Panhandling a part of urban experience?

Being a life-long Chicago-area resident, I have encountered panhandlers on countless occasions. My way of dealing with them varies based on my mood, but also on the way they conduct themselves.

Homelessness at very heart of Chicago

People who somehow manage to show me a touch of manners are more likely to get my sympathy, while those who think they can get pushy are most likely to tick me off and have me give them nothing.

WHICH IS SOMETHING I’m sure will offend those types of people who are trying to urge various local governments – including Chicago and some suburban communities – to repeal the ordinances they have enacted that try to restrict the ability of someone to seek a handout.

The American Civil Liberties Union, the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless and the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty sent letters this week to 15 municipal governments across Illinois – including Chicago and the suburbs of Aurora, Cicero, Elgin, Joliet and Oak Park – asking them to voluntarily repeal their restrictions.

Implying that the wrath of the ACLU and their allies could be wrought down upon us in the form of lawsuits if we don’t cooperate!

Panhandling? Or entertainment?

The Associated Press reported that the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless thinks laws against panhandling are wrong because they criminalize homeless people for their very existence – and that their actions in trying to get a handout are merely the acts of trying to survive.

THERE ALSO HAVE been rulings by the Supreme Court of the United States in the past that restrict laws against panhandling by describing such activity as freedom of expression. As in “free speech,” one has a right to walk up to you and ask for some spare change.

Of course, my comprehension of “free speech” is that no one is required to actually listen. We have a right to ignore things if we so choose – regardless of the morality behind such an unsympathetic act.

They/re not doing a leisurely lunch at Berghoff

So does the ACLU think we ought to be forced to pay attention to the homeless of our society? I would have a problem with that concept, because I’d compare it to the right of white supremacists to spew their nonsense rhetoric.

They may have a right to think such thoughts and say such trash publicly, but we, the people, have a right to disregard them as a batch of crackpots.

WHICH IS THE way I have been known to respond to beggars when they try to get pushy or intimidating. I have been known to be incredibly blunt and rude in telling them to drop dead.

But other times, if a person has been somewhat polite in their request, I have been known to reach into the pocket and give up some spare change.

Or one other time, I remember I actually pulled out a $10 bill and gave it to a woman – who was so thrilled she’d be able to get a “decent” lunch that day. Of course, she happened to catch my attention at the very moment I was headed to the Berghoff to have lunch with some former work-related colleagues.

I’m sure the lunch I had that day cost much more, and I would have felt like a total cheapskate if I couldn’t contribute a little something to her.

NOW I KNOW some of you are thinking I’m a fool. You’re going to want to believe these people are pulling some sort of scam and are just pocketing the money until it builds up into a significant sum – then they buy liquor or some form of illicit drugs with it to dull their sensibilities. Or that these are people “too lazy” to go out and “Get a Job!”

Nonsense image, but pizza is quite good. Photos by Gregory Tejeda

Although I must admit that if my life were to ever take a turn for the worse that I had to resort to soliciting people for their spare change, perhaps I’d need to resort to using something to numb my braincells.

Which is why I can’t help but notice all the individuals on the street corners with no place else to go and wonder if that is a worst-case scenario for my own life.

Because let’s face it, there are factors in life that can drag down anybody – no matter how superior we may believe ourselves to be.

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Cabrini-Green – R.I.P. (& good riddance)

The Cabrini-Green public housing complex on the Near North Side, like all the other high-rise public housing units that sprung up throughout the South and West sides, was a pit. Nobody lived there by choice.



Will Chicago even try to remember this mistaken attempt at isolation?

It was part of a failed attempt to house the less fortunate among us, whose real purpose was to isolate those people in distant pockets of the city where the rest of us Chicagoans could ignore them. A part of me thinks that we, as a society, should be ashamed that we ever let people live under such conditions.

SO LEARNING THAT the final resident of Cabrini-Green was to leave the Near North Side complex, and that all physical traces of the high-rises will soon be gone, is a positive for Chicago. Sort of.

Even though the places where these public housing residents were moved to aren’t exactly ritzy, they are bound to be an improvement over the collection of poverty that one found in the public housing high-rises – which always struck me as resembling prisons.

