Got dammit!!! SH! Mutha%$*@#! Son of a bi&@! Fu*#@ you!!! Bastard! I wanna die!
The yelling, spitting, lashing out and the disregard of the public when one defecates in between two cars, the drug use, the drinking while sitting on the piss stained curb- the hopelessness period.
Walking through the streets of San Francisco these days one is guaranteed to see the pain and hear these phrases of despair from the city’s mentally ill, forgotten, unattended to and gentrifuhked. Folks walk past either without a care or too busy to even notice the hellish pit that the poor, homeless and people of color are slipping through like quicksand while 85% of the poor suffer from mental illness here in the city along with the ever growing rate of substance abuse. Eviction, job loss, community violence, displacement an inhumane “justus” Sssystem- all of the above are major contributors to the stresses that can break a human being’s spirit in half.
The long office wait for SSI crumbs that has people leaving frustrated literally screaming mad. And the #1 complaint is representatives of these departments of human services who treat those in need like vermin that should be squashed.There are some compassionate employees in the field of trying to help those who cannot help themselves, but there are some who look their noses down with snooty attitudes and take pride in getting a paycheck for robbing other human beings of the little dignity and fight a person may have left. “I’d rather stay in the damn streets in my tent where I don’t have to deal with case managers treating me like a toilet bug!” One houseless skolar shared with me and it is the same as I spoke with other skolars that they would rather be out in the streets than to go through a ridiculous system with degrading accommodations and a 6 A.M check-out to nothing but foggy cold air and a liquor store.
The programs now set into place needs to be more consistent and aggressive in the aid of those who really cannot help themselves. The people need more long term inpatient mental health/substance use treatment programs and access to housing, education, healthcare and other preventative services with the chance to become viable functioning citizens again without having to endure 10 year wait lists. I was always told that every problem has a solution, and if we can build top notch stadiums for die hard sports fans we can tackle the problems of houselessness, mental illness and other forms of systematic trauma.
Political dictators make a fuss about how there’s not enough money to fund the programs we need so we can get ourselves together. There is no such thing as “no money” just “misplaced funds” that will never make it to po’ folks who really need it, but we have an ice-cream museum and Frisco always somehow come up with big money to spend on everything that shuns our down and out even more.
While the powers that be scramble around with the back biting game of who’s gonna run this town without money, POOR Magazine puts in the work of heal groups and educating folks to have understanding and to hold love for our people who have no one else or no reliable services to assist in the process of healing their lives. It is extremely difficult to hold love for someone who probably has never felt love before and it is difficult to keep my own panic attacks and trauma triggers in check when myself or children are being accosted by a person who can potentially harm us, but don’t mean any harm at all.
But if this epidemic against the poor continues to be ignored I will continue to believe that the people in office are the ones with the real mental health illnesses because who in their right minds would just sit back and allow for people to suffer?
QUEENNANDI PNN