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[–] 41 points 4 months ago

Yeah I had a discussion with my city councillor about this same thing after walking through a ravine path/dog off-leash area with no benches or garbage cans or anything.

I was fine, but I was with my friend has trouble standing for long periods. We ended up bussing back because he couldn’t rest anywhere.

Apparently the last councillor had them removed for this reason and he’s going to try to get them back with next year’s budget.

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  • [–] 25 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    They’re now working on figuring out how to remove the ground altogether

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  • [–] 16 points 4 months ago*

    Having nice things is why we can't have nice things.

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  • [+] -38 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    Clearly you have never lived in a country where the picnic services and parks have been turned into shanty towns. You should be pushing for more shelters not encouraging them to sleep on a subway bench. Problem is that would require you to volunteer, donate, hit the pavement. And you guys just wanna sit at home and meme instead

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  • [–] 54 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Problem is that would require you to volunteer, donate, hit the pavement.

    Me, a lowly peon, glancing around my subway: "Damn, miss those benches."

    You, a CEO at Terminally Online Industries: "It's your own fault for failing to single-handedly solve homelessness."

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  • [+] 28 points 4 months ago (2 children)
  • [–] 19 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    The meme is not on their side, unfortunately.

    They say "volunteer, donate" and "shelters" are the answer. That's nothing but a band-aid. Yes, it can help with the immediate problem, but it's never an actual answer. The answer is government programs to put homeless people in honest-to-god housing, not shelters.

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    [+] -42 points 4 months ago (6 children)

    You'd like to think that the new Ultra-Left Tankie Mayor will reverse course on this kind of policy.

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  • [–] 36 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    I know your comment is sarcasm, but the date on this post has likely been obscured on purpose to sow division exactly like this.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Youd like to think thats true, it probably is. This post is from like 4-5 years ago (evidence is the "wear a mask" in the NYC account's title). I'd guess that Mamdani has put that barbaric pratice behind the city, and that they would be moving forward on more low income housing and accessible shelters in the city.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Fun fact about the word "barbaric": it comes from ancient Mediterranean race politics. See, in the Roman Empire, there were two races; Roman and barbarian. Barbarian was the word for foreigners, and it came from the way the Greeks and Romans thought foreign languages sounded like "barbar".

    Now, we have 2000 years of history of different groups trying to claim they're the continuation of the Roman Empire. There's the Byzantines, and the Holy Roman Empire... And fun fact: when the Nazis called themselves the "third reich", the first reich was the Roman Empire. The Nazis were trying to argue that they were the new Romans. And the reason why America and England have all that neoclassical architecture in government buildings is for kind of the same reason.

    Now, I self-identify as an enemy of fascism and the traditional West. I'm the kind of person who thinks the goths were right and Rome deserved to be sacked. So, I identify as a barbarian. Barbarbar. And I support barbaric practices! I hope Zohran Mamdani has a lot of barbaric policies which expose the injustices of America and help the people.

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  • [+] -38 points 4 months ago

    Q: why hasnt mamdani fixed this A: he is an opportunist who tried to defund libraries until he was called out

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  • 51 comments in c/onehundredninetysix@lemmy.blahaj.zone view that post
    [–] 126 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I live in NYC. I've seen plenty of folks sleeping on the ground, so getting rid of the benches doesn't actually affect them that much.

    It only makes life tough on the people who don't habitually lie on the concrete.

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  • [–] 348 points 4 months ago* (6 children)

    It took me about 15 seconds to find an uncensored version, and it has more pixels to boot. Fuck off with this this dumb censorship.

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  • [–] 86 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    Fresh, decentralised version for myself and others in the UK

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Sorry. Is that still a thing? I wanted to avoid imgur, but I'm just so damn used to it =/

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  • [–] 7 points 4 months ago* (1 child)

    Not to worry, I just get it with a VPN and repost, that's how it is in the UK for now aha The 'Protect Children From Predators and All Forms of Human Nudity by Banning Everyone From Everything and Get a Generous Dose of Biometric Data Harvesting Normalised Act', or 'OSA', is still in effect

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

    Huh. Here in Czech Republic we also enjoy hating on OSA, though in our case it's something like "Author Protection Association". Anti-piracy rather than internet blocking, but similar bullshit. We call it "osa zla", which literally means "The Axis of Evil".

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  • [–] 33 points 4 months ago

    It is so blatant how the rich wage open war on humanity itself.

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  • [–] 33 points 4 months ago

    They will do anything OTHER than offer housing to the poor.

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  • [–] 62 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    I’m hoping one day architecture swings back into a friendlier form for all people.

