"Berkeley Homeless Protest Lack Of Places To Sleep" reads the headline in the Berkeley Daily Planet. I know, I know. You can't just wish the homeless away. But they can't just lay their whole trip on society, either. Seems to me that if you're lacking a place to sleep, you're really saying you won't go into the crucial re-entry phase, involving homeless shelters, sobriety programs, job-training, employment counselling, free Internet access to information resources at public libraries, and face it: day labor and wages. That's all out there for the taking.

So, before you ask a municipal corporation to let you illegally use its property as a crash-pad - that property being a park dedicated for recreational use by tax-paying and law-abiding citizens - ask yourself what's your plan for getting up off the ground.

A rational society's domestic ideal ought to be equal opportunity, not equal outcomes.

Related Posts:

"What Makes The Homeless Homeless?"

"Feces Ain't Fun: Downtown Arcata Hurtin'"

"Arcata's Commissars Of Entitlement"

"Anomie In Ashland"

"Skilful Mike Speaks"

TECHNORATI TAGS: BERKELEY, HOMELESS, EQUAL OPPORTUNITY

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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at November 17, 2005 04:16 PM