Friendship Park to close for five straight days

Despite an assurance and expectation I had that Friendship Park would try harder to have dependable hours of operation, notices at the park this morning tell us that unfriendly management will be closing the park for five straight days beginning this coming Saturday — for reasons that are undisclosed.

The Park has an irresponsible — and now, clearly, very much ongoing — history of mysteriously and suddenly closing the park at seeming whim and on the fly.  Reasons given for closures have been finding evidence of drug dealing or alcohol use; seasonal cleaning and modifications; and punitive closure when some denizens are seen running into the park when the gates have been opened in the AM. Garren Bratcher and Jim Peth are cited at the Loaves & Fishes webspace as Co-Program Directors for the park; Libby Fernandez is the Chief Executive Officer of Loaves & Fishes.

The suspected reason the park will be closed from October 3 to October 7 is for cleaning and winterization. Winterization includes installing heaters in the center of the park where there are big-gazebo-like structures with tables and chairs for socializing.

While it appreciated that the park needs servicing from time to time that must be done when denizens of the park are absent, it is a mystery why a five-straight-day closure would be required — and how it can be that the oh-so-self-righteous Loaves & Fishes management, so keen to march for homeless civil rights, can deny homeless people access to basic services for such an extended period.

In the far past, Loaves & Fishes' park was open seven days a week to give homeless people a place to be. For the past many years, Loaves & Fishes has not been open on weekends, closes at 2:45pm, and rather frequently is closed on weekdays, or has foreshortened hours of operation.

Update 9/30 3pm:  Libby Fernandez emailed me, writing, "We do need to close Friendship Park for the 3 days (M-T-W). We will provide showers Monday and Tuesday. We need to do repairs in the Washhouse on Wednesday. ¶ We will open the park for guests to access their lockers each day at 10 am and 1 pm."

Eight Laws of Social Change

My friend Bill, in his blog Integral Options Cafe, posted re The Eight Laws of Social Change, which I see as perhaps wise -- and very worth looking at here, with respect to efforts to improve conditions for homeless people.

The Safe Ground folks with their Campaign and Movement might consider these laws, and I should, too, with my effort, hoping to get homeless Sacramentans better service from homeless-help agencies in our city and county.

The Eight Laws come from Stephan A. Schwartz who, apparently, looked at the success the Quakers have had in delivering social change, and took from them factors that were causal for their success in the areas of abolition, public education, penal reform, women's sufferage, civil rights and environmental protection.

The "laws" are simple, and not expounded upon in Schwartz's powerpoint presentation, but ARE expounded upon at Spiritual Wiki, which I don't have access to.  Anyway.  For what it's worth:

Social Change requires wisdom, character, patience, and the willingness to forego any personal credit.

1. Individuals (individually) and the group (collectively) share a common intention.
2. Individuals and the group may have goals and cherish the potential outcomes.
3. Individuals in the group authentically accept that their goal may not be reached in their lifetimes.
4. Individuals in the group authentically accept that they may not get either credit or acknowledgment for what they have done.
5. Each person in the group regardless of gender, religion, race, or culture enjoys fundamental equality while the various roles in the hierarchy of the effort are respected.
6. Individuals in the group forswear violence in word, act or thought.
7. Individuals in the group make their personal lives consistent with their public postures.
8. Individuals (individually) and the group (collectively) always act from the beingness of integrity.

Safe Ground: Where the movement is now and what it should now do

A tip of the hat to the Safe Ground Campaign. It has done well, despite the problems I believe it has given itself.

Right now, the mayor and homeless-help agency leaders are publicly in accord, trying to put together a plan, based on a set of key-issue areas, that can bring Stepping Stone, a legal homeless transitional-living place, into being within the next six months.

Perhaps 35% of the public, the Democratic Party of Sacramento County, and the Bee editorial board, are on-board with Safe Ground. Our compassionate mayor, despite getting knocked around, has put his political career and strong-mayor initiative at risk in pronouncing his strong support for Safe Ground.

The scuttlebutt in Friendship Park is that Safe Ground* is likely to manifest sooner (in three months) rather than later (in six months).

Instead of U-Domes or EDARs or canvas tents, the expected camping/housing structures are Tuff Sheds [see picture, which is just one of many Tuff Shed models], which are typically storage sheds but will be buffed up with drywall and lighting of some sort. And, unless somebody is teasing me, the favored name for the homeless village acoming is Eden, as in "the garden of."

What the Safe Ground Campaign should NOW do

Arrogant son-of-a-gun that I am, I am pleased to answer my pal Tipp's call that I put down in words, in a positive, constructive way what Safe Ground Campaign should now do to get home from here, to make a legal camping/housing property come into being and succeed.

