Vagrancy (biology) (Phytogeography 🌱)

Vagrancy is a phenomenon in biology whereby an individual animal appears well outside its normal range; they are known as vagrants. The term accidental is sometimes also used. There are a number of poorly understood factors which might cause an animal to become a vagrant, including internal causes such as n...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagrancy_(biology)

#Vagrancy #Phytogeography #WaywardAnimals #AnimalMigration #BiologyTerminology #EcologyTerminology

Build a tiny bot that toots bird sightings via the public #Tarsiger API:

@tarsiger_bot 🐦

Source code on #Codeberg: https://codeberg.org/g-rppl/tarsiger
#birding #vagrancy #birdsonthefediverse #floss

"Papers, please"
Shasta Willson
Jul 25, 2025

[see link for citations, etc.]

Yesterday, to little fanfare, the police state metastasized. The media covered Trump’s executive order as a response to homelessness. Few explained the larger context: this is the legal basis to arrest and indefinitely detain any American citizen.

Here is the first full sentence of that order:

Section 1. Purpose and Policy. Endemic vagrancy, disorderly behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe.

That sounds more like Trump’s description of BLM protests in Portland, or ICE resistance in liberal cities, than it does a depiction of our all-too-real homelessness epidemic.

The order goes on to instruct agencies to dismantle progressive, research-based responses to homelessness, substance addiction and mental illness. A punitive anti-science response is hardly surprising for this regime, but don’t think for a moment they care—even poorly—about homeless veterans or opioid addiction.

They care about control.

July 4th we saw the funding for a massive police state drop into place. The BBBudget makes ICE larger than all but a few national militaries. It was never about immigration.

That budget provides 45 Billion dollars for concentration camps. That’s a lot of people.

Fascist regimes start with controversial steps against unpopular groups because it weakens resistance. I’m going to explain why this order threatens you, but I want to be clear: you should also oppose it because it’s the wrong answer to real social issues. Research says that treating homelessness first, and then addressing addiction and mental health from a harm reduction approach, works best. This order strips those programs. It’s not about helping vulnerable citizens.

Instead, it establishes the legal basis for a growing police state to demand your papers and detain you indefinitely on vague government-defined criteria.

That isn’t hyperbole.

One of the strongest protections you have is your right not to be detained or forced to produce identification without cause. When we say “papers please” in our best Nazi accent, we are referencing the alternative: a nation where you must prove you are an upstanding citizen on demand, or disappear.

This order establishes that inversion in Section 3: Fighting Vagrancy on America’s Streets. Vagrancy is a vague legal term historically used to evade “reasonable suspicion” laws. Instead of police demonstrating a reason to stop you, you need to prove you aren’t a vagrant. Your papers are only the first requirement—vagrancy laws enforced racial segregation, criminalized “chronic” public speech, and punished refusal to work. It’s a slop-term for authoritarian control, and its inclusion should chill anyone familiar with fascism, civil rights history, or other oppressive regimes.

They want more than the right to stop you anywhere, anytime, to prove you aren’t a neer-do-well, though. That’s where criminalizing mental illness delivers!

They want to lock you up indefinitely too. Not all of you—just anyone who doesn’t spitshine fascist boots with sufficient alacrity. They aren’t being coy either: RFK Jr. advocates for work camps for “lifestyle” diseases. He means all mental health conditions and many physical diseases like diabetes. Trump put him in charge of a commission to look into the “threat posed by the prescription of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), antipsychotics (and) mood stabilizers.”

Maybe you’ve never had a day of depression in your life. They haven’t forgotten you! Legislation to “research Trump Derangement Syndrome” was introduced to Congress last term, normalizing the idea that resisting this regime is, prima facie, evidence of mental illness. Like everything else they do, this isn’t original. Early feminists were lobotomized for their self-evident social deviance.

It’s a scary scenario, but we knew it was coming. From the day they began detaining documented immigrants, we knew this was the goal. When they passed the BBBudget, we knew why it was so big. This is a major escalation, but it’s also an expected one, so let’s talk about next steps.

They’re going to start with populations even the left struggles to agree about.

They’ll round up the people you look away from on the street, so stop looking away. See the people who don’t get to shower on sweltering summer days. Buy a coffee or hand them some cash. Don’t worry about how they’ll spend it—first we help.

I’d guess mental health roundups will start with transgender people. For years we’ve forced transgender people to establish mental distress as a prerequisite to medical transition. Most will therefore have mental health records, and admit it—some of you are a little ambivalent, right?

Easier to look away from uncomfortable questions and people.

Once they’ve established that homeless people in tents and transgender people who once considered suicide can be forced into government run camps, they can come for anyone they want.

So we push back hard, now. The first step is to make this a topic of widespread conversation and refuse to let go of it. Remember how we had nonstop stories about the flight to El Salvador, and we learned Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s name, and then stories of all the disappeared began circulating?*

[*my note: Yes, Kilmar Abrego is back in the USA, as are a few of the others sent to CECOT--but most are still there, without due process. We are already not pushing back hard enough on that.]

We do that again: everyone needs to be talking about this.

