Panhandling crackdown not the answer.

Hiding issues fails to address the problem

What is a community if not a representation of what makes us whole: our strengths, weaknesses, beauty, ugliness, hopes and fears; our collective presentation of the union of past experiences and future plans, all welded together in some contemporary montage?

It is and must be as much about what we are in contrast to falsely projected notions of what we wish to present in some illusory world of contrived ascetic perfection. A community’s strength and vibrancy rests in how it deals with all aspects of these realities. Does it address their causes or merely try to hide them?

In some cases, there are no solutions but only choices, none of which are ideal. Beyond this, is it the business of the state to be involved in the affairs of its citizens or instead allow them to act and express themselves freely, save where such liberty constitutes actual harm to another? Count me among those who favour this later approach.

These thoughts occurred to me as I read two Cape Breton Post articles by journalist Nicole Sullivan concerning a crackdown on so-called panhandlers in the Cape Breton Regional Municipality (CBRM). I think Ms. Sullivan presented the situation in its proper context in her two excellent articles (‘Panhandling crackdown,’ March 13; ‘Community comes through for panhandling Sydney man,’ March 16).

PROSTITUTION CRACKDOWN

I must say that in reading both my mind harkened back to that recent time when the CBRM police morals squad struck a blow for righteousness in its undercover crackdown on prostitution.

On that occasion, the police boasted of how what they were really doing was protecting women. Their actions had nothing whatever to do with pressure from certain elements to remove what they saw as people of a lesser quality than them from our streets. No, not at all. It was all about social justice as practiced by a modern-day police force. So much so, in fact, that imported from Halifax were special undercover agents well-trained in propositioning elderly men as they left ATM machines, cash in hand and all the more ready to accept a salacious proposition of transactional intimacy.

Now, the police have been enlisted to once again raise the moral banner and like knights of old embark on another such crusade. This time it is to remove our streets of so-called panhandlers. I must say, like you perhaps, I have given up in driving these streets, much less walking on them, over-ridden as they are with beggars. What sheer and utter nonsense.

I suspect the police, busy with more pressing matters, would agree, but in this world where public sensitivities and not offending the enlightened elements prevails, once the bell rings to the chase they must go. This was confirmed by the mayor in her remarks concerning business owner complaints.

‘SCRUPULOUS STANDARDS’

I rather suspect that if leadership of the type once provided by the late former Sydney Police Chief Alex Goldie was still in place, he would laugh off such pleas and tell the whiners to find something worthwhile to do. Unfortunately, those days are gone. Instead, we today live in a reality where finely tuned sensibilities operate unchecked by fact or freedom of expression.

Think of the contrast all of this represents regarding another reality. The next time you hear the self-serving blather from politicians about their concern for poor children or the mentally ill, measure such empty words with the reality of public actions. Yes, listen to their talk about how much they care and then watch as citizens are charged for merely asking another for a few dollars.

It is unfortunate that such scrupulous standards of what the authorities present as the right thing do not apply to government funded agencies and business leaders who seek far more munificent hand-outs. For them, of course, different rules apply. However, city hall tells us that at its recent planning session these government agencies, replete with public money, discussed what to do to help the situation.

State authority has no business in enforcing the private moral judgments of a select few.

There was once an itinerant part-time carpenter who encouraged us to be charitable and to do unto others as we would have done unto us. I wonder what he might say of the crackdown against those who ask for our help?