Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
Dan Clore
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/09-4
Sunday, August 9, 2009
The New York Times
Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
by Barbara Ehrenreich
It's too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it�s
almost illegal to be poor. You won�t be arrested for shopping in a
Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you�re
well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life
� like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast
that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict
the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in
the �80s and �90s. �If you�re lying on a sidewalk, whether you�re
homeless or a millionaire, you�re in violation of the ordinance,� a city
attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France�s
immortal observation that �the law, in its majestic equality, forbids
the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges.�
In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty
has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more
poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on
Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances
against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with
ticketing and arrests for more �neutral� infractions like jaywalking,
littering or carrying an open container of alcohol.
The report lists America�s 10 �meanest� cities � the largest of which
are Honolulu, Los Angeles and San Francisco � but new contestants are
springing up every day. The City Council in Grand Junction, Colo., has
been considering a ban on begging, and at the end of June, Tempe, Ariz.,
carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent. How do you know when
someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, �An indigent person
is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be
entitled to apply for or receive� public assistance.
That could be me before the blow-drying and eyeliner, and it�s
definitely Al Szekely at any time of day. A grizzled 62-year-old, he
inhabits a wheelchair and is often found on G Street in Washington � the
city that is ultimately responsible for the bullet he took in the spine
in Fu Bai, Vietnam, in 1972. He had been enjoying the luxury of an
indoor bed until last December, when the police swept through the
shelter in the middle of the night looking for men with outstanding
warrants.
It turned out that Mr. Szekely, who is an ordained minister and does not
drink, do drugs or curse in front of ladies, did indeed have a warrant �
for not appearing in court to face a charge of �criminal trespassing�
(for sleeping on a sidewalk in a Washington suburb). So he was dragged
out of the shelter and put in jail. �Can you imagine?� asked Eric
Sheptock, the homeless advocate (himself a shelter resident) who
introduced me to Mr. Szekely. �They arrested a homeless man in a shelter
for being homeless.�
The viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent can be
breathtaking. A few years ago, a group called Food Not Bombs started
handing out free vegan food to hungry people in public parks around the
nation. A number of cities, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances
forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, and
several members of the group were arrested. A federal judge just
overturned the anti-sharing law in Orlando, Fla., but the city is
appealing. And now Middletown, Conn., is cracking down on food sharing.
If poverty tends to criminalize people, it is also true that
criminalization inexorably impoverishes them. Scott Lovell, another
homeless man I interviewed in Washington, earned his record by
committing a significant crime � by participating in the armed robbery
of a steakhouse when he was 15. Although Mr. Lovell dresses and speaks
more like a summer tourist from Ohio than a felon, his criminal record
has made it extremely difficult for him to find a job.
For Al Szekely, the arrest for trespassing meant a further descent down
the circles of hell. While in jail, he lost his slot in the shelter and
now sleeps outside the Verizon Center sports arena, where the big
problem, in addition to the security guards, is mosquitoes. His
stick-thin arms are covered with pink crusty sores, which he treats with
a regimen of frantic scratching.
For the not-yet-homeless, there are two main paths to criminalization �
one involving debt, and the other skin color. Anyone of any color or
pre-recession financial status can fall into debt, and although we pride
ourselves on the abolition of debtors� prison, in at least one state,
Texas, people who can�t afford to pay their traffic fines may be made to
�sit out their tickets� in jail.
Often the path to legal trouble begins when one of your creditors has a
court issue a summons for you, which you fail to honor for one reason or
another. (Maybe your address has changed or you never received it.) Now
you�re in contempt of court. Or suppose you miss a payment and, before
you realize it, your car insurance lapses; then you�re stopped for
something like a broken headlight. Depending on the state, you may have
your car impounded or face a steep fine � again, exposing you to a
possible summons. �There�s just no end to it once the cycle starts,�
said Robert Solomon of Yale Law School. �It just keeps accelerating.�
By far the most reliable way to be criminalized by poverty is to have
the wrong-color skin. Indignation runs high when a celebrity professor
encounters racial profiling, but for decades whole communities have been
effectively �profiled� for the suspicious combination of being both
dark-skinned and poor, thanks to the �broken windows� or �zero
tolerance� theory of policing popularized by Rudy Giuliani, when he was
mayor of New York City, and his police chief William Bratton.
