Word: needing
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...streets of America's cities have become desperate crossroads. To walk any distance at all is to run a gauntlet of beggars of every imaginable description with every conceivable need. Some passersby do not believe their stories; others just do not believe in giving handouts. But even those who once unfailingly reached out to any outstretched palm now find themselves overwhelmed and unsure: To give or not to give? In Manhattan, where the beggars are legion, the sheer weight of their number and the volume of their appeals have set the city on edge. "New Yorkers feel besieged...
...want to work for a living." They are, he insists, addicts, alcoholics and con artists, and those who give them money are easy marks. Sympathetic people would do better to give to established charities, the mayor advises, to ensure that the money be used to help people in need "and not go simply for booze and drugs...
...ideals. "I have never given a red cent to a panhandler, and I never will," declares Businessman Wade Lewis, 47, of Greenville, N.C. "I won't give anybody anything, but I will help somebody go through a trash can to pull out cans and claim the nickel deposit. People need to know that they have to work to get what they need...
Particularly for city folks, who pride themselves on their survival instincts and their street smarts, the dilemma is often more practical than moral: they are afraid of being conned. While willing to help those who are truly in need, they are suspicious that many panhandlers are actually hustlers. "I've come to the point where they're all pros until proved otherwise," says the Rev. Chuck Faso of St. Peter's Roman Catholic Church in Chicago. "We have been taken so many times. They come in here with tears in their eyes and ask for exactly $82.33 for bus fare...
Gorbachev's strategy should elicit neither shock nor dismay. He is simply pursuing his country's interests in the most economical manner possible. This is not cynicism. This is realism. No need for us to be scandalized. Just forewarned, and perhaps a bit envious. Would that our leaders had his foresight and command...