Reaction to Article: “Why You Talking to a Bum?” by Katie Prout, in “Chicago Reader,” April 20, 2023
The homeless are NOT the criminals!
Katie Prout has written a candid and real account of what is happening on the Red Line trains and how the homeless are being treated. Proust interviews a man named Tracy and some other persons on the Red Line to get their take on theft, safety, survival, and more on the trains.
Prout does a very good job of showing the realities and thus is revealing that magical world of train living and surviving.
Prout makes it clear that the huge majority of the homeless are NOT the criminals who are threatening and strong-arming people. Or robbing them. Or injuring them.
There is, instead, a small core of (the same d*mn) criminals who frequent the train – especially late at night – and creating chaos among the homeless who just want to sleep, recover from a rough day, hide out from the rain and snow, and make it through just one more night.
This notion of making it through one more night is a key theme in several of the observations and interviews we have posted on our StreetSense blog in the past. The unhoused want to live, to make it, to survive, to get by, to meet their goals, or just get to the next day.
What the unhoused want depends on many, many factors. However, most unhoused persons are NOT on the train to make a killing—or to kill anyone.
We now have on the Red Line regular CPD (Chicago Police Department) officers, plus security guards dressed in bright yellow, plus black-shirt K-9 units, complete with German shepherds. The K-9 unit dogs are reminiscent of Nazi Germany and its use of shepherds to round up and scare and attack Jews, Gypsies, Poles, and…
many more victims of Hitler’s death machine.
The K-9 units are using the dogs to scare the homeless.
They do this by entering trains abruptly, having the dogs bark at the homeless, and yelling that the homeless have to get off the train. There is also some bumping of seats, some swearing, some threatening, and all of this with the dogs barking.
Some people yell, “Get that f*#king dog away from me or I will kill it!” ..and many other such responses to dogs chasing, menacing, and of course all of this chaos with the dogs barking like mad. The poor dogs. They want to be out in the middle of the night?
Some of the dogs look so old they may remember World War II from having been in it!
Said one Black passenger to me the other night, “Our people have been through all of this before! Down South, they used to use these dogs to bite us and chase us and f@*k us up!”
There is indeed a huge racial element in this dog-attack mindset: the article makes the clear point that the majority of Chicago homeless are Black and Brown persons. The data backs up that assumption. As StreetSense mentioned in a recent piece, about 80 percent of Chicago unhoused persons are Black, in fact.
So you have the powers that be allowing (empowering? insisting? unaware of?) dogs chasing unroofed people while visitors from out of town, people going to work, and couples coming home from dinner all seeing this.
Dogs barking at homeless people.
What a classy and well-planned approach to keeping people “safe.” And as Prout mentions in this Reader article, it is important to consider WHO we are keeping safe and from WHAT or WHOM? It can be assumed we are making sure the White people are safe…
as they contribute to society by going to work, behaving on the train, not putting their feet up or—God forbid!!!--falling asleep while riding the train.
OMG! Falling asleep on train! Can anyone imagine as huge a crime against nature as an exhausted person falling asleep on a train?
My God—it is things like this that sentence people to prison for life during these days on earth. And sends them to hell for all eternity—in the afterlife.
Prout also interviews (and puts the results within this candid article) Doug Schenkleberg, who is Executive Director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. Schenkelberg admits “Many folks are uncomfortable when they get on the el and they see someone they assume might be homeless…” The unhoused being on the train is considered to be not only criminal activity but is some way compromising the safety of the other riders.
Schenkelberg goes on to remind readers that “If you’re someone who is unsheltered, you seek out whatever is the safest situation you can find…” and mentions that the train is by default one of those situations. It’s about the unroofed persons sheltering themselves from the elements, simply. It is warm and dry on the train.
The question “Why you talking to a bum?” came from a young person who was watching Proust interview Tracy and another person. The group of late-teen and early-20s Blacks commenting were apparently concerned that Proust did not know she was talking to homeless people… and they wanted to warn her.
Man’s inhumanity to man.
The group felt they had to “clue her in” to what was happening… making sure the news of the subject’s homelessness got covered for that “real world” upstairs.
Funny how everybody has to be labeled, safety for others has to be maintained, and a certain life order must be protected. If somebody is homeless, others must be warned. If somebody is homeless, it is acceptable to call them “bums” and point out their status to others.
Thank God for helpers, and donors, community organizers, writers, readers, concerned others, decent people, honest taxpayers, people who care about their fellow man, straightforward interviewers like Proust, and coalitions.
BTW – on the topic of coalitions, the Chicago one maintains a website with helpful links for persons wanting to learn more about homelessness in the city, plus important data and news on how to help persons who are unroofed, plus resources for homeless and their helpers (
https://www.chicagohomeless.org/
). On the topic of blogs, note that the coalition has one also! (https://www.chicagohomeless.org/category/blog/)
Note, also, that the coalition includes a link to the Reader article we are discussing.
Proust is to be commended for writing an honest account and for using the authentic language of the persons interviewed.
Talking to a bum? There are about 10,000 homeless families in Chicago. There are over 50,000 homeless singles in Chicago. There are over 16,000 homeless students in the Chicago Public Schools. These are all numbers very easy to find—if you want to google them.
However, what does it say that there are that many supposed “bums” in the city?
What does it say that people would use the word “bums” do describe our unsheltered brothers and sisters?
.
.
* See article at: https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/why-you-talking-to-a-bum-cta-unhoused-police/ or hardcopy, volume 52, number 14, pp. 12-15.