Looters will be shot!

Have you seen me?

For the fifth Sunday in the last seven, someone "looted" our Sunday Tribune. It was kind of a drag, since I really wanted to look through the job section and it's a pain to read online. Liz and I put up a sign in the hall to tell people to stop "looting" our newspaper. This is not the first time that this has happend in our 100% white Wrigleyville apartment building. Last year, we were sleeping on the floor because we were waiting on our futon matress that Liz had ordered through the mail. We finally got sick of waiting and called the company. They said they had shipped the mattress so we ought to talk to UPS. We called them and they said that someone in the building had signed for the mattress with an imaginary name and taken it.

Before anyone thinks that we are either crazy and want to kill people for stealing our newspaper or assholes for drawing a metaphor between our suffering and the situation in New Orleans, let me tell you what we were thinking. We don't even really care about being stolen from--I'm always the one who when my MD player (40 hours of income) was stolen, and my friends were mad, I just said, "I sure hope that whoever has it is enjoying it!"

I just think it's interesting how little perspective people have on what constitutes "theft". It's like they have no internal principles whatsoever, but have just been getting by on whatever they can justify and make themselves feel good with.

Here take this little test (go ahead and rank the answers and comment...PLEASE PLEASE, it feels like no one is reading...):

Rank in order the heinousness of the action:
1. Stealing a newspaper because you are lazy and don't want to go pay $1.75 for one and you don't care about your neighbors.
2. Taking a school bus to escape the scene of a natural disaster where there is no food, water or shelter and you have lost everything.
3. Overcharging the U.S. military for your services as a company.
4. Undertipping
5. Taking Pepsi and food supplies from a grocery store during a natural disaster where you there is no food, water or shelter and you have lost everything.
6. Forging a signature on a UPS receipt, and stealing a futon mattress to put in your $1000/month apartment.
6. Taking electronics and other items from an unoccupied chain store during a natural disaster where there is no food, water or shelter and you have lost everything.
7. Setting up a state legalized gambling system which preys upon the broken dreams of the poor working-class and their desire to be financially independent.

Ok, I'm starting to go a little wacko, but anyway, "Save a newspaper, shoot a yuppie looter who lives in my building!"

For me, I always think it's awesome to steal from people who have done little to earn what they have and have more than they could ever use and if you steal from someone super-poor and they die because of it, you might as well have killed them with your bare hands. When we define "looting", it's vital to ask "Why are you taking that?" and "Who are you hurting?" Instead of "What color are you?" and "How powerful is the person you are taking from?"

I'm not saying you should share my code of ethics when it comes to defining the severity of theft and what is "looting"--just that you should have some sort of logical code and that in society we should attempt to define those terms rather than just using them to benefit the ethnic majority rich folks and attack the poor.