If you're going to to steal something, then rob from the rich and give to the poor. Most thieves just mug whoever is available and keep it for themselves. Robin Hood stands out among all the thieves in history because he had a purpose.
I'd like to know the back story of how Ms. Williams chose this particular house in which to squat. I would like to know if she was trying to make a statement of some kind in Detroit, a place where there are plenty of statements to make about the injustice of poverty and the way the system is rigged against poor people.
However, making a statement like this simply misfires. There is nothing in the story to suggest Ms. Williams and the rightful owner of the house, Ms. Hamilton-Gilmer, had anything to do with each other until she decided to just move in.
If Ms. Williams had decided to squat in the house on one Kevyn Orr, the appointed imperial proconsul in Detroit, I think I would have had a lot more sympathy with what she was doing. Even better would have been if she had squatted in Governor Snyder's house, or if she had gone to Topeka, Kansas and squatted in Charlie Koch's digs.
Other than the fact that she owns the house, we don't know anything about Ms. Hamilton-Gilmer. So let's assume that she is just like any other homeowner, except for having to deal with a squatter. That tells us an awful lot about who Ms. Hamilton-Gilmer is not, and she is not the problem with American society today. She is not an oligarch. Even if she is an absentee landlord who never actually lived in the house in question, that doesn't make her an oligarch like the Dave or Charlie Koch. Far from it.
Those problems are better personified by Kevyn Orr, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder or the Koch brothers.
A predatory animal does not strike the biggest and strongest grazer in a herd of sheep or deer in order to make lunch. Rather, it strikes at the sick, the lame or the weak. That's a lot easier. It's all about survival. A common criminal does not rob from the rich and give to the poor; he robs from whoever he can and keeps it, because it is about his survival. That is who Ms. Williams is, a common criminal.
We are better than that. We are humans. Let us act more nobly and emulate not the predatory beast who strikes at the weak in order to survive as an individual for another day, but emulate instead the real man, a man like Robin Hood. Let us act together (sorry, Charlie Koch, but real human are collectivists as well as individualists) to solve a problem that confronts all of us (sorry, Charlie Koch, but yes, I am talking about you) and grab the problem by the root (that's you again, Charlie, and your fat kid brother, too). Let us act together to build a more just society and a better world.
American democracy died Tuesday. It was murdered by oligarchs, including the Koch brothers, who think they are better than either Ms. Williams or Ms. Hamilton-Gilmer -- or you or me. Their murder weapons were money taken from our bank accounts and used to bribe politicians and to drown out other voices on the air waves and bought state legislatures who suppressed the votes of citizens who would vote against the interests of the oligarchy. Their vision of society is one run on the principle that when an oligarch does it, it isn't illegal. Mitch McConnell becomes Senate majority leader, just as Rick Snyder was "re-elected" governor of Michigan with a mandate not from the people but from the oligarchs to make the world safe for corporate criminals.
We are the people. The oligarchs are squatting in our homes.
Let us act nobly as humans and take back what is rightfully ours. Democracy is the only legitimate form of government. In Detroit, the governor killed democracy and appointed a proconsul with dictatorial power to sell the city's assets to the highest bidders. Did you see the oligarchs play dice for the cloak of the people of Detroit as democracy or any concept of government at the consent of the governed died on a cross? Democracy will rise again, and, on the day of judgment, the oligarchs will be cast down.
Let us truly make the world safe for democracy, not safe for wither common criminals or corporate criminals.
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