Move of Greyhound station in vicinity of Union Gospel Mission going forward

The Sacramento City Planning Commission has approved plans for the construction of a temporary Greyhound bus station on Richards Blvd, in close proximity to Union Gospel Mission and a VOA family shelter on Bannon Street, an article in the Sacramento Press informs us. Work to build the facility is expected to begin in four months.

The bus station is currently downtown at 715 L St., at a site city officials hope to upgrade with a more-upscale business. The temporary station on Richards will be in existence for from eight to fifteen years, until construction of the new regional transit facility at the Railyard Development is well underway, which will include a new and permanent Sacramento bus terminal.

A huge concern, addressed at length in the Sacramento Press article, is the matter of "transients" [i.e., homeless people] being drawn to the bus station to panhandle or hang around or otherwise cause the bus station to seem seedy and unsavory. Quoting the article, titled "Greyhound terminal moves forward," by Suzanne Hurt:

The city plans to install attractive wrought iron fencing around the entire site, and additional fencing on nearby parcels, after nearby business owners represented by the River District Property and Business Improvement District asked for fencing, landscaping and maintenance that would discourage transient loitering.

"Our area is swarming with homeless and transient individuals that negatively impact our businesses," River District PBID Executive Director Patty Kleinknecht said during the public hearing. She noted a McDonald's restaurant and a nearby gas station have problems with aggressive panhandlers and loitering.

"People don't feel comfortable in that environment. We all know we tend to avoid those business environments and areas where we don't feel comfortable," she added later. "In this economy, businesses need all the customers they can get."

…

The new bus station will include a ticket checkpoint so that anyone can't just come and go throughout the station, a problem at the current station, [city senior planner Rachel] Hazelwood said. "We want to break the cycle of the [homeless] problem."

Comments at the Sacramento Press website regarding the matter were unanimously negative for several reasons. One was that the move didn't fix "the transient problem" that now exists on L Street.

Another issue is that the existing "Streamline Moderne terminal" on L Street is an architectual wonder, adorned with "Gladding McBean Terra Cotta," that shouldn't be raised for construction of just another shiny, boring skyscraper.

A third issue is that the temporary terminal on Richard will cost a great deal of money - especially so for a building that will be useful for only eight to fifteen years.

A fourth issue was what commentor Naga called "the hating on the homeless, poor and carless rather than solving social issues." Naga said the whole matter was a "lose/lose/lose situation" that was "World Class Shitty!!!"  It is "insanity, waste and toxic elitism all in one!!," Naga wrote.

Concern for those who are homeless and mentally ill

I am increasingly concerned, and am hearing that others' concerns are increasing, about a lack of help for mentally ill people in Homeless World Sacramento.

There is a feeling that all the public agencies and nonprofits are shirking responsibility to help those who suffer most and are most in need of help.

The state and county are in trouble and it is known that services they provide or fund to help poor or mentally-ill people have been among the first to be severely cut or ended in response to the budget crisis. Advocates for the mentally ill and families that include a mentally ill member are not politically powerful.

Schizophrenic people, and others enduring other types of mental illness, can seem to be placid, and even serene, which masks their suffering.

I have heard that there is a man who now frequents Friendship Park who has been institutionalized for causing fires and is now acting oddly and is likely off his medication. He needs help, but there is none forthcoming. A young mentally ill woman who has been frequently taken advantage of comes to the the Loaves & Fishes facility and cannot get aid.

A man named Brian who I am seeing sitting on the curbside, baking in the sun, is looking particularly emaciated these days. I would bet he needs attention.

My bunkmate at the mission has been talking at night in the disturbing way he often does, disrupting men trying to sleep. While the night manager of the mission is keenly compassionate for this man, and other men who are mentally unwell and come to stay at the mission, and aids them spiritually, with food, clothing and being tolerant of many of their eccentricities, my bunkie needs another kind of help which seems to be unavailable anywhere in Homeless World these days.

One thing I would want is for some of the Friendship Park Greenhats [i.e., employees] to be educated regarding odd behavior of Park denizens, and in basic health aid. It is my understanding that no Greenhat has much social-work education nor knowledge of the interior-world of addicts or mentally-ill people.

Many Greenhats that are employed by Loaves & Fishes are chosen from amongst Jesuit Volunteers who have served a year in the Park. It is well known that gaining employment at Loaves & Fishes most easily comes after first volunteering at the facility for a long period of time. That avenue of getting hired shouldn't supercede the need to acquire "talent" that is needed to better help vulnerable or greatly-needful homeless people.

