this city has no soul left.

We’ve Stopped Screaming — And That’s the Real Crisis

By Tina Winterlik aka Zipolita

I saw a headline today that made my stomach turn.
"Vancouver mother presses Park Board for fence near elementary school."

And I thought — wait. A fence? Not a shelter. Not support. Not safety. A fence?

Then I read further and felt my heart break.

"She believes an 8-year-old shouldn’t have to walk past a dead body to get to math class — something she says happened last week."
— CTV News

That’s where we are now. Not just as a city, but as a society. An 8-year-old walked past a dead body on the way to school. And instead of collective outrage, grief, and immediate calls for action, the response is: build a fence.

So we don’t have to see it.

This is the kind of numbness I wrote about just last week. We are becoming what New York became during its hardest days — not because people are suffering, but because no one is screaming anymore. We've stopped demanding real change. We walk past the suffering. We walk past the deaths. We build fences so our children don’t see — but what are we teaching them?

That if someone dies on the street, we look the other way? That the solution to crisis is to hide it? That it's okay for someone’s son, daughter, mother, or friend to pass away in public and be treated like an inconvenience?

God forbid it had been her child 10 or 15 years from now. God forbid it’s any of ours.

We need to wake up.

People experiencing homelessness and addiction are human beings. Their lives are not less valuable because they're on the margins. Their deaths are not acceptable casualties of the housing crisis, the poisoned drug supply, or broken social systems.

We cannot fence away this pain. We cannot parent our kids through this with just compassion alone. We need justice, housing, treatment, dignity, and truth.

If we keep covering it up instead of healing it, this city has no soul left.

We should not be debating fencing.
We should be screaming for help — not for ourselves, but for every person we've walked past, every body we’ve ignored, and every system that let this happen.