Flick a cigarette in a heavily patrolled community of color and you�re
littering; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you�re displaying gang
allegiance. Just strolling around in a dodgy neighborhood can mark you
as a potential suspect, according to �Let�s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory
of Justice,� an eye-opening new book by Paul Butler, a former federal
prosecutor in Washington. If you seem at all evasive, which I suppose is
like looking �overly anxious� in an airport, Mr. Butler writes, the
police �can force you to stop just to investigate why you don�t want to
talk to them.� And don�t get grumpy about it or you could be �resisting
arrest.�
There�s no minimum age for being sucked into what the Children�s Defense
Fund calls �the cradle-to-prison pipeline.� In New York City, a teenager
caught in public housing without an ID � say, while visiting a friend or
relative � can be charged with criminal trespassing and wind up in
juvenile detention, Mishi Faruqee, the director of youth justice
programs for the Children�s Defense Fund of New York, told me. In just
the past few months, a growing number of cities have taken to ticketing
and sometimes handcuffing teenagers found on the streets during school
hours.
In Los Angeles, the fine for truancy is $250; in Dallas, it can be as
much as $500 � crushing amounts for people living near the poverty
level. According to the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, an advocacy group,
12,000 students were ticketed for truancy in 2008.
Why does the Bus Riders Union care? Because it estimates that 80 percent
of the �truants,� especially those who are black or Latino, are merely
late for school, thanks to the way that over-filled buses whiz by them
without stopping. I met people in Los Angeles who told me they keep
their children home if there�s the slightest chance of their being late.
It�s an ingenious anti-truancy policy that discourages parents from
sending their youngsters to school.
The pattern is to curtail financing for services that might help the
poor while ramping up law enforcement: starve school and public
transportation budgets, then make truancy illegal. Shut down public
housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Be sure to harass street
vendors when there are few other opportunities for employment. The
experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to
resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically
administered electric shocks.
And if you should make the mistake of trying to escape via a brief
marijuana-induced high, it�s �gotcha� all over again, because that of
course is illegal too. One result is our staggering level of
incarceration, the highest in the world. Today the same number of
Americans � 2.3 million � reside in prison as in public housing.
Meanwhile, the public housing that remains has become ever more
prisonlike, with residents subjected to drug testing and random police
sweeps. The safety net, or what�s left of it, has been transformed into
a dragnet.
Some of the community organizers I�ve talked to around the country think
they know why �zero tolerance� policing has ratcheted up since the
recession began. Leonardo Vilchis of the Union de Vecinos, a community
organization in Los Angeles, suspects that �poor people have become a
source of revenue� for recession-starved cities, and that the police can
always find a violation leading to a fine. If so, this is a singularly
demented fund-raising strategy. At a Congressional hearing in June, the
president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
testified about the pervasive �overcriminalization of crimes that are
not a risk to public safety,� like sleeping in a cardboard box or
jumping turnstiles, which leads to expensively clogged courts and prisons.
A Pew Center study released in March found states spending a record
$51.7 billion on corrections, an amount that the center judged, with an
excess of moderation, to be �too much.�
But will it be enough � the collision of rising prison populations that
we can�t afford and the criminalization of poverty � to force us to
break the mad cycle of poverty and punishment? With the number of people
in poverty increasing (some estimates suggest it�s up to 45 million to
50 million, from 37 million in 2007) several states are beginning to
ease up on the criminalization of poverty � for example, by sending drug
offenders to treatment rather than jail, shortening probation and
reducing the number of people locked up for technical violations like
missed court appointments. But others are tightening the screws: not
only increasing the number of �crimes� but also charging prisoners for
their room and board � assuring that they�ll be released with
potentially criminalizing levels of debt.
Maybe we can�t afford the measures that would begin to alleviate
America�s growing poverty � affordable housing, good schools, reliable
public transportation and so forth. I would argue otherwise, but for now
I�d be content with a consensus that, if we can�t afford to truly help
the poor, neither can we afford to go on tormenting them.
--
Dan Clore
My collected fiction, _The Unspeakable and Others_:
(Wait for the new edition: http://hplmythos.com/ )
Lord We�rdgliffe & Necronomicon Page:
http://tinyurl.com/292yz9
News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
Strange pleasures are known to him who flaunts the
immarcescible purple of poetry before the color-blind.
-- Clark Ashton Smith, "Epigrams and Apothegms"
Foxtrot
>News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:
>http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
>
>http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/09-4
>Sunday, August 9, 2009
>The New York Times
>Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
The title of this opinion piece is alarmist and an insult to America.
This is what pushes you on the far left into the margins.
>by Barbara Ehrenreich
>
>It's too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it�s
>almost illegal to be poor. You won�t be arrested for shopping in a
>Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you�re
>well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life
>� like sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast
>that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict
>the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in
>the �80s and �90s. �If you�re lying on a sidewalk, whether you�re
>homeless or a millionaire, you�re in violation of the ordinance,� a city
>attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France�s
>immortal observation that �the law, in its majestic equality, forbids
>the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges.�
>
>In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty
>has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more
>poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on
>Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances
>against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with
>ticketing and arrests for more �neutral� infractions like jaywalking,
>littering or carrying an open container of alcohol.
