Sacramento Homeless blog

Jefferson Bethke's poem

2012-01-21T18:02:00.000-08:00

Jefferson Bethke

Since I have spent A LOT of time in Homeless World Sacramento where most of the homeless guys have a family background that is Christian, and where most of the guys, themselves, too, say they are Christian, I thought I would embed this poem that has, I understand, gone viral on the Internet.

I found it via elephant journal, a mostly Buddhist online publication, that does its thing in Boulder, Colorado, a famously Buddhist (and liberal) city -- home of Naropa University. [I consider myself to be a Skyhooks Buddhist -- someone who is a secular Western Buddhist who believes we aren't 'just' pushed up from the muck, but somehow "pulled up," a product of spirit or consciousness, too.]

I am, myself, ambivalent about Bethke's poem. I think it nice that he wrote it and filmed it, but I don't think he is precise about his message. He is "trapped" in a meter-and-rhyme scheme that requires quick lines of text -- which has him saying some things that are clever at the price of logic or completeness. Nonetheless, WAY TO GO, Jefferson. Quite an accomplishment, particularly for someone as young as yourself [22 years old; didn't know you were THAT new to the planet].

Anyway, Readers, listen to "Why I Hate Religion, But Love Jesus" and let me know what you think in the comment section. In a few days, I'll put up a follow-up post.

Words of Martin Luther King, Jr.

2012-01-16T12:08:00.000-08:00

… the words of the late John F. Kennedy come back to haunt us. Five years ago he said, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” [Applause]

Increasingly, by choice or by accident, this is the role our nation has taken, the role of those who make peaceful revolution impossible by refusing to give up the privileges and the pleasures that come from the immense profits of overseas investments. I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin [Applause], we must rapidly begin the shift from a thing-oriented society to a person-oriented society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights, are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, extreme materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.

A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the Good Samaritan on life’s roadside, but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho Road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life’s highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. [Applause]

…

America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing except a tragic death wish to prevent us from reordering our priorities so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.

This kind of positive revolution of values is our best defense against communism.
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== Text above is taken from the book that is pictured. Frustrating for me, I cannot tell you from which speech this text comes, due to omissions in the preview of the book and unnumbered pages at Google Books. http://books.google.com/books?id=sOmOA8jgKvwC

sacHO now on Google Plus

2012-01-12T15:17:00.000-08:00

Find your mouse and grab your hat. Make the click in a second flat. Make your way to the 'puter and have a look. To see sacHO -- Sacramento Homeless, that is -- now on Google Plus.

So come on down. Befriend us, or love us, or +1 us or be non-plussed. Whatever suits. Watch as Sacramento Homeless takes over the world, or something well short of that. See you there! (Well, not really; the Internet doesn't work quite that way.)

A Bee Editorial and a faked 'fact' to stoke donations

2012-01-12T12:04:00.000-08:00

I am forever disgusted that "the truth" of what homelessness in Sacramento is like, and what undergirds the politics, and what the skanky homeless-help charities are like, never gets to the public. Instead, the public gets from the charities and the Bee and SNR bleetings that the homeless are pathetic or secret Jesuses or a crowd of children or all viscious psychopaths. Whatever works to represent the homeless in a way to make coffers overflow or stoke sympathy or entice the weary (and should be wary!) public is used, the truth be damned.

The hopeless Bee, today, in another of its Board Editorials from Fantasyland, "Editorial: Don't forget homeless women and children," laudably writes about mothers and kids (yes, solo homeless men do, indeed, get too much of what attention there is), but at the center of it all are fake "statistics."

From the ed:

…housing for poor families remains in desperately short supply. As [Michele] Steeb [CEO of St. John's shelter] and [Chet] Hewitt [president and CEO of Sierra Health Foundation] wrote [in a Bee Viewpoints piece Wednesday], St. John's shelter turns away 320 women and children every day. The county's two other shelters that cater to mothers and fathers with children, Sacramento Area Emergency Housing Center and Volunteers of America, report similar upticks in the number of families they must turn away every night as well.

That 320 figure is wholly bogus.

As I wrote as a comment to today's editorial:

The "statistic" "St. John's shelter turns away 320 women and children every day" is misleading and a concoction -- with an emphasis on the 'con’ part. There is not a hoard of whimpering people standing outside St. John's every morning and Michele Steeb jolly well knows this and the Bee is journalistically irresponsible to suppose anything like it is true and to fail to verify – really, “correct” -- that false claim. Ms. Steeb and the Bee, each, have an obligation to the public to present information that helps Sacramentans see the truth of what’s going on – not to fake facts or the situation to stoke public sympathy for homeless people and funnel donations to Ms. Steeb’s or any other charity in the homeless-“help” industry.

That 320 figure almost certainly represents people on a waiting list. While some of these women and children may be in desperate situations, many are certainly adequately housed or in OK shelters but hope to make a lateral or upgrade move to St. John’s in the future. Other people are OK, but maintain their spot on the waiting list because it’s easy to do and because they like to keep their options open. Too, there are sure to be women and children reduced to living in their car or on the streets who “jump the waiting list,” and get into St. John’s or receive motel vouchers.

J’accuse: The homeless-“help” industry needs to stop using untruth and skanky marketing techniques to fill its coffers. And it would if the Bee would do its job by ferreting out the truth of what the homeless circumstance is and report on what the charity industry that uses homeless people as props is really like. Just because they surround themselves with homeless people does not mean that homeless-charity executives are angels. Indeed, most are are the furthest thing from angels. The very furtherest thing.

The great tragedy -- and it very much is a tragedy; homeless people die on the street; mentally ill people die early, very often from hypertension-related reasons; drugs and alcohol drag people to the grave -- is that if the public had access to the truth of the circumstance of homelessness and what 'the life' feels like, this understanding would motivate a tsunami of real (and less expensive) help to bring meaning and happiness to suffering people's lives.

And then I found this in my email archives. From April of 2009, Michele Steeb wrote the following to me with respect to her report of a high "turn away" number:

Hi, Tom. Thank you for your email. The numbers you are referencing can be qualified as follows. There are ~300 women and children who are requesting a place today at St. John's. Yes, some are on the waiting list at other shelters, and some are in other shelters currently, but given that we are a program that assists families in getting back on their feet, versus a true shelter, we know there are folks who are expressly interested in on our Program. We would need to manually go through the list to try and determine how many are on the street, or living in their storage unit, or living in their car to provide you with those numbers, and btw, that information changes minute by minute. Someone on the street can get in touch with an old friend who says, "You can stay with me until a place opens up in the Shelter..." Moreover, just because someone is in a home doesn't mean they are safe. Many of the families on our waiting list are waiting to escape violent situations... or are staying with family/friends having escaped, but are in a temporary situation. Does this answer your question? Michele Steeb Executive Director

Michele Steeb: You stink.

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Update: Today, Jan 13, 2012, a link to this post was sent to the Editorial Board which consists of the following Bee staffers: Rex Babin, Cheryl Dell, Stuart Leavenworth, Pia Lopez, Dan Morain, Gary Reed, Foon Rhee, Ginger Rutland, and Joyce Terhaar.

Weirdness on "Robert and Gerald" night

2012-01-04T12:06:00.000-08:00

While the great majority of homeless people are fully able to formulate their own conclusions about how the world works, what they want in life and what to believe, some of the guys out here are less in command of “how the world works” and can be vulnerable to being manipulated or being taken advantage of in various ways. And, they can fall under sway of political-indoctrination efforts at Loaves & Fishes or be influenced by preachers too easily.

I worry more than a little about the easily-influenced guys, left to slosh around in hardscrabble Homeless World, with all the nuttiness they have to evaluate. Most worrisome, of course, is the communist-indoctrination effort by Loaves & Fishes and its associated “politically to the Left of Neptune” charities. But, also, there is single-instance weirdness by an occasional mission preacher.

By no means, by “mission weirdness” am I referring to issues like creationism/evolution, genesis/The Big Bang, or did/did not humans at any time share the planet with dinosaurs. These spaces where Big Science and belief may bump heads are, I think, of no great importance. One day, we’ll all get to heaven (or not) and likely the red line where truth ends and falsehood begins will be shown to us … with no penalty assessments if we are wrongheaded in our thinking on borderline-doctrinaire matters while on this earthy earth. [Of course, I’m expecting that Big Science triumphs here and that it is explained by our celestial betters, after our death, that everything in the Bible, while God-inspired (or the product of archetypal myth) is true, but is written from the perspective, or knowledge base, of men several millennia ago who had no science knowledge.]

Worrisome preaching in the past has included nuttiness coming from a college professor who insisted that President Obama is the anti-Christ, and that China is taking over America [See “Preacher tells us Obama is a forebearer of End Times” and “Obama is the Antichrist, Part II”] and from a preacher a year earlier who insisted that it was the sun that circled the earth, and not vise versa. {See “The Earth Does Not Orbit the Sun [Oh, yeah!?]”}

New worrisome preaching came Monday when the mission congregation was told that ill people should forgo aid from physicians and instead appeal to Jesus for help with their ailments. Make no mistake, I am not suggesting that people should not appeal to God or Jesus in light of physical ailments. Indeed, Christians should seek God/Jesus’ intervention in such a circumstance. What I find mightily worrisome is a chapel message that tells a homeless congregation that they should appeal to God/Jesus instead of visiting a doctor if they are ailing -- which was the message Monday night.

The success of healthy lifestyles in the modern age is well established. Buttressed by visits to physicians in intervals and to hospitals during emergencies, a person, today, can expect to live well into old age. In the Middle Ages, people could expect a life span of 35 years, on average.* The great difference between then and now is due to knowledge that has amassed on how to prepare food, avoid injuries and intercede in case of illness. Modern medicine works; the data proves it to be so. Everyone should go, or be taken to, a doctor when it is necessary. Avoidance in seeking the aid of doctors when it is necessary is stupid. Telling people not to seek the aid of doctors is criminally stupid.

It may be that doctors act as agents of God in bettering our lives, I don’t know. But a message that Jesus can do it all via prayer has been shown not to work. Our actions to get up and help ourself is mandatory. Prayer is no more guaranteed to cure an infection than grow American currency on a fruit tree, unless we take actions which could indeed serve a function in being a part of the prayer cure..

At the end of the his message Monday night, Preacher Robert alluded to Luke 8, 41-56: where Jairus appealed to Christ to save his dying 12-year-old daughter and where a woman touched Jesus’ hem who had “an issue of blood” for twelve years without there being any success from treatment by physicians.

Robert used this text from Luke 8 to buttress an argument he then made that Jesus can save us, while physicians cannot.

My retort: Physicians of today know what they are doing. “Physicians” two thousand years ago were, basically, witch doctors who didn’t have a clue.

In the year 30, in light of ailments as serious as those of the 12-year-old and the bleeding woman, ONLY appeals to God can have helped. Today, it would be negligent to the extreme not to seek physicians’ aid.

What the congregants can come to believe.

In my post about the preacher who misinformed the congregation about the orbits of the sun and earth, I wrote this:

Troubling to me [and my friend James] was that conversation at dinner after the sermon informed us that many of our dorm brothers bought the crappola nonsense the preacher spewed that evening. One man said the preacher must surely be a college professor who made "fifteen or twenty dollars an hour." Others were impressed by the preacher's verbosity and command of 'facts.'

The men at dinner did not agree with my assessment that the preacher was an idiot. "He has a job and a family; that's more than you can say," said a man seated across from me. Yep, but he's still an idiot.

Troubling to me, today, is the likelihood that many of my brethren in the seats Monday night buy the crappola nonsense that Robert preached. Unhappily, Robert’s pure crap is dangerous pure crap that can result in extended suffering and even death for homeless people and their children.

Homeless people DON’T HAVE MONEY and can be very reluctant already to seek the aid of doctors when they or their children are sick. Everything should be done TO ENCOURAGE homeless people to seek doctors’ aid, NOT discourage it, or – as Robert preached – avoid doctors’ aid in all instances.

