The Nature of Evil

The fiction of evil.

I thought the quote in the block with brown-colored-text below was highly interesting, which I lifted from an essay excerpt written by Lars Svendsen, published in the Fall, 2009, issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction.  The excerpt is from a preliminary work that preceded publication of Svendsen's book, A Philosophy of Evil. [Update:  The piece in The Review of Contemporaty Fiction ended up being a good chuck of the Foreward in A Philosophy of Evil.]

There's a lot of exposure to Evil or ideas about Evil in Homeless World Sacramento because: (1) it's a topic of some discussion, since HWS is in very large part Christian [the Bible is in large part about Good v Evil and most/many Christians think in terms of the poles of Good v Evil]; (2) there are people who have committed terrible crimes in our midst; (3) there's an abundant amount of narcissism and sociopathy "out here"; (4) people are subjected to a lot of petty and not-so-petty theft and other scams; and (5) other reasons.

Be aware that there is Good galore "out here," too! I am certainly not meaning to cast aspersions on the homeless community by bringing up Evil; I am just wanting to face one factor in the reality of homelessness.  A mission of this blog is to get out the truth of the homeless condition, in all its colors.

Note that Svendsen is writing about the real thing, itself, as he sees it, as well as how it is falsely portrayed in the Arts. [Footnotes are Svendsen's; I added the links.]:

…When I first began to "rehabilitate" the idea of evil, it appeared to me as an object of fascination. This fascination was especially tied to the tendency to regard evil as an aesthetic object, where evil appears as something other and therefore functions as an alternative to the banality of everyday life. We're steadily exposed to more and more extreme representations of evil in films and such¹, but this form of evil doesn't belong to a moral category. Like most other things in our culture, evil has been aestheticized. Simone Weil writes: "Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvellous, intoxicating."² In fiction, evil feeds off its fictional nature. It poses a contrast to the banality of everyday life and represents a transcendence of the same. "Evil" is translated as "transgression," "the sublime," etc. When such aestheticization becomes dominant, we lose sight of the horror associated with evil. For the purely aesthetic gaze, there is no actual victim. As a purely aesthetic phenomenon evil becomes a game without consequences, something we can gorge ourselves on, play around with, or shed a tear about without worrying that the knife will cut too deep.³

…One problem we face, however, is that the negative possibilities are so much greater than the positive. In terms of causality, it's always easier to do evil than to do good; easier to hurt another human being in ways that will haunt them for the rest of their lives than to do a comparative amount of good; easier to inflict an enormous amount of suffering on a whole people than to bring about a comparative state of prosperity. In short, there's an asymmetry between our ability to do good and our ability to do evil. This may be a defining condition for human action, but it's still our responsibility to do more good than evil. …

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¹ This is obviously nothing new, and our present fascination with evil clearly has its roots in the Romantic. For more on this subject, see Davenport: Gothic: 400 Years of Excess, Horror, Evil and Ruin ; Gillespie: Nihilism Before Nietzsche , esp. chpt. 4; Russell: Mephistopheles , esp. chpt. 5; Bohrer: Nach der Natur .
² Weil: Gravity and Grace , p. 70.
³ Oscar Wilde writes about how art expresses reality—that is, life—but in a tame form that prevents us from hurting ourselves. Therefore we must turn to art—not life—for all our adventures and experiences: "Because Art does not hurt us. The tears we shed at a play are a type of the exquisite sterile emotions that it is the function of Art to awaken. We weep, but we are not wounded … But the sorrow with which Art fills us both purifies and initiates … [It] is through Art, and through Art only, that we can shield ourselves from the sordid perils of actual existence" (Wilde, Complete Works , p. 173). Art, therefore, becomes a defense against life's burdens, and aestheticism becomes escapism. In my opinion, that encompasses all aestheticism—and Wilde himself implements a critique against such aestheticism in later works, especially in The Picture of Dorian Gray and De profundis.

Homeless monk's Employment Wanted ad

Homeless Noah Yuttadhammo's Employment Wanted ad.

It's been kind of a foggy, weird day for me. Like I'd been mugged.

But I got a personal email [really, an alert telling me a comment had been posted in Homeless Tom, another of my blogs], that has made me happy.

The blogpost to Homeless Tom was put up over a year ago. It's about an opinion piece I submitted to the Sacramento Bee in April of 2009, titled "Who the Sacramento Homeless Really Are, and How Best to Help Them. Guidance from an Insider."

In the piece, I wrote some things I now know are wrong by a country mile — like recommending sending money to funds-hoarding Loaves & Fishes or creepy VOA — but I also wrote this, as my recommendation of something the public should do for Homeless World Sacramento:

What do we need? Vegetables! There's lots and lots of sugar and starch in Homeless World, but artichokes and asparagus are next to unheard of. See if you can get your grocery store to help you out and sell you some produce that is being taken off the sales floor and GIVE it to you, or sell it to you at a deep discount, which you can GIVE to us!

Broccoli, green beans, asparagus, onions and tomatoes, hooray! If the quantity seems enough to provide a serving to feed a hundred-twenty, take what you collect to Union Gospel Mission [400 Bannon St.; Sacramento].

