Over the past two weeks, I feel like my understanding of homelessness has changed a lot. Statistically, I've learned a lot about homelessness in the United States, but I also believe that I've learned a lot from a social standpoint. For example, a lot of people look down on homeless men and women. There have been so many times in my life where someone will refer to a homeless man or woman as "that bum over there". But we don't really know anything about that person, the keyword being "person". We don't know why that person is homeless; there could be so many possible reasons. People believe that just because homeless men and women ask others for money, that they're somehow below them; but people don't know how hard it can be to ask someone for money. In my opinion, if all of the homeless men and women could be making their own money, they would much rather being doing that. Asking other people for money can be a huge blow to someones pride and ego. Just because they're homeless, it doesn't mean that they don't deserve to be treated like human beings.
What I'm trying to say is, what I've really learned in the past two weeks, is how to look at homeless men and women. I've "realized" that they're equal to me and everyone else in the world.

Homelessness News Article

This article was very bittersweet for me. A couple of weeks ago, I was browsing through the top stories on Yahoo. One of the articles that I scrolled past, was about a ninety year-old man named Mr. Abbott, who had been arrested in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, for feeding the homeless. I didn't read the article- just seeing the title made me upset. "What wrong could this man possibly be doing for him to get arrested?" I asked myself.

 Ironically, when I googled homelessness article, another article from the NY Times was the first result. The article also talked about Mr. Abbott, and gave me a more in depth explanation of what's happening to homeless men and women all over the country. What I read was sickening. Recently, throughout our country, like Fort Lauderdale for instance, series of laws have been passed that have basically criminalized being homeless and even helping the homeless.

"The latest one, passed last month, made food distribution in public places difficult by requiring toilets, written consent from property owners and feeding sites located 500 feet away from each other."

This is the reason that Mr. Abbott was arrested. What?

Although it made me extremely happy to read about a 90 year-old man going out of his way to help so many people, it made me extremely upset to find out that all over our country, homeless people, who probably have the hardest lives of all, are even being criminalized just for being homeless. We should be helping them and treating them as humans.

Another interesting topic I would like to study is feminism. Currently, the feminist movement has been gaining momentum, as stories such as the student who carries her mattress around that she claims she was raped on, sparks outrage and controversy across the country. Another example, is the woman who walked through certain cities in New York. After ten hours of walking, the producers of the video, claim that the woman had experienced over one hundred instances of verbal and sexual abuse. This caused controversy because many people wondered if the video was fake or not. More locally, I've noticed that feminism has been becoming more popular at Brookline High School. This has caused a division amongst students; while many approve and support the BHS feminist movement, many students also reject and make fun of the BHS feminist movement. I think this would be interesting to study because this has been a longstanding problem throughout our whole country.

Some questions:
What in society today causes people to either accept or reject feminism?
What is the definition of feminism?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/13/sexism-feminism-comic-rasenth_n_5976660.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2NUk5AFImw
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-hoglund-/what-the-internet-gets-wr_b_6160980.html?utm_hp_ref=feminism

Homelessness

One possible topic that I was thinking of doing for my senior project was studying homelessness. When I was young, my parents would always bring me to downtown Boston and Chinatown. In both of those areas, I saw a homeless person on almost every single block. I would almost always ask my dad if I could give some money to the men and women sitting in the freezing cold with their ragged clothes, and he would usually give me a couple bucks to give to them. I always felt a brief sense of happiness after helping, but the feeling of happiness would always be followed by a sense of regret; I wasn't able to give every other homeless man or woman in the area a couple of bucks, and even if I was able to, it would only help them temporarily. Although I don't go to downtown or Chinatown nearly as much anymore, I still occasionally see a homeless man or woman sitting on a corner asking people for spare change. I feel sympathy, and want to help as much as possible when I see a homeless man or woman, but I want to help long term.
Some questions I have is:
Would some homeless people even want long-term help? Some people are very prideful and wouldn't want that kind of help.
How could I help them long-term?
What factors play into homelessness?


https://plus.google.com/111664344816048247787/posts
https://plus.google.com/103889628295982379300/posts
https://plus.google.com/117435445210481709276/posts

All three of these blogs seem to be genuinely dedicated to spreading information about how people can help the homeless.