WTF? That is not a rational post.
If you want to go around choking people to death for being annoying you should go to the police academy like the rest of them. You’ve got to earn that free pass.
When the other side of the aisle in Chicago talk about crime, the only ideas they seem to have are more police, less accountability for the police (“let them do their jobs!”, i.e. kill anyone they want), and never ever let anyone out of jail ever (if they are black or brown). I am still waiting for any other ideas from that side.
As a lifelong resident of Chicago, I’m interested in actual solutions. How do we make our city more healthy? How do we stop our youth from turning to crime? How do we address the root causes? Does it start at home with the family? Absentee fathers? How many of those fathers are in jail? How can society help? I don’t have the answers, but if we aren’t even asking the right questions, neither will anyone else.
Back the topic, I’ve encountered many homeless people and people having mental health issues in my years going to school and working downtown. Yes I have been annoyed, and I’ve had occasions were I felt nervous about what this person may end up doing. but I never once felt like they should die.
…sounds like I personally have your father beat in that department. That being said…
What the fuck does that have to do with a scumbag that killed another human being for the crime of “being annoying”?
My brother is a criminal who is constantly incarcerated. He’s violent too, he even tried to choke my mom to death once.
But he is a drug addict with schizoaffective disorder. The last time I communicated with him (we’re not generally on speaking terms) he was emailing me stuff where he was clearly delusional and didn’t know who I was.
Some of his problems are because he’s a selfish jerk who thinks he’s entitled to take advantage of other people because they’re gullible enough to fall for it. (He’s said as much to me in the past.) Most of his criminal behavior, though, has been because of his mental illness and because he is a slave to his addictions. (Heroin, meth, alcohol.)
I don’t hate him. I don’t think he deserves to be murdered by GI Rando on a subway. I know he’s dangerous, but he’s more of a danger to himself than to others. I’ve tried to get him help and worked with his lawyer while he’s been in jail.
I have very, very intimate experience with this subject. People like Jasmine who dehumanize folks with mental illness are the real problem.
What ever happened to the concept of compassion when someone is having a crisis?
Did anyone even offer as much as a single kind word? It all sounds like a desperate cry for help to me.
AND… to try to get this thread back on track regarding the title, here’s an evil MF for sure:
North Carolina Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, the current Republican favorite to be the party’s nominee for governor in 2024, has a long history of remarks viciously mocking and attacking teenage survivors of the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, for their advocacy for gun control measures.
In posts after the shooting, Robinson called the students “spoiled, angry, know it all CHILDREN,” “spoiled little bastards,” and “media prosti-tots.”
[snip]Robinson’s comments about the school shooting survivors were frequently personal, mocking their appearance and intelligence. In one post on Facebook, Robinson shared a photo of several students posing for photos, with the caption, “the look you get when you let the devil give you a ride on a river of blood to ’15 minutes of Fameville.’”
In another comment on Twitter in April of 2018, Robinson shared several crying laughing emojis in response to a post that blasted conservatives who mocked the survivors, writing that when children “got sassy,” adults needed to make sure the “CHILDREN knew their place.”
I mean, it’s an improvement, isn’t it? In Sandy Hook, they were insulting the dead children. Insulting the survivors is a step up for these fuckers.
And that place, apparently, is 6 feet underground.
…just a reminder that Neely wasn’t breaking into a store. He wasn’t carjacking people. He didn’t have a gun. He didn’t shoot anyone over drugs.
This is just a distraction. Neely didn’t do anything to deserve to get murdered that day. Neely isn’t every criminal. He didn’t deserve to die because of a strawman version of progressive ideals that you’ve built up in your head.
Perhaps you could start with the guy who murdered Neely? He’s a criminal. A murderer. No character. No excuses.
That’s either an incredible oversimplification (if I’m being generous) or just a flat-out lie (if I’m being realistic) about what those Chicago politicians are saying. But, hey, if it’s true, surely you’ll be able to link to it, right?
Linkety link?
Perhaps you’d care to explain how you came to that conclusion.
Right. The military needs to be chock-full of people with mental health issues, huh? And perhaps this escaped your notice: “Help Wanted” does not mean “Walk in here, demand the job, and the employer must hire you”.
Then perahps you want to work on removing the societal barriers which contribute so much to poverty, lack of educational opportunities, and even employment, let alone advancement once employed. Somehow I doubt you do.
And no doubt certain privileges in his life assisted him on that journey. For one, I seriously doubt he or any of his peers who enlisted were disqualified from enlistment due to medical or mental health issues.
