I have been asked by the family of the man who passed away to remove his photo.

I took it down.

Kenneth Jarecke, author of an excruciating photograph of a horribly burned Iraqi soldier during the first Persian Gulf War wrote: “If we’re big enough to fight a war, we should be big enough to look at it.”

I live in a very turbulent world. I am an activist. That's how I see myself first and foremost. I am desperately striving for change. While I don't believe in creating physical violence against other people to achieve my ends, pretty much everything else is on the table. If I think I might be able to push further the conversation of homelessness, addiction and mental illness, I probably am going to do it.

But second, I'm a humanitarian. I am trying to reduce suffering where I can. And honestly, the longer I do this work the more I feel what I'm doing is hopeless. I often say that if we didn't do anything for the 20 six year olds gunned down at Sandy Hook, what chance do I have of getting society to help drug addicted homeless people?

Why do I bother making you feel anything that makes you uncomfortable? Am I ever really going to make a difference?

It turns out that man in the photo is not part of our homeless community. He was just in our neighborhood.

I know nothing about him. I don't know anything about what happened to him.

All I know is that what I saw was not right.

Whatever happened to that man, he did not deserve it.

He passed away in a neighborhood that I don't think he was regularly involved with. Because of his proximity to our homeless family I believed he was likely part of our homeless family. He was not. I was wrong.

I show uncomfortable images because I see them as a tragedy of a broken American system. That's how I saw him. No matter what happened to him I know one thing for certain: he was victim of a completely broken, completely failed system. He did not deserve that. Whatever happened to him: He did not deserve it.

Thankfully, the police officer covered him. That was highly respectful.

I see endless disrespect and dehumanizing of my friends in the Middlebury community. That's what I thought I was looking at.

While I feel like I saw a man who was caught up in a system of failure, he wasn't a friend of our community.

I think that if a newspaper had captured that photo they most likely would have posted it. And I also think they would not have taken it down if the family asked. You can Google images like this. You can find them from all over the United States and the world.

I have many questions about how I might do it differently. If I had waited a few days, would I have posted the photo? If I had gotten a photo of him uncovered, would I have posted the photo?

If I had gotten a photo of our friend, Chubbs, who died by hanging, would I have posted it?

If I had gotten a picture of our friend Andrew who died by overdose, would I have posted it?

I don't know.

I often find myself these days constantly in a desert of uncertainty.

I am deeply sorry for this family. I am deeply sorry for all the families who have lost cherished relatives due to overdose or homelessness. I feel it all so so deeply.

I want it to end. I want us to care for these people. That's all I want. I want justice. I want all Americans to be treated as equals. I want compassion and love for people who have seen very little compassion and love in their lives.

I guess what I am doing here is apologizing. I am truly sorry I hurt this family more than they already were hurting.

Maybe I'm apologizing for all of it, for all of me. Maybe I am wrong with everything I do. You need to know that every single action I take is questionable in my mind. I don't have any sense of confidence that anything I'm do is helping. Maybe every single action I'm doing is making things worse. I weigh that reality constantly.

Maybe every tent, tarp, sleeping bag, morsel of food or photo or video is all wrong. It certainly could be. There are many people that disagree with everything I do. Maybe they are right.

I am so deeply sorry for all your suffering. I feel it so powerfully. I wish we as a society cared about people not because of the thickness of their wallet, but because of their inherent value as a fellow human being.

I'm so sorry.