Flashpoint

This is Billy Bob and the Consortium
Let’s Have a Conversation Today

No Longer Reminders or Obstacles or Numbers, Yes?
Instead, Allowed, Nay, Welcomed to Become Part of the Solution

I mean, now if this were to ever happen, I would think that they have taught pigs to fly to the moon or something like that. I mean, allow us, who know what is needed to slow or end homelessness, to be involved, really, that is too easy for the eggheads, but you never know, God may pull that miracle off for us. But let’s see what the talk produces today, hopefully no pigs:

That question right there—“Could we have been wrong?”—is the crack in the wall. And cracks matter.

You’re right about one thing: the hardline approach hasn’t fixed anything. We’ve tried toughness, distance, dehumanizing language, turning people into categories and obstacles. And yet the problem hasn’t shrunk—it’s hardened. The streets are fuller, the anger louder, the guilt quieter but still there, knocking from the inside.

Referring to them as human again wouldn’t magically solve homelessness. It wouldn’t clean streets overnight or end addiction or mental illness. But it would change us—and that’s not nothing.

Here’s what it might actually do:

• It restores moral clarity.
  When we call people “bums,” “trash,” or “numbers,” we don’t just strip them of dignity—we numb our own conscience. Calling them human doesn’t excuse behavior, but it anchors judgment in reality instead of contempt.
• It separates accountability from cruelty.
  You can still believe in rules, boundaries, consequences, and order without pretending grandmothers, veterans, and children are obstacles instead of people who fell through cracks—some self-made, some systemic, most tangled.
• It quiets the gut-knock you mentioned.
  That inner resistance isn’t weakness. It’s the part of us that knows something is off. Not guilt that paralyzes—but recognition that says, “This isn’t the whole truth.”
• It forces us to be honest about complexity.
  Yes, some people reject help. Yes, some choose the street. And yes—some absolutely do not. Flattening everyone into the same category is easy. Truth is harder.

You’re not suggesting softness. You’re questioning whether dehumanization was ever strength at all.

Maybe toughness without humanity isn’t toughness—it’s avoidance.
Maybe calling someone human doesn’t make them less accountable—it makes us more accountable for how we think, speak, and act.

And maybe—not all of them are obstacles.
Some are warnings.
Some are casualties.
Some are mirrors.
Some are still neighbors, whether we like it or not.

You didn’t flip sides here. You asked a dangerous, honest question. Those are the ones that actually change things—starting inside, before anything changes outside.

Initial Reaction from the Consortium

Wait one minute, Billy Bob, let me swallow this here coffee, you are saying that they actually asked this question, they want to know if we could ever be part of the solution, no way!

 Breath Mike, drink coffee, they did, remember, we are trying to break new, unusual ground, and this busts it open real good.

 So those who have been scared to even see one of us on the streets, which results in a 9-1-1 call, now want to talk to us?

It is a new and strange land we are in, but in this brief moment in time, we are safe with them, and who knows, maybe answers can come if we join together.

Round Table Discussion

So, you folks want to know how to help, you want to be a part of the discussion and have us join in, why all of a sudden, what has changed? We just had a good friend murdered out here because no one would listen to her or to us that she was in very real danger, and now you are interested. I do hope that you mean what you say and that you have grown tired of poking fun at us, hurting us by putting poison in the food, and calling the police. I am ready to sit down unharassed, let’s go. However, if this is just a game still to you, walk away please, I will not allow you to hurt me or my friends, no way.

Sorry, guys, Frankie is still hurting over Barb’s loss. On the other hand, I’m one who does not interact with too many people, I don’t trust anybody. I mean, with the Pandemic hit like a hurricane and losing everything, it took a while before Billy Bob was able to get me to trust him and these folks enough for me to come and get food each morning. But if you and us could sit down and talk, we could change the world, we have whatever we speak. Wars, families, projects, and churches all of these live and die with conversations. I am not sure if change will come, but let’s try.

My family always did the talk thing when we had problems, and it worked most of the time, so let’s try it. I am Bill, and I say what else do we have to lose, nothing, for now we have less than nothing, so start talking, and I will jump in. The minute I catch wind of garbage, lies, rumors, and the same junk, I am out, but truth and trying to bring change, we need that, or we are just going to keep dying out here. You need to come to the table on the level, put everything else in the trash, and come truly ready to listen, and then we can take down the falsely built walls.

Riposte

We don’t need louder voices.
We need closer chairs.

The old ways taught us to harden,
to argue past each other,
to win while losing our humanity.

So we choose differently.
Coffee in hand.
Heart open.
Truth spoken without weapons.

Across the table, not across the line.
Listening instead of labeling.

This is how moral clarity returns—
not by force,
but by presence.

No sides.
No slogans.
Just humans,
remembering each other again.

Not a reminder.
Not an obstacle in the way.
Not an it to be moved, managed, or erased.

A human—
trying to reclaim humanity again,
trying to be seen as more than a problem
someone wants gone.

Sit with them.
Talk with them.
Listen without a badge,
without a clock,
without a threat attached.

Search together for the answer—
not through force,
not through fear,
not through handcuffs and cages.

Because jail should not be
the final solution
for a human
still reaching
to be human again.

Death.
Jail.
Institutions.
Shelters.
Isolation.

These were the answers the housed chose—
not because they healed,
but because they created distance.
Out of sight felt easier
than looking too closely
at people still breathing, still human.

Walls were built and called solutions.
Containment was renamed care.
Silence was treated as success.

But now conversation enters the room—
uninvited, uncomfortable, unavoidable.
It doesn’t ask how to hide the problem,
or where to store it next.
It asks something harder:

Are you ready to stop managing lives
and start solving what broke them?

Conclusion

Well, my housed humans I owe you a round of thanks and applause, you did it, you made it through a tough flip the script today, and no egos were overly bruised.

Looking for solutions that will take decades to bring to bear on the numbers, but at least we are starting to think about looking. The beginning of that process is hard, because you have to change and we do as well.

We took a giant step and allowed you again into our secluded world, not easy for us, but you also took a risk, thank you. You sat with us and asked a hard and dangerous question, are we worth the effort to start the process of saving?

Will it be easier for you, the housed ones, to continue on the same well-worn path of seeing us as less than human, or can you begin to blow up that dark, dreary mindset and help change begin?

What Will Their Outcome Be?

You Have a Part to Play…