And I wrote this, which I stand by:

But savaged with problems or not, you will find, among the homeless, in greater proportion than in the general population, people with mighty hearts and kind natures – folks who are likable, lovable, thoughtful and as generous as they can be. Not surprisingly, Jesus was homeless [Matt 8:20], as was Buddha. And as are saints [like St. Francis and Margaret of Cortona] and bodhisattvas [like Layman Pang and Noah Yuttadhammo].

Noah posted a comment in May, 2009, which read:

You embarass me! I may be a homeless bum, but I'm no Bodhisattva. Just an ordinary bum. Next month I plan to hit the streets of Hollywood with the beggars. I already walk for alms here in North Hollywood, but I have a room in which to stay for the time being.

Thanks for the great article.

Peace and love,

Yuttadhammo

I responded (from two comments I wrote):

Yes, you don't accept that you are a bodhisattva -- you not being a mahayana buddhist -- but I arrogantly proclaim you one, anyway.

[also, yuttadhammo, there's that Classified ad thing.] J'accuse

That ad thing is pictured in this blogpost. How excellent to gain meditation training from an expert monk for the mere loan of a shed as a place to live!

By the way:  Don't miss Noah's wonderful blog, Truth is Within.

Noah's addition to the comment stream, today:

Ruined Monastery.

Sorry, I missed your replies. Forgot about that ad... well, I did end up staying under a picnic table once in North Hollywood. Just me, my robes and the cement. One of the best nights of my life.

Keep up the good work!

Ah ha! Curious thing, if you go to Noah's blogsite, one of the pictures in the Mast part, to the right, looks like Noah living under a tarp and in a tent.  The picture is titled "Ruined Monastery," which is sad, and explains Noah's sad-looking disposition, I think.  He looks (and is!) homeless, there, surely.

O, Noah!  You are tremendous, my bodhisattva friend.

Letter sent to Libby and L&F Board regarding unhealthy meals that are served

Following is a copy of a letter sent — Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 11:29 AM — to CEO Libby Fernandez and copied to the L&F Board of Directors, relating to the meals that are served by the homeless-help nonprofit. Twenty hours later, I was 86ed for life from the Loaves & Fishes facility. During the short meeting when I was told I was 86ed for Life, I was told that I would not be informed either why I was being 86ed, nor who made the decision.

from  Tom Armstrong email
to  Libby Fernandez email

cc: Bob Pinkerton email
Chris & Dan Delany email
David Leeper Moss email
David Moss email
Don Fado email
"Dorothy R. Smith" email
Gerrie Baskerville email
Karen Banker email
Kathleen Kelly email
Kelly Tanalepy email
LeRoy Chatfield email
Norm Fadness email
Tim Brown email

date  Wed, Jul 28, 2010 at 11:29 AM
subject  "15,000 hot healthy meals"

mailed-bygmail.com

Dear Libby,

In a blogpost, just before Independence Day, readers of sacloaves.org are told that, in the month of June, "over 15,000 hot healthy meals" were served by Loaves & Fishes.

Because the Sacramento Loaves & Fishes nonprofit isn't overseen by a government agency, as a elementary school would have to be, there is no solid effort of sustained recording of what's served to know if the meals served in June, or served now, are truly healthy. I submit that the assertion that meals served at Loaves & Fishes are healthy isn't based on much, if any, real evidence.

It is my belief that, from all sources [outside, perhaps, a few determined-to-feed-people-well shelters], homeless people get an overabundance of carbohydrates [in particular simple sugars which are prime causes of diabetes] and salt, and a deficit of wholesome vegetables and, thus, their daily requirements of vitamins and minerals.

Many homeless people can supplement their diets using foodstamps, but here, too, it is difficult to get good, healthy food. Convenience stores are both inordinantly expensive [$1.59 for a 20-oz soda], and stocked with a lot of junk food, and little or no fresh food.

In is my intent, on a sporatic/random basis, to eat at Loaves & Fishes and try to assess the meal and then enter what was provided to me to eat in NutritionData.com's database, which then provides a nutritional assessment of the meal.

If my observations are correct, I suspect that most Loaves & Fishes meals are not adequately healthy, but I would delight in being proved wrong.

I hope you all will follow along as I gather NutritionData.com data, and will consider adjustments to what is served to homeless people by Loaves & Fishes, if there are is too much of this, or too little of that, making meals generally less healthy than they should be.

You will be in a place, having the authority, to improve homeless people's meals, if the evidence suggests it. I hope you'll make changes, when indicated. Afterall, in a real but limited sense, we are what we eat.

Respectfully,

Tom Armstrong

Note that I recently reported on one unhealthy meal: a baglunch passed out in lieu of a hot meal (which wasn't available), last Saturday, which I ended my blogpost by properly calling it "a meal from hell." I understand now, that on Sunday a bag lunch of mostly junk food was given in lieu of a hot meal, too.

Last April, Libby Fernandez told me she "monitors" this blog and "instructed" me to no longer blog about Loaves & Fishes, here. Indeed, outside Sacramento Homeless blog, she has a lock on the unwitting press and doesn't want anything to interfere with her blitzkriegs of donation-gathering.

In response, I posted ten daily articles, from May 1 thru May 10, about what Loaves & Fishes is really like in Sacramento Press.

Loaves & Fishes’ program of “Collective Punishment”

Auschwitz gas chamber. While Loaves & Fishes' Collective Punishment acts and threats are not of a magnitude of what happens on the international stage, the psychology/philosophy is unjust, wrong and cruel, too.

