SUNDAY, MARCH 8, 2009
Are we Going to Prison? (Are we Already There?)
By Michael Goodspeed
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky once observed, "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." More and more U.S. citizens are assessing the exactitude of Dostoevsky's ascertainment first hand. We have by far the largest prison population in the world - 2.3 million and growing, a staggering 25 PERCENT of the world's prisoners -- and by far the highest rate of incarceration -- counting only adults, one in 100 Americans is imprisoned.
But one need not enter a correctional institution in order to experience prison culture. It could totally surround you, invisible yet all-encompassing. You might not see the bars of your cell, or hear the bored, terrifying wails of the screws. But you'd feel the pressure, the immobilizing weight of the impossibility of change.
Freedom is imprisonment's opposite. Are you free? Stop and actually think a moment before answering that question. We tend to think of freedom in terms of freedom of movement. Because I'm able to get up off the couch and grab a beer whenever I want, or go outside and play in the rain, or get in the car and drive to the cinema, I feel free and assume this feeling is valid. I can do the things that give me pleasure, exempt from external control or interference. My iPod blasting A Perfct Circle in my ears, I gyrate and shuffle on my living room floor. No gestapo kicks down my door and says, "Sorry, you can't do that. Give us your iPod and place your hands behind your back." My arms and legs are forever unshackled.
But take away my couch to sit on, my refrigerator to get beer out of, my car to drive around in, and my floor to dance on. What of my "freedom" then?
Of course, my couch, refrigerator, car, and iPod did not come "free." I had to work for money doing things that I would not do strictly for enjoyment (no shit, Sherlock) then exchanged it for said items. But what if I couldn't work? What of my "freedom" then?
Actually, for me, as for gobs of other Americans (12.5 million by the "official," i.e. doubtless low number), that question is now being answered. I don't have a steady job. I've been looking incessantly and the results are horrifying. I've never traveled a conventional work path -- for a long time, I've made money at small creative ventures, not much but enough to stay alive -- but in the past, when I've sought more secure yet banal employment, I'd always been able to find it. No more. Have you looked recently in your paper's employment section? Oh, I know -- they're shrinking in part due to the explosion of online classifieds. But look online, and you're likely to see the same thing. No jobs. Not even bad ones -- the ones that our ignoble nightmare named Geroge W. Bush once described as "jobs that Americans aren't willing to do." But Bush had no clue then, and none now. My guess is that most if not all of our alleged "12.5 million" would be willing to get on their hands and knees and scrub other peoples' shit for a few pesos an hour.
What of your "freedom" now?
Ask a member of the ever-growing legions of our tent city populaces how "free" they feel. Consider this description of a homeless tent city in Sacramento, CA, from the UK's Daily Mail news service: "Today, tents are once again springing up in the city of Sacramento. But this time it is for people with no hope and no prospects. With America's economy in freefall and its housing market in crisis, California's state capital has become home to a tented city for the dispossessed. Those who have lost their jobs and homes and have nowhere else to go are constructing makeshift shelters on the site, which covers several acres. As many as 50 people a week are turning up and the authorities estimate that the tent city is now home to more than 1,200 people....Conditions are primitive, with no water supply or proper sanitation. Many residents have to walk up to three miles to buy bottled water from petrol stations or convenience stores." Link to full story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1159677/Pictured-The-credit-crunch-tent-city-returned-haunt-America.html
What of your "freedom" now?
The irony of homelessness is that one's "freedom" is so total it's completely oppressive. This reality is conveyed beautifully in director Mike Leigh's 1993 art house film "Naked," an existential meditation on homelessness in the U.K. In one scene, the film's protagonist is confronted by a security guard and asked, "Have you nowhere to go?" He responds with a look of bafflement, and a perfect summary of his predicament: "I have an infinite number of places to go. The trouble is where to STAY!"
And when you have nowhere to stay, when your life is reduced to an endless public spectacle, you are essentially at the mercy of the People Who Run Things. Stand in front of a building for too long, or sit on a public park bench, or linger for too long in a cafe or restaurant or shopping mall, and you'll feel the pressure, the weight of the staring eyes that say, "You aren't supposed to be here. Go away."
Even though my own experiences with homelessness have been mercifully brief -- never more than a stretch of one week, and always with the certainty that loved ones would rescue me as soon as I asked -- I've felt that weight, and nearly been crushed by it. I've no choice but to wonder, if I find myself TRAPPED on the streets, am I emotionally and mentally resilient enough to handle the strain? The truth is, I can't possibly know. I'd be lying if I claimed otherwise.
