To the distressed grad who returned to Northampton recently, I can only imagine the courage it took to walk through the downtown landscape you described. Your Sept. 12 letter to the Gazette speaks only to your modesty.
How truly awful that experience must have been for you, to be assaulted so indignantly by that “profusion of aggressive beggars.” That’s the trouble with the Third World isn’t it?
There’s no manners, no sense of propriety. It’s difficult to see so many “beggars” on the streets, to be asked for money every few blocks. Homelessness is an issue and one that, unfortunately, is hard to solve.
However, attitudes like the one voiced in the Gazette are deplorable. To speak of your fellow man as an object to be shunned is disgusting. Given the contempt in the author’s tone, can we really be sure he is against shipping off those unsightly beggars? It’s so much easier to enjoy a nice night out on the town, a carefully crafted meal, a boutique shopping trip when you don’t have to be confronted with the faces of American poverty.
Far better to pen pretentious newspaper letters bemoaning the loss of your right to walk unhindered downtown. With one of the highest rates of poverty among any developed nation, it should be unsurprising to see so many panhandlers in an urban setting.
Nearly 15 percent of all Americans live in poverty, and with wage stagnation, rising rent costs and an expensive health care system, those figures are unlikely to change.
This letter isn’t meant to advocate we all empty our pockets the next time we visit Northampton, but we should give pause. We all ought to remember that those “beggars” are real people who merit of our empathy.
It’s when we seek to scorn, rather than understand, that we do a disservice to others.
Hayley Bolton
Amherst