In recent days Friendship Park co-manager Garren Bratcher and Jay, another Loaves & Fishes employee, have threatened the crowd in the cul-de-sac with closure of the Park for an hour if there are any instances of running when the gates are opened at 7am. While Garren and Jay have been beseeching, and seemingly kindly in the way they express themselves, it is fully a threat they are making, nonetheless.

I have complained, with a flier two years ago and a recent blogpost, about this grotesque practice of punishing all for the misdeeds of one or a few. Truly the punishment, and mere threat of such punishment, is unjust and can and does, when deployed, greatly disrupt the efforts of many homeless people to improve their lives.

I have now learned that Loaves & Fishes’ ongoing practice is termed “Collective Punishment,” which, is, of course, greatly condemned. At wikipedia, the term is described thus:

Collective punishment is the punishment of a group of people as a result of the behavior of one or more other individuals or groups. The punished group may often have no direct association with the other individuals or groups, or direct control over their actions.

In times of war and armed conflict, collective punishment has resulted in atrocities, and is a violation of the laws of war and the Geneva Conventions. Historically, occupying powers have used collective punishment to retaliate against and deter attacks on their forces by resistance movements (e.g. destroying whole towns and villages where attacks have taken place).

An example of an atrocious effort in Collective Punishment is the blaming and harming of Jews, by some Christians, for the supposed acts of some Jews, 2000 years ago, in being causal for the death of Christ. Collective punishment is also the method of the Nazis, used against Poles, in World War II: Killing ten Poles, arbitrarily, if one Nazi soldier was killed while policing the streets in Warsaw.

Collective punishment is the basis of racism and tribalism and the most backward and unjust of actions. It is the underpinning of War Crimes and is one of Loaves & Fishes’ longstanding practices to control homeless people, in tune with the philosophy of “warehousing the rabble.”

The administrative people in Friendship Park, known at Green Hats, are fully capable of punishing precisely those who disobey rules.  This is the just alternative to what they are now doing.

By punishing all people wanting and needing to get into the Park when it is scheduled to open, it delays homeless people at getting ready for and to work. Too, it prevents homeless people from otherwise “getting their day on” to take actions to get employment, or get to their appointments, or otherwise do something with and in their lives.

In the fairly recent past, Loaves & Fishes has closed its Park for days without giving notice of what it is doing in Collective Punishment because of empty alcohol bottles found in the men’s restroom, or somesuch.

For the actions of a few, all were punished. That is grotesque and if the Loaves & Fishes Board of Directors wasn’t by all indicators comatose, I would hope they would stop the nonprofit's terrible, primitive behaviors.

Lunch today at Loaves & Fishes

INGREDIENT	QUANTITY
Apple & Eve white grape juice	1.0 x Custom Food (125g)
Bologna, pork	4.0 x 1 slice, medium (4-1/2" dia x 1/8" thick) (1 oz) (28g)
Bread, wheat	2.0 x 1 slice (25g)
Cheese, cheddar	1.0 x 1 slice (1 oz) (28g)
Cheetos Crunchy cheese-flavored snacks	1.0 x Custom Food (18g)
Cracker Jack	1.0 x Custom Food (28g)
Crackers, cheese, sandwich-type with peanut butter filling	1.0 x 6 cracker (39g)
Mustard, prepared, yellow	1.0 x 1 tsp or 1 packet (5g)
Peaches, canned, extra light syrup, solids and liquids	4.0 x 1 ounce (28g)

When I went for lunch, today, at Loaves & Fishes, I, like everyone, was given a sack lunch.

I cannot say that all lunches distributed were the same, but very most likely all were the same or very similar to what I received, which was the following:

• A hotdog bun
• Four slices of ham-based bologna
• A slice of processed cheddar cheese
• Two 11 oz bottles of water
• A 1-oz box of Cracker Jack
• 1/4-cup container of peach-and-pear chunks
• 1.38-oz package of Austin Cheese Crackers with Peanut Butter
• 5/8-oz package off Cheetos Crunchy cheese-flavored snacks
• 4.23 fl oz waxed bottle-box of Apple&Eve White Grape juice
• a small packet of yellow mustard

I thought it would be interesting to use this lunch as a first (unofficial) instance of testing the nutrition of what Loaves & Fishes serves poor people. It was my contention two years ago that what was served was so unhealthy, it bordered on criminal. Things have since gotten better, but it is still not a healthful place for people, in my opinion. And, indeed, nobody knows how healthy/unhealthy the food is because the nonprofit specifically refuses government funds in order not to have its activities overseen.

The table [above right] shows how I 'entered' the meal. Where it says "custom food," it means I entered the item off the nutrition information cited on the package.

Here: http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/1719929/2?nc=1&autosave=form.info.autosave#ixzz0udUWGtlV you can see SPECIFICALLY what I entered and the evaluation of the meal at NutritionData.com.

The lunch had 1066 calories, which is approximately half what you should eat in a day.  There were 51 grams of fat, which is 79% of the daily allowance.  There were 17 grams of saturated fat, which is 86% of the daily allowance.

Cholesterol, carbohydrates and fiber were good; about what you should get from a meal. But it had 98% of the salt one should consume in a day, and salt is something that has recently been shown to be something we should all cut way, way back on.