And it was this doubt, this gnawing anxiety that just over the horizon something looms that I'm unequipped to handle, that inspired me to undertake a filmmaking project here in Portland, OR, called "Homeless Portraits." I contacted a local homeless outreach organization called Sisters of the Road (http://sistersoftheroad.org), and was immediately contacted by several participants in their program. All were eager to share their personal accounts with the American public.
On Friday, March 6th, we met for the first time, and recorded a 30 minute introductory round-table discussion. My questions were straightforward and simple: How long have you been dealing with homelessness? What led to you becoming homeless? What if anything is keeping you homeless? What challenges and fears and obstacles do you face? This was a GROUP INTRODUCTION -- in the coming week, I am sitting down with each of them for more substantive, probing interviews.
Session number one -- 9 minutes of unedited introductory Q & A -- can be seen below:
Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky once observed, "The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons." More and more U.S. citizens are assessing the exactitude of Dostoevsky's ascertainment first hand. We have by far the largest prison population in the world - 2.3 million and growing, a staggering 25 PERCENT of the world's prisoners -- and by far the highest rate of incarceration -- counting only adults, one in 100 Americans is imprisoned.
But one need not enter a correctional institution in order to experience prison culture. It could totally surround you, invisible yet all-encompassing. You might not see the bars of your cell, or hear the bored, terrifying wails of the screws. But you'd feel the pressure, the immobilizing weight of the impossibility of change.
Freedom is imprisonment's opposite. Are you free? Stop and actually think a moment before answering that question. We tend to think of freedom in terms of freedom of movement. Because I'm able to get up off the couch and grab a beer whenever I want, or go outside and play in the rain, or get in the car and drive to the cinema, I feel free and assume this feeling is valid. I can do the things that give me pleasure, exempt from external control or interference. My iPod blasting A Perfct Circle in my ears, I gyrate and shuffle on my living room floor. No gestapo kicks down my door and says, "Sorry, you can't do that. Give us your iPod and place your hands behind your back." My arms and legs are forever unshackled.
But take away my couch to sit on, my refrigerator to get beer out of, my car to drive around in, and my floor to dance on. What of my "freedom" then?
Of course, my couch, refrigerator, car, and iPod did not come "free." I had to work for money doing things that I would not do strictly for enjoyment (no shit, Sherlock) then exchanged it for said items. But what if I couldn't work? What of my "freedom" then?
Actually, for me, as for gobs of other Americans (12.5 million by the "official," i.e. doubtless low number), that question is now being answered. I don't have a steady job. I've been looking incessantly and the results are horrifying. I've never traveled a conventional work path -- for a long time, I've made money at small creative ventures, not much but enough to stay alive -- but in the past, when I've sought more secure yet banal employment, I'd always been able to find it. No more. Have you looked recently in your paper's employment section? Oh, I know -- they're shrinking in part due to the explosion of online classifieds. But look online, and you're likely to see the same thing. No jobs. Not even bad ones -- the ones that our ignoble nightmare named Geroge W. Bush once described as "jobs that Americans aren't willing to do." But Bush had no clue then, and none now. My guess is that most if not all of our alleged "12.5 million" would be willing to get on their hands and knees and scrub other peoples' shit for a few pesos an hour.
What of your "freedom" now?
Ask a member of the ever-growing legions of our tent city populaces how "free" they feel. Consider this description of a homeless tent city in Sacramento, CA, from the UK's Daily Mail news service: "Today, tents are once again springing up in the city of Sacramento. But this time it is for people with no hope and no prospects. With America's economy in freefall and its housing market in crisis, California's state capital has become home to a tented city for the dispossessed. Those who have lost their jobs and homes and have nowhere else to go are constructing makeshift shelters on the site, which covers several acres. As many as 50 people a week are turning up and the authorities estimate that the tent city is now home to more than 1,200 people....Conditions are primitive, with no water supply or proper sanitation. Many residents have to walk up to three miles to buy bottled water from petrol stations or convenience stores." Link to full story: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1159677/Pictured-The-credit-crunch-tent-city-returned-haunt-America.html
What of your "freedom" now?
The irony of homelessness is that one's "freedom" is so total it's completely oppressive. This reality is conveyed beautifully in director Mike Leigh's 1993 art house film "Naked," an existential meditation on homelessness in the U.K. In one scene, the film's protagonist is confronted by a security guard and asked, "Have you nowhere to go?" He responds with a look of bafflement, and a perfect summary of his predicament: "I have an infinite number of places to go. The trouble is where to STAY!"
