Thor

Gateway to the Thor website.

Movie coming out this May about a typical homeless man who comes to save the human race.

Ho hum. Just another day and night and day and night out on the street. And, it's in 3D!

Plus, it's nice to know that Natalie Portman was able to find work after playing a confused swan. Bird roles generally set an actor's career back.

Going on the film's trailer, the movie seems to be on the stupid side of that thin line between (1) fantastic and awe-filled and (2) stupid and awful. But maybe I'm wrong.

The Sacramento Bee’s editorial writer on homeless matters is mentally ill*

The beginning of today's Bee Board Editorial on matters homeless, in its online manifestation.

The Sacramento Bee publishes some of the goofiest editorials I have ever read whenever the topic is homelessness.  Today's is titled (online) "Editorial: Time to alter how we talk about 'homeless'."

It is nice that the Bee is compassionate and disposed to help the homeless and find solutions to every situation, but the knowledge-base of what homelessness is like “out here” always seems to be absent in the writer. I think the writer needs to get out more; away from the desk at 21st & Q. Too, the writer’s thinking is odd and strange and, frankly, ultimately, unhelpful.

The Bee’s editorial writer -- whom one commenter to today's editorial tells us is (today) Ginger Rutland -- is, clearly, mentally ill, based on the Bee's standard of what mental illness is. Today’s editorial writer has to be the same person who has been writing the Bee’s official position on issues relating to homelessness for some time, since the writing and thinking has, for some time, had the same peculiar smell about it.

Today's editorial begins with four statements that the Ed writer thinks are shibboleths:

1. All of 'em [meaning, the homeless] are bums.
2. They don't want anyone's help.
3. They live down by the river by choice, not circumstance.
4. The people who advocate for them are exploiting public sympathy.

Let us go through the four, one by one.

1. Certainly, not all — indeed, none of us — are "bums." Bum is a derisive word descriptive of someone who we are supposed to hate. The homeless people in Sacramento should not be hated.

2. It is also wrongheaded to say that homeless people "don't want anyone's help." I think that it can easily be said that most homeless people seek help and accept what they can get. But if the deeper meaning that the Ed writer is after is that there are a great many homeless people who don't really want to be saved from their circumstance, that is somewhat true. For many, the "salvation" that is offered is assessed to be worse than the life they have.

3. To say that [many] live by the river by choice is true. It's not the ultimate goal of any but a few, but many homeless people, most of whom are solo men, would prefer camping out by themselves or in a group, as opposed to being in a shelter. This is so because they have much more control over their life. Many — but by no means all — want more control because they want to feed their addictions. Others want more control because they don't want to be warehoused and in the run-around matrix that raises their level of depression and feelings that their life is pointless. Many find they can accomplish more on their own than by being in a program, many of which are boring and unproductive.

4. Many who claim to advocate for the homeless exploit public sympathy. THAT is no shibboleth; THAT is as true as the sun rising from the east. Many use the homeless as puppets to push terrible programs and awful politics and then brazenly get all weepy and bathetic to build their nonprofit empires. THAT is how it is done. This blog has demonstrated that to be the case over and over and over and over again.

For example: Loaves & Fishes' supposed mission is to feed and shelter the homeless. The economic crunch has come and where oh where is any additional shelter coming from Loaves & Fishes?  Instead, they have started to serve increasingly skimpy meals and have built a big new warehouse (that could be used as a shelter, but won't be).

Loaves & Fishes' and most other homeless-services charities' appeals usually go for the heart tug, making homeless people seem pathetic, instead conveying the more-difficult-to-tell reality that homeless people come in great variety, somewhat mirroring society. Of course, more so than society, generally, more homeless people are mentally ill or have substance-abuse problems. The charities go with what will bring in the most money, and not with the hard-to-tell-pithily truth.

In the middle of the editorial it says this, which I assess to be wildly bizarre:

Yet one needs to address this question: How many of these illegal campers are of sound mind? Isn't a sign of mental illness someone who would turn down a warm bed to sleep on the ground, week after week, during winter rains and cold?

OK. I'll take up the challenge and address the question: NO. Turning down a bed to sleep on the ground is not, in the recent circumstance, nor usually, by itself, a sign of mental illness.

The SafeGrounders say they turned down shelter beds in deference to others. That is, so that others can have shelter beds. You can be of fully sound mind and do that.

I think that the SafeGrounders turned down the beds, at least in part, to keep up their protesting. That's not my logic, but that is a rational thing to do.

I myself have walked away from a bed at the mission for the sake of another, as have other people. It's called "compassion," and it happens all the time out here.

