Is the Media finally catching on (about Homeless World?)

Click on picture to see it in a readable size.

In the past, news media in Sacramento would bite at any worm-baited line Loaves & Fishes threw into the swirling news waters.  But recent non-events that Loaves & Fishes has tried to promote have been left untelevised and un-otherwise-reported on.

For example, last March, L&F promoted the idea that it would soon be feeding Lee Majors in its chow hall. Well, not Lee Majors, exactly, but some other “6 million” man or woman. Here, quoting L&F's March 2011 Newsletter:

This month, Loaves & Fishes will quietly serve our 6 millionth meal to some hungry and perhaps ill person. Loaves & Fishes staff and volunteers will care at least as much about this meal, we think, as our corporate friends at McDonald’s did about theirs. Needless to say, as we have said for the past 30 years, we could not accomplish this act of service without the extraordinary generosity of the people of Sacramento.

“Quietly” my ass. All this crapola is straight out of the Loaves & Fishes Ladle-on-the-Bathos Grab-the-Cash Playbook. Make the homeless sound like they each weigh about ten pounds and were just shipped in, straight from Calcutta, and are dying of dysentery, and then lunge directly at the targeted Sacramento citizens’ wallets.

Actually, it is unlikely-to-impossible that Loaves & Fishes was anywhere near serving its six-millionth meal to anybody – much less any poor soul who was hungry and perhaps ill. The organization’s effort at record-keeping, you see, is pure bunk, if not bunko. [See the sacHO blogpost “A Look at Loaves & Fishes’ Stats” from April of last year.] Competence at record-keeping is just another thing that is far from being the organization’s forte.

It should be noted that with all the fal-der-al and ballyhooing about the supposed wonders of their meals, the person in charge of meals preparation at Loaves [famous for her straight-from-the-freezer ice-hard frozen-meat sandwiches] was canned recently.  The fired employee was like a great many at Loaves & Fishes:  The friend of a friend of a donor who gets hired inexplicably, coming out of nowhere and doesn't have a whit of skill or experience related to the job he or she is hired for.

Homeless people are expected to volunteer for a year to get a job at Loaves & Fishes.  But while they are doing that, some Bozo comes along out of Left Field, is hired by L&F Administration, and the "homeless volunteer," stung by how corrupt everything seems to be, gives up on his/her insane effort to get work at the incompetent charity.

Media in our metropolis also didn’t bite on the Grand Opening of Loaves & Fishes’ new Warehouse/Admin Offices/Welcoming-Your-Filthy-Lucre Center – though to L&F’s credit, of sorts, the org may have seen that celebrating that boondoggle was not in its sole interest – getting money – since at least some of the people who are prone to help the poor might see what’s going on and actually want to give their money to some organization that actually concentrates on the business of really helping the poor.  And that organization wouldn’t be the constantly distracted, finger-up-the-nose Loaves & Fishes.

One important element in the fresh practice of media not "biting the worm" of doing homeless reporting via mouthing the press releases of Loaves & Fishes, Volunteers of America and other Sacramento homeless-services charities is a pair of "homeless confessional" memoirs by Sonny Iverson in the Sacramento Press and Christopher Lee Buckner in the Sacramento News & Review.

The first section of Iverson's four-part story, "Experiences in Homelessness" was published/posted to Sacramento Press on March 7. The four parts to the story are linked to, here: (1), (2), (3), (4).  The sacHO reaction was posted on March 10, in a piece titled "A vivid story of the torment of homelessness told by Sacramentan Sonny Iverson in the Sacramento Press. Read it!"

Buckner's story, in the April 28 issue of SN&R, titled "the coldest season" in hardcopy, and "Sacramento's coldest season" in it appearance at Sacramento News & Review's website, begins by describing an instance of Loaves & Fishes use of Collective Punishment, [Buckner doesn't say so, but I've been told by other homeless folk that the instance that Buckner is describing happened on New Year's Day.]  He goes on to detail the time-wasting practices of Volunteers of America and Sacramento Steps Forward.  The sacHO reaction was posted April 29 in a piece titled "SN&R publishes remarkable first-person story of life in Homeless World Sacramento."

My email to the County Supervisors in objection to a new book soon to be on the county library's shelves.

from  Tom Armstrong unbound@gmail.com to Phil Serna, Jimmie Yee, Roberta MacGlashan, Don Nottoli, Susan Peters cc Rivkah Sass date Fri, Jun 17, 2011 at 1:26 PM subject A new book on the library shelves mailed-by gmail.com

Dear County of Sacramento Supervisors,

For the past week, with the help of a member of city councilperson Angelique Ashby's staff, I have endeavored to make the Director of the Sacramento Public Library aware of problems with a book that the library was intending to acquire for its shelves.

While I believe the staff person spoke with Ms. Sass or library personnel, I have gotten no response to missives I have passed to Ms. Sass regarding the book.

