Article posted in Sacramento Press

My article "When you think of Loaves & Fishes, think of Joseph Stalin" has been posted to Sacramento Press.

... but, SP seems to have quickly taken the article down.

UPDATE 1/29, 4:45PM:

NEW, replacement article, "Communist nonprofits in Homeless World Sacramento," posted to Sacramento Press. SP is happy with it, hoping for interesting reader reactions.

UPDATE 1/30, 9:30AM:

Comments are jokey; SP doesn't promote article.

While I am mostly satified with what I wrote, I can see that the title I gave the article is a very poor choice and that I should have given the cream of what I had to say up-top. Instead, the piece is draggy reading for people who demand their information quick and to-the-point.

Oh well. A learning experience for me.

UPDATE 2/1, 9:15AM:

Eeha!  I am much heartened.  The article is gathering a long comment stream.  Some people understand what I am writing, while others assume that criticism of Safe Ground has to mean I'm a right-wing lacky.

Costa Mantis movie, dated 1/19/10, "Safe Ground Goes to SF"

[Pictured to the left of the 666 is attorney Mark Merin; to the right of the 666 are Tracey Rice-Bailey and Paula Lomazzi] In the viddie, Jack Hirschman reads his 1987 poem "Home." [Listeners to the poem should note that the nature of being homeless has changed more than a little over the course of 23 years.]

And here a glowing article, a decade ago, about Hirschman in SF GATE, the online presence of the San Francisco Chronicle: "Dean of S.F.'s Marxist Poetry / Jack Hirschman is lauded abroad unknown at home."

And, here, Hirschman in wikipedia, where we are told that Hirschman is, today, "an avowed Stalinist and has translated the youthful poems of Joseph Stalin into English (Joey: The Poems of Joseph Stalin [Deliriodendron Press, 2001])." [Though the book of translated poems is not listed on Hirschman's bibliography at the Poetry Foundation website, I am pretty sure the wikipedia statement is true. When Stalin was a young poet he was known as "Soso," the diminuative of Josef, and, thus, the Russian equivalent of "Joey." Deliriodendron Press was Hirschman's own tiny publishing house. An article/video online asks, "Could Stalin have been poet instead of tyrant?"] Indeed, a recent [2007] book, Young Stalin, won the Los Angeles Book Prize for Biography. It tells, in part, of "Joey's" background as a teenage poet with some talent.

Here, btw, is Costa Mantis's nine-minute video of the march in San Francisco on 1/20/10.

John Kraintz at San Francisco protest on the first aniversary of the Obama Administration

Video from the 1/20/2010 "homeless" protest in San Francisco on the first aniversary of the Obama Administration.  The protest was a tactic determined by Nelson Peery of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America to further communist goals to overthrow capitalism in the United States. [See Peery's piece in the Nov&Dec09 issue of Ralley, Comrades!] John Kraintz of Safe Ground is a speaker featured six minutes into the viddie.  He speaks for two minutes.

Here is what John [a fast learner of the populist politics of hate and division] says,

Hi, I'm John from Safe Ground Sacramento.  I came down here with a simple message, today. [starts screaming] YOU ARE THE LEADERS YOU'VE BEEN LOOKIN FOR.  REPEAT AFTER ME.  WE ARE THE LEADERS WE'VE BEEN LOOKIN FOR. [Crowd repeats the sentence.] C'MON, THEY'RE HARDLY HEARING DOWN THERE. WE GOTTA BE LOUDER. WE ARE THE LEADERS WE'VE BEEN LOOKIN FOR. [Crowd repeats the sentence.] You know they told us today we couldn't have a permit to go down to the Federal Building.  WHO THE HELL DO THEY THINK THEY ARE!?  THEY WORK FOR US; WE DON'T WORK FOR THEM.  WE ARE GOING TO GO DOWN THERE TODAY AND TELL OUR EMPLOYEES WHAT WE WANT THEM TO DO. AND WE BETTER SPEAK UP BECAUSE THESE PEOPLE they don't hear very well.  We've been talkin to 'em for decades, and THEY DON'T GET IT.  Maybe they don't hear so good; maybe they're a little slow.  So let's say it real simple and real slow.  WHAT DO WE WANT? [Crowd screams "housing."] AND WHEN DO WE WANT IT? [Crowd screams "now."]  WHAT DO WE WANT? [Crowd screams "housing."] AND WHEN DO WE WANT IT? [Crowd screams "now."] All right, today we've gathered under many different banners from many different places, but we came to speak with one voice.  THE PEOPLE. UNITED.  CANNOT BE DEFEATED.  [Crowd screams along with John as he repeats the mantra.]  THE PEOPLE. UNITED. CANNOT BE DEFEATED.  THE PEOPLE. UNITED. CANNOT BE DEFEATED. All right, we've been quiet for too long, so we gotta make up for lost time.  When we go down and talk to those people, today, let's go down and tell to our employees what they want us, what we want them to do.  All right?  And let's make sure they hear it.  Let's speak up.  LET'S GET DOWN THERE, AND TELL THEM WHAT HAS TO HAPPEN BEFORE THIS WHOLE COUNTRY GOES INTO THE TOILET.

