BURNT BY THE SUN
Is it a mirage? Am I seeing things? I suppose roaming around the Mojave Desert in such hot conditions can do all kinds of things to your mind! This is especially true if there is no shade (*See recent articles, below).
But believe it or not, a person can come across 200 people in tents, hastily-erected wooden shacks, and caravans who have taken refuge in this unforgiving landscape where a person can easily suffer a stroke or perish from dehydration if his or her water supply runs out. The facts are that those 200 homeless people have fled further into the desert to escape from on-going harassment from the police who constantly evict, stop, detain them—and deprive them of their most cherished possessions. The police can even destroy their possessions, thereby raising the question as to who is actually breaking the law!
It all seems so strange. Salvador Dali could not have invented anything more surreal! I am no Marco Polo or Baron Munchausen. There are actually around 200 people who have fled from the authorities in what some describe as an on-going war against the homeless in some American towns. You would think that those in authority would grant those people a break. But instead, just in case the homeless get too comfortable in the desert a sign was erected within the vicinity of the camp warning:
NO PARKING
NO TRESPASSING
VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED
Who erected this odd sign remains a mystery. One would have thought that the homeless here have already been burnt by the sun itself.
NO REPRIEVE OR REST
Where did those homeless people come from? Many of those homeless had previously parked their trailers in the city of Lancaster but were driven out by a crackdown on the homeless by the sheriff’s deputies that forbids them from camping in many spots under strict laws of loitering. This is not just an assault on the homeless but on anyone who happens to be resting in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Any person who simply decides to stop and sit down on a bench for a rest or simply sleep overnight in their car can find themselves judged to be for loitering. Even doing something innocuous such as going for a walk in a forest or countryside might be deemed 'trespassing.' This on-going harassment represents an assault on not only the homeless, the accidental tourist, or trespasser but anyone seeking to live a different way of life at odds with the new ‘industrial revolution’ of what we know as information technology which is encroaching into every aspect of a person's life.
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF!
None of this is new, however! There are historical parallels. Noam Chomsky points out that in England the people had a common right to the dwell in forests, use the wood, do some hunting and fishing—as well as build their own homes on the common land. Those rights were often based on unwritten customs inherited down through the centuries. Unfortunately, the people were illegally deprived of their land through enclosures, evictions, and the stricter laws where people could be turned into trespassers on their own land.
Chomsky writes, 'The rise of capitalist practice and morality brought with it a radical revision of how the commons are treated, and how they are conceived of.' In regard to America, Chomsky states how the colonists invented an absurd notion of 'terra nullius' which was used to deprive the American Native Indians of their own lands by claiming their way of life was worthless and lacked any commercial use or value {“Magna Carta: Its Fate and Ours,” from ‘Who Rules the World?’ By Noam Chomsky, London: Penguin Books, 2017, chapter 7}.
The methods and justification for the constant attacks on encampments, in addition to the raids and evictions, has been pointed out by Eve Ottenberg. Ottenberg claims that the number of homeless in America has been grossly underestimated and comes to approximately 3 million if children are taken into account. As many as one percent of Americans may be homeless. She mentions how many homeless are sleeping in sewers, tents, cars, subways, and on concrete. Ottenberg attributes the root causes of homelessness to a rigged system where falling wages can't keep up with soaring prices of gas, food and rent and the fact that 40% of Americans [according to a 2019 survey] are unable to come up with 400 dollars in an emergency should they face a great challenge. They have no plan 'B.’
Ottenberg states the real estate development racket is abnormally squeezing out affordable housing. Ottenberg, like Chomsky, can't help making historical parallels with the enclosure movement in England. She describes Americans as 'modern-day landless serfs.' {See the brilliant article in Counterpunch, July 22nd, 2022, Les Miserables: Living and Dying in America's Streets, by Eve Ottenberg.} Ottenberg explains how the powers that be attempt to rationalize the assault on the homeless by a campaign where the homeless are criminalized by law enforcement bodies, a campaign of fear-mongering is fostered which depicts the homeless as posing a dangerous threat to the public. There is also use of a false rhetoric which claims the homeless are inherently idle and 'a lost cause.' Homelessness is narrowly viewed as 'a law and order problem.'
BLACK RHETORIC
Where have we heard all this rhetoric of the homeless, the poor and the working class as lazy? This is what a contender for the British Prime Minister thinks of the British working class whom she derided as ‘work-shy.’ Such language used to insult the homeless and the poor is hardly unprecedented. One of the reasons for justifying the Highland clearances when the landlords evicted all their tenants off their land was they were lazy, dirty and wasting the 'common land' which could be put to better use by 'improvement landlords.’
