A minor correction.

A few days ago I went on local radio, an “All Sides Now” for Kmud, to talk about the homeless bill of rights. I was unaware that the legislature had used a procedural move to kill the bill. We need another member of the legislature to step up and sponsor a new bill guaranteeing people the right to exist if they can't pay rent. The rights outlined already exist. Each and every person has these rights simply by virtue of being born. We need to write them down so that the fascist's tools that are the police will honor them.

To that end I participated in the Days of Action for a Homeless Bill of Rights. Here are some pictures from Eureka. And a link to WRAP where you can see what the rest of the west coast is up to.

Pay attention, you are about to.

Should have posted this when I wrote it.

The Law and Order types have been laying the ground work since the Sheriff submitted his request for funds and now the community of Eureka is going to experience the "Shock Doctrine" up close and personally. The drive to criminalize and incarcerate the poor will have a brand new talking point. If we had more cells this won't happen again. All we need to be safe is to build more cells. Never a thought about building a shelter run by the government to get people out of the cold, no a bigger Jail is their only answer.
It is a terrible thing when a member of the community is taken from us by violence. There has already been a great deal of wrong information released and speculation is running wild. Don't let the Tragic death of Father Freed be used to ram through any ill-conceived jail expansion.

Vile in the City

I am disgusted by the goings on in our system on a regular basis. I was predicting that they would treat this case harshly in an effort to set an example. With those disclaimers I am ashamed that I am of the same species as the Eureka City Attorney. Sitting in a room with such vile people makes me feel unclean and her lack of empathy is indeed vile. My admiration for Tracy, taking time away from the people she loves to fight the good fight in such an environment grows each time I witness it.
One can Argue the legitimacy of our present government. There are some here that would say that the imperialists that stole this area have no legitimate right to tell people how to live here. A government that criminalizes poverty that it structurally creates has abrogated any authority it could once claim. In the courtroom of judges Miles A man was sentenced to debtors prison in a scene straight from Dickens or Kafka. Judge Miles sentenced Dane to more days in jail because he didn't try hard enough to evade law enforcement. The fact that Dane was sleeping somewhere might encourage others to sleep in the same place was the point from the bench. The idea that others would follow Dane's example of taking minimal space cleaning the area and leaving the space better then he found it would seem to be beyond the kin of those same impressionable poor folks.
The city attorney was seeking a pound of flesh asking for 27 months in Jail and thousands of fines as retribution for having the temerity to exist and to stand up for his right to that very existence. The conduct of the city attorney in this action, trying to smear Dane based on his political speech is an embarrassment to our community. The desire to grind one of our poorest citizens to dust and blame him for the cost of doing so is beyond any level of contempt that I can think of.
In our founding document, the Declaration of Independence the right to life, liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness is the underpinning of our union. Governments are established for the purpose of the protection of those rights. In any society the right to defend one's life is universally accepted. The idea that a government can make you a criminal for something that is a necessity of life is unacceptable. For Human beings to live they require sleep.
Judge Miles attempted to give Dane a break, in her mind by offering him probation. What the Judge fails to consider is that A poor person living on the street it is not possible for Dane to “go forth and sin no more” as the liberal magistrate would have him do because his sin is that he has no money in a capitalist country. He did no damage, caused no harm, no one lost the use of anything. The Idea that some woman working late for the county might find Dane so unacceptable that he needs to be incarcerated for the good of the city is vile and the fact that that is the reasoning from the bench being used to persecute this young man should sicken every member of a civil society.
Dane remains free pending appeals but is facing 140 days in Jail and thousands of dollars in fines for sleeping.