More information on El Hogar v County of Sacramento lawsuit

Three blogposts ago in Sacramento Homeless blog I wrote about a Sacramento Bee article that alerted us to two civil suits filed against the county of Sacramento due to severe cutbacks for healthcare services for poor residents of the county.

Yesterday, I wrote about one of the civil suits, Poole v Sacramento County. Today, using information that is now online at the Sacramento Superior Court website, and other online sources, I'll sum up what the other suit, with the foreshortened name of El Hogar v County of Sacramento, is and means.

Documentation regarding the civil lawsuit El Hogar v County of Sacramento [Case # 34-2010-00080899 ] can be found at the Sacramento Superior Court website, saccourt.ca.gov . To find documents related to the case, click "View Civil and Probate Case Documents," then, in the field "CASE # FORMAT" enter 34-2010-00080899 as the number, and press Search.

The El Hogar lawsuit is filed as a complaint, seeking a "temporary restraining order, preliminary and permanent injunctions and declaratory relief" on behalf of four private, non-profit adult mental-healthcare organizations. The four organizations, known collectively as Regional Support Team, alledge that the county is required to use private organizations to provide mental-health services to poor and indigent citizens and not a county-operated facility, as the County of Sacramento proposes to begin doing on July 1, the first day of its forthcoming fiscal year.

The four private, non-profit adult mental-health care corporations that brought suit are these, which constitute the county's so-called Regional Support Team:

• El Hogar Community Services, Inc. An outpatient mental-health agency serving adults in the Sacramento community who are experiencing severe and persistant mental illness. The organization runs three programs: (1) Guest House Homeless Clinic which serves homeless or those at risk of becoming homeless who have severe psychiatric challenges; (2) Serves downtown residents, as part of the county's Regional Support Team, to aid adults who meet criteria of needing mental health services; and (3) Sierra Elder Wellness Progam for older adults and some under 60 years of age who have multiple problems and are at risk of being victimized.¹
• Human Resource Consultants, Inc. As part of the Regional Support Team, HRC provides "medication and mental health services to adults who live in northeastern Sacramento County."²
• Turning Point Community Programs, Inc. A non-profit mental-health agency providing "psychiatric services, support, employment, housing and advocacy to people with disabilities and their families." The organization operates six programs in Sacramento County: (1) Pathways to Success After Homelessness which "provides supportive housing and mental health services for those with psychiatric disabilities and long-term or cyclical homelessness."; (2) Transitional Support Services which provides "community support services to 235 adults challenged with co-occurring psychiatric disorders and developmental disabilities"; (3) Integrated Services Agency which provides "psychosocial rehabilitation services for adults with severe and persistent mental illness and extended histories of long-term hospitalization"; (4) Crisis Residential Program which "provides short term respite for mentally disabled adults who have become suicidal, critically depressed, or otherwise psychiatrically incapacitated" (5) is a part of Regional Support Team; and (6) Employment Services Program which supports Turning Point members with psychiatric disabilities so they may choose, obtain or retain employment.³
• Visions Unlimited, Inc. is a part of Regional Support Team that provides services in the southern part of Sacramento County.⁴

Basically, two of the four plaintiffs are significant mental-health facilities, whereas services of the other two appear to be exclusively their part as participants of the Regional Support Team

In their suit, California Welfare and Institutions Code &sec; 5652.5 is prominently cited. It reads as follows [emphases, mine]:

(a)Each county shall utilize available private and private nonprofit mental health resources and facilities in the county prior to developing new county-operated resources or facilities when these private and private nonprofit mental health resources or facilities are of at least equal quality and cost as county-operated resources and facilities and shall utilize available county resources and facilities of at least equal quality and cost prior to new private and private nonprofit resources and facilities. All the available local public or private and private nonprofit facilities shall be utilized before state hospitals are used.
(b)Nothing in this section shall prevent a county from restructuring its systems of care in the manner it believes will provide the best overall care.

The County intends to create four so-called  Sacramento Wellness Centers to be staffed with county employees to provide clinic services, in replacement of the Regional Support Team.

Thus the lawsuit is a contest to determine who is to provide care to poor residents of the county, and is not about the level of care or its extent, though both sides in the lawsuit may have something to say on those topic as their points are argued before the judge.

Sacramento Homeless Blog will follow developments.

-----

¹ Information taken from the "About Us" and "Programs" pages from El Hogar's website.
² Information from the "About Us" page at Human Resource Consultants' website.
³ Information taken from the "FAQs" and "Programs" pages at the Turning Point Community Programs website.
⁴ Information taken from the homepage at the Visions Unlimited website.

Rev Linda to devote all her time to Side-by-Side

Rev. Linda is second from the left in this photo, taken in Friendship Park, that is posted at the Side-by-Side website.

Yesterday morning, at a breakfast for the homeless that First United Methodist Church provides twice a month, it was learned that Rev. Linda Kelly-Baker would be leaving her position at the church, effective June 30, in order to devote all her time to Side-by-Side, the organization she founded, and is Director of, that acts as a "listening ministry" serving the homeless in Friendship Park at the Loaves & Fishes compound.