>
>The report lists America�s 10 �meanest� cities � the largest of which
>are Honolulu, Los Angeles and San Francisco
I'm not familiar with Hawaiian politics but LA and SF are very liberal
cities and totally controlled by libs. If you lefties are so concerned
about how the poor suffer, why don't you set an example for the
rest of America?
>For the not-yet-homeless, there are two main paths to criminalization �
>one involving debt, and the other skin color. Anyone of any color or
>pre-recession financial status can fall into debt
>By far the most reliable way to be criminalized by poverty is to have
>the wrong-color skin
PROVE poverty or any other problems beset any entire demographic
group because of their skin color. This is more of what pushes you
inflammatory assholes into the margins.
>Flick a cigarette in a heavily patrolled community of color and you�re
>littering; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you�re displaying gang
>allegiance.
Flick a cigarette in Beverly Hills while wearing an Armani suit. Let's
see how the locals and police welcome you. It has nothing to do with
color or financial status. If you damage any community, of course
they'll resent it.
Isolated incidents can happen anywhere but claims of institutionalized
racism can't be proven. More unfounded alarmism by this asshole
and other assholes like Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright.
>Meanwhile, the public housing that remains has become ever more
>prisonlike
>But will it be enough � the collision of rising prison populations that
>we can�t afford and the criminalization of poverty � to force us to
>break the mad cycle of poverty and punishment? With the number of people
>Maybe we can�t afford the measures that would begin to alleviate
>America�s growing poverty � affordable housing, good schools, reliable
>public transportation and so forth. I would argue otherwise, but for now
>I�d be content with a consensus that, if we can�t afford to truly help
>the poor, neither can we afford to go on tormenting them.
...much more inflammatory America bashing. But no attempt to prove
the claim of institutionalized racism.
seeker
> News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
>
> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/09-4
> Sunday, August 9, 2009
> The New York Times
> Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
> by Barbara Ehrenreich
>
> almost illegal to be poor. You won’t be arrested for shopping in a
> Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you’re
> well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life
> that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict
> the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in
> homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance,” a city
> attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France’s
> the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges.”
>
> In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty
> has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more
> poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on
> Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances
> against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with
> littering or carrying an open container of alcohol.
>
> are Honolulu, Los Angeles and San Francisco — but new contestants are
> springing up every day. The City Council in Grand Junction, Colo., has
> been considering a ban on begging, and at the end of June, Tempe, Ariz.,
> carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent. How do you know when
> is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be
>
> That could be me before the blow-drying and eyeliner, and it’s
> definitely Al Szekely at any time of day. A grizzled 62-year-old, he
> city that is ultimately responsible for the bullet he took in the spine
> in Fu Bai, Vietnam, in 1972. He had been enjoying the luxury of an
> indoor bed until last December, when the police swept through the
> shelter in the middle of the night looking for men with outstanding
> warrants.
>
> It turned out that Mr. Szekely, who is an ordained minister and does not
> for not appearing in court to face a charge of “criminal trespassing”
> (for sleeping on a sidewalk in a Washington suburb). So he was dragged
> Sheptock, the homeless advocate (himself a shelter resident) who
> for being homeless.”
>
> The viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent can be
> breathtaking. A few years ago, a group called Food Not Bombs started
> handing out free vegan food to hungry people in public parks around the
> nation. A number of cities, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances
> forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, and
> several members of the group were arrested. A federal judge just
> overturned the anti-sharing law in Orlando, Fla., but the city is
> appealing. And now Middletown, Conn., is cracking down on food sharing.
>
> If poverty tends to criminalize people, it is also true that
> criminalization inexorably impoverishes them. Scott Lovell, another
> homeless man I interviewed in Washington, earned his record by
> of a steakhouse when he was 15. Although Mr. Lovell dresses and speaks
> more like a summer tourist from Ohio than a felon, his criminal record
> has made it extremely difficult for him to find a job.
>
> For Al Szekely, the arrest for trespassing meant a further descent down
> the circles of hell. While in jail, he lost his slot in the shelter and
> now sleeps outside the Verizon Center sports arena, where the big
> problem, in addition to the security guards, is mosquitoes. His
> stick-thin arms are covered with pink crusty sores, which he treats with
> a regimen of frantic scratching.
>
> one involving debt, and the other skin color. Anyone of any color or
> pre-recession financial status can fall into debt, and although we pride
> Texas, people who can’t afford to pay their traffic fines may be made to
> “sit out their tickets” in jail.
>
> Often the path to legal trouble begins when one of your creditors has a
> court issue a summons for you, which you fail to honor for one reason or
> another. (Maybe your address has changed or you never received it.) Now
> you realize it, your car insurance lapses; then you’re stopped for
> something like a broken headlight. Depending on the state, you may have
> possible summons. “There’s just no end to it once the cycle starts,”
> said Robert Solomon of Yale Law School. “It just keeps accelerating.”
