The experience of addiction, cycling in and out of rehab, and just generally being homeless

Becky Blanton [pic from her website]

There is a wonderfully interesting article, posted to Salon yesterday, titled "When my car was the safest place to live," that explains addiction and rehab right, from my knowledge of and observation of many of the great guys I know that have (or had) addiction problems and have experienced rehab at the mission. [I, myself, don't have an addiction problem - I should report - so I don't know the experience firsthand.]

Here is the 'money' quote, for me, explaining the problem of being addicted and the cycling in and out of rehab:

Thousands of alcoholics and addicts walk away from jobs, family, fortunes and seemingly stable lives every day. It is the nature of addiction. It is the nature of being human. Most addicts walk away from rehab, for that matter, or go through several cycles of rehab before being clean and sober finally sticks. What people don't realize about Ted [a homeless man in the news, recently, who walked away from his rehab program on Monday] is that he's not failing. He's right on track. He's just caught in the cycle of addiction: He believes the only way to alleviate the pain he's feeling is to use the drug that hurts him. And make no mistake: Withdrawal brings pain. Once the fog of drugs and booze clears, Williams has to face what he's lost: the years, the life, the relationships tossed, squandered or destroyed.

AND, there is this, the author describing how she felt being in the homeless undercaste -- a feeling, now even though her life has been righted, she has not [and may never] fully escape.

… there is safety in being invisible. No one expects anything. You're living the life you believe you deserve. No matter how you ended up on the street, a part of you believes you deserve it somehow. Stay on the street long enough and your self-esteem bottoms out. You begin to say you want out, but the reality is that the demands of a job, a schedule, are daunting. As hard as life on the streets becomes, a part of you enjoys the simplicity. Days become a blur and you become numb. And being numb from the pain is almost as much of a high as being numb from the bottle or the needle.

For some bizarre reason the kinder a stranger is to you, the more pain you feel. There is shame in feeling unworthy and in not measuring up to others' expectations. It's an awful dynamic: The greater the support of others, the more panicked you become. The more someone says, "You rock!" the more you feel like a fraud. The chasm between their reality of who you are and your distorted self-perception becomes too great. So the pain returns in force and so does the need to stop the pain in whatever way possible.

This isn't quite how I would describe my own experience of being in the homeless undercaste, but it is in the ballpark, and I have to greatly credit writer Becky Blanton for her ability at conveying her experience.  You rock, Becky!  No, really.  Truly.

Here, Becky Blanton's cool blog: beckyblanton.com

Genealogy in Homeless World

A fellow [I’m call him Lenny] who regularly stays at the mission is greatly interested in his ancestry. He spends a lot of time and money putting together books identifying those who preceded him on this earth, who, through a procession of births, from generation-to-generation, led to his being here (on earth and, now, a homeless guy).

He has a great many notable ancestors who were royalty: Kings and dukes, lords and ladies from families that ruled Denmark, Poland, Germany, Russia, and to a lesser extent, other European countries. He has even traced his line back to an ancestor mentioned in the first book of Matthew where Jesus’ family line is given, tracing King David forward to Joseph, Mary’s husband.

When Lenny went around telling people he was related to Jesus it became too much.  His pride in himself and feeling of superiority became constant and keenly evident.  He seriously began to disdain the rest of us, the unwashed masses, and feel himself a (much much better) breed apart.

My erstwhile friend, this avid amateur genealogist, proudly claims to have linked his tree up with Phares, found in Matthew 1, verse 3: “3 And Judas begat Phares and Zara of Thamar; and Phares begat Esrom; and Esrom begat Aram;”

Unless I blew the count, Phares is 36 generations before Jesus, which means he was born, something like 800 years prior to Jesus’s birth (figuring 22.5 years per generation). Since one’s great-grandfather is three generations prior, Phares is Jesus’s great-times-thirty-three grandparent.

Lenny often told me how proud he is to have royal lineage.  When he made a new find, he'd bend the ear of everyone he knew to let them in on the good news.  And he tells us that he, seriously, would like to see royal succession in the United States.

But in being prideful, Lenny is unaware of the geometrical explosion in the count of ancestors after but a piddling few generations. After a thousand years it is pretty much the case that everybody is rather closely related to everybody else.

And nowadays, with jumbo jets and instant communication everywhere, the division of continents is meaningless.  Soon, the distinction we give to 'race' [even as there is really no such thing as race] will disappear in only a matter of five hundred years or so because we will be so very very intermixed.

