A white homeless man threatened to call the police because he was the only white person in line to receive items from a food pantry and felt unsafe, a viral TikTok video shows.
Shirley Raines, known on the social media platform as @beauty2thestreetz often shares videos of her passing out food to those in need.
As diplomatically as she could, she explained to the man that his sense of privilege placed the good work that she was doing in jeopardy — and was not welcomed.
“I know you’re not talking like that. You are going to ruin it for everybody,” she says in a video posted to her TikTok account. “I heard your speech, and it’s, quite frankly, rude.”
Raines dedicates her time to serving unsheltered citizens of San Diego, California. Her work has inspired over five million people to follow her on TikTok just to see the various ways she cares for the vulnerable and underserved.
Raines shared with the man that she and her team drove all the way from Los Angeles to service the community, and she did not intend to let him disrupt the good work she planned to complete.
“You are responsible for you. You being the only white person in that line. We have lived that plight all our life … being the only Black person in the space not feeling protected and safe,” she snapped at him. “We are not here to hear your cup of tears. Stand in that line and do the best you can.”
“Do not come up here bullying us… and the fact that you would pick up that phone and call the police because you think you’re not being served properly, and f**k it up for the rest of the people in the heat, I find it, quite frankly, selfish and rude,” she added.
The activist’s advocacy for the homeless came out of her personal trauma. Two major events in her life inform her work: the death of her 2-year-old son Demetrius in 1990 and her own experiences with being unsheltered.
“Many years ago, I was in a state of homelessness myself almost and just didn’t have a place for him to stretch his legs and play. I sent him to a family member’s house who was careless with medication, and he never came back alive,” Raines said in an interview with CBS 8 News.
She worked through her bereavement by founding a nonprofit in his honor and servicing people on Los Angeles Skid Row. She continues to do so with the grassroots work she does in San Diego.
Raines chose San Diego because it was the last place she and her son lived together as a family before the tragic accident.
Her “Beauty2thestreetz” movement is reportedly fully funded by her and includes not just her friends and families but strangers who volunteer or donate.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, her work became even more crucial. As the government asked people to self-quarantine inside their homes, the unsheltered population, which had already been in a state of crisis, was left to fend for themselves.
“I would estimate we’ve got about 8,000 people who are sleeping out on the streets or in some of the shelters,” she said in a CNN interview in 2021.
The population surged by 40 percent, statistics showed, with Raines saying women were catching the brunt.
“There are more women on the street than before,” she said, explaining how many of the shelters for women closed because “the resources had dried up.”
Post-pandemic, she continues to work for the community. Regularly she feeds, offers showers, and provides some beauty needs to thousands of people a month. She has a dream to open a full-service salon for the homeless, understanding that looking good helps people feel good and feeling good helps people have hope.
Raines started a GoFundMe, hoping to raise $150,000 toward this goal.
