Homeless people not in need of a cell to get well

Editor’s note: This testimony below was delivered at a hearing on so-called “Laura’s Law,” forced treatment and conservatorship for homeless people, to California’s Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors in December 2019.
SAN JOSE, CA — Members of the Council and my fellow citizens, in the spirit of the ancient Greek forums of old, when men of reason, logic, and a sense of civic duty gathered to bear witness to the affairs that impact the body politic, it is with great humility that I present my contention.
Human compassion, moral conviction, and ethical concerns compel me to challenge the well-intentioned, politically expedient, yet ignorant assertion that homeless people should be conserved and incarcerated.
Human beings are not broken parts in a machine. We are endowed by our Creator with certain inalienable rights. Amongst these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and to secure these rights, governments were instituted to provide for the common welfare.
My homeboys and homegirls living outside along the Guadalupe River are not in need of a cell to get well, they are in need of spiritual physicians to heal their human conditions.
Can you realize the law has no place when a human needs shelter? Yesterday’s Martin v. Boise decision by the Supreme Court permitted the lower court ruling to stand that a human being has a right to erect a shelter in any public sidewalk or park, if the City or County fails to provide housing. Is not this a vindication of the idea that the law has no place if no shelter exists?
As a society, in order to have social justice we must first practice economic justice. The notion that pointing a gun at a citizen ordering him to put his hands behind his back because he is experiencing the abject consequences of poverty, generational trauma, PTSD, or schizophrenia is insane.
Members of the Council, I appeal to your sense of humanity, which should be the ethical guide in the legislation of laws that impact men’s lives. We are at a precipice. Your decisions will impact the lives of not only the least of these, but will reflect on us as a community, baring our impotency in dealing ethically, morally, and compassionately with our fellow citizens.”