Las Vegas Sun

November 14, 2009

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Letter: Great society would care for its homeless

Tuesday, Dec. 4, 2001 | 8:54 a.m.

It was gratifying to watch on TV and read about the wonderful, compassionate people bringing blankets to the escalating numbers of homeless in Las Vegas, and it caused many of us to do the same. But reading on we learned that these men, women and even children would be sleeping on the sidewalk on this cold, rainy night.

No matter how a person becomes homeless, isn't it the responsibility of a decent society to care for other human beings? Aren't we aware that Jesus, too, was homeless? And providing Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners to assuage our guilt is not the answer.

Besides the Las Vegas Sun, I also subscribe to the Chicago Tribune, New York Times and Los Angeles Times. Are our city fathers aware that Las Vegas is referred to as a compassionless society in these newspapers because of our people sleeping in the streets? All of these much larger cities manage to at least provide a roof over their inhabitants at night -- not enough help of course, but much better than the way homeless are treated here.

We in our country had better take a good look at our own humanitarian policies before arrogantly calling ourselves the greatest country on Earth.

RUTH DI MAGGIO

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