Assigned Bastard At Birth

by glass_museum on tiktok

Everbody wants third spaces until a homeless guy shows up. Now theres a lot of talk about third spaces for a reason. We need places to form community beyond just home and work, but that begs the question of who gets to be a part of our communities? You want more parks, more libraries but then you complain when these public infrastructures are, well public.

For the unhoused the importance of public spaces isn't just a matter of wanting somewhere to chill with friends it's a matter of existence and freedom. In his landmark essay "homelessness and the issue of freedom," Jeremy Waldron argues that the freedoms of the poor are dispraportionately restricted under the law since their material conditions coerce them into a state in which they must choose between survival and the violation of the law. He writes that freedom exists for the homeless "only to the extent that our society is communist."

Now before your redscare ass starts to hemmorage over the C-word let me explain, but first let's define our terms. Specifically let's distinguish between postive freedoms and negative freedoms. While postive freedom is the capacity to act according to ones free will, negative freedom is the capacity to act free from the coercion of others.

So things like loitering laws [and] public indecency violations though they apply to the rich and poor alike, they apply disproportionatly to those who posses no private property of their own and thus who exist solely in the collective space, and so while a homeless person may posses the positive freedom to, say, physically lay down in a park, they have their negative freedom restricted since they'll be forcebly removed for doing so, because of the regulations placed on public spaces that prohibit certain actions that are typically relegated to the private, like sleeping, pissing, showering.

All these actions are natural and necessary, and yet theyre prohibited in the public space. And this limitation is no problem for owners of private property, since the public is conceived of as being complementary to the private.

However, as Waldron notes, "This complementarity works only for those who have the benefit of both sorts of places" so if youre homeless you're stuck in a situation where you're forced to violate the law in order to survive, because in order to exist, one needs somewhere they can exist.

There's oftentimes a contradiction with how people consider the homeless if they even consider them at all, people don't want them pissing in the streets, but they also don't want them pissing in the Mcdonald's bathroom. People don't want encampments, but they also oppose the construction of affordable public housing.

There seems to be a desire for increased public life, but only a certain kind of public.

and we will say "When I was YOUR age, fruits and vegetables came from a supermarket and they were bred to get shipped 1000 miles in a truck and sit on shelves for weeks, and they tasted so sour and watery it was like eating paper compared to these ones. It wasn't even legal in some places to grow your own food"

and they will roll their eyes like yeah yeah just because everything was miserable in the 20s doesn't mean I have to have a smile on my face standing in the hot sun while you listen to that one guy talk about his bees FOREVER

And many other people have been just spitting, foaming at the mouth fucking FURIOUS. How dare I have the audacity to imagine a future where things get better?

Don't I know how BAD things are? Am I not aware of the TERROR and DEVASTATION of climate change and fascism and biodiversity loss? How dare someone be so bold, so callous, as to imagine something other than misery and suicide. How dare someone suggest it will get better. How dare a person propose that there is a future where we will be okay, in the face of so much terror. Hasn't she seen the abyss opening its jaws before us?

Well? What do you think?

there were kids who stayed inside because of the black plague and went on to help cure it.

there were women who sat at home and cleaned the house and dreamt up a world where they could vote and have jobs.

there were kids in the mines who thought up a life outside of it. there were children who hid in annexes and wrote a diary where they prayed for a future without a terrible man in control

there were slaves who wanted freedom so badly and had hope that it would get better

there were gay people who hid in the corners of clubs and fought back for a future where they could walk down the street together

do you know what all of that has in common? they had hope that things would get better and they made that change. they looked at the world in its cruel ways and fought back.

so now, there are kids and teenagers and young adults and new adults who dream of a world so beautiful and the only amazon their grandchildren know is the rainforest

and it is in everything we do that we find this hope. wishing on dandelions, counting the stars, making our own clothes out of crochet or knit or sewing it, watching the sunset, going to the farmer’s market, feeding the birds, planting seeds.

insane headline to pair with the actual photo of the beastie itself