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This cartoon has four panels. All the panels show a gritty commercial doorway – the kind that’s recessed a few feet into the building – on a city sidewalk. There’s litter and graffiti here.
There are two characters in the comic strip. The first character is a homeless man sleeping in the doorway, wearing a zip-up sweatshirt over a t-shirt and a dull red knit cap, and with a full beard. The other character is a muscular-looking cop dressed in a police uniform and carrying a baton. In defiance of tradition, he is cleanshaven. I’ll call these two characters KNITCAP and COP.
PANEL 1
Knitcap, covered by a brown blanket and with his head pillowed on some rolled-up clothes, is lying in a doorway, apparently asleep. The cop is using his baton to poke knitcap in the side. The cop has a somewhat sadistic grin.
COP: Hey, you! Get up! We’ve outlawed sleeping in public! You’re not allowed anymore!
PANEL 2
Knitcap is sitting up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with one hand. He speaks calmly. The cop watches, smirking, arms akimbo.
KNITCAP: In that case, I guess I’ll sleep in a hotel tonight.
PANEL 3
A close-up of Knitcap. He’s stroking his chin with a hand, as if thinking through his options.
KNITCAP: Or should I sleep in my townhouse instead? Or my Hamptons place? I’ll call my butler and ask what he thinks!
PANEL 4
Knitcap, grinning, is now holding a hand next to his face, thumb and pinky finger extended, pretending it’s a phone as he talks. The cop is glaring and slapping his baton against his palm.
KNITCAP: Smithers? Smithers old boy! My super fun street sleeping holiday is done. Which of my mansions shall I sleep in tonight.
COP (thought): Next step: Outlaw sarcasm.
HG: “What’s that? You’re going to put me in a nice warm cell and be required to give me three hots and a cot?”
PO: .oO(Next step. Outlaw human rights.)
The constitutional amendment that outlawed slavery in the US provided one exception: anyone convicted of a crime.
This was a tool of Jim Crow to maintain a sizeable black slave labor force via disproportionate criminalization of black people and poverty (newly-freed previous slaves were very poor, often illiterate). It was and is a tool of modern racialized hyper-exploited labor via the prison system. And it is likely a tool that US authorities are keeping in their back pocket for the mass criminalization of the homeless.