I'm gonna mute this one
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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.
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Yeah. the problem of posh people being confronted with the icky poors.
Yes, posh people are the ones using benches. And riding on the fancy seats on the bus. That's who it affects. Well reasoned.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]It sounds like wherever you are does not have adequate services for their homeless population. That’s a serious problem, and I would obviously advocate for the expansion of said services over sleep-prevention measures added to park benches.
But I am a therapist with experience working with homeless people, and contrary to what you apparently think, my experience does give me expertise on their lives. Where I live, they do have options. I’m sorry your state doesn’t serve its homeless population as well as mine. We can both agree that’s a bad thing. What we disagree on is that this simple park benches feature is/isn’t an “attack” on homeless people. I also hold the position that methadone clinics are a disservice to opioid addicts—due to my extensive experience with that population who are still addicted to opioids, and whose methadone clinics actively encourage them to remain on methadone rather than titrate off of it. Are you going to tell me that being against that is an “attack” on heroin addicts?
I’m sorry you’ve had the experiences you’ve had, but my position is entirely defensible, and you haven’t presented me with any evidence to the contrary. Moreover, your contention that I’m a “bad” therapist speaks volumes about your naïveté regarding my profession.
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Yes, posh people are the ones using benches. And riding on the fancy seats on the bus. That's who it affects. Well reasoned.
They don't use the benches, but lord do they complain if they encounter a homeless person.
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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.
Big tent liberalism is exactly what got you the anti-union, pro-war, pro-fracking, anti-immigrant democratic party of today. Every single time someone argues for speaking to a broader base it's used as an excuse to move further right. And it isn't working. Please, for the love of god, learn from the past three election cycles.
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https://apnews.com/article/california-newsom-homeless-61ebe5b2a732323989c8885899f8d929
For anyone saying that the democrats are bad for the homeless, please look at this.
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They don't use the benches, but lord do they complain if they encounter a homeless person.
So the "hostile architecture" doesn't really benefit them, does it?
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So the "hostile architecture" doesn't really benefit them, does it?
wrote last edited by [email protected]They (you) get the benefit of not having to look at poor people. Remember, they're complaining about the homeless.
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Big tent liberalism is exactly what got you the anti-union, pro-war, pro-fracking, anti-immigrant democratic party of today. Every single time someone argues for speaking to a broader base it's used as an excuse to move further right. And it isn't working. Please, for the love of god, learn from the past three election cycles.
Because when they compromise it’s never with the left. They always compromise with the right. They want the left to compromise with them but they never make any concessions towards the left.
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I will guarantee that anyone who campaigns on abolishing lobbyists and PAC donations will landslide. Hell, elect me and I'll do it because I really don't gaf about money. Extra bonus: I DESPISE Nazis and the Telecommunications Act.
How exactly are you going to campaign with no money lol
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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.
You would be surprised how many areas have inadequate homeless shelters.
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wrote last edited by [email protected]
That's not applicable here. A Scotsman is not defined by his behaviors, but his ancestral homeland. Liberalism and socialism are defined by their policy initiatives, otherwise the terms become meaningless when we ascribe any negative american political behavior to them.
All EU countries are liberal democracies. The United States falls far short of its liberal commitments. Just because American democrats abuse Big-L Liberalism doesn't mean that small-l liberalism is without meaning.
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I don't live in the US so I don't have first hand experience but both on lemmy and on reddit it was mostly leftists who were spamming "genocide Biden (without mentioning that trump was even worse)", something about inflation (like it wasn't a global issue) and other issues where gop is clearly worse. All as a reason to not vote Democrat.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Calling a genocide a genocide should not be a partisan issue, and if you think we need to temper our discussion of genocide so that your preferred genocider can win a fucking election then you are a genocide denier.
The way for the dems to differentiate themselves on this issue was to stop doing a genocide. They couldn't do that, and so they enabled the worse option because they were just too horny for killing brown kids.
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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.
wrote last edited by [email protected]All that it does is push homeless people out of the area. That is all that you are accomplishing. This will not force those who do not seek help, to seek help, it just pushes them out of sight. No matter what you say, this is the point, to push the homeless out of the area, they do not give a single fuck about getting them help. If they did, instead of making it so people couldn't lay down, or sit, in public, they would be putting far more money into mental health facilities, and other aspects of life that makes, and keeps, people homeless.
But no, just make it so they can't lay down in your area, that will make it better. It also makes life worse for people who are not homeless, especially the elderly, and disabled. This type of thinking also leads to the privatization of public spaces, reducing resources to everyone, that have a demonstrably positive affect on people. Part-and-parcel of hostile architecture initiatives are also legal punitive ones, to enforce the removal of unwanted people in areas that they can't specifically do something like put spikes on. The very morality behind "defensive" architecture is called into question, because of the line of thinking you put forward is little more than an excuse to push undesirables away from society.
https://english.artsci.udel.edu/arak-journal-article/?id=169
https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/b57726adb2fe4f91bd1a7356f7e74551
https://ltu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Berdan_Report.pdf
There are more, if you would like, everything I have ever found on this subject has read "we can prove many negative aspects of doing, and there might be some good aspects, but it isn't as evident, and often can possibly be explained by other factors", so I don't even really see research backing up this idea you propose.
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They (you) get the benefit of not having to look at poor people. Remember, they're complaining about the homeless.
Which is a valid complaint. Homeless people should be given food shelter, medicine, counseling, training and a job. Not a comfy bench.
