Homelessness A Crime (Get a home or go to jail)

Lets take a look at homelessness. Here in Canada it’s already tough to be poor. It’s illegal to sleep on public land, and crown land can be seized at any time by law enforcement. The Crown Lands Act endows them with this privilege. Ever been a Canadian in a park that said "I have the right to sit here, you can't make me leave, this is public property?" Well, according to the law you don't have the right, and they can, and will, arrest you if they please. We also have taxes which make it hard to exist without the world and not filing taxes can even be considered a form of tax evasion. Cops harass the poor more than many other groups, and it’s likely we’ll see a hardening on the poor in our country.

In the United States life is getting worse daily. I blogged about the old man who was arrested for feeding the poor and mentioned the man who was arrested for sheltering the poor, but not only are those who support the poor under attack, the poor themselves often find themselves being attacked by the system.

There’s a place in Los Angeles called Skidrow. It’s become a refuge for many of the city’s homeless. Although crime can be heavy there decent people just try to get by on what little they have. The city decided to come up with a plan to deal with what they call a homeless problem. Their solution was the broken windows theory. It amounted to police entering skid row and tearing down tents, sweeping the streets clean of all homeless people’s possessions, and even arresting old men for sitting on “stolen crates”, which could have been already sitting there on the sidewalk when people sat. It was a blatant attack on American civil rights.

The documentary above is pretty good. It gives a good look into poor people’s fight to keep what little they have. Still, it’s under attack. The video below outlines a pretty good portion of the assault being carried out.

 

We have to keep helping the poor, and fighting crime, but we also have to fight this Nazi mentality that seeks to "end" poverty in atrocious ways. We have to be careful, because there's a real difference between not having money and poverty. Poverty is often treated like some kind of burden that acts as a plague. The working class has it stuck in there mind that they have to end poverty. This has NEVER been the case. They have to help end the burden of poverty. Being poor is a place some people go to get freedom, and there's true freedom in it. Freedom the rich, and working class have forgotten about, or never felt. It's freedom from all things, including money. They've never had freedom from money, so therefore they don't understand it, nor have they EVER experienced its truth. They don't understand the burden it can relieve, and the absolute theoropy it can render. This is truth that runs deeper than a camping trip, or vacation, this is the true freedom.

In the bible there's an interesting story where Jesus tells a rich man to give up his possessions. This shows that God sometimes wants people to be poor, but likely also to see the truth in it, the good in it, and feel its true freedom. This is another reason why poverty is so fiercely and cruelly attacked spiritually. Not because it's bad, but because God can do good in it. It can be freedom, and when it comes right down to it, the core of their movement has little to do with freedom.