Jackson Free Press

Good job of reporting on that "Herding the Homeless" piece (volume 7, issue 29). I used to be a journalist, and I appreciate a clean, straight-forward story. But for years now, I've worked with the homeless. Thought you might like to know that people on the street refer to this herding concept as "passing the trash." They're not talking about investment bankers or sex offenders or bad teachers, to which the terminology commonly refers. They're talking about themselves. That's how they think people see them—as garbage that needs to be moved along.

I'm excited about the growth of downtown Jackson. It reminds me of those postcard shots of a bustling Capitol Street back in the '50s and '60s. But I'm concerned about what I'm hearing from some of the people I care about. For example, folks who are just sitting in Smith Park and are told to "move along" because "those folks are coming out of church in a few minutes and they like to walk over here without being bothered." Or a guy who has been a friend of mine for years who was arrested because the cops found a paring knife in his bag. He used it to peel apples, but they called it a concealed weapon. Or the one I hear more and more these days: "Boy, you need to get back on your side of the street." And what street is that? You guessed it.

I spend a lot of my time in meetings, and we discuss a lot of issues: the stigma of mental illness, the lack of affordable housing, panhandling vouchers versus donation parking meters. (By the way, did you know that even "Police: The Law Enforcement Magazine" admits that very few homeless people are panhandlers?) Then there are the pros and cons of downtown "cleaning and safety ambassadors," the suggestion by some that Stewpot and all the shelters should just pick up and move to Fondren, the feeling that everything has become a damned turf war. But it ain't grass, folks; it's "trash" we're fighting over.

I'm with you, Rodney. Why the hell can't we just get along?

A long time ago, just after I'd been on the job a couple of years, I started to feel burned out. One day, I took a break from the office and drove to Battlefield Park. I just wanted to sit alone for a while and try to collect my thoughts. But out of the corner of my eye, I spotted two familiar faces, Janie and Ben. They were coming my way. "Damn," I said. "I can't get away from these homeless people."

But they were smiling, and they seemed happy to see me. "Hey, Winda," said Janie, who had a slight speech impediment. "Want somethin' to eat?"

She and Ben were cooking rice over a tiny hibachi. They handed me a plastic bowl and spoon and poured some lemonade into a Styrofoam cup. After we'd eaten, Ben took a beaten-up soccer ball he'd picked up on the street and started passing it around. Too soon, it was time for me to go. As I was walking to my car, it occurred to me that Janie and Ben had offered me more genuine hospitality than I could ever hope to offer them. And they hadn't asked me for anything.

I really hadn't planned to pull Jesus into this, at least not overtly, but that time in the park reminds me of a passage from a book I read when I was a teenager. It was Malcolm Boyd's "Are You Running With Me, Jesus?" Boyd, an Episcopal priest, was sharing toast and coffee with a young civil-rights volunteer back in the '60s and wrote that he considered the moment to be very similar to the experience of Holy Communion. Janie and Ben and I shared rice and lemonade, but I believe to this day that the spirit of the Eucharist was present in their hospitality.

A few months later, Janie died of AIDS-related pneumonia. A handful of friends helped pay for her burial—in a cemetery to the west of Gallatin.

Linda Townes works with the homeless mentally ill in Jackson.