New York (ACD) --
New York City's leader and thief, Rudolf
Giuliani, has decided to 'crack down' on the homeless (11/20/99).
This was precipitated by an incident in which
a woman was struck over the head with a 
brick. According to reports on NY1 news,
there is no conclusive evidence that the attacker was
a homeless person! So we have a witch hunt being
carried out on a pretext, for plainly political
purposes. The homeless must agree to be harassed
if they want to avoid going to Ryker's Island.
Are they to abandon most of their worldly goods
so they can be hauled to a homeless facility in
a car? So that they can wait in line in
the cold for scarce beds in a detention center, not
once but each day, only to be turned out of doors
at six in the morning? The mayor's brutal homeless
policy makes the N.Y.C. cops, some of whom have already
demonstrated themselves to be pathological racists,
the only psychiatric analysts for this community
of displaced people. By criminalizing homelessness,
the mayor shows himself to be most insensitive to
the problems of the mentally ill. Is this how a
civilized society treats people who have noplace
to live, who often eat from trash cans and who,
in most cases, have little education and few
qualifications for employment? Do these people
belong in jail? It's time that New Yorkers recognize
that jails are a more expensive and shameful social
expedient than other more humane options. It's
time to send a message to the voters outside of
New York City that Rudy Giuliani's cynical practice
of blaming the victim cannot be emulated at the
level of national policy.
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