Donald Trump was so offended by seeing homeless encampments as he rode to play golf on the weekend that he demanded that homeless residents of Washington DC leave the country’s capital or face eviction.
Trump’s demand mirrors what a Winnipeg city councillor said last month when he called for the removal of encampments on what he called “image routes” in the city—main thoroughfares used by people from the suburbs to go downtown.
The reason he gave for the proposal was safety, and also for esthetics — they make Winnipeg look bad. The question left hanging seemed clear: Who wants to see encampments on the side of the road on their way to work, shopping or to see a movie?
When it comes to encampments, David Driedger, lead minister at First Mennonite Church in Winnipeg’s West End, doesn’t think we should look away. For him, those tents and tarps and shopping carts should be seen because they might be showing us a way to salvation. That’s the argument he makes in his new book Nothing Will Save Us: A Theology of Immeasurable Life (Pandora Press).
Read my column about Driedger's book in the Free Press.
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