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fire burns down people’s homes
makes blankets for fire victims
takes blankets back because fire victims are homeless now
Astounding
“This is not the Instagram post I had envisioned. Request denied.”
A lot of people here are looking for a philosophical answer, but I personally think it’s really just a class issue. Most people in the US don’t like to hear it, but our class structure is practically a caste system.
People generally despise the people of other classes (or castes), above or below. This is reinforced by segregation and media. Ultra Rich > Rich > Upper Class > Middle Class > Lower Class > Welfare Class > Homeless. All these groups live in separate communities with specific media environments that vilify the “others”. These groups only ever interact in ways with clear hierarchy. This is only exacerbated with the death of third spaces.
Having been middle class and sliding down the ladder to the point of imminent homelessness, I’ve been struck by the fact that the distribution of assholes for each group is pretty much the same. Over and over again, I’ve seen nearly no contact between classes to dispel the images projected by each class’s respective media ecosystem.
This country is so fundamentally segregated and divided that I really don’t know how it can be changed. There is really no clean and fair way to actually inform people about the similarities between people.
I’ve lived on the streets, in a car, in a house with 10 people so we could cover rent, in slums and have crawled up to solidly middle class. I think it used to be easier to do that than it is now, like every year it gets more stratified with more slipping below average (meaning the mean) but also harder to dig out. Not impossible, but it was hard enough as person of able body and mind back then - I can’t imagine how hard now.
At work in my department only one of us has never been very poor, I do think there is some social mobility but for each of us there must be hundreds who did the same things and it didn’t work.
There’s certainly a strained mobility in the country. I said it was a “caste system” primarily because from my limited understanding of the Indian caste system. Where people are born into their caste and experience an entirely separate culture from the other castes. It’s possible that I misinterpreted what classism is and that’s a part of it as well.
one of the major traits of a caste system is that there’s no mobility down or uup
The American de jure caste system is honestly one of the most disgusting truths to learn. Those people who become homeless do not often live long, prosperous lives wandering the streets. Either you get pulled out of it by intelligence/family/friends/luck, or you die. There is a never ending conveyor belt constantly pushing against our feet that feeds into a furnace fueled by blood. There’s no reason we need to let our homeless die. We could establish a society where everyone is taken care of, but the capitalists at the top like using the threat of sliding down that conveyor belt against us. And so an entire caste of people exists to die.
The entire system deserves to burn to the ground. I’m torn between my delight that it currently is, and my horror at the suffering the collapse will cause.
I was listening to an episode of “It Could Happen Here” about LA fire and mutual aid. What stood out was the fact that the LAPD was sweeping homeless camps DURING the fire and that people who had lost their homes came up to the organizers asking to get public housing and we’re shocked that the wait list is years long.
Pretty bleak world we’ve created.
Yup, a ton of previously fortunate people got a crash course in what the system is really like for people who needed it.
Good thing there is definitely no overlap between those two groups of people.
Crotcheting one adult sized blanket can take like a month, wtf is going on with this lady
There are plenty of “one day” crochet patterns.
The part that strikes me as odd is the crochetet saying she “wove” the blankets. That might just be the poster having an unreliable memory/being unfamiliar with different fiber arts.
Not to excuse her choice, but my first thought was that she spent a ton of time on these, and wants them to go towards housed people so they’re used for longer.
I agree that people lack compassion, but for a substantial number, it’s not ‘for no reason.’
Many people’s interactions with the homeless population are very negative, typically involving theft, drug use, and terrifying mental health breaks. Obviously, that’s very much an issue of selection bias since it’s typically the same few who give the entire homeless population a bad reputation.
I think if people gave more of their time to help the homeless and others who have fallen through the cracks of society, a lot of the cruel words and horrible treatment directed toward our less fortunate would diminish substantially. A few hours a week volunteering at your local food bank, shelter, church kitchen, nursing home, etc. Is a small inconvenience but an absolutely huge help.
Additionally, we must rethink how we treat repeat offenders and public criminality. A lot of the time police won’t even respond to a reported bike theft or incidence of public drug use. The offenders are a danger and nuisance not only to themselves and the general public at large, but also, and most substantially, to other homeless people.
Most people’s only interaction with the homeless is seeing them from a distance, and then making assumptions about them
I have had many dangerous interactions with homeless people and I carried on doing it anyway for a long time. At this point, I’m careful. I need to be here for my kids.
I’ve had two strangers shoot up in the back of my car while I was taking them somewhere (separate occasions). I had one ask me to pull over only so they could yell to a crowd of fellow homeless people, “y’all tell fatback that if I don’t get my shoes back, y’all ain’t gonna get fatback back!!” Guns were drawn. I was threatened. Very scary. I could never forget that either haha. I still reenact it regularly to make people laugh, wasn’t funny in the moment though.
