The Nameless and Faceless Deaths in Our Midst

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Thu Feb-08-07 11:58 AM
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The Nameless and Faceless Deaths in Our Midst

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Article 25:

http://www.un.org/Overview/rights.html

The Nameless and Faceless Deaths in Our Midst
by Janny Castillo

A vigil was held at St. Mary's Center in Oakland on December 21, 2005, to honor homeless people who died on the streets of the East Bay. Lydia Gans photo

"We know we have lost brothers and sisters like us. They had names. But they died nameless. John Doe -- what kind of name is that for a man?" -- Rev. Ken Hamilton

The preparation committee for the St. Mary's Homeless Vigil went in search of a non-existent count of homeless deaths in the East Bay. The question was how many homeless people died on the streets in Alameda County last year. Vigil organizers called the coroner's office, city offices, community activists, and homeless service providers. No one knew the answer, because no one in charge was counting these nameless deaths in our midst.

On December 21, 2005, a group of about 50 people stood in a circle in St. Mary's courtyard in Oakland. The sky was cloudy and dark and people stood shivering in the cold. Rev. Ken Hamilton spoke about the dead whose names were not known. "We know we have lost brothers and sisters like us," he said. "They had names. But they died nameless. John Doe -- what kind of name is that for a man?"

How many did we lose this year? How many homeless people did we lose to cold, to hunger, to violence, to sickness? The answer is lost in the cold winds of winter. Hundreds or thousands in California, tens of thousands in the nation. Homeless people seem as difficult to count after death as they are when alive. The real question is: How many have to die before real help is available to our poorest and most vulnerable? The answer should be, if it has to happen at all, let it be only ONE.

(snip)

It is unacceptable that even one person spent his last breath without shelter and died alone. The outrage and determination to rid this country of homelessness should be loud and clear. Instead, the cry for affordable housing, livable wages and affordable health care is barely a whisper.

(snip)

"Homelessness and hunger persist and increase only because the crisis is ignored. People are dying because they are being ignored. Ensuring that there is housing for everyone and freedom from hunger is not beyond imagination or ability. The crisis of homelessness and hunger first must be a crisis recognized not as a tourist deterrent, or a nuisance, or a sad situation, but as a moral challenge for our whole community. We need to understand, as Kofi Annan said, 'The cost of poverty is borne by all of us -- north and south, rich and poor, men and women of all races and religions. Today's real borders are not between nations, but between powerful and powerless, free and fettered, privileged and humiliated.'

"The intention of today's memorial service is to make visible the war on the poor, to put names and faces on people who have died homeless, to break through our numbness and despair, to reclaim our profound awareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life, to declare housing as a human right, and to transform our rage and grief into action that produces housing for the lowest income people."

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/January2006/memorial.htm

Will you make visible the war on the poor, will you put names and faces on people who have died homeless, will you break through our numbness and despair, will you reclaim our profound awareness of the sanctity and dignity of every human life, will you declare housing as a human right, will you transform our rage and grief into action that produces housing for the lowest income people?

Please, if you have a printer, download, print & send this report (“Without Housing: Decades of Federal Housing Cutbacks, Massive Homelessness and Policy Failure: http://wraphome.org/wh_press_kit/Without_Housing_20061114.pdf) to your Senators & Representative. Ask them what they will do to restore funding to Federal Housing Programs; ask them what they will do to alleviate the epidemic of homelessness in America.

Thank you!