Actual conversation with my mom today.

Mom: They lock the McDonald's bathrooms now bc of homeless people cleaning themselves in there.

Me: Yeah, it's pretty messed up that there are not more publicly available bathrooms and washrooms for people to use free of charge.

Mom: Well they don't pay taxes so why would we use tax payer funds on that? Also, did you see there is a map in San Francisco showing you where there is the most human poop so you can avoid it? It's so gross.

Me: If we don't pay for public bathrooms and the we lock the McDonald's ones, that's what happens. People have to poop.

Mom: Well then why doesn't anyone want to pay for it?

Me: ..... Uh....... ( Tries so hard to avoid gesturing at everything she just said)

If you want to know why people have lost faith in capitalism, this might help

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Fuck hostile architecture, I want unhostile architecture. I want benches to be designed to be as easy as possible to sleep on. I want little places for pigeons to nest to be purposefully put on buildings. I want people designing public spaces to think about what they'd be like to skateboard on. I want "Please loiter" signs. I want people to be kind. I want...

SunRunner begins charging fares due to complaints of homeless people

From October 2022 St Petersburg’s SunRunner ran free of charge, carrying passengers between downtown St Petersburg and St Pete Beach, but complaints about an influx in homeless people around St Pete Beach have led to the installment of a fare sooner than was originally expected. 

Most of the complaints came from St Pete Beach residents who were concerned about this increase in the homeless population in the area and blamed the SunRunner for carrying homeless passengers to the beach from downtown. The air conditioning and power outlets provided on the bus made it possible to beat the intense Florida heat and charge electronic devices while you ride. Whether or not the SunRunner is definitively to blame for the increase in homeless, in the summer months the beach became a more popular spot for unhoused people to spend the night because it was cooler than downtown alternatives, although sleeping on the beach at night is illegal and violates trespassing laws. 

In a meeting on August 23, Sheriff Bob Gaultieri said that the “homeless issues” began in March, and law enforcement was having to expend more resources in order to deal with problems such as public nudity when homeless individuals used the showers at the public beach accesses. Families were concerned for obvious reasons, and local law enforcement also came across instances of public urination and defecation. Residents also complained that they were being accosted at the Dolphin Plaza shopping center, which is across the street from a SunRunner stop at one of the main beach access parks. At September’s monthly Pinellas Suncoast Transit Authority (PSTA) board meeting one St Pete Beach resident Jill Kashner said, “I'm afraid someone's gonna throw a molotov cocktail into my window,” despite a distinct lack of molotov cocktail incidents. 

Calls for service at Dolphin Plaza increased from an average of 20 calls per week in 2022 to 127 per week the following year. “It was costing $10,000 a week to have deputies out there,” Gaultieri said at the August PSTA board meeting. At the same meeting he noted that since July 25 there had been 52 arrests issued, 132 trespass warnings and 32 ordinance violations. 

PSTA’s Chief Executive Officer Brad Miller had proposed an immediate installment of fares only on the westbound stops where the bus was headed towards the beach. The proposal was struck down, however, because of its targeted nature. St Pete Beach City Commissioner Chris Marone blames the SunRunner for these issues as well. At a meeting on Aug 8 he said, “It’s the buses and who they’re bringing in, and the Sheriff said we cannot just pick these people up and drive them somewhere and drop them off. We're not allowed to do that. We can make their lives miserable.” St Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch, however, opposed the implementation of a fare and said he even allocated money in the city’s 2024 budget to keep the SunRunner free of charge.

When the SunRunner began running city officials decided it would be free in order to encourage more use and help people get accustomed to the new route. There had always been a plan to begin charging fares in October 2023, but due to concerns about homeless people fares began a month early. Starting in September a ride costs $2.25 or you can pay $5 for a day pass and $70 for a one month pass. Students, youths, seniors and those with disabilities can pay half that. Groups of up to five people can get a day pass for $10 and children 8 or younger ride for free. Only contactless payment is accepted, no cash, which opponents of the fare installment such as the Homeless Leadership Alliance of Pinellas say unfairly targets a specific group of people. Intrastate travel is protected under the Florida Constitution so some opponents of the change, including lawyers, have noted that the cashless fare is restrictive and discriminatory. 

Of the approximately 100,000 riders the SunRunner carries per month, there is a significant number of riders who the fare poses a considerable financial burden on. People who have been utilizing the bus to get to jobs where they make minimum wage or to get to the grocery store and other errands will have to reconfigure an already tight budget to account for these new fares. 

i'm gonna go one step further and say it's actively good to engage with media you have fundamental ideological disagreements with, especially when you use that as a testing ground to conceptualize your own worldview and help you crystalize your perspective on things

as someone who has been chronically homeless for 9 years due to severe disability, the way housing is managed in america is just a joke. it's all about the profits for the landlord, nothing else matters. credit checks are a gate to keep out poor people. deposits are a gate to keep out poor people. you wanna apply for a low-income housing program? you HAVE to have a "severe" disability diagnosis and proof that you're too disabled to afford or apply for "normal" housing. this is a gate to keep out poor people.

people in positions to help house homeless people don't care because they're housed. there's no sense of urgency. they don't have to think about what it's like to go without a roof over their head. they get paid tens of dollars an hour to sit there and scoff at all of the "lazy poor and disabled people who should just get jobs and stop whining and expecting to have things handed to them." they get paid to ignore emails and take 2 hour long lunches to forget about how hard and scary the world really is.

