Urban Survival - The Uglier Side of City Living, Thursday, Period 2

[myownface]

Okay, back in the classroom. Sparkle was only a little intimidated by the group of students he had this semester. Which was impressive, since it was half the size of the first group he'd taught this to, and even had one of the same students.

He was going to just run with it. Yeah.

"Okay," he said, "so, this week we're going to talk about the reasons people might end up homeless. Using, you know, facts and data, instead of that 'oh, he's just going to spend it on drugs' bullshit speculation that a lot of people throw around when they pass some panhandler on the side of the road, making me immediately want to smack them into next month. Maybe they are. I dunno. You dunno. But it always kind of feels like people say that sort of shit because it dehumanizes the person sitting in the gutter that little bit more. Makes it easy to pretend they aren't there."

Which, in this class, he was saying just as much to get students to stop it if they did as he was to brace them for overhearing that shit if they ever wound up in that situation.

"Reasons for homelessness vary from city to city," he noted. "Or, at least, the frequency of those reasons varies. But a quick list, from a survey taken in Vancouver, has, from most to least, poverty as the number one reason, with 85.6% of people surveyed claiming it as a factor. From there, the list names housing crisis as a factor, followed then by substance abuse, mental illness, medical needs - yes, even in Canada this shit happens, family or relationship breakdown, abuse or a lack of safety, or being a new immigrant with no real options. You can dig into any one of those categories from there and make subcategories for them, if you want to, or draw lines connecting one and the next. Reasons for poverty might include things like racism or transphobia making it nearly impossible for somebody to find work. Mental illness and abuse are often linked - often, it's important to note. Not always."

He paused. Was any of this relevant to this class? He didn't know. But the next part was sure as hell relevant to him.

"There are other factors to take in, still. Things like how, in America, while only five to ten percent of the total youth population identifies as LGBT - a difficult thing to take an accurate measurement of because of anything from it being unsafe to come out as queer to self discovery being a journey that can take years, up to forty percent of homeless youth identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or trans. And out of those kids, family rejection and abuse are some of the top factors leading to them being on the streets."

Woo, he got through the hard part. Somebody give him a damn cookie.

"Last week, we also touched on personal rights and the importance of freedom," he went on. "Which bears elaborating here, too. There are a lot of factors that the people who are at the top of the food chain are going to use to keep other people down once they're at rock bottom. They'll point at things like race, disability, mental illness, gender, religion, sexual identity, and so on, and then use those things to justify to themselves that the people who are at the bottom deserve to be there. Once you can be identified as any one of those so-called undesirable things, things you have no control over and which shouldn't be factors that society uses to place value on another person, it gets a lot harder to keep your head above the water. There's active pressure from the people with money and security to keep you down, as somebody with neither, because for fucked-up, 'you aren't a white, straight, able-bodied Christian male' reasons, someone thinks you don't deserve it."

And shit, Sparkle had gotten off pretty light on that checklist. He smiled humorlessly, and then sighed and leaned back at a desk.

"I can't ask anyone to, like, come up with catch-all solutions to any of these problems here in class," he noted. "The fight for equality... basically anywhere... is always a long and hard-fought one that can't be remedied overnight. It should be remedied overnight, because that shit is bullshit, but that just... isn't how people work. And in order to address poverty as the number one issue leading to homelessness, half the battle is going to be running down that list and tackling those other factors, too. But, you know what? I'm gonna let you all give it a try, anyway."

He waved a hand.

"Anything I mentioned today. Throw rocks at it. Pick it apart. Try to figure out why it's a thing, or what people can do to make it less of a thing. Mental illness is on that list. So does society as a whole need to have a conversation about the stigmatization of things like depression and PTSD? What about the homeless queer kids? Or the abused? The ones in need of medical assistance who just can't find the care they need? Bounce it around. And keep an open mind when you do. Maybe you'll learn something. Hell, maybe I will."

Comments

Discuss!

[myownface]

Take anything that Sparkle mentioned in today's lecture and try to shine a light on it. Pick it apart. Try to figure out why it is what it is, and talk about if there are any solutions for it. It might not be an easy solution. It might not even be a reasonable one. But that's why we're talking about it.

Because, hey, someday maybe it'll be you out there, homeless and disabled, or impoverished, or mentally ill or black or abused or gay. And somebody will walk by you and avoid eye contact and whisper to whoever they're talking with as though being homeless means you're also deaf, 'they'll probably just spend it on drugs anyway.'

Re: Discuss!

[justice_undone]

"I don't know what LGBT means," Breq said. "Could you explain to me? And I would like to add another cause for homelessness. War. Not only the destruction of cities, but people being forced to flee and end up as refugees in foreign places."