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Footnote

* A simple comparison of life spans, juxtaposing the present time to past eras, is difficult to achieve. While there are records and valid research, cultures were wildly different in the distant past as compared to today. As many as half of infants and toddlers would die before the age of four in the period before the Nineteenth Century -- due to diseases we, nowadays, consider minor; starvation; and a right parents had to kill their children in many cultures. In Ages past, violence in the community was much more frequent. Anything resembling a police force or an effort to capture murderers was rare. General problems with availability of food -- or healthy, clean food -- also foreshortened lifespans. All this is in addition to the unavailability of anything approaching the sophisticated medical care we have today.

A stroll through Breton woods

2011-12-18T15:47:00.000-08:00

If there is any one secret of success, it lies in the ability to get the other person's point of view, to see things from that person's angle as well as from your own. -- Henry Ford

There has been a flurry of newsprint in the local daily about the long-simmering (and on occasion boiling) idea of creating a legal homeless campground. A new lukewarm splash of interest came Tuesday as result of Mayor Kevin Johnson pledging support for a campground under the aegis of SafeGround at one of two locations that have been identified. It was hoped by Johnson with the fervent support of fellow council member Jay Schenirer and others that at the weekly city council meeting that night some progress could be achieved toward getting something done.

But no; didn’t happen. Quoting a disappointed late-night commenter to the Bee article, who goes by the moniker The Ghost of Belle Cooledge, “at tonight’s City Council Meeting, addressing the homeless issue was AGAIN thrown under the bus with the poser supporter Councilman Schenirer playing the good cop saying he will take in ideas and will have it agenized in January. WHERE IS THE LEADERSHIP ON THIS ISSUE? Kevin Johnson promised this EONS ago.”

The next day, the Bee’s Marcos Breton weighed in with a column crudely titled “A camp for Sacramento's homeless would be a waste.” As has always been the case in the years I’ve read Breton, he pipes in without a scintilla of knowledge of what being rendered homeless is like, or of the myriad frustrations of dealing with authoritarian, often-dysfunctional and sometimes-overwhelmed homeless-services charities.His logic in his column is on the order of “other cities push their homeless out of town; we must do much the same or we’d be chumps.” He writes his dismissive columns on this topic without ever getting up from his desk chair.

Well, I’m overstating it. Breton does summarize at the end by tossing in the age-old bromide “a hand up for the homeless – not a hand out.” And he tells us “Helping people who want to help themselves” – by “stay(ing) clean, law-abiding and focused on employment” -- is something the public would support. BUT, all this through private charity – like Cottage Housing which he endorses – not through government financial support.

Many commenters to the column took Breton to task, with one using the moniker paulal (Paula Lomazzi of SHOC, no doubt) stating the pro-SafeGround position splendidly:

There are not enough shelter beds or transitional housing or other homeless housing programs. There are over 1,000 that must sleep outdoors because of no other option no matter how much they want to get out of homelessness. If we don't provide any place where people can legally camp, that's when you have unsanitary conditions. With a legal place for people to sleep until they can access housing, they would be able to have portable toilets, at the least. No cost to the city or county. Advocates have wanted to rent portable toilets for homeless people, but the city would not allow it. Also a legal place to camp would give people a bit more stability and ability to improve their lives and their conditions, easily accessible to service providers, peer support. Right now people must hide from [public] and police, move constantly, vulnerable being alone, etc.

In contrast to what Breton would have happen, which is in effect nothing since Cottage Housing isn’t going to expand overnight, legalizing a campground is very much necessary since it is clearly, as Lomazzi writes, safer and cleaner and free and allows people opportunities to get their lives together, as compared to what is inadequate, currently. This camp would only help a hundred people, but that would help. Again, a SafeGround camp – which is what it would be – is necessary. It is likely to prevent much suffering, and possibly prevent a life from being lost.

Understand, I am no fan of the SafeGround organization. They are a part of several connected charities that have national-political positions that are as stupid as dirt and to the Left of Neptune, bound up in the mutterings of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America which was formerly named the Communist League, and is self-described at the homepage of their website as wanting "public ownership of the means of production, and the distribution of the products of society according to need." I know it sounds crazy, but it is certainly true: many homeless people have been indoctrinated with politics from these fiery Depths of Hell. [See the “Ugliness of SafeGround”.]

I put a Henry Ford quote at the top of this blogpost. Here’s another one:

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty. -- Henry Ford

This quote would seem to be doubly damning of capital punishment and charity. But while it is damning of capital punishment – made more clearly so in Ford’s extended thoughts on the topic – Ford did not damn charity. Indeed, at his death he gave the vast majority of his wealth to the Ford Foundation, "to receive and administer funds for scientific, educational and charitable purposes, all for the public welfare.”

Charity is part of the equation for helping the neediest of the needy. And while there are nonprofit charities that play a role in helping people, the government – federal, state and local – has a role here, too. It is so easy and cheap to banish extraordinary suffering and aid the dispossessed. There is enormous payoff at so little cost. For Sacramento city and county to do nothing or what’s minimal – particularly if it is by Breton’s reasoning that we don’t want to be a chump, helping the poorest of the poor when other local governments aren’t – then the cruelty is overwhelming.

I know the city of Sacramento, at Mayor Johnson's behest, fully wasted a million dollars in early spring of 2009 getting a scant few beds for people at VOA’s Cal Expo winter shelter. Often, government money gets wasted for desired positive publicity rather than providing real help. And, yes, many local homeless-help charities are scoundrals, as, certainly, was VOA in 2009. But with a little care and a watchful eye, a lot of good can be done with little money.

Henry Ford’s point was that charity alone is like a kind of death for the poor. A way out, a helping hand, is necessary, too, to restore people who can work (or be otherwise productive) to meaningful lives. AND, a helping hand is needed to find a niche in the world for folks who are captured by addiction or mental problems that alienate them from society. A lot of homeless people are beat up in myriad ways. To merely provide means for homeless folk to make a beeline to a job is inadequate. Within the lowest caste (that is, among homeless folk) are many whose work skills and job-getting skills aren't competent, and will never be. But these are people, too, who love and suffer and bleed. Their lives should not be thrown away.

The Big Picture (The good, the bad and the ugly in Homeless World Sacramento) Part I

2011-12-15T22:45:00.000-08:00

If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die?-- William Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice

While I feel certain that homeless people (including myself) deserve the sympathies and aid of the public and much robust support from the government, I don’t think this because I believe Sacramento’s homeless population could pass as a cross section of the general population (as we're often portrayed). The homeless, who are the bottom 1% socially and economically in our society are, as you would suppose, disproportionate to the whole in being mentally ill; or mentally unusual; or psychically beat up; or depressed; or addicted; or in having quirks or criminal records or spotty resumes or damaged psyches that frustrate getting or holding onto a job.

Too, among the homeless are a great many who are asocial – who will steal or destroy things without a moment’s consideration of others who are hurt by these actions. There are also many charming con men “out here” who use lies and deception to get what they want, and think all others are morally just as they are -- but soft, somehow, and without the skill-set to match these con artists’ supposed rates of conniving ”success.” Others are rascals who take sadistic pleasure in what mayhem they stir up. The least-mature of these adult rascals litter and write on wet cement and mess up public restrooms and giggle when they poop on the sides of buildings at night.

There are actions and antics by many of my brethren that are ground for all the hate that gets directed toward homeless folk. Any time an article or Marcos Breton column about the homeless is published in the Bee, the usual haters whip out their keyboards to pound out mean-spirited spiels as online comments. No doubt, these haters are representative of a large number of people in our metropolis -- who feel similarly to Michele Bachmann who not long ago said, “if the sick and homeless want healthcare, they should get a job and make their own way.” Yes, well. It’s not that easy.

While a good many of the Sacramento homeless could never acquire a veneer of gentility such to be made ready for a pleasant dinner party or a spirited discussion of Spinoza, they think and feel in complete abundance and their lives – our lives – are as much an entire universe of joy and drama and meaning as any more-conventional citizen’s.We are real – though, for some of us, we’re not always altogether sure of that in the beat-up condition we find ourselves.

Among the homeless, too, is an overabundance of people who don’t have a grasp of how the world operates; they don’t see “the big picture.” They believed that one nutty Gospel Mission preacher [who lasted for just the one night] who told us the sun goes around the earth or that people once shared the planet with dinosaurs or that Obama is the antiChrist. These homeless fellows' knowledge isn’t enough encyclopedic to warn them away from the complete nonsense that often comes along disguised as information. They are insecured, left gullible, and this vulnerability leaves them wide open to being taken advantage of (or of being rendered homeless in the first place).

Yet others have very simply fallen out of their lives in one of the many ways that can happen. The money ran out and they are broken. A consumptive sequence of events has left them bedraggled and without resources.

But there are great virtues in Homeless World, too. One -- completely contrary to the stereotype that the homeless are all lay-abouts unwilling to work – is that homeless guys wanting to work always outnumber the jobs that can be found. There is always a desire for work and no job that comes along goes unfilled.

So-called “Daily Bread” casual-labor jobs that Loaves & Fishes used to offer (and may still, on a limited basis) get filled, always – except in the case of “employers” who gain the reputation of cheating guys out of what pay is owed. Casual jobs at Loaves & Fishes that are paid using $5 McDonald’s giftcards are always filled. Indeed, may homeless people volunteer to work at Loaves & Fishes on a scheduled basis.

At the mission, if there is a shortage of guys assigned kitchen duty, there is no problem rustling up volunteers to work, with no benefit forthcoming to these instant recruits for doing so.

Famously, too, homeless guys collect bottles and cans for recycling. There’s neither reluctance nor embarrassment to do that. Some fellows have mapped out favored collection spots and tell me they feel well compensated by the recycling business for their efforts. Other guys collect cans but complain they don't make much from it. Other guys are hooked up with folks who will use them to hold signs on the sidewalk at intersections. Often, in these Hard Times, these jobs -- which in years past had paid OK -- are now npaid under the table at less than minimum wage.

Other guys, may not think of it that way, but they truly have launched themselves as small-business men. A couple skilled guys I know get work in Granite Bay providing the manpower for home-improvement projects. Another fellow gets permission from businessmen and homeowners to pass his metal-detector equipment over a property to find treasure. By some prior arrangement, this fellow either gets paid for what is found, or gets a split of what coins, jewelry or whatever is unearthed.

Another guy I know frequently does yardwork for an appreciative homeowner. Yet another guy has set himself up washing businesses’ windows. Other fellows used to use Labor Ready for temporary manual labor, but that agency is no longer in business or open to homeless clients. Other agencies sometimes can be talked into giving a homeless fellow a chance. Doors get knocked on; it's rare, but sometimes opportunity follows.

The Union Gospel Mission, as part of its Rehab program, used to be able to arrange opportunities for many of the graduates to get employment. In recent years, UGM's efforts at helping find jobs has been significantly waylaid by the bad economy.

It’s a wacky, dirty world – homelessness is. But primarily, it is achingly poignant. Even the biggest scoundrels in this world have sides to their personalities that are funny or wistful or oddly -- but fully -- generous. We get by with little, endure suffering, live in the midst of a lot of craziness and there is something weirdly OK and distressingly habitual that settles into being our routine. We become like the frog in the beaker where the water temperature rises so slowly he doesn’t notice that he's being slowly boiled unto death. In many ways, our life, our future is escaping from us – drifting away like a gentle patch of steam.

But even when weeks pass by without the simplest "luxury" -- a cup of Starbuck's or clean socks -- just as with anyone, the circumstance that we’re in NOW is our life. It's where attachments and friends and challenges and intrigue meld into a daily drama. In this -- behold! -- we are just like conventional citizens. No different, whatever.

Hunger can cause obesity

2011-12-09T19:24:00.001-08:00

Keith Olbermann of the Current TV show Countdown named Republican presidential candidate Rick Santorum today's Worst Person in the World because of content in a speech he gave in Iowa saying that obesity that is common among poor people shows that they are not really going hungry.


