14 DAY TRIAL // The video above is old but it’s just now getting a lot of circulation on the blogosphere and social media. As it’s going viral, it is also reigniting the debate on the homeless and how much it is in our power and responsibility to help them.
Ronald Davis lives on the streets of Chicago. He says he’s been homeless for over a year and a half, but he’s still revolted and humiliated when people yell at him in the street, calling him a “bum.”
Because a bum he is not, he says: he’s a homeless person who’s fallen on hard times, but he’s still a human being who deserves respect.
“It's really humiliating to be shaking a cup 24 hours a day and people looking at you like you're some kind of bum. I have people who walk past me and say ‘Get a job, bum.’ And I say, ‘wait a minute, I'm not a bum, I'm a human being’,” he says.
“At the end of the day, when people go home and everybody gets on the Metra train... and then I just feel so bad that I can't be going home. It's really emotional because I'm really trying to get myself together and get off this street,” Davis explains.
In the video, he also says that he’s doing whatever he can to get a job but he has little success because he can’t provide contact information or a respectable appearance to potential employers.