EMAIL SIGN UP!
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
Published on Saturday, October 30, 2010 by CommonDreams.org
Prone Pioneers
Don’t
sit. Don’t lie. I mean, lie all you want to, especially if you’re
sitting in office, but don’t sit or lie on a San Francisco sidewalk
between 7AM and 11PM, should Proposition L pass this week. Repeated
offenders could be fined up to $500 or jailed for 30 days.
Across the land, new laws are being introduced to criminalize our most vulnerable and destitute. In Santa Cruz, one can now be arrested for sleeping outdoors, including “in, on or under any parked vehicle,” between 11PM and 8:30AM. Venice Beach is also banning sleeping in parked vehicles.
Punishing our most desperate for being desperate is not only cruel, it’s also a self defeating proposition. The homeless can’t pay their fines, and if you jail them, it’s only a waste of tax money. Take Boulder, which has a law prohibiting camping outside overnight. Like all of our other municipalities, Boulder doesn’t have nearly enough beds in its shelters. In the last four years, Boulder has handed out over 1,600 tickets to its homeless. Hundreds have been arrested when they can’t pay up. After a night or two in jail, they end up on the streets again. The idea, I think, is to chase these people from Boulder altogether. They can become someone else’s problem.
As this depression becomes more undeniable, as more homes are foreclosed, more jobs evaporate, more businesses shut down, as our homeless population explodes, you can count on seeing more laws passed against helpless people sitting, camping or maybe just coughing on the sidewalk. Each city and town will try to dump its economic casualties onto the next. The homeless of Manhattan can trek over to Newark. Those in Newark can shuffle to Manhattan… While we’re at it, we should pass laws against curling up in a dumpster or being frozen to death outside.
We already lead the world in incarceration rate. More than one percent of American adults are jailed. With many more to be locked up, expect more prisons to be privatized. Lowest bidders will get the contracts. Privately run means more efficiency, means trimming costs. Just pack them in and, instead of sloppy joe, just feed them soy burgers or whatever. There’s a growth industry for all you investors out there.
Sign displayed by some bongo banging guy in Boulder: “Sleep is an Involuntary Action. Which is NOT ILLEGAL.” Yet sleeping on the sidewalk, even when you have nowhere else to sleep, is already illegal in many American places. During too late late capitalism, just about any street activity is illicit or a nuisance. Don’t beg. Don’t peddle. Don’t busk. Don’t even loiter. Just walk straight in to that big box store, why don’t you, and be a good American.
Emerging from a Bart station in San Francisco, I saw two men tap dancing quite magnificently to a rapt crowd of tourists. Dollar bills filled their donation bag. Everyone was having a good time until an unsmiling, shades-wearing cop appeared. Show’s over. Edward Jackson, one of the dancers, knew his nemesis, “Why do you always do this to me, Bob?” Hearing no answer, Ed continued, “Don’t you have anything better to do than stopping a black man from making an honest living?” Still no answer. “Why don’t you go down to the Tenderloin and arrest all those crack smoking junkies?! How am I going to pay my rent if you don’t let me make an honest living? What do you want me to do, go mug somebody?!”
A transplant from Detroit, Ed later told me that he had been dancing in downtown San Francisco for more than a decade, and that he made several more times than his wife, with her straight job in a retail store. Unlike most of us, Ed can’t be fired, but he can certainly be thwarted by a policeman.
If we can’t make a dime on the street, will Big Brother leave us alone if we just putz putz around in our own backyard? Not so fast. In Michigan, House Bill 6458, introduced by two Democrats, Gabe Leland and Mike Huckleberry, will prohibit farming in any city with a population of 900,000 or more. Why didn’t they name Detroit outright, since it’s the only one that qualifies? And what’s going on here, exactly?
Urban farming is about the only positive development in Detroit right now. If more Americans planted their own vegetables and raise their own chickens, ducks and rabbits, etc, even in the cities, they wouldn’t have to rely on the toxic factory farms, but Detroit is the only American city without a supermarket chain, so access to food, even crappy stuff, is already limited. With factories gone, jobs gone, can’t a person plant an odd cabbage without being branded a criminal?!
There seems to be a pattern here. In Chicago, school cafeterias are banned from using vegetables grown on school ground, by the children themselves. Big Brother is even messing with the Amish. Dan Allgyer, of Kinzers, PA, has been harassed by our Food and Drug Administration for supposedly selling unpasteurized milk, a charge he denies. Even if he was, I’d rather drink milk from any Amish farm than the diseased product on supermarket shelves.
As all of our interlocking systems unravel in the years ahead, each of us will have to become more self-sufficient and resourceful. Each community, each neighborhood, will finally be introduced to itself. For better or worse, you will be welcomed home. You will be home, at last. As we stagger forward, don’t scorn the ones who are currently scraping by on the fringe, the day-laborers, odd job men, buskers, the peddlers pushing carts, even the homeless, for they are the point men, the pioneers of our time.