>
> By far the most reliable way to be criminalized by poverty is to have
> the wrong-color skin. Indignation runs high when a celebrity professor
> encounters racial profiling, but for decades whole communities have been
> dark-skinned and poor, thanks to the “broken windows” or “zero
> tolerance” theory of policing popularized by Rudy Giuliani, when he was
> mayor of New York City, and his police chief William Bratton.
>
> littering; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you’re displaying gang
> allegiance. Just strolling around in a dodgy neighborhood can mark you
> of Justice,” an eye-opening new book by Paul Butler, a former federal
> prosecutor in Washington. If you seem at all evasive, which I suppose is
> police “can force you to stop just to investigate why you don’t want to
> talk to them.” And don’t get grumpy about it or you could be “resisting
> arrest.”
>
> There’s no minimum age for being sucked into what the Children’s Defense
> Fund calls “the cradle-to-prison pipeline.” In New York City, a teenager
> caught in public housing without an ID — say, while visiting a friend or
> relative — can be charged with criminal trespassing and wind up in
> juvenile detention, Mishi Faruqee, the director of youth justice
> the past few months, a growing number of cities have taken to ticketing
> and sometimes handcuffing teenagers found on the streets during school
> hours.
>
> In Los Angeles, the fine for truancy is $250; in Dallas, it can be as
> level. According to the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, an advocacy group,
> 12,000 students were ticketed for truancy in 2008.
>
> Why does the Bus Riders Union care? Because it estimates that 80 percent
> late for school, thanks to the way that over-filled buses whiz by them
> without stopping. I met people in Los Angeles who told me they keep
> It’s an ingenious anti-truancy policy that discourages parents from
> sending their youngsters to school.
>
> The pattern is to curtail financing for services that might help the
> poor while ramping up law enforcement: starve school and public
> transportation budgets, then make truancy illegal. Shut down public
> housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Be sure to harass street
> vendors when there are few other opportunities for employment. The
> experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to
> resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically
> administered electric shocks.
>
> And if you should make the mistake of trying to escape via a brief
> course is illegal too. One result is our staggering level of
> incarceration, the highest in the world. Today the same number of
>
> Meanwhile, the public housing that remains has become ever more
> prisonlike, with residents subjected to drug testing and random police
> a dragnet.
>
> Some of the community organizers I’ve talked to around the country think
> they know why “zero tolerance” policing has ratcheted up since the
> recession began. Leonardo Vilchis of the Union de Vecinos, a community
> source of revenue” for recession-starved cities, and that the police can
> always find a violation leading to a fine. If so, this is a singularly
> demented fund-raising strategy. At a Congressional hearing in June, the
> president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
> not a risk to public safety,” like sleeping in a cardboard box or
> jumping turnstiles, which leads to expensively clogged courts and prisons.
>
> A Pew Center study released in March found states spending a record
>
> read more »
Yes, it is... just ask "Rod Speed" .. he doesn't seem to have any
compassion for the poor. I post articles highlighting their troubles
and
he shoots me down every time. You won't find much compassion there
Rod Speed
> Yes, it is... just ask "Rod Speed" ..
Wouldnt dream of it, someone might decide I was barking mad if I did that.
> he doesn't seem to have any compassion for the poor.
Then you need to get your seems machinery seen to.
What matters is why they are 'poor'
If that is due to circumstances beyond their control, like a
severe disability that prevents them from even using a PC
etc, it is perfectly reasonable for the state to assist them etc.
You on the other hand are clearly quite capable of using a PC, so
if you are still 'poor', the problem must be between your ears instead.
> I post articles highlighting their troubles and he shoots me down every time.
You're lying now. I dont bother with most of your posts.
> You won't find much compassion there
Another lie.
Frank Provasek
>
> Isolated incidents can happen anywhere but claims of institutionalized
> racism can't be proven. More unfounded alarmism by this asshole
> and other assholes like Jeremiah "GodDamnAmerica"Wright.
>
Fox News and the Youtubers who hate Wright and Obama never play the
full quote...
God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is
supreme.
Rod Speed
> Foxtrot <foxt...@null.com> wrote
Thats a dishonestly selective quote of what he actually said too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvMbeVQj6Lw
Foxtrot
>Frank Provasek wrote
>> Foxtrot <foxt...@null.com> wrote
>
>>> Isolated incidents can happen anywhere but claims of institutionalized
>>> racism can't be proven. More unfounded alarmism by this asshole
>>> and other assholes like Jeremiah "GodDamnAmerica"Wright.
>
>> Fox News and the Youtubers who hate Wright and Obama never play the full quote...
>
>> God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.
Republican George Allen innocently used the word "macaca" without
knowing its racist definition and it cost him his career in public office.
