Looking out: Street social security

July 16, 1997
Issue 

Looking out

Street social security

Street social security

By Brandon Astor Jones

"Government[s] can find money for anything they choose — buckets of money being thrown at the Olympics, $41 million plucked out of the sky to do landscaping around the Domain, when someone is stranded in the ocean, we find $5 million to rescue them — why don't our kids get the same support?" — Father Chris Riley

The question above is a valid one. Alas, very few of those whose hands are in control of any nation's government care one whit about young people. Children cannot vote, nor do they have vast sums of money to contribute to political campaigns. They are not considered — and when they are homeless and in desperate need of help, they are thought of even less by most.

Ironically, the very people who most likely are able to help them, when seeing them on the street, walk around them so quickly you would think that they are watching "Wet Paint" signs with youthful arms and legs. We should not be surprised that the "watchers" are, more often than not, the most vociferous people on the planet when speaking about the crime rate but are church-mouse quiet about the unemployment rate.

There is an "I got mine, and they have to get theirs" mentality pervading middle class society. Not very many of those "watchers" seem to care. It has become chic for "watchers" to walk briskly past young people in need on the streets. There is a feeling that they should not have left home — as if they should have endured whatever physical, sexual or emotional abuse went on there.

When will society realise that homeless children too often end up as homeless adults? Two years ago, I conducted my own unofficial study of how many men on Georgia's death row had been (a) homeless in their pre-teen and teen years, (b) physically/sexually abused in those years, and (c) jobless and homeless at the time of their arrest. More than one-third of the 28 men in the cell block at that time answered "yes" to at least two of those questions, and five answered "yes" to all of them.

These facts speak volumes about a pattern that should alarm us all — even the "watchers".

It is pointless to appeal to "watchers'" sense of compassion, kindness or care. They tend to be lacking in all three of those areas. Most often they are in the habit of doing things entirely for selfish reasons. So if a "watcher" is reading this, please consider this as an appeal to your intelligence, logic and deeply rooted sense of self-preservation: if you help care for and educate a homeless kid today, you greatly reduce the possibility 10 or 20 years from now — when s/he is hungry, homeless and desperate — of being hit over the head in a robbery or mugging.

Go ahead. Help a homeless kid. No-one will think you are getting soft. Any fool will be able to tell that you are simply making a wise investment that is likely to make your future safer. You will not be mistaken for someone who cares.

Speaking of someone who cares, Father Chris Riley run an ambitious program for homeless and abused young people called Youth Off the Streets. The organisation provides a range of services that homeless kids desperately need. Donations are tax deductible. You can ring Father Riley on (02) 9564 2117 or 9564 2263, or send a donation to YOTS, PO Box 719, Marrickville NSW 2204. It will be a good investment, sort of like a form of old age street social security.

[The writer is a prisoner in the United States. He welcomes letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, Georgia State Prison, HCO1, Reidsville, GA 30453, USA. For the first time in 17 years, Brandon has the real hope of his sentence of death being mitigated. If you can help by contributing to his defence fund or in other ways, please contact Australians Against Executions, PO Box 640, Milson's Point NSW 2061. Phone (02) 9955 1731, fax 9427 9489. Cheques can be made payable to "Brandon Astor Jones Defence Fund".]

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