In the newsletter of the church, "The Visitor," in its issue dated June 14, "the Rev" wrote,

Even though I will not be on the staff of First UMC as of June 30, you will still see me. FUMC will be my charge conference and my regular worshipping community. There is also a possibility that FUMC and Side-By-Side Ministries (which I founded almost 10 years ago) will become even more closely connected. … It is to Side-By-Side as my full-time work that I am most fully called. Side-By-Side is self-funded, which means that I must not only pay attention to the program itself, to the homeless individuals with whom I meet, and to the volunteers who work with Side-By-Side, but also to the work of the steering committee on issues of fundraising and organizational structure. I am happy to say that the steering committee currently consists of several folks from FUMC: Leslyn Syren, Tanis Toland, Tara Thronson (on maternity leave), and Buzz Heinrich. These wonderful folks and others actively work with me to keep the Side-By-Side ministry financially sound and growing.

More information on Poole v Sacramento County, the case that, if successful, would force the county to pay for indigent healthcare services

Information has now been posted online, at the Sacramento Superior Court website, regarding the lawsuit where two indigent women and Loaves & Fishes are suing the County of Sacramento to force that government entity to provide adequate healthcare services for the poor.

In its Petition for Writ of Mandate [the opening salvo in the lawsuit which outlines the grievances of the petitioners ( Rhonda Poole, Jane Bryant-Dubose and Sacramento Loaves & Fishes); what laws or statutes are being ignored; and what remedies are sought] the attorneys for the petitioners, from Legal Services of Northern California and Western Center on Law and Poverty, cite California Welfare and Institutions Code §10000 and §17000 and as rule that the County is ignoring or overriding by not providing adequate services.

Section 10000 [really just the general purpose information, followed by page upon page of instruction] reads thus:

The purpose of this division is to provide for protection, care, and assistance to the people of the state in need thereof, and to promote the welfare and happiness of all of the people of the state by providing appropriate aid and services to all of its needy and distressed. It is the legislative intent that aid shall be administered and services provided promptly and humanely, with due regard for the preservation of family life, and without discrimination on account of ancestry, marital status, political affiliation, or any characteristic listed or defined in Section 11135 of the Government Code. That aid shall be so administered and services so provided, to the extent not in conflict with federal law, as to encourage self-respect, self-reliance, and the desire to be a good citizen, useful to society.

Section 17000 [general purpose information] reads thus:

Every county and every city and county shall relieve and support all incompetent, poor, indigent persons, and those incapacitated by age, disease, or accident, lawfully resident therein, when such persons are not supported and relieved by their relatives or friends, by their own means, or by state hospitals or other state or private institutions.

Other Code, including Health & Safety Code, are cited in the Petition, which, in its core part, is fifteen pages in length.

Documentation regarding the civil lawsuit Poole v Sacramento County [Case # 34-2010-80000580 ] can be found at the Sacramento Superior Court website, saccourt.ca.gov . To find documents related to the case, click "View Civil and Probate Case Documents," then, in the field "CASE # FORMAT" enter 34-2010-80000580 as the number, and press Search.

It is explained in the Petition that Ms. Poole has standing to sue because she is indigent, residing in the Salvation Army shelter in Sacramento and was diagnosed with colon cancer in June, 2009.  Ms. Poole has suffered two events of excruciating pain and still has not had adequate medical intervention to address the cancer which afflicts her.

Ms. Bryant-Dubose suffers from "ulcerative colitis and uses a walker due to a degenerative knee condition."  The Petition reads, "… If not managed properly, ulcerative colitis can result in massive bleeding, severe illness, rupture of the colon and cancer. Ms. Bryand-Dubose has not been able to be seen by her treating physician, a gastroenterologist, for several months because CMISP [Sacramento County Indigent Services Program] has not scheduled the monthly appointments she needs.

Loaves & Fishes claim of standing in the lawsuit is because their outreach clinic, staffed by one nurse [Suzi], will be overwhelmed if cuts to county services are allowed to go forward, such that contageous disease might spread through the Loaves & Fishes compound.¹

Relief the Petition seeks is basically this:

Prohibit the closure of Del Paso Health Center and South City Health Center; prohibit the elimination of services at Primary Care Center; prohibit the elimination of CMISP case-management services; prohibit the reduction of provider hours at Dental Clinic; prohibit the reduction of hours at Radiology Clinic.

Otherwise, the suit asks that the County be instructed to meet its obligations under the Welfare and Instituions Code and the Health and Safety Code.

And, of course, very understandably, it asks that the county pay for attorney costs of the Petitioners related to the legal action.

----
¹ Loaves & Fishes' standing in the case seems surprizingly weak. I am glad L&F isn't claiming to represent homeless people, generally - because I don't think they do. And I think the likelihood that a contagious disease might be on the loose in the L&F Compound if healthcare services to the poor aren't improved, as compared to what's projected, is unlikely to the point of being infintesimal.  Still, I'm glad L&F is party to the lawsuit since it does broaden the suit beyond just two women.  Otherwise, the County could just offer healthcare services to those two persons and satisfy the the breadth of the complaint.