I KNOW that some SafeGrounders have sacrificed for others. I give them credit — that they deserve — for doing that, not infrequently.

It also is rational to want to camp out instead of be in a shelter. Shelters can be very very time consuming. Winter Sanctuary takes up about 16 hours time for dinner, sleeping and breakfast. In contrast, the Mission takes about 12 hours for all that and a sermon. Many SafeGrounders have come to the mission since their ARP camp was rousted. Other shelters add requirements that eat up time that could be and should be spent trying to build a life.

Loaves & Fishes can be insanely undependable, which eats up a lot of people's time. There are a great many queues and waiting lists that homeless people have to put up with while the time in their lives tic off, second-by-second, minute-by-minute, day-by-day, month-by-month until they wake up one day and find that they are old. You have no idea what it's like, Ms. Rutland — or whoever you are who wrote that ignorant editorial.
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* Footnote. The writer of the editorial isn't really (necessarily) mentally ill. But so long as she is tossing around ad hominems, I thought I'd throw one back.

Breton touts Supervisor Serna and Cottage Housing

Marcos Breton [sent to me as a 'shared photo' from Sacramento Connect]

Sac Bee columnist Marcos Breton hadn't written about homelessness for something like two years.  Today, after that long lag in offering up some words on Homeless World, he chirped words of praise for new county supervisor Phil Serna, who gathered funds to shelter the American River Parkway exiles who had been evicted from their tents in ARP this weekend.

In his column, "Phil Serna full of tough love for homeless campers,"  Cottage Housing gets a heap of praise.

Serna is quoted saying "It's a clean and sober environment, and there is testing to make sure of it."

No, that's not quite right:  There is testing which catches a lot of people not being clean and sober. But, sure, the testing also deters much use of alcohol and drugs.

Also, Serna is quoted saying this:  "Services are offered. People are assisted in clearing their warrants, in dealing with their disabilities, in getting their kids back."

Yes.  There are services, but they are much much reduced from what they've been and many of the requirements of Cottage Housing have been unproductive.  The harsh economy and the recognition that many programs were just run-arounds was causal for a big cutback.

Indeed, before he abruptly quit as president of Cottage Housing, Inc., Robert Tobin was on a tear cutting out the pointless programs and wanting to foreshorten people's stays in Cottage Housing.

For a spell, about a year ago, I would go to Side-by-Side meetings which were hosted by a Buddhist fellow I knew, Mark.  [Side-by-Side is 'its own thing,' independent of Loaves & Fishes and all else but with offices at L&F's Friendship Park] Often, people from Cottage Housing would come in with their cards that they needed to complete, which gave proof that they'd met a requirement to go to a certain number of meetings each week.  It was not uncommon for someone to come to a Side-by-Side meeting, often in the middle of it, stay for five minutes, ask for the card to be signed, and then leave.  Certainly, many people were conscientious, and would stay for the duration of any meeting they attended, but others were just "feeding the beast," being minimalist in doing what was required, which was for them a pointless run-around.

Homeless people, in good economic times, are put to the task of going to meetings that aren't meant for them and in no manner have any function at improving their lives.  It is the pure madness of a Communist country that happens in the middle of Sacramento.

Hooray for whatever programs there are that really help homeless people — but the truth is that there aren't that many of those.

I know it sounds all New Agey for me to get Wilberian on y'all, but I am going to do that.  There are stage of psychosocial development that many people have charted.  One of the more advanced stages -- called the Green Meme in Spiral Dynamics and in an early version of Ken Wilber's system -- is where almost all the executives in the homeless-services industry are. Green Meme is very cool -- except that, in Don Beck's words, when it turns mean "it absorbs rather than contributes."

Here a quote from Beck, which sounds plenty goofy when you don't know the color code, but I think it is understandable nonetheless, so here it is [just realize that the "noble savages" are what this "mean" version of the Green Meme really thinks of homeless people]:

…[what] this negative version of GREEN does is to destroy the capacity of ORANGE and BLUE social and economic systems to actually address the gaps that GREEN itself has identified. It destroys ORANGE economic structures. And it also destroys BLUE authoritarian systems, which are necessary to control RED, as we can see all too clearly in the example of Zimbabwe today. It therefore becomes counterproductive. It makes things worse. It relieves RED of the responsibility to learn discipline and purpose in BLUE-ORANGE, because it loves the indigenous people but tends to read into them greater complexity, as it sees them as "noble savages." And in destroying the authoritarian, purifying systems in BLUE and ORANGE, there's the flooding of the RED undisciplined, egocentric, impulsive behavior into the GREEN zone, both in one's self and in societies. And it is this unhealthy meshing of RED and GREEN, in which strong egocentric narcissism combines with pontifications about humanity and equality, that becomes the breeding ground for what Ken Wilber and I call the "Mean Green Meme."