The results of those clearances which took place in Scotland during the 18th and 19th centuries was the land came to be turned into a wilderness and ironically, a wasteland. In both England and Scotland, thousands of people who were driven from their land were reduced to becoming beggars. New legislation was passed to effectively criminalize those people and deprive them of alternative ways of making a living.
There was a lot of fear mongering in Scotland during the 16th century concerning gangs of beggars moving around and robbing people. In 1575, a law was passed by the Scottish parliament where any unauthorized beggars could be scourged and branded. Any beggars who 'refused to work' and were caught illegally begging could be put in iron chains, and nailed to the tron by the ears which were cut off. If caught a second time they could receive a death sentence.
The list of beggars considered undesirable by the authorities reflects deeply-rooted prejudices by the authorities against a particular way of life. The homeless were hardly lazy but simply wanted to choose a distinct livelihood which respected their freedom and dignity. The list of unwanted vagabonds encompassed Egyptians {a word for gypsies}, fortune tellers, minstrels, shipbroken mariners, and Irish and Highland bards. Storytelling, acting, and playing a musical instrument did not count as 'real work' as it did not boost the profits of new landlords or industrialists who sought sweat shop labor. Because those people did not want to become wage slaves they were deemed 'lazy.' A new law was passed by the Scottish parliament in the early 17th century where the masters of coal heughs (coal mines) and salt pans could apprehend the vagabonds and force them to work long hours in mines and salt works as slaves for life.
The English historian Christopher Hill writes that similar laws were enforced in England in which the 'royal policy of disafforestation and enclosure, or of draining the fens, as applied before 1640, involved disrupting a way of life, a brutal disregard for the rights of commoners; they and their children were often deprived of old established playing areas—to the detriment, traditionalists complained, of proficiency in shooting with the long bow. A consequence of the policy was to force men to sole dependence on wage labour, which many regarded as little better than slavery. {See 'Think you that we can advise ourselves no better than to turn our children to foolish [sweating] trades ?' from “The World Turned Upside Down,” in ‘Radical Ideas During the English Revolution, by Christopher Hill, 1991, London: Penguin Books, page 53}.
By the way, contrary to some views, the Scottish Gypsies were never idle and were constantly working for farmers during harvests as well as working as blacksmiths, carpenters, and handymen. Despite this, King James the 1st of England passed an act in 1609 where simply being a gypsy would suffice for being put to death. The storyteller Jess Smith, in her book 'The Way of the Wander,’ claims that the authorities mounted a systematic genocide against the gypsies. She argues that after 1609 'From then on there was no mercy. The genocide of Gypsies and Tinkers - women, children, and the elderly - became official government policy, and no one was spared' {‘The Story of the Travellers in Scotland, Way of the Wanderers,’ by Jess Smith, Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2012, p. 21}.
The negative rhetoric against those reluctant to perform sweatshop labor was often given a theological slant. The new reformation which swept through Scotland inspired a self-righteous attitude where vagabonds were viewed as an accursed generation incapable of any reform and beyond redemption of any kind. Calvinist preachers resented the fact that many of the homeless did not attend any church or belong to any social group. They were viewed as disrupting and undermining social institutions. Just read the following statement written in the margins of a Geneva Bible by Acts during the early 16th century-
‘Vagabonds.... which do nothing but walk the streets, wicked men, to be hired for every man's money to do nay mischief, such as we commonly call the rascals and very sink and dunghill knaves of all towns and cities ... Into what country and place soever they come, they cause sedition and tumults.'
Just as the homeless were depicted as evil, lazy and up to no good in the early 17th century in England, and Scotland, so they are again blackened in the 21st century America. It sounds like the same old story being retold again and again. When the vagrancy act of 1656 in England was passed against all wandering persons "the Quakers protested that Christ himself and his apostles would have been arrested. And if Christ returned to feed the five thousand in the desert in the 21st century he would also be detained. He would be deemed 'wicked.’ And there is no rest for 'the wicked! '
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*Articles about the homeless relocating to the Mojave Desert:
As police crack down on homelessness, unhoused end up in Mojave desert | California | The Guardian
Homeless in California: the Americans forced to camp in the desert - podcast | News | The Guardian
Homeless people face relentless abuse in Lancaster, ACLU alleges - Los Angeles Times (latimes.com)