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Dec 2 2003 - Jun 8, 2004
Usual tag: Homelessness.
Not clear that it's a *good* tag. Bum
Street Person
Gutterpunk
Homeless Person
Drug Addict
SELF
A parameter you can tweak in
visualizing what's going
on/understanding where
commentators are coming from:
innocent victims vs. lazy bums
of circumstance
Primary symptom, people
on the street who seem:
down-and-out unpleasant
and hurting undesireables
We need to get them
off of the streets.
We need to They're making
help them. tourists
nervous.
They are, They're
after-all, bringing down
human beings. property
values. (ha, as if
that were
possible in
SF)
Compassion is arguably
not what's going on here
precisely.
If every compassionate
liberal in SF invited a
homeless person to
sleep on their couch,
they would all be off
of the streets.
Whatever it is that
we feel for these
people, it seems too
abstract and
unfocused to call it
"compassion".
Myself, I don't even
claim to have a huge
amount of sympathy
for these people. I've been known to
call them "scumzoids"--
What I do have So if you think this Another piece of slang
though, is a sense piece seems insensitive, I've heard: "sketchy"
of justice: I don't you should see some of or "sketch".
want to see the law my other stuff...
cracking the whip Suggesting
over the heads of "lightly
the weak and sketched in",
defenseless, just like an
because they And when you come oscillating
occasionally annoy. down to it, the speed freak?
street people
annoy people who
annoy me a lot
more than they (Maybe I owe
annoy me myself. them for doing
me a favor.)
It's pretty
clear that
the term
"homeless"
is favored
because it The way the
absolves argument against
them of all that goes:
responsibility.
It's just not
The older *that* hard to
terminology like survive in
"bum", has the modern America,
opposite even without any Provided you avoid
difficulty. heavy job expensive habits,
"It's all their skills... stay off the drugs
own fault, (including booze)
they're just Many of them and keep your
lazy." *could* have spirits up and
gotten their self-respect intact.
act together
Is it possible to avoid their
to resolve that condition. Doing that in
question in any the face of
sensible way? living a
bottom rung
(Possibly not. existance is
The idea of the trick, of
"Responsibility" course.
has some hidden
gotchas.) SELF
LETTERS_FROM_EARTH
Other problems (accuracy
quibbles?) with the
category "homeless":
"Homeless" might include
someone doing the couch
tour for six months, or
perhaps living in a van These people don't normally make
on the edge of town while it into our mental image of the
holding down a job. "homeless", though possibly they
should.
Conversely, gutter-punks
on Haight street may
return to their parents
house in Marin every At first glance, many people
other week. call them "homeless",
but if you knew their
background story it might seem
more complicated than that.
Similarly you might have
drug addicts (including
drunks) hanging around, who
you might loosely identify
as "homeless" without
checking whether they've
got places to live.
And there are cases
like, say, drug dealers
working on the street,
that some people might
look on as a symptom of
a "bad neighborhood",
though this has nothing
to do with "homelessness".
San Francsico has more of the
homeless/bums/unfortunates/scum
on the street that many other
American cities.
What is
The Source
of The
Problem?
I hear all sorts of answers to this.
Everyone knows, but they all seem to
know something different.
It's the weather. They don't
freeze to death here.
They're drug burn-out cases,
hangovers from the sixties.
They're all mentally ill, but ever
since Reagan (governor, then president) Alternately,
there's been no facilities for them. "ever since
Proposition 13".
My guess:
San Francisco is a relatively liberal
town, and whenever the powers that be From a source that
try to pull a Giuliani and get medieval I believe (but can't
on the homeless, then a mayor gets reveal):
chased out of office.
One year under
We (mostly) don't *like* to see street Giuliani, the death
people hassled by the cops, so they tolls for NYC were
(mostly) don't, so we've got more forged. Many more
street people. people died than
were officially
So if you're feeling all reported.
virtuous that your town
takes care of the My theory: they
"homeless", you might chased a lot of
want to look into how people out of the
they've really been squats before winter
"taken care of". kicked in, and let
them freeze.
What I think you'll find:
the politicians knew you (I know one
wanted them to "clean up New Yorker
the streets" (of human with a simpler
trash?), and they also theory: They
knew that you wouldn't just killed
inquire too closely into them all.)
how they did it.
Many a town has been
beautified with a
thoroughly ugly beauty.
UGLYBEAUTY
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