Basically, it is a terrible meal.  It is understandable that sack lunches are likely to be less nutritious than hot lunches, but this lunch was extraordinarily bad, in a health awareness sense. For a homeless person it is a meal from hell.

Odds and Ends

It ain't cute

I posted an essay in Progressive Buddhism, titled "If you see the nice buddhists on the road, run over them with your tank."  The title pretty much explains the essay, though those who know the state of Western Buddhism and issues relating to the Buddho­blogo­sphere¹ and Tricycle magazine might better understand some references.  Yes, I snarl and rant in the piece.

The title of the essay alludes to the idea, coming from ancient Chinese Zen [Ch'an], that "if you see the Buddha on the road, kill him," which means that you should not try to ape the (historical) Buddha, or closely pattern yourself to be like him.  Rather, you should become a buddha - a unique buddha - by practice that makes you less egoic or more compassionate, resulting, ultimately, hopefully, if you're lucky, in full-throttle enlightenment, which will make you the envy of your fitful Buddhist friends.
---

The SafeGround crowd had their rally in Cesar Chavez Park on Tuesday.  I was there to pass out 35 fliers [which was as many as I could affort to create].  You can see the flier here, or by pressing the button "SafeGround Flier" on the green bar at the top of this page.

Per usual, when I do a flier-handout thing I have an interesting time.

Mark Merin was there, nattily dressed.  Smiling, he refused a flier that I offered.

John Krantz demanded a flier.  I told him no, they cost me 18¢ apiece and I only had a few left. I told him he knew where my website was where he could view what I wrote.  He came back with a quarter and said gruffly that that should more than cover my costs, so I sold him one and he left thinking he had gotten the best of me in the contretemps.

Garren, John [the former JV, now Green Hat], and SG's Jaime sat in a row on the grass.  Garren gave me an animated hand-sign that he explained was the surfer sign for "hang loose."  "A good thing?" I asked.  "Yes," he said.

A woman who introduced herself as David Moss's wife walked up to me, smiling broadly, and said she couldn't understand why I was doing this.  [Handing out fliers and resisting SafeGround's charms I guess is what she meant.]

David Moss is a methodist minister and a member of the feckless Board of Loaves & Fishes.  His fame, in my circle, comes from his fatuous attempt to somehow beat Libby Fernandez in a race to get arrested in protest of there being no legal homeless campground in Sacramento.  Moss won, getting himself arrested last September, winning Brownie points on the Sacramento Edam-cheese-and-cabernet Progressive-politics party circuit.

I told Ms. Moss that there were links online that proved the case, in the flier, that SafeGround was making a lot of effort to make America a communist country.  Her beaming smile never flagging, she said she was stumped trying to understanding why that mattered.  So, I told her donors had a right to know what SafeGround really was all about and I, then, just generally, repeated some of what I'd already written.  She continued to claim not to understand.

Libby was there.  She walked up to me and I asked if there were any dead babies yet.  She said she didn't understand, and I asked if the lack of formula had resulted in any deaths.  She said there was, indeed, an urgent need for formula.  She walked away, telling me I could still use Loaves & Fishes services - which I hadn't asked about.

Paula Lomazzi of SHOC started yelling and cussing at me when I booed when Libby came up to the stage to speak.  I 'returned' Paula's FU, which I regret.
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This morning, Loaves & Fishes did one of their usual treating-homeless-adult-people-like-toddlers things, that wastes adult homeless people's time and disrupts people's day.

A couple of guys ran after the gates were open at Friendship Park at 7am.  In 'retaliation' Tim and Jim hustled everybody [about 120 people, I'm guessing] out of the park and kept it closed for 15 minutes before reopening.

One guy, after we were outside the gates, again, said that he was upset because he had an appointment at the welfare office he needed to get to first thing.  It was a long walk and he was now worried he'd be late.  Someone suggested he hitchhike, but he, and others, said that didn't work, downtown.

I saw the running incident of the guy who directly prompted Tim to close the park.  Yes, he was running, but it was in an empty stretch of five yards of space.  There was absolutely no endangerment from his conduct.

Two years ago, I distributed a flier to homeless people, days after a similar park closure thing, then.  It is reproduced below.  I guess now the Nin quote at the bottom applies ever-more aptly to Friendship Park (and L&F) administration.  I cannot say, that today, I give Loaves & Fishes ANY credit for compassion, as I had nearly two years ago.

Your Time Has Value

Your Life Has Meaning

Last Friday morning, a few people, focused solely on their own wants or needs, rushed into Friendship Park after the gates opened, oblivious to safety considerations. It was the ill-thought determination of Park or L&F management that the park should then be evacuated and closed and that it (and other L&F services, such as Men’s Washroom) should remain closed for a period of thirty minutes.

This “toddler’s time out” imposed upon all the “guests” of the Park is demonstrative of a nanny-management philosophy in place at Loaves that treats the adult users of its services as irresponsible children.

Solely because of the big-hearted generosity of Sacramento-area individuals and businesses, Loaves & Fishes exists – as a facility to promote the well-being of people who have fallen on Hard Times. These individuals and businesses provide Loaves & Fishes with over $5,000,000 each year to improve the lives of displaced people like you and me.

