Welcome to the city of Vacaville.

June 27, Vacaville.

The city of Vacaville police are an interesting case of 21st-century small town fascism, made in the U.S.A.
Yesterday, the first day here, all performers are laborers were summoned to the cookhouse to have their picture taken, jail mug shot style, and their passport checked by the local police. Later on they came back with badges bearing the City of Vacaville police seal (a deceptively sunny logo,) "Special Event Permit, Circus Chimera, each person's Name, Expires 6-28-07," and the aforementioned picture. The reason officially given was that "vagrants" and other undesirable people had infiltrated traveling shows staying in the city.
So it seems you need a permit to stay if you don't own a home here. I didn't know it was a crime not to own a home, whether because you're homeless, or a transient, or simply traveling through, in the United States or in any other self-described democracies. Isn't this "a free country," as is often claimed (the meaning of this another debate altogether)? The badge of course makes one think of the uber-infamous token of identification, the yellow star Nazi Germany made all Jews wear.
Vagrants, homeless, gypsies, untouchables, circus people, the faces change, the societies change, but always it's the Others, whoever they are, the old human frailty born of ignorance and fear. We don't exactly know who you are but we don't like you.