She had seen that happen.

Re: Discuss!

[myownface]

"Refugees kind of land under the 'immigrant' blanket," Sparkle offered, "which I touched on really briefly, but you're right, there's a lot more to that whole end of things that I left out. A refugee might have a much tougher hill to climb in order to get settled in a new location, everything from language barriers and PTSD right on to the very basic, the 'starting with literally nothing.'"

He nodded a little in approval. He hadn't left them out on purpose, of course, but he couldn't touch on everything, either. There were only so many hours in a day.

"As for LGBT..." He tilted his head a little. "You come from a culture that doesn't recognize more than one gender, right? I guess it makes sense that you wouldn't be familiar with a concept that hinges so strongly on gender, then. LGBT... Q, I, A, and so on, is an acronym that includes people who fall outside of the local gender binary, who identify as a gender that wasn't assigned to them at birth, or who feel romantic or sexual attraction in a way that isn't simply a pairing of one male, and one female."

That was almost painfully simplified, but it seemed like as good a starting point as any.

Re: Discuss!

[justice_undone]

"They do," Breq agreed. "I've just seen it happen."

And been involved in causing the war, but that didn't mean she couldn't make the observation.

"That kind of prejudice wouldn't be relevant to where I'm from, obviously," she continued. "But I've been traveling a lot, and gender vary from place to place in my universe, and in some places there is prejudices against certain kinds of pairings. Is it prejudice here, or laws banning it too?"

Re: Discuss!

[myownface]

Sparkle nodded. Of course she had. He couldn't even be surprised, at this point. He bit the inside of his cheek for a few seconds, and then said, "I'd like to talk about that a little more, if you're feeling up for it? Maybe after we get the LGBT thing sorted out?"

Because that, at least, he felt confident about discussing.

"I mean, there's prejudice pretty much everyone on the planet," he added. "And laws kind of depend on where you are. But I don't think there's a single country on Earth where LGBT-plus people have the same rights as cisgendered straight people... That is, as people whose gender identity matches what they were assigned at birth, who feel attraction toward people of the opposite gender. Where I come from, Canada, we have a government that kind of seems to be trying. Like, a transgender person can have their gender identity put on official government identification. A same-sex couple can get married. But we still have a lot of work to do before we're really equal, you know? But there are other countries where what they view as deviation can get people thrown into prison or killed. Hell, even in countries that claim to have laws protecting us, we can still be killed. People will talk about it for twenty minutes as though they care, but that hate is still there. It's going to take a lot of work for it to go away."

Re: Discuss!

[justice_undone]

"I can see why it would be a reason behind homelessness," Breq agreed. "I've seen other places where it would make parents reject their children. It horrified the people I... worked for."

Not that the Radchaai had any right to be horrified.

"What is it you would like to talk about?"

Re: Discuss!

[myownface]

Yeah, Sparkle had a whole lot of things to say about the Radchaai, from what little he knew about them. But that wasn't a conversation for class. Not right now. He just nodded, and sighed, and let that go for the time being.

"About refugees, some more," he offered. Because if she'd seen them, maybe she'd have a few more insights. "I already covered trauma and language barriers and starting with absolutely nothing, but were there other things that they had to contend with that I missed? Prejudice is often one here, too, that people like to pretend isn't a problem, but it really, really is."

Re: Discuss!

[justice_undone]

"It is," Breq agreed.

And that was something the Radchaai was often guilty of, but they were definitely not alone.

"And it's easy for the privileged ones to blame their situation on their culture."

Re: Discuss!

[myownface]

Sparkle made a little huffing sound at that.

"Yeah, the privileged ones have 'blaming people's situations on themselves' down to a fucking art. Doesn't matter who they are or where they came from, they'll find something. Anything to absolve them of any responsibility for the hurting of others. Anything to be able to get out of having to help fix it."

Re: Discuss!

[justice_undone]

"Yes, Breq said, expressionless. "And many of those who do care find it impossible to make a difference."

Re: Discuss!

[myownface]

"A lot of the people who care, care because they know what it's like," Sparkle noted. "And a lot of situations might make it difficult for them to do anything about it. Doesn't mean that it's okay... just means things need to change."

Re: Discuss!

[justice_undone]

"That's the difficult thing, isn't it? Making the change?"

Breq, or Justice of Toren, had never been much concerned with these things. She had noted them, of course, but it had never been part of her responsibilities. Making changes, generally, was a new interest, although she hadn't really considered homelessness as an important issue.

Re: Discuss!