My suggestion to Jim Peth and Garren Bracket, co-directors of Friendship Park, and Libby Fernandez, L&F CEO: Train some of the current Greenhats in how to understand the umwelt of addicts and mentally ill people and deal with persons who are out-of-control or otherwise appear to be disturbed. Train them, too, in how to know if someone is a 5150 candidate.

Such training needn't be formal nor expensive. There are Internet sites and books that can be identified as valuable educational texts.

Some suggestions:

• "The mentally ill on the street": a blogpost in Sacramento Homeless blog.
• "The Lost Virtues of the Asylum," an essay by Oliver Sacks in the New York Review of Books.
• "The first-person dimension of homeless Sacramentans suffering from Schizophrenia": a blogpost in Sacramento Homeless blog. [See, too, the links at the end of the essay.]
• Schizophrenia and the Fate of the Self, a book by the brothers Lysaker. [Available through the public library's LINK system.]
• In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts, a book by Gabor Mate on addiction. [Available through the public library's LINK system.]

Cowboy Bill remembered

As is well known in the homeless community, Cowboy Bill ― Thomas William Deollos ― was struck by a car and later died from his injuries on May 22.

In a long, wonderfully-written post, titled "In loving memory of Cowboy Bill" at a non-public webspace, his brother details what Bill was like, how big his heart was, and recounts details in the circumstances that led to Bill suffering severe head trauma and other injuries.

It then tells of the ordeal to try to help Bill recover and how it was that Bill slipped away into death.

It is a very courageous piece of writing and a touching text to read.

I don't want to infringe upon the family's privacy, but I am hopeful the document will be circulated such that all those who knew, admired or loved Bill will have an opportunity to read what his brother wrote and reflect on Bill's excellent character.

It is my understanding that a memorial service will be held in Friendship Park next month.

UPDATE:  The memorial service in Friendship Park will be held on Wednesday, June 16 at 1pm.

Side-by-Side retreat in Citrus Heights

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Tuesday, I went to a retreat, sponsored by Side-by-Side, which took place at a Catholic compound in Citrus Heights called Christ the King Passionist Retreat Center.  The event lasted about five hours, mid-day, and served as an opportunity for the thirteen of us attending to connect with nature and enjoy a few uplifting hours in each-others' company.

Side-by-Side is self-described as a listening ministry which has an office and small meeting room in Loaves & Fishes' Friendship Park.  Reverend Linda Kelly-Baker of First United Methodist Church in Sacramento is the founder of the ministry and Program Director.

Homeless World Sacramento is to an overwhelming extent Christian, mostly of a fundamentalist bent and unbashful about it.  This was one of the things that was a surprise for me when I first became homeless.  Between work and friends I've had in my many many years on this planet, up-close-and-personal Christianity has been very much absent, except for a few rare work colleagues whose religious talk I ignored (believing work was no place for such).  I consider myself to be a Skyhooks Western Buddhist [By Skyhooks I mean I'm not reductionist; I believe there is some sort of force pulling evolution, rather than it just being pushed upward from the dirt.]  Also, of its many sects, I favor Zen, being a bit put off by the Tibetans' shamanist element. 

Even as I have been staying at the Union Gospel Mission for a long time, I haven't really had sustained exposure to Christians' way of thinking.  The retreat gave me some of that experience.

My friend, Lex, suggested that I come with him to the retreat, after telling me it wouldn't be exclusively Christian.  Mark would be there, I was told.  Mark is one of Side-by-Side's listeners/counsellors and is Buddhist, having for a period of years been a monk.

Reverend Linda; her friend from her Methodist Church, Ron; Mark; and a woman named Susan, I think it was, were leaders for the retreat. After introductions and visiting for a short while in a circle of chairs, our first activity for the thirteen of us was for us each, on our own, to go out into the vivid-green landscape, mindfully take in the beauty of it all, and report back in thirty-minutes' time. [I think the actual instructions were more complicated than that, but that is what my simplifying brain made of it.] Having been told there was a laberynth onsite, and given a general direction where it could be found, I headed for that.

The laberynth wasn't the pathway bordered by dense bushes that I hoped for and feared, but something much smaller: a pathway bordered by bricks that took me five or ten minutes to walk. Edward from the group came by to see the laberynth while I walked back and forth and around in circles. I was next lured to walk along the southern border of the property by the sound of my favorite birds, scrub jays that were flying around at high speeds, screeching noisily.

