Women on The Street Essay -- essays research papers

Women on the Street     Have you ever hasten down the street and felt that nagging feeling ofguilt, as you airwave by manyone lying in a doorway? Is she awake(p)? Is she ill?Why do we all rush by without conclusion out is shes all right?     People sit in watch stations, bus stations, parks, doorways,unmistakably sick, with what, we dont know. All are seemingly alone. more or less beg. more or less dont. Some have open sores that ooze and bleed. Some are drunk. Sometalk to themselves or formless others. They have no homes.     Street race make up a small percentage of the homeless person population. around homeless people blend into the daily flow of urban look. many families arehomeless. Many babies go from the hospital into the shelter system, never lettered what it is like to go home. Women are a nonher subgroup of the homeless.     Solutions to homelessness are not substantially found. But before we can solveproblems, we must be sensitive enough that we create the will to find thesolutions. Often if we do not feel the problem, if some emotional response isnot made, we are not moved to seek solutions. We are often unmoved to even pull in the questions. We cannot afford to keep walking by.     "Work is a fundamental frame of human existence," said Karl Marx. Inpunch-the-clock and briefcase societies no less than in unsophisticated or huntingand gathering societies, it is the organization of urinate that makes life-time incommunities possible. Individual life as well as social life is closely tied to go bad. In wage labored societies, and perhaps in every other as well, much of anindividuals identity is tied to their job. For closely people jobs are aprincipal source of both emancipation and correctness to others. It should comeas no surprise that, in the work force or out, work and jobs are important inthe lives of homeless women.      There are women who want to work and do, and women who want to work anddo not. There are women who cannot work and others who should not work andstill others who do not want to work. Some work regularly, some intermittentlysome work part-time, some full-time and there are even those who work two jobs.At any given moment, there is a parcel of job-searching, job losing, job changing,and ... ...escould have contained the explosive forces of racial animosity, social classdifferences, competition for resources, overcrowding, individuals who were notalways in control of their actions, and individuals who wanted to splitthemselves from the group. but came against these forces, and born mainly outof shared homelessness and common needs, was a powerful impulse to groupcohesion and solidarity. Most of the time, the impulse to solidarity was substantialenough to hold the negative forces in check, there by providing the tokenish ofpeace and skilful order that made soc ial life possible. On many evenings, as thewomen came together in the shelter, there was sufficient good feeling and fellowfeelings, when coupled with their common needs and circumstances, to allow asense of community to sputter into life. For most women, the loneliness oftheir homeless articulate was a terrible burden to bear this fragile bit ofcommunity, yet small, was precious indeed.     "Homelessness is the sum total of our dreams, policies, intentions,errors, omissions, cruelties, kindness, all of it recorded, in the flesh, in thelife of the streets." (Marin 41).