For accompanying story see
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2005/04/108381.shtml
For audio from the rally see
http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2005/04/108365.shtml
- e-mail:: rockyneptuno@yahoo.com.mx
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oops - here's the pic of Larry Milligan
20.04.2005 21:41
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qjb
homeless
20.04.2005 21:58
I give my respects for all who organized and represented our fellow citizens that we have forgotten. Whether your anti-war, anti-sweatshop, anti-budget cuts, we need to organize and recognize this growing problem. It is too bad the homeless problem isnt as romantic as the anti-war rallies, but this problem will continue to grow unless all who stand against poverty fight against it. peace
A
If You Really Cared
21.04.2005 07:16
If you reaaly "care" about the homeless why don't you all take one or two home with you to live. And when the lunitcs rape your 12 year old daughter, don't worry it wasn't their fault it was societies.
josh
hello josh the troll
21.04.2005 11:03
Josh the troll said, "when the lunatics rape your 12 year old daughter"..
Usually don't respond 2 trolls, but since u brought it up,
Corporate media scapegoating homeless people as rapists and child molesters when most rapists/molesters are in reality "family men" usually unhappily married, holding a well paying career and driving a nice car. They usually molest or rape somebody they know and due to their higher standing in the community are often not held accountable for their actions. The victim is also less likely to press charges because they are powerful and respected people in the community, and the reaction may be to blame the victim. Patriarchy is alive and well in the court of public opinion, and wealthy powerful males are still able to escape judgement for their crimes of violence and rape..
Lower income people don't have this luxury and therefore are convicted as guilty when in reality they may be innocent but easier to blame and scapegoat..
Would like to compare scapegoating violence on homeless to the litter problem often blamed on homeless people. The visiblity of the homeless living in a campsite is obvious, and any litter strewn about their campsite is blamed on them, regardless of origin. If a police officer wishes to give the housless campers a bad name, it is easy to carry a large garbage bag of litter from their police cruiser to the campsite, then strew the litter about and quickly leave (5 min)..
This is done when the homeless are away from the campsite. This was witnessed in Arcata California when the APD was attempting (they did) to shut down a campsite free space near the Arcata marsh. We were attempting to mirror the Dignity Village concept in Portland. The presence of litter is than blamed on the homeless and given as reason to move the homeless from this space, charging them with littering and tresspassing..
Don't some homeless people litter? Of course. There are always people who will give a bad name to their peers. The presence of litter makes it difficult for all homeless, it only takes a few to give everyone a bad name. This doesn't imply that the police can use the litter as a means to speed forced evacuation of a homeless camp. If someone returns to a campsite and notices litter that wasn't there when they left, the police are the likely cause, or some resident who dislikes homeless people and wants them to go away..
Littering and rape are very different, yet the similarity of scapegoating and stereotyping of homeless for both these offenses shows that society views humans with blinders on. While individual homeless people also rape, murder and molest children, assigning this behavior to a large and diverse group is ignorant and foolish. Wearing blinders also enables the real criminals to escape while innocent people are blamed because of prejudice..
If anyone was perceptive enough to notice a pattern with child kidnappings, femicide and rape (example; murder of 400 + women maquiladora workers in Jaurez) and the lack of effective police response combined with police/politician scapegoating of women as dressing seductive and therefore enticing their attackers, maybe their eyes would open to a very unpleasant reality. Patriarchy and police state tactics go hand in hand with blaming the victim and enabling the powerful wealthy males to escape judgement. Instead the peanut police blame the usual suspects, an Egyptian chemist and a gang of narco traffikers. No homeless here, but the truth is still buried under so much patriarchal bullshit that justice is once again delayed to benefit the wealthy..
People want to belive that drug dealers, foreigners, homeless, etc are the criminals responsible for the femicides and the wealthy powerful males are noble good citizens who love their family and community. Just look at all the good work they do!! How could these wealthy family men be rapists and murderers of women?? Of course not, it had to be that disgusting, dirty homeless drug addict. Now we all feel better, right America??
Puddin' POP anyone??
The above are also blanket statement generalizations but most likely more accurate than Josh Troll's statement that automatically labels homeless as lunatics. This is a bait and hook tactic on Josh Troll's part, yet it is also possible to throw this antagonism back atcha and bring up a related thread dealing with the fearmongering, stereotyping and scapegoating of homeless people..
luna moth
thanks luna moth
21.04.2005 13:18
for a great comment. you're so right...
reader
Homeless Rights & Commonsense...
24.04.2005 15:40
To the poster of the post titled;If You Really Cared.
That one is homeless or not has little to do with whether one is a rapist or not. Undoubtedly there have been and will be homeless people that do such things but being a rapist is not synonymous with being homeless, or vice versa.
For example most of the serial killer/rapist have not been homeless. Most appear to be single white males living a middle or lower middle class lifestyle. Which is not to say in any sense that the majority of single white males or middle class people are serial killer/rapists.
Most child molesters know their victims and have gained some level of trust before they act. They depend upon the victims shame in hopes of keeping the victim quit. A child molester is just as likely to be ones relative, a priest or even cop as it is a homeless person. Again this is not the same as saying that the majority of relatives,cops or priests are child molesters.
So called date rape occurs not just among the poor but also among middle class teens and adults. Look at the recent gang rape trial of the three young men from Rancho Cucamonga who were convicted of sexually assaulting an unconscious teenage girl with a pool cue, juice bottle and cigarette as they filmed themselves on videotape. They all came from middle class families and one of them was the son of a wealthy former Orange County cop.
Back to the question that is raised by your comment, would I invite a homeless person to live in my home. Well not if I didn't know him. But that's just commonsense and would go for just about anybody homeless or not. Besides that is not the issue that the protesters are raising. Your comment is a "Red Herring" an illogical argument. A red herring is when someone introduces irrelevant material to the issue being discussed, so that everyone's attention is diverted away from the points made, towards a different conclusion. The potential pitfalls of inviting the homeless to live in ones personal home is not part of the protestors agenda. Their agenda is that the homeless have the right to exist and in doing so to occupy unoccupied public land in the course of perusing that right.
What you and others like you fail to understand is that it is fair to say that most of the people on such sites as indymedia or infoshop have a very different vision of the way society should be structured then does the conventional mainstream viewpoint. In the society that we invision there would be no homeless as land would be held by the community and the rights to it would be granted to a person based upon tangible occupancy and use and not upon abstract absentee property rights. No person could be forcibly removed from the place that they were born on or live in. Nobody could forcibly expropriate or occupy against the choice of the current occupants any occupied residency or land. Of course I can't speak for everyone on such sites or everyone who advocates for homeless rights but I do believe that there are many of them that would concur with this vision. It is out of either ignorance or with plain maliciousness that the poster JOSH can pose a question such as whether or not we would let a homeless person move into our homes. That is not the issue at all.