We also need to organize. A lot of the practical implementation will come down to local decisions and internal sand in the gears. Medical professionals needs to talk about protecting patients and records. We all need to attend city council meetings and vote in Sheriff’s elections. If you have old counseling notes or medical records ask if they can be destroyed. Scan your life, and your community, for ways to slow down the transmission of records that could be used to target people under these laws. Publicize the stories of brutal work conditions at protests outside every ICE hiring event. If you haven’t before, study safe protest protocols, and then refuse to comply in advance. Get out there and be loud for as long as you can. Study the history of vagrancy laws, the research on addiction and homelessness, and how fascists divide us. Read every footnoted link on this article. Learn the difference between a concentration camp and an extermination camp, and admit this awful truth: America did this before, to our Japanese citizens. It can’t just happen here: it already has.

We can look to the model of resistance used to push back against immigrant rendition: visibility, protest, community resistance, organizing and mutual defense each play a role. We’ve won a number of fights—none of them perfectly—and regime popularity is underwater on every measure. We fight hard to make this cost them dearly. We make them fight for every inch they steal, and we fight for everyone because they are a human being, deserving of dignity.

We hold the line.

#Fascism #Vagrancy #DisabilityJustice

https://shastaw.substack.com/p/papers-please

New #WhiteHouse edict targets jurisdictions that are perceived to not be removiving "Endemic #vagrancy" and "drug users" with punitive measures. Specifically mentioned are threats to cut federal funding to cities that do not stop allowing so-called “harm reduction” or “safe consumption” sites for addictive drug users.

1/3rd of all "counted' #homeless people in #USA are tabulated as being in #California, which ranks amongst highest cost of living places in the #UnitedStates. Gov #Newsom issued new policies to remove homeless #encampments and #DJT in #DC has nearly a year to the day, now made similar #ExecutiveOrder against #indigent squalor as new #NationalPolicy called “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets”

https://www.statnews.com/2025/07/25/trump-executive-order-targets-supervised-consumption-harm-reduction/

https://www.mercurynews.com/2025/07/28/trump-executive-order-on-homelessness-echoes-newsoms-a-year-before/?share=exaeteyormmawsorso8b #GiftLink #MercuryNews #MediaNewsGroup

#DrugAddicts #HarmReduction #NeedleExchange #Homelessness

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered:

Section 1. Purpose and Policy. #Endemic #vagrancy, #disorderly $behavior, sudden confrontations, and violent attacks have made our cities unsafe. The number of individuals living on the streets in the United States on a single night during the last year of the previous administration -- 274,224 -- was the highest ever recorded. The overwhelming majority of these individuals are addicted to drugs, have a mental health condition, or both. Nearly two-thirds of homeless individuals report having regularly used hard drugs like methamphetamines, cocaine, or opioids in their lifetimes. An equally large share of homeless individuals reported suffering from mental health conditions. The Federal Government and the States have spent tens of billions of dollars on failed programs that address homelessness but not its root causes, leaving other citizens vulnerable to public safety threats.

Shifting homeless individuals into long-term institutional settings for humane treatment through the appropriate use of civil commitment will restore public order. Surrendering our cities and citizens to disorder and fear is neither compassionate to the homeless nor other citizens. My Administration will take a new approach focused on protecting public safety.

Sec. 2. Restoring Civil Commitment. (a) The Attorney General, in consultation with the Secretary of Health and Human Services, shall take appropriate action to:

(i) seek, in appropriate cases, the reversal of Federal or State judicial precedents and the termination of consent decrees that impede the United States' policy of encouraging civil commitment of individuals with mental illness who pose risks to themselves or the public or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves in appropriate facilities for appropriate periods of time; and

(ii) provide assistance to State and local governments, through technical guidance, grants, or other legally available means, for the identification, adoption, and implementation of maximally flexible civil commitment, institutional treatment, and "step-down" treatment standards that allow for the appropriate commitment and treatment of individuals with mental illness who pose a danger to others or are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves.

Sec. 3. Fighting Vagrancy on America's Streets. (a) The Attorney General, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and the Secretary of Transportation shall take immediate steps to assess their discretionary grant programs and determine whether priority for those grants may be given to grantees in States and municipalities that actively meet the below criteria, to the maximum extent permitted by law:

(i) enforce prohibitions on open illicit drug use;

(ii) enforce prohibitions on urban camping and loitering;

(iii) enforce prohibitions on urban squatting;

(iv) enforce, and where necessary, adopt, standards that address individuals who are a danger to themselves or others and suffer from serious mental illness or substance use disorder, or who are living on the streets and cannot care for themselves, through assisted outpatient treatment or by moving them into treatment centers or other appropriate facilities via civil commitment or other available means, to the maximum extent permitted by law; or

(v) substantially implement and comply with, to the extent required, the registration and notification obligations of the Sex Offender Registry and Notification Act, particularly in the case of registered sex offenders with no fixed address, including by adequately mapping and checking the location of homeless sex offenders.

