I'm gonna mute this one
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making the world as hostile as possible is a good thing?
Oh, please, seriously? I advocate for a feature in public spaces that disincentivizes homeless people from sleeping on park benches and you think I’m trying to create a living Hell for them? After I’ve already also advocated for more to be put into affordable housing and outreach services for them? Get over your self-righteousness, man. Demonizing me won’t convince me or anyone else.
And for the record, gaslighting is when you lie and manipulate a person ways that specifically cause them to doubt their perception of reality; it’s not a catch-all term for saying something someone else thinks is untrue.
Perhaps you should read your own comments with that in mind.
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I have written and rewritten my response here trying to find the right tone. I feel like we are closer to agreement here than might be immediately obvious.
I think a lot of what we are seeing now is a result of 50+ years of people who find the idea of your republic distasteful seeking every method they can to erode it away.
All the details are just components of this project, seems to me that MAGA is a result of years of stoking xenophobia and anti-intellectualism.
Turns out if you spend decades laying the groundwork you can make the situation seem completely hopeless to a whole populace.
I sincerely worry the long term goal is to perfect the formula for dismantling democracy and then start exporting it to the rest of the world.Or I could be a fool, I don't know and I don't want to rewrite this again. Sorry that this was so rambling.
[...] now is a result of 50+ years of people who find the idea of your republic distasteful [...]
You're absolutely right, although the cycle goes back a lot further than 50 years. The two parties are playing good cop / bad cop against the middle, directed by their donors with the concerns of the people driving only the nature of the lies they tell. The right wing implements authority the left placates the masses with flaccid opposition. Don't let your left parties slip to the "middle", it's just another word for right.
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By your logic, anyone from Australia would say the literal exact opposite. Let’s not forget what Liberal parties around the world are like.
That being said, in the US there are no elected center left candidates except maybe two or three. Elected Democrats—liberals, usually—are just as traitor lunatic as right wingers when it comes to anti homeless designs.
The fact that you talk about “the other extreme” without even a hint of self reflection is troublesome at best. The other “extreme” is called housing, son.
Did an American just question my logic? You guys are kinda deranged and politically toxic
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Conservatives wouldn't build the bench.
Free public spaces don't encourage people to go in to a shop hard enough. You wanna sit down? Starbucks has chairs. Want a sip of water, go buy a bottle.
Can I just say I used to live in a country with shanty towns and it sucks, it’s a shit show. Why would anyone want that? Slapping tiny homes on city parks isn’t a solution it’s just stupid
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Can I just say I used to live in a country with shanty towns and it sucks, it’s a shit show. Why would anyone want that? Slapping tiny homes on city parks isn’t a solution it’s just stupid
I was referring to like, parks, and town squares. Town squares are pretty rare in the US
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Provided, of course, that the leaves are variegated.
Or gentrified or whatever!
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No. But since you have experience, let me ask you: did you spend time sleeping on public benches and do you think features that attempt to prevent this are an attack on homeless people? And just to be clear, since this is a text-only format, I’m not being sarcastic or trying to make light of your experience; I’m genuinely curious.
wrote last edited by [email protected]When I was homeless all the shelters were full, and housing was a year plus wait for anything. I often slept in a concrete tube under a bridge. Then the government came in, removed the tubes, and puts spikes all over the concrete under the bridge. Yes I felt it was an attack. I was forced to move further out from where I could attain help, and do something to sustain myself, only making it harder for me to exist. Dealing with the government to maintain my place of residence, and medical treatment, is a part time job, where I spend, literally, 4-6 hours on hold with places like Jobs and Family Services, and the local housing authority. I can absolutely understand how easy it would be for me to stay homeless if I were say, schizophrenic. Luckily I am not, and I can maintain things like schedules, keep dozens of appointments per month, etc.
This is one of the worst possible ways to encourage people to seek help. it shows a deep lack of understanding what day-to-day life is for the homeless, especially ones who are very mentally ill.
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I was referring to like, parks, and town squares. Town squares are pretty rare in the US
U.s is weird in that you can go from state to state and it feels like completely different countries, some are gorgeous and well kept and others are straight up third world
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Yah I love how places like Lemmy are packed to overflowing with "radical leftists" who scream murder at liberals and moderates and how broadly appealing progressive policies aren't going far enough to address [issue X].
Guys, we're getting literally murdered out there, figuratively and literally. If there was ever a time to start building larger coalitions, it's now. No, you're not getting everything you want. No, we're not having a revolution, we don't have the military. Yes, you will have to compromise. And if you hate that word because you think it means walking alongside someone you despise...