Back at our meeting place, on the second floor of one of the primary buildings at the compound, we each talked about our nature walk and next engaged in creating mosaics.  A large variety of pictures from magazines were laid out on a couple of tables.  By choosing among the pictures we each crafted a miniature work of art on a white card, approximate dimensions of 5" x 8", using scissors and glue.  My simplifying mind glommed on to the instruction that there was nothing we could do wrong and proceeded, happily, with that as my focus.

My finished work was the least impressive of the bunch, but knowing my limited artistic skills, I was fully happy with what I ended up with: bugs, an eagle, grapefruit, an out-of-focus man and a candlestick that somehow conveyed the theme, a quote taken from a newspaper, that "Feeling peace is the ability to remain coherent under stress," a notion that, thinking about it now, I don't really agree with.

Others showed more artistry:  The two Rons' works were wonderful.  FUMC Ron somehow found pictured items that were all round, or garland-like and speckled or gritty that serviced as representations of community and love.  The other Ron used varieties of pictures of people that were well placed on his card/canvas and particularly interesting.  Lex focused on a theme of beaches, capturing ones (or representations of ones) from around the world that he had visited in his life's travels.  Joni's was nice: splayed pics of people and things that related to her life.  Rev. Linda's was the most abstract: a huge vase with arms sticking out of it.  Edward's was more literal, depicting aspects of his relationship with God.

Mark's artwork featured an observatory and above it a time-lapsed view of the sky with the stars as streaks.  Independent of me, but like me, he intentionally left some of the canvas [i.e., the white card] showing through. That is oh so Buddhist!  Rah!

We each held up and talked about our masterpiece. For many of the eleven Christians, this occasioned an opportunity for them to express themselves in terms of having surrendered to God and the absolute need for Jesus. I think that, among the Christians, there generated a sense that they were exclusively among their own. Indeed, I learned from a handout that the retreat was, really, directly, meant as a Christian event.

Lunch we had downstairs was wonderful: a salad bar was set up and clam chowder was available.  Scott would later tell me he thought the chowder was particularly splendid, as indeed it was.  I fully enjoyed my salad.  It's rare to get vegetables and a good quantity of roughage when you're stuck in Homeless World.

After lunch, a second opportunity to go outside for a spell and regale in landscape greenery and visit wild turkeys and hoppy squirrels. And, then, back in our circle of chairs, a round-up as we talked about what the retreat meant to us.

For my Christian friends it was a chance to delight in the flora and fauna of God's creation. After a lot of that sentiment, I was happy to hear Mark express appreciation of what had emerged out of the "primordial ooze." Mark is the furthest thing from being combative, like I proudly am; it was nice, though, to hear a little gentle pushback against the majority Creationist feeling.

[You know, I am sorry, but the proof of evolution is absolute and undeniable. "Facts are God's arguments; we should be careful never to misunderstand or pervert them," theologian Tryon Edwards wrote. I don't know that Edwards believed in evolution when he lived, in the 19th Century. I doubt he did. But now Evolution is as certain as one plus one equalling two. Get used to it, you crazy Christians. You, like me, are all spin-offs of baboon/chimpanzee-like creatures. Believe it! Edwards also wrote, "Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past." The story of Adam and Eve is a parable, at best! Knowing that, believing that, can be your best apology, you knuckleheaded Christians!]¹

When I spoke during the wrap-up session, I remarked on Nature Enlightenment [though I should have said "Nature Mysticism"]. Over hundreds of thousands of years, we have evolved alongside nature [seeing it as that greenness outside of us]. But, indeed, WE are natural; truly, we are fully in it. In a sense, it is the background that delights us when it comes to the fore. It is the white canvas showing through, that can make us jump in appreciation.

Oop. I told Lex I would write a blogpost that was 90+% positivist. I failed to do that; my feisty self has shown through. Still, I think this post is 70+% positive (and 100% correct).
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Footnotes:
¹  In emotion-dead simple text it is hard to know whether someone is serious or kidding.  My 'rant' in this paragraph is kidding/teasing, but at the same time I do think that Christians' disrespect for earnest, truth-seeking Hard Science is a real and serious danger to life on this planet.  AND that there needs to be 'pushback' against the clear nuttiness that many, or even most, Christians express with regard to how physics and nature operates.

Loaves & Fishes' donation claim and the Truth-O-Meter

When I went to the Admin office of Loaves & Fishes to pick up a copy of the organization's Form 990 – the 'public disclosure' document that organizations of their type and size are required to file every year, and provide to the public – Libby Fernandez, the CEO, instructed me to "be respectful" and reminded me that I am a user of the organization's services. She told me this while I was standing next to Loaves' wall of rude and truth-twisting political cartoons.  I don't think that Libby saw the oddity of that.