First thing: While Stepping Stone is swell as a name for the homeless campground while it's an idea getting bounced about, it should not be the name of the village once it's established. Whether or not the village is a station on the way to a "normal" life for its residents, the village must function as a wholesome, settled, mostly-tranquil community and not as a way station.

"Eden," too, would be a terrible name for the village. That name is Orwellian** -- though, granted, not as ooky as the name Friendship Park. The village, when established, should have a name it can hope to live up to, or – best – a neutral name.

Safe Ground needs to resolvedly, absolutely cut off its ties with communism. That means goodbye and good riddance to you-know-who and all the piffle and crimestop and control-speak and doublethink in SG meetings and paperwork. I mean, It's insane! With ties to the poison and horror of communism, the Safe Ground campaign shouldn't go forward.

Safe Ground, the campaign, should now spin on a dime and begin doing what it should always have done: (1) Appeal to the whole of the public, not just the narrow liberal donation-giving base. (2) Appeal to the business community and the ideals of cleanliness and wholesomeness and responsibility and doing work, rather than in terms of grievance and childish refrains of "I want it now, wah-wah-wah."

The Homeless Community needs to start to be presented AS IT REALLY IS. The public is understandably confused. In the Oprah-fuelled media-blitz days relating to Tent City last spring, the public was told, with the complicity of Loaves & Fishes, the Bee's toady homeless-issue staffwriter and SN&R that Tent City was huge and was comprised mostly of lovely young caucasian families with todlers who missed tooling around Granite Bay in their SUVs. [Well, something like that; you know what I mean.]

The public was actively misled. [See a June The Nation article which set things aright.]

The REAL situation of what homelessness is like and who all us homeless people are is something the public should be informed about. Truth is good for its own sake. The truth also happens to be compelling. Homeless people are mighty marvelous, but with many problems, too. They don't need to be swapped out for Paris fashion models or disgustingly-soiled grizzled old men when the TV camera lights are on.

The public will be able to understand that within the undercaste there are addicts and felons and mentally ill folks, oh my! Further, the public can be taught that homeless people suffer mightily, from deprivations and feelings of unworth. Plus, the public can come to understand the Trap of Homelessness in Sacramento where it is especially difficult to get conditions right such that a person is presentable to apply for work. It's ridiculously difficult out here!

By being TRUTHFUL [a concept that will need to be taught to L&F's board and executives] instead of truthy; sympathetic to the needs and fears of the general community; and by seeking solutions to problems, rather than exclusively and childishly demanding "what I want, now," there will be broader support for the homeless, both from the people in our metropolis and the people's elected and appointed leaders in the city and county.

IMHO, ONLY by getting broader support, such that the public is behind it, and such that ordinances can be passed, will a legal homeless encampment/community come into being and succeed.

----

* I think I'm on safe ground in saying that one of the problems with "safe ground" is the meaning of the term. Today, "safe ground" means many things, including its opposite, unsafe ground. The illegal campground on C Street was called Safe Ground, while safe ground was originally defined as a legal campground. Also, there continues to be confusion about how safe ground / Safe Ground / SafeGround should be spelled. In addition to being a parcel where homeless people camp (or put up structures), Safe Ground or the Safe Ground campaign is the effort to get a legal homeless campground in Sacramento AND Safe Ground or the Safe Ground Movement is the effort led by C.W. (with articles in People's Tribune) to put an end to capitalism in our country (which in the glorious future might be called The People's Republic of Safe Ground). -- tom armstrong / Tom Armstrong / TomArmstrong

** Orwellian is defined [at wikipedia] in these terms, which apply to the village-naming issue:

• The political manipulation of language, by obfuscation, e.g. WAR IS PEACE. Using language to obfuscate meaning or to reduce and eliminate ideas and their meanings that are deemed dangerous to its authority.
  
•  The encouragement of "doublethink," whereby the population must learn to embrace inconsistent concepts without dissent, e.g. giving up liberty for freedom. Similar terms used, are "doublespeak," and "newspeak." 

Homeless Sacramento couple gets check for nearly $1 million, and expect to help Safe Ground as much as they can

If only all of Sacramento's homeless people could get such great good news …

The Atlantic correspondent Christina Davidson has been touring our country, writing recession stories.  One she wrote, on the 17th, was about Charles and Elizabeth Zimmerman, called "Mending Broken Hearts in Sacramento's New Tent Village."

Well, now Derek Thompson of Business magazine alerts us that there's been a sudden, dramatic, very fortuitous development:  Sen. Kay Baily Hutchenson of Texas saw Davidson's article and intervened.

Here from Davidson's Road Tour journal, today's entry:

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) apparently read my piece about the Zimmermans and contacted Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV), who sits on the Committee on Veterans Affairs. As a result of their efforts, Charles Zimmerman had a mind-blowing meeting with a VA official yesterday afternoon.