Like I say, it sounds goofy, but basically what Beck says here is exactly what we see play out in Sacramento. The Mean Green Meme's efforts at absolute egalitarianism creates endless process and meetings that carry little if any meaning. Homeless people become trapped in a world of madness, with metrics mostly nonexistant. There is often nothing to show the foolhardiness of the endeavors.

So, Serna and Marcos trot out the idea of Cottage Housing and its array of programs as the solution to all the ills of homelessness -- but it's not and it's been around and it hasn't been.

I'm not saying that SafeGround makes any sense. It hasn't shown any real success at anything other than determination and money raising. But there is a fount of energy in all that and if it can be converted to more-meaningful activities to transform lives that would be terrific. I just don't see how that can be done.

Like anyone, homeless people need control over their own lives. And from that start, only then can things happen. BUT, SafeGround isn't much of an example of homeless people beginning to control and be responsible for their own lives. The Board of Directors of SafeGround is the usual crowd of interlocking-board-(and bored) people who are squishy-to-a-fault liberal functionaries that believe in screaming and complaining and pretty much nothing else [well, except for money raising and empire building]. And homeless people are all pretty much pawns to all this.

SafeGround on the March!!

A handout that Loaves & Fishes gave to all those asking for lunch tickets, yesterday.  CLICK HERE OR ON PHOTO for large, easy-to-read view of text.

SafeGround is nothing if not predictable. The river parkway is trashed and they are indignant about it.  And they conveniently forget it is they who helped trash the American River Parkway.

The woeful thing about all of this is that I know that, in Egyptian terms, the SafeGround crowd sees itself as the noble, historic protesters in Tahrir Square. "We want our rights, and we don't care how. We want our revolution, NOW." But, truly, they are more like Mubarak: Incapable of seeing the other side of an issue; fully lost in the mirror hall and echo chamber of their perception of complete victimization.

A comment to a Sacramento Bee’s article yesterday “Homeless must leave parkway” has been getting positive attention in Homeless World for stating very well the contra-position to SafeGround (and that niche of other communitarian-politics homeless-help organizations, including Loaves & Fishes; Francis House; SHOC and Sacramento Housing Alliance)..

The commentor, “educatorspouse,” wrote this [Be aware I did a little copy fluffing]:

We moved back to Sacramento 28 years ago. [Homelessness] was a problem then. It is a bigger problem now. And every winter attention is paid by the TV and press to the plight of the Homeless. All the "I wanna feel good and help" folks come down and cook holiday dinners at the various soup kitchens. And the problem remains. Loaves and Fishes, while a noble endeavor, is enabling this mess to continue in Sacramento. It has grown into a huge compound. Almost an industry unto itself.

And the end result is the same. More homeless people. I don't have a solution. But letting people with mental illnesses, alcohol addiction or drug addictions run the streets with no supervision is getting us nowhere. And then there is the “I like this lifestyle” group.

We are paying law enforcement to clean up after these people. People wait on them for free. And how in the end is this benefiting anyone? The politicians pay attention when it is politically expedient to do so. This problem is one the voters must change. By changing the existing laws so some of the folks can actually be helped. Oh yes. They may actually have to follow some rules of polite society.

What educatorspouse doesn't know [And how could (s)he!?] is that there were many efforts to corral homeless people into programs that, supposedly, offered real help to pull homeless people's lives back together — up until when the economy went kerflooey.

The problem with many of these expensive programs was that MOST NEVER ACHIEVED MUCH OF ANYTHING, and this was hidden because there were no metrics in place to hone the programs into ones that would be better at achieving good ends. The programs were just sort of 'out there' as show trophies of Do-Gooderness. Nobody much cared if they worked or not. They gave jobs to friends and ran homeless people around in circles. What's not to like?

But there do exist real programs, out there now, that have proved efficacy and do transform lives. Clean & Sober and the Union Gospel Mission Rehab program often succeed at turning guys' lives around.  The "problem" is that, as good as these 12-step-like programs are, the recidivism rate is very, very high.  Guys relapse into their addictions by dropping out of the programs or by returning to their old addiction [or a new addiction] soon after completing a program.  This just, simply is what happens 90% of the time.  The lure of alcohol and substance abuse is a beckoning siren song, too beautiful and seductive to disregard.  A homeless addict has a very long road to walk to find a meaningful life away from the pleasures of being benumbed and karfoblasted.