Thinking about respect, and being a freedom-loving American, a journalist (of a sort, that sort being a blogger and Sac Press stringer), and an admirer of journalism at its very best, I thought I'd satisty Libby's instruction by aping the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning procedures of "Polifact" in the St. Petersburg Times. What is more respected that a Pulitzer Prize, eh?

"Polifact" uses a Truth-O-Meter to gauge the validity of claims made by public figures. You can see the possible meter positions they use at right. [They also use three other meter readings, which aren't at right, which are used for politicians' flip-flops.]

What we're going to be looking at, today, is a claim that Loaves and Fishes made on December 22 and which the Sacramento Bee reported on on Christmas Eve regarding a deficient haul of donations.

Here's the nub of what Loaves & Fishes reported in a blogpost at their website:

The number of December donors is the same this year as last but the dollar amount of the donations is down by 14%. The same number of people are giving but they are each able to give less money this year.

These facts/factoids emerge: (1) a claim that December donations were down 14% for the first ~21 days of December, as compared to the prior year and (2) that as many people were giving this year as last, but each was giving less - were used as spurs to motivate people to send L&F more money.

I am going to ignore factoid #2.  It is sloppy to say that EACH donor was ABLE to give less this year than last.  What was probably meant was all they could know which was, simply, there were as many donations this year, in December, than the prior December, but the average donation was smaller.

The core of the appeal is, I think, this sentence:

Donations in the "giving season" sustain us throughout the rest of the year. Please consider giving a special gift, no matter how large or small, to Loaves & Fishes to help preserve this essential safety net for individuals and families who have fallen into homelessness.

I read the appeal as stating that the organization is in real, albeit modest, threat of no longer being able to fulfill its function unless more funds come in.  But I do know that people in our society are acclimated to donation appeals that are little hysterical when we know they are really meaning things in a bland way.  A charity might scream and drop big tears when really all it wants is more money to fix the coffeemaker and buy new draperies. [I'll get back to all this later in this post. Meantime, read on, reader!]

In the Bee article, "Loaves & Fishes reports drop in holiday donations," reporter Cynthia Hubert reported matters from a L&F press conference on Dec. 23 without blinking or fact checking.  Here is most of what Huber reported:

Donations to Sacramento's largest service group for homeless people, Loaves & Fishes, are down 14 percent this holiday season, the group announced Wednesday.

Sister Libby Fernandez, executive director of the organization, said loyal donors continue to contribute to Loaves & Fishes, but are giving smaller amounts this year.

Holiday donations typically represent about 20 percent of the group's annual budget, Fernandez said.

"We rely on Thanksgiving and Christmas donations to get us through the year," she said at a news conference.

"We are so grateful to the people of Sacramento, and we know that everyone is hurting this year. But we are asking people to dig deep one more time. We're begging for a little more financial help."

The facts/factoids we can pull from the text are these, I think:

• Donations are down 14%, but it is now uncertain about the timeframe of the decline.  "Thanksgiving and Christmas donations" certainly seems to include a period before the beginning of December.
• Holiday donations (typically) represent 20% of Loaves & Fishes' annual budget.  But budget for what?  Anticipated donations, I would have to suppose.  But that is pretty weird:  The public is not responsible for meeting what the nonprofit hopes or anticipates it will receive.  If by budget, Fernandez means annual expenses, L&F can have met that with the two-million-plus dollars their 990s show they have long had sitting in cash and short-term investments.
• Loaves and Fishes is "begging" for people to dig deep and give more.  This is hype that should mean L&F is in a very real state of need.

So, now, readers, Wohoo, let's do some Truth-O-Metering!

"Facts are God's arguments; we should be careful never to misunderstand or pervert them." - Tryon Edwards. Loaves & Fishes claimed on December 22, 2009, and at their news conference the following day, that donations were down 14% either through that date in December or up to that point in the Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Years holiday season.  I believe that some calculation based on precise factors was made, but it is disappointing that whoever wrote the L&F blogpost or Libby did not squarely know what it/she was writing/talking about.  The calculation, whatever it was, should have been precisely known and described.  While accounting is an art, math is science.  To the question of whether Loaves & Fishes raw stat is true, the response is that it is confused.  Verdict:  Half True.

