Re: “The number one issue on this year’s ballot” [July 25, Opinion]:
The Seattle Times editorial cartoon, published in my Eugene, Oregon, Gannett newspaper The Register-Guard with the headline “The new urban traffic jam,” is a slap in the face to those who are unhoused.
Do I generate trash? You bet I do. We all do. We “happily housed” have a place to put our trash until it’s conveniently hauled away. And we can drink, or smoke a joint, in privacy without being tagged “losers.”
We have showers and toilets and beds, refrigerators and stoves. Some of us get paid enough to hold a life together. Some of us make do somehow.
Many of us are one pink slip, hospital bill, breakup, or firestorm away from having to ask the humiliating question, “Oh, am I in your way?”
It’s not that complicated for a community to offer basic sanitation, shelter, and physical and mental-health care to those who fall into the chasm and land on the street.
We have it in us to let go the labels and judgments. We have it in us to recognize visible human suffering and to respond with swift common-sense compassion.
Unhoused members of our communities deserve better than to be trashed by degrading newspaper caricatures.
Mary Sharon Moore, Eugene, Oregon