[OPE] The neoliberal security state

Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor?
By BARBARA EHRENREICH
Published: August 8, 2009
IT'S too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it's
almost illegal to be poor. You won't be arrested for shopping in a Dollar
Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you're well
advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life - like
sitting, sleeping, lying down or loitering. City officials boast that there
is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute,
most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification in the '80s and '90s.
"If you're lying on a sidewalk, whether you're homeless or a millionaire,
you're in violation of the ordinance," a city attorney in St. Petersburg,
Fla., said in June, echoing Anatole France's immortal observation that "the
law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep
under bridges."

Complete
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09ehrenreich.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

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Received on Sun Aug 9 10:56:43 2009