And when you have nowhere to stay, when your life is reduced to an endless public spectacle, you are essentially at the mercy of the People Who Run Things. Stand in front of a building for too long, or sit on a public park bench, or linger for too long in a cafe or restaurant or shopping mall, and you'll feel the pressure, the weight of the staring eyes that say, "You aren't supposed to be here. Go away."
Even though my own experiences with homelessness have been mercifully brief -- never more than a stretch of one week, and always with the certainty that loved ones would rescue me as soon as I asked -- I've felt that weight, and nearly been crushed by it. I've no choice but to wonder, if I find myself TRAPPED on the streets, am I emotionally and mentally resilient enough to handle the strain? The truth is, I can't possibly know. I'd be lying if I claimed otherwise.
And it was this doubt, this gnawing anxiety that just over the horizon something looms that I'm unequipped to handle, that inspired me to undertake a filmmaking project here in Portland, OR, called "Homeless Portraits." I contacted a local homeless outreach organization called Sisters of the Road (http://sistersoftheroad.org), and was immediately contacted by several participants in their program. All were eager to share their personal accounts with the American public.
On Friday, March 6th, we met for the first time, and recorded a 30 minute introductory round-table discussion. My questions were straightforward and simple: How long have you been dealing with homelessness? What led to you becoming homeless? What if anything is keeping you homeless? What challenges and fears and obstacles do you face? This was a GROUP INTRODUCTION -- in the coming week, I am sitting down with each of them for more substantive, probing interviews.
Session number one -- 9 minutes of unedited introductory Q & A -- can be seen below:
s more of an open exchange, with members chiming in on a variety of topics. This footage is also essentially unedited:ng in to this project that I might face certain criticisms. Some might claim that it's exploitative to ask persons in distress to bare their souls for an "anonymous audience" (in fact, one respondent to my piece asserted just that). Another angry viewer chided me via email for "presenting an inaccurate picture." Homeless persons, in her mind, "can't be trusted," because if you trust them, "they will burn you." This comment -- even though the commentator formed her perception through personal experience with a homeless loved one -- is so twisted and backwards as to make cognition weep. I had never met any of the individuals I interviewed in the video. I knew nothing about their personal circumstances. All I did was ask them non-tilted, straightforward questions, with a minimum of probing on my part (bearing in mind, of course, this was only an introduction). They were permitted to tell their stories. And this makes some people VERY ANGRY. They don't want to hear what the homeless have to say. Examine the "arguments" that some have against the homeless -- the haughty rationalizations for indifference and/or condemnation -- and when you strip away all the diversionary bullshit -- the endless pleas that they aren't worthy of help because "they did it to themselves" -- all that's left is brainless gut-based immature reaction.
I can enumerate endless statistics that refute most if not all traditional homeless stereotypes. Example: According to the 2006 U.S. Conference of Mayors Hunger and Homelessness Survey (23 U.S. cities surveyed) only 26 percent of the homeless have substance abuse issues. (Link to PDF: http://www.usmayors.org/HHSurvey2007/hhsurvey07.pdf) In other words, in the surveyed cities, 3 out of every 4 homeless persons ARE NOT ADDICTED TO DRUGS OR ALCOHOL. Although among the chronically homeless, drug and alcohol addiction have long been major causative factors (as was the case with most of my interviewees), in the U.S. today, at ANY GIVEN TIME, a MAJORITY of homeless persons are not dealing with substance abuse issues. If they have cash in their pockets, they are not going to throw it away getting high. They will spend it on food, or hygiene products, or other necessities, or they'll save it toward permanent housing.
The day when it might have seemed appropriate to view homeless human beings as objects of pity are long gone. They are not "those people" -- lost souls whose lives' only apparent purpose is to serve as cautionary tales. They are you, and they are me. I am them. And I'm more than a little nervous.
Dostoevsky wrote, "To live without hope is to cease is to live." I am not advocating hopelessness -- far from it. This essay is about freedom -- not just the freedom to speak or move about as one wishes, but the freedom to determine for oneself a DESTINY that is roughly commensurate with one's talents, abilities, character, and will. In America, countless millions of us work hard and make intelligent life choices. We don't drink or do drugs or beat our spouses or abuse children. We've never been convicted of crimes. We don't stab our friends in the back. We're smart and able and eager to face life's challenges. And we can only stand in amazement as we see it demonstrated again and again, in our lives and the lives of others, that it simply isn't enough. It's not enough to be "good."
What of our "freedom" now?
Copyright ⓒ 2009 by Michael Goodspeed
Michael Goodspeed is an actor, filmmaker, and freelance journalist living in Portland, OR. Many of his productions (including the Homeless Portraits series) may be viewed on online at: youtube.com/CometStardust1975
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