is nauseating.

It used to be that the ruling class kept enough of a bourgeois class around to buffer them. Now they're running our of middle-class defenders, it seems

Makes sense. Sad sense, but.....

What if a non-homeless person trips and falls on them?

what if a homeless person trips and falls on them???? I guess the "non-homeless" are more important.

They're not seeing them in the East End, they're seeing them in areas where government ministers and corporate barons are likely to live. Those delicate flowers must be protected from seeing the end result of their policies against their fellow citizens.

We raised hell in Boston when a couple of tony stores tried to put up wrought iron anti sleeping structures on steam grates. Boston winters can kill and those steam grates were the only warm places to sleep.

The people who create poverty by grabbing everything for themselves must never be protected from seeing the consequences of their actions.

From a fellow Bostonian.

Many people focus on the Japanese hunts because TV tells them to.

So funny.

I was humored by your organization of humans, not your facts.

I see that it can be taken many different ways, some of which aren't very nice. So the mistake was mine.

Particularly when you live in a society where the rich are glorified and the poor are demonized. Imagine someone laying down spikes where you sleep - it would kind of suck, wouldn't it? Imagine the necessity of having to remove them, or pour concrete over them.

Ethical or not, I admire the people who did this. If I could, I would gladly join them.

There must be better ways, than laying down spikes on a ledge to prevent someone from sleeping there. There is also the question of whether or not it causes harm... and finally, unintended consequences. The spikes would not prevent a blind homeless person from trying to sleep there (hopefully they would feel the area out without leaning on those spikes), nor would they prevent some kid, who, without looking, decided to lean against that ledge. As far as private property goes... you want to keep people out? Fine, build a strong gate and wall. Employ security. But just laying down spikes on that ledge seems to me to be deliberate cruelty and contempt for the poor.

I mean, where do we draw a line? Would it be okay if people started putting land mines on their lawns because they don't want kids using them as a shortcut to get to school?

Unfortunately, gravity requires that you adhere to the surface of the planet somewhere. If one does not own or rent a place to do that, then we should find a mechanism to jettison such person from the planet.

Did you just say we should EXTERMINATE the homeless?

And a lot of people actually support the concept you intended to satirize.

You might want to add the "sarcasm" smilie to that post.

actually physically jettisoning people off of the planet made it clear that the poster was being sarcastic.

sleep.

Instead of destroying someones property because you don't like that they are dissuading people from sleeping on it, maybe come up with a better solution like finding a safe environment for the homeless people to sleep.

Here are two activist groups in Portland that are working with the city to bring awareness and solutions.

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Dignity-Village/116452415056947

http://right2dreamtoo.blogspot.com/

In this act, the destruction of property is the solution for making a statement.

people have every right to build and maintain public hazards.

and reaffirming the dignity of our fellow human beings is more important. But that's just some of us...

particularly #3:

8 Reasons Young Americans Don’t Fight Back
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10025072535

3. Schools That Educate for Compliance and Not for Democracy.

Upon accepting the New York City Teacher of the Year Award on January 31, 1990, John Taylor Gatto upset many in attendance by stating: “The truth is that schools don’t really teach anything except how to obey orders. This is a great mystery to me because thousands of humane, caring people work in schools as teachers and aides and administrators, but the abstract logic of the institution overwhelms their individual contributions.” A generation ago, the problem of compulsory schooling as a vehicle for an authoritarian society was widely discussed, but as this problem has gotten worse, it is seldom discussed.

The nature of most classrooms, regardless of the subject matter, socializes students to be passive and directed by others, to follow orders, to take seriously the rewards and punishments of authorities, to pretend to care about things they don’t care about, and that they are impotent to affect their situation. A teacher can lecture about democracy, but schools are essentially undemocratic places, and so democracy is not what is instilled in students. Jonathan Kozol in The Night Is Dark and I Am Far from Home focused on how school breaks us from courageous actions. Kozol explains how our schools teach us a kind of “inert concern” in which “caring”—in and of itself and without risking the consequences of actual action—is considered “ethical.” School teaches us that we are “moral and mature” if we politely assert our concerns, but the essence of school—its demand for compliance—teaches us not to act in a friction-causing manner.

It was sort of comparing Horace Mann and John Taylor Gatto. At the time I was in school - and very happy to be in school, but it was college, not the mandatory part of my education. Back then I believed (or thought I believed) in the process of mandatory education. Now I'm not so sure. The words of Horace Mann were inspirational, seemed so noble and wise - and Gatto seemed to me to be so cynical, so jaded.

Now it's a year later - and I have since lost my apartment, my independence, and a whole lot of confidence and self respect. The overwhelming student loan debt doesn't help much either.

