Friday 13th Unlucky for Homeless in Venice

A few days ago the Spirit of Venice sent out this:

VENICE CA --As if by some act of cruel fate, on Friday, May 13, 2011, at 3:00 am in the morning - under cover of darkness - LAPD officers rousted homeless people sleeping at Venice beach.

As if that wasn't enough, LAPD officers, accompanied by City of Los Angeles sanitation trucks proceeded to STEAL their possessions, throwing them into the waiting truck for disposal at an undeclared location, with no possibility of retrieval.

One disabled paraplegic artist of color was ordered to get up and leave the area. As he struggled to climb into his wheelchair, his lifeless legs dragging on the ground, the LAPD officer told him that if he didn't move faster he would confiscate all his possessions. The artist continued to struggle but was unable to comply with the officer's demands quickly enough. He watched in despair as the officer STOLE his bag of painting materials (his very livelihood) and threw them into the waiting sanitation truck.

I have, in an earlier diary, documented how the LAPD, at the directions of L.A. Councilman Bill Rosendahl, has been seizing the vehicles of people found living in them and forcing many to sleep on the sidewalk. Now the police are rousing the the homeless and tossing what's left of their meager Earthly possessions, including prescription medication and perhaps a clean change of clothes, into the trash.

If this is the way the government treats those being ground under by our increasingly polarized capitalism economy now, I fear what solutions they will seek in the future.

Writing about the "austerity measures" taken in the wake of the Great Depression, R. Palme Dutt, made a very ominous prediction in 1933 as to where things were going. He wrote:

Today they are burning wheat and grain, the means of human life. Tomorrow they will burn living human beings.
Fascism and Social Revolution, 1934

Today they are callously taking away the very means of survival from the homeless. I just hope our government doesn't keep marching down that road because I think we all know where it leads. It leads to state sponsored mass murder. We've been through that movie before.

And all we good Germans have to do is let it happen. Just look the other way and fail to speak up while our government takes measures that are just a little bit more draconian everyday against a section of the population that is so unlucky as to have the failure. of the economic system blamed on them.

So please don't be silent and please sign this petition whether you live in Venice or not.

LAPD ACCOMPANIED BY CITY DUMP TRUCKS, IN RAIDS, SEIZE VENICE HOMELESS' POSSESSIONS

IF NOT NOW? -- WHEN? >>>>> IF NOT US? -- WHO?

SIGN THIS PETITION TO STOP THESE CRUEL RAIDS NOW!

PLEASE FORWARD WIDELY - THANKS!