Illustration by Adam Peltier/Guardian

If there is one kind of story that Americans love, it’s one
of class struggles. So imagine the
intense feeding frenzy of national media when upper-class La Jollans began
efforts to oust unwanted transients from sleeping on park benches along the
neighborhood’s business district.

It wasn’t hard to find personality in the story: A community
leader assembled a band of over 40 pals by e-mail, organizing them into shifts
to guard benches against the homeless — and without any bathroom breaks. So
what began as a housewife’s tale worthy of talk at PTA meetings has become a
drama pitting poor against rich and the establishment against the
underprivileged.

Citizen-led enforcement commonly exposes a glaring question:
Is it sound for citizens to take on duties usually reserved for law enforcement
officials? There is already plenty of fresh controversy surrounding the
country’s Minuteman Project, a group of oft-armed citizens that patrols the
border for illegal aliens. The minutemen argument centers on self-empowerment:
Citizens do what the government can’t — or won’t — do for them. But in the case
of La Jolla, far from the socially and culturally roiled
backdrop of America’s
border towns, what could possibly be so amiss that it would ignite citizens
into action?

This board stands against the citizen-led initiative because
comparing the severity of our nation’s immigration problems with those La
Jolla has with its homeless is ridiculous. There are no
life-threatening issues at hand, nor is there a hostile bum takeover of La
Jolla on the horizon; there is not enough danger within this story
to warrant citizen action, unless you consider loitering dangerous. The bench-sitting will do nothing to ease the
county’s relationship with its vagrants, which number over 9,000, according to
the San Diego Union-Tribune. Worse yet, the effort could easily spark standoffs
between needy transients and well-to-do La Jollans.

If citizens have gripes about the homeless, they should not
attack the problem so myopically; the issue of homelessness is as vast as it is
complex, so attacking it bum by bum, bench by bench is like trying to break
through a concrete wall by shooting it with a machine gun. Joy Junction, a New Mexico-based group
advocating homeless causes, took the opportunity to approach the issue in the
right light. Upon hearing about the face-off, the group founded a program that
would pay bus fare from San Diego
to New Mexico for five transients
a day for five days. Such constructive
efforts need to be duplicated and developed; if there is a problem with the
homeless, where are La Jolla’s shelters or soup
kitchens? Where are its outreach and health centers?

La Jolla is not above dealing with
homelessness in the same, practical manner as other locales do, and the
situation is not dire enough to permit a citizen to take action into their own
hostile hands.