Public Comment

City Council had “yet another” special meeting on the "issue" of the homeless. It happened on Thursday, April 26, 2018. Unfortunately, the council had neither the courage nor the wisdom to make it a truly special meeting in any sense other than its timing. If ever there was a need for the city to step out of its “Iron Shoes” and its tunnel vision, it was this meeting. 

About 150 people showed up to speak on renewed ordinances that would provide ways for the police to harass and attack the homeless by "regulating" sidewalks and encampments. Several speakers mentioned that we had gone through this two years ago when Linda Maio proposed her set of rules – Linda’s Laws. They were never implemented because, over a two year period, the city could never get it together to provide storage space for homeless people’s possessions. 

This new set of regulations (Sophie’s codes) would be less stringent with respect to sidewalks, but not less hypocritical. Indeed, the council’s compulsion to pat itself on the back was so pronounced that, about 20 minutes after public comment ended, only a few people were left in the audience. 

When you take the hypocrisies of two years ago, let them fester without acting positively and forthrightly with respect to the human rights violations that homelessness itself constitutes, and put more hypocrisies on top of that, it piles up, like a garbage dump. 

 

Hypocrisy #1

The proposed code on “sidewalk” life says “sidewalks … [are] for the use of of the entire community.” These codes are to “ensure the entire community can access sidewalks and public spaces.” These statements are in bad faith because they do not say what they really mean. The entire community already has access. What the code really wants to say is that “the entire community must always have access to all public space,” and can’t if there are homeless people living and sleeping on it. Bad faith is a form of hypocrisy. 

To reserve the right, as a political organization, to kick certain people off a parcel of public space is to make a political decision about who can use that parcel, which means to reserve it for people other than those using it to live and sleep on. No law gives government the power to divide public space that way. No law gives government the power to give priority to the use of that parcel of public space to anyone other than the person using it. To claim that power is to belie and abuse the term “the entire community.” 

 

Hypocrisy #2

In Boise, Idaho, in 2015, some homeless people sued the city to stop it from raiding their encampments (Bell vs. Boise). The city had an ordinance that said it was illegal to sleep on public land. The US Dept. of Justice filed a brief supporting the homeless suit. (Cf. my article, “Housing is a Human Right,” in Berkeley Planet.) 

The DOJ argued that under the 8^th Amendment, if the city cannot provide shelter for all, then those left unsheltered must have access to public land. To abridge this access by law constitutes “cruel and unusual punishment.” Because a human being must live somewhere, and sleep somewhere, their doing so can not be punished. That would be to outlaw what is beyond their control. The need to sleep refers to existence rather than conduct. It cannot be outlawed. It would mean to criminalize a person’s status as homeless, rather than any conduct of theirs. Poverty is a status, and cannot be punished."To criminalize" a biological status means to send police to stop people from existing, and arrest them if they resist. 

In short, the 8^th Amendment “limits what can be made criminal and punished as such.” If the city cannot provide shelter for all homeless people in the city, then it cannot bar them from sleeping or living on public land. 

The government’s brief in the Boise case actually waxes humanitarian, affirming a broad government interest in ensuring that justice is applied fairly, regardless of wealth or status. It refers to government "interest" in breaking the cycle of poverty and criminalization wherever it exists. If there are no constructive alternatives to criminalizing encampment communities of the homeless on public land, then those homeless people have to be left alone. 

Yet the council considers this rehearsal of Linda’s Laws to be humanitarian. The council says "humanitarian" while doing the opposite. 

 

Hypocrisy #3

This council meeting on 4/26/18 was a special meeting called to discuss Sophie’s codes. (Sophie’s Choice?) It was held in a middle school auditorium, where there is more room than in the dinky council chamber at city hall. Yet it proceeded as if still in the dinky council chamber, as if nothing was special. 

It could have been a special meeting. The Mayor expected over a hundred people to show up, as evinced by the choice of venue. He could have adopted a special format, one that would have been more democratic – as opposed to the "normal" autocratic nature of council meetings. In "normal" council meetings, the people line up and speak monologues into the air, given only a minute to give "input" to the policy-makers. Without dialogue, there is no opportunity to enter into the policy making process. Dialogue, which is at the core of policy-making in a democratic ethos, is reserved for the councilmembers, who engage in it as an elite. 

When they line up, each person is limited to one minute, which is insufficient to make an intelligent presentation on an issue. One can round up other "minutes" or from other people, which means those others are then barred from speaking. To restrict what people say to a minute it to abandon the possibility of “free expression.” In other words, the people are excluded and disenfranchised by the structure of these meetings. 