Two civil suits filed in Sacramento Superior Court seek to force the county to meet its obligations to the poor

An article in the Sacramento Bee, today, tells us two lawsuits have been filed that are being pressed to force the County of Sacramento to meet constitutional obligations to poor people. Quoting the article, "Sacramento County budget cuts trigger lawsuits":

… two indigent residents and Loaves & Fishes in Sacramento filed a lawsuit against the county to block cuts to medical care for the poor. That same day several nonprofit mental health providers sued to stop cuts to their programs.

The Loaves & Fishes lawsuit is number 34-2008-80000580, filed in Sacramento Superior Court on June 22. No court documents have yet been posted online regarding the litigation. The two "indigent residents" are named on public court records, and in the article, as Rhonda Poole and Jane Bryant‑Dubose. The parties being sued are named as the County of Sacramento; the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors; Sacramento County Department of Health and Human Services; and Ann Edwards‑Buckley, the director of the Health and Human Services Department.

With regard to the Loaves & Fishes/Poole/Bryant‑Dubose suit, the article tells us

The Loaves & Fishes lawsuit is an attempt to stop the closure of two of three county clinics and the halving of service at the one remaining clinic. Those clinics provide medical care to poor residents who don't qualify for other health coverage such as Medi-Cal.

"Absent injunctive relief from the court, the county will fail to provide medically necessary care in a timely and humane manner to some indigent residents and will fail to provide any care whatsoever to other indigent residents," according to the lawsuit.

Ms. Poole, we are told, is suing because she was diagnosed with cancer over a year ago and has not been able to see a specialist for her condition. Ms. Poole lives in the the Salvation Army shelter. Nothing is said re Ms. Bryant­‑Dubose's part in the lawsuit. Likely, Ms. Bryant‑Dubose also has a medical condition that needs attention.

With regard to the second suit, we are told

The other lawsuit filed Tuesday was over the county's decision to cut four Regional Support Teams for adult mental health. Nonprofits El Hogar Community Services Inc.; Human Resource Consultants; Turning Point Community Programs; and Visions Unlimited have run the teams and are suing to stop the cuts, which take effect after July 1.

This case is identified on Sacramento Superior Court records as number 34-2010-00080899. It, too, was filed on June 22. Again, here, no documents have yet been posted online. The County of Sacramento; the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors; and untold others [Identified as "Does 1-50"] are cited as Defendents.

Sacramento Homeless blog will follow these cases through court records and newspaper accounts as it develops.

Walter Mosley on charity and our relationship to one another

Poverty and charity are two evils. The former grinds our bones and souls and children into rubble while the latter weakens and ultimately eliminates our ability to live lives for ourselves – leaving us dependent upon the kindness of bureaucrats. You know the ones - those people who have your life in a manila folder hanging from wires in a green filing cabinet that sits behind a locked door that you don't have the key for.

The arbiters of philanthropy and good will organizations never prepare us for liberation or revolution; they never question their superior position of humility and selflessness or the rightness of their charity.

Charity is the lesser evil but it is still evil.

― Walter Mosley, from his words accepting an award from Liberty Hill


Through my veins run 10,000 years of history that touches every continent, deity, and crime known to humanity. This history is not composed of the false accounts of the past; it is the blood and the beat and the light that passes through my mind, and yours. I am your sibling whether you know it or not, whether you accept me or not.

We, known and unknown to each other, form an identity that I can express but still not know, not completely. And for this state of being I am infinitely grateful because it means that I can be part of something greater than the individual, while still I am at home in my heart.

― Walter Mosley, from an opinion piece, titled "10,000 years of history run in my veins," posted to CNN, as part of the television network's coverage of Census 2010.

Top Ten List: Said to Loaves & Fishes' Wash House manager, Mark, after assignment of a shower stall

Not an actual homeless person.

10.   It's OK with me that the water tastes like wine, but must the soap bars smell like Oscar's feet?

 9.   Are you still accepting Mid-Town Car Wash half-off coupons?

  8.   Mmm. This shower stall still has that "new water" smell!

 7.   Could you come in the stall with me, Mark? It's been so long, I've forgotten how to operate the soapbar.

 6.   It would be a sure-fire customer draw, Mark! Fresh-water sea nymphs!

 5.   It would be a sure-fire customer draw, Mark! Shower Snacks^TM made from hardened gummy bears.

 4.   Mark! Have you been mixing the shampoo left-overs again!?  My hair is falling out.  And it HURTS.  Oh, Mark!!

 3.   Ooop. There's something wrong with this drain!  It isn't accepting the photon torpedoes that came out of my Bombay door.

 2.   I need the shower curtain from #6 for a tarp tonight, Mark. Can I trade you for a pair of my extra-large Scotch-Guarded boxer shorts?

AND THE NUMBER ONE THING SAID TO LOAVES & FISHES WASH HOUSE MANAGER MARK AFTER ASSIGNMENT OF A SHOWER STALL IS …

 1.   My shower yesterday only took three minutes, so I'm staying in here for seventeen minutes, this morning, Mark.  I'm not asking you; I'm telling you.  DO THE MATH!