Tough shit.
Pick an issue, gather allies, overwhelm it, then repeat for the NEXT issue and realize nobody is coming, you may not see a better world in your lifetime, your immediate sense of resignation at this fact is manufactured. Get your shit together. Your personal problems are clouding your thinking.
They're winning because they don't recoil in horror at the idea of working towards mid-way goals or making deals they find distasteful, that's how they pushed the overton window off the fucking map.
But yeah, lets continue to fuss over if our flags represent enough people and if [popular content creator] said the word "retard" once, while our administration builds camps and readies for war for funsies.
edit: just because I'm ready to soak up hate on this, you all also need to make real friends. You don't build movements in discord, not ones that have impact at least. You are medicating your loneliness while the world burns outside. Get out and push through the discomfort of your introversion, your ADHD, your ASD, your sexual identity insecurity, your looks or your accent or WHATEVER it is that you think is keeping you from being social and building community. We lost because we're isolated. Online groups don't count. Don't reply to me, go outside.
Who exactly are you going to form groups with? I am a bit lost on where you would even get started on something like that. Most groups I have seen advertised or have any success are extremists I wouldn't want to be a part of. I don't want to go back to being a Trotskyist just to have any meaningful impact. You berate neurodivergent and queer people specifically as not getting off their ass, yet those are the kinds of people in the ranks of these organisations. It's not like your average person is going to go and join the Labour party either.
Not all situations are like America. Here in the UK the backsliding is happening with the traditionally left leaning party who got in power using after massive fuck ups by the conservatives. So the right wing lost hard, but the other party have moved towards them. So you can't even say it's an issue with the alt-right like America. Instead it's actually an issue with the left wing party and left wing moderates. Voting for and allying with them has enabled this behavior. It has enabled them to go after transgender people specifically. Ironically the conservatives might have actually done better in this case, as they haven't expressed issues with queer people in recent times to my knowledge.
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No, it's when almost every example is of liberals doing that same thing that makes it an example of liberalism
That's actually not how a political ideology works! Do you believe that socialism is about exterminating your political enemies because nearly every socialist country in history did so? Or is it more likely that the people who label themselves with a political identity often fail to live up to their own ideals? Or that they never believed in those ideals in the first place and used it as a convenient tribe to gain power? Because liberalism has no opinion on the shape of park benches, that's just stupid
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Luckily, I became homeless in very late '99, where at least the area I was in, didn't have anti-sleeping measures installed on public benches, yet. Until I secured a shitty car to live out of, on the days I wasn't lucky to have a friend offer a spot to crash, parks were the only hope. I was removed by the police from them a bunch of times, told I cannot be sleeping there. When asked if they know any place I could spend the night, they spent zero time trying to help me. Told me to get out of there already.
It was really tempting to commit a crime, serious enough to get booked for few days, where I could catch up on sleep without freezing.
Fact those benches didn't have anti-sleeping measures, made for a few great nights where I could get some decent rest, which wouldn't have happened nowadays. So yeah, hard to say it's not an attack on homeless people, specially when the public servants have zero fucks to help you out.Sounds like the area you were in didn’t have adequate homeless shelters. Where I live, you could always have gone there. The cops wouldn’t necessarily have taken you there, but you could certainly have gotten there in your own.
I will admit that “anti-homeless” bench features don’t make much sense unless you have places and resources for homeless people to fall back on. But if there are said resources, I see the utility of these features to disincentivize homeless people from using public benches as a substitute for getting professional help.
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It's a political problem. Houseless people are there because there's no political willpower to create systematic change to support them. So you're absolutely right when you say:
we must either come up with new resources or reevaluate our investments in the resources we currently employ.
The only problem is the answer to this question is more often on the side of the investment not being worth it, so the problem is left unaddressed.
Not where I live. There are plenty of options for the homeless in my city, but we still have problems with homeless people taking up public space because they would rather be left alone and not address their problems.
Do you think I’m lying? Can you not empathize with this problem? Do you really think all homeless people flock to the resources available to them? None of them resort to vagrancy at all? Do you think the inventors of these bench features had steepled fingers and were like, “Let’s fuck these homeless MFers even harder!”?
Providing resources only goes so far. As a therapist, I can easily tell you that merely making help available does not guarantee the needy will come get help. Sometimes, you have to make it impossible for people to escape the consequences of their actions before they’ll do the work necessary to get better.