Here’s how the math works with Jesus' descendancy from Phares:

Everybody has two biological parents; four biological grandparents and eight biological great-grand parents. Each generation backward doubles. If you go back ten generations, you have 2-to-the-10th-power or 1024 greatXseven-grandparents. If you go back 20 generations, you have 2-to-the-20th-power or 1,048,576 greatXseventeen-grandparents. If you go back 36 generations, the distance in generations that separates Phares from Jesus, you can say that Phares is just one of Jesus’s 2-to-the-36th-power, or 68,719,476,736 [that’s, sixty-eight billion, seven-hundred-nineteen million, four-hundred seventy-six thousand, seven-hundred thirty-six] greatXtwenty-nine-grandparents. Indeed, it is certainly the case that every Israeli alive in Jesus’s time was a descendant of Phares [and of David!] and probably along many, if not all, of the 68 billion lines of descent.

According to various sources, the population in 1 A.D. was about 250,000,000 people, with about 7,000,000 Jews in the Middle East.  In David's time, there were 5,000,000 Jews in the Middle East.  It's hard to do any specific mathmatical analysis, but 68 billion divided by 5 million is 1,360 which suggests that Phares can have been an ancestor of Jesus more than a thousand times!

You bring things forward to today, the year 2011, that's about 75 generations after the life of Jesus, let's say -- though 100 is probably closer.  2-to-the-75th-power is 37,800,000,000,000,000,000,000 -- which is astronomically large -- and means we each have greatXseventy-five-grandparents that out number the population of the year Zero [which is approximately when those ancestors were alive] by a mulitple of trillions. This means we are each and all pretty much related to EVERYBODY who was on earth in the year Zero thousands and thousands and thousands of times over, with only the exception of those whose bloodlines died out.

It is difficult for us to comprehend how very closely related we all are. Sure, the continents, separated us by waters for tens of thousands of years, allowing for there to be continent-caused outward physical differences that we can see that are distinctive for folks most of whose ancestry comes from these continents. Europeans are light skinned; Africans are dark skinned; Asians are yellow; New World Indians are red or brown; Mideastern people are brown. But even with these continent differences, there was A LOT of intermixing. Indeed, each of us also has from 1% to 4% Neanderthal DNA. Neanderthal people are considered to be a distinct and extinct species from us homo sapiens and yet they are in the bloodline of ALL of us today.

We don’t see it, because it happens in the course of generation to generation, but these skin-color distinctions are fast disappearing. While we are not, as a species, becoming uniform in our appearance by any means, we are becoming radically and completely connected with one-another in a single family tree that wraps ever-faster around itself. The basis for being alienated from one-another is, happily, getting lost.

If we are not yet brothers and sisters, we are already all close cousins, and we should get used to it, accept it, and act like it is so. We should celebrate the success and happiness of any people on the other side of the street, or on the other side of the globe. Because them is us.  We are all connected to the royals and we are all connected to those who are starving.  We are all connected to the rich and we are all connected to the homeless.  Hooray!

Abandonment of mentally ill homeless gets Bee's attention

It has been a long-standing complaint from this blog that those suffering the most in Homeless World Sacramento — homeless people who are mentally ill, a great many of whom are schizophrenic — have been abandoned by both local government and the homeless-help service providers in our metropolis.

A Sacramento Bee headline article on Sunday, "Sacramento officers take fewer in crisis for help" [titled "Cops seek help for fewer in crisis" in hardcopy] tells us "In the last two years, the number of incident reports showing people taken into custody as 5150s [Involuntary psychiatric hold] dropped nearly 40 percent in the combined territory of the Sacramento police and county sheriff's departments, going from 2,215 during 2008 to 1,352 during 2010, records show."

The article goes on to say, "… the effects of declining 5150s involving police are disputed. Some professionals said it shows residents slipping through the cracks, endangering themselves and the public. Others said community groups have picked up the slack, and that the old system created too many involuntarily commitments."

I can tell you that in Homeless World, as this blog has been screaming, the declining 5150 is due to homeless-services providers dodging their duty and allowing those who suffer most not to get any attention. It is a scandal.  Even if we grant that the mental-health professionals also bailed on the mentally ill wandering on the streets, it remains a scandal that the homeless-services providers in Sacramento didn't 'step up' to help these abandoned, suffering people.

The headline Bee article is co-written by Cynthia Hubert, the Bee's Homeless Beat reporter who I have heard described as "Loaves & Fishes' friend," and "someone who can be counted on to get our [Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee's] word out." Certainly, Hubert's "Homeless Beat" reportering has fully followed the Loaves & Fishes line, ignoring Loaves & Fishes problems and failures.