BTW, Kraintz got the tagline "We Are The Leaders We've Been Looking For" from the same fount as came the title of an article in the August 2009 issue of the communist paper People's Tribune. The article in PT is "We Are The Leaders We've Been Waiting For."

In the January 2010 issue of People's Tribune, there is an article, titled "Anti-Communism Disarms our Movement." In it, the author, Sandy Perry, writes,

So is our movement really communist? The answer is yes and no, because it depends on what you mean by communism.

The literal dictionary definition of communism is a cooperative economic system based on common ownership, where wealth is distributed on the basis of human need rather than private profit. ...

Americans should not fear to criticize the failure of capitalism. It is already clear that it can no longer meet the needs of our people. The question is what new system for distributing our wealth will emerge, and will it provide for our basic necessities so we can survive? The important thing is to not let political and ideological differences get in the way of building a practical movement to win the power we need to shape our future.

Perry fails to mention that old-style Stalinists are behind the newspaper and the movement, and that the objectives of People's Tribune are minimally different from the horror of Soviet-style communism that has failed dozens of times and killed a hundred million people. Perry's "yes and no" communism has the same features of dis-incentivizing work and crushing freedom as its forebearers.

The difficulty helping people

[I originally posted this to another blog in December 2007.  Except that the book A Farewell to Alms is no longer "recent," as I wrote, then, I couldn't find anything else I would change.]

I would like to get into something very basic to Buddhism, that has certainly been explored, but to my admittedly-very-limited knowledge, hasn’t been pulled together very well.

Why is it so damn hard to help people?

One would think that it would be THE fundamental thing to do, of great help to the world at large. One would think that if you can give someone or some group or some nation that one simple, timely leg-up, he or they or it would go on to reach his/their/its full potential, and the benefits from that would ripple out into the world and there would be this cascade of goodness and good news.

But it is hard to help people. They fall into their ruts and pour concrete around their feet ... or so it seems.

The book A Farewell to Alms looks into the issue on the macro-scale, helping Third World countries, addressing question like Why, with all the money we pour into Africa and Iraq and Bangladesh, and elsewhere, do things remain essentially unchanged?

The author believes that aid delivered to dirt-poor countries gets diverted to feeding the problems instead of curing them. While aid, well directed, can have immediate benefits ― feeding the hungry, classically ― it also props up the corruption that is in place and any improved standard of living that might come gets overwhelmed by the high levels of birth and, thus, population increase endemic to impoverished peoples. And that drags the country down much more than anything can lift it up.

Truly, the idea of improvement to one’s standard of living is a new condition, first found in London of the 1820s. We animals, be us fleas or humans, rat or polar bears, will take whatever good fortune comes our way and turn it into a population boom that returns us to our natural state: poverty. That is, until affluence can take hold, for a spell, and our selfish interest in personal comforts and diversions can make us want to have a very limited number of offspring.

Global Warming and the disaster from that that seems unavoidable may just be another instance of a species wending its way back to its natural condition, living at the edge, or beyond the edge, of apocalypse.

But even if population control ― something that is out of flower [Whatever happened to ZPG, Zero Population Growth, a group that was out there beating the bushes in the 70s and 80s?] ― is the way to deliver us from world problems, long term, how can we help individuals, now!?

