Some Christmas thoughts about a news story that stayed in my head.
You might have seen this item when it did the rounds a couple weeks ago: basically, the city of Newark is going to fine people and groups who feed the homeless without a permit. It hit Twitter, I saw the headline, I shook my head and made the sign of the cross and wondered where it will all end, and moved on with my day, as I constantly do with bad news. This particular bit of bad news stayed in my head for a couple of reasons. One, it’s comically evil; two, I try to keep tabs on the criminalization of poverty and misfortune, since the scenario I’m afraid we’re moving toward is “Climate refugees lined up and shot or boxed up and gassed at the border of every rich country, especially this one, under both conservative regimes (which do it with Sadean gusto) and neoliberal ones (which do it with Carteresque rectitude, frowning all the while, and who seem to rediscover that it’s happening and get politely indignant every time they’re out of power, as they frequently are)”.