In 2008, Volunteers of America [VOA] stopped its mentally-ill outreach program, which employed, maybe, a dozen people.  I believe I am correct in saying that they lost outside funding, probably from the county, and determined not to fund the program from the nonprofit's donations.  Nothing was substituted for that disbanded program.  VOA should have partially funded the outreach program from reducing the outrageous  $300,000 salary that is paid to the organization's President/CEO — though that would have to have been a national-headquarters decision, rather than one from the Sacramento-area office.  Still, wiping out Outreach is in significant part the cause of failure to help mentally ill people 'out on the street' in the last couple years.

At Loaves & Fishes, some people with training at identifying mental illness should be employed on the Friendship Park staff, but that doesn't happen since the administration is focused on promoting Safe Ground, which abides by the backwards, curious politics of the L&F Board of Directors which is stuck on 1930s-era radical political ideas relating to the Catholic Workers' Movement.  [Quoting wikipedia: "The movement campaigns for nonviolence and is active in opposing both war and the unequal distribution of wealth globally."] Basically, they suppose they can turn America into a socialist utopia where everyone is guaranteed a job, technological advancement is stopped and all assets are owned by the collective.  It's an Orwellian nightmare on steroids.  And part of promoting an Orwellian America involves hiring new employees on the basis of proven loyalty to Loaves & Fishes, and not in regard to what skills are needed that would most benefit the homeless population at the park.

As I wrote recently,

Loaves & Fishes fully ignores most mentally ill people who use many services at the Loaves & Fishes’ Mall of Services. The very evidently mentally ill that Sacramento citizens can see out of the streets are getting no help whatsoever or very little help and are the most miserable and neglected. It is known that the pair of Genesis program social workers literally never go into Friendship Park or make outreach efforts to help the most in need. VOA’s robust outreach program was de-funded in 2008 by the county, and homeless-services charities in our county [including L&F, of course] have not stepped up. At Friendship Park, and at Loaves & Fishes otherwise, homeless people who buy into L&F management's radical politics get the jobs, not qualified people who can diagnose 5150 candidates or otherwise compassionately understand and aid people who are mentally ill or in crisis.

Turmoil at Loaves & Fishes

Loaves & Fishes

Problems, centering on Loaves & Fishes' now-stinting and nutrition-lacking midday meal, have many upset at the homeless services nonprofit.

Many lower-level employees and homeless and recently-homeless volunteers at Loaves & Fishes are particularly peeved at oblivious upper-management in the Ivory Tower [a common name given to the second floor of a central building where administration has its offices]

Complaints have been met by hard-hearted responses from senior management.  It is felt that upper management is now wholly focused on Safe Ground issues and completion of the nonprofit's new multi-million dollar warehouse — that many see as a boondoggle — rather than important day-to-day matters.

Also, I am told that the warehouse, on the northwest corner of Ahern and N. C Sts., which is now about three-quarters completed, will cost out at much more than the $1.7 million price tag that was disseminated. I was given no specific final-cost estimate.

While the small, modern warehouse will have many creature comforts and features that will allow for conversion of its space for other uses, the need for the new building, with its huge expense, has not been explained. The sense is that an organization that seemed always to be far afield from the mission it gave itself is near-fully out of touch with it currently.

At its website, Loaves & Fishes describes its "philosophy," in part, thus:

Without passing judgment, and in a spirit of love and hospitality, Loaves & Fishes feeds the hungry and shelters the homeless. We provide an oasis of welcome, safety, and cleanliness for homeless men, women and children seeking survival services.

I was told by one person who works at the facility, when read that quote, that any "spirit of love and hospitality" is complete bullshit.

Complaints about the midday meal are multifold. Central is the general case that the nonprofit, which began as a soup kitchen, has wholly abandoned its core claim of always providing hot meals. At its website, its dining room is described thus [with the bold font in the first sentence duplicating what on the webpage]:

Loaves & Fishes Dining Room serves a full course, home-cooked, noontime meal for 600-800 homeless guests every day. Over 1000 volunteers including church groups, company employee groups, service clubs and individuals alike, help serve our guests the only meal many of them will have all day.

A separate dining room is available for women and children each morning for breakfast through the Loaves & Fishes Maryhouse Program. This meal is cooked and served by volunteers every day.

Loaves & Fishes regulars describe meals that are currently served as ungenerous in what portions are served and less nutritious (if that's possible) than they were in the past. Also, not infrequently, they are not hot. No one with savvy in the area of nutricion is involved in food preparation at the nonprofit.

It should be pointed out, too, that claims of serving 600-800 that are made at the website, and a claim of a 675-meal average by CEO Libby Fernandez, are contrary to statistics released by the organization which show that the average number of meals served each day has been consistently under 500.