Torture numbers, and they'll confess to anything. On the question of whether the "14% Down" claim was properly representative of a dire situation at Loaves & Fishes, IT WAS NOT. Loaves & Fishes Form 990 for 2009 reveals that donations for the year were $3,820,111 - down less than 3% from 2008. L&F added more than a quarter million dollars to their fund balance in 2009, increasing it to $5,681,367, including $388,363 in Cash and $1,695,546 in Savings and temporary investments. While the city and county were broke and slashing services, and citizens were losing their job or on furlough,  Loaves & Fishes was growing bigger and spending less. I'm sorry, Chicken Little, but the sky WASN'T falling.  And, Chicken Little, you knew it wasn't.

“The window to the world can be covered by a newspaper.” -Stanislaw Lec. Cynthia Hubert, the Bee reporter, printed Loaves & Fishes' claims without asking that they be substantiated nor inquiring into the implication that the nonprofit was in real need of funds.  The Bee's obligation should be to its readers, not to Loaves & Fishes.  The article was a bald appeal for donations, and the Bee reporter and Bee editors should be there, on behalf of the public and on behalf of the reputation of the newspaper, to see to it that the content was genuine, meaningful and did not misdirect readers.  To the question Did the article convey the truth? The Truth-O-Meter reading is FALSE.

Vision of a Tuff Shed test Village

In Loaves & Fishes' May newsletter there's a missive, written in the second-person, that endeavors to show the desire for "SafeGround at its best," as a village of cabins.

Here, "SafeGround" is spelled as one word [which is the same way the recently launched nonprofit by that name is spelling the word/words.] Que lastima! the spelling of the term has been in constant flux! Perhaps, things are settling. The term, which has many usages, is used in the newsletter sequentially to mean (1) an illegal encampment in the woods by one the local rivers, (2) a stay at a church that is probably legal, deftly (and laudably) skirting the anti-camping ordinance and (3) the vision of "an actual safe ground" with "sleeping cabins" [read: Tuff Sheds] on property where city [or county, if it's in an unincorporated area?] officials allow a variance to the tough, meanspirited anti-camping ordinance, that, I believe, both the city and county have.

The vision of a Tuff Shed Village is given in a single sentence: "SafeGround is also committed to find an actual safe ground [meaning here a safe place to camp or sleep or be], where we can live together in simple inexpensive one- or two-bed sleeping cabins, self governed and self guarded."

All right. Fair enough. Like Loaves & Fishes and its allied charities, I want a Tuff Shed village to be attempted. And I think it must be tested. Next winter may seem to be a long, long way away, now, but it will come upon us fast, and with the economy being what it is in Recovery-laggard California, Homeless World Sacramento is going to need every means of keeping people warm and dry and safe that can be mustered.

I think that a village of about thirty people should be created soon, to see how well things go, with the hope that the village can be expanded to a larger size if things go very very well.  So, assuming a property can be found, a test village should be established, under the watchful eye of city/county authorities.

The idea of starting small and building up, to perhaps 100 people, creates problems that beginning with the full-blown village doesn't have. You have to decide upon what you need in ancillary equipment/features/appliances [washer/dryer; barbecue; club room; number of porta-potties; that kind of thing] for 30 people and then replace/supplement/expand those community features/things as the number of people and sheds ratchets up.

The idea of a small test-mode for the to-be Tuff Shed village can make everything seem especially expensive. Preparing Tuff Sheds and adding furnishings can be rather expensive, to the point of seeming to need a commitment beforehand that the village will be in existance for, say, a minimum of three-and-a-half years. Otherwise, the budgetting for all this comes to be a bit insane.  You can end up spending significant money and then have to throw it all down a rat hole.

So, you need the test-mode to be on the cheap and to be clearly successful. I'm thinking that the "starter village" should, at very first, have canvas-tent abodes, with perhaps a few EDARS (since EDARS, like common tents, can survive the failure of the village idea), and Tuff Sheds acting as a club room. I'm also thinking that there should be 'a test' of having a cordoned off area for guys to pee in the bushes [eco-friendly guy that I am]. [Read the SacHo post Yellow is the new Green in regards to the great good of proper peeing on plants.]  The mayor wants Sacramento to be the center of ecological revolution?  Hooray, that!  Let's go homeless people!  Let us do our part!

The test, you see, is to see how wild and wacky and violent things get and where savings can be found and where good can be done. Indeed, the test is to see if the village can be very peaceful and budget friendly. And if it's not peaceful and safe ― more like Mayberry than Baghdad ― then the idea of a sanctioned tent/shed town of some sort needs to be put to rest, til spring of 2011 at least, if not forevermore. We need to know soon if a tent town can be part of the network of accommodations ― shelters, transitional housing, housing at Mather, "A Movable Sleep" [aka, safe ground], camping in churches [also, aka, safe ground] ― to keep homeless people dry, warm, safe and alive during the winter of 2010-2011.

