Homelessness Is Hell: Barrus: NYT
A Response to David Brooks in the New York Times:
Here’s a question. Is it okay to unequivocally hate America with every molecule of the self.
I doubt it. Our idea of what freedom is does not allow the kind of dissent that doesn’t, and never will, fit into the ideological box we believe is free speech. Take a knee has to do with authority murdering children with impunity. It has nothing to do with patriotism.
It has everything to do with race. I hate cops. White people like David do not comprehend why because privilege prevents it.
I hate America.
I hate existence because I am forced to live surrounded by indifferent moral platitudes, deep, irreversible poverty, and hunger. I eat out of dumpsters. The New York Times will not believe that, and will not tolerate articulating it. I shower in shelters. I am invisible. You don’t want to see me. Mainly, I eat inside the dumpster because I don’t have a home, and no one knows I’m in there. I don’t have a neighborhood. I don’t have a college to extract romanticism. I don’t have food.
What I have is sex work because that is what America pays me for. Your friends and your brothers and your sons and your neighbors and your priests pay me to be something I am not. I am not immoral. I am not dirt. I am a human being.
Brooks’ focus is the sunny side of America. The country that has tried to destroy me all my life.
If I walk around my old neighborhood, I see the nodding out and needles stuck in arms. I see other prostitutes. I see cops with guns, and they will kill you, too.