Plungers at the Mission

The short-term exotic experience of being in Homeless World is called taking a plunge. While it can be a valuable learning experience, it can also be something that falsely confirms people's terrible stereotypical beliefs about the homeless.

I was walking back to the Union Gospel Mission late yesterday afternoon, going north on N. 7th Street, just emerging up from the underpass to the vast desert-like undeveloped area called the Railyard, when I saw ahead of me a group of people sitting under the only circle of shade within a mile.

I thought they were light-rail construction workers taking a siesta at first, my vision being so bad, but as I drew closer I could see that they were mostly young people with sleeping bags and backpacks and amid them was Abigail!  Hark! Plungers!

Abigail, you see, is a former-JV [i.e., Jesuit Volunteer] who got domesticated, turning her  volunteer job in Loaves & Fishes' Friendship Park into the same job, only with pay and vacation time and a green hat, indicating she's staff, which effectively robs work from a job-needy homeless gal or guy. [Absolutely no offence meant toward Abigail … but still.  Jobs for homeless people to work in Friendship Park have gone only to SafeGround people — that is, people who drank the Kool-aid of L&F's communist politics — and not to those many who are most able.]

A plunge — with those participating being called "plungers" — is a period of a few short days being taken on-tour out in Homeless World, all as if it was an E-Ticket Adventureland ride at Disneyland.

The Plunge Group, which consisted of about seven teenaged girls and four guys, their teacher/chaperone and Abigail, showed up at the mission about forty minutes before chapel time, and settled in on the grass in the courtyard.  I got out my notebook and got Abigail's OK to talk to the teenagers about their experience.

Ricardo and Chelsea [not their real names] were the first two I approached.

Ricardo told me they had been at Cesar Chavez Park, earlier, where they wrote down their thoughts in journals.  I asked if they knew it was sometimes called Wino Park, and they indicated they didn't.

I was told that they were students at St. Ignatious [which means Sacramento's Jesuit High School] and would be seniors in the fall. Jesuit High has a "Christian Service" requirement that includes the option for upper-grade students to come to Homeless World to work or take a plunge.  Wording from Jesuit High's website tells us this [emphases, mine]:

Students have a wide variety of choice when it comes to selecting service placements. Sites include agencies that serve the elderly, the poor and the homeless, the physically and developmentally challenged, children of prison inmates, at-risk youth and pre-school aged children. Sophomores can make lunches for children at the Mustardseed School for homeless children at Loaves and Fishes, or cook and serve breakfast at Maryhouse or Wellspring Center, both places for homeless women and children. Juniors can participate in an overnight "Plunge" at Loaves and Fishes where they simulate some of the experiences of homelessness. Summer school options for seniors include service immersion trips to Mexico and Latin America and counselor positions at camps for the handicapped.

. . . and Reflection:

At every level, but especially at the upper levels, reflection is seen as an indispensable part of Christian Service. In Jesuit schools, learning is expected to move beyond rote knowledge to the development of the more complex learning skills of understanding, application, analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Jesuit education insists that students consider the significance of what they learn and to integrate that meaning into their lives. Reflection helps students make connections between their personal experience of service and the larger issues of social justice.

Chelsea told me that, with Ricardo, she had worked on a project understanding homelessness in San Francisco, but when it was presented in class, those who heard what they came to say found it boring.

I asked Ricardo if they had any expectations, and he told me that he "didn't know what to expect."  A good indicator of being opened-minded, perhaps.  He also told me there was not a preparation meeting for the plunge.

Chelsea told me that earlier that day they'd been at Loaves & Fishes and had attended an NA [or was it AA? My notes are terrible.] meeting and had talked to some of the people, there.

I asked what they knew or had found out about homeless people in Sacramento.  They told me they know about the anti-camping ordinance here, and that from their San Francisco Project, they knew that there there was an ordinance, proposed by the mayor, to make lying down on the street or in a park illegal.

Chelsea said she now knew that homeless people were dirty — not themselves, she said, she knew they showered, but their clothes; and that she knew a great many had addictions or were recovering from addictions.

I asked what they hoped to learn.

Chelsea said "to be thankful for what you have."  Ricardo said, "How you can help."

Chelsea said that the opportunity to take the plunge was largely to "learn about ourselves."  She added the information that her "whole family" couldn't understand why she was doing this.  But Chelsea said she hoped to gain "awareness that would break down stereotypes."

I was told that they'd learned that "people who have less care more" about spiritual matters.  And that doing the plunge might prompt them [that is, Ricardo and Chelsea] to being "more open to new discoveries."

I had certainly hoped to talk to others of the students, but when I began to, the teacher/chaperone that was with the group shooed me away.
-----
Previous blogposts about plungers in this blog:

• "Sixteen-year-old takes Grunge Plunge into Homeless World Sacramento"; 1/31/09
• "Plungers in our midst"; 6/2/09

County to fully abandon homeless services

An article in the Bee today, somewhat badly titled "Health care would take huge hit, officials say," tells us that the county of Sacramento will be fully tearing down the safety net for its citizens in the new fiscal year, which begins on July 1, because of the budget crisis.