I look at my family and friends and myself and acquaintances past and think ‘what a menagerie of the lost and troubled.’ Each of us, in ways unique, is a cesspool of a sort with a mighty horrible end looming.

One friend of mine, from high school, was one of the most fun, upbeat people you could know. He was editor of the school paper and went on to get a degree in journalism. But like his parents, he liked alcohol. And in jobs he sought where he worked independently ― as an acquisitions editor, notably, repeatedly ― he slacked off and drove his budding career into the ground. In his personal life, he is alienated from his wife (now exxed) and daughter. A mutual friend of ours has helped ‘set him up’ again in life, guaranteeing his rent, and he’s gotten a rather menial job, but he‘s not fun anymore. He means to be fun, but it is like he is pitifully still in 12th grade with interests others of us have long since moved beyond. And he drinks, and we're tired of that.

Another example: My sister is on one level a great success ― vice president at one of the nation’s biggest banks at 25. But she is such a beast that a quarter century later ― while still with the bank and now a higher-level vice president ― she has been relieved of having others report to her. My sister and I had been only at the bare margins of each other’s lives, until the effects of aging began to drag down our mother. It is hard to know if the “evil” my sister does is by intention or due to some kind of emotional blindness, but everything she does is destructive and hurtful. Without going into details, she truly is a monster and is a prime reason for my interest in sociopaths. Is she one? I wonder. Is her long-time demonstrated affection for dogs just an act? It is hard to find compassion in her behavior or anything she does that can be explained by something other than selfishness. Significant others in her life have been kindly women she fully dominates and grinds down.

I could easily come up with a dozen other examples of people in my life who are flawed and entrapped and won’t be helped or can’t be helped by some bizarre, unique-seeming circumstance. Readers, I’d bet there is a menagerie of people like that in your life: People who had little tell-tale tics as little kids that grew into grotesque personality burdens that seem to have devoured them.

They can’t be helped, it seems. It’s like that, everywhere. At the workplace, there are people who have habits or addictions or areas of blindness that keep them from doing a good job. On the streets, there are people who have fallen. You want to pick them up and save them, but you can’t. Yet, until we can help each other we are surely doomed to endless cycles of destruction.

Huge tree takes a fortunate fall into Friendship Park

	This is obviously not a picture of the fallen tree, but does show where the central top section of the tree feel, between the sides of the two gazebos numbered 4 and 5.

A tall, fat, dead tree on adjoining property fell into Friendship Park at the height of the windiness during yesterday's storm. A prudent decision kept anyone from being hurt and dumb luck kept the level of property damage relatively low.

The tree fell at the back of the park, near the southeast corner where the fountain is that honors deceased homeless citizens. It uprooted itself and landed in the wedge of space between the back of gazebos numbered 4 and 5.

According to Garren Bratcher, co-director of Friendship Park, the park will be open today and it is hoped will be open tomorrow. If the park needs to close tomorrow, many park services will be offered at nearby Delany Center. Clean-up in the park, which will entail cutting up the tree to remove it in sections, will proceed through the weekend.

I was told that perhaps fifteen minutes before the tree fell, branches fell and hit the roof of the nearest gazebos. Brackett determined at that point to evacuate the corner of the park where the tree ultimately did fall. His decision was causal for some grousing from park denizens, but proved to be key. No one was hurt, though the area were the tree fell is typically crowded during the park's open hours. A bank of a dozen lockers on the east side of Gazebo 4 is in such a position that had anyone been in a locker there the person could have been badly hurt or pinned down.

This morning, the huge fallen tree, weighing tons, was quite a spectacle. Branches large and small littered the southeast corner of the property and the grassy area in the center of the ring of gazebos. Mike Tipper, a Loaves & Fishes employee, who is very probably Homeless World Sac's strongest man, was beginning a task of picking up loose branches and twigs.

Garren Bratcher was viewing the scene from the neighboring property. The metal property-division fence was curled down by the treetrunk's girth. Several metal and thick-wood benches were smashed or damaged. The tree's upper reaches put waves of damage in the rooves of gazebos its trunk landed between.

It was a fortunate fall.

