What do street people or unhoused people want? Family, work, drugs? How many of them sell drugs, are ex-convicts, are fueled by the desire for drugs, or have debilitating mental disorders?
What kind of work would drug dealers do if drugs were legalized? In some places, specifically 6th avenue in NYC, some unhoused people make money by selling informally on the street: books, scavenged magazines, or other scavenged things from dumpsters. In this culture, only the sober sellers are respected, and many make attempts and have aspirations to become booksellers. They make $50-200 a day. The scavengers make about $50 a day, and the panhandlers make an average of $75 a day. These people claim that they have chosen this life, and that they are the authors of their lives. Yet what is the structural similarity across the lives of these folks, primarily middle aged black men? And what is the major structural difference in the lives of black men who succeed in the corporate world?
Should we create a more appropriate place for these informal sales, which to many is perceived as the only option out of drug sales, panhandling, or stealing? What kind of system forces its children to drop out of school in the 3rd grade?
The respected booksellers who have sobriety and a home take pride in the fact that they "could" work in the corporate world, but choose not to. A few decades ago, low income families earned money by factory work. Due to technology and moving factories to 3rd world counties, the jobs for uneducated people are competitive and largely unrewarding in that they continue to serve the needs and wants of the corporate world, as school is currently doing in the required prescribed curriculum.
What makes these men drug addicted? And what are the women doing? Are they sex workers? Food service workers? At home on welfare?
The rejection of corporate America, U.S. education, and living on the streets of America is possibly the largest protest/strike on Earth, however unintentional or unorganized it may be. Shall we find out what they want? I will take a grand leap and say that these people do not want to be drug addicted or rejected by society. They want to be respected! But in a society that does not meet their needs, there seems to be no other option than create their own society, dollar-based economic system and all.
In my understanding of this culture, the only respectable way to live is
a) Sobriety
b) Earning dollars by selling an educative product
c) Caring for family
And empowerment happens when the men are in control, and even forceful, e.g. "Give me 3 dollars", there is obviously a system in place which created this superiority/inferiority complex.
Since most of these men are ex-convicts and parolees, if we have decided to integrate them back into corporate America by means of prision rehabilitation and education services, who will create the back to work programs for parolees? Can we trust the government and prision system to create them or should we create them? What do parolees want? Again: family? work? drugs? It seems that the respected unhoused people like to do business and sales because it is empowering and challenging.
What would a system look like that legalized and regulated drug sales?
