Guest Blog and Photos By Lizzie Falconer
The first rule I learned in San Francisco: stop thinking in black and white.
I was going down to see firsthand what homelessness, drug abuse and the AIDS epidemic had done to the city. I wanted to see the real faces of the issue, wanted to gain a clearer understanding. I saw the problem as broken down into two distinct groups: the good guys and the bad guys. It wasn’t a conscious line I was drawing in my mind, more of a belief that I had never acknowledged before.
Good guys: Single mothers. Children. Victims.  Hard workers. Nice people.
Bad Guys: Drug addicts. Prostitutes. Alcoholics. Abusers. Ex-cons. Dealers.
The good guys were those I thought were fighting to escape the poverty that surrounded their lives, the bad guys were contributing to it.
One morning, our group was at Glide Memorial Church serving breakfast to the 800 homeless people they feed everyday. The room was sticky and uncomfortable, and I was mad because another pushy, dirty, 50-year-old homeless man had felt the need to comment on my chest. I sat down, sweaty and annoyed, next to another volunteer. He was tall and couldn’t be more than 30, with a short military hair cut, and a collection of thin scars running between his upper lip and left eye.
“How long have you volunteered here?” I asked, in a half-hearted attempt to make conversation.
“Oh,” he said, turning his yellowed eyes towards me, “a while now. Since I got out of San Quentin.” San Quentin is the main prison in the Bay Area, where freed prisoners are given a few hundred dollars, their original clothes and left to fend for themselves.
“I’m from Oregon originally,” he continued. “But I’m escaping a bad relationship.” And then in a whisper, “I was gonna kill my girlfriend and her father.”
I blinked, struggling to keep a straight face.
“Oh… well that’s good you’re here,” I managed.
“It was the meth,” he continued. “My mama raised me better than that. I never would have done the things I did without the drugs. I’m not that person anymore, been clean for over a year.”
What became clear as the week went on is that the good guy/bad guy viewpoints that I was functioning with were useless. Often “good” victims become “bad” drug addicts. “Good” single mothers are forced into prostitution to support their families. These people on the streets are still people, whether they are addicted to meth or are paranoid schizophrenics. There were other stories I encountered too. The Ivy League educated war veteran who was paralyzed in Vietnam and couldn’t pay his medical bills and now lives on the streets. Or Mimi, an injection drug user who overdosed two times before she dropped drugs and began working to help addicts. People are too complex, their stories varied, and histories unknown to decide that they are singularly bad.
It’s not easy to admit that I was so quick to label entire groups of people that I – up to this point – failed to understand. But what I can say is that I learned the most in the moments where I stopped questioning and instead opened myself to those around me. It turned out to be as simple as this: listening, in all its capacities, difficulties and struggles, proved to be my strongest weapon in the fight against my own ignorance.

Learn more about Ethos’ weeklong series, My Alternative Break.

Gallery • 1 Photos

The intersection outside the Glide Memorial Church.