Reflecting on LAPD clearing the Echo Park encampment of people living in tents:

This strikes me as a perfect example of the idea that the function of a system is *what it does.*

It’s not that our systems are broken. That would imply we can just fix up what we’ve got, in specific instances where we acknowledge specific “oopsies.”

It’s that we would do well to assume that the *actual function* of our current structure is to delay the development of any long-term, compassionate, inclusive possibilities for healing until the point where people in power decide they “have no choice” except a harsh, militarized, quick-fix non-solution.

Yeah, with a gloss of offering hotel rooms; nah, without a reckoning of the cruel and *legalized* racial, gender, disability, and economic oppressions that created those conditions over generations.

It’s the systems equivalent of “when someone shows you who they are, believe them.”