To the citizens and police of Bangor, Maine

July 6, 2011 at 3:05 AM (Uncategorized)

This was kind of dumb.

I get that you don’t want homeless people using your electricity. I’m sure this homeless guy doesn’t want to use your electricity either; he’d rather be using his own.

Here’s the thing: If he’s ever going to get off the street and buy his own electricity, he needs a job. To find a job, he needs to have a phone. For his phone to be of any use, the battery needs to be charged. Maybe I’m wrong, but the fact that he had the phone at all (two of them, for whatever reason) is a fairly good sign that he wants very much for this to happen.

So rather than flip out over the 1/4 of one cent worth of electricity, rather than taking up the time of police officers to arrest and book him, rather than paying the costs involved in feeding and sheltering this guy in jail and then trying him for “Theft of Services,” why not leave the guy alone until he found a job and got off your streets on his own?

Where is he going to go when he finishes his 90 days in jail? Back out onto your city’s streets. This time, without his cell phone. This time, with a criminal record giving employers yet another reason not to hire him.

Good job.

People used to help each other in this country. Then somewhere along the line, the more greedy among us convinced people to hate anyone who needs our help. They’re all criminals and drug addicts and leeches, right? It’s downright unAmerican to give taxpayer money to people who need help. And so, today there are laws against feeding the homeless; people have actually gone to jail for this.

I can no longer recognize the America they told me about when I was growing up. I don’t know where it went, but I miss living there.

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