[Also, as a matter of full disclosure, readers should be aware that I was 86ed from Loaves & Fishes within 24 hours after posting nutritional data on a sack lunch L&F passed out in lieu of a hot meal one Saturday.  Later I learned I was 86ed for putting up these two blogposts:  “Loaves & Fishes’ program of “Collective Punishment”“ and “Babies are gonna die! Babies are gonna die!“]

A second gripe by many is that those served late in the hour-and-a-half window of opportunity to get lunch get leftovers that have nothing to do with what was posted as the menu for the day and can be little more than a quickly-prepared simple sandwich. Commonly, late eaters get less food, nowadays. Recently, rather than a hamburger as the entree, those served late got just a cheese sandwich. There is also the complaint that things are falling apart in the dining room with much food that "tastes like crap."

When a homeless person who volunteers his time at the homeless-services nonprofit expressed his annoyance with the situation to senior management person, he was told, dismissively, "Well, you're getting something to eat, aren't you?" and that, anyway, you're taking food out of a homeless person's mouth. This oblivious senior management person seemed not to know that who she was talking to was a homeless person, who volunteered his time, and in order to do that to help out, it was necessary for him to eat late.

Conjecture is that Loaves & Fishes is trying to save money in areas that are centrally "homeless services" in order to cover the cost of a price-overrun luxury, the new fandangled warehouse. And the mission of helping the homeless gets further and further waylaid to empire building by an out-of-control bureaucracy.

Friendship Park to be closed on Jan 28 and Feb 2

In other L&F news, the homeless-services organization will be closing its park on the weekdays of Friday, January 28, and Wednesday, February 2.  The purported purpose is an attempt to ameliorate the long-standing water -- I mean, long-standing mud-wallow situation -- which occurs in the park after any rainfall.

Probably since its beginning, the circumstance of mud build-up in the badly conceived park has made being there an additional source of misery for homeless people.

I am told that the park grounds will be re-graded and more of the gravel-like substance that is already there will be put down, or they might try using a different, maybe-better gravel-like ground cover.

Model programs to aid ex-prisoners join civil society

Fortune Acadamy in West Harlem

An opinion piece in the New York Times, “For Ex-Prisoners, a Haven Away From the Streets,” deals with the issue of the terrible life prospects of people rejoining the free, helter-skelter workaday world after having served a long spell in prison.

Two model programs that have demonstrated success at reintegrating men and women into polite society are featured: The Castle [run by the Fortune Society] in New York’s West Harlem and Delancey Street in San Francisco. Both, while quite different, are lauded as successful operations that, curiously, aren’t being widely replicated across the country.

The writer, Tina Rosenberg, tells us that one thing that has been learned is what’s most important in rehabilitating former prisoners to a successful outside-the-Walls life is to swap-out their old friends for new ones who are lawful, productive and up-beat. Writes Rosenberg:

At both Fortune and Delancey, a person emerging from prison is surrounded by a community of people who support him, hold him accountable, teach him skills and model good behavior. Many of the men and women in these programs come to think of themselves as productive members of society for the first time in their lives, and it may also be the first time they ever feel competent at anything besides lawbreaking.

The Castle and Delancey Street are big operations that give men and women rooms, a long stay and real employment opportunities. Plus, at Delancey Street, there are at-site business operations for the former prisons to run and earn money from. From this, the Castle and Delancey Street are far more encompassing than Rehab programs, that are church-based and mainly focus on drug and alcohol abuse, I know about in our metropolis at Union Gospel Mission and in Rancho Cordova.

A Castle or Delancey Street spin-off seems like something Sacramento would benefit from in helping former prisoners, here, get off the merry-go-round of lock-up and crime.

While neither program has been formally studied to verify its effectiveness, both Castle and Delancey are lauded anecdotally for being highly beneficial at restoring lives and ending crime.

Update on Loaves & Fishes’ New Year’s Day abrupt closure of Friendship Park

Entrance to Friendship Park as seen from the cul-de-sac on North C, abutting 12th St.

I have been given some details about the closure of Loaves & Fishes’ Friendship Park on New Year’s Day. The park was closed at about 10am, after it had been homeless people’s understanding the park would be open regular weekend hours on the holiday.

The marijuana incident was thus: One of the Green Hats, Park staff people, had smelled the strong scent of pot coming from the men’s bathroom in the park. When he went inside the restroom no one was the there, but the scent was strong and undeniably that of marijuana. This Green Hat had the authority to close the park; neither of the co-directors of the park was there that day.

