David Ballenger was stabbed repeatedly by teenagers
and died here, where he often camped. Afterward, one of the arrested youth was heard to
brag to a friend: "Let's just say there's one less bum on the face of the earth."
A Seattle Times report
This is an excerpt from a speech I made at a Vigil
Against Hate Violence, shortly after David
Ballenger's death.
Where have Seattle's children learned to fear,
hate, and ultimately attack human beings who just
look like they're homeless? In a City Council
hearing on the Park Exclusion law, City Attorney
Mark Sidran stood up and said, "I hear complaints
that most of the tickets given out in the parks
are to homeless people. Well, what you have to ask
yourself is, who's responsible for most of the
criminal behavior?" Seattle experienced a
terrifying tragedy when a passenger with a gun
shot and killed a bus driver, then himself. The
bus plummeted off the Aurora bridge. On the basis
of a comment that the gunman had been seen at the
Union Gospel Mission, the media began printing
that this horror was committed by a homeless man.
The man, it turned out, was not homeless. The
corrections, however, weren't nearly as dramatic
as the original rumor was. When Seattle's own
City Attorney portrays homeless people as
criminals and annoyances that the rest of Seattle
has to be protected from, when the media is quick
to seize on sensationalist stories scapegoating
the homeless, do we really have the right to be
surprised when our children act on the images
we've given them?
|