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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.
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Thanks for introducing me to this great comic and especially the source! Here’s another great one from there:
I’ve seen this comic a few times and ma just now noticing the mouse and cat scene playing out on the corner lol
Yeah and the best part is you’re lead to believe the cat is going to ambush them when it’s just joining in!
Background details rulz!
Edit: Any idea what his shirt is supposed to say?
Looks like “No, you’re Spartacus”
No idea what that’s a reference to though.
And in that moment, I aged to dust.
Oh don’t worry I’m just horribly film illiterate
A famous quote from a famous movie: “I am Spartacus”
Should be reference to Spartacus’ rebelion? When defeated, the rebeling slaves were asked to point out Spartacus to which everyome of them said “I’m Spartacus”.
Or so the story goes.
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.
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread.
Anatole France
Honestly, right wingers and elites have the short sighted and sick obsession with simply jailing whoever they don’t like for various reasons.
This obsession with controlling the masses has already created the largest Prison Population per capita in the US. The result? Prisons give US capitalists a ready source of slave labor, and gives them complete control over the population at large.
This control is exerted via forcing compliance to societal norms through threat of incarceration, as well as the more obvious form of control via stripping of the autonomy of those already incarcerated.
Ultimately only narcicists and megalomaniacs and their most sycophantic bootlickers would remain free if these sick fascists had their way, and they (and the rest of us) would find themselves residing within a hell of their own creation: a truly fucked world where only the most power hungry are free…and truthfully they wouldn’t actually be free.
Their lust for power would innevitably become their fetters.
The cat is playing poker with two mice in the last panel.
I mean, whether this cartoon makes sense heavily depends on where you’re at. In parts of Europe people choose to sleep on the streets even though they would get free sleeping places in social projects. (And they have their own reasons for that, and it’s fine. But still: they have that option here, it’s not like they are forced to sleep on the street).
This is true. Although many shelters disallow drug taking or alcohol
Are you even allowed to just play Texas hold em in the streets like that? Cop needs to get his priorities straight.
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Oh hell. You’re right.
There’s some real societal stigma against living and working out of a vehicle and I think thats hurting lots of people right now.
I think that we should promote living in vehicles and the nomadic lifestyle as a legitimate alternative to the conventional housing and renting system, while getting the government dollars to flow into charities like the homes on wheels alliance to help buy and convert used vehicles into minimal living spaces for those in need.
The current housing market is fucked, the current renting market is fucked, more and more people are forced to choose between paying rent and not dying of starvation, inevitably choosing the latter and getting evicted. Its going to take either a complete breakdown of the system or decades of gradual correction to fix these problems at all. In the meantime, let’s swallow our pride and accept that living in a pod on wheels is better than living on the street.
Also, I think the big issue with homelessness from the perspective of most people is visibility. Its not an issue as long as you can’t see it and it doesnt affect property values. Putting people in cars helps take away some visibility of that reality for the yuppies and homeowners who can’t stand seeing such things. One of the comments here complained about seeing a homeless person shamelessly popping under a bridge. If that homeless person had a blacked-out van with a sleeping cot and had pooped in a bucket out of view you would never know what’s going on in that random van.
Of course some homeless people are just nasty pricks who dont give a fuck and would shit in public anyways hard on that Diogenes philosophy, but thats human nature for you.
I’m not sure “out of sight, out of mind” is a good solution to the unaffordability of housing in our late stage capitalism society.
Certainly a modest proposal.
If they outlaw sarcasm I’m going straight to the death penalty. It was nice reading up all these posts to entertain my brain 🧠 in between tasks!
Background details rule!!
I have bit of a nuanced take on the subject (ie: I’m going to get downvoted into oblivion.)
So here goes. To me Homelessness isn’t the problem. Rampant drug addiction and mental illness are. For the mental illness part, we need comprehensive and affordable mental health care for everyone. That’s not going to happen in my lifetime though.
The drug addiction however…
Places like Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle and Vancouver (where I’m from) have followed the decriminalization theory of drug rehabilitation. This posits that by providing clean drug paraphernalia and safe places to use drugs, will help people to overcome addiction. But the current state of these cities prove that this theory is false. In order to make someone change, they have to want to change. When you make drug use easier, there is less incentive for that person to want to get clean. Homelessness and the accompanying problems are to most of them just the “cost of doing business.”
