Othering, verbal and physical assaults, laughing at victims of economic displacement, wanting to strip people of their possessions and their dignity, describing people as latent threats, the reduction of a group of people to encroachers and criminals, using language such as “bum” and “street person” and “the homeless problem”… and the increasing approval and enforcement of these views by those in power… normalizing living without housing, normalizing dying from exposure and untreated illness, not recognizing assaults as hate crimes, the use of ordinances that criminalize feeding people, criminalizing resting in public view, using the police to force them to “move along” from public spaces, shops and restaurants, using state violence to “sweep” them from the area and destroy their personal possessions, the use of prisons and other massive facilities as shelters, normalizing these specialized shelters that dictate and enforce “rules” and separate their families, while using zoning restrictions to keep people from choosing or providing other options for shelter
….
You tell me what that looks like.
Genocide and crimes against humanity never emerge overnight. They’re the product of years of Othering and socially acceptable hatred/mistrust until it comes to a point where violence is seen as a logical next step to “solving the problem” of people whose humanity has been taken away from them.
We are on a dangerous trajectory.
