Somewhere someone asked about irony, and I responded, enjoy...
Is it just me or is it a circumstance fraught with irony that Ed is serving his sentence for supporting the homeless under house arrest?
Not just you. But that's nothing, ya shoulda seen the trials! Kafka meets Carlin (in a good mood, maybe), big and little hideousnesses abounded! For years. Decades! Along the way a judge had to say, out loud, lookin' us right in the eye, had to say there is no right to sleep. Yes, really, no right to sleep. No need to imagine it, transcript says so, just like the judge said so, clearly and explicitly. No right to sleep.
But that's not what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about the criminalization of protest. Ed was prosecuted for protesting. Protesting the sleeping ban, an unjust and inhumane set of infractions. It can be kinda illegal to arrest non-homeless people, well, before Occupy, maybe, especially when they are exercising Constitutional rights, but arrest the County Of Santa Cruz, California did, repeatedly, using an unjust and inhumane misdemeanor law. Judges didn't seem to mind, didn't seem to mind at all. Juries neither, at least those that didn't speak their minds, clearly or subtley, and walk out, walk right out of their selection process.
So yeah, it is weird for Ed to be treated like a felon, jailed via misdemeanor, at home (via overtly cell-phone-like device), for protesting a cruel and inhumane set of infractions, infractions which criminalize something critical to life itself.
Making life illegal is weirder. Nothing new, of course, but really strange to experience, first hand. The State and/or Federal Supreme Courts remain, via Writ or whatever, and there are plenty of cites to debate. But that won't change the past. Santa Cruz, California thinks it is legal to make it illegal for selected people to exist. They insist. So do a number of other places in the USA. That's weird. Really weird.
Don't histories (and religions) keep trying to teach us such trends are something to be avoided? Maybe it's just me...
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