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  • [–] 4 points 4 months ago

    For as long as everyone can remember, it's been restrictive for the sake of litigious zoo people. We should take off all the anti-skateboard guards. More random things should have ramps and support the weight of a climber.

    If we want safety we can regulate more safety, but people have the right to move freely through the world even if we're putting things there.

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  • [+] -2 points 4 months ago (3 children)
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    [–] 27 points 4 months ago

    I wish these still had their timestamps

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  • [–] 23 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    I feel like JPs blunt, no-spin response is evidence of his disapproval

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  • [+] -53 points 4 months ago (30 children)

    I mean a subway station isn't a homeless shelter and homeless people are unfortunately very often mentally ill or addicted, which can create danger for commuters.

    Shit situation though

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  • [–] 109 points 4 months ago (17 children)

    the solution should be housing the homeless not making everyone's lives more miserable

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  • [–] 54 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Not just housing, but mental health services for everyone.

    I would say we can probably link something like 80% of the bullshit going on in modern society to widespread mental health issues. Definitely a large part is constantly electing obvious sociopaths to political offices. And allowing psychopaths that obviously lack empathy entirely to run corporations and employ large parts of the populace while missing a fundamental part of what many would consider their humanity.

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  • [–] [S] 40 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    A big driver of mental health issues are economic pressures. When you have to work long hours for shit pay, it does a number on you. Addiction rates increase with poverty, and our current economy is stressful for all but the richest and most fortunate. Even high earners have to work themselves to the bone for their position, and their lack of work/life balance drives them to isolation.

    So it all comes back to capitalism. Solving economic inequities is a prerequisite to addressing almost all of our problems.

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  • [–] 22 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    The entire system in the US is made to keep as many people as possible teetering at the brink of absolute poverty and scared shitless from that happening (since what follows that is mostly homelessness or prison, both dealth with in the most inhumane way imaginable), since that makes it much easier to exploit those people to the max.

    The point of the Social Safety Net was to stop that, but whatever little of it ever existed has been torn down in the US (and is even being torn down in other countries as mainstream politicians there have aped American "liberal" politics)

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  • [–] [S] 17 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Everyone everywhere should be terrified of their country emulating the US

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  • [–] 6 points 4 months ago

    All the right wingers are hard at doing so, as are the "center"-"left" mainstream parties though in a more dilluted way - essentially the conquests of the post-War period are being destroyed, same as in the US but starting from a higher basedline in Europe so there's more to destroy before reaching the bottom.

    Shit, even the "fringe" "left" has a large subset of parties led by people whole detached from any single global and consist ideology (such as the older ones like Socialism, Social Democracy or Anarchy) who grew up only ever knowing Neoliberalism and thus whose idea of being "left" is the Neoliberal "moral liberalism" (mostly commonly known as Identity Politics) that very explicitly excludes the greatest, most widespread and most suffering causing inequality of all - Wealth Inequality - which is probably why the Far-Right is gaining massivelly from the fall of the mainstream parties than those "left" parties, since even the Far-Right lies are more appealing to the Working Class than the upper middle class well-off scion of well-off parent's idea of "equality" that these parties defend.

    (I was actually a member of such a "fringe" "left" party for a few years and was thoroughly dissapointed)

    And yeah, I'm terrified.

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  • [+] -12 points 4 months ago

    Definitely agreed, but the subway station is for the commuters, not for solving the housing issue. It shouldn't be that commuters are having a less safe commute because the city, state, whatever isn't willing to deal with the housing/homeless issue.

    I mean removing the benches is a poor solution to that anyway. Should keep the benches but just make sure the station is actually serving the commuters

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  • [+] -13 points 4 months ago (9 children)

    You think the subway should house the homeless?

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  • [–] 14 points 4 months ago (4 children)

    The subway should be suitable for disabled people to use. If that makes the subway a home for the homeless, that isn't the fault of the choice to make the subway suitable for disabled people.

    Homeless people will find some place to stay. If you make places more unpleasant until homeless people find somewhere else to stay, and then you make that place unpleasant until they move away from there, etc., then all you're doing is spending massive amounts of money to make the entire city unpleasant and still end up with homeless people in the least unpleasant spots.

