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

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."

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"I'm thinking there are other reasons than compassion for some people to get rid of homelessness," Breq said. "And other methods."

Sparkle bit the inside of his cheek. Yeah, he'd run into that one a few times over the years, too.

"Yeah, most of the time, those other methods are... cruel. Really cruel. Essentially making 'existing without a home' into a crime all on its own." He curled his lip a little. "Or even 'existing with a home, but not being good enough for it.'"

"Yes," Breq said. "Or forcing them to relocate to places where they can be assigned work, to make cheap labour available where it's needed."

Sweatshops, too? Great. Sparkle was starting to dislike the Radchaai more and more.

"Something else you've seen, huh?"

"Yes," Breq replied, not elaborating further.

"I think I mentioned during introductions that there is no homelessness at the major space stations or planetside cities where I'm from, though. It's more of a problem in recently annexed places."

"And how much of that homelessness comes as a result of the annexation process?"

It was a question that he really had to ask. Between his conversations with Breq that vaguely touched on her home and the conversation he'd had with Seivarden last weekend... there were a few things still fresh on his mind.

"It depends on how smoothly the process goes," Breq replied. "Often there are already conflicts among the peoples living on the planet, and it depends on how well that is dealt with. Some places allow slavery, and when that is banned things sometimes result in migration."

"Charming," Sparkle said, in a tone that suggested that he didn't like much of what he was hearing about most of her reality. "Who ends up doing the migrating in those situations? The slave holders? The freed slaves?"

"Usually the slaves, unless the slave holders' properties are appropriated and the former slaves are offered paid work."

It was hard not to notice Sparkle's opinion.

"Perhaps the price for the lack of homelessness in the more..." The Radchaai word here would be civilized, and she wasn't going to use that,..."prosperous places is dependent on places like that."

Yeah, two mentions of 'civilized' in one week would probably set Sparkle right off the deep end.

"I suppose the more prosperous," yes, he noticed that pause, "places have to find a way to sustain housing for everybody somehow. What else do they get out of the annexations?"

Breq paused, looking at Sparkle, before continuing.

"The usual things. New planets with natural resources. Possibilities for social advancement for citizens. People, to some extent."

This wasn't really about homelessness now, was it?

Not entirely, no. Sparkle was biting the inside of his cheek, now, mostly to dissuade himself from going off too far on a tangent.

"Some extent?"

"If you have a planet with resources you need workers," Breq pointed out. She wasn't going to mention other ways human bodies might be needed.

So they were being exploited to strip their own worlds of resources to provide for the Radchaai?

Yeah, charming indeed. Sparkle's lips pressed tightly together while he tackled how to crack that egg, before he finally just sighed and nodded.

"Of course you do."

If he knew about the other ways they used human bodies, he'd probably try to find a portal so that he could personally burn down the entire Radch himself.

It wouldn't go well. But he'd try.

"I've read that often happened here too," Breq said. "And is still happening."

She had read enough about Earth to come across colonialism and exploitation of people in poor countries.

"I've seen it in other parts of my universe too. Which of course doesn't excuse anything."

"Doesn't matter where it happens," Sparkle replied, "there's no excuse for it."

He knew it happened on Earth. Of course it did. People were terrible no matter where you went. Some of them were just better at pretending that being terrible made them civilized.

"I'm not going to pretend Earth is perfect. Hell, most of these lectures are going to be about how shitty people are to one another. I have plenty of room in my heart to be angry about all kinds of shitty people all over, I promise."

Breq considered that for a moment. "I once saw the poor and homeless in a large city rise up against those in power, only to be slaughtered. I wished they hadn't done that, that they had found a better way, but I could understand their anger. I think at least some of them were aware that would be the likely outcome."

She had shot many of them herself, along with the troops from one of the other Justices stationed in the system.

Sparkle's jaw clenched slightly, for just a moment. And then he nodded.

"I would've been right there with them," he realized. "There are some causes worth dying for... even when you know you might not make it out again."

"I think it's often a good thing to know what you are prepared to die for."

She knew one such thing, and she doubted she would survive it.

"Can't hurt to have that figured out, yeah," Sparkle agreed. He bit the inside of his cheek for what was probably the dozenth time, and then shrugged. "I mean, that goes for knowing what you're prepared to live for, too. Life's complicated like that."

That was actually a more difficult question.

"It is. Being prepared to live is a good starting point for survival too."

"Surviving isn't worth much if you haven't decided what you're surviving for," Sparkle mused. "Especially not when things get hard."

"You might have to live for a while in order to die for something," Breq observed.

"I mean, it's hard to know what's worth dying for if you haven't done any living."

Sparkle shrugged his shoulders. Maybe it wasn't always that simple, but that was what he'd found, anyway.

"Perhaps." Breq considered this. She wasn't sure of the answer.

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

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