It was another afternoon of bad news and grim testimony Tuesday before the Sacramento County Board of Supervisors, who are staring at a $122 million budget deficit for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Department heads outlined dramatic cuts proposed for health and human services programs serving the county's most vulnerable citizens, including seriously mentally ill people, medically indigent residents and those at risk of abuse and neglect.

Regarding homeless people, specifically, in the county, the article tells us this:

• Homeless services: The proposed budget provides enough money from the general fund to support homeless programs for two months. After that, unless money is found elsewhere, more than 3,000 beds for homeless people could disappear, resulting in more men, women and children living on the streets.

Read more: from the Sacramento Bee article "Health care would take huge hit, officials say."

A Catch-22 for those who are homeless and psychotic.

Stanford anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann tried to understand something that was incongruous in Chicago — and is surely, too, a big problem in Homeless World Sacramento: People who are psychotic often refuse a diagnosis of mental illness and thus forgo benefits they could receive.

A review, in The Wilson Quarterly tells us, from her forthcoming book Down and Out in Chicago, that Ms. Luhrmann "planted herself in the homeless shelters and drop-in centers of a tiny, two-to-three-block area with probably 'the densest concentration of persons with serious psychotic disorder in the entire state of Illinois.'"

One person Luhrmann met was Zaney, a woman who "insisted she was not crazy despite the fact that she heard 'angry but nonexistent' voices. When Luhrmann suggested several times that she just 'pretend' to be crazy in order to get an apartment, Zaney would shake her head. 'I'm not that kind of person, she'd say.' "

The book review goes on to tell us

It's not that Zaney is unable to reflect or think straight, Luhrmann writes, it's that "crazy" means something different to her and the other women she met during her research — something akin to "weak." They see psychosis as something that "arises when a woman is not strong enough to cope with the difficulties of homelessness," and believe that "only those who give up the struggle to get out become flagrantly ill." Refusing help is a "kind of signal" It means: I am not crazy. I can survive on my own.

Luhrmann can see where these women are coming from. Many with severe psychosis are quite coherent and competent much of the time — they have to be, or they wouldn't survive on the street. It is a harsh word. "People in shelters say scathing, contemptuous things about each other and about people like themselves, Luhrmann writes." The most psychotic women — "the ones who are visibly talking to people no one else can see, who gesture to the empty air" — are the most scorned of all.

What makes it all the more difficult for them to accept a diagnosis is that to them the consequences of turning a deaf ear to the voices are dire. "This is the terrible dilemma of madness," Luhrmann writes, "that if you ignore the phenomena if you tell yourself that the voices and the visions are twisted figments of your imagination — and you are wrong, the cost is very high, because the voices promise your own destruction." The philosopher Blaise Pascal relied on the same logic when he became a Christian in the 17th century. "If he believed and he was wrong, he risked being a fool, but if he did not believe and he was wrong, he risked eternal damnation. He chose belief. We live, all of us, in the gray zone of interpretation, judging what in our world is truly real."

Helping homeless people who are mentally ill, Luhrmann concludes, requires recognizing their reality. Some programs, such as one in New York City called Pathways to Housing, already do things differently. They don't mention psychiatric diagnoses, simply assisting those who are "obviously eligible." The casual screening seems to work — the program costs no more than conventional approaches.

UPDATE 9/7/10: My inference from Dr. Luhrmann's webpage at Stanford University, is that the book referred to here may be titled "Uptown: living on the street with psychosis," or "Other minds: essays on the complex construction of subjective experience" and may not yet be published. To date, I have been unable to find the book, by any title, at amazon or from a general search via google. BUT, one possibility is that the book will be among books published by Raritan this winter and that, except for the Wilson Quarterly piece, there's nothing out about it as yet.-TA

Loaves & Fishes implicates Buddhism and Jack Kornfield in its June Donations Plea.

	The Sukhothai Traimit Golden Buddha was found in a clay-and-plaster overlaid buddha statue in 1959, after laying in wait for 500 years. It's huge and heavy: just under 10 feet tall and weighs 5 1/2 tons.

At the beginning of their June newsletter, Loaves and Fishes relates a story, taken from the beginning of renowned Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield's 2008 book The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology.

The first part and first chapter in Kornfield's book is "Part I: Who are you really?" and chapter 1 is called "Nobility: Our Original Goodness," which ought to serve as a clue to what the beginning of the book is about, not that that sentiment isn't strewn through-out the chapter, section and book such that what Kornfield is telling us should be crystal clear.

Somehow, the not-ready-for-primetime management at Loaves & Fishes have managed to use Kornfield's wise and kindly words in a way that mangles the meaning and says something at odds with Kornfield's intent.

Loaves & Fishes changed the story slightly to remove mention of the setting (which is in Thailand with the Buddha stature being in the city of Sukhothai/Sukotai) and conveyed the story thus to readers of their newsletter:

In a large temple there once stood an enormous and ancient clay Buddha.

Though not the most handsome or refined work, it had been cared for for over 500 years and became revered for its sheer longevity. Violent storms, changes in government, and invading armies had come and gone, but the Buddha endured.

