JPhttps://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a62875397/homelessness-in-america/ brutal, devastating, eloquent account of life while unhoused in the US. there are countless stories like this; this one just happens to be by a professional writer.
brillenfuxi think it would be a useful long term social project to make "homeless people deserve to be homeless because they made Bad Choices" as socially unacceptable and hateful and backward a view as a racist or sexist one. i think that could be a cornerstone for building broader political consciousness.
14 years ago my marriage ended suddenly, and it was a traumatic blow to my self concept and overall mental health. i felt like my life was falling apart. i made it through only because i had friends, family, and a steady job. if i hadn't had even one of those, there's no telling how far down i might have spiralled. from that point on i understood how close i am, most of us are, to being unhoused and without support. that is a message we must carry to the rest of society all around us.
the counter-message all around us is about getting the average person to disidentify with the homeless as deeply as possible: to channel all their terror of precarity, and their rage at a system that could do that to them, and turn it into hatred for and cruelty towards the homeless, seeing them as defective people worthy of extermination.
and that is largely the basis for current state policy. gavin newsom in his raybans trashing some guy's few belongings. that is what we're up against.
and that is largely the basis for current state policy. gavin newsom in his raybans trashing some guy's few belongings. that is what we're up against.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/2023/10/how-anti-homeless-sentiment-made-its-way-into-popular-cartoons good piece from a few years back about how incredibly pervasive hatred of the homeless is in popular media, and how these attitudes started decades ago, intensified under Reagan, and have now exploded into the disgustingly dehumanizing "zombie" language used with fervor by conservatives and liberals alike.
Nick 'The Viking'22 years ago, I got divorced.
3 months later, the company I was working for collapsed.
Nearly a mortal blow.
The next few years were the darkest of my life, some bad decisions were made.
I made it through, barely.
gkrnours@jplebreton there was a recent paper about a town that simply gave 1k/month to unhoused people and after a year, half had a housd and they estimated the city saved close to 600k due to reduced hospital visit and the like.
As if people are homeless due to bad luck and not bad choice
JoeChip@jplebreton @StingrayBadger
Mostly their "bad choices" revolve around being born around the turn of the century and being born into poor or dysfunctional communities.
Mostly their "bad choices" revolve around being born around the turn of the century and being born into poor or dysfunctional communities.
chicating@JoeChip @jplebreton @StingrayBadger Some people only have bad options 2 pick from. sometimes that's me, too, although the stakes are not that high yet.
Irenes (many)@jplebreton oh for sure. this is central.
@jplebreton in addition to it being an important cornerstone of political awareness in general
the specific phenemonen is currently a major pillar by which oppression along lots of axes gets excluded from consensus reality, made not-real through mass disbelief
@jplebreton if we could destroy the structure that sustains that disbelief, we could start to make some real progress
highly principled invertebrate@jplebreton Add ableist as a 3rd though - as disabled people have for the longest time made such a large % of homeless people & now in at least one country - disability isn't enough to cover rent in any part of said nation.
Dave Vogtsorry not sorry SF crowd. the homeless people were there first
Darwin Woodka@jplebreton idk, racist and sexist views seem to be doing pretty well these days
@darwinwoodka of course, yes. my point is that they are widely (though clearly not unanimously) recognized as bad, and even people who espouse those views have to at least to contend with that perception and its social consequences.