Their lives should be made more difficult as to incentivize them to want to change their ways. Of course there should be certain exceptions, such as when it’s too hot or cold out. But we have to somehow give them a reason to change their ways.
At least where I live there are systems in place to help you get off the street. I would know as I was homeless for a year living on the street. But when COVID hit, I finally had enough and decided to get help. I went to a shelter, got signed up for disability and through BC housing I got myself a room in a shared complex. I’m proof that when you really try, there is help out there for you to make your life better.
Now bring on the downvotes.
Drug addictions spiral out of control because their lifes suck and they want an escape. If you make their lifes harder you dont help anyone. Drug addiction should be treated in the same way as mental illness.
But the most effective way to help them is to give them a perspective and a way to get out of their situation before they have to stop using the drugs, i.e. give them housing and have a doctor supply them their drugs, then slowly taper them off.
Or just dont let people get homeless in the first place.
I know it’s almost an oxymoron, but homeless is closely tied to housing prices.
If you lost your job how long would you be able to keep living where you are? Maybe a long time, but for maybe 10% of the population it’s a much shorter frame. Add on some other twists of fate (or bad planning): a medical emergency; an abusive spouse; an unplanned pregnancy; a substance abuse problem; and you have a concoction that could land you on the streets in a few months if not weeks.
The “free drug paraphernalia” (e.g. services to help save addicts lives) has followed the wave of addicts, not the other way around. People were dying long before they showed up.
Affordable housing, shelters, and housing first programs are the real keys to solving this. But there’s a lot of people who would rather eat their right arm than see a drug addict (or other undesirable) get government assistance.
Lots and lots of disabled people, even with disability income. The affordable housing wait list in some major cities is several years.
When you make drug use easier, there is less incentive for that person to want to get clean.
You seem to have some very naive ideas about drug abuse. Drug addicts always have problems that caused them to become drug addicts. For someone without underlying problems, getting clean is its own reward and requires no extra incentives. If you truly care about getting people off drugs, you have to fix the problems that caused them to become addicts in the first place, but that’s difficult and expensive so nobody wants to talk about it.
I’m with you on the point that (mental) healthcare should be affordable and accessible. Drug use however isn’t the problem, but merely a symptom as well. Figure out why people turn to drugs, solve the underlying issue (generally mental health related), and the drug issue is gone.
Already in the works:“Safer Kentucky Act"
Pretending like people who have issues with homeless people camping just hate the idea of seeing poor people in the presence is a massive straw man.
A lot of homeless who choose to camp in heavily urban areas are deeply disturbed, and almost proudly violate every rule of society.
I’d think that if society fucked me over enough to the point that I had to sleep on her streets, I’d proudly violate all the rules too.
You expect people to respect the institution that bent them over until they broke? Fuck that.
Respect is reciprocal. I’ll give it at first but if it’s obvious I’m not getting any back, then there’s no sense in continuing to give it.
Something about a dog biting back after being kicked around enough
So on that last part, residents in areas with a high population of disruptive homeless would feel well within their rights to criminalize their behavior.
To that I would say society is failing them either further.
How much does it cost to criminalize homelessness? Between enforcement, jailing, feeding, clothing, trials, lawyers, DAs, etc. It’s a fucking fortune.
Why do we go right to the stick, when the carrot is cheaper and more humane? Why aren’t we helping them instead of spending more money to strip away whatever shreds of dignity they have left?
God forbid we help people down on their luck. Much better for us to exert even more effort and capital to dehumanize them. Surely that’ll keep everyone from choosing a vagrant lifestyle and make them pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
I bet you haven’t heard what those British MPs said about homelessness.
Considering this is meant to be NYC, I don’t really think that’s relevant.
This attitude towards homelessness is not unique to NYC.
I’ve seen this comment before and I hate it. The second that NON WHITE homeless dude talked back to the white cop he’d have a face full of curb and probably be on his way to jail if not death. What kind of ridiculously naive person drew this?
