concerning social justice

Concentrated smog pelts my white hoodie and forms into gray puddles on the cracked sidewalk scattered with garbage. A dim streetlight reflects off of a hunched figure on the stoop just around the corner from my friends' front door. He is drinking or huffing something out of a large jug. I recognize his face, but don't know his name. We are on the way to the corner bakery to get bread and milk for a simple soup dinner. It's cold and wet, and he will have no where to escape.

On the way back a few minutes later, I pass him some bread and coffee; he asks me for a blanket (which I don't have to give), then a "limosnita" -- spare change to make us all feel better about the unchanging nature of his life situation. ("...a shortsighted and perverse notion of charity leads Christians simply to perform token acts of mercy... This kind of charity has no real effect in helping the poor: all it does is tacitly condone social injustice and to help to keep conditions as they are -- to help to keep people poor." -Merton)
I don't give him anything, with my thoughts vacillating between, "I just GAVE him food!" and "He'll just spend it on drugs."

If I were out in that cold, raining night, I would probably want something to numb my reality, too.
Yes, his addiction either drove him to the streets, or the streets drove him to become substance-dependent, I assume. But what can I do about it? Giving him money won't help. Giving him bread and coffee doesn't reach to the core of the problem and wholistically bring about change and restoration to this man: created with the mark of the Divine, but beaten so far down that the Image is all but destroyed.

He has shown you, oh man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To do justice, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8)

But what does it mean to "do justice" for the untouchables of a westernized society? What is our part? What can I do to work justice?
And even my mercy in this case was watered-down, perhaps. Yes, I gave a bit of my money to put something in his belly -- I didn't just cross over and look away when I saw him, like the priest and levite in the Good Samaritan parable -- but I didn't take him in, offer him his human dignity again, care for his body and soul. Okay, there are all kinds of reasons to NOT do this -- it's not my house, he would take advantage, he needs rehab, I'm a single woman, etc. But what is he calling us to DO about it?
And walking with God in humility? Well, we're working on it.

Thomas Merton broaches the subject in his book Life and Holiness, which I am (slowly) reading. "There is no charity without justice. ... The sacrifice must be real, not just a gesture of lordly paternalism which inflates his own ego while patronizing 'the poor.' The sharing of material goods must also be a sharing of the heart, a recognition of common misery and poverty and of brotherhood in Christ." And he later declares that, "The task of each Christian today is to help defend and restore the basic human values without which grace and spirituality will have little practical meaning in the life of man."

He cites Jesus' parable of the judgment - those who fed the hungry, visited the sick, etc. did it for Jesus and are given eternal life.
God's divine revelation in the Mosaic law represents how we are to relate to God and to each other. He teaches us many times to care for the widows, orphans, and foreigners, and gives specifics of how to do good to our "brothers."
Who is my brother?
This question that I ask sounds eerily like the, "Who is my neighbor?" which prompted the Good Samaritain parable. My neighbor, my brother, my sister, is everyone; and especially those who most need my help.

I still don't know what to do for the street people. How to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God.