By closing the park for thirty minutes, in an act of impetuosity, L&F imperils the ability of people to get to work or meet court dates or make it to other appointments or to otherwise achieve something or get full measure from their day. While no one doubts there is compassion at the heart of Loaves of Fishes, one has to wonder if the people in charge are enough aware of the implications of their acts and how fantastic and amazing and worthy of ‘a break’ the people they serve are. Basically, Loaves has abundant heart, but inadequate head; compassion, but not wisdom.

Regular users of Loaves’ services are greatly appreciative of what they receive and view what they receive as life-saving. Absent Loaves and Fishes, many of us would go hungry, left on the mean streets with a foul body odor, in misery and despair. But while this is true, it is fair to ask if the Loaves and Fishes operation is nearly as good as it should be and if it is getting enough “bang for the buck” from the donations it receives.

Loaves and Fishes operating culture believes in lines and queues, like the welfare office; a parent-to-child transactional mode, like the welfare office; punishing all for the “misbehavior” of a few, like kindergarten teachers and Nazis in Poland. If there was greater appreciation for poor people’s lives, on high, I think there would be motivation to fix these very evident flaws of operation.

Life is a process of ‘becoming,’ a combination of

states we have to go through.

Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state

and remain in it. This is a kind of death.

-- Anais Nin

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¹ I humbly lay claim to having coined this word while blogging Blogmandu which was a Buddhism blogging meta-blog. Blogmandu provided news about interesting Buddhism blogs and posts and issues that were aswirl in the Buddhism end of the worldwide blogging pool.

Babies are gonna die! Babies are gonna die!

There's a concocted sense of panic at the Sacramento Loaves & Fishes website.

Be very scared!  Babies are going to die!

In a post titled "Urgent need!" - and, yes with an exclamation point! - we are told:

Just got word from the Directors at Maryhouse, our day shelter for women and children, that they are completely out of Baby Formula. They've been warning parents that we may not have any formula the next time they come in for some!

We are in desperate need of non-soy baby formula!

Donations can be brought to
Loaves & Fishes
1321 North C Street, Sacramento
M-F 7am to 245pm.

The blogpost is dated July 13 and is still up. Likely, there are dead babies, under shrouds, in the facility's cul-de-sac already!

Woe. It is too bad that nobody thought to spend just a little of Loaves & Fishes $2 million, in cash and temporary investments that's been accumulated in just the last few years¹, on baby formula.

Instead, the KILLER PUBLIC! The fully EVIL CITIZENS of SACRAMENTO are BABY KILLERS!!!!!!! What a horrible thought. But how far worse, much much worst to suppose - gulp - that as a marketing strategy, Loaves & Fishes exaggerates need into crisis to extract money [usually, but, also things, too, like baby formula] from people's purses and wallets². No, no, no. It can't be that.

It's funny³, Loaves and Fishes hosts meeting and events aimed at getting rid of capitalism in this country because, so they suggest, capitalism encourages bad behavior. It wants organizations to act more like it!? Is Loaves & Fishes the prototype for how an organization should behave in a capitalism-outlawed United States!?

Loaves & Fishes is significntly dysfunctional.  It seldom, and possibly never, gives warning such that any but a very small percentage of people who use its services know when it will close.  Its employees act as if that responsibility doesn't exist for them.  They ignore dead trees in the park, one of which fell, and in L&F executive Joan Burke's words, could easily have killed somebody.  They tell homeless people to lie to Census workers.  When homeless people get food poisoning, they cite Loaves & Fishes as the likely source.

ALSO, Loaves & Fishes can refer pregnant women or women of young children to WIC, the federal program that guarantees that fetuses and children are fed, but doing that might undermine the sense of Urgent Need! and, you know, undermine the L&F campaign to panic citizens into sending Loaves & Fishes money and stuff.
--
¹ Loaves & Fishes raised $394,000 more than it spent in 2007; $1,155,000 more than it spent in 2008; and about $250,000 more than it spent in 2009.
² Good point, pesky reader:  People seldom keep non-soy baby formula in their wallets.
³ Actually it is very seriously NOT funny.

L&F's Wash House and the Race to the Bottom

Yesterday, the Loaves & Fishes Men's Wash House was closed without giving notice to the some 140 guys who would have used the facility that day.

I had learned a couple days beforehand that the facility would be closed on that one day for the reason that the guys who work there needed a "mental health day."  I put up a 'notice' in the 'upcoming events' sidebar in this blog.  Likely, exactly zero men benefited from that notice in SacHo blog.

In other organizations, where providing good service is necessary to stay in business, employees take mental health days, individually, and the work of the organization goes forward.  In other organizations and in business, you can't rather suddenly close for nine straight days, as Loaves & Fishes' Friendship Park did during the first nine days of May, and not give a rat's ass about what effect that has on your customers/clients/the people who need your services.

In reputable organizations, administrative people who conduct themselves the way the administration does at Loaves & Fishes would be summarily fired.  I submit that the majority of administrators at Loaves & Fishes should be canned immediated and that that alone would make the world a happier, brighter, snappier and more-effervescent and -refreshing place.  Pouring tar and feathers on the L&F Board of Directors and running them out of the county would be a good thing, too.

The chair on the bridge
where Capt. Kirk sat.

At Loaves & Fishes [with the $10,000/day¹ it receives in donations from kindly, but non-inquisitive Sacramento citizens] dead trees don't get removed in an always-crowded park such that when one fell it could easily have smashed somebody.² Nowhere else is there such blithe administrative disinterest in being responsible.

