It’s official: the Everett City Council wins the award for adaptive solutions to poverty. The passage of Ordinance CB 1509-40 represents a major breakthrough in legislative success stories: four Councilors get to tout their anti-homeless attitude in private meetings and fundraisers with Chamber of Commerce hot-shots; the police get much more latitude in harassing undesirables; and we get to expand the burden weighing down on the festering bowels of the criminal justice docket.
By passing an ordinance which targets asking for money, Everett has raised a glistening, patriotic middle finger to First Amendment jurisprudence and the principle of avoiding duplicative laws for instant political gratification. Sure, attempting to coerce a person into giving you money is already criminalized under a little-known “attempted robbery” statute. Sure, making one fear for one's safety by a physical act is already prohibited by some tiny, unknown legal intricacy called “assault." But poor people can’t get their malnourished minds around complex concepts like “robbery” or “assault.” They’re too busy being stupid, lazy, and poor.
The criticism of this ordinance is unfounded: now, business owners can threaten to get those eye-sores away from their property, even when they’re in the public right-‘o-way. Instead of having to feel the weight of customers’ guilt when they look at the man with an ‘Anything Helps' sign while they’re dining on $40 lunch appetizers, business owners can call the cops, and tell some itsy-bitsy white lie like ‘I saw them yell in someone’s face, and the person gave a dollar and ran away.’ The cops will come in with tasers and take the icky-ewie peasant to the slammer. They’ll go to court, and we’ll have to pay a prosecutor to persecute them, and we’ll have to pay a public defender to defend them. We’ll have to pay for clerks and court reporters and a judge and a bailiff, too. Then, even though they didn’t actually intend to intimidate anyone, they will be given jail time (which we will make them pay for when they get out) and get a nice $1,000 fine. The fine will make them realize that being stupid and lazy is stupid and lazy, and then they’ll just go get rid of any mental illness or substance abuse issues or criminal records or bad credit they had, then they’ll get a job and an apartment—even though you need a job to get an apartment and you need an apartment to get a job—and they’ll be able to pay back the fine.
Homelessness: solved.
I do have to say, though, that maybe next year the Council should propose that we just eat beggars convicted under this ordinance. I mean, what better way to stop poverty than to provide the good peasants with food? Once nourished with tasty protein, the poors will have all the motivation necessary to pull themselves up by their bootstraps…just as long as this ordinance doesn’t take their boots.
Sign the petition to repeal this ordinance!