Heres a mind-bender for you with a question embedded in it: In some not-too-distant-Future Corporate world, you and a guest sit down to a chicken dinner in your home. The two of you dig in hungrily. Warm fried chicken dissolves in your mouth. Loud pounding at your door. Cops surge in. “Hands up! Your neighbor saw you buy Foster Farms, not Tysons, the official corporate brand. And, youre illegally sharing food! Thats two laws youve broken.” They grab the plates, tossing your food into the sink. They haul you down to the station where they sock you with two $50 tickets. They say youre lucky you didnt spend the night in jail. A few weeks later after a hard day, you shower and climb into bed, exhausted. Your BeautyRest mattress cradles your body in all the right places. The same bunch of cops jolts you from your warm twilight sleep. Apparently, since the food infraction, theyve monitored your purchases. “Sealy is the only sanctioned corporate brand,” they shout “Get up! Youre under arrest for unauthorized bedding!” This time the penalty is a week in jail and a $500 fine. Now imagine that, as a result of these arrests, you lose your job, then your home. You are living on the street. Food Not Bombs shows up in a nearby park. You are ravenously hungry. Police raid the tables. As you look helplessly on, their boot heels grind the food into the dirt. Dragging your tired bones to a doorway, you huddle on the piece of cardboard you carried under your arm. As you drift off on the cold, hard concrete, a flashlight blasts you awake. “Move on, buddy!” orders the cop. “Flusher trucks moving in. Youll get wet. You trudge to a piece of grass. Private security shouts in your face, “You cant sleep here.” Why is the housed scenario unimaginable, preposterous, comical in its exaggeration while the homeless scenario is not? Why do we assume that people living within four walls have the right to sit, eat, bathe, sleep and perform necessary activities of daily living in private. Why do we assume homeless people living in the open should not have the same rights? That is why homeless activists want a Bill like AB 5 that encourages Californians to view these essential activities of daily living, when performed by citizens without housing, as equally necessary and lawful as those same life-sustaining acts they take for granted within their own four walls. Homeless people report San Francisco cops shunt them from place to place many times each night. How they rest at all is beyond my imagining. That is why AB 5 gave homeless people the right, to “access public property,” “move freely” and “rest and sleep in public spaces without police or BID agents harassment or discrimination. In June 2007, Orlando, Florida instituted a feeding ban. Food Not Bombs cofounder, Keith McHenry was labeled a food terrorist by Mayor Buddy Dyer and arrested for feeding homeless people in Orlando parks. Bans like this in California, are the reason AB 5 forbade “law enforcement from enforcing laws that prohibit public serving of food.” In San Francisco, Department of Public Works employees routinely confiscate homeless persons belongings. That is why AB 5 guaranteed [homeless people] the right to possess personal property. Additionally: AB 5 guaranteed [homeless people] the right to access public restrooms, clean water...health care, confidentiality of medical records, assistance of legal counsel.” AB 5 would have created “24-hour neighborhood hygiene centers with bathrooms and showers where people [could] stay clean, rested and healthy.” AB 5 would have created a “law enforcement agency mandate to report to the Attorney General annual data on enforcement of local ordinances against homeless persons to guard against discriminatory implementation.” Bottom line: I ask you: Why are poor and homeless people deprived of basic human rights that housed people take for granted? Why is it necessary for the Coalition on Homelessness San Francisco and the Western Regional Advocacy Project to create a Bill that reinforces human rights automatically guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution to all American citizens?
Posted on: Sat, 25 Jan 2014 08:30:12 +0000
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