Positive Loiterer writes, "When Take Back Santa Cruz first appeared as a response to a gang-related stabbing of a high school student last year, it seemed reasonable enough. Why not have an organization dedicated to making our community safer, largely through encouraging people to spend more time 'positively loitering' in public spaces? Before long, however, it became clear that TBSC had a fairly narrow vision of what safety means, and from whom Santa Cruz should be taken back.

"For TBSC, homelessness is a problem not for desperate people scraping by on the street, but for the rest of us who are burdened with having to see and occasionally interact with them. Thus their solution is not to work towards building a community with sufficient jobs and housing and mental health services, but to 'clean up' homeless camps in the hopes of pushing them away to someone else’s town. Similarly, their solution to gang violence or any other crime is simply to support the police and prisons; analyzing the causes of crimes, and considering preventative measures are not only not mentioned, but rejected out of hand."

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