{"id":1048,"date":"2013-06-22T21:35:55","date_gmt":"2013-06-22T21:35:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/?p=1048"},"modified":"2013-07-04T19:28:17","modified_gmt":"2013-07-04T19:28:17","slug":"alaska-and-berkeley-prejudice-and-passion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/alaska-and-berkeley-prejudice-and-passion\/","title":{"rendered":"Alaska and Berkeley: Prejudice and Passion"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/p>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
NOTE BY NORSE:\u00a0 Tip of the had to John Colby for passing on these stories.\u00a0 The Alaska “compassionate cop” tale assumes and promulgates the mythology that homeless people are homeless because of alcohol, drug, and “mental illness” problems.\u00a0 It’s not a housing, job, or income problem (when it’s a problem and not simply a life-phase or rebellion against the abusive social-political order), goes this status quo-buttressing mythology–it’s the people themselves who are defective and need “to be fixed”.\u00a0 This, of course, allows for the money that might be spent on the obvious solution–housing–to be rerouted to social workers, police, drug programs, psych wards,\u00a0 and other “helpers.”\u00a0\u00a0 It also paves the way for treating the homeless as incompetents who need to be forced to “take help”.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 This encourages “solutions” that involve ignoring civil rights, forced “medication”, homeless sweeps, etc.
\nIt also sets the stage for treating homeless–as is happening in Santa Cruz now–as a “crime” or “public safety” problem based on NIMBY apprehensions, police-initiated legal definitions, and class war politicies.\u00a0\u00a0 In my 25 years of direct interviews with folks outside, I’ve found less than 10% have an obvious alcohol problem.\u00a0\u00a0 Maybe the snow in Alaska is toxic.\u00a0\u00a0 If anyone has any local figures on Santa Cruz city or county, I’d like to see them.\u00a0 Stigmatizing the homeless community as disabled because of “illness” (whether alcohol, drug, or “mental”) ignores the real disabilities created by sleeping bans, sitting bans, park closures, and other laws that destroy what community exists and aggravate confrontations with the police.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/hardlynormal.com\/blog\/2010\/03\/08\/alaska-homeless-as-seen-through-the-eyes-of-a-police-officer\/<\/wbr><\/wbr><\/wbr><\/a> <\/span><\/p>\n

More typical, familiar to me, and positive (though still depressing) is the story of Sandy and others in this “invisible people” clip and story from Berkeley at<\/p>\n

http:\/\/invisiblepeople.tv\/blog\/2010\/03\/sandy-homeless-berkley\/<\/wbr><\/wbr><\/a><\/p>\n

In Santa Cruz it’s illegal to sleep either in your car OR by the side of the road.\u00a0 Santa Cruz wins the “least enabling of bad behavior” (i.e. homeless survival behavior that annoys, frightens, or angers middle class residents and merchants.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

<\/wbr><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

NOTE BY NORSE:\u00a0 Tip of the had to John Colby for passing on these stories.\u00a0 The Alaska “compassionate cop” tale assumes and promulgates the mythology that homeless people are homeless because of alcohol, drug, and “mental illness” problems.\u00a0 It’s not … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[56],"tags":[3],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1048"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1090,"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1048\/revisions\/1090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}