The book can be found here in the SPL catalog:  http://find.saclibrarycatalog.org/iii/encore/record/C%7CRb2062034%7CSGo+the+Fuck+to+Sleep%7C?lang=eng .  The book's title is Go the Fuck to Sleep.  It looks like a small-child's bedtime picture book, but is ostensibly for adults. Yesterday, the library ordered ten copies of the book.

My objection is not with the f-word in the title and sprinkled throughout the text.  My great concern is the welfare of young children, many of whom are raised by parents with tempers they cannot fully, easily control.

Homicide is the third leading cause of death in children under the age of five. Sixty percent of the time it is a parent that committed the crime. The murder of a small girl named Caylee is in the news currently since her mother is on trial for the crime.  Not too long ago in our metropolis, a mother's boyfriend was convicted for murder in the incredibly horrendous torture of a small boy that led to his death.  The mother was was also convicted of a crime and given a sentence of a long period in prison.

I ask you:  Do we want quick-tempered parents or parents who are poor and highly stressed and frustrated stoking resident anger by bringing a book home from the library that unsubtly encourages them to be angry at a small child?

Here, the whole of the terrible book read aloud on a YouTube video:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI6RrDveqm8 .  Please view this video; it is only 4 1/2 minutes in length.

This is from the Juvenile Justice Bulletin, Oct 2001:  "Most homicides of young children are committed by family members through beatings or suffocation. Although victims include approximately equal numbers of boys and girls, offenders include a disproportionate number of women. Homicides of young children may be seriously undercounted."

This from the Merck Online Medical Manual: "In the United States, more than 896,000 children are neglected or abused every year, and about 1,400 of them die. Neglect is about 3 times more common than physical abuse. Neglect and abuse result from a complex combination of individual, family, and social factors. Being a single parent, being poor, having problems with drug or alcohol abuse, or having a mental health problem (such as a personality disorder or low self-esteem) can make a parent more likely to neglect or abuse a child. Neglect is 12 times more common among children living in poverty.

"Physical Abuse: Physically mistreating or harming a child, including inflicting excessive physical punishment, is physical abuse. Children of any age may be physically abused, but infants and toddlers are particularly vulnerable. Physical abuse is the most common cause of serious head injury in infants. In toddlers, physical abuse is more likely to result in abdominal injuries, which may be fatal. Physical abuse (including homicide) is among the 10 leading causes of death in children. Generally, a child's risk of physical abuse decreases during the early school years and increases during adolescence.

"More than three fourths of perpetrators of abuse are the child's parents. Children who are born in poverty to a young, single parent are at highest risk. Family stress contributes to physical abuse. Stress may result from unemployment, frequent moves to another home, social isolation from friends or family members, or ongoing family violence. Children who are difficult (irritable, demanding, or hyperactive) or who have special needs (developmental or physical disabilities) may be more likely to be physically abused. Physical abuse is often triggered by a crisis in the midst of other stresses. A crisis may be a loss of a job, a death in the family, or a discipline problem."

Yesterday, the Sacramento Public library ordered 10 copies of the book.  I think that would be a mistake at any time for this book to be on Sacramento Public Library shelves.  But during this economically-troubled time, couldn't we have the library NOT buy this horrible book?  It would not be an act of disallowing the freedom of people who want the book.  The book is available through the library's LINK system; anyone can still request it.

We don't put books that tell people how to commit suicide on public library shelves.  We don't put books that tell people how to build bombs on library shelves.  We shouldn't put a book on the shelves that might cause harm to a toddler.

Sincerely,

Tom Armstrong

Citizen of Sacramento

YouTube - Videos from this email

Post script. This from the blog PhD in Parenting in an entry titled "Go The F**k To Sleep: Funny or Offensive?":

Through the eyes of parents alone, “Go the F**k to Sleep” may be funny, just as “Get the F**k Out of My Way” would be funny if you were considering only my view point and not the viewpoint or limitations of those I was directing it at. In most cases, I don’t think our children are staying awake at night specifically to annoy us. Perhaps there may be the odd occasion where an older child is purposely trying to disrupt the parents’ plans, but for the most part, I don’t think that a non-sleeping child realizes that they are ruining your evening or keeping you from sleeping. They are thinking that they want to cuddle with you, that they are not tired, that they are thirsty, that they are scared, that they are lonely, or that they just don’t want to sleep.

Some of those are needs, others are wants, but none of them are maliciously intended actions that deserve a response such as “Go The F**k To Sleep,” even if we are sometimes thinking that on the inside.

So yes, I giggled a bit, but I didn’t feel great about it and I wouldn’t say that I endorse the book’s message any more than I would endorse a comedian who made inappropriate jokes.

Also, I should tell you, I have not gotten any response to this email or to two earlier missives delivered, by hand, to the Central Library office, to the attention of Library Director Ms. Rivkah Sass. The County Supervisors haven't really had time to respond; I may yet hear from one or more of them.