Update 1pm: Already, the fallen tree has been sawed up and hauled away and its littler pieces chipped. Operations are back to normal in FP, except that the area where the tree fell is still cordoned off, as is an other area of the park where a dead oak tree stands that may be cut down soon.

Vision in Friendship Park: The gate of heaven is everywhere

In Sacramento, near to where North B Street almost bumps into 12th – north of downtown, at a park at the Loaves & Fishes facility called Friendship – I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to one another even though a great many pairs of us don't know each other. It was like waking from a dream of separateness, of spurious self-isolation in the ordinary world. The whole illusion of a separate existence is a dream. Not that I question the reality of my life, but the conception of “individual” that we have in our isolated lives too easily manifests as a complete illusion: the illusion that by accumulating our own constellations of things and friends, colleagues and interests, we become a “universe unto ourself” that most respects and acknowledges others of our supposed ilk.

In truth, we are each a menagerie, more varied and jungle-cat wild than we pretend to be. And we are interconnected so thoroughly that, for each of us, every micro-component of us – every hair, particle, cell or thought – is a blend, an always-changing fandangled alloy, that has been whipped into a hundred-and-eight others. I couldn't pull myself out of everyone else here in Friendship Park any more than I could pull a drop of dye out of the ocean that was plopped into it a decade previous.

Certainly, individuals and their constructed worldviews are fully real, but that reality is not of an order outside everyday existence in a contingent world, nor does it entitle a Christian to despise the secular, or either to despise homeless people. Though some of us are “out of the world,” in a sense, we are in the same world as everybody else: the world of nuclear waste, the world of global warming, the world of technology, race hatreds, big business, revolution, and all the rest.

Are people who have jobs and houses and lives that are more accepted and "ordinary" somehow more civilized? In any sense are they, or are we, different or exclusive, or somehow better? The whole idea is preposterous.

This sense of liberation from an illusory difference was such a relief and such a joy to me that I almost laughed out loud. And I suppose my happiness could have taken form in the words: “Thank God, thank God that I am like other people, that I am only a person among others.” To think that for twenty or thirty years I had taken seriously the pure illusion that is implicit in so much of suburbian or Christian thinking: that I have left other men behind, in a cloud of dust. That my shit doesn't smell.

It is a glorious destiny to be a member of the human race, though it is a race dedicated to many absurdities and one which makes many terrible mistakes: yet, with all that, God Himself gloried in becoming a member of the human race. A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic lotto.

I have the immense joy of being homo sapien, a member of a species in which God Himself became incarnate. As if the sorrows and stupidities of the human condition could overwhelm me, now that I realize what we all are. And if only everybody could realize this! But it cannot be explained. There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.

This changes nothing in the sense and value of being an individual sometimes seeking solitude, for it is in fact the function of solitude and separateness to make one realize such things with a clarity that would be impossible to anyone completely immersed in the other cares, the other illusions, and all the automatisms of a tightly collective existence. My solitude, however, is not my own, for I see now how much it belongs to them—and that I have a responsibility for it in their regard, not just in my own. It is because I am one with them that I owe it to them to be alone, and when I am alone, they are not “they” but my own self. There are no strangers!

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed …I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift.

A little point of nothingness and of absolute poverty is the pure glory of God in us. It is, so to speak, His name written in us, as our poverty, as our indigence, as our dependence, as our sonship. It is like a pure diamond, blazing with the invisible light of heaven. It is in everybody, and if we could see it we would see these billions of points of light coming together in the face and blaze of a sun that would make all the darkness and cruelty of life vanish completely…. I have no program for this seeing. It is only given. But the gate of heaven is everywhere.

Tip of the hat to Mr. Merton.

Starbucks was here! Starbucks was here!

Starbucks was at Loaves and Fishes this rainy, windy, dark cold morning. And by Starbucks I mean the delicious coffee, of course. And I mean people with the company, representing the company's cafés in our metropolitan region.

It is always nice and exciting when Starbucks is here.

As we waited in the cul-de-sac for the gate into Friendship Park to open, we watched as Starbucks employees, dressed in black, brought out their heavy filled dark-green urns and placed them on the stand where, on "normal" days, Pinkie would place a beige urn of L&F's usual daily brew.

