For my teaching project Tatiana and I decided to show the documentary Voices in the Tunnels: In Search of the Mole People. We felt that it was an accurate representation of the kind of life that several homeless people have. My aim was to educate our audience enough to have them put aside their stereotypical views and look at this issue with an open mind. We felt that this movie had the potential to prove the message that we were attempting to give out. It is a documentary which exposed the students to real conversations and real people who were adapted to an entirely different lifestyle under the busy streets of New York.
I thought that the film was very beneficial to our project because not only were they able to hear from us about the problem of homelessness but they were able to see it for themselves. We educated our audience about how too often the individual is blamed for being homeless when in reality there are so many factors that actually go into this issue such as the economy, the safety net, affordable housing and minimum wage. The main obstacle that is preventing this problem from being solved is only ourselves. Society is not giving this issue the attention that it desperately needs. It was important for me to point out that part of the reason is because many people do not believe that the homeless are worthy of being saved. This kind of mentality is due to the concept of the American Dream, the idea that if you are in the streets is because you did not work enough. Taking this course has really made me look at homelessness from a humane perspective. How many people people living on the streets and barely getting buy on a minimum wage will it take until politicians and society realizes that this is a real problem. One of my biggest realizations when watching this film was when one of the people in the tunnels said “ there’s a very thin line between where you are and where I am”. I would have never understood these words the way I do now until taking this course. I find it very important that people recognize that homelessness can happen to just about anyone, there are certain things that are hard to prevent. It is even more important to be able to recognize that not every person in the streets is a criminal and that they once had a normal life too and just because life has stripped away their home does not mean that they have also lost their humanity.