The dog park — seriously? I am so perturbed at how people of privilege and popularity condemn other human beings to the margins.
“I have and they do not” is insufficient reason to live with an “us vs. them” mentality and utter disrespect. Now, the Durango City Council wants “them” to lie with dogs and sleep in the dog park.
To hide people in that space because “we” are too embarrassed that we have homeless people in our community is shameful. All people are human beings and the rest of us should be finding solutions to homelessness instead of hiding those experiencing it.
I am told there are no great solutions, but I disagree. If we care about all our community members, there are always options; there is always a way.
As a community, we give lip service to many issues and we seem to forget the worth of a human being. Whether someone is poor or rich, main stream or another stream, is of the popular color, gender or sexual preference, all human beings deserve respect.
We should not expect the homeless to sleep in our local dog park, not to mention on soil that still contains uranium tailings.
Let’s be the community that respects one another and finds a good solution. If we are afraid of possible fires, let’s find another respectable space.
Betty Schwartz-Bozeman
Durango
