Dave The Web Guy
How to Fix the Homelessness Problem
06/19/2023
A post came up in my Next Door feed this morning from a person who snapped the above pic.
What can be done? This guy has been sleeping in Bidwell Parkway for several days. Often joined by people who seem to be drunk or walk around yelling. I don't want to approach. Call 911 with medical emergency? Just don't want this to become a homeless base!
Accordingly, here is my advice for the person who posted it, and to anyone who lands here:
Advocate for "housing first" strategies that work. Same for forms of universal healthcare.
If you are a progressive with whom these concepts resonate already, lean in and support policies of compassionate containment or just containment, and involuntary policies of commitment to mental institutions and hospitals. This includes for jails and prisons when it seems to make sense. Forgive errors of judgement in the process (because there will be errors), and, fight abuses of the same in the courts - because they will happen as well - not in the streets every time a dramatic video is leaked. Tolerate necessary social control.
If you are a conservative, lean in and pay the extra taxes to make all of this happen, as well as slightly higher prices to compensate or help businesses and companies pay real living wages. You can't complain about homeless base camps and yet gripe against the social collectivism required to address them at the same time. A minority of people will game social safety net programs and you will walk past a few people living as well as you, the one who goes to work each day, at subsized expense. Learn to smile and say hello to them as you do.
The last option, systematic extermination, is not on the table.
If you can't stretch a little either way from your ideological anchor, and ovens are not an option, then go out and tell the guy in the picture above a good joke, he could probably use the lift.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
civildecomposition humanity regurgitation
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Not A Willy-Neely Death
05/05/2023
Jordan Neely wasn't killed on purpose.
To those who picked that up someplace (I'm looking at you mayonnaise media), if they honestly believe that, I guess I get their angst.
But, if they're ignoring the fact that an honest effort was made to quell an ambiguous threat that went horribly wrong with an ill-advised chokehold, then I can't have sympathy for the intellectual void that would settle someone on anger toward the marine. Such an intellect just wants to be angry and any headline will do.
What I am is sad for the man who died, for there not being a culture and a system that would have intercepted him through help or containment, and for the marine who at this point I more reasonably believe was just looking to help in a situation that was contextually threatening and chaotic. Enough to compel him.
I don't think that the marine reached out to stop a man from insinuating threats alone, as that would make no sense. He probably had reason to believe that some actual physical attack was imminent. He may have miscalculated that probability (though based on the dead man's police record, probably not) but that's not on him -- a mix of people would interpret the situation differently given the dead man's behavior.
A tragedy for both parties and any collective anger needs to be directed at every reason that guy was walking around freely, particularly given his past. Those reasons, whatever they are, are the deficit -- not the marine who unwisely got involved the way that he did.
As an aside, have you noticed that every single media house that publishes on about this story fails to land on this most direct and innocuous angle? That's because $$$. The rationale coverage appealing to reasonable people is not profitable.
It would make so much more sense for Elon Musk to label for-profit media entity Twitter accounts than non-profit ones for this very reason.
By Dave for Personal Blog.
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