Ross

Ross was killed by a drunk driver last weekend but I'm not going to rant about drunk driving. He was a panhandler. An aggressive one. He was perhaps the only beggar that I refused to dignify a response to. He was just so aggressive, "spare some change to help out the homeless buddy?" You may have run into him on your way to get a double-tall non-fat, no-foam latte. Or more likely he might have run into you.

He was the only homeless man that i have kicked out of Cuppa Joe, where i work. Which is why it came as a shock to hear that he was run over. Had I unfairly judged him? Had I fallen victim to the propaganda of Mr. "safe streets" Mayencourt? Did I envy him? That's right, did I envy him? He was like Diogenes, the original cynic, the first true punk rocker, shirking all of societie's rules.

Of course running them down is one way to get aggressive homeless people off the streets, although I'm sure the wonks at the Fraser Institue wouldn't go so far as to draft it into an official policy. Another is to make it so difficult to get welfare that they conveniently disappear. An article at the Tyee goes into more depth.

I can just hear Lorne Mayencourt muttering under his breath like a certain famous Dickensian, "Are there no workhouses? Are there no prisons?"

Well, actually no. We closed down Riverview and we closed down Woodlands and we've cut addiction services. We've shut women's centres and we've forced the disabled to fill out a 32 page booklet, and what really gets me, what pisses me off the most, is that the suburbs and the hinterlands re-elected these guys. They don't have to deal with it, except perhaps to shoo away a squeegee kid from their Lexus SUV. Just say the magic word 'economy' and follow it up with a 'sacrifice' here and a 'buckle-down' there and you're in.

Call me a bleeding heart liberal, but I think that we are advanced enough to take care of the weak and downtrodden, the mentally ill and the drug addicted; The "poor doomed" of the late Hunter S. Thompson.

You will see much of this issue on the City pages here, and much on our friend Lorne. I am thinking of starting a column called "Lorne to be bad" or something like that. If he or any of his band of merry men happen upon this article, I have one question: How is tripling the number of homeless supposed to make Vancouver streets safer?

Photo care of Rick Barnes at from the heartlands