Who Can You Kill?
the American Dream is a death sentence
I am looking for a coffee shop to work out of for the day. I’ve gotten a late start, so I know that I am totally fucked in terms of trying to find a seat. There must be 10 coffee shops per 10,000 people in New York City, yet every single one seems full at all times.
I find myself in a small café on the Lower East Side. The last time I was here, I was delighted to find an open spot in a prime location: right in front of the window. Wow, I thought. I’m gonna do some great writing here. I put down my bag when I noticed it. The smell. Sitting next to the open spot was what appeared to be a homeless man. His body odor was intense. I stood for a moment, weighing whether or not I wanted to deal with it. As I thought about it, I noticed that there was a small zone of free seats directly around this man as, clearly, nobody wanted to sit near him. Not without reason. I decided to go look elsewhere for a place to work.
Well, today I am back again. And just my luck, there’s a prime open table. I make my way over when it hits me again. The smell. I audibly sigh. I look up and notice the same man, sitting just behind the table; I didn’t see him when I first walked in. My jaw clenches. I can feel my heart rate quicken. Sometimes, I performatively mutter to myself when I am annoyed. This time, I am silent. I imagine, for a moment, saying something to him. Take a fucking shower, buddy. You fucking stink, jerk. I am getting more annoyed. I walk out of the coffee shop and end up at another place where I learn, after buying my coffee, that I am not allowed to use a laptop there. Perhaps this is a karmic gift for my dark and unkind thoughts.
As I sit sipping the coffee I think back to the homeless man. I think how that smell is familiar to me because it’s how some of the incarcerated people I would represent smelled when they were in lockup. Many of them were homeless. I think how, in that setting, I may have forced my brain into a more empathetic setting because they were my clients. I must have. They were my responsibility.
I imagine a scenario where the man and I get into an argument. I insult him, and he attacks me. We fight. I imagine the people at the coffee shop watching us wrestle each other in the street. Something happens. He trips and falls. Shockingly, he dies. I am charged. There’s a criminal case. I think about how so many people would “be on my side.” Would express their outrage at the homeless. At the poor. At “vagrants.” “Drug addicts.” “Crackheads.” That, if I said nothing, they would make me into a folk hero. The man who had had enough. A Charles Bronson type, a vigilante getting scum off the street. I am, of course, disgusted by this.
The most important thing I learned in four years of being a public defender was that everyone has a story. Everyone. Even ignoring the Brian Stevenson shit, the no one is the worst thing they’ve ever done, which I absolutely agree with…even ignoring that. Everybody has a story; nobody finds themselves in a jail cell without one. I found myself endlessly sympathetic to the stories the people I represented told me. And they weren’t all sob stories, either. Some of them were real assholes. I gave some grace in the form of understanding that living a life of poverty is a nightmare. Being institutionalized is a nightmare. Finding yourself as the meat on the conveyer belt of the American criminal system is a nightmare. And I watched it all and learned it, so I didn’t take it personally.
I didn’t know what this guy’s story was. But I know he has one. I know if I went back and asked, he’d tell me. Maybe it’s that the café is warm and open late. Maybe it’s one of the few places where he isn’t harassed or kicked out. Maybe someone here has shown him kindness before, given him a coffee, or just let him exist without demanding something in return. Maybe it’s because he knows he smells and no one will sit close, and that small zone of space feels like safety. Maybe it’s just that this is the best option in a world that doesn’t leave him many.
I talk to homeless people often, I think more than most people do. I appreciate when they just want a sandwich, or a coffee. I ask them about what they’re up to. Where they are sleeping. What the good spots are. What they like to watch on YouTube. One night when I was on the subway an older man (sometimes it’s hard to approximate age because of drugs) was hitting his cane against the handrail and was freaking everyone out. “What’s up?” I asked. “What’s going on?” He stopped immediately. We spoke a bit. I didn’t have any cash on me, so I asked him if he wanted half of my leftover sandwich. “What kind?” he asked. I laughed. Something about beggars and choosers. He took it off me and walked off at the next stop.
Sometimes I forget that our thoughts do not equal us. In fact, our thoughts reveal to us our training, what society has drilled into us, what the environment imprinted on us socially from a young age. Our true selves are revealed in our actions and how we reflect on our thoughts. Do we know why something is wrong? Do we give ourselves the space to feel frustration and anger and disgust? Do we forgive ourselves for our moments of weakness and unkindness? Do we still go out into the world and act in a way that we wish and hope ourselves to be?
Our society teaches us to hate the poor. We learn that to be rich is a virtue and to be poor is a sign of great sin. It is a personal failure. We collectively fail to recognize that the spectacular wealth of a small group of people in a society with such rampant poverty is the real failure, and it is a failure on all of our accounts.
Daniel Penny was acquitted by a jury of his peers last week. Daniel Penny, the man who strangled to death Jordan Neely, a homeless Black street performer, on a New York City subway in front of dozens of onlookers. The entire car watched Penny strangle a man for 6 minutes until he died. He has been celebrated in conservative media for many months, and his acquittal brought such joy to them collectively that he was personally invited by the soon to be Vice President of the United States to meet and take photographs.
This is a society that hates the poor.
This past week another interesting thing happened: Luigi Mangione was charged in the murder of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare—one of the most notorious companies in the health insurance industry for its high rate of coverage denials. All across mainstream media, Mangione has been referred to as sick, deranged, psychotic, and evil. Conservatives have trotted out the fact that he comes from a wealthy family, but that Thompson grew up working class, as some kind of indication that he is especially evil. That Thompson was the true hero, Thompson who grew up with little to become a millionaire heading a company that makes it profits from indirectly killing people and destroying their lives and the lives of their families. He was the hero because he achieved the American Dream.
This is a society that hates the poor.
We’ve built a system where the poor, desperate, and the inconvenient are fair game. The real question isn’t how it happens—it’s why we let it. Because in this world, the answer has already been decided.
Who can you kill?
I was homeless by the time I was 17 it was one of the longest years of my life. I was addicted to iv heroin by the time I was 15. I made it out, but most of us never do and without the help of my family and kindness of strangers (much like you) I never would have either. The hope that comes from the compassion of strangers in these situations can save someone’s life for the day and has mine. You are helping change things with what you are producing and putting out into the world: thank you 💕.
Thank you for this piece. We have to humanize the homeless since we're one paycheck away from joining them.