In fact, that probably is the best characterization of the structures. They were there to incarcerate people who didn’t have criminal convictions (or were perhaps in between prison sentences), but whom we didn’t want living among us.

Anyone who thinks I’m being overly cynical in taking such an attitude ought to read some of the Internet commentary that is sprouting up. There are many people whose biggest concerns are that these public housing residents may now be living near them.

WE’RE ALSO GETTING the rants from people who object to anyone being able to live in public housing, complaining it is now their own money (as in tax dollars) that is paying for undesirable people to be their new neighbors.

All of which means that I have mixed feelings about the demise of Cabrini-Green – which at its peak consisted of 23 high-rise apartment buildings containing more than 15,000 residents.

I can understand the reluctance of some people to move from there, even though I know their lot in life will improve by getting away from the concentration of narcotics and streetgangs that dominated the local lifestyle.

Not that they’re getting away from those problems altogether. They are everywhere. It just won’t be as intense as it was in the high-rises.

BUT I DO understand why those residents feared that the only reason city officials showed any interest in their fate was because the actual land upon which Cabrini-Green stood was SO CLOSE to the Gold Coast, Michigan Avenue and the Near North Side (some of Chicago’s most elite real estate).

They were correct in thinking that the interest had nothing to do with their own well-being (like I wrote earlier, if we cared about their well-being, we as a society never would have created the high-rises to begin with).

I got my chuckle from reading the Chicago Sun-Times account of the last Cabrini-Green resident. She is being moved to a smaller-scale Chicago Housing Authority complex south of U.S. Cellular Field, and complains that the area is a “food desert.”

She’s right. There won’t be any nearby supermarkets, compared to Cabrini where residents could shop at that Jewel-Osco supermarket located just to the east on Division Street.

OF COURSE, THAT was a source of tension at times for area residents, since that is a store frequented by Gold Coast residents as well (except for those who preferred the neighborhood Treasure Island grocery store that used to be on Clark Street). Many of them didn’t care for the interaction between the two that would occur.

It is probably another reason why some people may be glad that the housing complex honoring the memory of Mother Cabrini and former Gov. Dwight Green is gone. You won’t have to feel pangs of guilt while grocery shopping, although I suspect many of the people who most strongly felt this way never felt guilt.

Although it was that very proximity to the Near North Side that caused then-Mayor Jane Byrne to use Cabrini-Green for her stunt in 1981 when she “moved” to the housing complex for a month or so, in hopes that her presence might reduce the violence.

So while I realize that, as a whole, Chicago has potential to improve by eliminating these high-rises, I know that anyone who portrays this story as being that simple is being simple-minded themselves.

I ONLY WONDER how future generations will remember what once stood between Evergreen Avenue, Sedgwick Street, Chicago Avenue and Halsted Street – since I would expect developers to obliterate any traces of what has existed for the past seven decades.

I only hope that Hollywood and television don’t control that image. Because there are bound to be copies of that 1992 horror film “Candyman” (set in Cabrini-Green) that get aired on “bad movie nights.”

Then, there is “Good Times,” that staple of 1970s television that used to be CBS’ competition to “Happy Days” on ABC. The opening credits of that situation comedy set in a public housing complex in Chicago clearly singled out Cabrini-Green – although it was never mentioned by name.

I’d hate for people to think that the real-life of Cabrini-Green had anything to do with Jimmie Walker, or “Dyn-o-mite!” or those re-runs that crop up every night on “Me-TV.”

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EDITOR'S NOTE:  R.I.P., Dantrell Davis.

Federal politics of health care are as much of a mess as the health care issue itself

I find it absurd these days to read or hear the continued Republican rhetoric on the issue of health care when GOP officials claim that President Barack Obama is bringing doom to his Democratic Party colleagues by continuing to push for the issue.

What is so absurd about that issue is not the fact that Republican officials will design rhetoric for this year’s campaign’s meant to damn Obama and his allies, but the idea that they really believe that they’re somehow going to gain a moral victory from this issue.

NOW I DON’T know if the issue is coming up for a vote on Monday, or later this week, or suddenly at a future moment once enough arms have been twisted by the Obama Administration to get them to vote “yes.”

What I see from the various polls is that about half of the people of this nation still approve of Obama’s performance, and that the percentage of people who approve of the measure now pending before Congress to offer health care reform is about the same as Obama’s approval rating.

