With Malice Towards Some...

On Law and an Equitable Community

















Nearly every community you will ever take part in will already have established rules that the majority of the community members agree to uphold. Whether these parameters come in the form of codified laws, as they do in the modern nation state, or simple informal traditions as they may at a Bible study. There are rules everywhere.


If your idea of heaven is no rules, then pray you never get to heaven. The problem with no rules (anarchy) is that someone is always going to interpret the power vacuum as an opportunity to force others to do their bidding. Essentially, they will make you their slave. Which, if there are no rules, is completely acceptable.


Do you see how fast the situation went from No Rules = Total Freedom to No Rules = Slavery? In real world applications, the decent happens just as rapidly.


My point is that rules (laws, regulations, codes, etc.) aren't all bad. Most, especially the most basic, are generally good and beneficial to individuals and the communities they build. Granted, some rules are inherently bad. So, we need to differentiate between what constitutes a good rule and then by a process of elimination, we can determine what embodies a bad rule.


A good rule should provide a benefit to the community as a whole without significantly harming part of the community in exercising their civil rights.

So, using that reasonably compact definition, a bad rule would:
Provide benefit to a specific person(s) or no one at all
Negatively impact the rights of part of the community


The "poll tax" laws implemented during the late 1800's to prevent African Americans and Native Americans from voting would be a BAD rule, using my litmus test since it negatively impact the rights of part of the community.






A law which makes a slave of one man to another would be a BAD rule, because it negatively impacts the rights of part of the community (and I would add that it is inherently immoral, as well).


In my little corner of the world, the City council, at great expense to the tax-payers, recently annexed a large wooded wilderness area where many of the local homeless lived. Then, by using a tortured legal definition reclassified this wilderness area as a "park". This annexation allowed the council to pass a camping ban ordinance to force the homeless out of town.


Before I go on, let me cite some of the preposterous clauses which define "Camping" in this ordinance:


"Camping" means the use of park land or other publicly owned property for living accommodation purposes including but not limited to any of the following:


1. Sleeping activities


(Is closing my eyes or reclining on the grass a sleeping activity?)


2. Making preparations to sleep


(Yawning could be interpreted as preparations to sleep!)


3. Laying down of bedding for the purposes of sleeping


(Define "bedding" and how can you know my intention when I lay out a picnic blanket!


4. Storing personal belongings


(By what means and in what capacity?)


At best, the ordinance is too vague and would be struck down in total due to the lack of a severability clause, but who cares? These "transients", regardless of whether their families have lived in this area for two or three generations, are just trash anyways. Right?


Forgive my digression.


So, what benefit did all this very expensive legal wrangling provide for the community?


One might argue that the community gained a park, but in truth, it is still the wooded wilderness area it was prior to the legal definition change.


The only benefit of the ordinance is to legalize the prosecution the homeless, and thereby run them out of town. That makes it appear as if they solved homelessness in their community. Which... may I have the envelope please...


Increases Property Values!


Theoretically, at least. In truth, it proves how nearsighted the city council members are. While we have people living on the streets of a relatively rich rural community, the council members are annexing and renaming a wilderness area as "park". What is more, the land they annexed does not lend itself to zoning for other needs, such as affordable housing, of which the community is in desperate need.


They claim there's a serious drug problem in the homeless community, but has anyone checked the City councils urine lately? It's a simple, almost natural, step from collecting the garbage to disposing of it.


What next, the "cure" for Cancer? Great! Anyone diagnosed with cancer has 12 hours to leave town or face 90 days in jail per offence. Oh look, no more cancer! This is too close to the logic by which the Nazis, Pol Pot, and Stalin's purges were driven. Justice becomes justification for self-serving ideology. When the Law becomes a tool to work any deed no matter what it's need.


What of the Law Enforcement Officers, who have been drafted into the role of garbage men for politicians with the only solution to a growing community problem of unemployment, affordable housing, access to education, efficient transportation, and lack of social services is incarceration?


I understand that the typical sentence for violating the camping ordinance is a mere 3-7 days in a very safe and clean jail complete with cable TV and a professional correctional staff, but a little evil does not beget good, only greater evil.


A camping ban to keep the "park" safe for residence to enjoy by locking up those inconvenient and unsightly "transients" may sound like a blessing, however a kiss from a disciple is not always an act of love.


When people accept a "get rid of them" mentality towards any part of our community, we are all at risk. Many say there are too many problems with the people in our community transients, but they forget that the problems are in the population at large.


The "good people" say ship them off to Bellevue, but don't you dare bring homeless from other areas here!


Hypocrisy!



While the "good citizen" hides behind the thin, yet opaque, veneer of "law" the transient is condemned by it. Magistrates and Martyrs are defined by an act written by politicians with malice towards some. These people they call, "transients" are us, the people whose families built the community for generations now these Council members eject them as transients, drifters, vagrants, and undesirables...


Because the Council members have failed to do their job for ALL the people of this community, or perhaps they are working for someone else under a different agenda where certain types won't fit in. Why Bellevue? Why not a more final solution?

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I did not speak out;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I did not speak out;
As I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

- Martin Niemöller