Is He Dead?

That's the rather jovial question on everyone's mind over at People Of The CTA:
 

One wonders: how many of the 1,000 and counting who have liked this photograph have heard presentations on the plight of the misfortunate throughout their public schooling? How many have gone through some form of corporate sensitivity training? How many of them publish advertisements of their charitable donations on Facebook, how many have expressed concern for the children of Africa? Or, on the other hand, how many are aware that mayor Rahm Emmanuel is planning to sell this carcass of a human institution, the CTA, to Goldman Sachs?

Perhaps this man knows these things. Or at least he has felt the sting of their hypocrisy in every indifferent glance and sniggering laugh cast against him.

The Anglican priest Geoffery Studdert Kennedywrote a beautiful poem of this man, though he had never met him.  I've taken the liberty of updating it to fit Mr. Emmanuel's postindustrial dystopia:

When Jesus Came to Chicago

When Jesus came to Golgotha, they hanged Him on a tree / They drove great nails through hands and feet, and made a Calvary / They crowned Him with a crown of thorns, red were His wounds and deep / For those were crude and cruel days, and human flesh was cheap. 

When Jesus came to Chicago, they simply passed Him by / They would not hurt a hair of Him, they only let Him die / For men had grown more tender, and they would not give Him pain / They only just passed down the street, and left Him in the rain. 

Still Jesus cried, 'Forgive them, for they know not what they do,' / And still it rained the winter rain that drenched Him through and through / The crowds went home and left the streets without a soul to see / And Jesus crouched against a wall, and cried for Calvary.