Now, L&F's usual is not bad. It's hot and dark and liquid. But for whatever reason, the usual brew does not pack a wallop and lacks that robust deliciousness quality I so favor. It just doesn't jump into your brain and scream "HELLO IT'S MORNING!" like that Bucky Java.

Mmmmmm, Bucky Java.

And today ― Today! Wonderful today! ― was especially special! Bucky's star employees gave us all dandy insolated mugs to keep our fresh and tasty coffee hot in.

Some days are special for reasons that might not wow someone not homeless. Today was one such day.

"When You Reach Me" wins 2010 Newberry medal

Because it includes a homeless character [and because this reporter reviews novels that include homeless characters: Thus, there have been three entries in the Homeless Lit series in my other blog, Homeless Tom.] it is of interest that a new children's book by Rebecca Stead won the 2010 Newberry Medal, announced yesterday.

A short article in GallyCat reads thus:

When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead won the 2010 Newbery Medal yesterday. The book follows the adventures of a twelve-year-old girl who "encounters shifting friendships, a sudden punch, a strange homeless man and mysterious notes that hint at knowledge of the future."

At the publisher's website, you can view the first 22 pages of the 208-page book.  It reads like a children's book ― which for me means it is simple reading that has more that a few silly qualities.

Way back in 1979 [the timeframe of When You Reach Me, curiously enough], I worked with a woman, Dana Brookins, who wrote children's books on the side and won the Edgar Alan Poe award for her second book, Alone in Wolf Hollow. ["When You Reach Me" is Rebecca Stead's second effort, also, and, like Dana's winner, a children's mystery.] When Dana won her prize, I thought, Wow, how coooool.  And what an easy way to make money! 

Dana also told us of her other writing area:  Writing for confession magazines.  She wrote anonymous or ghost-written ― or how ever that works ― articles for a half-dozen confession magazines, using outrageous article theme with titles like this one, "I'm a Nun! I can't be pregnant!"  It turned out that Dana was practically the Meryl Streep of the confessional-writing field!  One day, she was quoted on the front page of the Wall Street Journal in a quirky article they had about the confession-magazine business. Geez, I thought.  Making money writing is a snap!  And there's glory to be had! If knuckleheaded Dana can make a few bucks doing work like that *I* ought to be able to reep millions!  Woo-hoo!

And, surely, I was right, then, but never pursued the writing biz agressively, and am, thus, pennyless.  But, no more!  Riches, ho!  I've requested "When You Reach Me" from the Sac Public Library, will read it, review it, and then write a simple book like it and win next year's Newberry.

UPDATE:  Hmmmm.  When You Reach Me has gotting some very very interesting reviews.  I am now highly tantilized!

Publishers Weekly tells us the book has a complicated plot that "converges to form a thought-provoking whole."  Readers are likely to spend "hours pondering the provocative questions [the book] raises," the review tells us.  Here, a blockquote from the review, conveying the idea that the book is remarkable:

Have you not heard of When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead? Well now you have. Go read it. Have you already read When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead? Excellent. Glad to hear it. Now go read it again. Have you already read and reread When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead? That is fine and dandy news. Have a seat. You and I can now talk about it, and we’ll wait for the rest of the world to catch up. Which they will. Because it is one of the best children’s books I have ever read and books of this sort do not drop out of the sky every day. They don’t even drop out of the sky every year.

Sacramento among ten cities that win Cities of Service grant

The New York Times [here] and Sacramento Business Journal [here] tell us in reports over the extended weekend that Sacramento won a Cities of Service grant from the Rockefeller Foundation that will fund a "chief service officer" who will report directly to the mayor.

SBJ tells us, "In its application, Sacramento listed education, public safety, homelessness and the environment as its high-priority issues that it will target with increased volunteerism."

A report on the grants at the Cities of Service website tells us the grant to Sac is in the total amount of $200,000, to be paid over a period of two years. Our city's Chief Service Officer must be hired before June 1, and will be tasked with forming "a citywide planning process that culminates in the creation of a comprehensive service plan. ... By December 1, 2010, [he will] have submitted a progress report and put into operation a website or other appropriate technological tool to facilitate residents' participation in service."