I was a child who stood out. Mostly because of my silence. I didn't run around and play with other children, I didn't wear the same clothes they did, or play in the same sports, I wasn't interested in the same things. I was sort of a dreamer who would stand aside during recess with a book, or maybe just watching the clouds and picturing a dragon in them (preferably a dragon that would eat the students and teachers that bullied me).

There were many occasions when I pretended to be sick, or simply ran away from home because I hated school so much. For me, it was something of a prison. Not as cruel as the real thing, but nonetheless, a place I hated full of people who probably wanted to beat me up - who did beat me up, on occasion.

Education is a wonderful thing, a noble thing, it is beautiful and enlightening when done right, for the right purposes. Some times though, I think our mandatory system of it is just another tool to tell us how to act, how to think, and how to eventually become good little worker bees. Conformity.

The method seems to be working if that's the intent. We're pretty dumbed down.

go to "school" so she shadowed a friend at a public school for 3 days. When it was over, I asked if she had made a decision. And she said, "Too much standing in line."

They say the darndest things, don't they? I once read an essay by Michael Moore where he talked about his last day of higher education. He couldn't find a place to park, basically said screw it, and took off.

There IS too much standing in line.

Thank you for sending out into the world such a smart person.

I can't count the number of people I've heard in the past several years express deep distress over what's happening to their lives, but what alarms me most is how much of it ends up aimed at themselves. Millions have been pushed underwater, yet everyone seems to feel alone and responsible for their own situation. There is something deeply wrong in our messaging when smart, capable, moral people are blaming themselves individually for mass societal distress that our corrupt political system has actively created.

Thanks for articulating this. We need a sea change in our understanding of what government is and what we have a right to expect from it. In a country with the wealth of the United States of America - or even in a country WITHOUT the wealth of America - there is no moral justification for dealing with poverty by putting spikes in public spaces where the homeless sleep. It is sick and inhumane and a perversion of everything we are capable of doing and have a responsibility to do. It is a statement on how far into sickness this nation has been pushed that we need to remind people how sick it really is.

I'd love to see that essay, too.

at least in some places.

the placing of the spikes was the first act of destroying or vandalizing public property.

Every time I hear or read shit about "property rights" and even "private property" (as opposed to personal property) seeming to have a more important place than human rights, IT REALLY PISSES ME OFF!

Even the "good" wars, like the one against fascism, under capitalism, was ALSO about competing capitalist and imperial interests, as in market share and control of resources.

And RW bullshit at that. Marx HIMSELF, in the Manifesto made the distinction between "personal" property, like your shirt, and private property like the factory the capitalist owned. But neo-liberals have spent decades trying to conflate the two in people's minds, so they can keep their lock on the means of production.

That neo-liberal bullshit won't work with me. You can believe it if you choose.

Doesn't strike you as a teensy bit hypocritical?

Hint: It is..

At which value is something up for dibs?

Shirts seem to be ok. So... More than $50.

Cant imagine many solid factories worth less than a million...

So something in-between...?

Do you feel entitled to someone's car? Home? Land? Small business? Large business?

You should pick a number so it's crystal clear what you want to claim.

Sounds like Maggie Thatcher and Ronnie Reagan from the 80s. That's worked out so well for the working class hasn't it?

"At what point do you take from the ones that have and give to the ones that don't?"

Quite frankly the point of redistribution is when anybody, worldwide, doesn't have enough food to live on, or a roof over their heads, or clothes on their backs. When these are no longer problems, THEN we can talk about any extra that individuals can keep over and above the basics.

And of course this is just the generic basics. I'm not going to try and paint a picture of an entire socialist system in an Internet post. And even if I did try to paint this picture, my voice would be just one opinion. In a true bottom-up workers' democracy, everybody's voice would be heard and it would be voted on by local and workplace councils.

Nobody's economic livelihood should depend on any other individual. Workers make society run, so workers should run society.

As you say it, they can go first.

Between "personal property" and "private property"?

There was an article a while back where a couple of old farts in San Francisco were grumping about their property taxes going up from $350 to $500 a YEAR. A $12.50 a month increase.

Cry me a river.

After all we must worship at the feet of our betters, the "Job Creators"!

Immoral shit putting up spikes 'cause you can't "bear" the sight of homeless people.

I can't bear that sight either which is why I'm in favor of HELPING them get off the streets than SPIKING them for getting on the streets.

Destroy away activists!
Show that this type of practice is totally unacceptable & will NEVER be tolerated.

This ain't no Super Mario Bros. game!
We don't need to see spikes on that level.
What's next? They're gonna use those spinning fireball columns to scare the homeless off?
Get the 'flock' outta here!
John Lucas

The point in doing this is to show that what the people who owned this place are doing is immoral.