It has since been learned that the Wash House staff took Thursday off, not for mental health, but to go to a Star Trek exhibit at the Aerospace Museum of California.  Some of the staff of the Wash House are Trekkies.  There is a mural in the staff section of the Wash House that shows the bridge of the starship Enterprise.

Make no mistake, I think the world of the way that Mark (usually) manages the Wash House.  I volunteered some time working there and I continue to use the facility. If Mark and a few of the boys wanted to take a day off, I submit that it would have been very possible for others to step in and run the joint for a day, keeping it open such that homeless guys could "get their day on" by first getting themselves clean and presentable.  Absent that, there certainly should have been an effort to post signage, and get the word out, to let homeless guys know such that they could find alternate means to get bathed and shaved early enough to meet their obligations for the day.

My guess is, and I bet I'm right, the Wash House gang were growlly because the people who work in the Park, effectively, got a whole week off the first week in May, whereas they had to be open a couple of days, then. Thus, in a race to the bottom³, the Wash House gang got to disappear from work for a day as something of recompense. The competition is on at Loaves & Fishes for who gets to work the least.

The work of Loaves & Fishes, helping the hungry, homeless and misbegotten, is as noble as it gets. But those who work there don't understand all that. They don't understand how fortunate they are to do something meaningful and that it all is sure to make a difference in this hardscrabble world.

Many don't have a clue and instead of recognizing that they have a direct opportunity to make the kingdom of heaven on earth, there are wacky ideas in the L&F Ivory Tower of turning America into a Communist Paradise, with gulags and no freedom and drudgery and the government owning everything and, dammit, a ceasation to any technological advancement!  There's more work to be had if everybody has to pull their own plow through the cornfields.  Backwards to the Dark Ages, ho!
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¹ Donations were over $3,650,000 in 2009.
² Joan Burke, L&F's Advocacy Director was quoted in a Sac Bee article on Jan. 22, 2010:

"By the grace of god, the limb fell off first, piercing the roof of one of the gazebos," said Burke. "It was pouring rain, and people had to come out of the cover. There was quite a bit of grumbling, but not 10 minutes later, the whole tree went over, crushing several benches. So we are very thankful there was nobody there, because they truly would have been killed."

³ A race to the bottom usually refers to a situation caused by an individual seeking a more favorable outcome at the expense of others by upsetting an equilibrium to their own favor, only to cause retaliation by the other individuals, resulting in a competition that leads to an overall dire outcome, for each and every body, and, often, for others [aka, homeless men!] who were not among the competitors. [Some wording from this definition is 'borrowed' from a wikipedia article that is no longer online as it had been.]

SHOC and Safe Ground, with John Kraintz's participation, at Communist confab in Detroit

Five delegates¹ from SHOC’s so-called “Homeless Leadership Project” and SafeGround [including John Kraintz, who is listed as a “participant”] were at the US Social Forum which, despite its name, was not about clog dancing, but, instead, turning our country into a communist one. The US Social Forum is a part of the People’s Movement Assembly which is a bunch of wacky, nutty far-far-far-Leftist craziness by people who are completely out of touch with the central lesson of the Twentieth Century: that Communism doesn’t work and is a bloody nightmare.

The assemblage was held in Detroit’s convention center and drew massively less than the 20,000 people the sponsors claimed.  People stayed away in droves.  But the Communist Party USA was there, one of the few groups that actually uses the C-word when advocating the C-word.

SHOC [aka, Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee] and SafeGround [aka, Safe Ground] are the Frankenstein offspring of Loaves & Fishes and have their offices in L&F’s Friendship Park.  Both are mysterious organizations, even to those of us who frequent Homeless World Sacramento.

The only named person associated with SHOC is Paula Lomazzi, even on the page at the SHOC website where its history is given.  My experience is that attorney Cathleen Williams is the brains behind SHOC.  She has been the leader at two SHOC meetings I attended in 2009, and at the so-called Homeless Power Forum.  All of these events were in Loaves & Fishes' Delany Center.  Both Lomazzi, and more so Williams, contribute to the Communist newspaper People's Tribune. [The organization behind People's Tribune (and another publication, Rally, Comrades!) is the League of Revolutionaries for a New America, [here's the wikipedia listing] formerly named the Communist League.  One online organization identifies them as Stalinist and fervently anti-democratic.]

I have asked that Safe Ground meet its one public obligation [a "public inspection" requirement] to know how it is organized, by seeing its nonprofit application. [See Publication 557]  Indeed, when I visited the organization's office last March 31, Libby Fernandez was summoned to come down to talk with me and instructed me to "wait patiently." To this day, Ms. Fernandez, a member of the board of directors of Safe Ground [I think; they provide no paperwork], has not turned over that information.  Her reason given last March was that Safe Ground had not yet gotten its non-profit approval number.

At the People's Movement Assemblies website, you get this as part of the Vision Statement from their homepage [emphases, mine]:

We believe that we can create a new economic system that is not based on individual, corporate or private ownership and does not exploit people, the planet, natural resources or living beings but instead is based on principles of collectivity and sustains our communities. We must move aside old systems that have failed and create new ones that serve and are accountable to all peoples and all living beings.


