HOMELESS Man Treated Like Trash By COPS, Then This Happened
A homeless man treated like trash by cops, then this happened. We often share social experiments that have some sort of substance and meaning when it comes to human nature and how you treat others when no one is looking. The social experiment this story is about is no different, but it is certainly one of the most impactful you will hear about in a long time. Mo and Edison Turner were a pair of brothers in promising young social media and streaming platforms, age twenty-nine and twenty-seven respectively. Both had been living in New York all their lives, but they never had it easy, being the only children of a humble marriage. They were Black, from one of the poorest neighborhoods in the borough of Brooklyn. Their father was a train station ticket agent and their mother was a seamstress in an old pants industrial factory. The couple had to face numerous challenges throughout their lives because, despite never getting into trouble and working tirelessly to raise their two children, the Turners had another big problem that never seemed to go away: racism.
While economic problems were common for the family and they had always managed to get by despite having a limited income, the discrimination and fear they had to experience because of the color of their skin was much more difficult to manage, especially when the attacks were directed at their children. It is no secret that in New York, as in many other major cities around the world, there is a serious problem of racism that continues to divide society and provoke altercations on an almost hourly basis. While there have been many advances and the mentality around this issue is changing for the better, it is a slow progress that does not prevent people of color from feeling excluded in many aspects of their lives. Mo and his brother Edison grew up feeling this way and had to live through some really painful things they will never forget. However, despite living so conditioned by the color of their skin, the brothers never felt inferior to the rest and fought to achieve all their goals and leave their mark on the world, becoming a pair of young people with an inquiring mind and a great talent for telling stories through social networks.
“We will tell the truth about what is happening in the streets. We will show what nobody wants to see and what the powerful of this country are determined to hide from all of us. We will do it for all those who, like us, live in fear and feel excluded from a society that refuses to see us all as equals. We will make you proud of us, Mom. We will speak for you and for all those who have ever felt forgotten by the system,” Mo explained to his mother after making the important decision to open, together with his brother Edison, a YouTube channel called Mo and 18.
“You will end up getting in trouble. I do not want you to get hurt, honey. We have suffered enough already. Do not complicate your lives anymore, please. You can do something else,” his mother begged, worried about the consequences of his protest videos.
However, neither of her two sons were afraid of what might happen to them and were determined to go ahead with their project.
“Do not you think we have been silent for too long? If we do not do it, who will? I am not going to sit around waiting for someone else to have the courage to fight for what is right and open people’s eyes. I am sorry, Mom, but we are going ahead with your blessing or without it,” concluded the eldest of the brothers, leaving his mother distraught at the thought of seeing her children persecuted for the content they intended to spread.
Fortunately, none of Mrs. Turner’s fears were realized as her sons not only managed to create a successful YouTube channel, but they quickly became a reference in the industry and each week gained more and more followers to their cause who admired and applauded their work. At the beginning of their career as YouTubers, the brothers barely accumulated two or five hundred views for each video they uploaded, but that changed drastically when instead of uploading simple protest videos, they decided to go a step further and started recording social experiments in which they boldly showed the reality of New York society. Of course, their videos were not without controversy and received a lot of criticism, but it was nothing compared to the amount of praise and congratulations that filled the comment section of each of their videos. Although at the beginning the main objective of the channel was to talk only about the racism in the city, they soon realized that there was a wide variety of topics to be addressed using the same technique and with which they could be able to support other groups that suffered the same harassment and discrimination as the Black community, such as the mistreatment of the homeless who unfortunately flooded the streets of the city.
Currently, the Turners accumulated more than a million followers on their YouTube account and more than five hundred thousand on Instagram. There were a few people, adult, young, or teenagers, in the United States who had not heard of this pair of brothers so creative, and that did not stop attracting the attention of the media with each new publication they made. All their experiments have been popular and have provoked a multitude of reactions globally. However, there was one in particular that caught everyone’s attention and managed to put the spotlight on one of the most protected groups in the country: the police. That experiment is the reason why we are telling you this story today and the sad reality of hundreds of people who, like its protagonists, must survive on the streets and lead a miserable and unfair life.
It all started when YouTubers Mo and Edison decided to conduct an experiment on the streets of New York to see how people reacted to seeing a homeless white teenager sitting a few feet away from a homeless Black veteran. The experiment had the sole purpose of demonstrating society’s discrimination against the image of a young person living on the street versus an older person of color. However, what the Turner brothers and all their followers ended up discovering surpassed all expectations and left them totally astonished. To begin with, it is important to emphasize the fact that the teenager was not truly homeless, but a close friend of Mo and Edison who had agreed to collaborate with them. However, the costume he was wearing in the staging they carried out was so realistic no one would be able to tell if it was a farce.