	There's a svelte middle-class person inside every homeless person.

Olbermann quoted Santorum, via an Iowa newspaper: Said Santorum with respect to Food Stamps, "If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?

The answer to Santorum's question is that obesity is commonly caused by hunger, as contrary to commonsense as that may seem to many.

Quoting the Food Research & Action Center [as Olberman did, also] [emphases, mine]:

Obesity is a major public health problem in the U.S. While all segments of the population are affected, low-income and food insecure people are especially vulnerable due to the additional risk factors associated with poverty, including limited resources, limited access to healthy and affordable foods, and limited opportunities for physical activity. Even individuals who are highly motivated can have difficulty eating healthy and being active if their environments do not support or allow such behaviors (Institute of Medicine, 2009).

In addition, households with limited resources to buy enough food often try to stretch their food budgets by purchasing cheap, energy-dense foods that are filling – meaning that they try to maximize their calories per dollar in order to stave off hunger. Those who are food insecure may also overeat when food does become available, resulting in chronic ups and downs in food intake that can contribute to weight gain. This is especially a problem for low-income women, who often restrict their food intake to protect their children from hunger.

And by the way, obesity is common among those who eat at Loaves & Fishes for these reasons. Loaves and Fishes which claims with pride that it does without government funding means, too, it does without nutritional oversight. Loaves & Fishes serves large quantities of cheap, energy-dense foods because of cheap, dense administrators at that charity.

It's cold out there

2011-12-08T13:44:00.001-08:00

Forensic graph from the National Weather Service.

The National Weather Service records the temperature hourly. Their forensic record for Sacramento shows the subfreezing temperatures that many homeless folk sleeping outside have to deal with.

The red line in the graph, at right, shows hourly temperatures measured at Sacramento Executive Airport over a seven-day period. As you can see, for the past five nights, the red line touches or nearly touches the gray horizontal line that represents a temperature reading of 30 degrees Fahrenheit.

Indeed, each night there are recorded subfreezing temperature readings. It's cold out there, often windy, but mostly dry with frost on the grass visible at dawn. Stay well out there, homeless friends.

Thanksgiving meals

2011-11-20T11:44:00.001-08:00

Thanksgiving cometh. And for Sacramento homeless folk it means a bounty of good eating during what is a week of culinary delight. A couple handouts provide info for much of what's in store. Eat hardy, my homeless friends.

Four reforms from Thomas Friedman

2011-11-03T17:46:00.000-07:00

We need to focus on four reforms that don’t require new bureaucracies to implement. 1) If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big and needs to be broken up. We can’t risk another trillion-dollar bailout. 2) If [a] bank’s deposits are federally insured by U.S. taxpayers, [the bank] can’t do any proprietary trading with those deposits — period. 3) Derivatives have to be traded on transparent exchanges where we can see if another A.I.G. is building up enormous risk. 4) Finally, an idea from the blogosphere: U.S. congressmen should have to dress like Nascar drivers and wear the logos of all the banks, investment banks, insurance companies and real estate firms that they’re taking money from. The public needs to know.

Capitalism and free markets are the best engines for generating growth and relieving poverty — provided they are balanced with meaningful transparency, regulation and oversight. We lost that balance in the last decade. If we don’t get it back — and there is now a tidal wave of money resisting that — we will have another crisis. And, if that happens, the cry for justice could turn ugly. Free advice to the financial services industry: Stick to being bulls. Stop being pigs.

-- words come from New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's latest piece, "Did You Hear the One About the Bankers?" The picture comes from FreakingNews.com. Bolding some of the text comes from me [Tom Armstrong] as my way of saying to those commune-ists Cat, the Delanys and Libby that THAT is the way to fix the economy, not by turning America into a backward, Communist, totalitarian country, like North Korea.

As the homeless join 'Occupy' encampments it adds a new, often-unwanted dimension

2011-10-31T20:48:00.000-07:00

A frontpage story in the New York Times addresses the curious situation that is occurring nationwide of homeless people joining the Occupy movement. A rough estimate is that 30% of the people amassed in the movement are homeless.

A bit of one picture from the article: An L.A. homeless guy.

Homeless people are, of course, part of the Bottom 99% that the Occupy movement represents -- indeed we can easily lay claim to being the Bottom 1% -- but homeless people join city encampments with special sets of interests and needs, and oftentimes a much lessened interest in the movement's goals.

From the Times piece, "Dissenting, or Seeking Shelter? Homeless Stake a Claim at Protests":

From Los Angeles to Wall Street, from Denver to Boston, homeless men and women have joined the protesters in large numbers, or at least have settled in beside them for the night. While the economic deprivation they suffer might symbolize the grievance at the heart of this protest, they have come less for the cause than for what they almost invariably describe as an easier existence. There is food, as well as bathrooms, safety, company and lots of activity to allow them to pass away their days.

...[Homeless people's] presence is posing a mounting quandary for protesters and the authorities, and divisions have arisen among protesters across the country about how much, if at all, to embrace the interlopers. The rising number of homeless, many of them suffering from mental disorders, has made it easier for Occupy’s opponents to belittle the movement as vagrant and lawless and has raised the pressure on municipal authorities to crack down.

In the article, protesters in only one city, Atlanta, cherished the presence of homeless people. The sentiment there was expressed by a protesting 50-year-old former repairman: "The homeless bring numbers. They bring a voice."

But sentiment found in Nashville, New York, Los Angeles and Oakland was different.

A 22-year-old L.A. protester, homeless herself, said this, "“There are a lot of them here that have mental problems and that need help. They are in the wrong place.” A Nashville participant in the movement had this to say about the homeless presence, "This is keeping people away: It distracts a lot of energy away from the issues we’re fighting for ... A lot of women felt unsafe camping out at night. It discourages a lot of people from participating."

At Zuccotti Park near Wall Street a protester tasked to provide security offered this crass comment: “It’s bad for most of us who came here to build a movement. We didn’t come here to start a recovery institution.”

The article made no mention of Sacramento, which has unique features.The incurious press in our metropolis has made the SafeGround movement representative of the whole of homelessness and has made John Kraintz and Tracie Rice-Bailey celebratory leaders. Kraintz and Rice-Bailey are known to live in apartments in the downtown area and have been seen frequenting in or near Chavez Park which is Occupy Sacramento's Ground Zero.

At one point, about two weeks ago, I saw Kraintz advising some protesters arousing honks of support from motorists on I Street. The particular grouping featured a woman with a bullhorn complaining bitterly about the Obama Administration. The protesters, between 12 and 20 in number, gathered near the street, but in front of the Federal Court building, had a variety of messages. Many had signs complaining about the crackdown on marijuana. But others had signs that related to more-common Occupy complaints, like income disparities. Kraintz, straddling his bicycle, was advising one young man that their movement needed to hone in on what they were about, to deliver a clearer message.

Paula Lomazzi, Executive Director (and sole staff member) of SHOC [Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee], acting as if she is a core Occupy Sacramento movement organizer [and it may be she is], has been involved in rallying the presence of her niche of homeless people and homeless-aid-industry muckamucks to attend City Council meetings relating to gaining a right for the Occupy people to camp without harassment in Chavez Park.

Always troubling, is the horning in, via the LoafFish-SHOC-SafeGround triangle, of the unsavory politics of the three Alkali Flat-area charities. All have a wholly anti-capitalism agenda associated with The League of Revolutionaries for a New America (formerly, The Communist League). Lomazzi -- and in August, Rice-Bailey, the hippie of SafeGrnd -- have written for LRNA's newspaper, The People's Tribune.

SNR gets it EXACTLY right re Occupy Sac

2011-10-27T10:00:00.000-07:00

OK, I may get in trouble here, but the Sacramento News & Review is spot on in their editorial this week regarding the Occupy Sac protesters' RIGHT to free speech. Here it is, en toto:

A tent in Chavez Park two days ago.
As Occupy Sacramento moves into its third week, some people—say, for instance, the local daily and the city council—seem to be suffering from protest fatigue. After all, the protest is messy (despite the fact that protesters in Cesar Chavez Plaza have been cleaning up after themselves), and, gosh, if we let them protest 24 hours a day, won’t we have to let less savory characters do the same?

But that’s precisely the point. It’s easy to support freedom of speech when you buy ink by the barrel or have microphones and cameras at ready access for each and every one of your opinions. But the main thing protesters of Occupy Sacramento have to work with is their own bodies. A 24-hour protest is a pretty stark statement of how much the principles they are fighting for matter to them.

And if the Ku Klux Klan or anti-gay protesters or pro-life protesters or—gasp!—our homeless citizens are the next to protest 24/7 in front of City Hall? Good for them, as long as they keep it peaceful. That’s what free speech, the right to assemble and the right to petition for redress of grievances are all about.

Things are much messier in democracies than in dictatorships and oligarchies. Freedom of speech and the right to protest aren’t privileges that can be revoked; they are rights, and they are not reserved for causes of which we approve. The fear of potential problems is not an excuse for prior restraint on free speech—and our city council and local daily should be the first to say so.

And, indeed, the ed is right that there is an issue of allowing Occupy to protest that lets in the Big Barn Door protest from the homeless community. [And, unfortunately, that means SafeGround and probably not the larger, needier, more-legitimate-without-crazy-underlying-politics other 90% of suffering homeless folk.]

The problem with SafeGround is that they have become -- like Loaves & Fishes and SHOC -- a money-grabby pseudo-charity that has become far more interested in garnering publicity [which brings attention, which results in donation receipts] than a group that ACCOMPLISHES anything. By constantly jonesing for a rumble, and making noise, they have come to think that that is all they need to do. They protest everything, object, nay-say, and play victim instead of engaging any path toward possible progress. If others, say the city council, has issues or problems SG rejects them. WE are poor victims, so goes the SG whine. And that trumps all else.

And, thus, SafeGround will begin their full-throttle protesting in Chavez Park the minute the Occupy crowd leaves. But for SafeGround it won't really be an exercise of free speech; it will be the same old, same old. "Get your lime-green SafeGround T-shirt, right cheer, folks. Just fifteen smackers. Help a victimized homeless dude, wontcha?"

The delicious absurdist irony is that by having a legalized place to protest, the SafeGrounders will have undermined their protest for a legalized place to be. Thus nullifying their protest. But should they leave, their complaint of not having a place to be would re-arise as something they must settle in in Chavez Park to protest.

Urgent! Urgent! Sacramento Steps Forward continues its malevolent "bucks rush" campaign

2011-10-15T22:32:00.000-07:00

OK. It is time to stop any thinking that the hybrid charity/govt organization Sacramento Steps Forward is doing anything other than going after people's dough for the sake of going after people's dough. They've adopted a corporate mindset: It's all about the money.

For corporations, that's legitimized. Big corporations are, by Supreme Court determination, supposed to be wholly at work for the stockholders. It is all about profits for them.

Central bit of SacStepForw's email sent Friday.The countdown of days is in red,which presents a falsified sense of urgency. Click here to enlarge to a more-easily-readable size.

Sacramento Steps Forward, on the other hand, is supposed to be at work for the public. Certainly, they are tasked with the job of helping the homeless -- but that shouldn't be, and certainly needn't be at odds with serving the public interest. And how should they "serve" the public? By being an honest and straightforward enterprise -- which is what they've chosen not to be.

Three days ago, Bob Erlenbusch, of Sacramento Housing Alliance and whom I believe is on the Board of SSF, was quoted at the SSF Facebook site saying SSF doesn't need the hundred thou until the end of the year [see graphic at the bottom of this post], but Sac Steps Forward is playing a game of "bucks rush" to try to panic the public into sending in money straight away because there is a dire emergency. {Pay us before you have time to think! It's a dire emergency!! Pay us NOW!!!]