In its May newsletter missive, the second sentence reads: "You joined SafeGround yesterday by signing a pledge to not drink, do drugs or be violent in camp." The sentence is a misdirection. I believe that all charities have a moral obligation to never mislead, which is something I find Loaves & Fishes doing more often than not.  Donors and potential donors, especially, but everyone else, too, should be given the undebased truth such that, over the course of time, they can come to have a pretty accurate understanding of the charity's business [what it does; who it serves], and, ultimately, gain complete confidence in the charity. But, truly, overiding all the ancillary benefits, being truthful is its own reward. Or, should be. [I do worry that The Communist Thing has resulted in a sensiblity of "the end justifies the means" in the homeless-help industry far-far-whacky-Left.]

I have been given a copy of the pledge SafeGround-wannabees sign, as it is currently worded. It says, very much the same thing it did when I signed up last August.  The so-called "SAFE GROUND ENCAMPMENT PARTICIPANT AGREEMENT begins with a statement of what Safe Ground is about, what is expected and "guidelines," ¹ and then asks an initiated participant to sign a pledge to abide by the Rules, which is this, in toto:

RULES:
       1. No drugs within 50 feet of the encampment.
       2. No alcohol within 50 feet of the encampment.
       3. No violence or threats of violence.


I, __________________________, have read and agree to abade by the above listed rules of the Safe Ground encampment.  I understand that I may be asked to leave the encampment for violation of any of the above-stated rules and I agree to leave promptly, upon being directed to do so vy a membver of the core group (Council of Elders) of the Safe Ground Encampment.

While SafeGround people are pledged not to drink or do drugs in camp, they can get high just outside camp and then be thoroughly sloshed and biffledinked and weave their way back inside the camp.

It is my understanding that when many core SafeGrounders were spending their extended Winter vacation at Hawthorn Suites [from about the middle of November to the end of March] there were issues relating to the use of alcohol and narcotics - and partying, generally - on hotel property. Some SafeGrounders' thinking was on the order of hell, this is a ho-tel-room! Let us use it for the good times it was created by the hotel god for! Meantime, SafeGround's elder elder figured a demonstration of SafeGround monastic restraint was what was required. Things devolved from there to a Spy-vs-Spy social atmosphere, with tattling, and threat of tattling.

So, while I like the idea of "SafeGround at its best," it may be we haven't seen it yet or it is tantalizingly out-of-reach, Kirstin Paisley's essay about SafeGrounders being a phalanx of Jesuses, notwithstanding. Would a Tuff Shed village be like the Merin encampment on C Street, with drug suppliers circling the area? Possibly. SOMEBODY needs to be 'real world,' talk "real talk," and face the very real possible problems that a sanctioned Tent City or homeless village, or whatever, might present.

The test should not be artificial, a short span of time when SafeGrounders 'play nice' while internally building up resentments.  It should be a community that really, actually-factually "grows up," advances to maturity and respect for neighbors, and takes maturity and respect to heart enough so that the community functions in that way.  That's a high bar, but nothing less should be attempted.  It should not be a community of people under the thumb of an autocratic "Council of Elders."  As for drinking or getting high or matters re sex in the compressed space of a camp, the problems should get resolved by maturity and acquiesence to a norm of serious behavior that doesn't want to discomfort others.  People shouldn't be disallowed to go into their baffoon subpersonality, they just need to know where the off-switch is.  And people shouldn't be subjected to some that have a controlling-others, running-the-show mode, enabling their inner Napoleon.

Remember, all:  At its inception, Safe Ground was incubated in SHOC meetings where communist principles were lauded and copies of People's Tribune were handed out.  You are a victim! Arise! Revolt! Revolution!

So, the new community will have a Council of Elders who can roust you, in an extralegal way, instead of the police!?  How is this unlike the Councils in Communist countries that suddenly gained power and had no oversight as they did what they pleased?  [Think of when Uri Zhivago returned home from the Eastern Front to find a Council running his house and the community of people that had come to live in it, in the book/movie Dr. Zhivago.  Or, the Councils in China that ran communities in th 80s and dictatorially maintained the one-child-per-family rule.]  At least the police are subject to legal oversight.

In America we are always supposed to be under the rule of law with due process.  Homeless people many, if not most, of whom have next to nothing are especially vulnerable and should not be subjected to whimsical rule by extra-legal autocrats.  This ain't the Soviet Union, and Homeless World Sacramento should not, in part, be made into the Soviet Union in miniature.

