After more than more than two hours of public testimony Monday night, City and Borough of Juneau Assembly members made no decision on the proposed ordinance that would prohibit camping on private property in the downtown area. They intend to act after their next regular meeting. Until then, they might look to the Juneau Police Department’s Year of Kindness campaign for a few valuable insights.
I understand the frustration expressed at the Assembly meeting. Something must be done to prevent business doorways from being shelters and, in some cases, toilet rooms for the homeless.
But even those supporting the measure recognized that, at best, enacting this ordinance won’t solve the bigger problem. How big it is depends on how deep into its roots we’re willing to explore.
An initial descent in that direction leads to a question about the hours public restrooms are open. As Robert Minch pointed out, the city closes them at 4:30 p.m. and doesn’t reopen them until 8 a.m. the next day. And they’re closed the entire weekend.
Going deeper, Mark Ridgway poked around obscure economic incentives. He suggested connections between heavy alcohol consumption by some homeless individuals, the tax on the sale of alcohol, and the funding of programs for Bartlett Hospital, JPD and others to deal with the problem.
Ridgway, who was neither for nor against the measure, has had problems with homeless people hanging out at the entrance to his business. But he explained “over a period of years, you get to know them as human beings.” It was a common acknowledgment from people on both sides of the debate.
Greg Capito, who supports it, said he’s spoken to dozens of homeless people and “learned a ton from talking to those folks.”
“I have some friends with me,” Cynthia Dau told the Assembly, before naming five of them. Not surprisingly, she opposed it.
“Friends” is the theme of this month’s Readers Write section of the The Sun magazine. One story was about three young boys growing up alongside Japanese farmers in the 1940s who often went into their fields and took fruit and vegetables whenever they wanted.
“Anything they grew seemed like fair game to our appetites,” Pat Brumm writes. “We would take a few bites and toss the rest on the ground.”
Until the day a farmer caught them in act and marched them to his house. When they got there, Brumm was so sacred he thought he’d never see his parents again. Instead, a woman gave them tea and cookies. And Brumm began “to feel like an honored guest.”
When the farmer finally spoke, he explained how taking his crops was like taking their money. But he didn’t demand they pay for what they’d picked. He said he wanted to be friends and welcomed them “to pick and eat from his field” as long they abide by his one condition. They had to eat whatever they could pick and waste only the inedible parts.
“No society can exist that tolerates significant antisocial behavior in the long term,” states the fifth edition of Japan: A Country Study, “but Japan is among the societies that most strongly rely on social rather than supernatural sanctions and emphasize the benefits of harmony.”
The aim of the book is to understand Japan’s ancient traditions and societal evolution on its way to becoming a major world economy. The chapter titled “Values and Beliefs” explains that Japanese children are taught they’re part of an interdependent society that starts with family and extends into the community and workplace. “Working with others requires self-control” they learn, “but it carries the rewards of pride in contributing to the group, emotional security, and social identity.”
By choosing to share his private property with Brumm and his buddies, the farmer listened to this cultural intuition. He wanted harmony. And that required kindness.
In American culture, an act like that is generally reserved for family, friends and business partners. Plus, our affinity for competition coupled with private property rights have in them seeds of confrontation and punitive consequences. These are antitheses to kindness.
JPD’s kindness initiative is attempting to lead us beyond our comfort zone by encouraging “one kind act a week directed at someone outside the person’s normal circle of associates.” And as the farmer did in Brumm’s story, we’ll have to apply it in difficult situations if we’re to help to create meaningful change in our community.
This may seem hard to swallow, but because kindness is essential to a cooperative society, other cultures value it more than we do. If we can’t accept that, then we’ll only find superficial solutions to the many sides of this problem. And years from now someone will have Mr. Minch’s role of reminding the Assembly that criminalizing homelessness solved nothing in our Year of Kindness.
• Rich Moniak is a Juneau resident and retired civil engineer with more than 25 years of experience working in the public sector.
