My Encounter with Poverty in Berkeley.

This time, I want to share a rather hard experience I witnessed regarding hunger, and my exposure to poverty. Going back to GPP 115 material about middle-class everyday interaction with the poor, ‘zones of interaction’, and the visibility of poverty, I was presented with a rather uncomfortable visible image of the struggle of poverty recently. Anaya Roy explained how poverty in the U.S, tends to detach us away from it, because we feel uncomfortable and distanced from it, unable to understand or acknowledge our own space and relation to the problem. I thought I had a had a rather critical perspective about that notion, that I could experience and perceive everyday poverty because I myself experience some sort of financial/social struggle, and have seen and worked in Mexico’s slum towns. But I had never witnesses such an uncomfortable image about the struggle of poverty until recently. I was walking down Bancroft with my cousin, near Urban Outfitters around 11:30pm, when we both saw a homeless person bend down, eating dog shit off the sidewalk. As we passed by him, he kept eating it, telling us to “stay in school, or shit you will eat.” It was a really hard sight for both of us. At that moment, I could not even judge or look down on him, how could I? I just felt great sorrow and guilt. Guilt that I, unlike him, had the option to go to a cozy home and fix myself a warm meal. I had the urge to go to a store and buy him food, but nothing was open at that time, so I just walked away. I still feel horrible, knowing I didn’t not so anything, and worst, about my own privilege. I still do not know where I stand in this encounter, but know I cannot judge what he was doing because I have never been forced to such a combination of human suffering. I just wonder what the man perceived that act as:  luck ‘having found food’ to feed his hunger, or suffering, degrading himself to eat animal excrement because of his economic situation, or perhaps something else to hard to understand

The idea of Poverty just fills me with unsettling questions

One of Ananya Roy’s stories in lecture recently struck me, in which a boy asked her why in America there are homeless; rather, why do we not allow informal housing of the extremely impoverished in America. Of course, I realize there do exist "encampments" hidden underneath seams of the urban fabric, such as in the brush at the Albany Bulb or under bridges, however there are still so many trying to sleep on the concrete around my warm, secure home. Often in the Bay I have witnessed despicable verbal and physical violence toward bodies trying to rest on the streets. I wonder how, after being exposed to all the noxious elements of life on the streets throughout the day, these individuals also manage to survive sleeping on the cold concrete unable to lock out the dangerous, bad, or drunk people out that scare us all. I feel like the reason we don’t allow informal housing, is that cities feel compelled to be able to say the individuals without homes on their streets are just transients, and thus not reflective of the city, nor responsibility of the community. Do we not allow informal housing because we think the homeless are easier to regulate and police when they have no privacy? No running water, no mirror, no place to store their things, no toilet, no refrigerator or stove? Do we refuse to allocate space for makeshift dwellings, because it is easier to pretend like the problem doesn’t exist? Is it that we fear a built environment exposing the raw and inhumane conditions of Americas most poor would render the problem visible? I know many individuals who would build themselves a makeshift house in a dangerous slum on the outskirts of town and feel blessed to have walls surrounding them, as temporary, fragile, and illegal as they may be. I understand that slums pose many unimaginable dangers, but I wonder if they could possibly be worse than what we already have in America. How can we have so many people in this country of abundance wealth living in a culture of conspicuous consumption yet suffering from such extreme poverty that they cannot even afford a place to call home? My best guess is that we don’t allow anyone access to free land, due to the fear that it would be unfairly taken advantage of. Nonetheless I can’t help but wonder sometimes if "third world" slum establishments in fact might serve society better than how the poorest are forced to live in Berkeley.

http://lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2011/02/08/the-barrios-of-bogota/

Class Infographic | Fall 2013