I love the suffering people in Homeless World Sacramento. People who know me out on the street, know that I do, very much. I love them as they are, as they really are, from my sense of their suffering [we all suffer], and admiration of the scrappiness of many, the resiliency of many, the boldness of some.  And I am in solidarity with the brokenness of more than a few.  Sadly, I have to wonder if homeless-help industy executives in our metropolis have the moxie and clarity to find a meta-positional sensiblity [lifting themselves above the dull hysterical drama of life] or have a clue what agape is to see the treetops above the forest and to appreciate the people of HWS.  I wonder this. Especially when things are particularly surreal and it's coming down so hard I need a hat.

Garren, Mark of WH & Gerrie, at Loaves can rise to a meta-position² when called upon, which is supercool, but it's a meager few. C'mon, you others, lift your game.
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¹ This is the explanation of Safe Ground at the top of the Participant Agreement, FYI. "We have been campaigning to get City and County permission for homeless persons to set up camp in Sacramento and not be harassed or ejected from their encampment. We are calling this a campaign for SAFE GROUND, a community where homeless people can live in peace and harmony in a self-governing community. Guidelines for this community include the following: mutual respect; maintaining a neat/clean environment; keeping loud noises down and allowing people to sleep after 10:00 pm; controlling pets; and respecting the community's rules."

² Whoops. I thought I knew what meta-position means. Likely, there's some other word that I should use.

From the Internet I learn "The Meta Position in NLP [Neuro Linguistic Programming, a type of hypnotherapy] is a location outside a situation enabling you to view the situation in a more objective way. A dissociated position not involved with the content of the event or the person. Very similar to Third Position."

That's sort of what I mean - being in Witness Mode, as Ken Wilber calls it, maybe -- but I also mean being emotionally flat or  friendly and rising above the din of samsara.  In Buddhism, as I said, the avenue is mindfulness and seeing others as fellow sufferers. In Christianity, it can be that you get into agape mode.  I DON'T think I mean - from Buddhism or Hinduism - getting to experience your small-s self as your capital-S Self; nothing that heady. 

The mistake of conservative Christians

Most of the preachers at the Union Gospel Mission are talented and passionate and are empathetic (or, try to be) with the congregants.  A few, like Jimmy Roughton and Brett Ingalls, compose exquisite sermons, that have an arc leading to a point, and, in Roughton's case and in the case of those from Heart Talk ministry, love is expressed for guys they are speaking to, rather explicitly.

But that leaves more than a few who clearly don't work very hard, if at all, at coming up with a sermon.  Often, what they have to say is blueplate fundamentalism, that wanders and can have no point, is mostly accusatory, and can focus quite a lot on the torment of hell.  For them, the finger wagging from an essay Make Lux wrote is somewhat appropriate.

This from Mike Lux's essay "How Do Christians Become Conservative?" in the Huffington Post [with emphases, mine]:

Conservative Christians' primary argument regarding Jesus and politics is that all he cared about was spiritual matters and an individual's relationship with God. As a result, they say, all those references from Jesus about helping the poor relate only to private charity, not to society as a whole. Their belief is that Jesus, and the New Testament in general, is focused on one thing and one thing only: how do people get into heaven.

The Jesus of the New Testament was of course extremely concerned with spiritual matters: there is no doubt whatsoever about his role or interest in the issues of the day, that the spiritual well-being of his followers was a major interest of his. How much he was involved with or interested in the political situation of the day is a matter of much debate and interpretation. Some say it was a lot and others that it was pretty limited or, as conservatives would say, not at all. However, much of a priority or focus it was, though, if you actually read the Gospels, it is clear that Jesus' main concern in terms of the people whose fates he cared about was for the poor, the oppressed, and the outcast. Comment after comment and story after story in the Gospels about Jesus relates to the treatment of the poor, generosity to those in need, mercy to the outcast, and scorn for the wealthy and powerful. And his philosophy is embedded with the central importance of taking care of others, loving others, treating others as you would want to be treated. There is no virtue of selfishness here, there is no "greed is good," there is no invisible hand of the market or looking out for Number One first. There is nothing about poor people being lazy, nothing about the undeserving poor being leeches on society, nothing about how I pulled myself up by my own bootstraps so everyone else should, too. There is nothing about how in nature, "the lions eat the weak," and therefore we shouldn't help the poor because it weakens them. There is nothing about charity or welfare corrupting a person's spirit.

