The King of Fountain Square

There was a tweet that got my attention because it’s my hometown of Evanston. Five city workers “beat up a senior citizen after a verbal altercation.” Sounds bad. It’s like a police brutality video, but without the police. So it’s the same, but different.

My first response was to assume the beaters were at fault and to tease fun of Evanston’s statement about beating a innocent man man “not reflective of our values.” And I couldn’t not make fun of the organization’s statement: “Our priority is to hire the best ambassadors who have a passion for downtown and understand the importance of making positive impacts daily.”

Then I watched the whole video, and not just part featured. The workers, hired, in part to clean up the trash left by this very man, pull up in their truck. He’s choosing to piss in public view. He should be reprimanded. The pisser could say, “Sorry, my bad,” and leave it at that. But no, he gets in the workers’ faces. He confronts them. (A sign that maybe this _is_ the job for police?). He could walk away. But instead he decides to get in the middle of the workers to give them a piece of his mind. Because he has a right to piss in plain view at Fountain Square without anybody telling him not to! Keep in mind many of these workers are often recently homeless and this is generally a good work program to help people who can’t get jobs with most private employers because of past substance abuse, incarceration, lack of housing, etc. It’s real work, and it’s needed work. They fix the proverbial Broken Windows.

The incident started because the man was pissing in public. Comments, predictably, were like, “just goes to show how we criminalize poverty.” And ” and “we need public bathrooms for the unhoused!” But I know Evanston; I know this location; it’s Fountain Square, the center of Evanston. The library is 500 feet away. There’s a bathroom there. He didn’t want to use a bathroom. He preferred to pull out his schlong and pee in public.

Progressive cities can be funny. They seem to like watching people not follow rules. It brings out an endorphin rush of patronizing empathy. “If only we had public bathrooms!” But Evanston has them at the library, down the block. It was open! Virtually within pissing distance! If you don’t want to use a nearby clean public bathroom, might I suggest pissing, er, literally anywhere else but Fountain Square? In an alley? Between parked cars? Anywhere but the literal public center of Evanston at high noon on a Monday.

Remember Evanston defunded police. And when the contract that got these workers hired, councilmembers voted down “an amendment to the contract that would have added an extra $75,000 to the contract to allow for the company to hire someone focused on social services for the homeless people and panhandlers that gravitate to downtown Evanston.” But we’ll leave that alone.

Evanston did hire workers, in part, to clean up the trash left by homeless people. (I do presume he’s homeless based on all accounts, but I don’t know that for sure.) So these workers see him pissing, and they confront him. That’s good. Not bad. Isn’t this the alternative non “armed agent of the state” community response we’ve “reimagined?”

This guy is clearly in the wrong. He’s clearly violating my rule of: be wrong or be a jerk, but don’t be wrong and a jerk. Meanwhile workers are still working. Then the guy gets in the face of a worker, and the worker is like, “Not so close, buddy.” (All dialogue is invented.)

And the pisser slaps his arm down and feints like he’s going to punch worker in his face (see top right video, in the link). Tough guy flexing. The worker backs off. These are not acceptable working conditions.

At any point the pisser could simply walk away and leave. Sure, people have said, so could the workers. But, no! Because A) the workers have a job to do, and B) I don’t want this pisser to be the King of Fountain Square. Somebody needs to remove his crown. That used to be the job of police. It’s not easy. (In the 1970s William Muir called this the Paradox of the Dispossessed.)

From a public safety standpoint it’s important anybody who acts like the Kind Of Fountain Square follows society’s most basic rules. But without policing, the public will either cede the public space of Fountain Square and/or confront the violent pisser at some point. Neither is a good option. Because he’s a fighter. Personally, I wouldn’t mess with the King of Fountain Square. Nor would most Evanstonians. It’s his public space, see. And Evanstonians can cede Fountain Square for him to piss on and go on talking about reparations or something.

