external monologue

beerforthehomeless

beck tipped me off to this local website, beerforthehomeless.com and i've been chatting with a few people in town about it. mike had something on his site about it recently too which i started to comment on and then realized i was writing more of a diatribe than a comment, so i'm copying it here too. check out the site and then let me know what you think of my "analysis."

my comment
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i'm kind of ambivalent about the beerforthehomeless phenomenon. while i like the idea that being homeless shouldn't make one a "second-class citizen", i don't think the solution is providing beer. the logic of the whole thing seems to be built on a couple of false assumptions. first, beer is not "a simple pleasure that society allows" to a certain strata of people as the site claims. its not as if someone is handing out free beer to the wealthy, and the poor are just being excluded. no, the homeless don't have beer for the same reason that they don't have caviar and that i don't have a BMW -- its out of my price range, and i don't need it. A second faulty assumption is that all mature adults have unlimited access to beer. I know plenty of mature adults who either can't afford beer or choose not to drink it, but this has nothing to do with whether they're homeless, much less second-class citizens.

now don't get me wrong, i'm not saying its wrong to hand out beer to the homeless; just that the justification on the website is a bit weak, and seems to be driven more by the desire to get a reaction out of people rather than actually help the homeless. it seems to me that there are better ways of helping the homeless than merely giving away beer. a free handout has never been the solution to solving the poverty problem, has it?

granted, this is not really the proper forum for presenting a solution to the problem of poverty, nor do i even have one, but i would submit that the real solution has something to do with developing relationships with the homeless such that you could discover their real needs and actually help them in the same way that you would help anyone you love and value.