RIHLA 4

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I chose to read the article, " Hate crimes and violence against people experiencing homelessness" because when I read the title it made me think about the homeless and how they were being mistreated. When I read the title I had a mental image of them being abused and I just wanted to read more about what the article had to talk about, and the details on how they would be mistreated.

In the article it stated "News reports Of men, woman, and even children being harassed, kicked, set on fire, beaten to death and decapitated." When read this it made me mad because I couldn't imagine someone that is so helpless being mistreated this way. I also read that there are people that do it because they are "thrill-seekers" I don't understand how you can receive any thrill from treating any human being this way. Just because these people are homeless that doesn't give the right for people to think they have no feeling, or that they have no reason on being on this earth.

This relates to what we have learned in class from the reading about the untouchables. In the societies where the untouchables existed they were mistreated by being beaten and the woman were raped. This relates to the homeless because they are like the untouchables of our society. The homeless are beaten and killed because of there "ranking" in our class system. Both groups are the lowest in their systems of ranking so they are mistreated and abused and nobody seems to care.

After reading this article it makes me want to investigate whether or not Illinois has some type of law against people that do some type of crime against people that are homeless. If we don't I might want to write a letter to one of the state reps addressing this issue and having them create some type of law, or at least making them aware of the things happening in their own state to the people that need the most help.

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