Message for the El Paso Police Department: SHAME! SHAME! SHAME!

This entry may be incomplete and I reserve the right to revise it...

Today I spoke to a homeless man who was being hassled by the local police.
I was waiting for a bus in the blazing sun on one of the ugliest spots in the universe, "Mesa" Street in El Paso, Texas. Steel and glass self-piloted instruments of climate destruction everywhere. Noise and heat. The people invisible within their dark shiny monsters.

But as I hid from the sun behind a telephone pole--not especially effective, but something is better than nothing in the cruel sun--a man began to speak to me.
A very tan man. Not overly tall, with a large belly. He had just been chased away from a bank by the security guard. I'll bet that he too was just trying to get out of the sun.
When I got up close to him, he smelled. He was speaking softly and I had to
approach close to hear.

He said he'd recently been released from prison--maybe he said four months ago--
and he attempted to sound threatening, saying that he wouldn't put up with the
abuse he'd been getting.... But he was not frightening. He looked lost, even indecisive.

I asked if he was homeless, and he said he was. And then he told me that the El Paso Police had told him to stay away from this area. I began to sputter, expounding on how freedom of movement was a basic right in a democracy. But my words, even as I spoke them, seemed ineffectual.....I would like to find stronger words to express my disgust.

This is where we find ourselves today. The weakest are pushed down harshly,
severely, unapologetically.

The world is becoming more cruel and more heartless.

I've seen this before in Slovakia and when I lived in Vienna, I did read that the police there used the law to punish the homeless... (As I recall, a law about freedom of movement and non-obstruction in public spaces was used to punish a homeless beggar with a financial penalty. But the beggar in question was standing on a very wide sidewalk, and hardly could have been doing much harm--except perhaps to the guilty consciences of the more fortunate shoppers.)

This is our world--a world where the police oppress the weakest members of the society. A world where we seem to wish that the poor would simply disappear.

Just last night I was reading Loic Wacquant's important book, "Punishing the Poor".
Wacquant points out that criminals are most likely to re-offend when they are cut off from the society....

I spoke about the poor man's fate with a rather bourgeoise member of Westside El Paso society---her response: "What crime did he commit?"

She didn't stay for my answer; if she had, I hope I would have said: IT DOESN"T MATTER.---WHATEVER HE DID, HE WENT TO PRISON, AND NOW HE'S OUT.
Without a job, what do you expect him to do? Without a home, what can he do?
He is a human being deserving of dignity and respect just as much as you....

just as much as the police of the City Of El Paso... who are themselves apparently the victim of budget cuts.

Tell me: what is solidarity? And why is there none in this miserable city, this miserable country?

Who was it that said: You can tell the level of civilization by how a society treats its poor. Shame, shame, shame....

POSTSCRIPT
Waiting for my bus home, I spoke to one of the security guards at the bus terminal in the Northeast part of town.... and he told me that his duties included keeping homeless people away.... This is what his supervisors or managers had told him to do....