Tulsans Declare War on the Homeless

[jgruber]

I remember reading about this kind of thing in the during the Great Depression.


http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,129230,00.html


Tulsans Declare War on the Homeless
Tuesday, August 17, 2004

TULSA, Okla.  — Anger over a homeless man's fatal beating of a brass-knuckle-wielding bar owner is boiling over in Tulsa (search), where street people are facing a loosely organized campaign against their presence — and in some cases are being run out of the area.

T-shirts have been printed blasting homeless people with a four-letter word, and some people are warning of vigilante justice. A wanted poster with a picture of Terry Badgewell (search), the man who used a length of pipe to kill Deadtown Tavern owner Shawn Howard, was put up in a liquor store downtown.

[Freak]

Chicago gives homeless a one-way bus ticket to my town and my town gives them a one-way ticket to FL.  I guess you could call that running them out of town.

[Aonghus]

Personally I say we send them to Mexico in trade for the illegal immigrants.

Homeless people are a f-ing plague here in Southern California... sleeping in the alleys, wherever they can, breaking into *&^% willy nilly.

One of them broke into my jeep and trashed it last week for a bunch of grapes and about $6 in change.. nice guy.

Tulsans are right...

@#!* the homeless.

[DOWNY]

I agree, @#!* homeless people. The only reason they're homeless is because they're lazy bastards who won't get jobs like the rest of us. Goddamned hippies.

I propose making them into soap or some type of alternative sidewalk salt so people don't slip during the winter.

[The ZAPINATOR]

edit

[dgatl]

Interesting, two threads about Oklahoma at the same time.  I lived in Tulsa for a long time.  The homeless problem there is no where nearly as bad as in other places (like Miami, whew, it was bad there.  They would hover around your cafe table and the minute you put your food in the trash they would dig it out and eat it).  I think Tulsa is going to such extremes because

1)  Tulsa sucks
2)  Tulsa is trying to revitalize its image and woo companies to stay instead of heading off to Houston
3)  Tulsa sucks in general
4)  Downtown Tulsa really sucks

[jgruber]

For those who say @#!* the homeless, I suggest you work at a homeless shelter and find out who it is you are wanting to @#!*.

I ran a homeless shelter and it open my eyes wide.  There are many who fit the stereotype.  The alchy who couldn't stay sober.  The druggie who was clean for a month at a time

But others didn't fit the stereotype.  The working mothers who couldn't afford the rent on minimum, the 2 month old, the family of five.

[dgatl]

For those who say @#!* the homeless, I suggest you work at a homeless shelter and find out who it is you are wanting to @#!*.

I ran a homeless shelter and it open my eyes wide.  There are many who fit the stereotype.  The alchy who couldn't stay sober.  The druggie who was clean for a month at a time

But others didn't fit the stereotype.  The working mothers who couldn't afford the rent on minimum, the 2 month old, the family of five.

JeffJoe, you're right when you say that we can't just "@#!* the homeless."  In the other homeless thread, I bitched about giving them money.  The working mother with a 2 month old is sad and a reflection of the state of our society, but the ones that you see and encounter regularly are the functioning bums with two hands and two feet that could do something to make a living but choose to bum money on the streets to get cigarettes and booze.  Downtown Tulsa is run over by bums and drug dealers.  The streets need to be cleaned up.  But of course, most cities wouldn't dream of creating rehabiliation programs for them, because honestly, most of the homeless wouldn't go to it anyway.

[jgruber]

Remember you may see a bum with two hands and two feet, but you are working on limited information.

There are plenty of lazy people who rather sleep in a ditch than work for a living.  I ran into them, too.  But let's not condemn them all without knowing the whole story.

[DOWNY]

Remember you may see a bum with two hands and two feet, but you are working on limited information.

I've seen homeless people with wooden legs and fake Vietnam vets with no hands. Don't essentialize them JeffJoe. Please, be sensitive, for the children!

There are plenty of lazy people who rather sleep in a ditch than work for a living.  I ran into them, too. 

I ran into two of them myself. Just the other day I was driving down the freeway and two ran out in front of my Denali like two crack-hungry deer. *SMACK*! The dents those fuckers left is going to cost me a right nut to fix.

But let's not condemn them all without knowing the whole story.

@#!* the homeless.