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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 13, 2023

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Personal anecdote time: I ride Toronto public transit frequently. The TTC has not been in a good place for a while. Violent, mentally ill homeless have had free reign. Last year a woman was set on fire (she died), another was stabbed to death with an ice pick, and a close friend of mine is currently going through the trial of someone who tried to push her onto the subway tracks. A foreign student who had come to Canada a few months prior was shot to death completely at random at my subway exit (this will give you a very good idea of where I live if you know how to use google).

But things got noticeably worse in December when a number of the city's emergency homeless shelters they had set up for the duration of COVID shut down without replacements. Twice I had to intervene to stop a homeless man harassing women late at night. Just about every trip you'd take you saw at least one obviously deranged person. Things were really ugly.

So how did the mods at /r/toronto react, given that they control the information source on the city for many people? (Canadians I believe use reddit the most of any nationality) Why, No-Crime January! For the month of January all posts on crimes committed in the city would be removed, unless the mods specially approved them, with the not-so-subtle implication that this was to counter "conservative narratives" on violence in the city. This got immediate backlash, but it got even worse when January saw another big wave of transit attacks. This was enough to get foreign press attention, and city politicians approved for a one month (!) deployment of police patrols onto the TTC, with the predictable types kvetching about the harm this would do to "racialized people" (as if they would prefer the violent mentally ill to the presence of police). Of course the /r/toronto mods declared their "temporary experiment" to have been a huge success, and that the new no-crime policy would become a permanent rule.

I'm a big believer in public transit. I'm a big believer in walkable cities. I do not believe those visions are compatible with a philosophy of policing and mental health which leaves mentally ill people unchecked to ruin public spaces. I talk to a lot of people and the number of outwardly progressive people who have conceded (in secret) to me that they're thinking we need a return of insane asylums is notable. The problem, at least in the Canadian political environment, is who is going to do it? The Conservatives don't want to spend the money. The Liberals and NDP would face rebellion from their activist/NGO base. At present the inevitable situation seems that the problem will get worse and worse until the public reaction is so bad it demands a crackdown. People are itching for a return of order.

Even at the most compassionate, how the fuck is letting mentally ill people scream, shit, shoot up and otherwise behave in a feral manner in public spaces like this any benefit at all to them? The violent do need to be locked up (and that means put in appropriate but secure treatment and not just stick 'em in a cell and forget 'em) because they are actively dangerous, and the others are a threat to themselves and need something as basic as shelter, hygiene, and medical treatment where appropriate.

Treating them like urban foxes is not good enough.

Yeah, I can't fathom how somebody thinks that letting them loose on the street is the more compassionate alternative to an asylum. I used to do some volunteering with homeless outreach and it was awful the kind of situations these guys would end up in. Not only were they often simply incapable of meaningfully taking care of themselves, they of course had to deal with other violent mentally ill homeless, as well as the more lucid and crueler homeless who would simply steal off of them or beat them up.

I've mentioned it before but it does seem emblematic of a neoliberal society that many people find state violence as unconscionable but are plenty willing to "outsource" that to the streets, or to prison gangs, etc.

until the public reaction is so bad it demands a crackdown

Do you think this is realistic? Why hasn't a crackdown been demanded in L.A., even though it's apparently much worse than the TTC already?

PPC-style actual law-and-order conservatism is still completely verboten amongst all of my Canadian friends and colleagues.

Why hasn't a crackdown been demanded in L.A., even though it's apparently much worse than the TTC already?

Because no-one with the political power to do so takes metro, or even really remembers that it exists. Seriously, the only reason I know that LA even has a subway (as a native Angeleno) is because my best friend from law school is a train nerd and public transit enthusiast.