I am told that since the individuals who had been smoking in the bathroom weren’t there to be identified and then punished in some way, it was the determination of this Green Hat to close the park, then, rather than keeping it open until its announced closure time of 1pm. This was Park policy.

I am told that it is now Loaves & Fishes’ policy to punish misbehavior in the park in this way:

If the specific persons who misbehave — by running into the park or acting violently or using banned substances — can be identified, they will be excluded from use of the park or the Loaves & Fishes Mall of Services for the day, and likely for a period of time thereafter if not “for life.”

If misbehavior is determined to have occurred, but the individuals who are causal of the actions cannot be identified, then the park is emptied in an expression of management’s disapproval and to exert control.

While this is an improvement [of sorts] on Loaves & Fishes’ longstanding policy of punishing everybody in the park even for many instances when those who had broken the rules were identifiable, it is still a policy that is “opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice."* It is still a policy that uses Collective Punishment to appease the wrath of egocentric management.

Loaves & Fishes remains outside the realm of civilized First World society. It is still acting like North Korea.

I mean, I cannot even think of an organization other than Loaves & Fishes, in the civilized world, that intimidates people by Collective Punishment and by threats of destroying people's property**.  They are out there on an island by themselves of behavior that is beyond the pale.

Yes, military boot camps and Scouts and sports teams and other groups vying to create a team may use Collective Punishment but they are in the business of trying to create a collective.  Homeless adults are individually trying to pull their lives together; they are the furthest thing from "a team."  Homeless adults individually have appointments and obligations and efforts going to get their lives ontrack which Loaves & Fishes management's cruel and vain policies disrupt.

Imagine a justice system that cannot find someone to punish for a crime. Would it suffice ‘as justice’ for all of a hundred suspects to instead be punished, en masse? Of course not.  It would be backward and show that the organization wasn’t being run in adult-to-adult transaction mode, rather in parent-to-child.

Sacramento businesses and citizens donate money and items and time to Loaves & Fishes in an effort to benefit homeless people such that those people can get their lives back ontrack, not to feed a nanny governance policy run by control freaks.

Loaves & Fishes mucky mucks should meet and try to figure out what the purpose of their organization ought to be.  Right now, they are marbling in a load of misery with what good they dispense.  But, it is hard to imagine leadership at L&F ever doubting themselves or thinking about what it is they are doing.  They've gone this far off into the Dark Wood of  a complete disconnect with any benevolent mission to aid the homeless, they likely could never find their way back/out.

The earlier sacHO blogpost on this matter can be found here:  "In an act of Collective Punishment, Loaves & Fishes closes its park in the morning on New Year’s Day," posted Jan 3, 2011.
---
*   Quoting the International Committee of the Red Cross regarding Collective Punishment

**  Loaves & Fishes' Park management threatens people with 'destruction of their property' when items are left in Day Storage overnight, or when homeless people park their carts where park management doesn't want them to.  Also, as blogged earlier, L&F operates a locker rental 'business' without attention to any rights of the rentees.  Basically, L&F thinks it's a nation unto itself, without any obligation of following due process … like North Korea.

In an act of Collective Punishment, Loaves & Fishes closes its park in the morning on New Year’s Day

Calvin [a "green hat" in Unfriendly Park] makes the argument for continued incompetent management. Hobbes represents me — only, in real life, I don't have that good a coat.

In an act of Collective Punishment, Loaves & Fishes closes its park in the morning on New Year’s Day

In one respect — and only one — that I can think of, Loaves & Fishes is NOT hypocritical: The management hates the way America is run and wants to turn it into a backward communist country. Consistent with that, Loaves & Fishes’ management runs its facility like a backward communist country. The People’s Republic of Loaves & Fishes.
A seemingly minor thing happened on New Year’s Day. A couple of people smoked a joint in Loaves & Fishes’ Friendship Park and one of the park directors, or both of them, determined, at about 10am, that, in retribution, they would punish all the homeless there by closing the park for the day.

This is something the managers of the park do all the time: At whim, they throw a monkey wrench into everybody’s day for transgressions by a few, that are minor, and would be handled by any civilized management team for any organization anywhere else by dealing with the transgressors quietly and directly.

But Loaves & Fishes ain’t civilized; it’s the Rocky Horror Show. It’s the Sacramento Chainsaw Massacre, in 3D! It’s Beavis and Butt-head. It’s the Three Stooges with Fake Shemp.

So. They close the park.

On a holiday, when homeless people had been told the park would be open, and when getting something done is difficult because many don’t have a shelter they can stay at in the daytime, and stores and other places generally aren’t open, the directors of Unfriendly Park¹ close the place, on a whiff and a whim.

