MIM Notes No. 200      December 15, 1999

New York increases Criminalization of Homelessness

by MC88

Fascist-leaning mayor of New York Rudolph Giuliani announced on 26 
October that homeless people will henceforth be required to work 
to receive housing from New York's shelter system, the largest in 
the U.$. The new rule, an extension of the Giuliani 
administration's existing welfare policies, will apply to about 
4600 families and 7000 single adults in the system.(1)

The Giuliani administration is in the vanguard of Amerika's 
attacks on the oppressed, developing new methods of oppression 
that quickly become standard fare around the country, such as its 
workfare program and "quality of life" policing. In a country 
experiencing an epidemic of police murder and an imprisonment 
craze unprecedented in history(7), Giuliani is the wave of the 
future.

National Oppression: It's the Amerikkkan Way

Homeless people in the U.$., like prisoners and the poor, are 
drawn disproportionately from the oppressed nations.(3) Settler 
reactionaries like Giuliani score big political points with the 
oppressor nation by attacking these oppressed groups, justifying 
it with rhetoric about "personal responsibility". A Giuliani aide 
said of the new policy, "The city is asking parents to take 
responsibility for themselves and to take responsibility for their 
children."(1) 

The imprisonment craze, prisoner slave labor and workfare are all 
justified along similar lines of making people take 
"responsibility", yet we never see the bourgeoisie taking 
responsibility for the workings of the capitalist economy and its 
anarchy of production which makes homelessness and unemployment 
inevitable. 

Socialism enabled a poor country like China under Mao to swiftly 
eliminate homelessness and unemployment, in addition to even worse 
problems like drug addiction, infanticide and famine, but the 
richest capitalist country in the world still has approximately 
700,000 homeless people and millions of oppressed nationals in 
prison or unemployed.(2)

New York's homeless will be required to work the same kind of 
menial jobs that New York currently forces upon its welfare 
recipients, such as cleaning up garbage on the streets or in city 
parks. These jobs do not teach any marketable skills or otherwise 
do anything to, in Giuliani's words, "help people to help 
themselves."(1) These people will be working just for shelter, and 
won't be receiving wages, so this extra work won't help them save 
money to pay for a place to live. Many already have low paying 
jobs or work in the city's workfare program. Like prisoner slave 
labor and workfare, this new homeless policy, while masquerading 
as "compassion and love" (in Giuliani's words), is a brutal attack 
on the oppressed.

As a further slap in the face of the oppressed, the Giuliani 
administration will confiscate the children of those who refuse to 
engage in forced labor in return for a place to sleep. When MIM 
looks at the foster care system in the U.$. today we see the 
settler nation trafficking in oppressed nation children much as it 
did before the Civil War. Giuliani's plan could result in 
thousands more oppressed nation children being stolen and put in 
the homes of their oppressors. The foster system is part of a 
general carrot and stick policy of the bourgeoisie towards 
oppressed nation youth: hundreds of thousands are stolen and put 
in wealthier environments to be better assimilated, then the ones 
that get away are thrown in prison.(4)

Damned if You Do, Damned if You Don't

On 19 November Giuliani and his police commissioner Howard Safir 
made a further announcement that was so reactionary it actually 
stunned many New York activists. They announced that the NYPD was 
going to start arresting homeless people caught sleeping in public 
places if they refused shelter. The homeless have to "choose" 
between slave labor and jail, unless they can evade the police.(5)

This most recent announcement was a reaction to crime hysteria 
following a random act of violence three days earlier. A womyn 
crossing a midtown street was struck in the head with a brick by a 
man the pigs assumed (without evidence) was homeless. The 
reactionary Daily News ran a front page editorial under the 
headline "Get the Violent Crazies off Our Streets", demanding that 
homeless people be rounded up and institutionalized. Giuliani 
expressed agreement with the substance of this call for increased 
national oppression.

Giuliani justified the new policy on the basis of the sanctity of 
private property, and said that homeless people do not have the 
right to sleep on the streets, and that "Streets do not exist in 
civilized societies for the purpose of people sleeping there. 
Bedrooms are for sleeping."(5) Giuliani seemed unaware that 
homeless people by definition have no bedrooms. Apparently he 
admits capitalism is uncivilized because it forces people to sleep 
in the street by denying them housing.

Since city streets and parks are supposedly public property, one 
might ask why the homeless do not have the right to sleep there. 
After all, they are part of the public. This demonstrates what MIM 
has known for a long time: there are no rights, only power 
struggles. The homeless are powerless, so they have neither the 
right to housing nor the right not to have housing. They have no 
power, therefore no rights. MIM organizes homeless people along 
with all of the oppressed to seize power and thereby gain for 
themselves the right to "land, bread, housing, education, 
clothing, justice and peace."(6) 

Socialism is Better

MIM has no problem with making people work for shelter. MIM fights 
for socialism, where everyone is guaranteed a job and a home and 
paid according to the system of "to each according to their work", 
the flip side of which is "if you don't work, you starve." Under 
socialism people aren't allowed to get rich as parasites on other 
people's labor; people are required to carry their weight instead 
of being carried on the backs of the oppressed and exploited. This 
is very different from capitalism where unemployment and 
homelessness are inevitable and those who work the hardest are the 
poorest. Under capitalism, stockbrokers and bankers sit on their 
asses all day shuffling paper and get food, shelter and wealth 
handed to them on a silver platter. Then, they have the nerve to 
lecture the people who make the clothes that they wear and the 
food that they eat about personal responsibility.

Even liberals who just want to make homelessness more bearable can 
see that Giuliani's policies just aggravate the situation. People 
who truly want to eliminate homelessness need to study history to 
find the most successful proven path to that goal. MIM did this 
and is now leading the way along that path, through anti-
imperialist revolution and socialist construction to communism.

Notes:

1. "NYC Homeless May Work for Shelter", AP dispatch, 26 October 
1999, and "NYC Wants Homeless People to Work", AP dispatch, 27 
October 1999, both available on Yahoo News at www.yahoo.com.

2. Different studies produce different numbers. Of the most widely 
quoted studies, one found 7 million had been homeless at some 
point between 1985 and 1990, and one found that in 1999 700,000 
are homeless on any given night and 2 million are homeless at some 
point during the year. See National Coalition for the Homeless 
Fact Sheet #2 at http://nch.ari.net/numbers.html.

3. In 1998 the U.$. homeless were 49% Black, 32% white, 12% 
"Hispanic", 4% Native American and 3% Asian according to the U.S. 
Conference of Mayors. This would count many First Nations people 
as Hispanic or Caucasian, and many Latinos as white. The 
definitions of these government categories do not exactly 
correspond to the scientific definitions MIM uses. So even with 
some oppressed groups undercounted we see that the oppressed 
nations are massively overrepresented. See National Coalition for 
the Homeless Fact Sheet #3 at http://nch.ari.net/who.html.

4. In 1995 children in foster care in the U.$. were 45% Black and 
36% white according to the U.$. Congress, 1998 Green Book 
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1998) which you can 
find at http://www.welfareacademy.org/research/1998.htm. Blacks 
are 13% of the U.$. population. There were about 500,000 children 
in foster care in the U.$. in 1998.

5. The New York Times, 20 November 1999, pp. A1 and B3.

6. From Point 10 of the Black Panther Party 10 Point Program, 
viewable at http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/bpp/bpprog.htm.

7. See Facts on U$ Imprisonment, in ULK of this issue.