One day when I was coming back from taking out the trash, I saw two oldish Albanian men pulling a defenseless kid by the ear. The kid's tormentors were slapping him as well. The kid looked like he was about my age. The kid also looked like he was homeless. The saddest part was that there were plenty of other people around on the street and not one of them did a thing to stop it. Some of the kids who were playing soccer on the street even laughed.

This showed me that some people don't accept homeless people because they either beg for money or come try and get money in some “undesirable” way but what people don't understand is that they do this so they can buy food or water to survive. In fact, some people refuse to understand this obvious fact. Some people just don't understand that some people are less fortunate than them. Usually, the individuals that have this mindset think that they are just pretending and trying to get free money.

What is also sad is that the homeless people are human beings too, but some people treat them like they are unwanted dogs on the street. When they come up to car windows to ask for money, people ignore them and just roll up the window while staring straight ahead. When the homeless sit on their doorstep, they chase them away like stray cats. Even if they have collected enough money to buy something the shopkeepers “command” them to get out like they have the power to order them around because they are less fortunate. What has happened to society? Why are the shelterless treated less like people and more like stray cats and dogs? This mentality is poisoning society, here in Albania and around the world. It has become a huge problem.

People must help prevent this problem, and to do so, people can start giving more to the homeless and organizations that help them get on their feet until they can survive on their own in a life like the more fortunate people. Not just money, I’m talking about clothes and other things that they can’t buy because of the shopkeepers. Just because they don't have a car or a house doesn't make them any less human or any less civilized; it just means that they are less fortunate or they that they made poor choices. What is even worse than ignoring them, is laughing at them when they get yelled at or slapped, making fun of them because they don't have as much as you.

I think people do these things out of fear that the unfortunate will steal something of theirs or give them some disease or make their car dirty. These people who are so fortunate are not always so different from the unfortunate, some of them sit in cafes all day with no job, they rely on the fact that one of their family members has a job and will always be there to provide money and comfort. What they don't realize is that the family member that they rely on so heavily, might not always be there to provide; they are just as much a burden on society as they think the homeless are.