A study done by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty states that approximately 3.5 million people (1.35 million of them children) are homeless in the United States.
Over the past eleven years (1999-2009), advocates and shelter workers around the country have received news reports of men, women and even children being harassed, kicked, set on fire, beaten to death, and decapitated. From 1999 through 2009, in forty-seven states, Puerto Rico and Washington, DC, there have been one thousand seventy-four acts of violence committed by housed individuals, resulting in two hundred ninety-one deaths of homeless people and seven hundred eighty-three victims of non-lethal violence.
Most hate crimes/violent acts are committed not by organized hate groups, but by individual citizens who harbor a strong resentment against a certain group of people. Some are “mission offenders,” who believe they are on a mission to cleanse the world of a particular evil. Others are “scapegoat offenders,” who violently act out their resentment toward the perceived growing economic power of a particular racial or ethnic group. Still others are “thrill seekers,” those who take advantage of a vulnerable and disadvantaged group in order to satisfy their own pleasures. Thrill seekers, primarily in their teens, are the most common perpetrators of violence against people who are homeless. Eighty per cent of hate crimes/violence against homeless persons in 2009 were committed by perpetrators under the age of thirty.
Breakdown of Non-Lethal Attacks:
Beatings: 67%
Rapes/Sexual Assaults: 13%
Setting Victim on Fire: 8%
Shootings: 6%
Police Harassment/Brutality: 6%
Thomas Kelly, 37, died on July 10, five days after being beaten with electric 'shock sticks', flashlights, shot-filled leather gloves, as well as kicking by six police officers who were part of a police patrol in the town of Fullerton, California.
Thomas was part of a growing army of people in the U.S. which many identify indiscriminately as the homeless, homeless or displaced in a system that degrades human beings every day.
According to the Coalition for the Homeless, in the United States there is abundant material documenting homeless episodes due to persecution by civil servants, as well as incidents linked to abuses by the police on the basis of confidential data in the United States.
There was a period of time in the history of Europe, when the killing of homeless people was legally allowed. As many as 72,000 people were hanged in England during the time of Henry VIII. The number went even higher during the rule of the king's granddaughter, Elizabeth I. Gallows with dead bodies of homeless people could be seen all across the country.
In America, there are millions of homeless people. Each and every one of them has their own story. Some of them spent a half of their life in jail, others fell victim to real estate swindlers, some others sold their homes because of debts.
If a homeless person dies, and police fail to find their relatives, the body will be buried in an unmarked grave. Many are buried in mass graves to save costs. Morgue employees may also decide to deliver dead bodies of homeless people to medical institutions for practical work and experiments. If the body can not be used at all, they simply burn it in a crematorium.
The picture is depressing and it reflects another example of how Corporate Capitalism decorates the 'shop window' to hide its failure from the world.
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