Across the land, new laws are being introduced to criminalize our most vulnerable and destitute. In Santa Cruz, one can now be arrested for sleeping outdoors, including “in, on or under any parked vehicle,” between 11PM and 8:30AM. Venice Beach is also banning sleeping in parked vehicles.
Punishing our most desperate for being desperate is not only cruel, it’s also a self defeating proposition. The homeless can’t pay their fines, and if you jail them, it’s only a waste of tax money. Take Boulder, which has a law prohibiting camping outside overnight. Like all of our other municipalities, Boulder doesn’t have nearly enough beds in its shelters. In the last four years, Boulder has handed out over 1,600 tickets to its homeless. Hundreds have been arrested when they can’t pay up. After a night or two in jail, they end up on the streets again. The idea, I think, is to chase these people from Boulder altogether. They can become someone else’s problem.
As this depression becomes more undeniable, as more homes are foreclosed, more jobs evaporate, more businesses shut down, as our homeless population explodes, you can count on seeing more laws passed against helpless people sitting, camping or maybe just coughing on the sidewalk. Each city and town will try to dump its economic casualties onto the next. The homeless of Manhattan can trek over to Newark. Those in Newark can shuffle to Manhattan… While we’re at it, we should pass laws against curling up in a dumpster or being frozen to death outside.
We already lead the world in incarceration rate. More than one percent of American adults are jailed. With many more to be locked up, expect more prisons to be privatized. Lowest bidders will get the contracts. Privately run means more efficiency, means trimming costs. Just pack them in and, instead of sloppy joe, just feed them soy burgers or whatever. There’s a growth industry for all you investors out there.
Sign displayed by some bongo banging guy in Boulder: “Sleep is an Involuntary Action. Which is NOT ILLEGAL.” Yet sleeping on the sidewalk, even when you have nowhere else to sleep, is already illegal in many American places. During too late late capitalism, just about any street activity is illicit or a nuisance. Don’t beg. Don’t peddle. Don’t busk. Don’t even loiter. Just walk straight in to that big box store, why don’t you, and be a good American.
Emerging from a Bart station in San Francisco, I saw two men tap dancing quite magnificently to a rapt crowd of tourists. Dollar bills filled their donation bag. Everyone was having a good time until an unsmiling, shades-wearing cop appeared. Show’s over. Edward Jackson, one of the dancers, knew his nemesis, “Why do you always do this to me, Bob?” Hearing no answer, Ed continued, “Don’t you have anything better to do than stopping a black man from making an honest living?” Still no answer. “Why don’t you go down to the Tenderloin and arrest all those crack smoking junkies?! How am I going to pay my rent if you don’t let me make an honest living? What do you want me to do, go mug somebody?!”
A transplant from Detroit, Ed later told me that he had been dancing in downtown San Francisco for more than a decade, and that he made several more times than his wife, with her straight job in a retail store. Unlike most of us, Ed can’t be fired, but he can certainly be thwarted by a policeman.
If we can’t make a dime on the street, will Big Brother leave us alone if we just putz putz around in our own backyard? Not so fast. In Michigan, House Bill 6458, introduced by two Democrats, Gabe Leland and Mike Huckleberry, will prohibit farming in any city with a population of 900,000 or more. Why didn’t they name Detroit outright, since it’s the only one that qualifies? And what’s going on here, exactly?
Urban farming is about the only positive development in Detroit right now. If more Americans planted their own vegetables and raise their own chickens, ducks and rabbits, etc, even in the cities, they wouldn’t have to rely on the toxic factory farms, but Detroit is the only American city without a supermarket chain, so access to food, even crappy stuff, is already limited. With factories gone, jobs gone, can’t a person plant an odd cabbage without being branded a criminal?!
There seems to be a pattern here. In Chicago, school cafeterias are banned from using vegetables grown on school ground, by the children themselves. Big Brother is even messing with the Amish. Dan Allgyer, of Kinzers, PA, has been harassed by our Food and Drug Administration for supposedly selling unpasteurized milk, a charge he denies. Even if he was, I’d rather drink milk from any Amish farm than the diseased product on supermarket shelves.
As all of our interlocking systems unravel in the years ahead, each of us will have to become more self-sufficient and resourceful. Each community, each neighborhood, will finally be introduced to itself. For better or worse, you will be welcomed home. You will be home, at last. As we stagger forward, don’t scorn the ones who are currently scraping by on the fringe, the day-laborers, odd job men, buskers, the peddlers pushing carts, even the homeless, for they are the point men, the pioneers of our time.
Comments are closed
Comments
Note: Disqus 2012 is best viewed on an up to date browser. Click here for information. Instructions for how to sign up to comment can be viewed here. Our Comment Policy can be viewed here. Please follow the guidelines. Note to Readers: Spam Filter May Capture Legitimate Comments...
