4 questions on "Occupy Northside"

The Northside "Occupy" encampment was removed from Lake View Hill Park just before the Thanksgiving holiday, and this being Madison there is a community meeting scheduled tomorrow night to debrief. Like most Madison public meetings, it's scheduled at a lousy time for working parents so I won't be there, but if I could go here are the four questions I would ask:

1. Is there a concise statement of what the "Occupy" group wants?
2. What is it specifically about these 15-odd people that they aren't being served by existing supports -- how are they different from the hundreds of other homeless individuals served every night? Are there systematic problems causing this one small group to fall through the cracks, or is this an idiosyncratic group?
3. If there are systematic issues, how do we address them without falling into a "San Francisco trap" of spiraling costs, assumption of the entire region's homelessness problem, and loss of our public spaces?
4. Does the expectation of responsibility go both ways -- if the community as a whole is responsible for supporting those in the "Occupy" group, do they have a reciprocal responsibility to meet reasonable conditions upon that support (e.g. observance of shelter rules, participation in treatment programs, etc.)? I mean this as a general question, not a debate over whether specific conditions in specific places are reasonable -- without the premise, discussion over a particular policy or provider becomes meaningless.

I will say I've been disappointed by how this has become another litmus test for the ne plus ultra progressives to distinguish themselves as superior. How we triage homeless services could well be out of balance, but the way to address that is to identify and argue for a better balance, not to demonize and provoke your neighbors.

The fact is that our homeless services in Dane County reflect a moral choice to prioritize (implicitly, if not explicitly) families, locals, and those in short-term difficulty over single adults (particularly men), out-of-towners, and chronically homeless people. Managing scarcity is why we have politics in the first place -- there will always be one more program to help one more person, if only we'd pay a little bit more -- and we have to balance compassion with our ability to be compassionate.