It is exactly this kind of mean-spirited thing — running the homeless around in circles of do-nothingness — that is, perhaps, the prime cause of the foreshortened lifespans of homeless people.

If we could look at the low birth rates and suicide rates and depression and other misery visited upon the people in North Korea by their overlords, I submit that it would scan with what Loaves & Fishes' leaders visit upon the homeless in Sacramento.

To say “the homeless deserve better” than what they get at Loaves & Fishes would be a whopper of an understatement. To say “the people of Sacramento are getting ripped off by how the money they donate to Loaves & Fishes gets spent” would be another understatement.

And the beat goes on.

Punishing a bunch of people for the actions of a few is unjust. It’s called “Collective Punishment” and is something that the United Nation is particularly strident at deploring. It’s a style of punishing made famous by Nazis, that was used by them and is used by other groups that are morally and ethically unrestrained.

The International Committee of the Red Cross has this to say regarding Collective Punishment:

… parties to a conflict often … resort to "intimidatory measures to terrorize the population" in hopes of preventing hostile acts, but such practices "strike at guilty and innocent alike. They are opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice."

In August, 2008, after being rendered homeless for only a short time, I encountered Loaves & Fishes opposition “to all principles based on humanity and justice” and was moved to distribute a flyer to then constantly-being-threatened denizens of Unfriendly Park. You can find a copy of it here. It says in part this:

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.

At that time, I presumed people in the homeless-services business had to have a heart, somewhere, that could be appealed to. I have since learned that many Sacramento homeless-services organizations have devolved into “rackets” that are out for their own enlargement and perpetual existence — solely that. Snooker donors; rake in the dough; put up a front that you are a supremely compassionate organization.

It is funny — in a highly unhumorous way — that Loaves & Fishes hides behind the skirt of being a fist-pumping Christian do-gooder when what they are really doing AND THEY KNOW THEY ARE REALLY DOING IT is this:

They enable [bordering on ENCOURAGE] alcoholism and substance abuse. Indeed they are “Sacramento Central,” at their Delany Center, at encouraging the submission of blinky SSI claims by homeless people to get money to stay diffleblunked and wafflesnouted. Loaves & Fishes times its Park closings to best happen near the end of months, to contrast with the schedule of SSI payments, which is diabolical. It means that addicts are aided, by Loaves & Fishes policies, at economizing on living expenses to best direct their funds toward Party Hardy!

Please note: Addicts suffer mightily. I want them to find their way out of their addictions and to a meaningful, happy life. But I more that question whether the Loaves & Fishes Board of Directors want such a thing. They act in opposition to any Clean and Sober effort.

Year after year of homeless people's lives get washed away in a sea of meaninglessness … and in Sacramento Loaves & Fishes is likely to be a part of the reason.

Loaves & Fishes fully ignores most mentally ill people who use many services at the Loaves & Fishes’ Mall of Services. The very evidently mentally ill that Sacramento citizens can see out of the streets are getting no help whatsoever or very little help and are the most miserable and neglected. It is known that the pair of Genesis program social workers literally never go into Friendship Park or make outreach efforts to help the most in need. VOA’s robust outreach program was de-funded in 2008 by the county, and homeless-services charities in our county [including L&F, of course] have not stepped up. At Friendship Park, and at Loaves & Fishes otherwise, homeless people who buy into L&F management's radical politics get the jobs, not qualified people who can diagnose 5150 candidates or otherwise compassionately understand and aid people who are mentally ill or in crisis.

Job seekers and other scappy, driven homeless people — of which there are many — get clobbered by the Loaves & Fishes shifting, unreliable operating policies that makes use of their services difficult because it's undependable. It is heartbreaking and it is very much in evidence that Loaves & Fishes management doesn't see the need to change its ways.  And so it goes year after year after year.

----
¹ This is another, more-appropriate name for "Friendship Park," a course.

Loaves & Fishes bearing false witness

On July 29, 2010, I was charged with trespassing at Loaves & Fishes property. Getting the police report, relating to events when I was at Loaves & Fishes on that date, proved to be exceedingly difficult. I received the police report only on October 26, nearly three months after ‘events’ and just ten days prior to the scheduled Trial Readiness Conference [11/5/10] at Superior Court, which was just five days prior to the my trial [11/10/10] on the charges. [But I must note, I didn’t make an effort to get the report until October.]

I tell you all this, not because my fate is on the line; I’m OK, now. But I have to think that other homeless people, without my inclination to write things and keep records would have been totally screwed by the false [i.e., lying] report to the police that Loaves & Fishes provided.

