COMMENTARY: A tribute to the hero of the homeless

c. 1999 Religion News Service (Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS.) UNDATED _ Mitch Snyder lived and died in my town. I call it my town now, although when I first moved to Washington, D.C., I _ like many people _ thought I was just passing through. The nation’s capital seemed like more of […]

c. 1999 Religion News Service

(Dale Hanson Bourke is publisher of RNS.)

UNDATED _ Mitch Snyder lived and died in my town.


I call it my town now, although when I first moved to Washington, D.C., I _ like many people _ thought I was just passing through. The nation’s capital seemed like more of a short-term adventure than a long-term home.

This is a city of monuments and monumental egos, of shop talk that becomes headlines and bigger-than-life people you pass on the street.

Eventually I saw that it is also a place where people carry on ordinary life. They shop for groceries, go to church and school, live out everyday dreams.

And it is a place of broken dreams, too. Members of Congress are arrested for driving drunk and young up-and-comers are struck down by disease in their prime. People who planned to pass through get stuck here, serving those who climb over their backs to get ahead.

Some people lose their fortunes and their minds. Some even end up living on the streets.

Mitch Snyder was the person who made me _ and other Washingtonians _ notice those people in the shadows of the monuments. He was the one who said this town owed street people more than life on a heat grate. He was a person who dared to remind anyone who lived in Washington that with all the glory came a burden.

A movie was made about Snyder. For a time he became very popular with the Hollywood crowd. But that wasn’t his doing and he didn’t really care about glitzy movie stars as much as he cared about smelly street people.

Caring about the homeless wasn’t just a cause for him and his well-publicized hunger strikes weren’t publicity stunts. More than once he came close to death, waiting for the government or private developers to make a place for street people.

There were people who called Mitch Snyder crazy. When he committed suicide nine years ago this week, some people took it as proof that Snyder’s rantings and ravings had simply been the outpouring of his tormented mental state.


But some of us wondered how much the torment came from looking at the homeless without any filters. Snyder lived with them, ate with them, championed their cause from their very place. He didn’t try to swoop down and save them, he knelt down and yelled out in frustration over their plight.

Eventually everyone who lived in this town heard his voice. Shelters were opened and new ones were built. Working people stopped stepping over folks on the sidewalk. The problem wasn’t solved but it was recognized.

And because it was recognized in this city, it became a national cause. The homeless population of America began to come into focus. People living on the streets became a concern, not an annoyance.

Mitch Snyder died, but he changed the face of Washington and other cities as much as any of the men whose faces are etched in marble on our monuments.

Washington is my town now and homeless people in this city are my problem too. We all seem to know a person or two, and we help out as much as we can.

A hungry person on the street can expect to receive a sandwich from a well-dressed person. Many street people are greeted by name as office workers rush in from the suburbs. Those who want to escape life on the streets have more help and less red tape.


Nine years after his death, Mitch Snyder’s legacy lives on. It might have killed him to do it, but one man convinced many of us to spend a little less energy on pomp and a little more time on human dignity. Many people come to Washington with grander dreams, but few accomplish as much.

DEA END BOURKE

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