While I Have Everyone’s Attention…

Now that the storm of press has calmed down a bit over Justin Keller’s open letter, I’m reflecting on the conversations I have started and engaged in with people in responses to my open letter reply. We have hopefully learned a few things. . .

Refrain from making ignorant judgments,

Don’t threaten the lower classes with taking away the little they have,

If you don’t have something non-selfish to say, keep your mouth shut,

You are no better than anybody else, even if you and your friends think so,

Money is the root of all evil, etc.

Every day on the Internet, we see articles and videos that make us angry and prompt us to feel bad about things we normally turn a blind eye to. We don’t pick up causes when we do see these issues. We just lose more hope in humanity, rightfully so.

I’d like us to do something this time. If we’re all engaged in dialogue, I’m sure we can come up with solutions. Here is a forum for us to say the smart things we tell our friends, publicly. By solutions, I don’t mean a reprise of Michael Jackson’s cheesy ‘We are the World’ song. (Surely Jackson donated money and spent time in poor countries, but did anybody else? Did the fans he was targeting, or the general public watching, do anything long-term?)

What are some of the problems we have?

  1. There are too many people in our beautiful city without homes. There are too many homes in our city that are too expensive. PROBLEM.
  2. There are enough people making surplus income to fix a lot of problems in the city, but we/they are not sharing it. (This applies to all of us. When we see people in need, oftentimes we don’t help, even when we have something to give because we think that giving them something small is too temporary a solution.) PROBLEM: DISCONNECT.
  3. There are people who think we shouldn’t give the lowest class anything but a boot out of our world. PROBLEM: DISCONNECT.
  4. There are people who ‘FEEL UNSAFE’ in the presence of somebody with nothing to lose, even though these people barely have limbs to stand on or enough nutrition to kick our asses. PROBLEM: DISCONNECT.
  5. There is more intention being placed and more money being spent on building condos for the wealthy over low-income homes for the poor. PROBLEM: HIERARCHY, DISCONNECT.
  6. Ed Lee. PROBLEM: HIERARCHY, DISCONNECT.
  7. Mental illness has been rampant on the streets since the 70’s due to lack of ability to properly function in society and being booted out of homes. (This is thanks to Ronald Reagan becoming President before Jimmy Carter’s CHMC bill went through.) PROBLEM: HIERARCHY.
  8. The United States keep shuffling homeless people from border to border, but no steps are being taken to solve the root cause of homelessness by the Federal Government. PROBLEM: HIERARCHY.
  9. All this new technology could be used for better things, like, oh I don’t know, social change? PROBLEM: DISCONNECT.
  10. It’s easy to point fingers. It’s hard to fill the gaps between us. DISCONNECT.

So what do we propose? (WARNING: This requires time and informed thought.)

Should we call on self-outing morons to donate their time to a good cause to change their views? Should we strap them to chairs and force them to watch ‘Tenderloin,’ ‘The Soloist’ and ‘Apocalypse Now?’

Should we all set aside time and money to advance the work already being done to assist the mentally ill and the homeless? Are the systems in place working?

Should we have a cap on how many condos and high rises are built in our fragile city? Shouldn’t we have a minimum on how many low-income homes and open lotteries we have available to people in need?

Should we call for any resignations that might be beneficial?

Should we boycott for-profit companies and organizations that may be wasting resources and money on furthering our disconnects?

Should we write to The House of Representatives and Congress for better answers, in this lame-duck Presidential transition time?

Can we invite the tech workers who don’t connect with SF community events to come out and meet more people ‘lower’ than them so we can start a new frequent dialogue and get them to really know what San Francisco is about?

Thoughts…