My granddad always used to buy a Big Issue when he was alive. Homelessness and the charities they sparked was a cause that he felt strongly about. I’d always wondered why but now I get it. I get it big time.
The City of London is home to some incredibly wealthy people. People who earn sums of money that I can’t even count to. It is home to bankers, brokers, big buildings and Italian suits. It is also home to Nathan. Sorry, scrap that, it was home to Nathan.
Nathan was a Big Issue Vendor. Now for those of you who don’t know what The Big Issue is – it is a great publication founded by John Bird. It is a hand up and not a hand out. The street vendors buy the magazines for £1.25 and then sell them for £2.50 – they keep the difference and are empowered to spend it on what they want.
Now Nathan had a pitch outside a Starbucks near the Bank of England ‘the Square Mile’. Nathan was abandoned by his parents when he was 3. They’d had enough. They fucked off and left him. They left a 3 year old in a house by himself. For four days Nathan screamed and screamed…and screamed, until finally his screams were heard. Nathan was put through foster care and by the time Nathan was 16 he had been through 9 different foster homes. Nathan had had in that time 4 cracked ribs, a collapsed lung and a broken nose. Playing football? Nope. He suffered these injuries from the very people who promised to be his guardians.
When he was 16 Nathan ran. He ran as far away as he could. No education to speak of, no family, no money. Worse than any of this he had, what he thought, no hope. Every child deserves the right to be loved, to love and to be master of his or her dreams. Nathan was never loved. He never was allowed the chance to love. His life was survival. His dreams consisted of survival. If he allowed himself to dream of a world where he was accepted, was loved and where he was seen as a good man then his reality would have suddenly become too bleak for him to continue to want to survive. He could not afford to dream. To me, there is nothing worse in this world than a child feeling that they cannot dream. So at 16, Nathan, found himself alone, again, in anew city–London.
He begged for money, he got into drugs, he got into alcohol. Who the fuck can blame him? These things offered him an escape, an escape from his shocking reality. Whenever I give money to a homeless person my friends always say the same thing ‘They’re only going to spend it on booze or drugs’. My reply is always the same ‘Good. I hope they do’. This may seem a strange response but these people, who are without homes, who live in absolute poverty are deeply unhappy people. If for one moment a sip of lager or the smoking of a joint makes them happy then so be it. Who am I to judge? I have not walked a mile in their shoes. I don’t know how they are feeling. If this makes them happy for the briefest of moments then good. Yes I would prefer them to buy a tea, or to save it for a hot meal but when I hand over that money I am telling them to go do whatever it is that can make their day just that little bit more bearable. I then hope that they can find the courage, the wisdom, to see that drugs and alcohol are not the answers to their problems.
When my granddad died he said he wanted a bench in memory of him. Now this was not for him. My granddad was a canny soul and he knew that a bench to a homeless man is a good nights sleep. My granddad deliberately told us a nice park he wanted the bench to go in. This park was near his Big Issue seller. My granddad felt he could give this man a good night’s sleep. Whenever I go to his bench and I see a homeless man asleep on it I am pleased. It has served its purpose.
The Big Issue is a wonderful foundation because not only does it make those on the streets entrepreneurs it also gives these guys a purpose and more importantly than any of that it gives them hope. Hope that is generated when people not only give them money but give them their time. Those people who take an interest in what their past is. Those who speak to them to find out what they want their future to be. You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money. Nor can you quit poverty.
Ask yourself how often you walk past a vendor or a homeless person in the street. It takes a minute of your day to change that person’s day completely. A ‘Good Morning’, a ‘how are you’ or a couple of teas and a chat and suddenly that person’s day is immeasurably better. Just how your day is made better by random acts of kindness, so is theirs. Remember, a rich man is just a poor man with money.
How do I know that my granddad was right? Why am I writing this blog post? I went to Starbucks at the start of the week, by the Bank of England and Nathan was not there. I walked 500 yards to the next vendor and I asked him “Hey, do you know where Nathan is – the guy who works outside of Starbucks”, his response will haunt me forever “Nathan froze to death last night”…
We are now in 2012, it is unacceptable that this happens. There are countless reasons why someone is homeless. There are those that think some deserve it. Even if this is true, which I will always dispute, what someone can’t argue is the freezing to death of a 17 year old boy who simply had no hope is totally wrong. There are many things we do well but I am afraid looking after those that are vulnerable is something that we just do not get. Nathan didn’t need our money. He needed our time. He needed our love. He needed hope. I was told he froze to death but I am absolutely convinced that Nathan just gave up. He froze to death in a city whose riches knows no bounds. But more importantly, he froze to death in a packed city all alone. If I am right, and he did give up, who the fuck can blame him.
‘The poverty of our century is unlike that of any other. It is not, as poverty was before, the result of natural scarcity, but of a set of priorities imposed upon the rest of the world by the rich. Consequently, the modern poor are not pitied…but written off as trash. The twentieth-century consumer economy has produced the first culture for which a beggar is a reminder of nothing.’ Shame on us.
the news and me.com 
Often, I wonder about the things you mentioned in the post. We are now in a world where it is possible that no one has to suffer the way Nathan did. But I am not entirely convinced that giving a few dollars here and there is the solution. It may help Nathan smoke a joint but it wont changes his situation.
I feel we should do… more.
I don’t know how yet. but I feel there can be a better solution. I bet if people were aware that Nathan is going to freeze to death then many would have come forward to help. But the problem is that many just don’t know yet.
would go even further: Is it acceptable for us to have the incredible disparity in wealth that exists across different regions of the world?
I was having a conversation with my friend the other day, in which we discussed the abundance of resources available to us, the human race. We came to the inevitable conclusion that witholding resources from those that desparately need them *is* violence. How does the global conversation get steered in this direction? How can we get people to start talking about, as the Python’s so eloquently put it, the violence inherent in the system? How does one convince another, so full of themselves that they (we all) are, that in a world rich with resources such that no one person should EVER have to starve or live outside (but for their choosing, of course), that witholding resources is violence? The starving poor throughout the world are not starving because they choose to be; they are starving because someone put profit in front of morality. The homeless poor throughout the world are not homeless because they choose to be; they are homeless, again, because someone put profit in front of morality.
We have the richest culture, we the people of the world, full of the most amenities and the highest overall standard of living that has ever been in the history of humankind. Yet, the simple issue of letting a man freeze to death is one that cannot be conquered, for the few that hold such immeasurable wealth refuse to share.
Thank you for writing this article, and for putting it so well; a rich man is simply a poor man with money. I hope one day to wake up in a world where no one has to starve or freeze to death. People such as yourself give me hope that this may yet come to pass.
😦 ..there are so many Nathans in this part of the world as well…but the whole world is spending big money and competing each other in developing nuke weapons..
wonder what we can do to dissolve the disparity…
your blog reminds of the song by Phil Collins – Another day in paradise..
I read this on Connections at work, very well written and moving. Thank you for making me think.
This is heart breaking.