There is also the problem that we have an economic system that leverages unemployment against inflation.  Even in the very best of times we are going to have homeless people.  This is so because the unemployment rate is kept above 5% at all times such that wages aren't pushed upward.  This is done intentionally by the Federal Reserve Bank to stifle inflation.

There will always be circumstances in a free country where people will fall out of their lives.  The only guaranteed way of preventing homelessness is to put an utter end to freedom. That's, basically, what the communitarian homeless charities want.  And THAT would be catastrophic — but that's a whole other blogpost.

SafeGround to get its camp yanked

SafeGround, and other homeless encampments on the American River Parkway, are to be cleared out by Monday, Valentine’s Day , according to information in a Bee article, today, titled “Homeless must leave parkway camp; donations pay for other shelters," online [and — as you can see, at right — titled "Homeless must leave camp" in the paper's hardcopy, made-from-trees vestige-of-the-prior-century edition].

I am told that there is much woe and beating of breast going on in Friendship Park this morning.  The Park is where the headquarters of SafeGround is located, as well as that of SHOC.  And the Park is in the Loaves & Fishes' complex.  SafeGround, SHOC and Loaves are the central players in the Communitarian homeless movement — that segment of our metropolis's homeless-services charities that pushes "victimization" politics.

The effort to clean up the American River Parkway began with a Jan 20 article in Sacramento Press, "American River Parkway advocate: Park is 'no jewel'." Parkway advocate Bob Slobe took a series of pictures in the park that showed evidence of a large number of homeless people making use of the park to camp, and in so doing leaving a large accumulation of trash in their wake.

A Bee editorial on Jan 30, "Editorial: Big Surprise: Blight returns to river," highlighted the problem [that is, the colossal mess] and suggested as the solution giving SafeGround what it wants, a legal place to camp. Of course that oddly ignores the reality of SafeGround camps being a big part of the problem in the first place.  Mostly unbeknownst to the public, because of conveniently half-blind Bee editorials, is the failure of SafeGround to clearly show that it can take on the responsibility of administering a fully safe, mature and functional camp or (what it most wants) a village of Tuff Shed shacks.

County Supervisor Phil Serna hopes to have end-arounded most concerns, at least for the duration of winter, by having raised $35,000 to 'shelter' the SafeGround campers in beds at Salvation Army and to have paid for full-winter shelter in the Winter Sanctuary effort of Sacramento Steps Forward.  [BTW, my homeless pals believe the Bee article is mistaken at identifying 32 beds at Salvation Army that are new and opening up, they believe any beds that come 'online' will come from VOA's detox location.  Indeed, last winter 32 beds from the detox location were made available as winter "overflow' beds for men.]

This will all be helpful.  Men are swamping those shelter beds that are out there.  This is known since Union Gospel Mission offers short-term [7-day max] bunkbed slots for men and has been oversubscribed every day for quite some time.

So, what happens to SafeGround, now — an organization that has real success at little other than raising money?  and getting privileged circumstances for its core members and no one else?  I think they will see all this as another opportunity to protest and raise more money.  No doubt.

For the record, I support the idea of a SafeGround test village, writing extensively about that last May: "Vision of a Tuff Shed test village."  But the public should know that it is likely the case that "people in the know" -- that is, the sheriff and high-placed city and county officials -- already know that SafeGround is too immature and into its addictions to ever pull off responsible administration.  There are, among the homeless, many many eyes working for the police.  This is "real talk," something there is little of in the press or at protest rallys.

Hector Marquez speaks up for Hosni Mubarak

Hosni Mubarak

While the sermons at the Union Gospel Mission are, as I’ve written elsewhere, mostly excellent, there have been a spate of problems recently, according to me [mostly] and other careful listeners in the chapel’s field of seats.

Last night, “the inimitable Hector Marquez” [as the Gideon host once loftily described him] was the featured sermonizer, and he came, in that way that he always comes, loaded for bear. Hector [everyone in the pews seems to call him by his first name] always works himself up in the coarse of his preaching, and he certainly did that last night. He yells and screams and pounds the altar, albeit in a non-threatening way, except when he spikes it to make a particularly prominent point.

His topic was one of there being a great disobedience out there in the secular world and in many church communities. The kids today are particularly bad. Several have murdered their parents. The world is going to hell in a hand basket -- that kind of thing. I’m not critical of that sort of talk; Marquez makes his point. I disagree with much of what is said, but it’s arguable. Marquez has Scriptural support for what he says and there is valid reason for him to get into these issues. He puts anecdotal evidence out there and throws in some stats -- like the high divorce rate, these days. People disobey God; children disobey their parents. The Ten Commandments are broken right and left.