Let’s get back to the USMC veteran for a moment, shall we? From what I’ve read, he had his victim in a choke-hold for 15 minutes. As I’ve said before, he should not have used such a hold in the first place. Actually, that should be “in the second place”. In the first place, he should not have physically attacked his victim. Next, 15 minutes is certainly a long time. There were plenty of other options besides killing the man. Do I really need to list those options for you?
Hell, admitting the shooting actually happened with real victims is a step up for those scum.
The only criminal is this case is that former Marine murderer, and all you have done is provide excuses for him.
Which of these should that mentally ill homeless man have done? 
If you don’t like my long-winded replies just read the bolded parts for the short version.
Many people avoid those shelters due to fears for their safety - in group settings with little security robbery, assault, and rape can and do happen. I had a homeless co-worker once (yes, some homeless people have jobs - they’re not mentally ill, just desperately poor) who stopped going to a shelter to sleep because their rules about showing up in the afternoon and leaving in the morning conflicted with his work schedule so it was either sleep in the shelter and lose the job or keep the job and find somewhere to sleep (for awhile, the basement of the shop). I’m not sure the above really comes under “choice”. My co-worker opted to keep the job, thinking that having some income would increase his chances of actually getting a permanent place to live even if in the meanwhile he was illegally sleeping in the basement of a business (yes, the owner knew and was OK with it - it still violated the local zoning ordinances, the lease, and the company insurance policy).
Many of the services for homeless pre-suppose mental illness and/or drug addiction. While there are homeless people with those problems there are others whose main problem is a lack of income combined with a lack of affordable housing in the area. You’re less likely to spot these folks out in public because they don’t “look homeless” - they maintain acceptable personal hygiene, dress within social norms, and can interact with others in a socially conventional manner. They also tend to couch-surf, sleep in their cars if they have one, and if they’re employed can usually spring for a cheap hotel room from time to time. Married couples who wind up homeless might object to being separated every time they go to a shelter because, of course, the system assumes homeless people aren’t married. Shelters that take women might not permit boys above a certain age to stay with their mother which poses problems for teenagers and their parent(s). Shelters that take men typically have no provisions for children, especially girl children, because the system assumes homeless men don’t have dependents. So, on top of homelessness, homeless family face the possibility of being split up every single night they use a shelter.
Meanwhile, a lot of shelters, at least in my area, have rules like “you must arrive by X time of day” and “You must leave by Y time of day” but you’re not allowed to leave between those times (well, you can, but you won’t be allowed back in). The no drug policies typical of many shelters may or may not be extended to needed prescription medications and lead to confiscation of them without return, which can land a person in the hospital if they enter the shelter system without knowing these things, or involvement of the police under the assumption that any medication a homeless person has is an illegal drug and not a needed medication prescribed by a legitimate doctor. After which good luck getting it replaced, maybe it will be, maybe it won’t be.
In other words, “go to a shelter” is easily said by people who don’t really know how jacked-up the situation is in reality. Are there good homeless shelters where people are allowed to come and go as needed for a job, where the temporary residents are treated kindly and with dignity, where the people using them are genuinely safe? Yes, yes there are. But not all of them are, and some of them are pretty horrible. If someone is sleeping in a cardboard box on a sidewalk instead of a shelter that may not be because of mental illness or dysfunction, they may be doing it because they find it safer than the shelters.
Meanwhile, you have mentally ill people who need treatment, but first have to navigate rules and regulations which, as I noted, may include separating them from their prescribed medications and putting them into situations where they may be victimized by unsavory people who also happen to be homeless. Back when I lived in Rogers Park in Chicago one of the local characters was “Crazy Mary” who was regularly assaulted by gangbangers, regularly had her medication stolen, and due to her propensity to hallucinate, could not reliably describe her assailants when police did try to help her, and was barred from various shelters for either arguing with people who weren’t there or for bringing “drugs” with her - you know, her prescribed psychiatric medications that actually did help her when she was able to get/keep/take them - which got her booted due to no-tolerance policies. Not to mention being assaulted more than once in a group shelter situation. (Her story had a sort-of happy ending in that she ended up at a long-term facility a.k.a. “nursing home” last I heard of that wasn’t too bad (being mobile and able to do self-care helped with that) and gave her a relatively safe place to sleep and didn’t confiscate her meds, but what happened after that I’m not sure)
Oh, and “food pantries” - I’ve got a bit of personal experience with those. Again, the assumption is often that you’re on drugs or something when the core problem is often simply a lack of money. I went to a couple during my worst years of financial distress and they’re not always wonderful. One of them insisted on a mandatory 40 minute indoctrination session that alternated between evangelical Christianity (why do you hate Jesus? You need to get Jesus into your life. Jesus will save you. You need to come to our Church on Sunday and the Bible study classes on Wednesday and our program on this day and that day…) and trying to get you to admit to alcoholism, drug abuse, self harm, or the like. Og help you if you have any sort of dietary restriction - if you don’t take the white rice and peanut butter it’s not because you’re a diabetic with a food allergy it’s because you’re an ungrateful wretch and you don’t actually want help. Are there good food pantries? Sure, but there are also some pretty terrible ones, too. The best ones let you “shop” and make your own choices among the offerings.