Charles called me as soon as the meeting had ended to tell me that the VA had apologized for delaying resolution of his case for so long. He said they told him he would start receiving full benefits within a matter of weeks, including an initial check that would cover backpay for the past 18 years since his retirement.

"Are you sitting down?" Charles asks. "Yes," I say. "They say they'll be sending me a check for $972,000," he replies.

We both laugh semi-hysterically for a bit before calming down enough to discuss rationally. "What are you going to do with all that money?" I ask. "Retire," he says. "Then help Safe Ground as much as I can. And that's it."

Mayor hopeful, committed to meeting needs of city's homeless population

This morning, the Mayor held a press conference to update the public on the status of pressing homelessness issues and to reiterate his commitment to make Sacramento "a city that works for everyone," including the least fortunate, us homeless. The briefing also served to show that the mayor and parties involved in the Safe Ground movement are reconciled and expect to be working together to meet the shelter and sleeping needs of homeless Sacramentans in the face of the continuing difficult economic conditions and a coming winter that may be severe.

Mayor Kevin Johnson, now in office for ten months, said that homeless people must be treated with respect and their dignity recognized and that the city must pursue a goal of ending homelessness, altogether, over time. Aside the mayor as he stood at a podium in a small room in the new building at the City Hall complex were about eight leaders involved in efforts to aid the homeless, including Sister Libby and Joan Burke of Loaves & Fishes; Gregory Bunker of Francis House; and Thomas "Hawk" Jackson Ashmore**, an able and articulate member of the homeless community.

A legal encampment for the homeless

The mayor first spoke about Stepping Stone, envisioned as a legal "transitional-housing encampment which facilitates outreach and empowers individuals to [achieve] self-sufficiency." A fifteen-person ad hoc committee, in conjunction with a staff aid, has the responsibly of finding the best components of a camp that can succeed both for homeless people and the metropolis.

 There are many "key issues" the mayor's advisers must deal with in putting together a successful proposal (according to a handout that was provided -- with "funding" added, based on the mayor's reference to it during the briefing)  With each issue, a specturm of possiblities was noted, which I've reproduced, below:

• Size

  Small (50-100)   | Medium (100-200)  | Large (200-400)

• Location
  

  Next to Services | Close to Services | Removed from Services

• Selection Criteria
  

  No Restrictions  | Self-Selection    | Targeted Community

• Governance
  

  Self Governance  | Joint Governance  | External Governance

• Security
  

  No Security      | Community Security| Private Security 

• Staffing/Services

  Minimal Services | Hub and Spoke     | Extensive Support

• Funding
  

  Gov'ment Funding | Mixed Funding     | Grants and Donations 

The Mayor hopes to have a proposal come together soon that will "launch in October" with the manifestation of the camp coming in three to six months. A site near Bannon Street, three acres behind the VOA property there, is known to be a prime plot of ground under consideration for the camp, but the Mayor said other sites will be sought and fully evaluated in the process of creating his proposal.

The Mayor thanked the C Street encampment members for volunteering to abandon their campsite, given the understanding that he and his office, homeless-agency leaders and other city and county leaders would endeavor, tirelessly, to "make something happen."

Sister Libby spoke at the podium to say that she was "very excited" about the Mayor's commitment to get something achieved. And, she said, her goal was that it be done without city money. "Funding is a big problem," she said, but it is her hope that the city and county not need to weigh in with financial help.

"Hawk" Ashmore** came to the podium and said that "we [the homeless] have a right to live." He was hopeful that peace officers would be instructed to cease arresting homeless folk for just living. "It costs $1500 to $2000 just to be put in jail," he said. Safe Ground is not a [end-all] solution, he said, it's a effort to make things better.

Gregory Bunker praised the Mayor. "It's the first time a mayor has stepped forward to this degree," he said. And he warned, because of the economy, "a burgeoning population of homeless on the streets" is possible.

Shelter this winter

Mayor Johnson had less optimism relating to the coming crisis of additional, cold-weather shelter for homeless people. He said there continues to be a problem finding funding to meet the need.

Cal Expo; the detox center on/near Richards Blvd; church properties; and facilities at Mather are candidate sites for shelter beginning sometime in November. Separate from the "encampment" task force, but with some overlap of members, is an eight-person ad hoc committee, the Winter Shelter Task Force, working on the problem for the mayor in conjunction with a member, or members, of the mayor's staff. County, city, and private support is being sought for funding.

End Notes

In questioning from the press afterward, the Mayor said that he would love for our city to be a leader in the quest for ending homelessness, but that will not forestall the continuing need for transitional means and emergency shelters.

