It's cold outside.

And people are dying.

I find it difficult to think of our country as a first world nation when we literally have people freeze to death on our streets, outside of all the other problems we have, the racism, the sexism, homophobia, nationalism/fascism, I think that one thing is more of a judgement on our culture and on capitalism than anything else. We can and have argued for years about whether or not various members of society deserved equal rights, and what that actually means in practice, but there is never debate, never outrage or protest every winter when the homeless die in the cold. Not much of it anyway.

Capitalism treats the act of gathering resources to survive as almost a game, and the assumption is when you play a game you accept the stakes, and that is horrible when those stakes are what they are. I find it hard to imagine a worse fate, dying forgotten in the night, alone in the cold. There is perhaps no better way to realize that the place you live doesn't want or care about you.

The most basic responsibility of a government is to keep it's people alive, if it fails at that, or doesn't even try to succeed, or actively sabotages efforts to do so then it is proving that it doesn't deserve to exist, and may be beyond saving.

There is no reason, none whatsoever, that every person in this country can't have a place to live, that in the year 2017 people freeze to death on the streets is an unconscionable failure.

Where government fails, volunteers and non profits step in, but they shouldn't have to.

Here is a list of shelters and warming stations by country, share it and remember it if you see someone needing help in the days to come.