The new war against America’s homeless

Millions of America’s 140 million poor already are living without housing and many of us are a medical crisis, layoff or car repair away from joining the ranks of our country’s unhoused.

Cities are increasing the sweeps of camps and discarding people’s tents, blankets and other survival property. Meanwhile, economists are warning that there could be a global recession as a result of a number of issues, including the trade wars, tax breaks for the super wealthy and student loan debt. There is a potential catastrophic increase in the number of Americans living on our streets.

This could be one reason for the new attacks against those living outside that attempts to paint homeless people as mentally ill drug addicts beyond help or redemption and the wave of recall campaigns of political leaders who attempt to introduce humane solutions for the growing homeless crisis.

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth, Poverty, and Morality is initiating a media campaign against the construction of shelters and affordable housing solutions by claiming the homeless are basically mentally ill drug addicts who will never have the resources to rent housing so there is no reason to build it. A Sinclair Broadcasting affiliate’s hate film, Seattle Dying, is the first shot in this well-financed and nationally coordinated effort to dehumanize homeless people.

It’s even more disturbing than the Manhattan Institute’s anti-homeless attacks in the 1980s, which included vigorous promotion of municipal criminalization against sitting on commercial streets, so-called aggressive panhandling and public sleeping.

Yet another disturbing development is the use of the recall process against politicians who advance solutions to the homeless crisis, as is the case in Santa Cruz, Los Angeles and Chico, where a group launched a campaign to unseat Mayor Randall Stone and Councilman Karl Ory. All three efforts use the fear of the homeless spreading disease and lawlessness.

Based on past dehumanization campaigns, these actions suggest a forthcoming dramatic increase in the passage and enforcement of harsher laws, destruction of people’s survival property and the possibility of internment, as is already the case with people fleeing the chaos and violence caused by decades of U.S. wars in Central America.

The phrase “life unworthy of life,” or “lebensun-wertes leben” in German, was a Nazi designation for the segments of the community that, according to Hitler’s regime, had no right to live. We cannot let this happen here. We are homeless, not helpless.