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When I was homeless all the shelters were full, and housing was a year plus wait for anything. I often slept in a concrete tube under a bridge. Then the government came in, removed the tubes, and puts spikes all over the concrete under the bridge. Yes I felt it was an attack. I was forced to move further out from where I could attain help, and do something to sustain myself, only making it harder for me to exist. Dealing with the government to maintain my place of residence, and medical treatment, is a part time job, where I spend, literally, 4-6 hours on hold with places like Jobs and Family Services, and the local housing authority. I can absolutely understand how easy it would be for me to stay homeless if I were say, schizophrenic. Luckily I am not, and I can maintain things like schedules, keep dozens of appointments per month, etc.
This is one of the worst possible ways to encourage people to seek help. it shows a deep lack of understanding what day-to-day life is for the homeless, especially ones who are very mentally ill.
As I said to another commenter, “anti-homeless” measures like these make zero sense if there aren’t resources for the homeless available. I’m sorry, it doesn’t sound like resources were available to you, and that truly sucks. Your state should do better.
However, in places where resources are available, homeless people still sometimes refuse to utilize them, and then measures like this become valid and utilitarian.
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Did an American just question my logic? You guys are kinda deranged and politically toxic
I’ll spell it out for you so you can join in on enjoying why your comment was particularly hilarious. You created the very narrow spectrum this post was made to ridicule: from far right (“conservative”) to right wing (“liberal”). You never even considered that it is only right wing to refuse to provide housing for people!
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the thing about Democrats and 'liberals' is that its a broad coalition of ideologies and political groups competing for power and having to compromise. we all want to bring about our vision of society and help people, but small differences lead to huge schisms. also, monied interests have undue amounts of power over our institutions.
conservatives on the other hand are completely united by cruelty and adherence to rigid heirarchies (in spite of how dysfunctional they are), and basically the only issues they ever have in their own base is that something isn't causing enough pain to people they hate.
i feel it is important to hold our representatives accountable, but saying things like both sides are exactly the same or complaining about liberals as if they are one cohesive entity has no value outside of pushing people away from politics. there are VERY specific people and groups that are making very bad decisions for Americans, like AIPAC or other big donors that simultaneously fund people like Andrew Cuomo and Donald Trump
Like we can all agree plantyr or whatever the fuck it's called needs to get dicked down YESTERDAY right?
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That's actually not how a political ideology works! Do you believe that socialism is about exterminating your political enemies because nearly every socialist country in history did so? Or is it more likely that the people who label themselves with a political identity often fail to live up to their own ideals? Or that they never believed in those ideals in the first place and used it as a convenient tribe to gain power? Because liberalism has no opinion on the shape of park benches, that's just stupid
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So hostile architecture is unnecessary.
It solves a different problem.
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Not where I live. There are plenty of options for the homeless in my city, but we still have problems with homeless people taking up public space because they would rather be left alone and not address their problems.
Do you think I’m lying? Can you not empathize with this problem? Do you really think all homeless people flock to the resources available to them? None of them resort to vagrancy at all? Do you think the inventors of these bench features had steepled fingers and were like, “Let’s fuck these homeless MFers even harder!”?
Providing resources only goes so far. As a therapist, I can easily tell you that merely making help available does not guarantee the needy will come get help. Sometimes, you have to make it impossible for people to escape the consequences of their actions before they’ll do the work necessary to get better.
I've worked with hundreds of homeless people, usually trying to help them before the cops sweep their camp, or keeping their car rolling so they can keep living in it.
There was a ubiquitous set of conditions:
- can't afford housing even though they had a job.
- lost identifying documents, usually in a sweep, and working on replacing them. You can't get work without these.
- no reliable postal address
- no support network
I've never met anyone who wanted to be living on the street.
I'm not talking about crust punks train hopping. I'm talking about the people who missed a day of work for whatever reason and couldn't make rent one month. Now they're in a tent near available services because the shelter kicked them out after the max stay of a week.
Being a therapist gives you no expertise here and it seems to me that a therapist who sees punishment as a viable means for behavioral change is kind of shit at their job.
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It solves a different problem.
Yeah. the problem of posh people being confronted with the icky poors.
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Wow so you have no heart? Figures, person who can't use english the way I have arbitrarily decided it should be used based on other the word farts of people who are suffocatingly similar in lack of imagination to me.
English as does every other language evolve with use. Words mean whatever we decide they do. If zoomers decided that skibidi means cool or awesome than it means cool or awesome. If that weren't the case then the following text: "Eall folc weorþaþ frēo and efne bē āre and rihtum ġeboren. Ġerād and inġehyġd sind heom ġifeþu, and hīe þurfon tō ōþrum ōn fēore brōþorsċipes dōn." would be perfectly understood by any English speaker.
