THREAD: If you know someone who is confused about the core function of police, send them this story of 30 cops with guns and a small tank evicting houseless women and children from a vacant home at the request of a corporate speculator. (1) kqed.org/news/11795944/…
To understand what happened, you have to know something: There are more vacant properties in large U.S. cities than houseless people. (2) sf.curbed.com/2019/12/3/2099…
There is no county where a person can afford a two-bedroom home while working 40 hours for the federal min. wage, and in only 22 of over 3,000 counties can you afford a one-bedroom. The threat of police violence makes this possible. (3) perma.cc/ST97-DCLU
The only way to enforce a situation in which there are a lot of vulnerable people without houses and a lot of empty houses is with the threat of violence. **Police are the threat to the houseless not to take shelter and the threat to the hungry not to take food.** (4)
This is usually invisible to most people because police don't have to violently evict women and children very often. For millions, the omnipresent **threat** of this police violence is enough: it keeps them from risking their lives like the women in Oakland. (5)
The message was no doubt received by the other houseless women in the Bay Area trying to decide how to shelter their children: endure the pain of houselessness or have violence done to your body. (6)
You may think there are pros and cons to this system, but the threat of violence if one rejects unequal social/economic arrangements enshrined in law is a key function of police. They spend only 4% of time on "violent crime." I explain here: (7) yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-puni…
The corporate speculator said he was "pleased" with the eviction the police did for him. (end)
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