16 Comments so far
Show AllExcellent Linh ,your posts get better and better.I look forward to your next piece.I am forwarding this to other housing challenged folks.
peace
I am just astonished at what is going on in this country. In a place with the worst unemployment levels in the country, with NO grocery stores, they make it ILLEGAL to grow your own food? What the hell is going on here? Why do those in power HATE AMERICANS? It just amazes me that even when big money REFUSES to help, they will still get in other's faces and make sure that one can't even help one's self. To the point of making sure they starve to death rather than to leave them alone and let them live by themselves.
Am I the only one who keeps noticing that big money is NOT the answer to anything, but the problem 98% of the time? In Detroit, no chain grocery store will build, but you can bet your life that it's those corporations that are behind this ban on growing things. These corporations would prefer that the people of Detroit starve to death. They won't even just leave them alone, they have to make everything worse and increase the suffering.
Big money is NOT an answer to ANYTHING. it's more often the problem. In EACH of these instances, big money can be found to be at the bottom of the problem. I say it's time that we stop ALLOWING corporations OR humans to have that much power and influence. REMOVE that money, and remove the power. They are FAR more of a problem than anything they fix.
From what I have read and heard, the city of Detroit is on it's way to food self-sufficiency in the next couple years.
It could serve as a model! (GASP)
In the alleged "land of the free", self-sufficiency is a crime. Anyone not leading a corporate-approved lifestyle is punished.
This, by the way, is a theme in US foreign policy too. Any country on earth that doesn't play along with Wall Street is attacked.
this reminds me of the Jim Crow vagrancy laws.
Soon it will be a crime to breathe. The Powers That Be best be careful, for they will make us a nation of criminals. And once we're all criminals and have lost all respect for the rule of law, which is a farce, we'll have nothing left to lose by rebelling against our jailers.
I was sleeping in soundly when a loud knock on my van window woke me. It was the police. He had spot lights focused on me. He asked me what I was doing and in my just awake state I told him I was sleeping. He agreed that seemed clear. He asked more questions and I reported I was driving to Columbia to speak about feeding the homeless at the university. He told me to move along as it was illegal to sleep in the park. He suggested a church parking lot.
San Francisco's Proposition L is not new to the city. A no sitting law was passed back when Frank Jordan was mayor. Since it has been illegal to violate that law for over 10 years the main reason for Proposition L is political. Park of a nationwide campaign to criminalize the homeless and attempt to redirect attention from the failure of capitalism.
The San Francisco police have been able to arrest people sitting on the sidewalk for over a decade and the Santa Cruz law has already been on the books for 20 years. Re passing the same law year after year is more about message then the law.
Food Not Bombs has been organizing against these laws since 1986 when the city tried to drive its homeless out of sight. Food Not Bombs has campaigns in each of the cities reported on in Linh Dinh's article. Please join us today. www.foodnotbombs.net
"Part of a nationwide campaign to criminalize the homeless and attempt to redirect attention from the failure of capitalism."
Very nice catch tofu.
"The idea, I think, is to chase these people from Boulder altogether. They can become someone else’s problem.
"
That is PRECISELY the idea of the right wingers, especially the Randian fanboys*, the argument being that if poorer people cannot live in an area they need to move (to the slums and ghettos and shantytowns).
*They convieniently ignore the contradiction between forcing people to move, with the power of the State, and their libertarian free market ideology.
It is all part of "...the majestic equality of the laws, which forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets and to steal bread."
Anatole France
in a situation of increasing world-wide operational scarcity, the winners will consolidate and protect their winnings, while the losers are left to die....from j. conrad's Heart of Darkness---"the horror, the horror"
How times have changed!
I remember traveling in an old car to the west coast back in the 60s when I had almost no money and discovered a public park in Ottumwa, Iowa, where you could sleep in your car or camper or whatever, and they provided free toilet and even shower facilities. And camp-cooking. It was a huge relief in the vast midwest. Two days of rest in the middle of summer after driving from the east coast. Free!
Later, in a western state near a reservation my car broke down and a local gas station had to order the replacement part, and installed it for a fair price, knowing I was a total stranger just passing through.
We used to look out for each other. Something changed in the American psyche, probably starting around the time of Nixon.
-30-
Thanks Linh. After much deliberation, I'm actually thinking of moving to Vietnam. I don't think I could find there, or anywhere, a society so wedded to heartlessness, as my home society of America.
Hi Ubrew,
I trust that you have visited Vietnam? But that country has its own madness. You should really check out my new novel, Love Like Hate, for an unsparing dissection of Vietnam. Also, if you haven't seen them, Tran Anh Hung's "Vertical Ray of the Sun" is a great take on Hanoi, and his "Cyclo" is an unsurpassed portrait of Saigon.
Linh,
Thanks for your great articles, I really enjoy them. Keep up the great work.
Tom
Linh is my favorite author on this site , if any. Everything is so real and straight forward . What is the most vivid is the realization that there isn't some clear happy ending to his articles. Some posters will respond with saying Linh's a defeatist , but he's just saying what it is.
Although I personally believe the elites will break us off for a bit more when the system is about to collapse( thats what happened during the great depression .)