how the FUCK are you supposed to work when you don't have a place to sleep at night, shower, or eat? come the fuck on. use your goddamn brain. this system is built off of abuse, lying and torture. nobody earns an "honest" day's pay, none of this is "honest" work. it's all built off of the backs of lying and stealing from someone who needs it more. jobs aren't given to the person who's the most qualified- they're given to the person who lied the most to make themselves sound good during the interview. jobs are given to people who are good at interviews, NOT people who are GOOD at what they do.

i don't know how to tell you that when the average person isn't making enough to eat, fuel their car or pay for their phone, they also can't afford the roof over their head. disabled people and low-income people are struggling even worse with this. i don't know how to tell people that you should care about this.

we are literally all the same species. we are all humans. you cannot look down on disabled, poor and addicted people because we're "scum" and "less than human". we're not. that's a lie you're being fed by capitalism to feel better about yourself so you'll keep blindly working. wake up. this is not how humans behave. you're being brainwashed. everyone needs a stable home. EVERYONE. especially if you want them to contribute to your stupid money machine.

capitalism makes no fucking sense. give people homes or get the fuck out of our way, because we're about to just start taking them. this is unsustainable. this is unliveable. this system doesn't fucking work. a system that leaves its people to starve and die while apartments, homes, condos, and hotel rooms stay empty and collect dust doesn't work. none of this shit works. fuck this fascist system. none of us are free.

I miss the days, way back when before October 7, when I felt like I was part of leftist circles. I miss feeling energised by leftist slogans because I thought they included me, instead of targeted me.

I miss hearing “eat the rich” and not hearing it as a dog whistle for “kill the Jews.” I miss feeling inspired by phrases like “our struggles for liberation are all connected,” instead of hearing its real meaning, “the Jews are the evil puppet masters behind everything and the world must unite against them.” I miss believing that when leftists talked about punching up at their oppressors, it wasn’t just an excuse to punch down at more vulnerable minorities that they decided were their oppressors despite all evidence to the contrary.

I miss the days when the left poured into the streets to protest cops and corporations instead of protesting Jews. I miss updating myself on those protests so I could join them, instead of to know which areas to avoid because they’ll be Judenrein for the day.

I don’t wish my eyes hadn’t been opened. I’d much rather see the truth no matter how painful and disillusioning it is, because the alternative isn’t actually “bliss.” It’s having a perpetual nagging feeling that something’s off but I can’t put my finger on it, or if I can then I must be overreacting or imagining it’s worse than it is.

But that pain and disillusionment is very real. That loss is very real. It was a community I thought I belonged to, a community I put a lot of work and energy into for many years, and there is grief at the loss of it. Grief that it’s gone, grief that it never was what it claimed to be in the first place. I guess I’m grieving the loss of that part of my identity. And grieving the loss of how people I thought were my friends and allies perceive my identity. Grieving the illusion that they were ever my allies at all, that they ever would be my allies if I needed. Because I haven’t really changed, but the way my former circles look at me completely changed. People who thought I was a good person and a good ally on October 6 decided I was the devil incarnate very literally overnight.

The person who privately reached out to me a few years ago to thank me for a Facebook post I made defending sex workers, because as a former sex worker they appreciated it. Now they’ve been posting antisemitic blood libel, the kind of rhetoric that’s already gotten Jews killed, for six months straight. I tried to tell them how much pain it causes me as a Jew to see their posts, and they only doubled down. It truly is their loss. I was a good friend and a good ally, and they threw me away because I’m a Jew. But it’s totally not because I’m a Jew, it’s because I’m the evil kind of Jew, the kind that just so happens to be the profile of ninety percent of the Jewish population.

I’m grateful I have such a strong sense of Jewish identity, because otherwise the loss of identity in this other way would be far more destabilising. I get why so many people cling to their political identities no matter how much cognitive dissonance they have to wave away; why they insist their ideology is righteous no matter how much evidence to the contrary. Without any other solid identity they would feel too adrift. But that doesn’t excuse their behavior. It’s not ok to jump on a bandwagon to persecute and kill Jews because you want to belong to something that badly, because you can’t handle your sense of self evolving with all the growing pains that come with it.

So many progressive Jews like myself have described ourselves as “politically homeless.” (Specifically in the diaspora; I know the political framework in Israel is completely different.) We can let ourselves sit in that grief. Being homeless is painful and uncomfortable, but it’s better than staying in an abusive home.

Anarchists will call for a general strike every other week with like only 3 days notice and then shame you by saying some shit like "you want every Palestinian to be vaporized" if you clock in to work

All landlords, cops and billionaires must perpetuate evil in order to maintain their status as such in society, if they didn't help uphold the evils of this system, they won't remain any of these 3 for long

I said this once on my old account, and I'm going to say it again: even if a TiM in a women's shelter isn't actively misbehaving towards the women in the shelter (and momentarily ignoring the fact, of course, that many of them do), by being there, he is still taking a bed away from actual biological women who have nowhere else to go. About 99% of biological women who are homeless become so due to domestic violence, and going back home could mean death for them. Meanwhile, most TiMs have experienced a male puberty, and could more than handle themselves in a male shelter. Yes, even TiMs who are on cross-sex hormones and have had cosmetic surgeries in hopes of "passing" as a woman. You are still significantly physically stronger than most women are; you'll be fine in the men's shelter. And, if they feel that there aren't enough shelters for guys, or that they want ones explicitly for trans people, they can always go out and build them. You know, like women did for ours? It's not our sex's job to compensate you with our beds and shelters that we took the time and effort specifically to set aside for ourselves. Not when our lives are on the line, and the only thing you risk injuring is your ego. That's not our problem. You deal with it, and then go find a bed at a men's shelter. No, I am not sorry for you. Go cry to someone who cares.