Hospitality and the Open Door

Hospitality is a paper put out by The Open Door Community in Atlanta, a Catholic Worker house. I wrote something earlier about their work in protesting anti-panhandling (ie. anti-begging) laws in Atlanta.

This time I'm writing about the September issue which on page four has a very interesting reflection on an animal cruelty case. It recounts the story of a malnourished dog and the charges brought against the owners, the photos of the state the dog was in that almost made the judge cry and so on. Then it reflects on homelessness and poverty in Georgia and the fact that the society there, like so many others, fails to properly provide for vulnerable people - who, one could argue, it was morally a guardian for.

The writer's actual point was that the legal resources that go into protecting animals from abuse were disproportionately greater than those spent on protecting homeless and poor persons from societal abuse. However the article raises the question, in a just world would communities that stood by while homelessness and poverty grew be sued for inhumane treatment by the Humane Society (or the RSPCA in Australia).

In other words, is it possible that a homeless person's best course of action might be to charge the local council with cruelty to animals?!

Now that's an incendiary remark, sure, but follow the anti-panhandling story in the August and September issues and you'll see it may just be appropriate.

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