But Democrat Jesse Jackson repeated referred to Jews as "Hymies"
and easily got away with it. Wright screeched "God damn America"
three times in a mouth foaming hate filled rant. He said of 9/11 that
America's chickens had come home to roost. He got away with them.
Why the double standard?
>Thats a dishonestly selective quote of what he actually said too.
>http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvMbeVQj6Lw
Thanks for posting the entire rant. Now it's clear what a partisan he
is. His status as a tax free organization should be revoked.
BTW if Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright is so loving, why did
Bailout Obama distance himself from him?
Rod Speed
>>>> Isolated incidents can happen anywhere but claims of institutionalized
>>>> racism can't be proven. More unfounded alarmism by this asshole
>>>> and other assholes like Jeremiah "GodDamnAmerica"Wright.
>>> Fox News and the Youtubers who hate Wright and Obama never play the full quote...
>>> God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.
> Republican George Allen innocently used the word "macaca" without
> knowing its racist definition and it cost him his career in public office.
> But Democrat Jesse Jackson repeated referred to Jews as "Hymies"
> and easily got away with it. Wright screeched "God damn America"
> three times in a mouth foaming hate filled rant. He said of 9/11 that
> America's chickens had come home to roost. He got away with them.
> Why the double standard?
Thats always been the way political correctness works.
>> Thats a dishonestly selective quote of what he actually said too.
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RvMbeVQj6Lw
> Thanks for posting the entire rant. Now it's clear what a partisan
> he is. His status as a tax free organization should be revoked.
> BTW if Jeremiah "God Damn America" Wright is so loving,
> why did Bailout Obama distance himself from him?
A more important question is why he had anything to do with him in the first place.
Jeffrey Turner
> "Rod Speed" <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Frank Provasek wrote
>>> Foxtrot <foxt...@null.com> wrote
>>>> Isolated incidents can happen anywhere but claims of institutionalized
>>>> racism can't be proven. More unfounded alarmism by this asshole
>>>> and other assholes like Jeremiah "GodDamnAmerica"Wright.
>>> Fox News and the Youtubers who hate Wright and Obama never play the full quote...
>>> God damn America for as long as she acts like she is God and she is supreme.
>
> Republican George Allen innocently used the word "macaca" without
> knowing its racist definition and it cost him his career in public office.
What the fuck is the "innocent" use of a racist term?
> But Democrat Jesse Jackson repeated referred to Jews as "Hymies"
> and easily got away with it.
Sure he did. What office was he elected to?
> Wright screeched "God damn America"
> three times in a mouth foaming hate filled rant. He said of 9/11 that
> America's chickens had come home to roost. He got away with them.
> Why the double standard?
Because in the 1980s, your hero Raygun, when he wasn't tripling the
national debt, was building madrassas in Afghanistan to teach jihad.
But that was "good" jihad.
--Jeff
--
The comfort of the wealthy has always
depended upon an abundant supply of
the poor. --Voltaire
5110 Dead, 243 since 1/20/09
Why did Republicans have anything to do with Pat Robertson and Jerry
Falwell?
--
"Universal" American healthcare coverage, explained:
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor
to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread." (Anatole France from The Red Lily, 1894)
--
"Universal" American healthcare coverage, explained:
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor
to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal
bread." (Anatole France from The Red Lily, 1894)
Rod Speed
>>> Why the double standard?
Because they actually are that stupid, stupid.
Beam Me Up Scotty
Les Cargill
Rod Speed
> Foxtrot wrote
>> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote
>>> Frank Provasek wrote
>>>> Foxtrot <foxt...@null.com> wrote
>>>>> Isolated incidents can happen anywhere but claims of institutionalized racism can't be proven. More unfounded
>>>>> alarmism by this asshole and other assholes like Jeremiah "GodDamnAmerica"Wright.
>>>> Fox News and the Youtubers who hate Wright and Obama never play the full quote... God damn America for as long as
>>>> she acts like she is God and she is supreme.
>> Republican George Allen innocently used the word "macaca" without
>> knowing its racist definition and it cost him his career in public office.
> What the fuck is the "innocent" use of a racist term?
Using a term without being aware of its racist connotations.
Many outside the US dont realise that the word 'boy' can be used racistly in the US.
>> But Democrat Jesse Jackson repeated referred to Jews as "Hymies" and easily got away with it.
> Sure he did. What office was he elected to?
>> Wright screeched "God damn America" three times in a mouth foaming hate filled rant. He said of 9/11 that America's
>> chickens had come home to roost. He got away with them.
>> Why the double standard?
> Because in the 1980s, your hero Raygun, when he wasn't tripling the
> national debt, was building madrassas in Afghanistan to teach jihad.
That last never happened.