Something else the public isn't told in the email campaign is that grants are being sought. Very likely, I aver, the grant givers are standing on the sidelines to bridge the gap in the gap -- that is, to pay whatever short of the $100,000 that Sacramento Steps Forward seeks. So, the probable truth is that the public gets hassled and then hustled when there really isn't going to be any shortfall in the Winter-help program till. It's all just a rabid-dog marketing scheme. Right now on SSF's homepage at their website is a big blue sign that says "Urgent!"


	From SSF's Facebook wall; an entry dated 10/11. [Click here to enlarge slightly.] UPDATE: SSF has taken down this entry.

Just as bad as all of this is that Sacramento Steps Forward doesn't have a real sense of what being homeless in our county is like. How could they, from their Ivory Tower? If you go to their website, you will see that they could just as well be talking about Hampton dilettantes or people in wheelchairs or hotdog-cart vendors as Sacramento homeless people. The experience of being homeless and cold and miserable and at risk isn't delved into. I think this is because the lot of them don't have a clue. An exception is Rudolph and TRB, who curiously are on a committee as homeless representatives when neither is homeless anymore, and when both were there to accept winter-long stays at Hawthorn Suites for SafeGround's core members from Mayor Johnson in 2009, when most of the rest of us were left to struggle with the elements. This, when SafeGround would have nothing to do with Winter Shelter. It's a lot like Benedict Arnold supposing he can take off his new Red Coat and come back, again, to work for George Washington at Valley Forge.

A greatly disappointing Sacramento Steps Forward donations-seeking email

2011-10-13T21:46:00.000-07:00

Is Sacramento Steps Forward honest with the public?

A look at the Sacramento Steps Forward website, and an email I received from them this afternoon, makes me wonder if the hybrid charity/government organization is up to it to do the important task of raising money and saving homeless people this coming winter from the misery of sleeping outside.

SacStepsForward's email. Click to enlarge.

One would think that ANY group seeking donations from the public would know it is important to appear competent. Any email that is sent out should be accurate, honest and fully competently written. Indeed, it should be pristine, a thing of beauty. Several sets of eyes should look over any webpage, email, or document that is likely to be scrutinized by the public. This is so because most people won’t see the folks in an organization running around making good things happen; what they will see is that which is put in front of their nose – like on a computer monitor.

Too, any government organization (or nonprofit, for that matter, IMHO) has a sacred obligation to be wholly truthful. It should never lie or mislead. Honesty should be an absolute.Based on the SSF email I received today, I think the organization is chasing away possible donors – not just for today but for the future. Indeed, if anyone were to ask me, I would recommend NOT donating to Sacramento Steps Forward for, at least, the time being.

As you can see from the first graphic that comes with this blogpost, the email that was sent out begins with the onerous information that “Winter Shelter Should Begin” in 38 days. A reader can only suppose that they are being told there is a rush for Sacramento Steps Forward to meet the $100,000 donation-goal that has been set within a 38-day time frame.

Source of the Erlenbusch quote: SSF's Facebook site.

But, a look at SSF’s Facebook site shows that there is no such rush. There, Bob Erlenbusch is quoted in an Oct. 12 post saying, “We don’t need the $100,000 tomorrow, but it’d be nice to have it by the end of the year, before we get too deep into the season.” In other words, they don’t need the funding in 38 days, they just think “it’d be nice to have it” in 78 days. [I believe I’m correct in writing that Erlenbusch is on the Board of both SSF and the Leftist¹ homeless-help charity Sacramento Housing Alliance. In years past, he was a Really Really Big Cheese in Homeless World Los Angeles before something happened and he came to ply his trade here is Sac, as a Small Cheese, starting one or two or three years ago.]

Panicking people to buy something or give money is a dishonest ploy. If Sacramento Steps Forward is intentionally trying to panic people, which by appearances they are, then they are weasels. BUT, even if the effort is not an intentional “bucks rush,” it is far from being an action that ‘keeps faith’ with the great good people of Sacramento, who are the source of the pay of the staffers of SSF and keep us, the county’s homeless, alive more than anyone. But, as I say, the organization should be keeping faith with the public, and be honest straight shooters WITHOUT NEED OF ANY REASON TO DO SO. Honesty should be second nature. Or, first nature, for that matter. Automatic. The default position, with no other position possible other than this ‘default.’

Also, SSF should not be ginning up any supposed magic of the $100,000 amount that it puts out there. For starters, the org was asking for dough a month or so ago, claiming that there was no government money forthcoming when they have to have known that the welfare department was in a process of delaying some of its payments as a means of gathering up some stash to partially fund winter homeless programs [and are now known to be the source of $150,000 that SSF has already received]. When SSF asks for money now, I have to think that there are possible grants in the wings that will fill-in for any shortfall in what was sought. If there are fill-in-the-gap grants laying in wait, SSF must let the public know this. The public is not a rube to be conned.

The email says, “If this gap isn't filled [that is, if the goal of raising $100,000 isn’t achieved], homeless families and vulnerable adults will be left with severely limited options this winter to get away from the cold and rain.” That just isn’t so. There is nothing magical about the amount SSF is seeking. Whatever is raised will be put to good use, very likely. But if it is less or more than $100,000, THAT amount – whatever it is – will be put to use eradicating homeless people’s winter misery. And, if Sacramento Steps Forward is a competent organization THAT will be of use eradicating people’s misery, because if SSF gains a golden, and deserved, reputation of being sincere and authentic to the public THAT will manifest in a beautiful relationship with the people of Sacramento and THAT will be of great use in eliminating misery.

And, finally, the short SSF email is poorly written. That is suggestive of bobbling the ball and not doing high-quality work in other, vital areas. The email says “You’ve raised $1,325.” No, I haven’t. I, Tom, am not seeking donations; SSF is. It says that money that came in earlier will fund “Winter Shelter programs, which provide extra shelter beds and motel vouchers for homeless families and disabled adults sleeping outside.” While we know the meaning that is intended, the message as written is weirdly funny. People aren’t sleeping outside if they’re sleeping in a shelter or motel.

A middle paragraph in the email is embolded. It reads thus:

$100,000 may seem like a daunting task. But did you know there are over 1.4 million people who live in Sacramento County? If every person donated even $1, we'd reach our goal. Easily.

This isn’t a biggie, but “$100,000” isn’t a task. RAISING $100,000 would be. As for the populous of Sacramento County, it is certainly the case that not every man, woman, child, toddler, or newborn will be donating a dollar. Online comments to articles about homelessness that appear in the Bee are in good majority damning of all homeless people. From this we know a great many in the county despise the undercaste – and would never consider sending in their supposed share, which would be, by the SSF figures, about seven cents. In any case, I am bewildered: I don’t find the bolded paragraph to be fun, interesting or meaningful. And I think that is because it’s not, it’s not, and it’s not.

C’mon, Sacramento Steps Forward: Do better. Act more mature, serious and honest. Act as if what you do matters in this crazy old world, because it can.
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¹ Normally, mentioning political leanings would be inappropriate, but Homeless World Sacramento is anything but normal. Many charities in the homeless-aid industry [or, homeless-help racket as one longtime homelessness muckymuck calls the industry here] proselytize their often-goofy politics as much as do anything else. For the record: I don’t know anything specific about Erlenbusch’s personal political thinking. Also, for the record: I am homeless and liberal -- and decidedly not an advocate for totalitarianism, like many of the fuzzball executives of homeless charities, here, who mistakenly think themselves to be liberal … and sane.

Great words.

2011-10-13T15:42:00.001-07:00

Great quote, great man, great presentation (picture). Had to put this up.

I read the picture saying "The grass isn't greener on the other side; it's only green for you where you are. Besides, the sky is a beautiful blue where you are! Get on with it, damn it!"

Plus, I think there's a wispy iCloud in the background.

Trees, Loaves, Fishes and Nincompoopery

2011-10-11T23:26:00.000-07:00

Let me begin this by making a forthright statement: The best thing that could happen right now, to benefit the homeless people in Sacramento County in advance of the life-endangering difficulties of winter, is for the world-class stumbling, bumbling incompetence at Loaves & Fishes to END. And for it to end, there absolutely must be multiple personnel changes. Fire and then hire, y’all.

The latest instance of grand mal stupidity at Loaves & Fishes relates to tree removal. I am told that a week ago Garren, a co-director of Friendship Park, drove a rented cherry picker onto the park grounds, and, with a chainsaw, or other saw of some sort, commenced, by himself, to begin a project of eliminating three big dead or nearly-dead trees from the property.

Make no mistake. Removing big dead trees from Friendship Park is not just a good idea, it is necessary to assure the safety of homeless denizens of the park. Unfriendly Friendship Park is surely the most densely populated park in the county – very much especially so on rainy, windy days when homeless folk use the park as a place to huddle and escape, as best they can, a bad winter day’s miseries. And bad weather and a new winter are acoming.

In January of 2010, an enormous fully-dead tree fell in the park and could easily have killed a half-dozen homeless people.Libby Fernandez’s Smithers, Joan Burke, was quoted in the Bee then, thus:

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.

Right. A completely dead tree that had no roots, and can have weighed five tons, fell over. Someone could have leaned against it and it might have fallen. But, because the leadership at Loaves & Fishes is spectacularly incompetent the danger of the tree went unaddress (and likely unnoticed) before it fell. After the tree incident, there were no employee repercusions. Libby [CEO] and Joan and Garren and Jim [the other co-director] went skipping along singing “la-de-da-de-da” and nobody cared that from blithering full-stink nincompoopery we barely escaped multiple homeless citizens’ deaths.

Meantime, the comatose Loaves & Fishes Board of Directors were being wheeled around on their gurneys enjoying their every-afternoon extra-heavy morphine drip. No word – ever – from them. They are like a phalanx of Maynard G. Krebses, squealing in panic that they might be asked to WORK by learning what was going on at their nonprofit (but, empire building!) organization.

One would think that after the January 2010 near-slayings-via-incompetence the problem of trees would, at least, have grabbed the attention of L & J & G & J [who are still, today, in the same positions they were in in January, 2010], but not so.

So, getting back to last week: Garren drives a cherry-picker [a motorized crane or lift of some sort] into the park and commences to begin to cut off branches. This is not one of his duties and this is not a task someone should blithely choose to do on whim. This is something that an organizaton where the brains of a flea is present hires out a tree-removal service to get the task done. What makes it all the worse is that it is now known that Garren has tried to remove tree limbs at home [where the trees were certainly not the height and girth of FP trees] and has hurt himself.

So Garren gets himself hoisted up on the lift and manages, after some head-scratching uncertainties, to forget how gravity works. Near the beginning of his task he is underneath a limb he is sawing off, it falls and hits him and he falls and then he with his bloody head is taken to the hospital.

It is likely fortunate that Garren screwed up right away since his plan included cutting away at trees hanging over 12th Street and power lines. Apparently, the not-geniuses in Loaves & Fishes management didn’t think that, just maybe, you have to contact the city before you suppose an amateur woodsman can mess with tree limbs tangled up with 440-volt electrical power lines.

To the BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF LOAVES & FISHES: We need an adult, here. Is one of you an adult? Somebody with a lick of sense needs to review what is going on – and has long been going on – with the management of the Loaves & Fishes charity.

Yes, Libby Fernandez stomps around and does her Napoleon impersonation, but that does not mean that she knows squat about running anything other than her mouth.A handful of homeless people could have been killed a year-and-a-half ago. Cowboy Bill was killed last year. Garren could have been badly hurt last week.

Homeless people are real people – not freakin’ puppets for you heartless baboons to play with. You need to impose repercussions for endangering lives. You need to stop waltzing around in your holier-than-thou robes and do your freakin’ job.

It is nice to hear, as I heard yesterday afternoon, that the Board intervened to have replaced the manager of the lunchroom about whom there were a great many complaints. Indeed, from what I was told, Libby remained resistant, but acquiesced to the Board’s insistence that a new chowhall manager be hired.

