By Eric E. Clingan
Arizona Daily Wildcat
September 23, 1997

Of Markers and Cardboard

Arizona Daily Wildcat Eric E. Clingan

A wit once remarked upon his arrival in Tucson that he witnessed a man on a corner shouting, "Will work for a marker and cardboard." Unfortunately, some new arrivals, including students and staff here at the University of Arizona, may come to believe that a cottage industry exists in such use of those materials. Without question Tucson has had a problem getting a handle on the homeless.

The problem first became entrenched in this nation when certain liberal groups used overt manipulation of our vernacular to circumvent the characterization of such people. For, as few as10 years ago, they carried the disgraceful monikers of "Vagabonds," "Hobos," and "Bums." Today, they are "Homeless." The term is used to conjure up some sort of compassion, misplaced as it is, for unproductive, drug-abusing, filthy deviants. A better term, more honest and still hopeful, is "Human Refuse." Those who would take exception to such a characterization are blinded to its inherent hopefulness. Simply put, just as society recycles the paper in your hands at present, society is capable of recycling these individuals from their squalid lives into productive members of the labor force.

Certainly, these vagabonds are not entirely bereft of intelligence. Indeed, they share much with entrepreneurs. First, they vary their business with the seasons, moving north by train car to Flagstaff in the summer and then back to Tucson in the winter. Their spirit of creativity also speaks well of them. Offer to take them up on their sales pitch, "Will Work for Food," and a litany of medical lamentations are likely to surface which, in turn, give rise to the potentiality of talent in fiction writing that exists on our corners. Also, just as a businessman is apt to express disappointment at a drop in his profits, these bums become as abrasive as the stubble on their faces should you pass them by without contributing to their cause.

However, unlike entrepreneurs, the hobos of Tucson devalue the property most closely associated with their favored corners. In addition, they spread their filth and squalor amongst our recreation centers and city parks where they sleep under the shade of trees and pathetically relieve themselves on the same. Finally, while businessmen here in the Old Pueblo's desert landscape work hard for growth and upward mobility, the bums of Tucson stagnate as rocks in the sand.

What most new arrivals fail to understand is that, unlike the Muscular Dystrophy Association and other noteworthy charities, contributing to this cause will only exacerbate it. The only effective means with which we can battle this problem is through overt expressions of intolerance, both publicly and privately based. For example, at the behest of angry property owners, Tucson's City Council made slight progress on this issue by evicting these vagabonds from their rickety dangerous shantytown, which was illegally pitched at the base of "A" Mountain this past summer. Those property owners there can verify the accounts mentioned herein as well as other numerous incidences of drug abuse and alcohol-related violence which, of course, gives rise to justified questions such as, "What exactly are these hobos spending my charity on, anyway?"

Even more can be done to eliminate this unseemly problem. First, the Tucson City Council and/or Pima County should enact and enforce an ordinance requiring a permit to loiter on street islands and corners. This would allow for the survival of paper hawkers, some of whom, while homeless, are undeniably not part of the problem and indeed are admirably seeking their own solutions (tip them well). The immediate result of such a permit requirement would be, of course, an increase in arrests. So, to alleviate the temporary overcrowding in our jail cells, and in exchange for three square meals per day, they should be made to don a reflective vest and labor as a street cleaning detail. In this way, they will be beautifying the boulevards they once sullied, while simultaneously realizing their supposed goal of, "Will Work for Food."

A final suggestion is something all Tucsonans and visitors can incorporate as a means of sending a message of intolerance to this deviant culture. Simply fight back with our own markers and cardboard. Using a thick black marker, write in block, bold letters, "WORK-ING FOR FOOD", on a 4 x 6 index card and then place the card conspicuously in the lower-left corner of your windshield. Perhaps a wave of this sort of public condemnation and utter disapproval will convince many of these vagrants to join the establishment instead of determinedly dangling, as a dingleberry, to its derriere.

Eric E. Clingan is a senior majoring in political science.