Star-Advertiser sets new low comparing Waikiki homeless to cigarette butts

by Larry Geller

In what may be a new low in editorial comment for the paper, “This Waikiki beach rocks, no ifs, ands or butts” (Star-Advertiser, 5/26/2014) celebrates the selection of Duke Kahanamoku Beach as best beach by “Dr. Beach,” crediting the selection in part to its lack of cigarette buts. It then concludes:

“Now about those Waikiki homeless encampments ...”

Dear editors: people are not cigarette butts. If you don’t like the Waikiki tent encampments, how about pounding the city and state for their woeful failure to implement evidence-based solutions to moving people into permanent housing? Human beings are not trash, to be swept away.

See also: Is dehumanizing the houseless the very best we can do for them?? (7/9/2013).

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