Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Pensacola ratchets down attacks on homeless people -- a little

Pensacola, Fla., is about to repeal a law that makes it a crime for homeless people to cover themselves with blankets on city property.

It's a step, but it isn't enough.

The City Council last week voted to repeal the ban on blankets, but the matter has to go to a second reading. And it can get cold in Pensacola these days.

A local civil rights attorney, Alistair McKenzie, begged the council to repeal other laws that increase the suffering of homeless people. In Pensacola, it's illegal for homeless people to wash or shave in public restrooms, relieve themselves on public property or ask for money:
… I want to implore with you for your humanity, your Christianity, whatever sense of morals that you have, that you eliminate all of these ordinances.
The Council refused.

Billionaire sociopaths like to run their yaps about the poor needing to work harder. But they fail to mention the poor, unlike the billionaire sociopaths, have to fight the power of the state in ways that billionaire sociopaths can't even imagine.

Father Nathan Monk, not a billionaire sociopath, created a petition you can sign here to urge Pensacola to repeal the ban.