There should totally be a movement called “Sleep in Public” where people defend their right to sleep on public property. Sleep in your cars. Sleep on benches. Sleep at the park. Just make it a mundane and regular part of life to see someone napping in the library. It would make it much harder to single out the homeless for harassment if everyone else is doing the same thing and much harder to argue that it’s a “threat to public safety” when it’s so clearly harmless.
“But homeless people commit crimes!” I have a very hard time believing they commit crimes while asleep.
“Homeless people commit crimes!” I once had a client late to an appointment during my internship in Grad School and, when she did show up, it was with a black eye.
Why?
Because a fucking pig cop hit her for the “crime” of falling asleep on the subway. An elderly, disabled black woman who has no home fell asleep on the subway and was awoken by a fucking Nazi cop bastard HITTING HER.
“Homeless people commit crimes” fuck you. Homeless people are trying to get by in a world that would rather see them dead than happy and well. Homeless people have their very existence criminalized front to back every single fucking day. Homeless people deal with assault, violence, discrimination, and fucking architecture designed to make their lives, which are already fucking difficult, near impossible.