(b) The Attorney General shall:

(i) ensure that homeless individuals arrested for Federal crimes are evaluated, consistent with 18 U.S.C. 4248, to determine whether they are sexually dangerous persons and certified accordingly for civil commitment;

(ii) take all necessary steps to ensure the availability of funds under the Emergency Federal Law Enforcement Assistance program to support, as consistent with 34 U.S.C. 50101 et seq., encampment removal efforts in areas for which public safety is at risk and State and local resources are inadequate;

(iii) assess Federal resources to determine whether they may be directed toward ensuring, to the extent permitted by law, that detainees with serious mental illness are not released into the public because of a lack of forensic bed capacity at appropriate local, State, and Federal jails or hospitals; and

(iv) enhance requirements that prisons and residential reentry centers that are under the authority of the Attorney General or receive funding from the Attorney General require in-custody housing release plans and, to the maximum extent practicable, require individuals to comply.

Sec. 4. Redirecting Federal Resources Toward Effective Methods of Addressing Homelessness. (a) The Secretary of Health and Human Services shall take appropriate action to:

(i) ensure that discretionary grants issued by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration for substance use disorder prevention, treatment, and recovery fund evidence-based programs and do not fund programs that fail to achieve adequate outcomes, including so-called "harm reduction" or "safe consumption" efforts that only facilitate illegal drug use and its attendant harm;

(ii) provide technical assistance to assisted outpatient treatment programs for individuals with serious mental illness or addiction during and after the civil commitment process focused on shifting such individuals off of the streets and public programs and into private housing and support networks; and

(iii) ensure that Federal funds for Federally Qualified Health Centers and Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics reduce rather than promote homelessness by supporting, to the maximum extent permitted by law, comprehensive services for individuals with serious mental illness and substance use disorder, including crisis intervention services.

(b) The Attorney General shall prioritize available funding to support the expansion of drug courts and mental health courts for individuals for which such diversion serves public safety.

Sec. 5. Increasing Accountability and Safety in America's Homelessness Programs. (a) The Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall take appropriate actions to increase accountability in their provision of, and grants awarded for, homelessness assistance and transitional living programs. These actions shall include, to the extent permitted by law, ending support for "housing first" policies that deprioritize accountability and fail to promote treatment, recovery, and self-sufficiency; increasing competition among grantees through broadening the applicant pool; and holding grantees to higher standards of effectiveness in reducing homelessness and increasing public safety.

(b) The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall, as appropriate, take steps to require recipients of Federal housing and homelessness assistance to increase requirements that persons participating in the recipients' programs who suffer from substance use disorder or serious mental illness use substance abuse treatment or mental health services as a condition of participation.

(c) With respect to recipients of Federal housing and homelessness assistance that operate drug injection sites or "safe consumption sites," knowingly distribute drug paraphernalia, or permit the use or distribution of illicit drugs on property under their control:

(i) the Attorney General shall review whether such recipients are in violation of Federal law, including 21 U.S.C. 856, and bring civil or criminal actions in appropriate cases; and

(ii) the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in coordination with the Attorney General, shall review whether such recipients are in violation of the terms of the programs pursuant to which they receive Federal housing and homelessness assistance and freeze their assistance as appropriate.

(d) The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development shall take appropriate measures and revise regulations as necessary to allow, where permissible under applicable law, federally funded programs to exclusively house women and children and to stop sex offenders who receive homelessness assistance through such programs from being housed with unrelated children.

(e) The Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, in consultation with the Attorney General and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, shall, as appropriate and to the extent permitted by law:

(i) allow or require the recipients of Federal funding for homelessness assistance to collect health-related information that the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development identifies as necessary to the effective and efficient operation of the funding program from all persons to whom such assistance is provided; and

(ii) require those funding recipients to share such data with law enforcement authorities in circumstances permitted by law and to use the collected health data to provide appropriate medical care to individuals with mental health diagnoses or to connect individuals to public health resources.

1/2 🧵

@RAHU

1824 Vagrancy Act adopted everywhere British colonised. Laws were adopted to cover a broad range of ‘offences’ and ‘offensive’ ways of being, including impoverishment, idleness, begging, hawking, public gambling, sex work, public indecency, fortune-telling, traditional religious practices, drunkenness, homosexuality, cross-dressing, socialising across racial groups, being suspicious, and many other activities as well.

https://freedomnews.org.uk/2025/06/13/scrapping-the-vagrancy-act/

#HousingCrisis #Landlords #Rent #Vagrancy

A quotation from Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784) English writer, lexicographer, critic
Poem (1738), “London: A Poem,” ll. 159-160

Sourcing, notes: wist.info/johnson-samuel/19352…

#quote #quotes #quotation #crime #homeless #indigence #injustice #law #lawenforcement #lawbreaking #poor #poverty #vagrancy

Tramp Emile, my distant cousin

Emile Vitse, a distant cousin, was convicted of vagrancy in the 19th century and stayed in the Colonies of Benevolence. His life was full of ups and downs, with convictions, unemployment and an unstable relationship.

https://evasboom.com/en/2024/04/27/tramp-emile-my-distant-cousin/

#genealogy #GenealogicalResearch #19thCentury #vagrancy #ColoniesOfBenevolence #Merksplas #Bruges #archives #Vitse

@geneadons @geneadon.social