Your argument could also be used, at its logical extreme, to justify returning escaped slaves to their former owners.

We will lose our soul as a planet if we put "property rights" above the natural right of all people to have a decent life.

I'll wait here.

... And not shop at a store whose policies you disagree with.

Like you made a difference even though you didn't?

The point of this activism is to make a public statement. Which isn't possible with your method.

it into housing for the homeless. How's that strike you?

Also, why is it a "store" in quotes?

Lastly, wide open berthing that lacks appropriate facilties would be a terrible place to house large groups of people and you would deny, via a criminal act, the people of that neighborhood access to food and supplies.

Grocery store or jewelry store? A store that serviced ALL of the people including the homeless or a store that serviced the wealthy owners?

Anyway, the point was NOT what kind of store it was, the point was that some of us have the political will to TAKE from the wealthy "private property" owners and arrange to get that hoarded wealth to the people. And it's only unrealistic at this point because there's not the WIDESPREAD political will to expropriate from the owners what they've stolen under capitalism. That will change as the system takes and takes from the rest of us and gives and gives to the economic elite.

These ARE the notions I embraced as a youth.

What part of communist (or Marxist or revolutionary socialist) do you not understand. I'm sure that neo-liberalism is working out VERY well for you.

If people don't trump property, we will no longer have any humanity at all. Or any real rights, since most of the human race does not own property and never will.

Property rights trump EVERYTHING.

in other threads I spent 8 of the last 10 years homeless. I became so good at living homeless I honestly didn't think I could go back to living any other way. Just me and my adult epileptic son, crisscrossing the USA, sleeping in woods and ditches, watching my son quiver into another grand mal seizure. One time it happened by a busy road. No one stopped, no one tried to help, no one even called 911.

Here's a little tidbit of info I'm not sure if you know about. On the East coast, the authorities are far less concerned with property damage as they were with human damage. But on the West coast, property rights and damages are their major concern.

In California there was violence all around us, a regular thing. But don't steal a block of cheese from Safeway, because you are going to jail. When I was in Northern Maine, property crime was frequent and overlooked, but don't dare lay finger on another person, or you are going to jail.

At the rate they are fencing off the land out west will assure that, eventually, there will be nowhere else for the homeless to go.

Your pov and comments are always interesting, thanks.

of property rights in different areas and I appreciate your experience in the matter. But as a Marxist, my concern is not about HOW those property rights are enforced, but about the fact that they are there at all. The fact is that the east coast LEOs, by LAW, could have been just as harsh as the west coast ones were. That's the problem in my view.

As I've said before, I not a big believer in "private" property and I make a distinction (as Marx did) between "private" property, especially ownership of the means of production and livelihood, and personal property like your shirt or a stick of deodorant. Ownership of the means of production and livelihood should be in the hands of the workers themselves and NOT some owner whose only job is to make as much money as he/she can off of your labor. No matter how bad it is or gets for you, the owner doesn't give a rat's ass as long as his bottom line is padded as much as possible. And that's not because said owner is "greedy". It's because that's the way the system is set up. Those are the rules of capitalism and "private" property.

BTW, thanks for your personal, real life, experiential contribution to this thread. I'm curious. Why do you think it is that the eastern LEOs are more lenient than the west coast ones?

and my first question to the locals was, "where are the rest of the homeless?" I was told they had moved on, got a job or froze to death.

One thing I noticed right away was that there was very few fences in Northern rural Maine. Dogs roam free and a campsites are available 20 feet off almost any road, even if private property. No one ever objected or took action against our presence. I agree with you that it shouldn't matter which coast we were on, but it somehow did.

When we got in California very tired from driving a van I bought, we parked on a roadside pullout to catch some sleep. We were rousted by the first cop who came by. He spent a lot of time on us, didn't find anything illegal but let us go with the warning that we were, basically, forbidden to park anywhere. Then it hit me, California is one fenced off place. Even the most modest properties look like compounds. There's really no where to go except the National Forests, unless you want to pay at least $50 a night for an unsafe motel. And that rate applies to pay campgrounds as well. We were well aware that no one cared about us except us.

In contrast, in Maine, they really did care. The locals saw to it that my son and I got jobs in a tree and wreath factory, where we made wreaths for the fallen soldiers in the WAA, (wreaths across America) program. They were quick to give us referrals for food and clothing. The factory owner seemed genuinely concerned with our welfare, asking what we would do when the seasonable work ran out.

Now I work two jobs. I cut and drop headstone monuments for a monument company in the daytime and work graveyard as a convenience store cashier at night. Yet I'm barely making it as these bosses are like the ones you described. I'm always one paycheck away from going back to the homeless life, stuck somewhere between the surreal and sublime.

I'm not sure if that answers your question or not. Maybe California has "homeless fatigue."

