South Elm Street business owners met with District 3 Councilman Zack Matheny and members of Greensboro city staff on May 18 to discuss parking challenges. One of the issues of discussion was homelessness. Participants listed suggestions for dealing with various challenges on sticky notes.
Comments revealed intolerance for homeless people, and one directly advocated violating their human rights: "1) Make panhandling illegal, 2) Ban panhandling, 3) Don't allow panhandling, 4) No panhandling in BID, 5) Lose the panhandlers, 6) Bus homeless to Friendly, and 7) Taser the homeless."
Minutes indicate that the following individuals were in attendance: Alex Amoroso, Grey Davis, Becky Causey, Gregory George, Sidney Gray, Betty Cone, Jim Marshall, Seth Marshall, Ed Wolverton, Bruce Beaman, Kevin Danko, Simonne McClinton, William Heroy, Michael Schiftan, John Bailey, Catherine Chauvin and Pat Sawyer.
I wonder if anyone cares that such statements are made. And I wonder if any of the participants feel sufficiently embarrassed by the suggestion to taser the homeless that they might want to publicly distance themselves from it.
UPDATE, 5:47 p.m.: Matheny called me unprompted to clarify that the "taser the homeless" comment does not, in any way, reflect his viewpoint. The councilman said the woman who made the comment, whose name he does not recall, is an employee of a South Elm Street business.
"She made what I thought was a poor comment," Matheny told me. "There was no way that police would ever consider doing such an act."
The councilman also disavowed the comment advocating taking Spanish off the parking meters, which he said might have been made by the same person.
"I don't see the point in that," he said. "Those are derogatory comments of someone lashing out. It's not how I would talk."