The scariest one though. My ex and I were very young. Our daughter was about 4 months old. Dude was camping outside of my house and he wouldn’t respond to anything I said to him. I had to go to work and I didn’t want to leave the wife and kid there with him just outside. I called my work, told them I might not be coming if dude didn’t leave.
I asked him how he was doing. Nothing. I asked him where he was from. Nothing. I finally said, “Look, I’m going 30 miles that way. If you want a ride, go get in my car. It’s unlocked.” He stood up immediately and went and sat in the passenger seat.
He said nothing the whole way. He pulled out a large hunting knife and picked his fingers with it. I just talked and talked about my kids and my life to him so he might see me as a person and not kill me. He just grunted and growled the whole ride.
I pulled into a McDonald’s and I told him that that was as far as I was willing to go. He looked at me, nodded his head, got out of the car and walked away. That was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I still have nightmares about to this day. I was sure he was going to cut me up and take my car.
It would be nice if we could heal people in his situation. I really hope that we make it there someday as a species.
Thanks for sharing.
A lot of people who don’t have much experience helping with the homeless don’t realise how dangerous it can often be and tend to err on the side of optimism.
We’ve had to call police on numerous occasions because of instances of physical assault. Of course, the vast majority of people we help are lovely, but it helps to be realistic to keep yourself and others safe.
I think a lot of leftists here have never interacted with or see homeless on a daily basis and believe in the whole “nobility of the homeless” myth.
Homeless people are a target of this administration.
The goal is to criminalize homelessness, for prison labor. My state is currently trying to ban all homeless services except for the two largest cities.
The hatred is motivated by the “Just World” fallacy I think - that homeless people must have done something to deserve their condition. If you believe in a “Just World,” you’re comforted with the knowledge that it’ll never be you on the streets, you work hard/don’t make bad decisions.
I understand not wanting homeless people close to you - they are dirty, smelly, prone to drugs and crime (which is why they must be helped and housed). But wanting to harm them remotely - wtf
I believe it’s a thought process along the following: “I hate seeing homeless people living on the streets in my neighborhood. They are smelly and cause crime and take our taxes while doing nothing or causing harm. I worked hard to save a lot of money to own a house in this neighborhood and they are ruining it while living here for free. If I help them, they’ll continue to stay in this area. I don’t want to make them feel welcome in my neighborhood at all so I will not donate my blankets to them.”
We have a high homeless population in my city and homeowners here all have that mindset, even though we are a very liberal city.
I feel like in this case it was… “I wove these blankets for wealthy people impacted by the fires so they can owe me praise & fame. I don’t give a shit about other people other than myself.”
I mean have you never seen a reddit thread where everyone jerks each other off about not giving homeless people money so as to not encourage more homeless people to ask for money? I assume it’s a similar mentality.
Yeah I’m connected with a group that feeds the homeless, provides sleeping pads and connects them with other available resources. The organization has a handful of acres on their site and had tried to allow people to camp there but it was a complete failure on multiple levels. The local govt kept trying to shut it down and insurance was dropping coverage. But the clencher was the twenty dumpsters full of trash that appeared in just a few months, and all of the needles everywhere. There were three or four really good people who stayed there for a little while but most just trashed everything. We still feed them though.
How were these people expected to dispose of their trash? My household generates nearly a bag of trash per person per week, mostly food and drink packaging I think. A couple dozen people could fill a dumpster a week. But it simply disappears if we leave it by the street in front of my home. How does that work when you’re homeless?
There was a dumpster on site. They didn’t use it. Also, what peregrin5 said.
A lot of the trash isn’t generated. It’s collected. A homeless person isn’t going out and buying stuff off Amazon or food that has lots of packaging. But if you live around homeless folks you can often recognize them by the pile of junk they’ve collected from various sources, most of which they don’t have any actual use for. Many just seem to have a compulsion to packrat things.
removed by mod
It isn’t for no reason. Victim blaming shields people from accepting how scary reality can be. It is the blanket of the cowardly and heartless.
Remember though they love rags to riches “stories”. Someone that does make it through and they’ll talk about how all it takes is hard work. It’s humanized when they meet someone but not so much otherwise.
Hey, I love it too! I love it so much I want to make sure trust-fund kids are afforded the opportunity to pull themselves up by their own bootstraps too! It’s a crying shame to have their amazing story arc ruined by vast riches at an early age. They should love it, because they hate people getting hand outs they didn’t earn.
Does she realize that the fire victims are homeless because of the fire?
What’s she going to do with 100 crocheted blankets now?
Burn them so no poor person can get their hands on em
It’ll be a public burning replete with #maga swag for sale.
She’s going to take them back home and make them thicker and warmer for the homeless people…
Nah, she’s going to give them away to people she likes instead of dirty, lazy homeless people.
No, the rich ones who are down on their luck! Not the poor ones who fucking earned homelessness
Some of those on the street lost theor homes in the fire
Just no words
