P4+JPerez

Growing up we learned what was right from wrong; those lessons are carried with us into adolescence and probably even adulthood. Yet, sometimes when we see a wrong committed against another human being we are not so quick to write it, and often; almost if it were instinctual we often try to come the victor in a situation of injustice; even if it would violate our views of right wrong.

An act of injustice can quickly become a battle for survival, and when it comes down to it right wrong are out the window. However the lapse of judgment can come from both sides of the struggle. More often than naught it comes from the aggressor as an escalation. As the depression mounted the farmers that moved westward found no jobs, no food, and disgusted Californians that were sick of the “Oakies”. Many arrived with little or nothing, and faced the prospect of feeding their families with no jobs while the land owners destroyed acres of crops even as the “children of the poor grew rachitic…” and “smell of rot fills the country” only served to add to the injustices committed upon these shunned human beings.

When it comes to facing injustice people often choose to ignore it or put the victims down more. The majority of the population chosen to remain ignorant in regards to homelessness. First “we turn an adjective into a noun: the poor not the poor people”, in attempt to dehumanize them, to moralize the assistance we have not offered these people in need. After that kicking them out of the boat of “us” is easier and leaving them to drown in the ocean of “them” is easier; although it is a sinking boat because we refuse to acknowledge that “homelessness owed not economic dislocation, but simply to self-destruction”. Other efforts to keep the downtrodden from raising themselves comes from Lars Eighner and how he has “heard of people maliciously contaminating discarded food and even handouts”, clearly a looking for a quick fix to the homeless “problem”.

Sometimes injustices are caused in order to survive or become a struggle to survive. Especially in this country were Social Darwinism has layed waste to the population while a small percentage presides over us. Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath showed how some people put their ethics and morals aside to survive. A most vivid example from the book: “squads with pick handles, clerks and storekeepers with shotguns, guarding the world against their own people”, shows how during the depression it truly became a survival of the fittest.

Clearly the only way for people to survive has come through our instincts and ruthlessness because our individuality does not permit us to band together.