As they had planned, the teenager sat just a few feet away from the homeless veteran on one of the busiest streets in the city, both carrying handwritten cardboard signs asking for money to buy food. There was not a single difference in the situation of the two people. Both were living on the street and needed money to eat. They were not asking for anything else and neither looked up from the ground. They were simply holding their sign up to make the messages as visible as possible. However, despite their similarities, the reaction of passersby was very different. Again and again, people passed by offering money to the teenager while ignoring the veteran. Little by little, the cardboard cup in front of the young man began to fill up with coins and the occasional bill, while the veteran’s was still completely empty. The experiment was going just as the Turners had hoped, demonstrating the difference in how people on the street were treated simply because of the color of their skin. However, the most shocking part of the experiment would happen a few hours later, leaving everyone completely speechless.
At one point, a middle-aged woman with a cane who was probably between sixty and seventy years old stood in front of the veteran and, after looking at him with genuine contempt, spat at him and knocked his head off, hitting him with her cane. The veteran, however, did not move and simply continued to hold up his sign without taking his eyes off the ground. But the worst was yet to come. It was two o’clock in the afternoon and both had been sitting on the ground for more than five hours when two police officers appeared. They were strolling leisurely along one of their usual patrols. It did not look like anything out of the ordinary was going to happen. People were coming and going down the street, the sun was shining overhead, it was almost lunchtime, and the crowds had increased. The Turners were about to take a break to get something to eat when the unexpected happened.
“Why, aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Men like you disgust me. You are a disgrace to our country and soldiers. Come on, look me in the face when I talk to you, scum!”
Suddenly, all eyes were on the same place. Everyone was looking at the veteran sitting on the ground while he endured the shouts and insults of the police officer, but no one did anything. They just watched and kept walking as if nothing had happened.
“That is how you make a living now, and you call yourself a soldier? The country treats you so badly you cannot even afford a hot meal?”
The policeman seemed to be getting more and more upset. The poor veteran did not even raise his head. He remained totally still, staring at the floor. Unfortunately, the policeman was still not satisfied and, before leaving, spat on him and poured the coffee he was drinking all over him. The coffee was on fire; it had just been served to him at the coffee shop just a few meters away, but the veteran did not even complain. The YouTubers, who were recording it all from across the street, could not believe what they were seeing. The poor man was shaking and you could tell he was scared, but he did not even try to defend himself. He was too afraid of the reprisals he might suffer if he said anything, so he just waited for them to get tired of him and move on.
Fortunately, after throwing the coffee over him and insulting him again, the policeman and his partner, who just watched without intervening at any point, seemed to be satisfied and decided to continue with their work. After that, and after verifying that they had gone far enough away, the veteran burst into tears, holding his hands to his face. The image was desolate. After that, the man sat up and, as if nothing had happened, approached the teenager and asked him to take care of his things, saying that he would be right back. And just a few minutes later, the unthinkable happened. The veteran, who had just suffered a terrible humiliation and had barely raised any money all morning, brought a slice of hot pizza and a bottle of water for the teenager.
“I hope you like it. It is freshly made. I could not get a bigger slice, but I assure you it is worth it. Bon appétit, young man.”
The veteran gave him the slice of pizza and set the bottle down next to the young man. Then he smiled slightly at him and sat back down in his seat. The young man could not believe that this poor man, who had just been publicly humiliated and barely had enough money to survive, had just bought him a slice of hot pizza and that he was still able to smile and be nice to him. It was unbelievable. After the veteran clearly showed his observation that the boy was getting money over and over again while he was getting nothing, the veteran put his pride aside and took it upon himself to help a fellow man in need. He put himself last and this young man first. Not many people are capable of displaying such an attitude.
After that precious gesture, the YouTubers decided to put an end to the experiment and tell the whole truth about what they were really doing. The teenager, who had earned quite a lot of money during the time he spent sitting on the street, explained the social experiment to the veteran and thanked him for the kindness he had shown despite being at a clear disadvantage. He then gave him a tender hug, and Edison handed him all the money he had earned that day, along with two hundred dollars more that the Turner brothers wanted to give him.
“We will see to it that justice is done for you. I promise you, sir, no one deserves to suffer the mistreatment you have had to endure, much less at the hands of the police. It is a disgrace, and I will not let those cops get away with it and continue to terrorize everyone whenever they please,” Mo assured the veteran after giving him the money.
The man thanked them for the money and wished them the best of luck with their experiment. Luckily, they did not need it because as soon as Mo and Edison’s experiment was made public, social media did the rest. Within hours, the video was filled with comments condemning the conduct of the police officers against the veteran, many of them calling for the immediate expulsion of both from the police force. The video quickly went viral, and just two days after its publication, the pressure on the police officers who assaulted the veteran was so great that they had to resign immediately and issue a public apology through the NYPD’s official social media channels.
It is truly amazing that even when people are at their lowest point, they are still able to have a heart of gold. The homeless veteran had no motive to help others; in fact, after everything that had happened to him that day, it would have made sense for him to have wanted nothing to do with anyone and to have thought only of his own well-being. But this humble and courageous man had too big a heart to do such a thing, preferring to spare what little money he had just to buy food for a starving child he had not even met—a truly incredible story about the true meaning of generosity.
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