In short, the people who have a problem with this passing and say they will “take it out” on Obama would have been opposed to the president and his allies regardless and will find some other issue with which to vote against him come the Nov. 2 elections if they can not use health care.

There’s also the fact that those same polls usually show Obama with slightly more people approving of him than disapproving, but Congress usually has approval ratings that resemble something swirling around the political toilet bowl (George W. Bush at his lowest was better liked than Congress is these days).

WHAT IS DISGUSTING to the American people about this issue is not so much that Obama has tried to do something about the current situation in this country where roughly 47 million people who live here do not have any kind of health insurance.

Which means if they get sick, they either do not get treated or they wind up pushing off the expense for their health care upon government-run public hospitals. Which means the taxpayer gets hit with the bill.

So much for the idea that Obama has devised a plan so expensive that the taxpayer will get hit with the bill. We’re going to get hit with a big bill either way. It’s just a difference whether it will be the federal government helping out, or will the county government (that runs the public hospital) have to deal with this all by themselves?

What bothers us is the partisan maneuvering, and on both sides.

WE HAVE A serious problem that for the first time in 16 years, a president is trying to show the initiative to address. Yet on the Democratic side of the Senate and House of Representatives, we have elected officials who behave as though they wish they wore the “R” after their names (for Republican) and are all too quick to make compromises so as to minimize the extent to which health care reform would truly “reform” anything.

And on the Republican side, we get too many partisan pols who just don’t want to touch the issue until a time when they can take credit for it while also protecting the financial interests of the insurance industry officials who are among their biggest financial supporters.

A Gallup Organization poll last week found 48 percent of people disapproving of the current health care reform measure, while only 45 percent liked it.

Considering all the partisan games that have been played with the legislation by Congress, it’s a wonder that the disapproval rating isn’t higher.

YET I THINK it is foolish to think that this somehow reflects poorly upon the president, who currently has 49 percent of the electorate approving of his performance on the job (compared to 44 percent disapproving).

That same Gallup Organization currently gives Congress a 16 percent approval rating overall, with 24 percent approving of Democratic congressmembers and only 14 percent approving of the GOP members.

Anyone who claims the disgust level is aimed solely at Democratic congressmen is lying to you. Part of my intent in writing this commentary is to un-spin that little lie we’re going to hear repeatedly in coming months.

We’re tired of the fact that some people wanted to take health care reform and use it to make statements related to the immigration and abortion debates currently taking place in this country. We hate the fact that the only way this issue has a chance to get through Congress is through political maneuvers so arcane and questionable that some wonder if they comply with the U.S. Constitution.

WE DESPISE THE fact that we are not going to get a straight “up or down” vote on this issue, and that coming up with a way to cover the health care costs of as many people as possible has become bogged down in the muck.

When some people say that Obama should have focused on unemployment and economic issues in general during his first year as president, I wonder how many of those people are making the mistaken assumption that putting people back to work will get them a health insurance plan as a job perk?

For I can’t help but notice the number of jobs that don’t offer any such insurance, or where companies are trying to cut the perks they offer in an attempt to bolster their profitability (although in all fairness, there are cases where it is a matter of turning any kind of profit at all).

Thirty-one percent of people polled may have told Gallup recently they consider “unemployment” to be the most important issue (“healthcare” was third with 20 percent), but health care is an issue that is going to have to be resolved or else it’s lack in certain segments of our society will be the key factor that drags us all down in future years.

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EDITOR’S NOTES: Several polls by the Gallup Organization say much about our society these days, but this (http://www.gallup.com/poll/126614/Americans-Say-Jobs-Top-Problem-Deficit-Future.aspx) one about people being more concerned with unemployment and the economy makes me wonder how much people understand how the issues are intertwined.

I wonder how many Chicago-style political tactics are being applied this weekend to remind those so-called moderate Democrats (http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/03/sunday-snapshot-the-coming-crunch-week-for-health-care/37461/) in Congress that they do bear the “D” after their names and ought to vote accordingly.

Even if a favorable health care reform vote is taken this week, Barack Obama is going to have to immediately cope with those people who think immigration reform must now become the priority issue (http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=10081177) for this administration.