Jeffrey Turner
> Jeffrey Turner wrote
>> Foxtrot wrote
>>> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote
>>>> Frank Provasek wrote
>>>>> Foxtrot <foxt...@null.com> wrote
>
>>>>>> Isolated incidents can happen anywhere but claims of institutionalized racism can't be proven. More unfounded
>>>>>> alarmism by this asshole and other assholes like Jeremiah "GodDamnAmerica"Wright.
>
>>>>> Fox News and the Youtubers who hate Wright and Obama never play the full quote... God damn America for as long as
>>>>> she acts like she is God and she is supreme.
>
>>> Republican George Allen innocently used the word "macaca" without
>>> knowing its racist definition and it cost him his career in public office.
>
>> What the fuck is the "innocent" use of a racist term?
>
> Using a term without being aware of its racist connotations.
>
> Many outside the US dont realise that the word 'boy' can be used racistly in the US.
And where's George Allen from, Wingnut Planet? But that's a typical
racist response, "I always call those people 'x,' how should I know
it's wrong?"
>>> But Democrat Jesse Jackson repeated referred to Jews as "Hymies" and easily got away with it.
>
>> Sure he did. What office was he elected to?
>
>>> Wright screeched "God damn America" three times in a mouth foaming hate filled rant. He said of 9/11 that America's
>>> chickens had come home to roost. He got away with them.
>>> Why the double standard?
>
>> Because in the 1980s, your hero Raygun, when he wasn't tripling the
>> national debt, was building madrassas in Afghanistan to teach jihad.
>
> That last never happened.
Typical head-in-the-sand response.
Eventually, around 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries will
fight with the Afghan mujaheddin. Tens of thousands more will study in
the hundreds of new madrassas (Islamic schools) funded by the ISI and
CIA in Pakistan. Their main logistical base is in the Pakistani city of
Peshawar. [Washington Post, 7/19/1992; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
9/23/2001]
http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a1980syousefcia
Acting on behalf of the CIA, the ISI was also involved in the
recruitment and training of the Mujahideen. In the ten year period from
1982 to 1992, some 35,000 Muslims from 43 Islamic countries were
recruited to fight in the Afghan jihad. The madrassas in Pakistan,
financed by Saudi charities, were also set up with US support with a
view to "inculcating Islamic values". "The camps became virtual
universities for future Islamic radicalism," (Ahmed Rashid, The
Taliban). Guerilla training under CIA-ISI auspices included targeted
assassinations and car bomb attacks.
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7746
>> But that was "good" jihad.
--Jeff
Rod Speed
> Rod Speed wrote
>> Jeffrey Turner wrote
>>> Foxtrot wrote
>>>> Rod Speed <rod.sp...@gmail.com> wrote
>>>>> Frank Provasek wrote
>>>>>> Foxtrot <foxt...@null.com> wrote
>>>>>>> Isolated incidents can happen anywhere but claims of
>>>>>>> institutionalized racism can't be proven. More unfounded
>>>>>>> alarmism by this asshole and other assholes like Jeremiah
>>>>>>> "GodDamnAmerica"Wright.
>>>>>> Fox News and the Youtubers who hate Wright and Obama never play the full quote... God damn America for as long as
>>>>>> she acts like she is God and she is supreme.
>>>> Republican George Allen innocently used the word "macaca" without
>>>> knowing its racist definition and it cost him his career in public office.
>>> What the fuck is the "innocent" use of a racist term?
>> Using a term without being aware of its racist connotations.
>> Many outside the US dont realise that the word 'boy' can be used racistly in the US.
> And where's George Allen from, Wingnut Planet? But that's a typical racist response, "I always call those people 'x,'
> how should I know it's wrong?"
Its also quite a common problem across cultures.
>>>> But Democrat Jesse Jackson repeated referred to Jews as "Hymies" and easily got away with it.
>>> Sure he did. What office was he elected to?
>>>> Wright screeched "God damn America" three times in a mouth foaming hate filled rant. He said of 9/11 that America's
>>>> chickens had come home to roost. He got away with them. Why the double standard?
>>> Because in the 1980s, your hero Raygun, when he wasn't tripling the
>>> national debt, was building madrassas in Afghanistan to teach jihad.
>> That last never happened.
> Typical head-in-the-sand response.
Never ever could bullshit its way out of a wet paper bag.
> Eventually, around 35,000 Muslim radicals from 43 Islamic countries will fight with the Afghan mujaheddin. Tens of
> thousands more will study in the hundreds of new madrassas (Islamic schools) funded by the ISI and CIA in Pakistan.
So your claim that they were in Aghanistan has been exposed
as a bare faced pig ignorant lie. They were actually in Pakistan.
AND the absolute vast bulk of those in PAKISTAN were actually
funded by Saudi etc, oil money. The ISI has no money, Pakistan
was BANKRUPT.
> Their main logistical base is in the Pakistani city of Peshawar. [Washington Post, 7/19/1992; Pittsburgh Post-Gazette,
> 9/23/2001]
And even someone as stupid as you should have
noticed that Peshawar is in Pakistan, not Afghanistan.