Then two bystanders come in to help “deescalate.” But fighting words are exchanged. The pisser doesn’t want to be “deescalated,” and he pushes one of the deescalators nearly to the ground.

Now the workers are getting pretty pissed. The other public deescalator seems to be telling them to take it easy. One worker goes into the street. It’s not clear if to get in the truck and leave or “bring it on.”

Either way, the pisser, once again, could leave, but decides his best choice it to run after the guy in the street.

Now there’s general pushing and shoving. The fight is 5 against 1, with one referee. The pisser falls down and gets punched and kicked. The ref is like “fair play.” Now I’m not for kicking a man when he’s down. And he seems get kicked or punched about six times. But he’s not seriously hurt. By street rules this is kind of a fair fight. The pisser gets up. Does he leave? No. He may not be stinging like a bee, but he floats like a butterfly before taking a boxer’s stance. He still wants to fight. Now keep in mind the workers may not want to be here, but they have a job to to do here. The pisser has no reason to be here at all.

But everything is kind of calm. Workers go back to work. There’s a bit of “no, your mom.” Worker thanks the ref, “I respect you.” Other deescalator is on other side of street talking to the pisser, “It’s cool.” Car goes down street. Clearly we can all go home now. Nothing to see here.

Then the pisser returns to Fountain Square. He didn’t have to do that. But remember, he’s a public asshole. He’s the king, and nobody can tell him where not to piss.

So the workers are like, “Whatever. Ef you,” and get back to work. They do their job of putting bags of garbage in their true. Two bags fall off, and they leave.

To review. After choosing not to go to the clean public bathroom at the open library one block away, the pisser gets yelled at for pissing in public in the literal center of the city. Then he starts a fight against five workers trying to keep the place clean and got knocked down and then punched and kicked. He doesn’t seem seriously hurt. So Evanston’s response, reflecting its values, is, naturally, to fire the workers. (Actually just canceling the contract with the company that hired the workers, but I’m pretty sure it works out the same.)

What is it about “Evanston’s values” that are so against the working-class? How can a city (my home city) be so “progressive” as to side with a violent homeless dude starting a fight with the working men and women the city hired to literally clean up the mess the homeless guy leaves behind?

Evanston, where of course hate has no home, doesn’t want to police public space, won’t protect their workers from physical assault, and then, in effect, fires minimum-wage Black workers when they dare fight back? I guess those are values of a sort.

Let’s also note the inherent paternalism of privileged people saying, “Ideally, this situation would have been handled differently. So I denounce these workers for handling it in a non-ideal way, even though I’ve literally never been in such a situation and never will.”

So what have we learned? Well:
1) Evanston doesn’t want public order to be policed by police (#defund).
2) Evanston doesn’t want public order policed by the community.
3) If you want to piss in public rather than the open public bathroom, you can start a fight with anyone who tells you otherwise.
4) Evanston will throw poorly paid Black (maybe one Hispanic?) workers under the bus at the drop of a hat so as to defend the right of the Pissing King of Fountain Square to do whatever he damn well pleases. And don’t you dare tell him otherwise.

Just like police videos, if you see only the few seconds starting at ~2:40, it looks like this poor guy is being attacked by a mob. Except this is on him. He was doing wrong. Classic case of fuck around and find out.

Now this isn’t a police video. And that matters because I wouldn’t defend cops who did what these workers do, because we do hold police to higher standards. But these are poorly paid workers asked to clean up public space. They have to deal with the guy. Perhaps every day. Perhaps they many times before, I don’t know.

If you don’t want “armed” police to deal with this, and you don’t want unarmed workers to deal with then, and if you don’t have a problem with people pissing in public instead of public bathrooms, then just own the whole no-rules thing. But most of us want some public order and public places not to smell of piss. And if you do want some public order and public places not to smell of piss, then you want need rule enforcement. So cut some slack to people trying to enforce rules, whether it’s the public, public workers, or the police. There are no magic fairies to deal with these things.