Street preachers not doing jack.

This is going to sound like virtue signaling. Maybe it is.

Most weekend nights, I go out to K street and hit up my route: Coin Op, maybe Darling Aviary, then O'Mallys in Old Sac (cause I'm deeply depressed).

I stop at 7-11 and buy a bunch of junk food. Buffalo wings on a stick, pizza slices and whatever else. Hot food. I wander Downtown handing it out to people sleeping on the street. Beyond a simple 'Do you want this? Here, this is for you. Be safe'. I don't talk further. I don't preach, I don't make sure people can see me, I don't do anything more than do a minor nice thing because at one point in my life, we were in an alcove just like that and no one stopped. I stop. That's what I think of it as. Stopping. Meanwhile, I have been seeing these street preachers with megaphones and amps, usually in front of DOCO. These jags are bellowing into their megaphone that God has called them to save us.

Look, I like church people, usually. I was raised by them, sent to space camp, clothed and fed, by church groups and nameless people in nonprofits and state agencies. They're why I now work in nonprofits and have for decades. But they DID something. These street preachers and groups of kids offering to pray for me. That's not doing something. It feels performative. It angers me to see people fucking around when there are hungry people IN LINE OF SIGHT. Don't deliver a speaker-amplified tirade in my general direction and call me a failed human being (Specifically! You in the Star wars shirt, he bellowed. Fuck you, sir.) while I'm busy bringing shitty but hot meals to people.

Or maybe I have a chip on my shoulder. Am I just a jaded asshole?