Just because the Washington post claims something, doesnt make it gospel.
> http://www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a1980syousefcia
> Acting on behalf of the CIA, the ISI was also involved in the recruitment and training of the Mujahideen.
Nothing to do with the MADRASSAS being discussed.
> In the ten year period from 1982 to 1992, some 35,000 Muslims from 43 Islamic countries were recruited to fight in
> the Afghan jihad. The madrassas in Pakistan,
There it is again.
> financed by Saudi charities,
So the Washington Post article GOT IT WRONG.
> were also set up with US support
The US was completely irrelevant on that.
> with a view to "inculcating Islamic values". "The camps became virtual universities for future Islamic radicalism,"
Pity they werent in Afghanistan.
> (Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban). Guerilla training under CIA-ISI auspices included targeted assassinations and car bomb
> attacks.
Separate matter entirely to the MADRASSAS being discussed.
zzbu...@netscape.net
> News & Views for Anarchists & Activists:http://groups.yahoo.com/group/smygo
>
> http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/08/09-4
> Sunday, August 9, 2009
> The New York Times
> Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
> by Barbara Ehrenreich
>
> almost illegal to be poor. You won’t be arrested for shopping in a
> Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you’re
> well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life
> that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict
> the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in
> homeless or a millionaire, you’re in violation of the ordinance,” a city
> attorney in St. Petersburg, Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France’s
> immortal observation that “the law, in its majestic equality, forbids
> the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges.”
Well, luckiily is only New York Times cranks that reallu care about
the debate.
The 21st Century People still work on GPS, Atomic Clock
Wristwatches,
HDTV, On-Line Publishing, Electronic Books, UAVs, Self-Replicating
Machines,
and Drones, rather than crank Star Wars crapola.
>
> In defiance of all reason and compassion, the criminalization of poverty
> has actually been intensifying as the recession generates ever more
> poverty. So concludes a new study from the National Law Center on
> Homelessness and Poverty, which found that the number of ordinances
> against the publicly poor has been rising since 2006, along with
> ticketing and arrests for more “neutral” infractions like jaywalking,
> littering or carrying an open container of alcohol.
>
> The report lists America’s 10 “meanest” cities — the largest of which
> are Honolulu, Los Angeles and San Francisco — but new contestants are
> springing up every day. The City Council in Grand Junction, Colo., has
> been considering a ban on begging, and at the end of June, Tempe, Ariz.,
> carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent. How do you know when
> someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, “An indigent person
> is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be
> entitled to apply for or receive” public assistance.
>
> That could be me before the blow-drying and eyeliner, and it’s
> definitely Al Szekely at any time of day. A grizzled 62-year-old, he
> inhabits a wheelchair and is often found on G Street in Washington — the
> city that is ultimately responsible for the bullet he took in the spine
> in Fu Bai, Vietnam, in 1972. He had been enjoying the luxury of an
> indoor bed until last December, when the police swept through the
> shelter in the middle of the night looking for men with outstanding
> warrants.
>
> It turned out that Mr. Szekely, who is an ordained minister and does not
> drink, do drugs or curse in front of ladies, did indeed have a warrant —
> for not appearing in court to face a charge of “criminal trespassing”
> (for sleeping on a sidewalk in a Washington suburb). So he was dragged
> out of the shelter and put in jail. “Can you imagine?” asked Eric
> Sheptock, the homeless advocate (himself a shelter resident) who
> introduced me to Mr. Szekely. “They arrested a homeless man in a shelter
> for being homeless.”
>
> The viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent can be
> breathtaking. A few years ago, a group called Food Not Bombs started
> handing out free vegan food to hungry people in public parks around the
> nation. A number of cities, led by Las Vegas, passed ordinances
> forbidding the sharing of food with the indigent in public places, and
> several members of the group were arrested. A federal judge just
> overturned the anti-sharing law in Orlando, Fla., but the city is
> appealing. And now Middletown, Conn., is cracking down on food sharing.
>
> If poverty tends to criminalize people, it is also true that
> criminalization inexorably impoverishes them. Scott Lovell, another
> homeless man I interviewed in Washington, earned his record by
> committing a significant crime — by participating in the armed robbery
> of a steakhouse when he was 15. Although Mr. Lovell dresses and speaks
> more like a summer tourist from Ohio than a felon, his criminal record
> has made it extremely difficult for him to find a job.
>
> For Al Szekely, the arrest for trespassing meant a further descent down
> the circles of hell. While in jail, he lost his slot in the shelter and
> now sleeps outside the Verizon Center sports arena, where the big
> problem, in addition to the security guards, is mosquitoes. His
> stick-thin arms are covered with pink crusty sores, which he treats with
> a regimen of frantic scratching.
