Aggressive Homeless On San Jose State University Campus Scaring Students

[daredtowork]

3. Ask more questions about "aggression" of homeless people

Last edited Thu Mar 5, 2015, 02:49 AM - Edit history (1)

From this article it sounds like just having to *see* homeless people triggers some sort of guilt or pressure of responsibility or just unpleasant aesthetic feelings that are being projected as the aggression of the homeless person.

Watch out for the sexist variant of this ploy: the wife/daughter/elderly mom feels "unsafe" around homeless people. Until the homeless people do anything threatening, that "feeling" is a manifestation of the complainer's own stereotypes and prejudices. The best advice for them is to work weekends in a soup kitchen until they start to see the indigent poor as fellow human beings.

The bench issue should be a red flag and a civics lesson for the students. Cities deliberately remove benches on the streets. Where are the homeless people to go? This is a "right to rest" issue, but it is also hurting the elderly and the disabled as self-styled City Leaders attempt to encourage homeless people to go elsewhere. In this case they migrated to the public space of a State college campus.