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This cartoon has four panels. All the panels show a gritty commercial doorway – the kind that’s recessed a few feet into the building – on a city sidewalk. There’s litter and graffiti here.
There are two characters in the comic strip. The first character is a homeless man sleeping in the doorway, wearing a zip-up sweatshirt over a t-shirt and a dull red knit cap, and with a full beard. The other character is a muscular-looking cop dressed in a police uniform and carrying a baton. In defiance of tradition, he is cleanshaven. I’ll call these two characters KNITCAP and COP.
PANEL 1
Knitcap, covered by a brown blanket and with his head pillowed on some rolled-up clothes, is lying in a doorway, apparently asleep. The cop is using his baton to poke knitcap in the side. The cop has a somewhat sadistic grin.
COP: Hey, you! Get up! We’ve outlawed sleeping in public! You’re not allowed anymore!
PANEL 2
Knitcap is sitting up, rubbing sleep out of his eyes with one hand. He speaks calmly. The cop watches, smirking, arms akimbo.
KNITCAP: In that case, I guess I’ll sleep in a hotel tonight.
PANEL 3
A close-up of Knitcap. He’s stroking his chin with a hand, as if thinking through his options.
KNITCAP: Or should I sleep in my townhouse instead? Or my Hamptons place? I’ll call my butler and ask what he thinks!
PANEL 4
Knitcap, grinning, is now holding a hand next to his face, thumb and pinky finger extended, pretending it’s a phone as he talks. The cop is glaring and slapping his baton against his palm.
KNITCAP: Smithers? Smithers old boy! My super fun street sleeping holiday is done. Which of my mansions shall I sleep in tonight.
COP (thought): Next step: Outlaw sarcasm.
HG: “What’s that? You’re going to put me in a nice warm cell and be required to give me three hots and a cot?”
PO: .oO(Next step. Outlaw human rights.)
The constitutional amendment that outlawed slavery in the US provided one exception: anyone convicted of a crime.
This was a tool of Jim Crow to maintain a sizeable black slave labor force via disproportionate criminalization of black people and poverty (newly-freed previous slaves were very poor, often illiterate). It was and is a tool of modern racialized hyper-exploited labor via the prison system. And it is likely a tool that US authorities are keeping in their back pocket for the mass criminalization of the homeless.
Can they sleep outside your house?
Literally everywhere but your house is outside your house.
They already sleep outside our houses
Give them their own houses.
I’ll pledge a % match of my networth to a billionaire’s % networth in tax dollars to solving the housing crisis, healthcare crisis (including mental, dental, and vision care) and providing a UBI to US inhabitants.
I’m in. I wonder what the actual numbers on this are.
Am I gonna be out the thousands I’ve been promised by the “UBI can’t work” crowd, or is it going to be like seven cents (total, for my lifetime) because I have no real concept of what a billion dollars is compared to what I earn…
![[Lefty Cartoons] Let’s Outlaw Being Homeless! That’ll Work!(feddit.org)](https://feddit.org/pictrs/image/30c824c8-ccf8-4951-b2d5-d26038e65f12.png){kind=link}
I’ve seen this comic a few times and ma just now noticing the mouse and cat scene playing out on the corner lol
Background details rulz!
Edit: Any idea what his shirt is supposed to say?
Looks like “No, you’re Spartacus”
No idea what that’s a reference to though.
If they outlaw sarcasm I’m going straight to the death penalty. It was nice reading up all these posts to entertain my brain 🧠 in between tasks!
In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets, and steal loaves of bread.
Anatole France