Stepping Stone he said would serve as a transitional means to put people in permanent housing.

He said it was a "big political challenge."

After addressing homeless issues, the mayor spoke about matters relating to basketball in the city.  An agency, working for the NCAA, had determined that Arco Arena is not suitable for university-level basketball, precluding Sacramento from being a site for elimination-tournement play.  The arena was found to be too old and shabby.

The mayor is determined to be more aggressive and to move the timeline up in getting a new, state-of-the-art arena for basketball in Sacramento to host events and to keep professional basketball [the Kings!] a part of the community.

Kevin Johnson was highly impressive at the podium this morning.  I am convinced he is fully, genuinely the compassionate fellow he seems in print and on TV.  He is also a sterling speaker, both with prepared statements and in responding to reporters' questions.  A stong mayor?  After seeing, hearing him today, I'd easily, happily vote for giving him enhanced powers to fix the problems our city has.

--
* Quoting from a handout from the "Office of the Mayor," provided before the press briefing.
** Corrections made to THIS report, using information from the Sacramento Press article, "Mayor Keven Johnson addresses homelessness," written by Jonathan Mendick.  I first wrote that Ashmore's name was Thomas "Hawk" Jackson; it is, in fact, Thomas "Hawk" Jackson Ashmore.

Homeless hired as consultants to do unions' picketting

I cannot, ever ever, blame scrappy, needy homeless people for taking whatever job they might. They do this all the time, yet suffer from the popular, terrible misconception that homeless people in Sacramento are lazy bums.

Some homeless people are lazy, of course, as are some plumbers, dentists, candlemakers and Indian chiefs. Make no mistake: There's a little of everything in Homeless World, just as there's a little of everything in every subgroup of human beings.

But it is largely the case that the Sacramento homeless are scrappy! Hooray for that. We take jobs waving furniture-store-liquidation signs on street corners for less than minimum wage, and suffer the frustration, sometimes, of never getting paid for some of the work we do. There are jobs paid under-the-counter, and wages paid months late.

This morning, homeless people, perhaps all of whom were part of the C Street encampment – they all wore dark-green Safe Ground T-shirts – were paid minimum wage to picket for four or five hours on three sides of the full-block-size county administration building at 700 H Street.

The paid picketers carried signs that read "Save County Jobs; No Consultants; ETTI/APECS." I learned subsequently that ETTI and APECS stand for Engineering Technicians/Technical Inspectors and Association of Professional Engineers, County of Sacramento.

Curious thing. ETTI and APECS are opposed to outsourcing, yet they hire stand-in picketers. May be I'm out of touch, but I've never heard of unions hiring others to do their picketting for them. Are not hired picketers Picket Scabs?

The mentally ill on the street

The following long blockquote is from Oliver Sachs's piece, published in the New York Review of Books, September 24 issue, titled "The Lost Virtue of the Asylum" [emphases mine]:

The movement for deinstitutionalization, starting as a trickle in the 1960s, became a flood by the 1980s, even though it was clear by then that it was creating as many problems as it solved. The enormous homeless population, the "sidewalk psychotics" in every major city, were stark evidence that no city had an adequate network of psychiatric clinics and halfway houses, or the infrastructure to deal with the hundreds of thousands of patients who had been turned away from the remaining state hospitals.

The anti-psychotic medications that had ushered in this wave of deinstitutionalization often turned out to be much less miraculous than originally hoped. They might lessen the "positive" symptoms of mental illness – the hallucinations and delusions of schizophrenia. But they did little for "negative" symptoms – the apathy and passivity, the lack of motivation and ability to relate to others – that were often more disabling than the positive symptoms. Indeed (at least in the manner they were originally used), the anti-psychotic drugs tended to lower energy and vitality and produce an apathy of their own. Sometimes there were intolerable side effects, movement disorders, like parkinsonism or tardive dyskinesia, which could persist for years after the medication had been stopped. And sometimes patients were unwilling to give up their psychoses, psychoses that gave meaning to their worlds and situated them at the center of these worlds. So it was common for patients to stop taking the anti-psychotic medicine they had been prescribed.

Thus many patients who were given anti-psychotic drugs and discharged had to be readmitted weeks or months later. I saw scores of such patients, many of whom said to me, in effect, "Bronx State is no picnic, but it is infinitely better than starving, freezing on the streets, or being knifed on the Bowery." the hospital, if nothing else, offered protection and safety – offered in a word, asylum.

By 1990 it was very clear that the system had overreacted, that the wholesale closings of state hospitals had proceeded far too rapidly, without any adequate alternatives in place. it was not wholesale closure that the state hospitals needed, but fixing: dealing with the overcrowding, the understaffing, the negligences and brutalities. For the chemical approach, while necessary, was not enough. We forgot the benign aspects of asylums, or perhaps we felt we could no longer afford to pay for them: the spaciousness and sense of community, the place for work and play, and for the gradual learning of social and vocational skills – a safe haven that state hospitals were well-equipped to provide.

