Word: beggars
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Bopping down Wilshire Boulevard in his Reebok tennis shoes, black Lycra biking shorts, a clean T shirt, red wristbands, sunglasses and a Panama hat, big Tim Brown doesn't look like a typical Santa Monica, Calif., beggar. And he's not: at 6 ft. 3 in., the former Golden Gloves boxer and current alcoholic is an intimidating presence as he accosts pedestrians and dashes into traffic to knock on car windows. "You have to make them scared enough so they'll give you what they have in their pockets," says Brown, explaining the activist panhandling philosophy that he says...
...people for whom the decision is easy. For those who take their Scriptures seriously, there are Jesus' instructions to his followers: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." The Talmud teaches that "when a beggar comes, hand him bread, so that the same may be done to your children." Likewise, Muhammad taught that "the mercy of Allah is near to those who do good." And since all good things come from Almighty God, he held, one never really gives; one only gives back...
...other side are those who feel just as strongly that one should never help support a beggar. To do so mocks the work ethic, fosters dependence, corrodes individual dignity and compounds the problem: the more handouts, the more hands are out. No less a person than Martin Luther deplored the fact that "there are plenty of people roaming around the country nowadays, ((having)) a good time with other people's possessions." The anti-handout convictions too are often born of careful thought and high ideals. "I have never given a red cent to a panhandler, and I never will," declares...
...handicapped, the injustices of the world he saw around him. "He was painfully aware of the misery of humankind," asserts James M. Robinson, noted director of Claremont's Institute for Antiquity and Christianity. "He felt he should do nothing to aggravate human misery. As long as there was a beggar without food tonight, how could he store up food in his rucksack...
...production now totals 6.8 million tons a year, with little prospect for future growth; Western experts say the country will require an estimated 2 million tons of imported food in 1990. It almost seems, says Morris with a sigh, that the Ethiopians are "determined to render themselves a perpetual beggar nation...