“Hey! Cut that out! I live here!”
This sentence— yelled at a homeless man by a stranger during my first week in America in early 2023— has stuck with me ever since.
It was a cold San Francisco evening in April 2023 where I was making my way home from dinner; the street quiet and empty, lit mostly by surrounding restaurants packed with people huddled inside to escape the chill.
As I walked along the street, my attention was drawn to a man ahead of me. Hunched over and bundled in blankets, he sifted through a street-side rubbish bin (trash can), keeping some items in his personal haul while tossing items he deemed of no value on to the surrounding footpath (sidewalk). Ignorant at the time, I later learned he was hunting for bottles and cans for which he could exchange for small amounts of money he could use to survive.
His search was suddenly interrupted as a man on a fancy new e-bike sporting an essential Bay Area puffer jacket hit the brakes and came to a halt beside this man. He began to yell:
“Hey! Cut that out! You’re just gonna dig through the trash and make a mess in my neighbourhood? I live here! Don’t you care? Don’t you care about the mess you make? Get out!”
Time seemed to freeze for me as I watched the situation play out; it was so striking to me.
One man cold, hungry, scavenging to survive, and causing no real harm; the other teaming with privilege yet erupting over poverty touching his curb and the mild inconvenience this brought him.
No empathy, no compassion, no solutions or offers of help. No acknowledgment of the failures of the system that lead this man here or the state of survival he was in. Instead, just anger and blame expressed toward someone who was in no position to defend themselves by someone in a much better position.
Privilege, inequities, and abuses of power have long plagued our society. However, I don’t think anything could have prepared me for just how stark and visible these inequities would be in America, or how relentlessly I would encounter them, especially in cities with such enormous wealth like San Francisco and Los Angeles where I found myself living.
It has been 3 years since that night. I wish I could say things have improved since then, but I think it’s increasingly clear they are only getting worse, and having recently returned to New Zealand, similar sentiments are being seen here.
Despite all we have been through as a society, it seems many of our leaders continue to operate on misinformed ideas, disdain, contempt, and at times, outright hatred, toward entire communities and groups of people, especially those already marginalised or suffering. Utilising their power to weaponise fear and misinformation, implement harmful laws, ignore human rights, overturn hard-won protections, and cutting funding for imperative social services and research while continuing to prioritise those that do not need more all while selling the lie that it will somehow trickle down and improve things for others.
I shouldn’t pretend this is anything new. If anything, it is likely merely amplified by the technology that now shapes how we access information and whom we are taught to blame.
I can understand, on a human level, the frustration of the man on the bike. Witnessing poverty is uncomfortable. Walking past people sleeping rough on the way to catch a train, or seeing active drug use on a street corner, is not pleasant. It affects all of us.
Unfortunately, just as the man on his fancy e-bike will likely never know what it is like to dig through the trash for bottles to survive, those with the voice and power to make change, especially in wealthy cities like San Francisco, are often the ones who will never experience the poverty or broken systems themselves. The pain, stress, and trauma they can inflict upon those who go through them and the lack of hope you grow to feel.
Instead, they see the problem, and they simply want it gone. Often not because they care or worry about those people, but because they see it as an inconvenience or eyesore. Lately, that impulse seems to have gone further: for example forcing people into dystopian and contentious “reset” facilities that defy established best practices, or continuing to engage in homeless street sweeps that only destabilise people and put them in further danger. Clear attempts to solve a problem through cruelty and coercion, rather than evidence and compassion.
Laws—and those charged with enforcing them—should protect people, not hurt them. Systems should support and uplift the vulnerable, and prevent those with so much from exploiting those with so little.
When they are weaponised to hurt, abandon, or demonise people—especially marginalised groups—we must ask who they truly serve.
But more often than not, we reach for these cruel solutions not due to malice, but because of something far more human: compassion fatigue. When we are exposed to so much suffering every day and feel powerless to help it, our mind starts turning that suffering in to scenery it can block out. We no longer see people or fellow human beings, we see an inconvenience that we have to pass. That numbness makes it easy to support laws that promise to get the suffering out of view, rather than truly solve the underlying problems.
This fatigue is not a personal failure, but it is often weaponised as a political tool. When enough of us go numb, the systems can criminalise survival and call it a solution.
However, more recent research has shown that compassion fatigue may be impacted by mindset and expectations, and by seeing compassion as rewarding rather than draining, we can increase the amount of compassion we have for others and improve overall outcomes and the positive personal feelings we get by creating positive change. By having these mindsets, we can do more to help each other as a community and a society, and vote and use our voices in ways that support the wellbeing of all instead of resorting to coercion, suffering, or yelling at those that already have nothing.
It seems, as things go on and inequities continue to grow, it is those with nothing that are starting to do the yelling.
“Hey. Cut that out. We live here.”