:mao-shining:
They believe people that aren't housed are dangerous, lazy, and that you shouldn't give them money.
They have already begun installing home security garbage that will effectively flashbang pedestrians and delivery drivers at night.
I understand that homelessness is a requirement under capitalism because housing and land speculation is the only real growth vehicle (i.e the backbone) of capitalist economies. Regardless of what these people do, millions will be forced into homelessness by the market and market-state.
I need theory covering why you should give homeless people money, and capitalist parasitism (Mao?).
Anything on convincing these people on why they should do mutual aid with the people on the streets will also be greatly appreciated. I think anything on liberation philosophy would be more effective as they are religious.
These people are not particularly privileged, and identify as socialist and religious, but the difficulty is that they are quite old and paranoid.
There's that beautiful piece, People "Feel Unsafe" Because Visible Poverty Is Everywhere, by Adam Johnson from Citations Needed. I wish that every one in the world would read it, please share it with your friends.
the "danger" thing really gets me. who the fuck are you that houseless people could threaten your fucking safety? the people who get any self defense equipment taken away by the cops, who get surveilled, harassed, and beat every goddamn day by the pigs?
yeah the people this society's put at the bottom of the bottom if they come at you with their fucking bare hands and you lose i can't say you ain't had something comin.
but what people actually mean about danger is visible human poverty that might threaten their fuckin capitalist fairy tale that everyone on the bottom just ontologically deserves to be there to suffer and die (just not where my bourgouis ass can see it)
why you should give homeless people money
I don't know if there's any practical case to be made for this.
Would we be radicals if we did not believe that we had the best approaches and solutions to the problems of our time? And if money is power, would we relinquish it to people whom we haven't checked if they share our values and analysis?
Sure, it's charitable and generous and loving, we can all agree on that. But I don't think it's anything more than that. I have decided that I was Not Born To Play Defense and that I would lend assistance mostly to people and organizations who were on my side ideologically.
That said, Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich is pretty good, it's a snapshot of people working low-paying jobs and being quasi-homeless in :florida-cool: .
In terms of making the case for serving the most destitute, this article makes a strong case for Housing First, safety nets, and societal responsibility in general. The author is certainly not a comrade but much of his writing can make people more open-minded.
you should give money to homeless people so they feel less awful and so you don't look like a scumbag and because it's the correct mindset and it's human interaction.
I do give needy people money occasionally, if I have a couple bucks and money isn't tight. Sometimes I buy them stuff from the store or cover their bus fare. But this is maybe 0.3% of my income, compared to 35% of my gross income that I spent one year making sure that a struggling comrade didn't go homeless (she eventually pulled out of her rut and has been making everyone proud).
For the past couple years I've been getting a much clearer picture of a strategy by which I might build a revolutionary moment, or at least enrich the world and make it structurally better off. So for me everything on top of rent and utilities and food and transportation goes toward projects tangent to this strategy, or saving up for bigger hurdles, like buying land to hold in trust and use for communal and movement-building purposes.
Or would you rather I spent everything on charity to local basket cases, or contributed to whatever "good causes" on gofund me until I was broke, making no noticeable dent in the magnitude of either?
I could give all my money to the poor- and live the life of a saint, or I could give all my money to a long-term replicable project of abolishing poverty- and live the life of a communist.
