By Brian Flagg,
Contrary to what the media promotes, the issue ain’t John McLane.
Yes, he was stupid and he got busted for pot. And he has some big skeletons in his closet.
The real issue is that all those dream pods in the downtown streets have raised the issue of the sin of massive poverty, homelessness and human suffering to the front burner of people’s consciousness.
It has forced our Bishop to try to deal with it.
It has forced Peggy Hutchison, Director of Primavera Foundation to come to a meeting and inform the community that in spite of reports of the homeless “refusing services”, Primavera has 17,000 people a year coming to them begging for housing assistance. They can only accommodate a fraction of them. She also likened this extreme poverty to a low intensity war against the poor.
It has forced those reveling in the new revitalized, gentrified downtown to deal with the reality of those left behind, the marginalized and the excluded, the ones whom Pope Francis speaks up for.
And it has forced me and all of us here at Casa Maria to evaluate if we are doing as much as we can and being as effective as we can possibly be in the struggle for the dignity of those we serve every day.