The monks who tended the temple noticed that the statue had begun to crack and would soon be in need of repair and repainting. After a stretch of particularly hot and dry weather, one of the cracks became so wide that a curious monk took his flashlight and peered inside. What shone back at him was a flash of brilliant gold! Inside this plain old statue, the temple residents discovered one of the largest and most luminous gold images ever created...Now uncovered, the golden Buddha draws throngs of devoted pilgrims from all over.

The story's meaning, relating to "certain of [L&F's] guests" in Homeless World Sacramento, according to the newsletter writer, is this [emphases, mine]:

In the story above, it is only when the statue cracks from age and stress that it reveals its golden interior. So it is with certain of our guests. They may look like humble clay as they trudge along 12th Street towards Loaves & Fishes but the stress of shared homelessness cracks open their humanity and gives us glimpses of the spark of divinity within them. Their grace and generosity under pressure is truly golden. They joke with each other, comfort each other, pray with each other as they confront staggering losses, of jobs, of livelihoods, of families, of homes.

As I say, Loaves' meaning is afield [indeed, far aKornfield] from what meaning Kindly Jack attributed to it.

I suppose Loaves can conger up their own meaning from the story, out of thin air, as they seem to have gone ahead and done, but it is crass, at best, for them to do that: to implicate or connect Buddhism and Jack Kornfield in what is clearly the set-up for a plea for donations. Indeed, at the end of the first page in the newsletter it reads, "You can make a donation online ... blah, blah, blah"

Kornfield says of his story, immediately after relating it in The Wise Heart [emphases, mine]:

The monks believe that this shining work of art had been covered in plaster and clay to protect it during times of conflict and unrest. In much the same way, each of us has encountered threatening situations that lead us to cover our innate nobility. Just as the people of Sokotai had forgotten the golden buddha, we too have forgotten our essential nature. Much of the time we operate from the protective layer. The primary aim of Buddhist psychology is to help us see beneath this armouring and see our original goodness, called our buddhanature¹.

For the purpose of the newsletter, "stress cracks open ... humanity ... [to reveal a] spark of divinity." Contrariwise, Kornfield's Buddhist reading is that inside, beneath the armouring of a protective layer [that comes into play for all of us because of life's threatening situations] is our essential buddhanature or innate nobility.

Catholics, like other Christians, see people as essentially sinful. The Buddhist view is the opposite: People are essentially noble and good.

Christians put on an armour of protection from the dastardly world. [See Ephesians 6:11 "Put on the whole armour of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil." ]

In Buddhism, the idea is to take off any protective armour, to learn who we already are and to be with and relate to others in the marketplaces of the world, which is not a dastardly place.

The newsletter says that stress cracks open humanity allowing sight of divinity. The Buddhist reading is that the aim from settling the mind is to know who we really are. Divinity has nothing to do with it.
-----
Loaves' analysis of the story reveals some untoward things about the view of Loaves & Fishes management toward those the organization supposedly exists to serve and what it thinks of potential donors.

For Kornfield, the message is one that relates to us all.  For Loaves & Fishes, the story is one selectively about a subgrouping of homeless people (the most pathetic among us, I guess they're going for): a bunch of clay figures that don't walk, but trudge, along Twelfth Street.

Make no mistake, there are homeless people we all might consider pathetic, in a sense.  They are pathetic because they are in need of help that they mostly don't get.

In Loaves & Fishes' telling, only after the stress of being homeless is there a crack in pathetic homeless people's clay exteriors that lends sight of their humanity. Oh, really?  What were they before that, when they had more-normal lives or were first homeless? Zoo animals?

There are several discordant meanings for the word humanity:  (1) mankind; human beings as a group; (2) the human condition; (3) the quality of being benevolent.

You have to suppose the newsletter writer was going for meaning #3. Thus, stress cracks these pathetic people open such that they are seen as being benevolent and divine.

It's an interesting theory, but I really don't think so.  I think, like all us homeless folk, and like many who are housed, we forget our troubles from time to time and enjoy what is immediately before us.  We are, momentarily not under pressure.  We can be like the prisoners at the end of Sullivan's Travels and laugh at a Warner Bros. cartoon, forgetting where we are.  And where are we, often?  At Loaves & Fishes.
-----

¹ The Buddha-nature doctrine centres on the possession by sentient beings of the innate, immaculate buddha-mind or buddha-element (Buddha-dhatu), which is, prior to the attainment of complete buddhahood, said to be not clearly seen nor known in its full radiance.

The Buddha-nature is equated in the Mahāyāna Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra with the changeless and deathless true self of the Buddha. In the Laṅkāvatāra Sūtra, however, it is said that the tathāgatagarbha might be mistaken for a self, which according to this sutra, it is not. This Buddha-nature is described in the Mahāparinirvāṇa Sūtra to be incorruptible, uncreated, and indestructible. It is eternal awakeness (bodhi) indwelling samsara, and thus opens up the immanent possibility of liberation from all suffering and impermanence.