I am, however, disgusted to learn that Wash House Mark lost his perch as manager of the Wash House because the Head of Loaves & Fishes believed she needed a new token [i.e., African American] person in a skilled positon at the charity, ostensively to rebuff any effort at suing the charity for racial prejudice. [The pink-slipped chow-hall manager was a black woman.]

I have not spoken with Wash House Mark in a year and a half. But, during the period when I was using the Wash House -- from April, 2008, to July, 2010 -- I witnessed him in action as the manager and knew him to be skilled, fair, compassionate and just. He knew how to do the precisely appropriate thing, which ain’t easy, since some homeless guys are a little nuts. And he was mirthful and didn’t play favorites. He was the very model of a sterling employee. If he got the nomination from any party for president, I would campaign for him and vote for him and buy a car just so I would have a place to adhere a Vote for Mark in 2012 bumper sticker. And yet, Libby has taken away his duties where he was a Wash House Abraham Lincoln in order to use deceptive means to dodge a lawsuit.

For shame, you bunch of feckless weasels.

By the way, no disparagement meant for the new head guy in the Wash House. I understand the new guy proved himself to be quite able in his prior duties operating the day-storage shed. It is no fault of his that he was offered and, rightly, took a promotion.

But, boy-oh-boy, what a typical shoot-yourself-in-the-foot occurrence for bungling Loaves & Fishes not to appreciate the one thing they had got most right in all the world. They had Mark where he was steller, but now he is doing something of lesser importance where his genius cannot shine so brightly.

Waste, waste, waste, waste, waste. Loaves & Fishes: such a disgrace.

What the 'Occupy' protesters want addressed

2011-10-07T08:36:00.000-07:00

There has been some complaining that the Occupy protesters -- in Sacramento, New York and elsewhere -- have been unclear, unspecific or all over the map about what they want. They is more than somewhat true, but things are that way by design, not for lack of reasons for them to be upset.Below is a manifesto, a cry in pain, a list of some particulars that Keith Olbermann read on his show a few days ago. I neither know the source of the document that was read nor how 'officially' we should take what was written. But it is certainly in the realm of stating what all the hubbub is about. So, I offer it up:

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members. That our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors. That a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people, and the Earth, and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power.

We come to you at a time when corporations -- which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality -- run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here as is our right to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in workplaces based on age, the color of one's skin, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is, itself, a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut worker's health care and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams, but look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.

They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products, endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians, who are responsible for regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people's lives, or provide relief in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantial profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully kept people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners, even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City general assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble, occupy public space, create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard.

New Winter Shelter Options

2011-10-06T20:55:00.000-07:00

City officials, county officials, everybody is interested in upping Winter Shelter options for the local homeless. Happily, a few new possibilities have landed smack in our laps.

Logo of Occupy Sacramento on their Facebook page. Occupy Sacramento is our burg's protest contingent as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement that is raising awareness and wants to fix the mess in America where corporations and those who are extremely wealthy have an exorbitant degree of power, as a result of, effectively, buying politicians.

One is for the homeless to camp with Occupy Sacramento. Sure it sounds like camping, and in violation of ordinances, but it truly is the case that people can camp in the process of protesting (or so I'm told). So .... why not save two birds with one tent? Camp to protest, and while you're protesting survive the winter.¹ Sounds like a Godsend to me.

It cannot be denied that the homeless have reason to protest. And, indeed, the SafeGround folk have an established history of protesting. Much of the Occupy Wall Street grievences match up with items that should be on homeless people's lists of gripes, anyway. And where is Occupy Sacramento? Why, in Chavez Park, a central spot for us homeless to hang already.

The other ideas come as a result of a search for homeless stuff among recent Google+ postings. What I found was a recent picture of the Montana cabin that Ted Kaczynski, the Unibomber, lived in. His cabin had been shipped across country for use at his trial in the late 1990s. Today, the cabin is stored in an otherwise empty warehouse in Sacramento.

The Unibomber's once-remote cabin that he built in the outback of Montana is now more remote than ever before while being tantilizingly close to soon-to-be-cold homeless Sacramentans.

Might not the cabin and the warehouse make for nifty space to shelter homeless folk!? Great idea, ya!? The cabin looks like a fine, upstanding, sturdy structure -- better than any of those plywood sheds that the ShakeDown folks -- er, I mean SafeGround folks -- are Jonesing for. And the warehouse -- WooHoo! -- looks big enough to hold hundreds.

But of course the nice cabin and big, big warehouse will be denied us. In an area where there is a multitude of empty structures, many homeless people are going to be outside this winter, including on the coldest of nights when temperatures dip into the 20s.

It's a chilling disgrace. And I sure wish citizens would hold the homeless-services industries' feet to the fire re all of this. It is they who bulk up their charities and are far the most to blame while providing stinting attention to the poor. If somebody dies this winter I am going to take MY protest to the warehouse that the twin disgraces Libby Fernandez and Joan Burke work in [if you call their putzing around "work"].

Oh, and while my dander is up, something else I learned today: The national head of Volunteers of America got a raise in his salary of something like 7%. He now makes more than $324,000/yr. A curiously huge sum for someone who works to coax citizens to "volunteer" their labor to aid the poor. Living large on the backs of others, eh, Mr. CEO? It stinks. It stinks to high heaven. Screw you, VOA.
=====
¹ Bad news. The police arrested 20 people camping out on the first night of the protest. Freedom to protest is encumbered, at least in Sacramento. And, on the night of Oct 8, per Alexander Leach, the Liberal reporter for Sacramento for examiner.com, 14 more people were arrested. The Occupy folks are now seeking a variance to the city's anti-camping ordinance. Good luck with that. [I meant that last sentence both literally AND sarcastically. Sarcastically in the sense that I don't think there's a chance in hell they'll get their variance since we homeless will pounce after any variance is granted and stage our own OCCUPY SACRAMENTO for the sake of saving homeless people's lives this winter. A legal tent encampment could save lives, you see.]

Who the homeless are

2011-10-01T21:11:00.001-07:00

I’ve been homeless in Sacramento since I first fell into the circumstance over three years ago. Though my life is stalled and my future is a worry, I’m grateful for my experiences which have been a revelation. Put simply, I have learned that homeless people are not as advertised. They are neither the pathetic simpletons of Loaves & Fishes’ newsletters; nor alien invaders as local media sometimes have it; nor are we a parade of Jesuses, as is the risible romantic notion at Trinity Cathedral’s webspace. I have found myself -- out here on the streets and in a shelter and at the public library and trying to be inconspicuous at the train station -- in the midst of a bounty of friends, people who are colorful and chipper, amazing and endlessly interesting. Of course, the thousands of us in this county are each unique, fully distinguishable one from the other, but there are generalities about the lot of us that can be made.

Many of the adults on the streets and in the shelters are mentally ill or are addicted to alcohol or powerful substances like methamphetamine or crack cocaine or, in rare cases, heroin. It is peculiar that many regular citizens in the county –- and probably most everywhere in the nation and so-called civilized world -- have a heighten revulsion toward people who are near-inexorably trapped. Scientists are making remarkable progress at understanding brain function and dysfunction and the confusion at the core of mental illnesses. New books in this fervent arena of discovery are out there –- including at the public library where I find them. Some people for genetic reasons, or from surviving a horrible upbringing, are particularly vulnerable to an adulthood that is lost to confusion or anger or entails a fall into an abyss of benumbing addiction. We only think our lives are a function of our will when, truly, we are in significant part subject to forces beyond our control or direct awareness.

It is mostly a result of staying at the mighty mission, a place where I have slept for a thousand nights, where I have learned about guys’ troubled upbringing. Many of the regular preachers at the Union Gospel Mission have come from dysfunctional families and some have, themselves, overcome terrible addictions. When these preachers talk about their troubled past, many guys in the seats nod or laugh in recognition to similar horror in their own lives. It is all an oddly poignant thing: what was grim once can emerge as something absurd and funny, even in light of a reality where guys are continuing to endure disastrous ongoing aftereffects of a life made haywire. [The mission, of course, has has an eye to get guys into their program to square up their lives and afterlives.]


	Click on picture to buy this T-shirt from zazzle. Me and this blogsite have no connection to this offer; I just like the T-shirt!

I am a listener in a world abounding with talented talkers. I know a master auto mechanic whose stories are wild and hilarious. His teenaged kids are in the vicinity, but he doesn’t see them. He disappears onto the streets for drinking binges that last weeks at a time. An artist whose unique work was featured on Rachel Ray’s show has no makeshift studio; he now concentrates on his mastery of chess. One guy is the king of rock climbing, and has been written up in the New York Times [Google “sky is his roof" at the Times’ website.]; I see him in town carrying a world of stuff on his back. Another guy has the singing voice of an angel. Homelessness is talent waylaid.

While there are rascals and full-blown psychopaths and narcissists in Homeless World Sacramento, convicted pedophiles, thieves, rapists and cunning, charmy con men, it is mostly a place where everyone is remarkably gentle, and all try to scrape together an existence.

There are scrappy people who collect bottles and cans and will hold up a sign all day at an intersection. They take sub-minimum wage jobs from friends of friends, and they’ve taken work from Loaves & Fishes’ “Daily Bread,” where they risk getting wholly ripped off for their labor.

Some of the guys are walled off. There are sad sacks, always in touch with their gloom. Others are loners who near never speak and keep to themselves. Still others have anger on a hair trigger. You have to be cautious when interacting with them because a trivial misunderstanding can erupt and become a physical confrontation.

It’s a fragile world; one that is often dangerous. But mostly Homeless World Sacramento is a place of neglect and loss and wonders unrealized.

Yeah, like, no kidding 'justice' in this country and in this county is a freaking nightmare

2011-09-26T21:52:00.000-07:00

An article in today’s New York Times “Sentencing shift gives new clout to prosecutors,” brings to the fore one of the biggest problems in our country, and one of the many things crushing Sacramento’s homeless people: the failure to maintain fairness in the justice system.

It’s an indictment¹ of not only the the Supreme Court, DAs’ offices, judges generally, how police are utilized and politicians, but, also, major newspapers, like Sacramento’s Bee, which have a nation-saving responsibility to keep the public alerted to the breakdown of vital institutions.

The top-of-the-front-page story tells of District Attorneys’ offices that have gained/grabbed (1) the lions’ share of what little power defense attorneys once had and (2) the discretionary power that judges once had, as a result of legislation passed, across the country, to salve unrealistic fears of the populace. Many of these fears have been induced by functionaries of justice and prison institutions and rightwing politicians and their media.² It also says something about how justice is lost [when needed most!] during tight economic times.

Today, punishing people for crimes that have been committed is the littlest part of what happens when the gears of justice grind and some soul is yanked into jail. The gameplaying of plea-bargaining outweighs doing what is just – and even outweighs interest in whether a defendant is really guilty, either legally or morally, of anything at all. Indeed, today it is common for fully innocent people to agree to jail terms in plea bargain, to avoid being tagged with a far greater punishment by an Orwellian justice system where the District Attorney is the central power and catches all the breaks.

Says the Times story,

“We now have an incredible concentration of power in the hands of prosecutors,” said Richard E. Myers II, a former assistant United States attorney who is now an associate professor of law at the University of North Carolina. He said that so much influence now resides with prosecutors that “in the wrong hands, the criminal justice system can be held hostage.”

And, later in the article,

In the courtroom and during plea negotiations, the impact of … stricter laws is exerted through what academics call the “trial penalty.” The phrase refers to the fact that the sentences for people who go to trial have grown harsher relative to sentences for those who agree to a plea.

In some jurisdictions, this gap has widened so much it has become coercive and is used to punish defendants for exercising their right to trial, some legal experts say.

…

“[In today’s tight fiscal climate] there are some judges who will punish you for going to trial,” [said Bill Cervone, the state attorney in Gainesville, FL]. “Legally, you cannot impose a longer sentence on someone because they exercised their right to trial,” he said, speaking of judges. “Factually, there are ways to do it.”

