March, 2007

Homeless Marathon: I believe ...

I believe that the American people are a great people in the truest sense, in that we wish to do what is right and have compassion for each other. But we too often bamboozle ourselves by buying a bill of goods about greatness in its emptiest, most meaningless sense.

Just as slavery was perpetuated by poor whites conned into believing that their membership in the Caucasian Club was more important than feeding their families, so too, our current system of economic injustice is held in place by the unsupportable notion that the first duty of an American citizen is to be the armchair emperor of the world. Our Presidential elections too often turn on propositions--all of them fake--about how we ought to rule over others, while the most obvious questions go unasked, like that old standby, "Why are people sleeping on the streets of the richest nation in history?"

So I guess you could say that the Homelessness Marathon keeps growing, because we aren't smart enough to move on to something more important. Thank God.

-- Jeremy Alderson, founder, Homelessness Marathon