A journalist and advocate who rose from homelessness and addiction to serve as a spokesperson for Philadelphia’s most vulnerable was shot and killed at his home early Monday, police said.
Josh Kruger, 39, was shot seven times at about 1:30 a.m. and collapsed in the street after seeking help, police said. He was pronounced dead at a hospital a short time later. Police believe the door to his Point Breeze home was unlocked or the shooter knew how to get in, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported. No arrests have been made and no weapons have been recovered, they said.
Authorities haven’t spoken publicly about the circumstances surrounding the killing.
My experience mostly comes from moderating queer friendly communities with a low amount of anonymity. If you have a community with a high instance of trauma surrounding being cast out of your family, abused directly or placed in the abusive situation of conversion therapy then let someone use that space to proselytize Christianity positivly it tends to make that place unsafe because you can actually cause flashbacks in the standing community and eventually in the interest of protecting the right of one person to say whatever they the rest of the community stops being able to speak freely without having to explain themselves and have to tiptoe around the one person who makes any instance of them venting their reasonble frustrations with their situation about how "not every Christian… ". People sometimes need places to let off steam.
Often people in threatened minorities need protected spaces where they don't need to follow the rules that are more universally applied where they don't feel they have to appease the sensibilities that are enforced on them the minute they step outside. Not every space is welcome to everyone and the ones that use an anything goes moderation policy usually find themselves hosting some damn near criminal elements who drive off others and rot the place.
Much of it seems to be a matter of what we think Lemmy and the communities are for.
In my mind, c/News and c/Politics should be group spaces where people of all stripes can express view points in well-reasoned, civil, ways. I have no problem with little corners of the federation that cater to the hurt and angry, my issue is when it spills out into the more public spaces. I will readily acknowledge some of that opinion comes from a stance that does not seem all that popular on Lemmy.
When I first heard about the fediverse, I was excited that the echo chambers would be broken open. I thought everyone could have their radical little corners, but that there would be open communities that we could all meet in and discuss issues in a reasonable way.
When I joined an instance with a "democratic" experiment going on, I quickly realized that my view that it was awesome to federate with everyone was a relative minority; many people there thought it was more awesome to be able to defederate from those whose opinions they never wanted to see. Fortunately, their community found something of a middle ground, but it was still quite the disappointment to me.