While SacHo is keen on volunteers when expertise is needed, we believe that use of volunteers in place of employees, which often happens, undermines society. Much of the work done by volunteers in Homeless World could and should be done by homeless people. It is both weird and ironic when, as often happens, volunteers "serve" the homeless by denying them jobs ― or opportunities to pay back worthy providers of aid.

Does it seem strange to any of you, as it does me, that there are volunteers at homeless-help facilities, yet none playing professional basketball or playing the musclebound lead in violent movies? Why is that!?  How much expertise is needed to bounce a ball or grunt something unintelligible!?  And, hey, I'm 6'5":  I could probably play point guard for the Cavaliers for several seasons before getting dumped.

Many many homeless people, themselves, have the time and the desire to do the necessary tasks to aid the homeless community. SacHo intends to "make a play" for some sort of "Homeless for the Homeless" volunteering effort via the forthcoming chief service office. Will see how high that ball bounces before work-averse Safe Ground takes over and spoils everything.

The Loaves & Fishes - Hammer & Sickle Connection

Below is content of a flier I will be handing out, Friday the 15th at about 6:30am, in the cul-de-sac where homeless people gather before going into Friendship Park [minus the L&F logo].

The LOAVES & FISHES

HAMMER & SICKLE

CONNECTION

Written by Tom Armstrong of sacramentohomeless.blogspot.com

In an article, "New Conditions Call for New Tactics," written by perhaps America's best-known communist, Nelson Peery, in the most-current edition [Nov&Dec09] of Rally Comrades!, a publication of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America [which is a renaming of what was once the Communist League], it says this:

It is now becoming clear to the advanced workers that in order to free themselves from the political clutches of their enemy they will have to stop "fighting the right" and throw their blow at the middle, the Democratic Party. It should be clear to all, that it is this middle, the Democratic Party, that ties the workers to their enemy and makes them politically impotent. More importantly, the destruction of the political and ideological middle is indispensable to polarization and transformation. Without this destruction, they remained tied by a thousand threads to the "right" and are incapable of fighting them.

On January 20, 2010, [the first anniversary of the Obama administration] members and supporters of the Sacramento Loaves & Fishes-nurtured organizations, SHOC [which stand for "Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee," an integral part of SHA, the Sacramento Housing Alliance], Safe Ground and Homeless Leadership Project [which is part of SHOC], will be on hand at a mass rally in San Francisco to help deliver that hard left cross to the gut of the Democratic Party in support of their communist ideation: A revolution in America to overthrow capitalism, stoppage of technological progress, and guaranteed jobs for all.

The end justifies any means.

One thing that communism has going for it is its complete failure in every instance where it has been tried. It ALWAYS, ALWAYS fails. There are many reasons for its failure which brings on the terrible specter of totalitarianism and an utterly immoral police state. Some are these:

• By taking from those who can work and giving to those wholly according to need, ‘work’ is dis-incentivized. Most people’s desire to work comes from the fact that they’re paid, not because they are in love with their government’s philosophy.

• With capitalism outlawed, there are no markets for goods. With the government determining prices, some goods become over-abundant while others are in short supply. Without ready supply of its needs, industries have a hard time being able to continue to function. The economy struggles and is likely to completely collapse, as happened in the Soviet Union and in Eastern Europe.

• When functioning of government begins to fail, the proscribed "dictatorship of the people" wrests tight control in a spiral that ever-more denies people basic freedoms. Religions are typically outlawed as is any thinking that questions the decisions of the ruling elite. In the 20th Century, over 100 million people were summarily killed within communist countries.

• Morality goes out the door. Even the rag-tag communists of today, in the nonprofits that are supposed to be working to benefit homeless people in Sacramento, push communist ideology without identifying what they are doing. Cathleen "Cat" Williams [of SHOC & SHA], an attorney who does legal research for the Mark Merin organization, is a principal writer for People's Tribune, another of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America's publications. Paula Lomazzi of SHOC is also a contributor [though, likely, foolishly naive about what she's doing].

Check it out on the Internet!