At some level I suspect even you have some respect for property rights.

Any locks on your door or home? Keep things secured at the gym? Do you have things that you would prefer not to be taken from you?

Those are property rights on the exact same level as TB the people who put their rights behind that Tesco

The owners of this building hadn't lost anything.

The owner has legitimate concerns about loss of business, possible criminal acts, liability etc.. Etc...

The fact that you only consider your property important is also pretty telling.

Humanity has to be more important than property values in the end, or else we end up with a world that's utterly soulless, where nothing positive, compassionate or life-affirming can ever happen.

Maybe the owner had issues with the homeless in the past and thus chose to have the spikes installed.

That is certainly much more likely that the certainty of your statement which you obvious have no idea if it's true or not.

The rest of your post is a logical null.

And why the absolutism on property rights? Nobody's talking about having the state forcibly collectivize this place.

People should obviously be able to protect their belongings(including the homeless themselves, which is why I've always opposed things like Gavin Newsom's insistence on demolishing tent cities in San Francisco without giving the homeless the chance to even gather up their stuff and prevent it being trashed), but the people sleeping rough in front of this place and also on the streets of Montreal weren't harming the property at all. They weren't harming anyone at all. They were just trying to get some sleep, on a cold night, in the only places they COULD get it.

And the business they were camped in front of wasn't a hardscrabble mom-and-pop operation, it was a Tesco(the British equivalent of a 7-11-I bought stuff at a few of them when I visited the UK a few years back). Tesco is a soulless corporate behemoth that pushed a lot of independent shops out of business by undercutting them on prices. Why would you ever feel sorry for them?

And my point about what happens in society puts property rights before people is born out by the sharp turn towards relentless selfishness, arrogance and human devaluation this country has taken since 1980-driven by the exaltation of property and profit above all else. Property fetishism is eroding the soul of this country and this world, leaving nothing but a gold-plated shell behind.

THAT is what you are defending by going on and on and on about property rights-and if your view prevails, nothing generous, positive, inclusive, joyous or even moderately non-brutal can come to the vast majority of the human race. Property, in the
end, becomes the enemy of life itself.

People should be able to have some things of their own, but having things shouldn't outweigh the need to be decent to all.

This is an excellent, farsighted approach to address the problem of homelessness. Kudos to whoever thought of it.

The concrete pour is a protest, not intended to be the solution.

And in the short run, the statement had to be made.

Is "property" more important than treating the homeless like human beings?

However the way this guy is doing it is DESIGNED to make a mess as a protest.

I had some friends once who invaded a McDonalds and smashed some clocks that were set to time how fast orders got placed. The workers were being reprimanded if they didn't get the orders out fast enough, so my friends engaged in "radical criminal action" to smash the clocks. Management didn't replace them.

Monstrous not to allow a body to sit down and rest.

In other words, those who install them are treating homeless people like animals?!

P.S. The hobbit's name is Peregrin Took. "Peregrine" refers to a species of falcon.

Clearly it wasn't a reference to Tolkien, but rather a reference to the thieving nature of peregrines.

Have you never been walking around outside, eating a sandwich only to have a peregrine swoop down and snatch it away, leaving you standing there, sandwichless, yelling "Hey, that peregrine_took my sandwich!"?

Or have you never run into a convenience store quickly and left your car running - only to come out and find it missing. You know what happened - a peregrine_took your car.

I think it is fairly obvious that this is what the name refers to. And you must agree, unless a peregrine_took your sense of humor away.

try that here in the U.S., they'd end up in Gitmo.

Those things are a tragic accident waiting to happen.

When you have homeless people, you have a malfunctioning society.
Something's wrong with your society if the concept of "homeless person" exists.

Instead of insulating yourself away from the problem with some stupid ass spikes, solve the causes that make people live on the streets in the FIRST place!

No one should be homeless.
ESPECIALLY in a country of wealth & abundance.

No whitewashing the epidemic.
Help these people & fix the malfunction which causes homelessness to begin with.

Hammer these spikes!
Cement over these spikes!
Break these spikes!

This type of "vandalism" should be a national MOVEMENT!
John Lucas

It would be even COOLER if more concrete can be poured to lay the foundations for new homes in order to house the homeless.

Think big!

they made it even worse; going from a Motel 6 bed, to laying on a lava bed.

Idiots.

And so more uncomfortable than laying on spikes.

and the court battle and publicity will get them moved pronto.

Better yet, since it's England, a dog could cut his paw. Dog abuse. The Brits would go crazy.

And have they considered art? Get some plastic baby dolls. "Impale" them on the spikes with fake blood. I'll bet that would make them remove them, too.

slip, make it easier for the homeless to get some sleep. Even thick cushions would work. Put them out each night.