Aletheia (Or Verity By Another Name)

Norman Garstin - "Alethea And Her Mother" (1898)

A recent episode of Dead and Gone (Season Two, Episode 6) finally touches upon a social issue that should've been addressed during the first season but wasn't—i.e. Reagan-era dismantling of social "backstops" and homelessness.  Still, it's been addressed in the second season, and that’s a good thing. Stepping back from the individual cases covered in this second season, one can see how they are similar in some significant ways to the case covered in the first season.

In Episode 6, Mike Rooney talks to an associate professor of social work at the University of Buffalo, Elizabeth Bowen, and to a journalist from the San Francisco Chronicle, Kevin Fagan.  What both have to say about homelessness may shed light on the plight of some of those living in Rainbow Village back in '85, including Ralph Thomas and Vivian Cercy.  For example, Fagan makes an important distinction between 'real homelessness' and 'chosen homeless' as he discusses the issue, and it's difficult not to think of these differences as they existed among those staying in Rainbow Village on the night of August 15/16.  Here's what he has to say:

"So I've had some real homelessness and some chosen homeless.  It gave me a little bit more of a feel for what what I was lookin' at and bein' in when I reported on homelessness.  It's not like I'm some anthropologist goin' in and looking at these strange creatures called homeless people.  No I can really feel what they're goin' through.  My heart breaks every day when I talk to these folks.  You're...you're desperate when you're living outside.  No one really wants to live outside.  

You know unless you're a kid.  Deadheads...sure, you know, it's like a chosen homelessness for a lot of folks, 'cause you're, you know, bouncin' around being a hippie, a bohemian whatever you want to call it.  But you're eventually going to go back to your real life.  Young people, in particular, like me, you know when I was doin' the street-thing, street musician thing.  It's exciting and it's strange but eventually you're going to go back and get a job and have a house--have a roof.  That's a different kinda, different kinda homelessness.  Real homeless because you got no choice, that's a crisis [my emphasis], and no one really wants that."

For me, what Fagan says confirmed something I'd already been thinking about as I looked into the history of Rainbow Village.  Ralph Thomas, Vivian Cercy, and others were living in crisis—in real homelessness—while others, who may have been just passing through, were living a kind of chosen homelessness.  Mary, for example, planned to go back to work and get a job as a baker or chef.

Fagan talks about homelessness and crisis, and Elizabeth Bowen talks about trauma and homelessness:

"For most people, I think being homeless is very traumatic.  To not have that security and just to be worrying about your day-to-day survival.  Mental health and substance use can be part of it, but I think people often focus on that and forget all these other factors that lead to homelessness.

Sometimes mental health issues and substance use are more of an effect of homelessness rather than a cause of it.  There's a lot of trauma in that, a lot of people encounter different kinds of violence and assault while being homeless.  People may have post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, not as a cause of homelessness but after being homeless. Or people may turn to substances as part of a coping mechanism to deal with this incredibly stressful and traumatic living situation.  So to characterize mental health issues and substance use issues as singular causes of homelessness I think is often not totally accurate and somewhat exaggerated.”

Bowen describes a "stressful and traumatic living situation".  This reminded of Vivian Cercy.  At the time of the murdersVivian Cercy was living in a car with her children.  She testified that after she witnessed the tense exchange among the three people near the gate to the Village, and then hearing what sounded like firecrackers, a man threatened her while she was in her car:

"About 20 to 30 minutes later, Cercy heard two male voices, one of which sounded white, talking behind her car. The person with the white voice said, ‘Leave her alone; she's got two kids.’ A few seconds later there was a knock on the window of the driver's door and Cercy saw a man wearing a pea coat. He asked her name and where she was staying. [Cercy told the man she was staying with Harry Shorman.] When he asked what color bus Harry owned, Cercy asked the man why he was questioning her. The man said he was going to kill her.  Cercy immediately blanked the man's face out of her mind and could give no description[,] including the color of his skin. The man walked away without saying anything else." (In Re Ralph International Thomas on Habeas Corpus, p. 7)

She "blanked the man's face out of her mind."  To me this sounds like an effect of trauma resulting from having her life threatened.  And something else that Bowen remarks about contact between the homeless and law enforcement sheds light on the level of animosity Jim Anderson expressed toward Vivian Cercy and Harry Shorman:

"... I would have to overall characterize interactions between law enforcement and people experiencing homelessness as pretty negative and sometimes I think abusive and traumatic."

To get to the truth of what happened on the night of August 15/16 there needs to be a sustained dialogue involving experts like Fagan and Bowen who can help us understand not only the content of the court documents, but also who gathered, reported, and interpreted it.  As I remarked in another post, questions have to be asked about why Jim Anderson prosecuted Ralph Thomas in the way that he did.

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I'm a silly, old fool who still believes that conversations can get us closer to the truth.  And I believe that the ancients have a lot to teach us about truth, beyond simple fidelity to the facts.

Many are familiar with the River Lethe of Greek mythology.  It flowed through the underworld and those who drank from it lost all memory.  In ancient Greek, the word lethe literally means 'oblivion', 'forgetfulness', and 'concealment'.  The ancient Greek for 'truth', aletheia, literally means 'un-concealment' and 'unforgetfulness.' For the ancient Greeks, truth was the revealed truth, and dialogue could reveal it.