I was told, on October 27, that the DA will drop the trespassing charges, coming from a complaint/ticket Loaves & Fishes filed. The DA formally cleared me on my next scheduled court date, Nov. 5 -- though “cleared me” is an overstatement. The charges were dismissed “due to lack of evidence.”

From my experience, I have to believe that Loaves & Fishes is pretty much in the Screw the Homeless business. They are not a friend, but an enemy. They are in the empire-building and donor-snookering business and do that at the expense of homeless people. [Indeed, a man who is likely the most-senior and experienced person in our city with the homless and providing them aid, considers Loaves & Fishes to be "a racket."] Being poor is, effectively, a conviction of a felony, all on its own. And Loaves & Fishes is wholly out for its empire-building self, and certainly not interested in seeking justice for the homeless.

I write emails [instead of phone] and the complaint against me has to do with blogposts [which, like email, is written, permanent and potent evidence] Other homeless people, met with Loaves & Fishes’ storm of perfidy would get crushed, having nothing to counter it but their truthful testimony -- which, by itself, is certain to be given little or no weight.

So, my situation was never threatened, but only because the asshole witness could be shown to be a completely unethical lying piece of trash. The test now for Loaves & Fishes will be if they properly FIRE the piece of trash OR if they keep him despite his complete incompetence.

Truth and justice in Sacramento are in short supply when it relates to the lives of homeless people, I greatly believe, with my experiences being just a sampling of the meanspiritedness, prejudice and madness.

     The Loaves & Fishes Witness Statement

The Loaves & Fishes Witness Statement - minus the witness’ name which I’ve substituted with X’s - can be found, in full, here. It's a public document.  It’s written by Sacramento police officer G. Chargin, relating the witness’s report of the situation. [Note that quotes herein, then, are from the summarizing report, and are not directly what can have been said.]

The witness says I have “been blogging on the internet making slanderous comments about Loaves & Fishes and the staff.”

My response: I haven’t slandered Loaves & Fishes, though I accept that the witness thinks so. If Loaves & Fishes wishes to pursue a civil suit because of my activities, they certainly can. They have the 2009 Sacramento Attorney of the Year under retainer. Go for it, I say.

The witness complains that I email blogs to “all of the Directors on the Board” at L&F.

My response: Between my two blogs - Sacramento Homeless and Homeless Tom - I have put up 612 posts. I cannot know exactly how many have been sent to the Board of Directors, because I use a service/gadget to relay posts. But my guess is that a dozen, and not more that 20, have been sent to the board in two-and-a-half years. A Board of Directors is supposed to exist for the purpose of oversight. Looking out for missteps of its organization’s administration is Job One. I have gotten only one complaint about the sending of blogposts that I know of; and that related to a request I cease using a particular email address, and use another one belonging to a certain board memeber. But there can have been other, subtle chafing words from the L&F board. I don’t remember, and it’s hard to research, but I doubt it.
The witness complains, in all apparent seriousness, that I accused the staff of having sex with the Jesuit Volunteers.

My response: The humorless witless is unable to perceive the humor & lampoonery in a joke that was intentionally way, way over-the-top [such that everyone with an ounce of sense would KNOW it was a joke] that was taken down. The joke related to the Park being scheduled to close for nine consecutive days while the staff did … what? There were no pictures nor descriptions of sexual positions nor frisky farm animals mentioned. It was a pale, harmless joke with a PG rating. Get a grip, witness.

Allow me to point out, too, that in the reception area in the Ivory Tower [L&F Admin office, as it's called by some employees] there are political cartoons that are vile, all in support of Loaves & Fishes nuttiness, of course.

The witness complains, “He named me and accused me of being a Nazi.”

My response: The witness has to be referring to the post in Sacramento Homeless “Loaves & Fishes’ program of “Collective Punishment”“ Readers can read the post for themselves which is unchanged since when it was written, except for the picture and probably the fixing of typos within days if it first being posted. Please tell me where any Loaves & Fishes’ employees are cast as Nazis.  He's a certifiable idiot, but I did not call him a Nazi, nor is he one … to my knowledge.

The witness says that I “claimed there are dead babies on [L&F’s] property.” The witness has to be referring to the post in Sacramento Homeless “Babies are gonna die! Babies are gonna die!“ Readers can read for themselves that I am clearly lampooning and mocking Loaves & Fishes deplorable scare tactics in snookering donors to get to their money.


The stupid witness also said that I “put [L&F’s] logo on his email which makes it look official and that Loaves and Fishes is responsible for it.”

