The few parks around downtown Los Angeles used to be nothing more than crash pads for the homeless. The city fathers, in their infinite wisdom, bowed to the pressure of the nearby merchants who were losing business, and instituted a dragnet that rather quickly got the message out that sleeping downtown was going to land you in jail, which is much worse than being merely homeless in L.A. with its mild weather and generous citizenry.
The thoughtful community was rather irate about this for a while... until we saw the results. The homeless are no longer concentrated in one spot. You can't plan all your drives to avoid a few blocks in downtown L.A. and be guaranteed of not having to come face to face with a homeless person.
They're everywhere now. Not in such concentration that anybody gets upset enough to petition their own local governments to emulate L.A.'s law. There's one on this corner and one a few blocks down. There are a few scattered about in Pasadena and Glendale and Eagle Rock and Arcadia and Sherman Oaks and just about everywhere where there's a decent place to lie down at night.
And now everybody sees them all the time. Nobody can fool themselves into thinking that homelessness is not a problem -- or worse, into not thinking about it at all.
I think that's a good thing. Now everybody in southern California knows that this vast, opulent city (well it's a little less opulent since the Perestroika Recession but how long did people think they were entitled to get rich by building weapons?) is confronted every day with evidence that they are really lucky. They give more to the homeless and they treasure what they have a little more. They do a better job of putting their children on a path that won't lead to homelessness. They vote for government programs that actually help people instead of merely making the government bigger and more powerful.
I'm exaggerating for dramatic effect of course. But the essence of what I've said is true. The government cannot solve the problem of poverty. It has to be handled at the individual level. The more we have to face it, the more we're likely to think about it, and the more we're likely to help devise a solution -- one homeless person at a time. That's the American way.
The cop broke the rules he swore to uphold and he's going to have to face the consequences. Nothing can change that. As I've often said to you people, some things are neither right nor wrong, they just are. Sometimes following the law to its preposterous and inescapable conclusion is in itself a catalyst for change. That cop is a brave, honorable man who can sleep soundly at night. Plenty of brave, honorable men get the shaft every day. But it doesn't mean they should stop.