What there is: quote after quote about compassion for the poor. In Jesus' very first sermon of his ministry, the place where he launched his public career, he stated the reason he had come: to bring good news to the poor, liberty to the captives, to help the oppressed go free, and that he was here to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord -- which in Jewish tradition meant the year that poor debtors were forgiven their debts to bankers and the wealthy. In Luke 6, Jesus says the poor and hungry will be blessed, and the rich will be cursed. He urges his followers to sell all their possessions and give them to the poor. The one time he really focuses on God's judgment and who goes to heaven is in Matthew 25, where he says those who go to heaven will be those who fed the hungry, clothed the naked, visited those in prison, gave shelter to the hungry, and welcomed the stranger -- and those who don't make it were the ones who refused to help the poor and oppressed.

I don't know that I have heard any preacher say that "greed is good"; on that, Lux may be out-of-touch. But there is a lot of talk in the general realm of getting stuff from God, countered by a greater number of other preachers who ask the constantly-shifting congregation to not ask for stuff from God - as if He's "a benign Santa Claus in the sky," [quoting an Elk Grove Baptist preacher/speaker last night] - but submit to His will.

Jimmy Roughton

Still there are important sections of the Bible that are little preached on, and I find this troubling.  I Corinthians 13, the Book of James [which extols good works and does not belittle faith, but may seem to], the Sermon on the Mount, and Christ's Commandments to Love [except from Roughton, recently] get scant attention.  I would want one of the preachers to take one of the four I mention and talk about it, exclusively, one night.

[Full disclosure:  I don't claim to be a Christian, and don't expect to become one.  On the other hand, I don't rule it out.  I consider myself to be a Skyhooks Buddhist -- that is, someone who 'buys in' to most Buddhism principles, seeing others as colleague sufferers, but isn't 'reductionist' as many of my Buddhist friends are.  I fully believe that humans came into being 'from the ground up.'  That is, evolution is proved.  I believe that science is a noble truth-seeking field that can be mostly trusted.  But I also believe that in addition to the 'push' from the ground up, there is some kind of 'pull' from above.  What that 'pull' is, I do not know.  God doesn't talk to me.  Jesus has not come knocking at my door.]

Governor proposes ending many programs that aid poor people

In a budget proposal presented by Gov. Swartzenneger yesterday, the governor said, "California should be in a position to safeguard its most vulnerable citizens. … We may want to, but we're not because our budget system is broken, and now I have no choice, and I stand here and call for the elimination of important programs."

MercuryNews.com tells us "[Swartzenneger] blamed federal judges for blocking cuts in social services last year, preventing the state, he said, 'from using a scalpel to go and trim some of these programs. We now have to use the ax to eliminate them.'"

Among programs the governor proposed to gut are In-Home Supportive Services, a program for the blind, disabled and elderly; and California Work Opportunity and Responsibility to Kids [aka, CalWORKS], the state's welfare-to-work program.  The governor proposes to deeply cut the Healthy Families Program, the state's insurance program that serves children, teenagers and pregnant women. Democrats in the state legislature intend to strongly oppose the gutting and cutting the governor proposed in these three and other programs that aid poor Californians.

Why homeless people don't have a healthy diet

A great many homeless people have few options regarding what they eat.  Though Sacramento is in the Central Valley, varieties of vegetables are far too rare on the trays at places where we're fed.  [Pyramids come from Good Medicine magazine.]  I submit that an alternate label for this pyramid pairing is "Why homeless people don't eat right."

Ten day series of articles on the long Friendship Park closure running in Sacramento Press.

Attention all.

I'm in the sixth day of a ten-day project, writing daily articles for Sacramento Press about the nine-day closure of Friendship Park and other Loaves & Fishes cutbacks in services for that period [from May 1 through May 9].

Y'all are invited to 'come on down' and read what I'm writing [the Day 5 article is here, from where you can click on the storyline side tab to read any of the articles posted in the series].

-- Tom Armstrong

The disaster of being rendered homeless

"According to the National Opinion Research Center, of all the negative events that can happen to Americans, only the death of a child is considered more painful than declaring bacnkruptcy or losing one's home and having to live on the street.  It would be surprising, then, if the threat of financial disaster―whether from inadequate retirement savings, crushing medical bills, layoffs, or simply excessive debt―did not take a toll on the well-being and peace of mind of millions of American families.  As a result, finding policies to minimize such risks offers an especially promising opportunity to help alleviate widespread anxiety and distress."

― from The Politics of Happiness by Derek Bok