>
> For the not-yet-homeless, there are two main paths to criminalization —
> one involving debt, and the other skin color. Anyone of any color or
> pre-recession financial status can fall into debt, and although we pride
> ourselves on the abolition of debtors’ prison, in at least one state,
> Texas, people who can’t afford to pay their traffic fines may be made to
> “sit out their tickets” in jail.
>
> Often the path to legal trouble begins when one of your creditors has a
> court issue a summons for you, which you fail to honor for one reason or
> another. (Maybe your address has changed or you never received it.) Now
> you’re in contempt of court. Or suppose you miss a payment and, before
> you realize it, your car insurance lapses; then you’re stopped for
> something like a broken headlight. Depending on the state, you may have
> your car impounded or face a steep fine — again, exposing you to a
> possible summons. “There’s just no end to it once the cycle starts,”
> said Robert Solomon of Yale Law School. “It just keeps accelerating.”
>
> By far the most reliable way to be criminalized by poverty is to have
> the wrong-color skin. Indignation runs high when a celebrity professor
> encounters racial profiling, but for decades whole communities have been
> effectively “profiled” for the suspicious combination of being both
> dark-skinned and poor, thanks to the “broken windows” or “zero
> tolerance” theory of policing popularized by Rudy Giuliani, when he was
> mayor of New York City, and his police chief William Bratton.
>
> Flick a cigarette in a heavily patrolled community of color and you’re
> littering; wear the wrong color T-shirt and you’re displaying gang
> allegiance. Just strolling around in a dodgy neighborhood can mark you
> as a potential suspect, according to “Let’s Get Free: A Hip-Hop Theory
> of Justice,” an eye-opening new book by Paul Butler, a former federal
> prosecutor in Washington. If you seem at all evasive, which I suppose is
> like looking “overly anxious” in an airport, Mr. Butler writes, the
> police “can force you to stop just to investigate why you don’t want to
> talk to them.” And don’t get grumpy about it or you could be “resisting
> arrest.”
>
> There’s no minimum age for being sucked into what the Children’s Defense
> Fund calls “the cradle-to-prison pipeline.” In New York City, a teenager
> caught in public housing without an ID — say, while visiting a friend or
> relative — can be charged with criminal trespassing and wind up in
> juvenile detention, Mishi Faruqee, the director of youth justice
> programs for the Children’s Defense Fund of New York, told me. In just
> the past few months, a growing number of cities have taken to ticketing
> and sometimes handcuffing teenagers found on the streets during school
> hours.
>
> In Los Angeles, the fine for truancy is $250; in Dallas, it can be as
> much as $500 — crushing amounts for people living near the poverty
> level. According to the Los Angeles Bus Riders Union, an advocacy group,
> 12,000 students were ticketed for truancy in 2008.
>
> Why does the Bus Riders Union care? Because it estimates that 80 percent
> of the “truants,” especially those who are black or Latino, are merely
> late for school, thanks to the way that over-filled buses whiz by them
> without stopping. I met people in Los Angeles who told me they keep
> their children home if there’s the slightest chance of their being late.
> It’s an ingenious anti-truancy policy that discourages parents from
> sending their youngsters to school.
>
> The pattern is to curtail financing for services that might help the
> poor while ramping up law enforcement: starve school and public
> transportation budgets, then make truancy illegal. Shut down public
> housing, then make it a crime to be homeless. Be sure to harass street
> vendors when there are few other opportunities for employment. The
> experience of the poor, and especially poor minorities, comes to
> resemble that of a rat in a cage scrambling to avoid erratically
> administered electric shocks.
>
> And if you should make the mistake of trying to escape via a brief
> marijuana-induced high, it’s “gotcha” all over again, because that of
> course is illegal too. One result is our staggering level of
> incarceration, the highest in the world. Today the same number of
> Americans — 2.3 million — reside in prison as in public housing.
>
> Meanwhile, the public housing that remains has become ever more
> prisonlike, with residents subjected to drug testing and random police
> sweeps. The safety net, or what’s left of it, has been transformed into
> a dragnet.
>
> Some of the community organizers I’ve talked to around the country think
> they know why “zero tolerance” policing has ratcheted up since the
> recession began. Leonardo Vilchis of the Union de Vecinos, a community
> organization in Los Angeles, suspects that “poor people have become a
> source of revenue” for recession-starved cities, and that the police can
> always find a violation leading to a fine. If so, this is a singularly
> demented fund-raising strategy. At a Congressional hearing in June, the
> president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
> testified about the pervasive “overcriminalization of crimes that are
> not a risk to public safety,” like sleeping in a cardboard box or
> jumping turnstiles, which leads to expensively clogged courts and prisons.
>
> A Pew Center study released in March found states spending a record
> $51.7 billion on ...
>
> read more »