[myownface]

"God, is it ever," Sparkle sighed. "People resist change. Especially people who are comfortable already. You want to see the ones who resist hardest, just look for the ones who made it to where they are in life on the backs of others."

Re: Discuss!

[refused2berescued]

For once, Uma wasn't participating. She was sitting quietly, a perplexed look on her face, trying to figure out if anything in this class related to her and her experiences at all.

Re: Discuss!

[myownface]

Sparkle noticed this, of course. He wasn't going to let her just sit there looking puzzled without at least making an effort.

"Of course, what I listed off are only some possibilities," he noted. "They aren't by any stretch of the imagination an exhaustive list. Is there something I might have missed?"

Re: Discuss!

[refused2berescued]

Uma shrugged. There was a lot going on in her head, but she didn't really have words for it. "What you're talking about doesn't exist in Auradon, even on the Isle," she said. "I guess sometimes kids don't go home for a few nights cause of stuff--" she was thinking of Harry and Gil, with Hook's infamous rages and Gaston's notorious bullying "--but there's a home to go to."

Re: Discuss!

[myownface]

Sparkle nodded a little, processing that.

"This class is mostly about people without a home," he noted, "but... I can't see why someone mostly left to their own devices, or who might have a reason not to go home every night, can't make use of it. Some of the lessons might not be relevant... but if you have any questions, I'm here to answer them, you know?"

He shrugged his shoulders a little.

"Sometimes, what you learn about one situation can still be applied to another, even when it doesn't look the same on the surface."

Re: Discuss!

[refused2berescued]

Uma nodded, chewing on her lip before realizing that she was doing so. That signaled confusion and weakness, so she stopped. "And we never see anyone from Auradon proper, just the barge that brings supplies. And everyone knows why we're on the Isle, anyway. There's only one reason to be there. I don't know about the rest of the stuff you mentioned."

She went stony-faced again. She might not, y'know, hate this class entirely or whatever. And now she was bad at it. Uma didn't like being bad at things.

Re: Discuss!

[myownface]

Sparkle considered, carefully, whether he should just out and ask.

To hell with it. If she didn't want to answer, she wouldn't.

"So... what is the reason to be on the Isle?"

He had his suspicions, or at least a few inklings, but he wanted to be sure.

Re: Discuss!

[refused2berescued]

"It's where the villains live," Uma explained. Why wouldn't she say? It was a fact of life. "They were all rounded up from Auradon or resurrected and sent to the Isle."

Re: Discuss!

[myownface]

Sparkle... wished he could say he hadn't heard weirder. Or worse. But after spending like a quarter of his life on the island, now, that wasn't ever going to be the case again, was it?

"Okay, so... basically it's a prison colony?" He pursed his lips a little in thought. "I'd ask why bother bringing people back from the dead just to punish them, but... I mean, the sort of people that ship all their criminals off to an island are usually exactly the same kind of shitty people who think that sort of thing is a good idea, too."

And now he was looking thoughtful again.

"I think this class might still be useful," he decided. "If I'm talking about things you don't have context for, feel free to ask me to elaborate on it, in class or after it. That shit isn't a reflection on you so much as the assholes who put you in a situation where you wouldn't encounter any of it in the first place."

Re: Discuss!

[refused2berescued]

"It's...unjust?" she asked, wishing she didn't sound so uncertain.

Her whole life, she'd been fighting to find ways to get off the island, had spent it resenting the people who kept her there, eating their garbage and making due with their scraps. But the justice of the situation had never entered into it. She was a VK, the Isle was where the villains were, that made sense.

Or maybe thinking about it that way had just never been a priority because it didn't matter whether it was just or not. She'd been trapped there either way.

"Doesn't matter," she said quickly. "Villains don't care about justice. We care about getting our own way."

Re: Discuss!

[myownface]

Sparkle tilted his head at her at that, and then just kind of spread his hands.

"What would your way be, if you could have it?"

Because she hadn't struck him as especially villainous since the semester started.

Re: Discuss!

[refused2berescued]

Shut up! She was super villainous all of the time!

"Get my crew, get my ship, get off the goddamn Isle," Uma said immediately.

And then stalled because pretty much all of their plans ended with 'get off the goddamn Isle.' It was hard to figure out what came next when they had no idea what existed beyond the barrier.

Re: Discuss!

[myownface]

Much villainy. So scary.

"Get a taste for freedom for the first time in your life? See the world?" Sparkle offered her a little smile. "Figure out what to do with the rest of your life based on whatever you find out there, maybe? Did you grow up on the Isle?"

Because, see, that right there? That was injustice.