We must link arms with our sisters and brothers globally and commit to a willingness to work together to seek understanding, to coordinate action and to move forward collectively with a sense of urgency to create a more just world. We acknowledge the need to break down barriers. We must integrate our national struggles for the human rights to dignity, welfare, freedom and justice.

Can you say "Communism"!?  It's not a "new economic system," it's something that has been tried two-dozen times and killed more than a hundred million people, summarily [that is, not by war, but more in the fashion of lining people up in front of trenches and giving them a bellyful from machine guns], and the death and misery continues in several countries, today.

Communism fails because it gets all the incentives to work backwards and because the all-powerful government it puts in place has no 'checks' that deter corruption.  Communism may sound good, in the abstract, but in operation it devolves into a cruel totalitarian regime.  Every time. It may be forgivable to have believed in Communism eighty years ago, but to believe in it today is insane.  The evidence of its horror is abundant.

The Leftist so-called homeless-help agencies in Sacramento are an abomination.  They are not liberal.  They are not progressive.  They are foolish totalists.  They are spending some of any contributions you give to them to try to foment a massive conflagration of terror in this country (that, granted, won't happen during the lifetimes of any of us, since so many of us know a little history).  These whacky far-Leftists in Homeless World Sacramento may be naïve.  They are certainly ridiculous, and they put in a lot of effort to do something that would be astronomically high on the stupidity scale.

Here words from the May/June edition of Rally, Comrades!:

…abolition of private property has a name. Communism is the common, public ownership of the means of production – with everyone contributing to society what he or she is able to contribute and everyone taking from society what he or she needs. Today, when computers and robots increasingly replace human labor in supplying goods and services, communism is the way to reorganize society to get food to the hungry, homes to the homeless, health care to the sick. It is the way to save Mother Earth from the corporations and to unleash the full potential of humanity.

If you don't know your history, it may sound good, but it is catastrophic.  Many people, including me, are frustrated by the abusiveness of unfettered capitalism.  But there are many, many things that can be done to address all that that doesn't put an end to freedom and democracy and checks against government abuse.

For the record:  I am not a Tea Partier, nor a hard-hearted conservative nutjob.  I am Buddhist and liberal and know something about history.
---
¹ Update 7/9/10 the article, posted at Street News Service, online, was originally published in hardcopy in SHOC's Homeward Journal, July/August issue, buried on page 4, with Cathleen Williams cited as the writer.

Homeless man painting

From the blog and blogger Cre8tiv Glory:  A painting of "a man I saw standing on a corner holding this sign."  The blogpost is titled "Homeless in Sacramento."

Where's the Sermon on the Mount!? Jesus' initial talk is near never mentioned at the mission.

"The Sermon on the Mount," a fresco in the Sistine Chapel, done by Cosimo Rosselli

When a group fails to show to lead the congregants in praise and worship, to give testimonies and deliver a sermon, the burden [though he certainly doesn't feel it to be a burden] falls on Donny Braninburg, the Union Gospel Mission's Eagle's Nest Ranch Supervisor, to give the night's sermon to the guys.

Though "failure to show" has been very rare, there's been a spate of no-shows recently, and Donny's considerable skills as a preacher have been on display three times in the last two weeks.

In his most-recent talk, Donny made the point that if Jesus were around in Sacramento at this time, he would expect Him to come to the mission. We the congregants at the mission, the undercaste of society, impoverished, plagued with extreme problems of various sorts, would be the very folks Jesus would likely most want to fraternize with and teach.

I'm probably not spiritually plugged in nor knowledgeable enough to express an opinion on something as woolly as what Jesus would be doing if He were in Sacramento today, but I am arrogant enough to say what I think: I think Donny's right!

But this brings to the fore several questions I want to deal with here: How much like the undercaste of Jesus' place and time are we in the undercaste in Sacramento, today? What message can the mission crowd glean from The Sermon on the Mount? And why do preachers who come to the mission fail to bring us the message of Jesus' inaugural talk?  I ask this because I recall no instance of the Sermon on the Mount being mentioned by any group preaching at Union Gospel Mission, and having asked others, who have been around longer than I have, neither do they recall mention of The Sermon at the mission.

I snagged a book I found at the Central library to help me with my investigation: Understanding the Sermon on the Mount by Harvey K. McArthur.  It's a wee book, under 200 pages, but scholarly and seemingly forthright and objective and keen on focusing in on controversy regarding that first one of Jesus' sermons. [I note that wikipedia uses McArther's book almost exclusively in its section on interpreting The Sermon on the Mount.]

In Christianity's blooming, beautiful first three centuries, chapter five of Matthew and and the sequence of chapters five through seven, where text re the sermon is at the fore, were far the favorites and most discussed chapters and sections of the New Testament.  Early Christians, who were communities of deeply loving people, were crazy, nutty, wild and enthralled by The Sermon on the Mount.

Later, reverence for The Sermon broke down more than bit — but not because it was disparaged, rather because people were unsure what the heck The Sermon meant and the fact that it didn't suit the effort to convert people by grace. And, it's requirements were too severe, maybe. The "competition" that the Sermon on the Mount had was Paul's message, from his many letters, which takes up the lion's share of the the New Testament, as determined by the Nicene council that put the Bible together, selecting those books which "made the cut."

