It is seven in the morning on this bright Odin's Day, the historic last day of Mars in the two-thousand and fourth year of our Most Common Calender. I am as a matter of course an insignificant nobody drifting through Kansas City's historic Compassion Zone with Amleth's fire-sharpened stake in hand. If I am not burned at that stake by the editorial floozies for declaring the Liberty Memorial to be a gigantic lingam unworthy of monetary worship without a matching yoni; if I can rid myself of my compassionate liberalism; if I can steal the monopolist's sheep; if I can poke him in the eye and roll away the rock to make good my getaway; - I shall fill my stake with gold and set sail.
Lest I digress and record the world's longest screed, this meeting with myself is called to order for the purpose of recording the historic origin of the Compassion Zone.
Mind you, Alter Ego, that an historic city of refuge, an unofficial sanctuary for vagrants, has existed for several years on the northeastern corner of downtown Kansas City, Missouri. The sanctuary includes Kansas City's historic Civic Center wherein are located city hall, police headquarters, various courts and jails. An assortment of half-way houses, shelters, missions, and main library buildings have always been located within the civic complex until very recently: the main branch is now being relocated to a renovated historic building a few blocks west, where it will be the centerpiece of the commercial real estate development named the 'Library District.' Kansas City's only daily newspaper reported that one of the main reasons for moving the main library was that the building had become a fetid zone infested with vagrants.
Now the unpatrolled, unofficial city of refuge was recently named the 'Compassion Zone' by one Sean O'Byrne, a former real estate agent who is the current head of an organization of "safety and maintenance ambassadors" formed by downtown landlords and business persons; they refer to their organization as the Downtown Community Improvement District. People downtown call the ambassadors "Kemper's Yellow Jackets" because they wear yellow jackets and because the dominant and reportedly arrogant power behind the scenes is one Jonathan Kemper, president of the historic Commerce Bank, aka The Boss. Kemper's Yellow Jackets are frequently scoffed at by conservative old-timers for being nothing but a make-work outfit, and they are sometimes jestingly associated with the old fascist Brown Shirts and Black Shirts; but they have in fact done a great job of cleaning up and patrolling the streets - there are seldom any cops to be seen around town unless someone really worth protecting like Dick Cheney shows up at the Muehlebach. The Yellow Jackets are not paid much but they have an excellent attitude and they help everybody. They call ambulances and the police; direct greenhorns away from unsafe places; advise people not to give handouts to panhandlers; and, most importantly just lately, they direct vagrants away from private real estate to the Compassion Zone.
The grand opening of the new, virtually privatized public library is coming up soon. The civic leaders would rather not have vagrants around the building loitering, drinking, urinating, defecating, using drugs, so on and so forth, wherefore efforts are already underway to train same to behave themselves or else, and to direct them to the Compassion Zone. Yellow Jacket Chief Sean O'Byrne realizes fully well that people in general need a place to hang out, some place where they can let everything hang out and do those things they would be ashamed to do in public, such as sit around naked with drinks, fornicate and scream at each other and the like. He knows there is no place like a private house for that, and of course he would like every houseless person to have a house or at least an apartment or a room in a flophouse.
But of course houseless people whose home is in the Heart of America have no houses - even flophouses are few and far between. Chief O'Byrne does not have the wherewithal to buy them housing, so they hang on the streets when not working; and of course that poses certain unsightly problems for Chief O'Byrne's public safety and maintenance crew. Mind you, dearest Alter Ego, that he has a heart as well as a brain, wherefore not only does he think that the community should do something to houseless people, like keep them penned up in the Compassion Zone, he sometimes feels that the community should something for them.
For instance, hungry indigents leave the Compassion Zone and walk a few blocks west to the Grace and Holy Trinity Cathedral to get the most excellent free meals in town; six-hundred gourmet meals, some with wild game, are served each day. Now Chief O'Byrne's heart bleeds to see poor folk "parading" cross town over the uncompassionate downtown area with their blankets and garbage-bag suitcases and such in hand. He believes charitable services should be consolidated within the Compassion Zone. To that end he has suggested a day care center for "homeless" people.
Alter Ego, you know that I have good cause to believe that Chief O'Byrne plagiarized my suggestion to build a day care center in what he dubbed the Compassion Zone. However, in my several articles on the subject, I stated that laws and regulations should be equally enforced everywhere; that it would be plainly wrong to identify "homelessness" with criminality; that it would be wrong to banish poor people or even convicted criminals from the historic Kemper Business Campus - now the eight-block Library District. You, beloved Alter Ego, my most intimate associate, know very well that I said that and sent copies to Kemper's Yellow Jackets. If the civic leaders want to take away the library from people who patronize it as a homeless shelter, instead of providing adequate services and security to that end, I said some alternate facility should be provided, where vagrants, tramps, vagabonds, indigents, runaways, and maybe nobodies like me can hang out on hot and cold days, clean up, learn things, read and write, find jobs, eat a hot venison sandwich, get a shower and shave and massage, stuff like that.
Well, this meeting is beginning to bore me, so we shall adjourn. I am glad you heard me out, my dear Alter Ego, for the standing policy of the one-eyed civic leaders is to "ignore naysayers", and they also ignore yea-sayers if they are nobodies drifting through the Compassion Zone. You see, the monocled civic leaders believe they are always right; they do not realize that their uptight self-righteous attitude is at the root of the blight on downtown Kansas City. If only Boss Pendergast were still around to remind people that there is more than one or two sides to a story: "There is my side, your side, and the right side."
Meeting adjourned.
I have arrived for a historic meeting with myself at the Country Club Cafe in the historic Muehlebach Hotel, historic host to historic presidents and seventeen other degrees of status, right on down to my unknown self.