In posting this, I'm not meaning to suggest we should go back to the way things were in the early 80s, when people were all-too-easily put in mental institutions, but we do need to correct today's situation where seriously mentally ill people are abandoned to the streets and left to try to subsist without any support at all.

One of the first programs, and probably THE VERY FIRST PROGRAM lost in Homeless World Sacramento when, in 2008, there was a flicker that the economy was going to tank was the VOA Outreach program to first identify seriously congnitively impaired people who were abandoned to the streets.

A significant percentage of homeless people are lost and alone, disoriented and abandoned, and they have no allies working to protect or rescue them. Woe the primary so-called homeless-advocacy agencies – Loaves & Fishes and VOA. They do not "step up" to address what should be the primary tasks of their mission. Loaves & Fishes does not have properly trained personnel in its Friendship Park. VOA, as I wrote, lopped off the most important program it had at the first whiff of economic hard times.

A related SacHo blogpost I hope you'll read, "The first-person dimension of homeless Sacramentans suffering from Schizophrenia."

Yipe. The template for this blog may be partially lost.

It appears that the free service that powered part of this blog's template has gone out of business.

A restructuring of this blogsite may be in the cards in the days acomin'! Woe.

Hope for good news for homeless people at mayor's press conference Tuesday morning

Mayor Kevin Johnson has scheduled a press conference Tuesday morning that is likely to include some good news for homeless people in the city of Sacramento.

The event is scheduled for 11AM at City Hall.

For now, this is as much as I know.

It is conjecture on my part, but the topic is more likely to have to do with shelter space this winter than the issue of legal camping space for us homeless within city limits. Maybe there's good news in both arenas.

Forum offers unexpected updates on current hot homeless issues

Forum Description: One Book Sacramento program: Homeless and Mental Panel Discussion. The Soloist tells the story of Nathaniel Ayers and puts a face and a name on homelessness and mental illness. His story gives insight that humanizes homelessness and de-stigmatizes mental illness. Local experts will discuss the connection between homelessness and mental illness. The program will be moderated by Ben Adler of Captial Public Radio. Experts participating in the discussion: ·Tim Brown, Sacramento Ending Chronic Homelessness Initiative director; ·Joan Burke, Loaves & Fishes director of advocacy ·Dr. Cameron Carter, Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology - UC Davis ·Sean McGlyn, fomerly homeless mental health consumer

Last night, I attend what was billed as a Forum on Homelessness and Mental Illness at the Central branch of the Sacramento Public Library.

A few things of interest regarding homelessness as it is today came up in the presentations given by several of the speakers.

The forum fully diverged from what I expected and hoped it would be – about mentally ill homeless people, their experience and how they should be treated and aided – to somewhat-self-promoting talks about what the speakers knew about current homeless issues in Sacramento. A prime topic was Safe Ground in two of its meanings, (1) the non-legal camp of about 40 homeless people on a small parcel of land, owed by Mark Merin, on C Street near 13th; and (2) the effort and hope to have one or more legal homeless encampments in the future. Mental health was a side matter that was not explored in any depth.

Tim Brown told us that at this time there was no money for shelter space for the homeless this coming winter. But he was hopeful that something could be "patched together in the next week or so." He also took note of stimulus money that can be utilized beginning in October, but must be narrowly targetted to benefit newly homeless or Sacramentans at risk of becoming homeless.

Joan Burke told us right now in Sacramento things are not right. "We know that housing is the answer to everything," she said.

From my observation, Loaves & Fishes, this year, has gone through quick cycles of endorsing and praising Mayor Johnson and, then, attacking him. Last night, Joan Burke praised the mayor for being the first to try to address homelessness seriously.

[From what I glean from local news, the mayor and homeless agencies, led by Loaves & Fishes, are now hotly negotiating an end to legal matters, involving Lehr v Sac'to and the C St. encampment. I fear and expect that the agencies are, mostly, angling for their piece of the pie, using homeless people as pawns in this political showdown that can only hurt the mayor's standing and ambitions.]

Burke also praised the C St. encampment for making sure that no drugs, no alcohol and no violence was central to the homeless organizers' rules of conduct. In this, Burke is partially incorrect. People in the Safe Ground camps -- on C Street and north of Loaves & Fishes -- sign agreements not to use substances near the encampment, not that they are not to be high while in camp. [Update 9/19: According to a Sacramento Press report, Merin requires campers to be drug and alcohol free on and off his property. One camper was caught not living up to that standard and was evicted from the C St. parcel.] Burke also said that when a true Safe Ground [i.e., legal campground] is established a "non-profit must be involved." That surely is Burke's veiled way of revealing that Loaves & Fishes will be have a city/county contract to manage things if negotiations with the mayor are to get anywhere. It should be noted that Dignity Village in Portland, a successful homeless encampment many point to, does not have a non-profit overseer.

