Thread by @shellenberger

The mayors of many progressive cities act helpless to stop the spread of homeless encampments, but Boston's mayor proves they can be humanely shut down so long as you a) recognize they're actually open air drug scenes & b) stand up to @ACLU

bostonglobe.com/2021/11/05/met…

Almost everything people believe about "homelessness" is wrong. The word "homeless" is a propaganda word designed to mislead you into thinking the people on the street are there because they are poor rather than because they are suffering from untreated mental illness & addiction

Don't take my word for it.

"It was advocates who coined the phrase, ‘homeless,'" the U of Penn's Dennis Culhane, America's leading academic homelessness expert, told me. “They’re the ones who thought ‘homeless’ would be a soft, fluffy term for the public to be sympathetic to.”

“The anti-homelessness movement chose the term ‘homelessness,' as opposed to ‘transient,’ ‘indigent,’ etc. for its implication that the biggest difference between the homeless & the housed was lack of shelter," wrote left-wing anthropologist Teresa Gowan.

amazon.com/Hobos-Hustlers…

Words are powerful. The word “homeless” not only makes us think of housing, it also makes us *not* think of addiction.

The news media participated, using Great Depression metaphors to frame homelessness as poverty since the 1980s.

Progressives say it's somehow more kind to totally misdescribe the reason people are on the street, but it's not kind at all. In fact, it's actively harmful. What other disease do we justify misrepresenting in service of a political agenda? The result is the denial of proper care

Boston's progressive mayor shows that this might finally be starting to change. They are providing shelter to street addicts and requiring people to use it, or sleep somewhere else. And they are offering drug treatment & psych care to those who need it.

bostonglobe.com/2021/11/05/met…

Boston's mayor has been aided by honest reporting:
"The area is currently an open-air narcotics market where multiple overdoses are a daily reality. Reports of violence & sexual exploitation are common. Two tent fires have been reported and there have been at least 6 homicides"

Could something similar happen in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, Vancouver, Austin, Philadelphia, Denver, and other cities where people are being exploited, raped, and abused in open drug scenes?

Of course it could. It's just a matter of political will.

We have known for decades that the only way to close open drug scenes is through a combination of social services and the police

Against the misinformation of some progressives, that's what Portugal, Netherlands & other European nations did:

bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.11…

Today, at 12 noon, residents of the Tenderloin neighborhood, where San Francisco's largest open air drug scene has created chaos, will march & protest

"We are immigrants & refugees... small business owners. We are the Tenderloin and you have failed us."

hoodline.com/2021/11/reside…

“Like most children who live in the Tenderloin, my granddaughter is scared to walk outside," said one organizer. “We have been treated as a containment zone for decades and it is time to stop."

hoodline.com/2021/11/reside…

Our @calif_peace Coalition will attend

We are:

- parents of street addicts
- parents of kids killed by fentanyl
- recovering addicts
- community leaders

We demand

- end open drug scenes
- universal psych
- Shelter First, Housing Earned

Learn more

californiapeacecoalition.org

At 11 am, Tuesday, November 30, @calif_peace will protest SF's deadly open drug scene

At least seven of us, including parents of kids at risk of dying from fentanyl, will commit nonviolent civil disobedience

To participate in the protest or civil disobedience, please DM me

Years from now we will look back at the rise of drug deaths from 17k to 96k between 2000 & 2020 as a period of collective insanity

We will view it as outrageous that we let our brothers & sisters die preventable deaths because progressives were misled & cowed by drug ideologues

Let the courage of Boston's liberal mayor inspire us. She is, so far, standing firm against @ACLU & other drug fatalists.

May her action be the beginning of the end of victimology, the noxious ideology that has become, literally, the death of us

/end

michaelshellenberger.substack.com/p/the-reason-t…