But there are still problems with them - food pantries may not be helpful if you have no cooking facilities and they’re offering mostly ingredients or things that have to be cooked (fortunately, even when poor I’ve always had a full kitchen to work with). Soup kitchens where you can get a free meal are a problem if you have dietary restrictions, food allergies, or something like celiac disease. No provisions are made for such things, and the people serving may or may not truly know what’s in everything and may or may not have the necessary knowledge to avoid cross-contamination or may be careless about making sure what’s in the decaf pot of coffee is actually decaf (if they even offer the option) or understand why these things are so important to the person asking the questions, the person who should be grateful for the free food and not questioning everything!
Don’t get me wrong - I very much support shelters (occasionally with my own physical labor, funds, and donations), food pantries, soup kitchens, and so on but it’s a sad commentary on our society that they are so necessary and yet far from sufficient to meet the needs of our citizens. But I also understand why needy people don’t always take advantage of them, whether those people are mentally ill or mentally normal.
And I get that homeless people can be scary, smelly, or otherwise objectionable - hell, I lived in Chicago for 15 years and rode mass transit all the time. People sleeping on trains or buses (one guy had a bunch of car keys for a particular model of car and would sleep in other peoples’ cars, including ours - we only found out because my spouse left for work very early in the morning), people “bathing” in public bathroom sinks,people sleeping on park benches, people bathing in Lake Michigan early in the morning and changing clothes on the beach, people who smelled awful, people who dressed weird or acted weird or were clearly disoriented or otherwise off-putting. But none of those should be subjected to the death penalty as punishment.
^ This.
We do a really, really shitty job of taking care of our own citizens. We punish rather than help. We require the poor/homeless/mentally ill to meet standards the rest of us would find difficult to meet. We stigmatize. We blame people for being sick, disabled, or having misfortune.
Why, all of them, of course. And at the same time! It’s not like he had a full schedule before his demise, right? [/mocking another poster’s so-called suggestions]
Unfortunately too many other people have voted for a government hell-bent on cutting funds for what little social safety net we have and spending government money trying to regulate sex and reproduction for the female half of the population, censoring the education of our children, and promoting guns, guns, and more guns. I didn’t vote for those people (I voted for different people) yet they’re now running the country.
Wow. I usually just tried to leave the situation myself - moving to another subway car is a valid way to de-escalate the situation. But then, I’ve always been willing to run rather than get into an actual physical confrontation whenever I had such an option. Not that I’m unwilling to defend myself if I have no choice (and I’ve done that) but when given a choice I try to evade trouble.
Right. Let’s just ignore the women who have been raped to death in India and the authorities look the other way. The life-long maltreatment of “Untouchables”. The religious violence. The illness and deaths from contaminated water because people are shitting in the river. Etc. etc. Which is not to slam India, just to point out that every country has its problems. Poverty in India differs in details but it’s just as horrific as anywhere else, and more so than some places. And, just because, I’ll throw in that “sleeping in a doorway” is more survivable in India than, say, New York or Chicago because India doesn’t get winter the way New York or Chicago does. While living in Chicago I twice encountered people frozen to death on my morning commute. I expect that sort of thing is a lot less common in New Delhi.
My guess: a diversionary tactic to avoid admittedly that there are a some really fucked up things about the US. Also, a bit of blaming the poor for being poor, and blaming the mentally ill for being mentally ill. Both of which are fine American traditions.
Sure, there are some great things about the US. There are some other things that really, really suck.
Or voted against increasing funds. Recently, in Kankakee, Illinois, a proposed tax increase of $0.005 that would have paid for increasing mental health services failed because “OMG! More tax!” That’s what ads from the opposition boiled down to.
Powerfully written. Thank you.