Native Americans believed land belonged to the
community, not to individuals. They didn’t own land
the ways homesteaders conceived of ownership.
today everyone is shouting
keep criminals off the streets!
keep homeless off the streets!
keep children off the streets!
none of these streets were
here when the colonists came,
bearing the seeds of a “nation
of laws” that would ultimately
assign property rights to all the
land from sea to shining sea
yielding profits to real estate
developers who pushed the ideal
of this being the highest and best
use of the land
now maybe if we just got rid of
all those nasty streets, we’d be
rid of those criminals, homeless,
and wayward children, just like
we clear buckets of sitting water
to be clear of mosquitoes
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