In a tip of the hat to the some-25 Safe Ground encamped homeless in attendance, Burke said that their role was like that of Rosa Parks, the Civil Rights heroine. Of course, when Ms. Parks refused to give up her bus seat in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955, it was an act of courage that set forward a chain of events ending segregation in the South. Ms. Parks' act happened in realtime and wasn't staged. The municipal bus Rosa Parks was on wasn't owned by her attorney to falsely create a confrontation.

Joan Burke went on to say that her goal, or that of the Safe Ground Movement, was for "Everyone to have a simple home or apartment of their own." The implication, from further discussion, was that rent for the residences would be gifted to each homeless person from the government. This sentiment was hardily approved by homeless people in attendance to the event.

Sean McGlyn told us about his twelve years of homelessness in Sacramento. His statements demonstrated his full awareness of what life is like for a rather-typical [if anyone can be typical] longterm alcoholic in Homeless World Sacramento.

"What's sad about it is you get used to it," he said. What happened was that he "kind of gave up [on getting out] after two years" because the undercaste circumstance had become his life. You get to a point where you can't get back to [situation normal].

Finally he got his life back together, succeeding in a nine-month program to gain and hold sobriety, after failing at that or similar programs before. He said, "I don't think I could have done it by myself." Finally, in a combination of will power and just the right help in the right way, everything clicked.

[You can't get the sense of it from what I've written about what McGlyn said, but McGlyn told his story vividly and affectively and it had a profound effect on listeners – me, certainly.]

Chances for expanded shelter this winter for homeless are not great

An article today at the KCRA3 website, "Mayor: No Money For Winter Shelters" tells us that Mayor Kevin Johnson may be glum about hopes for the manifestation of some sort of shelter this winter for the homeless.

The report tells us Johnson "said the city needs to stay 'on message' – that homeless issues need to be resolved through negotiation, not confrontation."

Currently, the city and so-call "homeless advocate agencies" – Loaves & Fishes, Francis House, and the tiny SHOC [Paula Lomazzi acting a committee of one under the title Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee] – are in dispute re a settlement of Lehr v Sacramento, a case which would recompense homeless citizens for belongings that were comfiscated by city police and might decriminalize some activities that homeless people are now being cited for.

The mayor has recently voiced displeasure with the so-called Safe Ground illicit homeless encampment on C Street, near 13th, on property owned by liberal lawyer Mark Merin.  Johnson has said the campground was not helpful to his effort to establish a legal homeless encampment.

In the article, today, it says, "The mayor said he hopes by the next month to have three or five locations to discuss as possible" sites for legal homeless camps.

Word I've received from a mayor's aid is that "the Mayor is committed to finding a solution [to meet the need for shelter space this winter]." There is hope that there may be good news after the policy board meets next Thursday.

At the Safe Ground movement rally

Before the 10:00 AM rally at City Hall that the "Safe Ground movement" had planned for this morning, Sister Libby [CEO of Loaves & Fishes] came up to me and I asked if Cathleen Williams is still a part of the "movement." Libby nodded and said "yes," or "oh, yes" in a strong, certain way.

"Shouldn't she not be?" I asked.

"I've been reading your blog," said Libby, politely. "I don't think that she's communistic. Communion is part of the movement."

As she was walking away, I asked Libby if she believed People's Tribune was communist. There was no response, or perhaps Libby didn't hear me.

I didn't stay, but later, maybe fifteen minutes after 10AM, I saw the crowd of people, numbering perhaps 100, maybe more, marching around City Hall, chanting repeatedly "What do we want? Safe Ground! When do we want it? Now!"

They settled in, where they had been, in an area between the two buildings that make up the City Hall complex. Joan Burke, Loaves & Fishes' Director of Advocacy said a few words through a megaphone – something about the great good work of this that and the other and him and her – and then Sr. Libby said a few things over the megaphone I couldn't make out.

People milled around, chatting in groups. There were homeless people, many wearing Safe Ground T-shirts; some men were very well dressed and had to have been politicians or businesspeople or lawyers; happy supporters of the homeless cause were there; more than a few seniors were there; as were some detached people, possibly city workers out to see what was happening. One older man with flowing hair was dressed impressively in a brown robe as a Jesuit or Benedictine monk, excepting that his sneakers and jeans showing below the robe distracted a bit from the effect. A motley, yet starkly liberal, grouping. A News40 van was parked nearby, as were a couple of large black police vans. A couple cops, closer to the action, were on bicycles.