A judge in a District Court [one stop short of the Supreme Court] tells of the great loss in actual trials that now occur:

“How many times is a mandatory sentence used as a chip in order to coerce a plea? They don’t keep records,” said Senior Judge John L. Kane Jr. of United States District Court in Denver, who believes that prosecutors have grown more powerful than judges. But it is very common, he added. “That’s what the public doesn’t see, and where the statistics become meaningless.”

But one result is obvious, he said: “We hardly have trials anymore.”

Being innocent doesn’t help:

No matter how strongly defendants believe they are innocent, [said Denis deVlaming, a prominent Florida criminal defense lawyer], they could be taking dangerous risks by, for example, turning down a one-year plea bargain when the prosecutor threatens additional charges that carry a mandatory sentence 10 times as long.

…

Experts like Ronald Wright, a former federal prosecutor and now a professor of law at Wake Forest University, say they fear that the steep decline in acquittals [which are much reduced in Federal cases now, as compared to the past] stems partly from more defendants, who might have winnable cases, deciding not to risk trials and reluctantly accepting plea bargains instead.

The article ends describing a case where a man fired a gun in his own house, just “to scare his daughter’s boyfriend out of the house after he repeatedly threatened his family.” The man felt fully innocent of any real wrong-doing. But due to the man’s determination to have his day in court, he turned down a plea bargain, and lost in trial. He was sentenced to 20 years, the mandatory minimum in his state for a fired gun. Even the reluctant, “duty bound” judge saw things as unfair. And the sentenced man has come to believe America is now a “banana republic.”

From what I've read, and learned in three-plus years of being homeless, I cannot help but think, add Perry as President, and how very close to a banana republic the USA would be.

And in Sacramento County

I have heard cases of Sacramento homeless people that are freaking nightmares of injustice, which because I don’t know all sides to the stories, and because I don’t want to get anyone “out here” in any more stupid kind of trouble, I feel I mustn’t write about what I've heard.

But here is my story of my one crime [other than the thrown-out-of-court tale of Libby Fernandez’s Flying Monkeys getting me handcuffed on the street and charged with trespassing after daring to write two blogposts. Freedom of the Press isn’t recognized in the truth-averse North Korea of LibbyLand. These are the two blogposts I wrote: “Loaves & Fishes’ program of “Collective Punishment”“ and “Babies are gonna die! Babies are gonna die!“ Proof of that being my supposed crime is in a police report, from what was reported by a Flying Monkey. By the way, I fully stand behind the stories, now as then. They are the absolute truth. And, may I add now, somebody should throw a bucket of water on Libby so we can watch her melt.]

My story. In the days after my mother died on Apr 15, 2008, my sister revealed to me that she had gotten Power of Attorney from our Alzheimer’s-suffering mother, everything was hers, and “f*ck you.” This, after I had effectively prepaid for the funereal and wake, covering my sister’s charges for all that on her credit card [amounting to ~$25,000, all I had].

Within ten days, I was at Union Gospel Mission, homeless and penny-less, and, in an unrelated moment, robbed of my wallet. But before arriving at UGM, two windows, on either side of a front door at the site where the wake for mother would be held [my sister’s house] got broken by a tire iron. Before that, my sister had barred me from the funeral. [I don’t want to draw readers into the whole of the long, long backstory with all its soap-opera moments, but it has to be said that I was taking care of our mother, while my sister, working for Bank of America, was negotiating mortgage loans in Florida and other far-flung places. Our mother always favored me, for many understandable reasons, while I defended my sister to our mother and my sister always tore me down. Next in events, my sister slyly divides from her legally-committed partner and ultimately gets, I don't know exactly what -- but millions -- solely for herself from our mother's death.]

Fast forward nearly one year: I’m charged with a crime, vandalism. I am assigned a Public Pretender; let’s call her “J.” J and I talk; I tell her everything; I’m told that J is this great, great friend and champion of Loaves & Fishes. J even gives a grandly received memorial speech for a prominent, beloved homeless guy of the time.

J then shows me a letter from the DA assigned to the case where the DA says it is up to J to decide when the plea-bargain factors he has told to her should be withdrawn, due to any perceived lack of the defendent's interest. The DA wrote (something to the effect) “there are these foreboding factors; if we have to investigate further, then a very serious felony is likely to need to be added.” I say “not interested” to the plea offer.

The next time J has me in her office, she sits behind her desk and plays with her breasts, while remaining clothed. It leaves an indelible impression on me. It is fully bizarre. I'm stunned.

The time after this that I’m alone with J, in a quiet spot in the courthouse, J talks babytalk.

The subsequent time I’m alone with J, she says nothing, just moving her kind-of-odd mouth around in these strange angles.

[I read J's "message," easily. She will do nothing but have me accept the plea bargain, or further the plea-bargaining process, which I won’t do.]

I go to J’s boss’s boss and tell him what has occurred and that I want a lie-detector test to show that my story, which seems fully amazing to me, is the truth. He won’t do anything and says I can complain to the county.

I ask J to pass me to some other Public Defender. She won’t or can’t do that. I file an admittedly-unschooled form with the court writing that J is “an abomination” and that justice is being undermined. The judge gives a fervent speech to the effect that J is a girl scout and a credit to her profession. I learn a tad of law and file a Faretta Motion, asking the court to accept me as my own lawyer. J gets the court to have psychiatrists interview me, which ends up delaying things for three months and I remain stuck with the horror J as my "defender."

The psychiatrists [and maybe one high-faluting psychologist] decide that I am sane by majority vote. I get my Faretta Motion approved by the “J is a girl scout” judge and then file a successful motion to bar that judge from having any more say in my case.

A year and a half passes (something like that), during which I got two- or three-months’ General Assistance, a hundred bucks from Google for blog ads, and something between a thousand and 15 hundred dollars from small insurance awards having to do with our mother’s death, that my sister couldn’t steal. I live lean, most of the time with no locker, carrying all my stuff, staying at the mission --and when I can’t, outside, or, on a few weekends, at a friend’s house.

Neither the DA’s office nor I initiate communication between us.

At the trial, I don’t have any money, and I can’t really ‘do’ lawyering. Though I have some arenas of smarts, legal, I discover, ain’t one. My defense strategy has to do with “jury nullification” – or whatever it’s called – where the jury does what’s right, despite all else.

One juror, with a background in legal matters, in the middle of the ‘event,’ grandly objects to the judge regarding the injustice of the trial [to which, I am thinking, ‘Gee, am I really THAT bad!!?’]

I do get to question my sister in the trial, which I don’t do well. But my sister can’t help but seem like Leona Helmsley, whom she literally had come to move, gesture and sound like. As well as “be inside” like.

The jury stays in conference all of the first day after the trial, and during the next morning. Coming into the court, having reached their decision, none of the jurors will look at me. I am pronounced guilty of felony vandalism for breaking two windows.

I will later be jailed and required to pay restitution, including for many hours, at $40/hr, that my sister says she paid her friends to pick up bits of glass.

A juror stays around to see me afterward and tells me the jury was with me, but by factors of law, they felt they had to decide “guilty.”

The Bee

I'm not aware of our local paper covering "justice" as it's practiced, with this loss to society of a moral and just justice system. I'm sure the Bee has, with respect to single issues, look at a lot of injustice, but when has there been an over-arching story? I think it is a certainty that justice-lost in our metropolis is particularly egregious.

On a matter where I am very aware, the Bee fails utterly at notifying the public of the grotesquery of the Communist-infiltrated homeless-services "charities" north of downtown. I refer specifically to Loaves & Fishes, SHOC and SafeGround as organizations that promote politics that the spectacular majority of people in the county and country would find to be offensive in the extreme. By purposefully failing in its duty to the public, the Bee allows for citizens to be fooled and conned into giving to organizations they would rightly deplore.

The Bee is an unnecessary organization unless it does those things that are most important, effectively defending civil liberties. The silly sometimes, but surprisingly capable, Sacramento Press can tell citizens about events and local political doings. The SN&R is better than the Bee, often, with in-depth coverage of important matters. Bloggers do an amazing job in our area; I could make a key-lime pie! And, of course, the Sacramento Homeless blog is a beloved and irreplaceable institution, alerting its up to 25 readers of matters of great importance.

But if the ground opened up and swallowed the area around 21st and Q, who would notice to report on it?
---
¹ I intend the word figuratively, not legalistically, of course. What know I of legal?
² This sentence is not from the article, but from other media and from what I've come to believe.

Sacramento homeless prominent in UN report about violations of basic human rights [Part II]

2011-09-17T22:16:00.000-07:00

[First read Part I, if you haven't yet.]

Yesterday, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights issued notice of three reports on the right to water and sanitation relating to the US, Japan and Slovenia.

Regarding the United States, the notice says this:

United States of America

The UN independent expert visited the USA from 22 February to 4 March 2011, to assess issues of sanitation, safety, affordability and excluded groups, focusing on the right to non-discrimination and equality.

“I was especially shocked by what I saw in Sacramento, California, where the city decided to shut down or to restrict the opening hours of public restrooms, forcing homeless people to improvise other types of solutions to be able to exercise the right to sanitation. Open defecation, open urination have been criminalised. So what happens is that someone can be criminalised just because he/she does not have a place to do his physiological needs.”

Check the report on the USA: http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hrcouncil/docs/18session/A-HRC-18-33-Add4_en.pdf
Ms. de Albuquerque comments on her USA mission; watch the video: http://youtu.be/l3P893QyeRM

I am going to go through a timeline of what was happening in Sacramento a little before the time of Ms. de Albuquerque's visit here. I think it is illuminating. While it doesn't discredit the UN representative's shocked reaction, it does put things in context and show that the county [Supervisor Phil Serna, especially], city and police were trying to do something, and exhibited some compassion. Nonetheless, the need and circumstance should have been addressed as urgent and an appropriate response should have been marshaled -- but it was not.

Jan 20, 2011: Sacramento Press publishes "American River Parkway Advocate: Park is 'no jewel'" The piece shows twelve pictures of the Parkway being despoiled along a two-mile stretch by homeless campers. Bob Slobe, the advocate, is quoted saying, "There’s roughly 200 tents out there, which means there are more than 200 people, and they have everything but toilets. They’ve cleared the ground and put down wood chips.” The article launched an effort to clean up the American River Parkway.

Jan 30, 2011: A Bee board editorial "Big Surprise: Blight returns to river," highlighted the problem [that is, the colossal mess on the Parkway] and suggested as the solution giving SafeGround what it wants, a legal place to camp. [Unresolved is the extent to which SafeGround is a direct part of the Parkway problem. They were among those camping in the area that was photographed.]


	Tim Buckley, the fellow who took care of human waste at the SafeGround American River Parkway camp. The fact that this role was necessary for homeless people to exist shocked the UN expert on water and sanitation. Picture appeared with a Bee Board editorial on February 18.

Early Feb, 2011: New county supervisor Phil Serna raises money to make it possible for half the SafeGround campers to stay at Salvation Army. This is offensive to many in the wider homeless community because, once again, the core SafeGround contingent -- rather than being leaders for all the county homeless -- seem to get special privileges and favors FOR THEMSELVES.

Mid Feb, 2011: With one exception, the 64 SafeGrounders turn down the 32 "Serna beds" at Sally's [Salvation Army] that were made available for them, citing the fact that others had been on a waiting list for beds at Sally's and had a pre-existent right to them. Very noble. Hooray, SafeGround. The beds end up going to others who were camping on the Parkway and not to the 160 on the waiting list. [It should be noted, as it never is by the Bee or SafeGround, that people on many waiting lists are not necessarily without beds somewhere else AND that some people just maintain themselves on waiting lists even though they have a housing situation. Why? Because staying on a waiting list, and moving ever up to near the top of it, is easy to do.]