Possibly, I won't get a response. Most people, from what I've read online, have had small children and are humored by the book because they identify with the frustration expressed in the book's text in getting a young child to go to sleep.  Frankly, I'm disappoint in the public.  The safety of babies and toddlers should be of preeminent concern.

Woe, the irony. Mohanna hopes to create the shelter that L&F wouldn't.

The 10 zillion dollar warehouse.

It's so macabre, it would be funny if it wasn't tragic.

Loaves & Fishes abandoned the warehouse that it rented that was smack dab in the middle of the Loaves & Fishes Mall and Homeless People Tormenting Compound. Why? Because they wanted to bulk up their empire. Why? Because Loaves & Fishes under the "leadership" of Libby Fernandez is wholly in the business of bureaucracy maintenance. It's a closed loop. A loopy closed loop that exists only to exist to exist. It's a bureaucracy to self feed that bureaucracy that is all that there is. It is a madhouse, a Looneyvillle run by crappy people.

The Loaves & Fishes Grand Wasters of Money spent over $1.5 million to build their fancy schmancy heavy-security new warehouse/Welcoming-Your-Donation Center/Administraitors' Offices & Spa.

So, what is to become of the abandoned warehouse in the very middle of the L&F Maul? It is to become a homeless shelter, very possibly.

But it won't have anything to do with crappo Loaves & Fishes. [Yea!] It is Mo Mohanna, owner of the abandoned warehouse, swooping in like a majestic big beautiful bird, who hopes to create the new shelter. He's a true Angel of Mercy.

At the end of an article in the Sac Bee a week ago, "Sacramento training program helps homeless women," is says this:

The ceremony [for women graduating from the Empowerment Program] was held in an empty warehouse decorated with crepe paper and clusters of violet and silver balloons. About 200 of the graduates' friends and family members attended.

Downtown businessman Moe Mohanna owns the warehouse and the building next door in which Women's Empowerment is housed. He also volunteers as a mentor in the program and described picking weeds out of his students' hair who had slept beside the American River before coming to class.

Mohanna has confidence in the program's participants. "If you get up, you wash your face in that cold river water, and you walk all the way here, you can do it," he said. He hopes to turn the warehouse into a homeless shelter this winter.

What a joy that Mohanna, a man of compassion, can mentor women in a space where, just across the street, women with hearts of basalt spin their webs of woe.

There was no global flood

At the Union Gospel Mission, on rare occassions, a preacher will claim that there was quite literally a global flood as it says in the Book of Genesis [Genesis 7]. I believe it to be the case that the great majority of the preachers believe that the flood literally occurred and that it was worldwide.

I recall vividly a preacher claiming to have visited the Grand Canyon which for him was clear evidence of this Great Flood.

I don't remember ever in my life believing there had literally been this great worldwide flood. But, then, I wasn't raised in a Christian household. And, if the Great Flood ever came up in conversation, I couldn't imagine where all the water could have come from. I know that Christians believe "God can do anything," and use that phrase when something that defies a science-minded sensibility comes up.

Anyway, for the record, there never was literally a Great Worldwide Flood. It didn't happen. The geological evidence is absolute in showing there was no such thing.

It is of course possible, even likely, that there was a Great Flood, that engulfed a huge swatch of territory, and that inspired the story of Noah. But there was no flood that "took out" all of life such that the human race had to be re-vitalized through Noah and his family. It didn't happen; but that doesn't mean that the story is "false." It is, instead, an architypal myth, chockablock with meaning -- just not any literal meaning.

Sorry that the viddies below are kind of meanspirited here and there, but the science in them, I think, is fully valid.

Loaf & Fish begins to fill its new building with stale pastries

With the Loaves & Fishes Warehouse and Welcoming-Your-Cash Center set to open on June 8, administrators at the facility have begun to fill some of the space at the heavily secured building with the stale pastries that are the mainstay of homeless people's breakfasts at L&F. The black bags, yet to be offloaded, that you can see in the armored van, have come from furtive 3am pick-ups from dumpsters at local Dunkin Donuts. Photograph from The Town.

This just inEerie, but not surprising. An anagram for "Loaves and Fishes" is "A Vessel of Danish," and decidedly NOT "A Vessel of God."

The new building has been built at a cost of $1.5 million as part of Loaves & Fishes' effort at "Empire Building." The building is being outfitted with all manner of security devises and, we are told, will function as a Welcoming Center, Warehouse and new, swanky office space for administraitors. During the time the building was in construction, homeless people in Sacramento suffered through one of the area's coldest and wettest winters, while funds for shelter had been cut by local government. Loaves & Fishes' mission statement tells us that they are supposed to exist to feed and shelter the homeless. Unhappily, the Board and administraitors at L&F have abundantly proved themselves to be pieces of crap. Loaves & Fishes did nothing beyond the usual pathetic minimum during winter for the homeless people it hides behind as it cons the public into handing over donations.