No being of any kind is without the Buddha-nature (Buddha-dhatu). It is indicated in the Angulimaliya Sūtra that if the Buddhas themselves were to try to seek for any sentient being who lacked the Buddha-nature, not one such individual would be found. In fact, it is stated in that sutra that it is impossible for Buddhas not to discern the presence of the everlasting Buddha-nature in each and every being. [From wikipedia.]

The forced quiet of suffering

I snagged the quote below from a page, just after the dedication, in the recent tome The Book of Calamitiesby Peter Trachtenberg, except that I used a different translation [to English from Russian] and extended it:

I look at this life and see the arrogance and the idleness of the strong, the ignorance and bestiality of the weak, the horrible poverty everywhere, overcrowding, drunkenness, hypocrisy, falsehood. . . . Meanwhile in all the houses, all the streets, there is peace; out of fifty thousand people who live in our town there is not one to kick against it all. Think of the people who go to the market for food: during the day they eat; at night they sleep, talk nonsense, marry, grow old, piously follow their dead to the cemetery; one never sees or hears those who suffer, and all the horror of life goes on somewhere behind the scenes. Everything is quiet, peaceful, and against it all there is only the silent protest of statistics; so many go mad, so many gallons are drunk, so many children die of starvation. . . . And such a state of things is obviously what we want; apparently a happy man only feels so because the unhappy bear their burden in silence, but for which happiness would be impossible. It is a general hypnosis. Every happy man should have some one with a little hammer at his door to knock and remind him that there are unhappy people, and that, however happy he may be, life will sooner or later show its claws, and some misfortune will befall him -- illness, poverty, loss, and then no one will see or hear him, just as he now neither sees nor hears others. But there is no man with a hammer, and the happy go on living, just a little fluttered with the petty cares of every day, like an aspen-tree in the wind -- and everything is all right.
― Anton Chekhov, "Gooseberries"

Also powerful, and also true, these words by Trachtenberg in the book's introduction:

We live in a country whose politics and culture sometimes resembles a vast machine designed to deny the inevitability of suffering. The machine works by promoting the fiction that suffering happens to other people, under circumstances so exotic and bizarre as to be statistically impossible. In this manner suffering becomes entertainment. The disease of the week isn't cancer or heart attack but Bubble Boy syndrome. On television more people die of terrorism than in car accidents. The new conventional medical wisdom seems to be that with proper diet, exercise, and lifestyle, nobody has to get sick; maybe nobody has to die except for some fat chain-smokers in trailer parks. Our public policies amount to a symbolic exorcism in which crime, illness, and ignorance are drawn out of the general population and projected into the Gadarene herds of the poor, the black and colored poor especially. Through-out there's the implication that those who suffer somehow deserve their suffering. Do not ask for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for Stupid.

This fantasy of immunity arose out of traditional American exceptionalism but became prevalent only amid the euphoric abundance of the postwar years. It is a child’s fantasy, and it has made us a nation of children. I believe it accounts for our collective helplessness in the face of illness, our paranoia about crime, our contempt for the disadvantaged. It’s why we have no national health policy and vote for politicians who slash medical aid to the poor. It’s why antidepressants are among the most widely prescribed drugs in the United States. It’s why the attacks of September 11 plunged us into a paroxysm of incredulous rage and self-pity that instead of being allayed by the successful invasion of Afghanistan, keeps seeking new cathartic outlets: today Iraq, tomorrow who knows? It's why our government wouldn't let us see the coffins of the soldiers killed in those cathartic wars, and why we didn't want to see them. Because Americans don't know how to suffer, we are inflicting great suffering on others, and in all likelihood we will bring further suffering upon ourselves. I don't want to speculate about what form this suffering will take. However it comes, I'm willing to bet we'll be unprepared for it, unprepared in the deepest psychic and spiritual sense. Clueless.

The curious matter of helping methadone addicts

The Sacramento Bee posted an editorial that seems straightforward, simple and right, but I believe raises issues that are very interesting, not at all simple and worthy of thought and more-nuanced consideration.

The base issue is the elimination of the subsidy for methadone, which is used to ween addicts off heroin.

The Bee editorial insists that by cutting the state's $53 million subsidy, as Gov. Schwarzenegger proposes, California forgoes $60 million in federal matching grants. And "more importantly, most of the 35,000 people who are benefiting from the program would be in danger of returning to their old addictions. To feed their habits, many would return to lives of crime, costing society far more."

I don't really dispute the logic in the editorial, but I do wonder about the math and about the questionable ethics surrounding the idea of paying people to prevent them from committing crimes. And I wonder about what is curiously absent from the editorial: The matter of what works best at reducing people's suffering, long term.

Sacramentans are also Americans.

Whenever we read about the possibility of getting "matching funds" we are primed to think we must spend the local money to get that "free" matching money. Heck, it's two for the price of one! What a deal!

But if we think globally rather than tribally, we would realize that us Californians NOT getting the $60 million isn't the same as an uninsured $60 million building burning to the ground and it being a complete, clear, and absolute loss. If California doesn't take the $60 million it could be used instead to fund something important through the US government, or to pay down the national debt. There would still be $60 million dollars of utility to be used beneficially for some different purpose if we don't use it to buy huge quantities of methadone, used, to ween many former-herion addicts off methadone in stages.

