Writer S.E. Smith points out a hypocrisy in modern American society
: We find it funny, weird, or cool when Apple customers sleep outside in advance of a new product launch. Yet many states are simultaneously cracking down on homeless people for simply existing in public spaces.
Smith writes:
Yet there’s a deep and unavoidable social divide to address when one group of people is chuckled at for sleeping outside, while another is a source of derision—with legislation designed to actively target it. This divide falls heavily out along class lines, as those wealthy enough to buy the latest Apple product are apparently not as worrisome to civic leaders as members of the homeless community; one is welcome to bring sleeping bags and a sense of community spirit to the streets of downtown, while the other is not.
And later:
We can’t have it both ways: Either people deserve to use the sidewalk or they don’t, and laws regarding the use of the sidewalk should be enforced equally, regardless of social status. Last year alone, Apple benefited from unequal enforcement of sit/lie laws in Spokane when police declined to cite and disperse those waiting for new iPhones, though it likely would have been irked if homeless people without funds for new phones had joined the throng. In 2012, similarly unequal enforcement also marked the release of a new iPhone model.
If you’re going to revel in the spectacle of huge crowds mobbing your doors in anticipation of a product release, you’d better be prepared for police officers coming to break up the crowd. After all, they’re loitering and blocking the sidewalk.
Read the full article—which explores a lot of the anti-homeless sentiment being codified in law across the country—over on The Daily Dot.
(Image: Waiting for iPhones NY, Bastique, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Top photo: "Waiting for iPhones NYC," by Bastique