The Sermon on the Mount, you see, is poetic and grand, welcoming and compassionate, but expects a lot, possibly leaving many worldly-successful Christian people without prospect of getting a mansion in heaven.

Some love The Sermon.  Others, much less.  Yet others, not at all.

Gandhi loved The Sermon, second only to the Bhagavad Gita.  St. Francis of Assisi embraced The Sermon and believed it fully literally … and lived it.

Martin Luther, father of the Lutheran church, hated The Sermon, calling it "the devil's masterpiece" of mischief.

Taken literally or almost literally [with a view that it is hyperbole], The Sermon says that people should become extremely meek, mild, compassionate, loving, righteous and good.  And that doing this, they find the path to heaven.  Paul, in his epistles, never speaks directly of Jesus [which is rather surprising] and he certainly seems to instruct that people are saved by faith and grace, alone.  [This, re Paul, is disputed, btw, by Elaine Pagels, who says that the epistle that is now I Corintians 15 was understood, in its time, to mean that Paul knew, as the leaders in Corinth knew, the resurrection story was a myth.  But Paul instructed that the Corinthians accept the myth, to better lead people to heaven's gate.]

So, which is it: Saved by grace or good works? It's a prime question that plagues Christiandom to this day.

I understand, and accept, that the mission preachers present a literal view of the Bible text.  And that there is much in the Bible that instructs and supports a teaching of "saved by grace."  But the preachers all tell us they believe the whole of the Bible is text either dictated by God or fully inspired by God.  It is inerrant and fully true.  The absence of mention of the The Sermon becomes a curious omission.

I understand that the preachers who come to the mission don't commiserate with each other and don't coordinate what they preach with brethren preachers on the schedule.  Thus, on some rare occasions, three preachers will talk about the same thing in a week's time.  [The Prodigal Son; David and Goliath; the Jonah story; and Abraham almost slaying his son are frequent sermon topics.]

I understand, too, that many preachers come to the mission hoping to "hit a home run," and save a boatload of souls in one fell swoop.  And that talking about The Sermon might not have a snowball's chance of meeting that high hope.

Still.  Someone should talk about The Sermon.  It's big.  And it's out there.  And I'd bet many of the best of the regular preachers have something - even a lot - that they can say.

So.  What of my questions:

How much like the undercaste of Jesus' place and time are we in the undercaste in Sacramento, today?

We are different than the peasant class of Jesus' place and time.  Most of those people were fully uneducated, worked very hard and scraped to get by, and because of how the Jewish religion was taught, they were pretty much fully expected to be left out of heaven.  But Jesus said they were the last who would be first.

We in the undercaste in Sacramento can't find work or enough of it or don't work, though there is a massive amount of talent 'out on the streets.'  Jesus and the mission folk mightily want to save our souls.

What message can the mission crowd glean from The Sermon on the Mount?

We're listening, O Mission Preachers.  Tell us.

And why do preachers who come to the mission fail to bring us the message of Jesus' inaugural talk?

I hope it's just a random thing, and because of reasons discussed in this blogpost.  I expect it's not because it's the Will of God.

"Libby News in Sacramento" is being captured by fwix

View Larger Map

A news-gathering online source is now capturing "Libby News in Sacramento."  I find that it is of some uncomfortable interest to me that eight out of the thirteen stories on the first page of what the news-gathering site has captured are articles I've written for either Sacramento Homeless blog or Sacramento Press.  In all those stories, about Loaves & Fishes, I am likely to have mentioned L&F CEO Libby Fernandez.

Be aware that I certainly didn't put fxiw up to the task of "capturing" Libby.  [Really.  I DIDN'T, Libby.  I swear.  I know you're monitoring this.  Honest.  Please don't 86 me!  Don't reach for the God button on your desk.  Don't do it, Libby.  Please.]

The first page of the site even includes a map of Libby, which after some research I've determined to be a town in the Kootenai National Forest in the far northwest corner of Montana, near where Montana, Idaho and Canada butt heads. [If you think of Montana as being a buffalo facing west, Libby is next to the animal's frontal lobe.]

At right is a map I created of Libby, showing the Libby Shopping Center and Cemetery.  Friendship Park is curiously not visible.

Excellent photographs of Tent City residents on display online

Sacramento Tent City, California
Photo taken by Peter Duke

At a website called Photography Served there are some terrific photographs of people identified as residents of Sacramento’s Tent City [circa January to August, 2009].

The photographs appear to have been taken by Peter Duke who had a grant from or is otherwise associated with the I Am Waters Foundation.

The pictures appear in a set of 17. The first seven are from Tent City. The last ten are from “Lower Ninth Ward - New Orleans” and “Houston.” I recognize several of the Tent City faces.

At the I am Waters Foundation website is the story on "Sacramento Tent City - 2009" where Peter Duke tells the tale of meeting the homeless and photographing many of them. More photographs are seen at this site, as is a video of Matthew Doss singing a bit of "A Change is Gonna Come," acapella.

I mightily like how the photographs were taken, using a technique that Andrew Zuckerman uses in his stationary and video photography: focusing on the subject; presenting it vividly, not starkly; in a positive way; and against a white backdrop.

Those photographed “look good” in the Duke spread as opposed to how Tent City people appeared in an SN&R spread last year where many of the people appear stark, somewhat mimicking how Dorthea Lange photographed people in the Depression Era to garner sympathy.