Feb 15, 2011: The homeless on the river are given notice and rousted, though that only serves to move the homeless to other locations with no better water and sanitation access. The Bee publishes a story "The homeless shuffle goes on," titled online "Rangers roust Sacramento homeless -- yet again -- and admit it's not the answer."

Feb 18, 2011: The Bee Board proves it is disconnected to reality with its goofiest, most-surreal editorial of all, "Time to alter how we talk about 'homeless'," which says of the SafeGrounders, "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?" [It's time for the Bee Board to stop dropping acid before writing editorials.]

Between Feb 22 and Mar 4: Ms. de Albuquerque visits Sacramento and hears from or about SafeGrounder Tim Buckley's role as the human-pooper scooper guy and is especially shocked.

Sacramento homeless prominent in UN report about violations of basic human rights [Part I]

2011-09-17T17:51:00.000-07:00

Sacramento has been prominently cited in a United Nations report on cruel treatment of homeless people in the United States.

The report, researched and written by Catarina de Albuquerque, is titled “Report of the Special Rapporteur on the human right to safe drinking water and sanitation.”

Below, a 2 1/2-min. YouTube video showing Ms. de Albuquerque talking about what she saw during her research earlier this year. She says she “was especially shocked” by what she saw in Sacramento.

i

Click here to bring up Part II of this Sacramento Homeless report.

SafeGround is UnSafe

2011-09-09T12:55:00.000-07:00

Below is text for a flyer to be distributed at the so-called Safe Ground [or, SafeGround] Jubilee on Sept 14.


	An article, written by SG Activist Tracy Rice Bailey, about the 'Jubilee' appeared in the August issue of the People's Tribune. The People's Tribune is published by the League of Revolutionaries for a New America [formerly, the Communist League] which also publishes Rally, Comrades!. [click on pic to enlarge.]

While SafeGround does good things, far the most notable being itsinvolvement in promoting and staffing shelter for homeless people on, mostly,church properties in the county, the group also has the most unsavory andOrwellian of political connections and a history of greatly helping coremembers while falsely promoting itself as the voice of all Sacramento-areahomeless folk.

At thetime of its foundation, a so-called “Safe Ground Movement” was cited as centralto the nonprofit’s efforts by the Homeless-Services-Industry FarFarFarLeftistfringe and their lawyers. This political“movement,” in close association with The League of Revolutionaries for a NewAmerica , seeks – I kid you not – a One World totalitarian government. At their website [ http://lrna.org/program.html ] you canread this:

The demands of this new impoverished class for food, housing,education, health care and an opportunity to contribute to society are summedup as the demand for a cooperative society. Such a society must be based on thepublic ownership of the socially necessary means of production and thedistribution of the social product according to need.

The new class cannot solve its economic problems without thepublic ownership of the socially necessary means of production and thedistribution of the social product according to need. For the first time anobjective communist economic class is forming to become the foundation for acommunist political movement.

Globalization creates this new class everywhere. Global unity isthe condition of its national emancipation. The League extends its hand ofcomradeship around the globe.

In cooperation with their commune-ist and Communistsuperiors homeless members of SafeGround have organized a "Homeless Forum" featuring League of Revolutionaries for a New America speakers, gone to Communist street protestsin San Francisco, and, last year, went to a big Communist meeting in Detroit.

Unless you think that North Korea or the Soviet Union is a beautifulexample of what you would like to see in a One World Government, I ask, onbehalf of many -- if not the great majority -- of Sacramento Homeless people, that you NOT donate to the organizations SafeGround, Loaves & Fishes or SHOC. Your money will be used in significant partto promote Looney Tunes political objectives.

Black and White

2011-08-28T16:17:00.000-07:00

Black and White Poem
by Barbara Pixley

You could hardly see for all the snow,
Spread the rabbit ears as far as they go;
Pull a chair up to the TV set,
"Good Night, David. Good Night, Chet."

Depending on the channel you tuned,
You got Rob and Laura - or Ward and June;
It felt so good. It felt so right,
Life looked better in black and white.

I Love Lucy, The Real McCoys,
Dennis the Menace, the Cleaver boys;
Rawhide, Gunsmoke, Wagon Train,
Superman, Jimmy and Lois Lane.

Father Knows Best, Patty Duke,
Rin Tin Tin and Lassie too;
Donna Reed on Thursday night! --
Life looked better in black and white.

I wanna go back to black and white,
Everything always turned out right;
Simple people, simple lives...
Good guys always won the fights.

Now nothing is the way it seems,
In living color on the TV screen;
Too many murders, too many fights,
I wanna go back to black and white.

In God they trusted; alone in bed they slept,
A promise made was a promise kept;
They never cussed or broke their vows,
They'd never make the network now .

But if I could, I'd rather be,
In a TV town in '53;
It felt so good. It felt so right,
Life looked better in black and white.

I'd trade all the channels on the satellite,
If I could just turn back the clock tonight;
To when everybody knew wrong from right,
Life was better in black and white!

A song that the Landmark church guitar-playing worship leader sang at the UnionGospel Mission Thursday night left an impression -- and not one that I think was intended.

The title of the song, for which the worship leader may have composed the tune, is “Black and White,” based on a poem, which I found online [see sidebar]. It was about black-and-white television and the simple straightforward TV shows of the 50s and early 60s. The theme of “black and white,” was a time when, supposedly, moral differences were more clear-cut and life was simple and happy. At one point the song expressed longing for a specific year: "if I could, I'd rather be,/In a TV town in '53;/It felt so good. It felt so right."

But of course any ideation of the 50s is in reality wrongheaded. Those supposed halcyon days of yore are romanticized because of our mind’s inclination to create Great Olden Times by fabricating a false past.TV stars mentioned in the song – like Rob and Laura, Ward and June -- are all white people, with the exception of Ricky Ricardo [the Latino husband in "I Love Lucy," but not cited directly] and a couple of dogs.

Nat King Cole

No black people are mentioned because, as people my age [57] would know, they didn't appear on television of that time, except for the lamentable exceptions of "Amos and Andy," which was funny if you could get around the racism, which you can't [The NAACP was at the fore in protesting the series immediately after it began.] and Nat King Cole's show, which was popular, had episodes only 15 minutes in length, and couldn't retain advertisers, so it was quickly cancelled. There was also the character of Rochester, played by Eddie Anderson, who was Jack Benny's wise-cracking gravel-voiced black valet on "The Jack Benny Show." Rochester was the exception that makes the rule: an admirable character who almost always got the best of Benny in their verbal jousts.

The Truth, which should matter greatly, is that the 50s was a time of overt racism and segregation. Hate mongering was widespread and protected. It was a horrible time, covered over by a patina of calm in segregated white neighborhoods.

The TV shows, including the sitcoms, and the movies of the time were generally unimaginative and unrealistic and absurdly wholesome. A rebellion in the form of an escalation in the civil rights movement and the 60s freedoms-seeking movement, and women's rights and all of that was overdue. Hooray for the end of the 50's!

It's difficult to understand how very "tone deaf" the worship leader was to have sung his song, with its backward lyrics, in the mission where something like 40% of the people in the seats are black homeless men and where 50 is the average age. But make no mistake, even if everyone in the seats was white, the song was undignified and ignorant and cringe-worthy.

Landmark's worship leader is by no means a bad person, but I do think he would benefit from gaining a better understanding of the chapel audience that he stands in front of, and our challenges. To his great credit, the worship leader likes to bring interesting things and oddities to sing for us at the mission. Very often he sings a song he has wholly composed himself. One time I recall he came with a re-worded version of John Lennon's "Imagine." I cringed when he began the rendition of the song, wholly at odds with Lennon's wording, but cheered at the end. As much as Lennon's words and vision are in line with my thinking, the worship leader's riff on the song was still very clever and kindly.

But PLEASE. I do understand that the religion of the mission is conservative. But let us not go backward in time to a backward time, the terrible 50s. THAT old-time religion should be forgotten in acknowledgment of the mistake that it was.
------
Just by happenstance I got of couple of reactions from mission guests, both black men in their 50s, to the "black and white" song. The first man was pretty disgusted with it.; The second man, a friend, said his hellos to me when I was first beginning to compose this post at the library. I told him what I was writing, and he told me he was in the chapel then and heard the song. He said while he was hearing it he was wondering if he was the only guy who noticed how offensive the song was.

Sacramento Stand Down set for Sept 16, 17 and 18

2011-08-24T19:41:00.000-07:00


	Click on the flyer pictured above to see it in an enlarged, readable size..

At right is the flyer that is being circulated about the 2011 Stand Down in Sacramento that aids homeless veterans. [Click on it to see it enlarged and readable.]

The website for the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans tells us

The original Stand Down for homeless veterans was modeled after the Stand Down concept used during the Vietnam War to provide a safe retreat for units returning from combat operations. At secure base camp areas, troops were able to take care of personal hygiene, get clean uniforms, enjoy warm meals, receive medical and dental care, mail and receive letters, and enjoy the camaraderie of friends in a safe environment. Stand Down afforded battle-weary soldiers the opportunity to renew their spirit, health and overall sense of well-being.

That is the purpose of the Stand Down for homeless veterans, and achieving those objectives requires a wide range of support services and time. The program is successful because it brings these services to [a metropolis in] one location, making them more accessible to homeless veterans.

In July 2002, the founders of Stand Down – Robert Van Keuren, Dr. Jon Nachison and Vietnam Veterans of San Diego – asked the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans (NCHV) to become the “keeper of the flame” and provide national leadership for the movement. Since the first Stand Down in San Diego in 1988, the program has become recognized as the most valuable outreach tool to help homeless veterans in the nation today.

Those of us who have been homeless for a couple of years or more and either are veterans or have homeless-veteran friends know that the annual Stand Down is a very big deal. It

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provides vets with all that it claims to bring to the community of veterans: Opportunities to socialize with other veterans, and to get every kind of aid that can aright one's life. And, it comes with compassion and recognition of the service men and women brought to their nation.

The is FOR SURE an ABSOLUTE DO-NOT-MISS three day event for all Sacramento-area homeless veterans.

Homeless folk on the bike trail

2011-08-18T20:27:00.001-07:00

Expect a bad aroma: Loaves & Fishes to close its Men’s Wash House for five days straight

2011-08-18T15:31:00.000-07:00

The stench of bad leadership at Loaves & Fishes hangs in the air like a rotting halibut.


	Men's Wash House: A vital service to allow homeless men to keep themselves clean with a shower, shave and clothing exchange.

Loaves & Fishes will be closing its Men’s Wash House for five days – the first five days of September – for reasons that have not been disclosed. A notice was put up in Friendship Park and at the wash house to that effect this morning.

A five-day period, during a hot summer, when homeless men cannot easily keep themselves clean is a significant disruption of homeless services. Being stinky out in public is a bummer. Loaves & Fishes really ought to find some empathy for the suffering of homeless folk. Or, ought to fire some of its reeking top-level employees and replace them with people who have a compassionate nature. In the past, the Wash House has been closed such that Wash House staff could take a single day off to go to a Star Trek Convention in Sacramento. A search of the Internet shows no evidence of a five-day, Memorial extended-weekend Star Trek Lollapalooza, though that could just be because it’s hidden behind a futuristic cloaking devise of some weird sort.

Anyway, the Wash House staff would never advocate for a long close; they care about their work and the guys they serve. Another possibility is that the water tank has busted, the building has been invaded by termites, and all the urinals and toilets have been busted up by gangsters dressed as nuns wielding bats – but still, it takes FIVE DAYS to fix merely all that? Or, it may be that Mark – the irreplaceable fully-competent-and-compassionate manager and Wash House Mr. Congeniality – is vacationing in Argentina. But, truly, there is no excuse. A five-day closure is unjustifiable, but IS the usual output from the never-stinting-at-being-meanspirited, disconnected-from-what-being-homeless-is-like Loaves & Fishes high-up management.

During the first three days of the Wash House closure, homeless men in the know will be able to go to the Union Gospel Mission for clean clothes and a shower. However, UGM does not have open hours, staff and facilities to compensate for the inavailability of the Wash House.

