Jordan McClements of Dover is a painter and writer, whose art depicts the overdose/unsheltered crisis. His works are on display at the Dover Art League and at Studio B Milford.
You pass a man in Dover I call “John Elway,” a man who wears a Denver Broncos jersey. Sometimes, he panhandles. He has a red, scruffy beard, and the slightly tan features of his face are now adjusted, from chiseled to slightly worn. His red beard is starting the gray, rugged feature. From last winter until now, I’ve noticed this. The bill of his hat is increasing more, tilting farther back, as if the sun is now behind him. Maybe that’s him stepping between you and the median, and it will wake you up to what we’re actually missing in Delaware.
We need detox. We need treatment. We need a place where people can go and get help.
If we offered our time, John Elway wouldn’t be a fixture of our Dover populace, like your favorite homeless person who you sometimes give money to and sometimes don’t, and who you tell other people about, like I do, because you recognize somewhere within yourself that you don’t know how to help this person. You don’t know how to give him or her your time. You don’t know how to be safe because you’re trying to be safe in your own life. That’s a really valid claim, but we’ve gotta step up.
We’ve gotta ask our governor. We have to say, write, call and email.
Gov. Matt Meyer, put your boots on the ground and see this thing for what it is. We can’t use spreadsheets anymore.
We can’t use numbers anymore.
My cousin wasn’t a number for your lame cash grab and for hoarding and for doling out Delaware’s Band-Aid treatment instead of a Hope Center, when we have plenty of stories to match the numbers. You don’t want us to talk about the criminals who run the nonprofits in Delaware, which are not coordinated and have been under investigation countless times for stealing from Delaware families like mine, the McClementses, via the opioid settlement fund.
That money better make a Hope Center now, and I guarantee you that I will hold you accountable, Matt Meyer and the entirety of the state of Delaware. My nephews will overcome because they are McClementses. Because of your inability to dictate your meaningless, arbitrary narrative of the overdose crisis, there’s only one Hope Center in a three-county state full of millionaires who are empathetic. Performance and other acts of charity can bring legacies.
Delaware politicians, my legacy is fighting for the voice of the voiceless. You fight among yourselves.
Get real.
We need politicians and readers alike to step outside their cars and realize that this is life or death here in Delaware.
I’m a former heroin addict who overdosed in a slimy Dover motel in 2017, and I lost my cousin, Robert Leroy McClements III, to an overdose in Dover in 2019.
We were both born in Kent General Hospital, and he died there.
I have a chance to attend Northwestern University to escape Doom Town, aka Dover, where everybody you know overdoses and knows your last name.
If I don’t go to school in Evanston, Illinois, I’m gonna be homeless, and the likelihood of me getting on heroin — no matter how great I am as a person and believe in myself — is skyrocketing because I might choose to use drugs if I lose my medication.
I’m close to homelessness right now.
I’m one argument away from the street.
I have skin in this game; I’ve been homeless before.
Everything rides on me being accepted to the Medill School at Northwestern.
Everything rides on me doing the right thing, just like you, reader, and just like you, young addict.
People are asking for help here in Delaware.
What do we do?
We drive by, look away, lock the doors, walk quickly and pretend they deserve their condition.
Who’s they?
The anonymous person we pass by.
Why we are ignoring them is a question for philosophers.
Today, we give them a Hope Center.
Today, we give them hope.
This isn’t a question anymore.
This is the answer.
Welcome to Dover, Hope Center.
Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at civiltalk@iniusa.org.
