“A few names have survived oblivion.
  In time, oblivion will have them all.”   

Someone's other

     A social, psychological experiment designed to test the way the homeless are perceived found that people were not able to recognize their loved ones if they sat on the street and, in every case, walked straight past them. The campaign called Make them Visible exposed that not even one participant in their study recognized nor acknowledged their relatives or partner dressed up as a homeless person.

     A number of actors recruited by the campaign acted as homeless persons and their unsuspecting relatives or partners were asked if they would take part in a social, psychological experiment, not being told what the experiment was about. The video of the experiment asks: "Have the homeless become so invisible, we wouldn’t notice our own family members living on the street?" before showing how the actors were made-up to look as if they were homeless living on the streets of New York City.

     Then, a hidden camera captured their loved ones walking straight past them. They were oblivious to the fact that their relatives sat on the pavement. One woman's husband walked straight past her without noticing at all that it was his seemingly invisible wife who sat on the floor, even though he actually looked at her rapidly. Another participant walked past her mother, uncle and aunt without realizing any of them were the three homeless persons she passed by. Something that surprises her uncle. He says: “She didn't even look!”

     The participants that just walked by were visibly shocked and distressed when they were informed that the homeless person or persons they ignored were in fact someone they cared about. This experiment is a powerful reminder, hopefully an influential one, that the homeless are human beings, just like us, with one particularity. They are alone and uncertain of how to deal with the many issues our society makes us deal with. And they are someone's uncle or cousin or wife or mother.

Ivonne