But, then, Marquez’ attention turned to Egypt. Marquez’ complaint was the chaos there, which he blamed on the disobedience of the crowd to their president. I sat in my seat, stunned. Had I heard what I thought I’d heard? Hector was defending Hosni Mubarak, and calling that cruel dictator “the president!?” Hector was often off-his-facts, but this was a misapprehension of the world that I didn’t think was quite possible.

Mubarak was a capable and real president of Egypt when he was first in office, following the assassination of Anwar Sadat in 1981, but by the early Nineties, he’d become a fully cruel, murderous strongman. For the duration of his now 31-year reign, the country has been under martial law with the constitution suspended and dissent throttled by venal police that operate like a criminal mob. Mubarak is the elected president, but elections in Egypt have been a sham. There was just a 22% turnout of voters, in 2005, with the dictator getting 88% of the vote.

ABC News and the Guardian (a prominent UK newspaper) have each reported recently that Mubarak has siphoned off 70 billion dollars of Egypt’s wealth in corrupt activities. That is a colossal degree of corruption in a country where the gross national income per family is just $2,070/yr. The people are poor and their suffering has been exacerbated because of corruption “at the top,” and the country being run as if by a Mafia don.

The people of Egypt want out from under the evil dictatorship and have taken to the streets to demand the return of their democracy. Lately, they’ve been met by Mubarak’s goon squad and 150 peaceful demonstrators have been killed.

When we were lined up to move from the chapel to the chow hall, Marquez was there to shake the hands of us guys in the congregation. I asked the preacher, “Did I really hear you defending Mubarak!?” Marquez said he was opposed to the chaos and that the Egyptian people are very poor. He didn’t say yes, explicitly, but yes is what he meant.

Other articles in sacHO re Hector Marquez:

• "The inimitable Hector Marquez" Aug 3, 2009
• "More Hector Marquez weirdness and other stuff from last night" Oct 5, 2009
• "Spate of earthquakes doesn't mean world is coming to an end" Mar 8, 2010

Amtrak to get tough regarding homeless people at the train station

Sacramento Valley Station: home of our metro's Amtrak station; downtown terminus of the Gold Line of the county's light-rail service; and the terminus of several medium- to long-distant bus lines.

I have been informed from a reliable source who knows an insider, that Sacramento Valley Train Station management has terminated use of one security service for use of another in an effort to combat the presence of homeless people at the station.

"Homeless people" were pointedly cited as the problem that was causal for a recent complete change in the station's security team.

There are said to be complaints from national Amtrak personnel and from those awaiting trains in the station that the restrooms — particularly, the men's restrooms — are getting trashed.  Homeless people are cited as the cause.

There have also been complaints about people sleeping on the benches during late night and early morning hours, and that these people are noticeable because of their ragged attire.   The train station opens at 4:15am every day, and closes at about midnight (though the exact closing time can get adjusted on the fly due to scheduling delays).

Reality check

The train station is a lifesaver for many homeless people who get caught under-prepared on a difficult very cold night.

Many homeless people who are most in need of services, and suffer the most, stay downtown and sleep as they can downtown. It would be nice — damn nice — if the insanely negligent homeless-services charities would do something to help these people, many of whom have mental-illness issues and addiction problems, but, hey, they're too busy empire building and deciding which brick facade looks best on their new multi-million dollar warehouse.

Many times, I have needed to "stay out" because of overcrowding at the homeless shelter.  When it is necessary for me to do this, I go to one of a couple spots I have where I am most comfortable sleeping in public and where, from experience, I have not been rousted by the police or security people.  My spots are downtown.  When it has been very very cold, I have 'taken advantage' of the train station as a place to be warmed.  It's been a God send.

I do know that the men's room at the station does gets trashed, graffiti gets etched into the toilet seats [usually 666s and swastikas], the walls get spray painted and the paper products are stolen or wasted.  It's a big recurring problem.  It greatly detracts from the ambiance of the friendly station.

Still, there needs to be a middle way. A policy of chasing homeless folk out of the station can be done in such a ham-handed way that it is very very cruel. Ours is an unfriendly metropolis toward homeless people — both because core homeless-services providers are crap and because hate is easier than compassion.

Homeless people are surely not the only category of folks trashing the men's rooms. Most homeless people are gentle and meek, but certainly there are many antisocial homeless people in the mix, too.

I am hopeful that Amtrak management will not target the homeless, choosing to go after a category of people, rather than those who are the specific wrongdoers.