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  • [–] -3 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    I agree with you almost completely. The issue is if the homeless prevents the space from being suitable for disabled people or other commuters, then this is the "less worse" option from the subway's perspective. The subway is focused on creating a safe and clean commuter environment; it's not within their power to solve homelessness so they have little choice but to make everything a bit worse for everyone to stop the problem they're dealing with from making it even worse yet for everyone.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    the subway’s perspective. The subway is focused on creating a safe and clean commuter environment

    Well there's your problem. Your subway organisation is myopically focused on making its own little corner as "well-functioning" as possible even at the cost of the rest of the city. It ignores the social harm it causes to whatever the next place is that homeless people decide to congregate instead (and the additional harm it causes to homeless people by forcing them to stay in less hospitable locations, and the additional harm it causes everyone in those homeless people's vicinity because they are more desperate on account of staying in less hospitable environments and thus more likely to resort to crime).

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  • [–] 2 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Sorry, I'm bumping up against Poe's Law with this comment so I think I'm misunderstanding your point.

    I don't own a subway, it's not my organisation. I was just using my imagination to put myself in the shoes of others to understand their decisions.

    Now then: You're literally stating that having homeless people in a space causes social harm, and that making a place less hospitable for the homeless, even if it improves that place for its main function, is also a societal bad. Let's accept that for the sake of argument. Why are the homeless camping in the subway? Doesn't that mean they've already passed down from further up this displacement chain and the subway is also a victim of the same thing?

    The subway and the homeless are both just dealing with their situations in the best ways they can. Asking the subway to house the homeless in their corridors is about as helpful as just telling those homeless people to stop being homeless.

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  • [–] 1 point 4 months ago

    Why are the homeless camping in the subway? Doesn’t that mean they’ve already passed down from further up this displacement chain and the subway is also a victim of the same thing?

    The subway is an inanimate location, it can not be a victim. The people of the city that may use the subway are a victim, but less so than if the subway was made less hospitable for everyone without improving the situation of the homeless in the city.

    Asking the subway to house the homeless in their corridors is about as helpful as just telling those homeless people to stop being homeless.

    All it would take for the homeless to stop being homeless is for the cops to stop throwing homeless people out of buildings that haven't been used for a year. Homeless people are constantly doing their best to stop being homeless, and the state and other people keep violently attacking them to make them homeless again.

    Meanwhile all it would take for the subway organisation is to do its job of making the subway a nice place to be. If that makes it the nicest place homeless don't get attacked by cops, that's not the subway organisation's fault.

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  • [–] 5 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    You think offering benches to sit on qualifies as housing the homeless?

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  • [–] -1 points 4 months ago

    No, I was being a bit facetious in my response to the comment that the solution is housing the homeless, not making things less hospitable. It's of course not within the Subway's powers to actually solve homelessness so giving them flack for picking the less worse option with their limited options instead of magically solving the root of the problem is silly.

    Get mad at the people who are actually responsible for dealing with the root cause, not the ones needing to make tough choices dealing with the reality of it.

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  • [–] 18 points 4 months ago (1 child)

    Getting rid of benches doesn't get rid of the homeless. They'll still be homeless with no where else to go without them. It just makes things worse for everyone.

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  • Now I'm not in NYC myself, but I can't stand for long periods of time or walk long distances. There's tons of disabled or elderly people like me that need public transit and need those benches.

    So how about we don't fuck those people over in a desperate quest to be unnecessarily cruel to homeless people?

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  • [+] 6 points 4 months ago (6 children)
  • [–] -5 points 4 months ago (5 children)

    Alcohol is sold in most stores from what I know. If drugs, I dunno, drug dealers?

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  • [+] 2 points 4 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 0 points 4 months ago* (4 children)

    Pharmaceutical companies and Alcohol Brands are both run by the 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁 bourgeoise 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

    Do you mean like owned by? Because the actual people running those places are just regular clerks and shit

    you think drug dealers give out free samples?

    Some do yeah. Often the dealer isn't some random guy but a person you know or even a friend of yours. They might give you a hit

    it usually starts with a prescription

    They do fent or alcohol prescriptions 👀

    Not sure what this has to do with the subway benches though

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  • [+] 5 points 4 months ago (4 children)
  • [–] -2 points 4 months ago (3 children)

    Right but it's not the transit system's job. Of course they don't want to make commuting worse for all of those non-homeless people using it

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  • [+] 3 points 4 months ago (3 children)
  • [–] -3 points 4 months ago* (2 children)

    How would people struggling with mental, substance abuse and addiction issues camping right next to the commuters make the experience worse, even dangerous, to those commuters? Not much of a question, really. And aside from those, there's piss and shit too and that sort of issues, waste, used needles and stuff. Areas where there's a lot of homeless people unfortunately are pretty dangerous and others start to avoid them

    Subway stations aren't build to house people.

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  • [+] -20 points 4 months ago (2 children)

    Sorry you got downvoted for speaking the truth. I bet every one of these virtue signaling commenters also distance themselves when they come across a bum on a bench.

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