Should people be paid to not commit crimes?

There just simply is something askew about the idea of paying people not to commit crimes. If the government is going to do that, then I have to ask Where is my $300/mo not to commit a crime!? Yes, I wasn't going to commit a crime anyway, but why does that matter? Indeed, in many ways I am a better person to whom $300 should be paid since I would use the money in a more-socially responsible way than a methadone addict, or a recovering methadone addict, might. I'd use my $300 to buy V-8 cocktail juice and use the services of a laundromat.

I do recognize that good and noble politicians often have to agree to do rather wacky things for the betterment of society. I just want to lay it out there that we should not get comfortable with the idea of bribing people not to commit crimes. It is one of the slickest of slippery slopes down the embankment of fiery hell.

Already, we bribe other countries to not go forward with nuclear enrichment, which they do anyway. And we bribe a great many homeless people with SSI checks so that they can drink and party (ruin their health and die at a young age) without robbing others and then drinking and partying.  We enable irresponsibe behavior in defference to other behavior that is, supposedly, more destructive to society. 

It's a wacky world. I don't have any answer, here. I just submit that we should be uncomfortable with the whole idea.

If we don't spend $113 million on methadone, what happens, exactly?

If we spend $113 million subsidizing methadone addicts' substance they're addicted to (which is methadone) we know what happens: many of the addicts stay with their addiction and come back for more methadone next year.  Others recover from their addiction.

If we DON'T spend the $113 million buying methadone for methadone addicts, what happens? We could spend it for police and prison personnel. And then, maybe (or maybe not) we won't have to spend as much as $113 million next year.

I note a May 27 Associated Press story tells us that "Some heroin addicts who got [that] drug under medical supervision had a better chance of kicking their habit than those who got methadone"

Quoting the story:

In a British study of 127 people who previously failed to beat their addiction, scientists gave them either injectable heroin or methadone. After six months, those who got heroin were much less likely to continue taking the drug illegally than those who got methadone. The results were published Friday in the British medical journal, Lancet.

So.  Should we buy methadone and heroin addicts more heroin?  I'm just asking.

Re suffering.

What is the path that lessens suffering in the long run? I don't know. I would want somebody to study that. I wouldn't want somebody to spend as much as tens of millions on such a study, but I would want some comprehensive research done

I would want us to try to look at all the possibilities and then do what's best.  If buying $113 million-worth of methadone (or heroin) next year is what's best.  OK.  Fine.  Let us do that.

The meaning of life

What is the meaning of life? To be happy and useful.

- Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama

At the end of his highly-regarded (by critics) and uber-mightily highly-regarded (by me) book in 2006, The Happiness Hypothesis, Jonathan Haidt [pronounced "hite," not "hate," btw. Who'd want to read a book on happiness by a guy named hate?, I ask you.] addresses the ultimate question:  What is the meaning of life, and answers it.

A prime area of my recent homeless studies relate to happiness and meaning:  Two things that homeless folk have in short supply. 

Because the book is four years old, I think it is OK to, sort of, give away the ending.  Indeed, since the book has been around (but is not dated!), I think it might re-arouse interest in the book to give away the ending.  The ending is in context of the chapters previous, so I've included links and footnotes to explain what Haidt is aluding to here and there.

So, here it is, from near the end of The Happiness Hypothesis:

The Meaning of Life

What can you do to have a good, happy, fulfilling, and meaningful life? What is the answer to the question of purpose within life? I believe the answer can be found only by understanding the kind of creature that we are, divided in the many ways we are divided. We are shaped by individual selection to be selfish creatures who struggle for resources, pleasure, and prestige, and we were shaped by group selection to be hive creatures who long to lose ourselves in something larger. We are social creatures who need love and attachments, and we are industrious creatures with needs for effectance¹, able to enter a state of vital engagement with our work. We are the rider and we are the elephant, and our mental health depends on the two working together, each drawing on the other's strengths. I don't believe there is an inspiriting answer to the question, "What is the purpose of life?" Yet by drawing on ancient wisdom and modern science, we can find compelling answers to the question of purpose within life. The final version of the happiness hypothesis is that happiness comes from between. Happinesss in not something that you can find, acquire, or achieve directly. You have to get the conditions right and then wait. Some of those conditions are within you, such as coherence among the parts and levels of your personality. Our conditions require relationships to things beyond you: Just as plants need sun, water, and good soil to thrive, people need love, work, and a connection to something larger, it is worth striving to get the right relationships between yourself and others, betweeen yourself and your work, and between yourself and something larger than yourself. If you get these relationships right, a sense of purpose and meaning will emerge.

----
¹ The Effectance motive comes from the need or drive to make things happen, after developing competence through interacting with and controlling one's environment. Effectance is almost as basic a need as food or water, yet it is not something that is satisfied and then disappears, like hunger. Effectance is a constant need to progress. It explains why we get more joy from progressing toward our goals than achieving them. As Shakespeare wrote, "Joy's soul lies in the doing."