6/29/24
Newsletter #626
The Crack of Dawn
The United States Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that it is illegal for homeless people to sleep outdoors. Since we all know that sleep is essential every day, what this ruling really says is, “It’s illegal to be homeless.” If you are so poor that you cannot afford housing; you’re breaking the law and you’re a criminal. Thus, our overfilled jails and prisons get more inmates, and our rate of incarceration goes up.
The oldest set of laws in the western world is the Code of Hammurabi, from way back in the ancient world in 1750 BC – 4,000 years ago. It says in its prologue, then repeats in its epilogue, "to prevent the strong from oppressing the weak". This is the rock bottom sentiment of the western world.
Does the Supreme Court’s ruling sound like the strong oppressing the weak to you? It certainly does to me.
From the New York Times:
Those ordinances, Justice Gorsuch wrote, did not criminalize the homeless but rather the act of camping outdoors. He wrote, “It makes no difference whether the charged defendant is currently a person experiencing homelessness, a backpacker on vacation or a student who abandons his dorm room to camp out in protest on the lawn of a municipal building.”
Is he out of his fucking mind? Have Gorsuch, and five other conservative judges, lost their basic humanity? The basic core of Western Civilization? If you are picking on the poorest people in society and criminalizing their existence, you are the worst kind of bully. You’re an asshole. Certainly Clarence Thomas, bombing around in his bribed, quarter-of-a-million-dollar, pimped-out motor coach with his demented MAGA white wife, is the biggest asshole. Thomas is such a piece of shit that he is reviled by both black and white alike and has been mutually detested from the very beginning with his unsavory dealings with Anita Hill. Clarence Thomas should never have been allowed to be a Supreme Court justice in the first place.
The strong must protect the weak. If the strong take advantage of the weak, that’s no longer civilization, that’s called barbarism. Any move in that direction is a wrong move. Jesus, fuck! We don’t want to become any more barbaric; we want to become more civilized.
I’m outraged, although with this conservative court I am anything but surprised. It’s a perfect example of where the majority of the court stands, which is not on the side of civilization. They think, let’s persecute those who cannot defend themselves. What the Supreme Court has done is shameful and wrong.
I shouldn’t have read the paper today.
The strong are bullying and it pains me too.
Injustice like this makes me sick!
In our society, if you have no money, you have no value. My father experienced homelessness at one point, so I understand this struggle intimately. Although I have not personally faced such circumstances, it is troubling to witness what our world is becoming.