At the homepage of WRAP [the Western Regional Advocacy Project] you will see "Homeless Leadership Project" and "SHOC/Safe Ground Sacramento" listed as Advocacy Endorsers of the Jan. 20 rally that WRAP is organizing. Using google, or another search engine, you can find Cathleen Williams articles in People’s Tribune; or, the publication Rally Comrades! You can read about the League of Revolutionaries for a New America or Nelson Peery in wikipedia

SacHo snips for January 11, 2010

Here, a brief look at several very recent news stories, that caught my attention, that are important for the futures of those of us in Homeless World Sacramento.

Time magazine focuses on California's budgetary cesspoll and Governor Swartzennegger's plan to address the latest revenue-expense gap in an article titled "California Deficit: Arnold Has to Make 'Sophie's Choice'". Per expectations, for homeless people bad becomes horrible becomes worse.  The safety net for the most vulnerable of the vulnerable ― homeless children! ― is to be further cut if the Governator has his way.

Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, a Los Angeles Democrat, said she is "highly troubled" by Schwarzenegger's proposals for further cuts to a social welfare system under severe strain. Unemployment in many urban neighborhoods tops 20%, and the number of homeless women and children is growing. Additional cuts to the foster care system and increased caseloads for social welfare workers will put children's lives at risk, according to Bass. "Last year's budget left the safety net on life support," she said. "Now the governor is talking about disconnecting the respirator."

An article in a U.S. Airforce publication, Installations, Environment & Logistics, "Homeless find hope at closed California bases," tells us about the communities for helping homeless people at the former McClellan Air Force Base and the rehab program at the former military barracks at what was Mather Air Force Bace. A couple introductory snips follow [Read the article for history and some details.]:

...at the former McClellan AFB, a non-profit called Cottage Housing Inc. operates Serna Village. The complex of 83 apartments houses 100 recently homeless parents and more than 200 of their children. The program opened in 2002 to provide transitional housing and life skills training.

Serna participants work with personal development coaches to become self-sufficient. They set personal goals such as finishing requirements for a high school diploma or getting a first job. Various programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous meetings are offered regularly, as are numerous classes including acupuncture, yoga, nutritious cooking, parenting and writing. Children can take part in various clubs and a mentoring program.

***

[A] homeless rehabilitation program called Mather Community Campus has been operating since 1995 in former military barracks at what was Mather AFB until the base closed in 1993. The program offers temporary housing for homeless single adults and families "who believe employment is an essential part of their new life."

An article in the Bee, yesterday, "Gift cards can be a headache for recipients" tells us that gift cards [that is, those debit cards that merchandisers and fast-food stores sell to be given as gifts (which many kind Sac'to homed citizens gave out to homeless people) ] with a balance under $10 can be redeemed for cash in California. [I didn't know that!] BUT, it can be a hassle. Following, a snip [but read the whole article and comments for a full understanding of the hassles]:

By law in California, any gift card with a balance below $10 can be redeemed for cash. (The only exception is for perishable food, but not for restaurant meals.)

Two years after the law was passed, apparently not every store manager got the memo, says Russ Heimerich, spokesman for the state Department of Consumer Affairs.

"Staff turnover at some retail outlets is so high … one store manager who may know about the law is replaced by one who doesn't," he said. "That's what we've found."

Heimerich advises consumers who are stymied in efforts to cash out a $10-or-less gift card to "go up the chain of command" by contacting the company's regional or corporate office for assistance.

And, finally, an article in the New York Times online, "Citing Hazard, New York Says Hold the Salt." The piece tells us that in New York, the mayor there is wanting to get food processors and restaurants to cut back on the amount of sodium. Here, a snip:

The plan, for which the city claims support from health agencies in other cities and states, sets a goal of reducing the amount of salt in packaged and restaurant food by 25 percent over the next five years.

Public health experts say that would reduce the incidence of high blood pressure and should help prevent some of the strokes and heart attacks associated with that condition. The plan is voluntary for food companies and involves no legislation. It allows companies to cut salt gradually over five years so the change is not so noticeable to consumers.

While many of my friends in Homeless World would like more salt on their food, others of us would benefit from and like much less. I know that cornbread served at Loaves & Fishes can be very very highly salted. Less salt in recipes and the availability of tiny salt packets might satisfy everyone, albeit at some not-negligible expense to L&F.

Is life a roller-coaster ride?

I don't know what life is, but I do hope that quickly after death we will each find out.

