Occupy Berkeley: Urban homeless folk on the move
One surprising result of the new 99% movement has been that it has exposed, revealed and uncovered America's vast homeless population. "I've heard that in New York City, police are now instructing junkies, derelicts and the homeless to go down and live at Zuccotti Park," someone recently wrote on my FaceBook page wall.
Hell, these poor homeless slobs have to go somewhere.
Before the Occupy Wall Street movement came along, most of the destitute and homeless of America had been hidden away, living in invisible places where they wouldn't be noticed, hassled or jailed -- but now, suddenly, with the rise of OWS, it's now becoming cool to camp out.
As a result, we are now seeing America's homeless emerge out into OWS encampments, out from their secret hovels and hidey-holes and cardboard boxes under the freeways -- like rats coming out of a drain. America's rats. America's drains.
America's dark little secrets.
At Occupy Berkeley the other day, I counted 40 tents, 15 spiked-haired young runaways, 10 homeless veterans, eight toothless dopers and ten homeless dogs.
The Occupy America movement is making America's downtrodden underbelly of castoffs and misfits and detritus suddenly visible -- suddenly caught in the spotlight provided by free camping space.
Back in the 1960s, we had only one (1) homeless person -- living up on Telegraph Avenue during the daytime and in People's Park at night. Just one. Back then, Frankie was an anomaly, even for Berkeley. But now, as our schools, jobs, economy, infrastructure, healthcare system, Veterans Administration, senior programs, community networks, etc. all collapse around us as the money that used to fund them stops, changes direction and floods into the coffers of the rich instead, America will be creating more and more and more of this homeless jetsam and flotsam in years to come.
More and more of these socially-disposable prototypes are being created each day as schools fail to teach, jobs fly overseas, militias point the finger of blame on everyone but the banksters, lobbyists and war profiteers responsible, healthcare becomes unavailable to the working class, large numbers of returning vets suffer from untreated PTSD, the "War on Drugs" creates more and more criminals, gouging your neighbor becomes a way of life, Social Security and MediCare are threatened and the One Percent concentrates on creating World Domination for them instead of democracy for us.
More and more urban homeless folk are being created every single day -- and more and more of them are now on the move.
Will the next one be you?
PS: The dramatic new trend toward the militarization of America's police is turning out to be a war profiteer's wet dream. No longer do weapons manufacturers have to trudge off to far-away places on the other side of the globe in order to start wars and kill people so that they can sell their products. If they play their cards right, weapons manufacturers will now be able to start wars and kill people right here at home!
Or they can do both.
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