Chicago Man Found Living in LSD Bridge

[XNASA]

http://www.suntimes.com/output/news/cst-nws-bridge13.html

---The Lake Shore Drive drawbridge that spans the Chicago River carries thousands of cars a day.

It's among the first structures to catch the vicious winter winds off the lake.

And it's one of the final barriers for tall-masted rivercraft seeking open water.

To suburban native Richard Dorsay, though, it's home.

Or it was until Sunday, when the 36-year-old homeless man was evicted by police and city officials -- who were stunned to find he'd been living for at least three years in a little wooden village built into the beams and girders of the bridge's intricate underbelly.---

[eleonora]

1. They should have left him there

He wasn't hurting anyone. Now, where is he going to go? Heh..

[CornField]

8. He was stealing

This isn't a simple case of a guy setting up a home under a bridge, this guy had tapped into the electricity and was breaking into the office for water.

[eleonora]

9. oops hehe

And I was imagining a camping gas burner and a blanket. Didn't read the whole article.

[RawMaterials]

2. I thought the story was going to be about Tim Leary

or Albert Hoffman

[KurtNYC]

4. Picture yourself in a boat on a river....

...Cellophane flowers of yellow and green towering over your head,
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes and ...she's evicted.

[Beetwasher]

5. Damn! Beat Me To It!

'zacly what I was gonna post! Sans the evicted part...

[patcox2]

3. The law, in its majestic equality, forbids both the rich and the poor

from sleeping under bridges. I forget who said it, a french novelist or statesman from about a hundred years ago.

[vpigrad]

6. Yes, but the rich..

have somewhere else to sleep! Us poor don't have much choise in the matter.

[patcox2]

11. Of course, that is the genius of the observation.

Anatole France, (thank you)was being sacrcastic, and at the same time, pointing out that facially neutral treatment is not necessarily fair and just. His observation is meant to point out, in the most elegant and witty way, that what at first appears even-handed and fair, is not necessarily so.

The big lesson of it, to me, is that economic equality is a component of justice. The more economic equality, the more just a society, even if the laws are all otherwise the same. The freedom to do what you will never be able to afford to do is a false freedom, just as the proscription of something that is a necessity to you is not fair just because it is also proscribed for those who have no need of it.

This is a big moral argument for progressive taxation and redistributive tax policies. They promote fairness and justice.

[papau]

7. Anatole France in The Red Lily, ch. 7. 1894

Anatole France (1844-1924)
The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets or steal bread.
-- The Red Lily, ch. 7. 1894

[nickgutierrez]

10. At least they didn't find him on a LSD binge.

That might not have gone so well.