VENDOR SUBMISSION - Jen A.

Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself

BY JEN A., CONTRIBUTOR VENDOR

The poor, the traumatized, the sick, the dying — that’s who we are.

We’ve been used-up and broken doing your hard, physical labor so you don’t have to. We receive little pay: pay usually given “under-the-table” so you don’t have to bother with social security for us.

We’ve been traumatized year over year fighting America’s endless foreign wars so your children could stay safe and warm stateside. We’ve been used and abused by those we should have been able to trust.

We’re sick because of America’s unconscionable corporate drug plague and because your Republican legislature won’t give the least of us the dignity of adequate healthcare through the Affordable Care Act.

We’re dying from neglect because that’s all that is left to us — that’s who we are.

And yet, we’re a resilient bunch. We’re surviving veterans of America’s war on us.

We can live outside because that’s the only place we can afford to live. That takes skill and courage — skill and courage you don’t have.

We scrounge for our basic needs and make do with very little because we have to tote all of our belongings on our backs. That takes immense creativity — creativity you couldn’t begin to muster.

If we grow too sick or too weak to carry our load, members of our community will carry it for us. That takes compassion — compassion that you don’t seem to have.

Recently, there’s been a big to-do about the homeless encampment at Brookmeade Park down on the west end. It’s been there for years. Local residents want the city to shut it down and clear out all of the campers so they don’t have to look at them anymore.

They’ve formed, “Reclaim Brookmeade Park,” and appointed Ms. Dede Byrd their spokesperson. The group paid to have five disparaging digital billboards erected, directed at Mayor John Cooper to, I suppose, shame him into doing their bidding.

“All this is to help the homeless and open the park back up to the public,” Ms. Byrd opined in an interview with Channel 17. Are the homeless not members of the public?

Ms. Byrd went on to say, “the acute situation is the addiction and mental health crisis is occurring with the people who are chronically homeless and you can deal with that right now.” That sounds as though Ms. Byrd has some sort of magic wand she can wave over the folks living in the park and miraculously heal them of all their problems. Where is the humanity in her statement?

I know professionals and just kind-hearted people from a handful of Nashville non-profits who have worked tirelessly for years in an attempt to move all of our campers into stable housing or into better living situations. But they can’t move them into homes if those homes don’t exist. There are even fewer drug and alcohol treatment opportunities and mental health facilities. Maybe Ms. Byrd’s magic wand could help with that.

Nashville has kicked the can of homelessness down the road for years. Occasionally the city throws meager funding at the growing problem. But there has not been a coordinated cityof-Nashville effort to more effectively deal with homeless individuals. The homeless are residents of Nashville too. They are our neighbors.

I wonder if Ms. Byrd and the other members of “Reclaim Brookmeade Park” have ever gone into the camps and actually talked to the campers to find out who they are and how RBP might be able to help them. The money they spent on those hurtful billboards could have been used to actually help their neighbors or to spruce-up the park. They want our mayor to do something to magically solve their perceived problem. What constructive actions have they taken to help their neighbors?

There’s a wonderful book, The Least of Us, by Sam Quinones. It’s the chronicle of his journey across the U.S. to find out how cities and towns are dealing with the consequences of the hopelessness and homelessness caused by the American corporate drug plague: a plague our governments allowed to flourish unabated for years. His ultimate conclusion: “In a time when drug traffickers act like corporations and corporations like traffickers, our best defense, perhaps our only defense, lies in bolstering community.” It is when neighbors reach out to our forgotten and vulnerable that gives Quinones hope.

The campers at Brookmeade Park need all of us to come together to help them. It will be hard work and will take all of our compassion and an infinite amount of patience. But, Ms. Byrd, you and your group can do this. Stop waiting for someone else to do what y’all could have been doing for years. Help them. Love thy neighbors as thyself.