Progressives: Still clueless on homelessness

Mayor Newsom tried to hold a public meeting on homelessness
while being mocked by a "progressive"

That full-page ad in the Chronicle last week (below in italics) annoyed progressives in the Bay Area, who showed unintentionally yet again how clueless they are about homelessness and the associated squalor on city streets.

Let's start with the SF Weekly, which has a long history of cluelessness on a number of issues, including Islam, the bicycle fantasy, City Hall, and graffiti/tagging vandalism, to mention a few. 

Like the Chronicle, the Examiner, and the Bay Guardian, the SF Weekly failed to write anything about that UC study on San Francisco's flawed system for counting serious cycling injuries even though it routinely trumpets its pro-bike policies.

That's how The City That Knows How speaks Truth to Power, except when it agrees with power by censoring an important story.

In the SF Weekly, Peter Lawrence Kane furiously denounces the woman who placed the ad in the Chronicle, suggests she's a racist, though the race of the apparently deranged man isn't mentioned, accuses her of calling for "a counter-revolution," of holding "brazenly fascist" notions, and of wanting "unbridled capitalism at its cruelest."

Kane even wondered if the ad was a "parody." He rants indignantly about the state of the world:

We live in a world where concerned citizen-racists call the cops on people of color for selling water or using coupons, and now we have Neiman-Marcus patrons taking out full-page ads in newspapers because they had a run-in with a weird person.

There's no indication that the guy was black, and he was more than simply "a weird person." He was apparently deranged and was fooling around with scissors behind her back.

Carol Denney in the Berkeley Daily Planet calls the woman 

someone consumed by the fear of what a nearby young man might do, claiming her quality of life was seriously compromised while having a sandwich at the Fresh Market Cafe' at Neiman Marcus on Geary Street while seeing someone "acting silent" and holding a pair of scissors.

What the woman described is a clearly deranged man fiddling with a pair of scissors behind her back, which would have upset even someone who didn't have enough money to place a $30,000 ad in the Chronicle.

More from Denney:

The young man described in the ad didn't make noise, didn't commit any theft, didn't break any law. We can be assured of this because no one takes out a $30,090.00 full page ad to tell a story of the horror of having to share public space with others and leaves out such detail if they really want to make their point...

This speaks volumes about the progressive view of the ongoing crisis of homelessness and all-around squalor on city streets (Berkeley of course has a similar crisis). 

We're supposed to "share public space" with deranged people, who may/may not be homeless. Maybe he was one of those people who shoot up on city streets I mentioned the other day.

Regardless of this guy's status, whether he was homeless or not---or "unhoused," as progs might say---his behavior was disturbing and unacceptable, whether in a high-end venue like Neiman-Marcus or in a Subway sandwich shop on Market Street.

The question now is What do we do about it? In an ideal world---my ideal world, anyhow---the deranged guy in Neiman-Marcus would have been detained by city cops and thoroughly checked out to learn whether he was a threat to others and himself. Is that "fascism"?

Kane on homelessness:

It’s also much too large for the city to tackle on its own. As SF Weekly has analyzed in the past, much of the blame can be pinned on the Reagan Administration.

We're surely beyond playing the blame game. The Reagan administration was more than 30 years ago. The question is what do we do about it now. The city has been and must continue to "tackle" homelessness on its streets as best it can regardless of how "large" the problem is.

Robert Gammon on Twitter:

The SF Chronicle ran a full-page ad today that bashes homeless people with obvious mental health issues. And if that were not bad enough, it was paid by an anonymous donor that calls her group, Fed Up Populace Campaign---a shady org that doesn't have a website. Ugh.

She doesn't even have a website! How can we take her seriously?

I've been blogging about the homeless issue in San Francisco since 2004. What was obvious even then is that progressives were utterly clueless about the issue, and many still are. They're just poor people who may, you understand, have some emotional issues.

That's a half-truth. Yes, being poor is not a crime, but living on city streets is unacceptable. Shooting up on city streets is unacceptable. Being demented on city streets is unacceptable.

See also Oh Gavin, you're such a bitch! and Progressive ideology in SF: Basic principles.

WATCH YOUR BACKS---NOBODY ELSE IS

.... as if stepping over used syringes and filth in Maiden Lane

wasn't bad enough....

Recently, I went into the Fresh Market Cafe at Neiman Marcus on Geary St. to have a sandwich. I was seated at a table with my back to the food counter. Over my right shoulder and behind me I noticed a youngish homeless man acting silent, strange, and trying to peer over the food counter. It struck me how out of context this was and thinking to myself how did he get here, deep into the cafe?

Feeling uneasy after a few minutes and thinking of a purse snatching, I got up to get my purse and move my table. I turned around and saw this homeless person wielding a large pair of SCISSORS that he was opening and closing erratically, previously behind my back! Horrified, I yelled to the waitress and hurried to the other side of the restaurant. While waiting patiently for security, this psychotic homeless person took a glass of water and walked out of the door onto Geary St. wielding the scissors.

The San Francisco city fathers and those who whould be held accountable for our public safety have for years let us all down by catering to the lowest common denominator. We, the tax-paying, responsible contributing members of society have had our quality of life as San Franciscans seriously compromised, dangerously so.

Sit with your backs to the wall, fellow citizens.

Signed,

Anonymous disgusted female San Francisco resident (for now)

* Neiman Marcus management were as horrified as I was. They are in no way to blame.