An answer you can find in old movies [for example, "Heaven Can Wait" or "The Horn Blows at Midnight"] is that after life you are on a cloud, in a long line, waiting for Angel Gabriel to let you in the gate – or not.

Another possiblity is that you are deleted. There is less than nothing after life; you are as much not around as the memory you don't have of yourself before you were born.

It can be that you pass through the Bardo, a spooky old place, dream-like and filled with potential terrors, on your way to a next birth, as a human or some other sentient being on this or some other planet or somewhere or somehow in some other universe that you could never imagine. And it can be, that your reborn self comes tagged with lessons that you need to learn from all your prior lives, bringing you pains and pleasures that you deserve.

Many of us Buddhists pull out text from some sutra and say that Buddha told us not to speculate on those things be cannot know. And what might happen to us after death is just the kind of time-wasting speculation he was talking about. But Buddha also told us to use our own judgment of what we should think or do, and I think that considering the possibilities of what death might mean is a good use of a modest chunk of our life's time.

My hope is that we find out that a life is just a crazy old roller coaster ride.

At the end of life, you find yourself in a roller-coaster car, passing out of a dark tunnel. The track takes you up and down a few modest bumps, splashing through water, then your car is brought to a halt. You then remember before you were born when you embarked on the ride. And unless you had a remarkable life, in an instant you see how silly you were in life, misjudging what was important and what was unimportant.

Just as with roller coasters in amusement parks throughout the world, there is no lesson to be learned from a ride, and you disembark at the same place where you got on. Life, it turns out, is just a stunning experience, playing with that magical substance Ignorance. We are all of us, really, this single great Cosmic Self, frozen with absolute knowledge of everything and thus incapable of laughter, love, terror or hope. It is only through Ignorance that Cosmic Self can have adventures and experience the myriad feelings that Ignorance makes possible.

While life isn't a land of lessons, we do learn things about it: It turns out that chasing after money and status is not only life's biggest time waster, it is as destructive as living a life of crime. There is nothing that one can achieve by being well off financially and being respected by others. Indeed, by taking more than your share of earth's bounty and putting yourself above others, you add to the collective pool of misery. It is only from a deeply-felt compassion for others, and having modest possessions, that a life is profoundly satisfying.

But life is not a lesson. And whether we live as a seriel killer or an ego-free saint, there are no rewards nor punishments to receive or endure after life's end. There is only this: Certain knowledge about everything, and the opportunity to ride again.

Funny thing -- or, I should say, seriously, that it is not so funny a thing -- the Roller-coaster Theory does not pick up much religious support. I think the reason for this is that religions thrive when obedience to the religion is rewarded with prizes and benefits after death. The Twin Towers suicide terrorists each had twenty submissive virgins waiting for them after their murderous crashes. Good Christians have an eternity in Heaven. Well-behaved Hindus and Buddhists have karmic rewards, which might include a next life graced with prosperity, health, and attractive physical features. And, of course, for Buddhists there is Paranirvana, an absolute end to all suffering.

The Roller-coaster Theory comes then with marketting problems. The afterlife of the major religions promise a Parential [usually, Fatherly] Approval, and with it, happiness and security. So, there is a reason for us to be Good; our life has meaning. Be Good to make the Great Cosmic Dad proud.

In the Roller-coaster Theory, you are not still a child -- one of God's children -- you are a grown-up. And while dangers and terrors and random acts of violence are for the most part outside what you can control or influence, there is no one more in charge than you are. Your life can go wonderfully or horribly, despite your will, effort and talents; there is no guardian angel to guide or protect you. And so it is hard to feel that there is ultimately any meaning to being alive.

Why be good if there is no eventual reward? At the first level of understanding, it is because you can only really be good if there is no reward. At the second level of understanding – which trumps the first, obliterating it – we should be good for its own sake: Good for Goodness' sake. That's all. There's nothing else.

But what is Good? And what is Goodness' sake? There is no one outside yourself to tell you. As our heart/mind matures, the ideal of good becomes less treacly and rule-bound. We do the right thing outside the call of reasons for what feels like [and is] a growing abundance of wisdom and compassion.

[This blogpost was previously posted to Homeless Tom.]