Homeless in Manhattan

Monday, January 10, 2011 11:09 AM

The homeless people are back on the streets of Manhattan. Walking along Fifth Avenue. Perhaps they never really left. I have not been to New York recently. I remember the 1970's. The homeless were out in force then. It was an entirely different era and atmosphere. New York is a much, much cleaner place today. The current street people present a more visual contrast. The phenomenon has always been a shock and a conundrum. It is a sociological problem or purely a byproduct of the economy?  


I remember going on a field trip to the Bowery, to the Catholic Worker, the HQ of Dorothy Day at the tail end of 1960's. Down there, everybody was living on the sidewalks or in a flop house. The Catholic Worker ran a soup kitchen. I found out later that Dorothy was the sister of Donald Day, who was the author of an astonishing book, Onward Christian Soldiers. He had been the Baltic correspondent for Colonel McCormick's Chicago Tribune in the 1920's and 30's. Donald Day was outspokenly anti-Bolshevik and then anti-Roosevelt.


Dorothy was deemed to be a Red, or at least a fellow-traveler. She has since been proposed for sainthood. The Vatican is considering it. Donald was regarded as a trouble-maker by the Roosevelt Administration for his hard-hitting dispatches and incorrect views on the European situation in the 1930's. Later, in 1944 he moved from Stockholm and Helsinki to Berlin to commentate over German radio.


Everything is connected. Manhattan's homeless endure. Is it the fault of society or the economy--or both? In another direction, is it possible that Baudelaire hit upon something in his prose-poem, “Let’s beat up the poor!”? Did the homeless exist under Fascism? Just asking.


**


“Don’t call me a Saint. I don’t want to be dismissed so easily.”--Dorothy Day.


“I have remained in Europe because I prefer to fight with all my power against the Bolsheviks rather than fight for them.”--Donald Day.


***


Update: “The girl on 5th Avenue”, NY SOCIAL DIARY, (1/11/11).

Update II: “Woman Dies During Night On Sidewalk Near Church”.

                  New York Times, February 21st, 2011. 

Update III: “More on Dorothy Day, Anarchist”

                   Lew Rockwell dot Blog. May 3rd, 2011.