My response: I certainly never put Loaves & Fishes logo on any of my emails. I have used Loaves & Fishes’ logo in blogposts, but no one could possibly think that it was used in such a way to indicate L&F was reponsible for text I wrote or that posts in my blogs were official Loaves & Fishes positions on anything. I used L&F logo in ‘fair usage’ in the same way that I can use the logo of Coca-Cola in a blogpost about Coca-Cola. [Notice how wikipedia uses Coca-Cola pictorially at their website.] The ignorant witness doesn’t understand “fair use.”

The witness told the copper, “We had banned Thomas Armstrong before.”

My response: There was a botched effort at banning me on April 29, thereabouts, but Loaves & Fishes pulled back from the effort, and I was not banned at that time.

The witness said, “at that time, [Tom] agreed to stop his slanderous blogs about Loaves & Fishes.”

My response: I most certainly didn’t agree to anything. The ‘agreement’ that Libby Fernandez, CEO of Loaves & Fishes, demanded was that I never mention “Loaves & Fishes” in my blogs again. I would never agree to that; this is still America. While I admit to being strident at times, I am putting truths out there about homeless-services nonprofits [of which Loaves & Fishes is the worst] that aren’t otherwise being truthfully reported about.

After Libby Fernandez made her demand, I immediately contacted Sacramento Press and wrote a ten-day report for them about the disgraceful nine-day closure of Friendship Park, from May 1 to May 9.  Here are the ten daily reports, from May 1 to May 10: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10.

The witness said, “Today [7/29/10], when T. Armstrong came onto our property, we called him into our office and informed him he was banned. He became angry and stormed out slamming the door. I walked out into Friendship Park and saw that he had not left the property. He walked back towards me and said he should sock me in the jaw. i told him he was on private property and trespassing. When i advised him we would call the Police and have him removed, he said to call because he was not leaving.”

My response: When I walked into Friendship Park, Jim Peth gave me a Bronx Cheer (which I wasn’t sure, until a minute later, was for me). When I tried to get a shower reservation, I was told by Kevin that I couldn’t have one and would have to talk to Jim or Garren. I was led into a FP office with Jim and Garren there and things were conducted aggressively and sourly. I asked to know who determined I was banned and for what reason, and was told I didn’t have a right to either of those bits of information. I was directed out of the office and do not believe I was the one that shut the door, much less did I slam it.

The elephant in the room that the witness conveniently fails to mention is my belongings in my locker. I was told that I had to immediately remove all my property from the locker and leave with it. My locker, which is one of the big ones, was filled to capacity with stuff in it that weighed easily four times more than what I could carry.

This issue of locker content came up in the botched effort to ban me last April. I wrote the Board of Directors [You can see the complete email here.] asking for information on what their locker-rental policies were, and how they could possibly think they have the right to dump out my locker contents without notice. The country we live in isn’t North Korea, as much as Loaves & Fishes wants to turn it into that. I never did get a response regarding the locker-rental policy at Loaves & Fishes.

At one point [on 7/29] Garren held up three trash bags for me to take my locker contents away in. I know full well [from the 4/29 incident] that what I had in my locker was many times more that what I could carry. In response to the witness's “You can use this to empty your locker,” “I can hit you in the jaw, too.” When the witless turned away slowly [He knew he wasn't threatened and didn't act threatened], I told him I was kidding; I didn’t mean that literally, OF COURSE.  Nobody thinks I'm violent.

When the witness said he was going to call the police, the whole of my response was “please,” which I meant and he understood to mean "Yes!  Get the Police here!" I most certainly did not make a proclamation of not leaving. My point was that putting me in a circumstance of losing my property was something that needed the attention of someone who wasn’t an complete idiot like he is.

     Hypocrisy and Lying

I have been told by preachers at the mission that what God hates most is hypocrisy. There's Scripture that's been read to me to support the idea. And, from the Internet, here's some quotes in that vein.

Loaves & Fishes has collected a couple hundred thou, I think it is, from a lawsuit against the city and county because the police deprived homeless people of their property. Yet Loaves & Fishes' abides by no ordinences to properly care for homeless people's possessions that are on its property.

"Bearing false witness" is something else that is deplored by God, according to mission preachers. Here, from the Internet, are quotes from Scripture about that.

You might suppose that the sanctomonious Pecksniffian Christians that think so adoringly of themselves in the Administration office and on the Board at L&F would find some resistance at acting so very much like the demons that ran the Orphanage where we first found Oliver Twist, but no.  They are all straight out of Dickens and, if the public only knew what all what was going on, would be run out of Sacramento on a rail.