{"id":1729,"date":"2009-08-09T09:17:37","date_gmt":"2009-08-09T16:17:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp\/2009\/08\/living_in_a_police_state_is_ok\/"},"modified":"2009-08-09T09:17:37","modified_gmt":"2009-08-09T16:17:37","slug":"living_in_a_police_state_is_ok","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/2009\/08\/living_in_a_police_state_is_ok.html","title":{"rendered":"Living in a Police State Is OK"},"content":{"rendered":"

I know, because I live in one, and I’m doing fine. I haven’t been arrested for jaywalking, littering, loitering, begging, or sleeping under a bridge. I haven’t been arrested for sleeping in a homeless shelter when there’s an outstanding warrant against me for sleeping on a suburban sidewalk. I haven’t been arrested for being someone who looks to a reasonable person like I belong on public assistance. I haven’t been arrested for eating food someone gave me in a park. I haven’t been arrested for not being white, wearing a wrong-color T-shirt in a wrong-color neighborhood, or looking overly anxious in an airport. I haven’t been arrested for being late for school or without ID in public housing. And those are just some of the things I haven’t been arrested for. The reason I haven’t been arrested is not because I’m white and haven’t committed any of these crimes — let’s face it, I’ve jaywalked, littered, and loitered, which makes me a triple threat — it’s because I’m not poor. If I were, living in my police state would not be OK, as Barbara Ehrenreich points out today in her must-read NY Times op-ed<\/a> on “the viciousness of the official animus toward the indigent.”
\n(Crossposted at HuffPo)<\/a>
\nPostscript: <\/strong>Talk about a police state … a friend writes from Germany: “Did you know that the German govt is now authorized (by a Parliament fulla worthless flakes) to invade everybody’s pc or laptop with a spy program — called, don’t laugh, ‘Trojan horse’ — and make a record of every key touched, and store the information for six months, etc. Of course, Hitler waived the idea of opening everybody’s mail and used a shortcut: Dangle a few krauts from the nearest tree with a cardboard sign around their necks that says: I am the evilest pig in town \/ With Jews I have been screwing around. Selah.<\/em> In other words, we have accomplished the unthinkable — we have sunk below herr Hitler … and M’sieu Napoleon, and Henry VIII … and Nero.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I know, because I live in one, and I’m doing fine. I haven’t been arrested for jaywalking, littering, loitering, begging, or sleeping under a bridge. I haven’t been arrested for sleeping in a homeless shelter when there’s an outstanding warrant against me for sleeping on a suburban sidewalk. I haven’t been arrested for being someone […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1729","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-uncategorized","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pbvgEs-rT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1729"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1729\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/herman\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}