Hundreds of unsheltered people living in tent encampments in the blocks surrounding the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco have been forced to leave by city outreach workers and police as part of an attempted “clean up the house” ahead of this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s annual free trade conference.
The action, which housing advocates allege violated a court injunction, was celebrated by right-wing figures and the tech crowd, who have long been convinced that the city is in terminal decline because of an increase in encampments in the downtown area.
The X account End Wokness wrote that the displacement was proof the “government can easily fix our cities overnight. It just doesn’t want to” (the post received 77,000 likes). “Queer Eye but it’s just Xi visiting troubled US cities then they get a makeover,” joked Packy McCormick, the founder of Not Boring Capital and advisor to Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto VC team. The New York Post celebrated the action, saying that residents had “miraculously disappeared.”
Lol what? I don’t think they would appreciate being executed, and would gladly take the status quo over being “out of their misery” 🙄
It’s a “Modest Proposal.” A satirical joke. It points out the absurdity of the current system and attitudes about unhoused people being filth that need to be cleaned away. You usually clean dirty things by washing away the grime and taking the waste to the dump. It’s no way to describe actual people.
We put these people’s lives at risk by not giving them basic necessities. We give them serious, life-changing trauma while insisting they pull themselves up with little help. We treat them like they don’t deserve to live, as dangerous pests that we can uproot at will. If we’re not going to do enough to help them out of their situation and we don’t want them around, what else can we do but kill them? We could put them in some town in the middle of nowhere, but that’s just housing them with extra steps. We give them housing and social services, or don’t complain when they’re on the streets.