It's sad to see how people treat eachother

There is an epidemic in all cities world wide, homelessness. Not just drug addicts and the mentally ill are driven to the streets, hard working families make up a large percentage of the homeless. The Hawaiian islands are no exception. Here is an article I came across when I was doing a little research earlier today, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/sep/24/news/adna-oahu24. It's no secret that crystal meth is a big problem here in Honolulu, and that is one of the largest contributors to the homeless epidemic here. But there is one thing that most people in the mainlands don't know, and it's that cities all over the United states are actually buying some of their homeless people one-way tickets to Hawaii. Instead of dealing with it, they ship them off to a place where they can sleep almost anywhere year-round. They literally DUMP these people, citizens of their own cities, here in Hawaii.



I spend most of my time in downtown. I work there, it's where I go to meet up with people to ride bikes, and it's just where all the fun stuff is. So throughout my day I see a lot of street people. They are sleeping in shady patches of grass and on benches, or bumming change from tourists. On occasion, I talk to some of the bums at the bus stops to pass time. I know it probably scares my family to hear that, but I have a sense for danger and I know when it is safe to talk so someone, or when it is time to get the fuck out of there. They are people just like you and I who were just were put in a bad situation either by choices they made or it was something that they could not have controlled. The lady in the picture was at my bus stop today. I was waiting for the Express when she walked up the trash can I was sitting by and started rummaging through it. I'm kind of use to seeing that by now, but she wasn't pulling out old food or cigarette butts, only aluminum cans. She looked at me and smiled, so I asked her what she was doing. She said, "I can cash these in and get a little bit of money to buy some food, I also like to help out because I know most people don't recycle." Amazing! There are so many ways homeless people can make money, but she chose a less lucrative approach, knowing that in doing so, she would be helping out the environment. It gets better........ she sat down and pulled out a small package of Cheetos, and started to feed the birds. For all I know that was the last bit of food she had, but she chose to give the entire bag to the birds.

Homeless people have always caught my attention. When I was around 6 or 7, I went to Philadelphia with my family. One of my only memories of being there was at and ice cream shop. I remember coming out of the place with a milk shake the size of my body. We all had something, my mom probably spent 40 bucks at that place on ice cream for the family. We were sitting out front enjoying our treats when a some guy walked up to a trash can and started going through it. I never saw anything like it, I had no idea why he would be digging through the trash. Did he lose something? Then he pulled out the ass end of an ice cream cone and started eating it. Then did it hit me, "Ooh, hes hungry!". I looked down at my monster of a milk shake and without even a second thought, I walked over to the guy and said this word for word,"Here! You can have this! Its really good!" I handed him the shake and he replied with a quiet "thank you" and walked away. It was the act of a naive child with the basic human instinct to take care of one another. I didn't even do it to be nice or impress anyone, I just did it because i knew it was the right ting to do.

Everyone is born with the instinct to take care of one another, but over time it fades away and it turns into a big self-centered, every man for himself, winner takes all competition. I hope that one day we can live in a world where it's not like that, and everyone is treated fairly regardless of their economic situation or where they stand socially.


And that's how I feel about that-Joey