This meeting would have been the perfect time to try some creative transformation of procedure. With so people having come to participate, a form of organization allowing dialogue between constituencies and councilmembers would have represented some real progress toward including the public. Extending speaker time, creating a way in which to engage individual councilmembers in dialogue, providing the possibility of changing a delegate’s mind through discussion would have been earthshaking. It would have concretized the humanism and compassion and equality and equity for which the City Council is always patting itself on the back. 

Instead, we got the usual elitist autocracy. The council sat up on a platform, looking down on the people, separated by height from any possible equitable exchange. 

 

Hypocrisy #4

Speaking of autocracy, it actually came to pass that the mayor squelched the “free expression” of one speaker. 

The council’s "sidewalk" proposal states that these new regulations will “protect Constitutional rights, including freedom of expression.” Indeed, it repeats the expression, “freedom of expression,” 3 times, as something that will be upheld and guaranteed in this “sidewalk screed.” 

Yet during this City Council meeting, one man went to the podium and spoke about some irregularities in the way these rules and regulations were being conceived, written, and proposed. And the mayor would not let him finish. His accusation to the council was that these new rules for using sidewalks were written by people who had never been homeless, and did not understand what it was like to be homeless, while nevertheless telling the homeless who to be. He still had a half a minute on the clock, and the mayor cut him off, silencing his accusation. It is atrocious that people can only speak from that little cell of time called a "minute." But to then prevent someone from saying what they have to say about the issues and about the irresponsibility of the politicians who present it is to add insult to injury. That is the utmost hypocrisy. 

In other words, there will be nice rhetoric about “freedom of expression,” but it will be empty, and spoken in bad faith. And as the Mayor sought to silence this man, the councilmembers just sat there. None had the courage or forthrightness to say, “hey, let him speak, he still has time.” 

 

Hypocrisy #5

Well, the council pretends that it is composed of adults. Yet it acts like a child who, when faced with a misbehaving toy, hits it or throws it against the wall. Sometimes the child will scream, while hitting the toy, as if to say, “be something else, I want you to be something else.” 

Homelessness is an objective, existential condition imposed on people by a confluence of economic process and a priority of property rights. The former is beyond their control, but the latter is used to throw human rights in the garbage. 

The City Council doesn’t like the fact that the homeless exist. So it hits out at them.with these little systems of rules to hurt them, maybe thinking that by hurting them, they will become different. These “sidewalk screeds” are simply a way to hit at something for its existence. 

Perhaps out of impotence, or perhaps out of disdain, or perhaps because these councilmembers are really just spoiled brats, they hit at the homeless without changing the situation (like giving them homes). With these rules, they hit at the existence of the homeless, and say, like the child, “be something else.” 

Faced with somethng in the world that they don’t like, they throw a tantrum, a quiet rhetorical, but militarized tantrum. 

 

Hypocrisy #6

The city’s “sidewalk screed” states that living in one place on a sidewalk for three days will be considered an encampment, and dealt with as such. That means the cops will come and remove the person and confiscate their possessions, those things that they need to survive in their unprotected state under the elements. And the council has the audacity to call this possibility "humanitarian." 

The section of the codes they did not discuss at this session had to do with procedures for removing encampments. Encampments are the element of community that constitute the social dimension of homeless survival. It is their way of defending themselves against city regulations that would throw them in the garbage. And this is where the council gets politically autocratic. There is nothing in its “endampment screed” that even vaguely pays attention to democracy. Nothing mentions “due process,” that Constitutional right that sits at the very center of democracy. 

Before an encampment is closed, there should be meetings involving the city, the members of the encampment, and people from the surrounding community, to talk to each other about the encampment, about the conditions of homelessness, and about what should be done by government that would be truly humanitarian. 

Sophie’s codes show no interest in that. That is Sophie’s Choice. 

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The most egregious hypocrisy revealed by the City Council was its self-flattery, its ability to crow about this plan being humanitarian, and compassionate. The council thus lies to itself. It doesn’t deal with the homeless, nor try to put an end to the condition of homelessness, while at the same time making their situation worse – even against the US Constitution. It may be less strengent than Linda’s Laws, but its motivation and implementation are the same, a way of hitting at the existence of the homeless. It is a cop-oriented spoiled brat approach to what is a problem only for homeless people, which the city wishes only to make worse, rather than resolve positively for the real humans who reside there in their tents. It even resists providing portapotties and water, so it can then hold biological functions against these people. 

If the city has no positive solution, it should just get out of the way, and let those alone who have to form community as a basic dimension of survival.