SafeGround, Joan Burke and Truthiness

In an email I received from Joan Burke of Loaves & Fishes it says this [in bold] [My comments in red.]:

Peaceful SafeGround Rally at Sacramento City Hall

10 AM on Thursday, September 10, 2009
Sacramento City Hall

915 I Street

Sacramento, 95814

Why Hasn't Sacramento Provided a Safe and Legal Place to Camp? [As Ms. Burke knows better than anyone, the mayor is making an effort to create a legal campground, Stepping Stone, that has been waylaid, in part, by her organization and its lawyer with the misadventure on C Street, near 13th.] The number of homeless people has risen by 14% in just two years. [This is an example of misuse of statistics by discarding unfavorable data. The reasonable/normative timespan of change to observe here is one year. But that change was only 4.6%, and wouldn't have seemed alarming.] Shelters are turning away hundreds of men, woman and children every night for lack of space. [This implies that people are being turned away at the door and being forced onto the mean streets, but not so. Many people are on lists at St. John's and the Salvation Army seeking to move there from a shelter where they're currently staying.] Why would we arrest people who have nowhere to go? Shouldn't the city spend its money on housing for people rather than on jails? [For starters, jails are a county expenditure, but this is an odd comparison for other reasons, too. The problem, really, is a lack of affordable housing that should be fixed by legislation/ordinances encouraging construction of low-cost housing.] Criminalizing homelessness is unjust and solves nothing. ["Criminalizing homelessness" is an effort to "warehouse the rabble," as John Irwin's classic study showed. What Loaves & Fishes does at its Friendship Park, and VOA does with its Overflow shelter is ALSO warehousing the rabble, keeping homeless people out of sight from the general population.] Please support the more than 1,200 homeless people who will sleep outside in Sacramento tonight and every night. [Yes, but supporting the homeless people can mean NOT supporting Loaves & Fishes' activism efforts which include leadership that believes capitalism should be ended in this country and advances in technology suppressed. Also, there's the ongoing L&F truthiness problem.]

Come to the SafeGround Rally this Thursday at 10 AM at City Hall.

Ask our Mayor, City Council and City Manager to act immediately to:
1. Declare a moratorium on enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance. It is unjust to cite and arrest people who have nowhere else to go.
2. Provide SafeGround, a legal campground for homeless people who have signed a pledge of no drugs, no alcohol, no violence. [Loaves & Fishes' SG pledge calls for no drugs nor alcohol usage within 50 feet of an encampment, not that people at one of their campgrounds not be on drugs or drunk.]

Culture of Cruelty

A post in Integral Options Cafe alerts us to an opinion piece in Truthout, by Henry A. Giroux, called "Living in a Culture of Cruelty: Democracy as Spectacle." The second paragraph in the article attracted my interest as pertaining most directly to homelessness:

Increasingly, many individuals and groups now find themselves living in a society that measures the worth of human life in terms of cost-benefit analyzes. The central issue of life and politics is no longer about working to get ahead, but struggling simply to survive. And many groups, who are considered marginal because they are poor, unemployed, people of color, elderly or young, have not just been excluded from "the American dream," but have become utterly redundant and disposable, waste products of a society that not longer considers them of any value. How else to explain the zealousness in which social safety nets have been dismantled, the transition from welfare to workfare (offering little job training programs and no child care), and recent acrimony over health care reform's public option? What accounts for the passage of laws that criminalize the behavior of the 1.2 million homeless in the United States, often defining sleeping, sitting, soliciting, lying down or loitering in public places as a criminal offence rather than a behavior in need of compassionate good will and public assistance? Or, for that matter, the expulsions, suspensions, segregation, class discrimination and racism in the public schools as well as the more severe beatings, broken bones and damaged lives endured by young people in the juvenile justice system? Within these politics, largely fueled by market fundamentalism - one that substitutes the power of the social state with the power of the corporate state and only values wealth, money and consumers - there is a ruthless and hidden dimension of cruelty, one in which the powers of life and death are increasingly determined by punishing apparatuses, such as the criminal justice system for poor people of color and/or market forces that increasingly decide who may live and who may die.

The article on the whole sounds, perhaps, less shrill than this one paragraph plucked from it, but, shrill or not, the point is apt at focusing in on where I think American society has lost its way. [BTW, I don't know about the heightened racism claims; Sacramento probably suffers less from that than other places, or I may be, simply, unaware.]

We still greatly suffer from the George W. Bush Administration's incivilities and cruelties and its impact on culture. Also, the Obama Administration has not begun as well as most of us hoped. But for whatever reason, things certainly seem mean. There is reason to hope that the country is in recovery from snarling meanness, but, as a society, we still tolerate some mighty haters and truth twisters in the public sphere and some mightily haters and truth twisters on the local scene.

I very much agree with the sentiment from the quote above [enlarged & bolded] that homelessness is being increasingly criminalized and compassion for the homeless found lacking in many quarters. Unhappily, in Sacramento, the homeless-aid industry, partially smitten with communist utopian ideations, chooses to combat the public and stir its donation base rather than promote understanding.

Weird Homeless Communist Theatre

According to today's news, 16 or 17 of the homeless folk camping at the so-called Safe Ground* campsite on C Street near 13th were arrested and their tents and belongings seized.

It's an unhappy situation. Had the campers been arrested for doing their best to live in a city/county that allows no space for them, I would be outraged. But, truly, the event is not that: It is orchestrated political theatre, motivated in big part by the vanity of a far-left-wing lawyer and homeless-aid-industry narcissism where homeless people are manipulated and used to spur donations, and to give homeless-aid nonprofit executives liberal cache on the progressive cocktail-party circuit. [That's my informed guess, at least.]

As incredible as it sounds, the "Safe Ground movement" is involved with communist politics. It's 1917 all over again at Loaves & Fishes.

Cathleen Williams, an attorney herself, wife of "Safe Ground movement" lead attorney Mark Merin, has called for "a revolution" passionately citing an article in the August issue of People's Tribune, "Revolutionaries Must Rally the People to a Vision of a New World." The article calls for "a society where everyone able to do so would have the opportunity to make a contribution to society, and would in turn receive everything they needed to lead a civilized life. Anyone unable to contribute because of age, illness or disability would be taken care of. All would have health care. There would be no unemployment, no poverty." If that's not equivalent to Karl Marx's communist utopia vision of "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need," I don't know what is.

People's Tribune calls for an end to capitalism and advancing technology. Cathleen Williams has written perhaps ten articles for People's Tribune; one where her association with markmerin.com is indicated. Ms. Williams's poem "Food" ends with the sentiment that if extreme poverty meant enough to the reader, she/he "would bring [the capitalist] system down. [Prior posts in this blog have been, in part, about meetings re Safe Ground led by Ms. Williams: See "Mayor's Homeless Task Force envisions legal homeless encampment next spring" on Aug 11, 2009, and "Common ground on safe ground. Common sense, not communism." on Aug 18, 2009.]

Paula Lomazzi who is the doer-of-all-things administrator of the organization SHOC [Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee] is proud to have written one rather benign article for the publication in its August 2009 issue.

Several members of the homeless community that have been recruited by SHOC associate themselves with communist ideas and are involved in the Safe Ground movement. John Kraintz who is pictured often and quoted invariably when Sacramento homelessness is written about these days sees events in terms of 1930s America and the need for an aggressive labor organizing movement. He's angry, he has his gripes, and can find no merit in thinking that doesn't jive with his own.

Kraintz sees himself as having enormous influence in the movement, telling me that if he chose to exercise it, he could have his way on all matters that come up relating to Safe Ground. I have told him that the connection with communism is likely to waylay the effort for a legal homeless encampment in Sacramento, but Kraintz insists he will do nothing to blunt the communist connection, though it appears that the matter is getting much discussion in the many committees relating to the movement behind the scenes.

The matter of the legitimacy of the encampment on C Street now moves on to the courts, even as the "encampment" is a prop put together, mostly, by Loaves & Fishes, and not a "naturally occurring" [if I can call it that] circumstance. Homeless people are pawns in a concocted situation used to force arrests and spring Mark Merin to engage in courtroom theatre.

Instead of acting maturely, instead of appreciating the needs of the general community during these difficult economic times, the Sacramento homeless-help industry has its issue to stir resentment and prompt past liberal donors on its lists to give yet more.

Instead of finding the very very best property in the city or county for a beta peaceful homeless encampment, instead of continuing to work with the mayor, the Safe Ground movement has chosen the 1960s route of gripe and protest instead of nurturing the hope for real progress and success.

Because the culture of the movement is to always always see no merit in the stance of those that disagree with it and to feel spectacularly aggrieved and to offend the public as much as possible and to perceive themselves as white as snow it should fail quickly.

BTW, my own 'politics' are to the left. I would describe myself as being liberal with a few beliefs that rate as moderate. I've never voted for a Republican in 37 years of voting. Every communist state has been a failure that quickly became an oppressive dictatorship. Truly, 100 million died in the gulags or from the guns or were otherwise crushed by communist regimes in the 20th Century. You'd think that lesson couldn't be quickly forgotten.
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* I say "so-called" since the idea of "safe ground" is supposed to mean sanctioned by the city or county, whereas the parcel at C & 13th is not sanctioned.