Libby Fernandez: NOT a friend of the homeless

2011-08-15T22:38:00.000-07:00

Loaf& Fish CEO Fernandez was profiled in the July 29 issue of the Sacramento BusinessJournal. In the piece she is quoted telling homeless-averse business peoplewhat they want to hear. The first andthird paragraphs in the profile follow [emphases mine]:

“Loaves andFishes is the heart of downtown,” Sister Libby Fernandez said. “It’s awelcoming place for the very poor and homeless, and gives them a place to beduring the day. We serve an average of 650 poor and homeless people each day,and if they weren’t here, they would be at other places downtown. ”

…

“When peoplewho are homeless are here they can use our restrooms, our showers, wash up, gettheir clothes cleaned,” she said. They can use our telephones, sit in our parkand just be, without disturbingother people and other businesses. They can socialize here, and get services and help here.”

In his book Managingthe Underclass in American Society[1]John Irvin wrote about how the REAL effort in many metropolises is not to helpthe poor or homeless, but to corral them, to run them around in circles, towaste their time and to keep them out of public view. Police -- prompted by politicians who areprompted by business people -- in metropolises where such a polity, called“Warehousing the Rabble,” is extant endlessly roust the homeless and otherwisekeep ‘em out of “nice neighborhoods.” Does that sound like Sac’to to you? Yep.

And you know it’s true: Homeless people in Sacramento get ticketed and arrested for conduct andactions that conventional citizens, doing the same activities, would never bebothered about by the police. There arelaws on the books that exclusively or near-exclusively are there targeting thehomeless to make us behave like cattle.

Libby, with her quotes in the Biz Journal, proves her fealtyto the Warehousing the Rabblephilosophy and the business community, in opposition to suffering homelesspeople. She is certainly NO friend ofthe homeless. It’s all a charade. She showsthat she does not support the right of the homeless to be treated the same asconventional Sacramento citizens.

Make no mistake, Libby is well known for deliveringradically differing messages to suit the different audiences sheaddresses. It’s called duplicity andLibby is shameless at it. To thebusiness world, she’s dutiful at keeping the stinky homeless away from thegentile public. To donors andvolunteers, she is Mother Teresa aiding the wretched. To the homeless, she pretends to be achampion of the poor. And to othergroups, like the employees at Loaves & Fishes, the Jesuit volunteers, andthe L&F Board of Directors, she has yet other masks.

A change at the top at Loaves & Fishes is overdue. It is time, too, to end the duplicity and forLoaves & Fishes to embrace a new policy: one of compassion and genuine interest in helping homeless people findmeaning in their lives and opportunities to better their circumstance.

[1] Full title TheJail: Managing the Underclass in American Society

Momentos

2011-08-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

The seven-minute film, below, is getting attention. Me, I'm bothered by it more than a little. I was affected by the little movie, but also repelled by the 'romantic' notion that homelessness can be swept away in an instant AND by the very idea from the film that it is desirable and so self-evidently so that a homeless portion of a person's life should be utterly swept away, like a bad dream. The circumstance of homelessness, of sleeping on the street, is a lesson-learning opportunity. While there are dangers and deprivations in being homeless, the life circumstance is also more-raw in many, many altogether good ways, than a life that is wholly unchallenged and floating on a sea of illusion.

At the film's website, we are told the message of the film is "that life is good." Maybe that theme predominated in the minds of it creators while they were making the film, but the short is what it is and I don't think its message is that.

The Perfidy of Loaves & Fishes

2011-07-19T14:32:00.000-07:00


	The 1st page of Loaves & Fishes' July 2011 newsletter. [Click pic to enlarge.] .

	The 2nd page of Loaves & Fishes' July 2011 newsletter. [Click pic to enlarge.] .

	The 3rd page of Loaves & Fishes' July 2011 newsletter. [Click pic to enlarge.] .

	The 4th page of Loaves & Fishes' July 2011 newsletter. [Click pic to enlarge.]

They are Stinkers and they Stink. It is astonishing. It is utterly amazing how Loaves & Fishes’ unillustrious leaders can’t manage to ever have a single ethical moment. They dish out their 99^44/100% pure bullshit without regret or guilt. They deliver their con job with not a thought that is honest, accurate and fair. There is only one conclusion that can be reached: They are psychopathic racketeers. They are the Gargantuans that stomped on Tokyo. They are Beavis and Butthead. [It is perhaps an act of Cosmic Justice that an anagram for the name of one of the administrators is Urban Joke. And for another it's Brazenly Inserted Fibs.]

You know, I have prayed to God and asked if I could get a good seat in the grandstands when the L&F Administrators meet their Maker on Judgment Day. And you know what He said? “Yeah, sure, Tom, I’ll mail you some front-row tickets so you can come and bring a few friends. Come early so you can be there when the hinges to the trapdoor are being oiled.” And I told Him, “Thanks a lot, God! What a Pal!” ¹

Loaves & Fishes appears to have stopped posting their newsletter to the Internet. Instead, in an apparent effort to escape notice of their shenanigans from The Knowing, they stealthily, slyly just mail the damn thing to their ‘marks,’ the moneyed targets of their perfidy.

A picture that tops the front page of the July newsletter shows two people shaded by a tree. The caption reads, “Two of our many guests enjoying the cool shade.” Hello? On July 4, Independence Day, when the stores are universally closed, so was Loaves & Fishes’ Friendship Park, a place on that difficult-for-us-homeless holiday when we are in the most need of a place to be. I am told that two staff members at L&F were there at the park but wouldn’t open Friendship Park because of a claim that three staff members where needed for that purpose.

Perhaps one-fourth of the homeless population is higher functioning than every member of the Loaves & Fishes operation. Easily, one person could have been deputized as a temporary staffer/volunteer to allow the Park to be opened to save all those suffering from the extreme heat on July Fourth. But no. Whereas in the past – pre-Fernandez – the Park would always have had skeletal staff on holidays in recognition of the special degree of misery that holidays bring to the Sacramento homeless [sometimes with a closed day the subsequent day], that doesn’t happen any more at always-unreliable L&F. O, the gall, the dastardliness of treacherous Loaves & Fishes to suggest they are generous in supplying shade to the homeless. Truth is, the homeless aren’t shaded and it is Loaves & Fishes administraitors who are shady.

Also on that first page of the newsletter, Isaiah 58:10 is prominently quoted [embolded words, mine]: “If you offer your food to the hungry and satisfy the needs of the afflicted, then your light shall rise in the darkness and your gloom be like the noonday sun.” The lightless Loaves & Fishes administrators are there to take donors’ money and do minimal for the homeless, leaving homeless people to roast in the noonday sun. Woe the intense hypocrisy of L&F to dare to use that quote.

And THEN, in a “letter” addressed to their “Friend and Supporter” Loaves & Fishes dares to seek to saturate its new $1.5 million building in faux Godliness. All that money was spent while Loaves & Fishes did NOTHING extra to aid the effort to help the poor in Sacramento during a particularly cold and wet winter. They call the building the “new Welcoming Center and Warehouse” and do not mention that it is also new office space for the corroded administration. And that homeless people are near-fully barred from the building. It’s a welcoming center for contributions and money and debutantes and Richie Rich. Its down the street from the where the homeless are allowed to be.

Hilariously, on the second page of the newsletter, Mother Teresa, Dorothy Day and St. Francis of Assisi are evoked. Hey, with that line-up, I’m sure St. Paul and Jesus are disappointed to have been left out. And where’s Batman and Glenn Beck, for crying out loud? But what makes it a 10-on-a-scale-of-10 absurdity is that the picture that runs with it IS A FAKE. Pictured are what recipients of the newsletter are led to believe are homeless people being served a meal. [In the text it says “You who stand at the serving tables each day and serve the food are twenty-first century Dorothy Days.”] But, I'm told, the picture HAS NO HOMELESS PEOPLE IN IT. It’s a staged picture with volunteers and L&F staffers. Loaves & Fishes is incapable of having any honest period of time that lasts even so long as the snap of a camera shutter.

On the backpage, the Genesis program at Loaves & Fishes gets special notice. Readers are led to believe that Genesis – which was started by Libby Fernandez, by the way – helps “the most vulnerable and yet the hardest to help.” That is radically not true. The most-in-need homeless are unserved, unsought and unhelped by Loaves & Fishes and the toity Genesis program. The great tragedy of homeless services in Sacramento is that there is no one tasked to save people who are severely mentally ill, many of whom sleep in their excrement at bus stops and in doorways. Loaves & Fishes not only does not help these people, they do not hire people who could help these folks because open positions at the charity are reserved for friends and family and friends of donors.

Woe the Endless Perfidy of Praise-Unworthy, Empathy-Barren, Malodorous Loaves & Fishes.
------
footnotes:
1. I am not meaning to take God's name in vain, but to mock the way Loaves & Fishes chooses to drag God around on a leash and how they shamelessly slather themselves with the butter of Jesus. Loaves & Fishes management thinks it is the holy be-knighted when to the clear-eyed they are the wholly benighted. On the first page of their newsletter they unabashedly post filthy crap like this: "Almighty God, I do not want to be irreverent but while your Son with five loaves and two fishes fed five thousand, this Loaves & Fishes community has fed six million!" In other words, "God, your son Jesus was a piker. We're over a thousand times mightier and more holy!" But it's worse than that: Libby Fernandez's record keeping is so slovenly L&F has certainly not served the six million meals over a period of 26 years, as is claimed. Of course, Safeway feeds probably 30 million people each day, so in orwellian LoavesThink, you could say that Safeway is The Biggest, Meanest, Mightiest Jesus of All!! Huzzah! [Elmer Gantry and Lonesome Rhodes have nothing on the arrogance, vanity and effrontery of Loaves & Fishes.] Also germane here: "The Power of Mockery."

The virtue of empathy

2011-07-18T20:31:00.000-07:00

This from the new book The Science of Evil: “When our empathy is switched off, we are solely in the “I” mode. In such a state we relate only to things or to people as if they were just things. Most of us are capable of doing this occasionally. We might be quite capable of focusing on our work without sparing a thought for the homeless person outside our office. But whether we are in this state transiently or permanently, there is no ‘thou’ visible – at least, not a thou with different thoughts and feelings. Treating other people as if they were just objects is one of the worst things you can do to another human being, to ignore their subjectivity, their thoughts and feelings.”

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

2011-06-28T06:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-06-20T19:58:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-06-16T23:11:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-12T20:37:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-05T16:36:00.000-07:00

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.

Diminishment of the impulse for immediate gratification might diminish the number of people who are homeless

2011-05-29T11:26:00.000-07:00

Certainly, the prime factor in leading a majority of homeless men into a life with many long periods of homelessness is giving in to immediate gratification instead of having longterm goals, and being just generally interested in one's future.

This viddie covers A LOT of ground -- all of it fascinating! -- but includes discussion of a technique -- mental gym, I think it's pithily called -- that can, perhaps, train a mind to pass on immediate gratification and go with long-term goals. Great stuff; hella interesting.

Sex, Lies and Exegesis

2011-05-24T15:20:00.000-07:00

Definition: exegesis [ek-si-jee-sis]: critical explanation or interpretation of a text or portion of a text, especially of the Bible.


	Painting by He Qi, a prominent artist from China who focuses on Christian themes. This piece is inspired by The Song of Solomon.

In his May 21 column, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof stirred up a hornets’ nest. His column wasn’t really a column, it was a quiz, titled “Religion and Sex Quiz.” The questions and what he provided as the answers were provocative, to say the least.

We would later learn, in his follow-up, a post to the Times online in the afternoon of the same day, “Reader Comments on my Religion Quiz,” that the information that was used to create the quiz came with the help of Bible scholars, “including Jennifer Knust, whose book inspired [the quiz], and … Mark Jordan of Harvard Divinity School.” Kristof doesn’t name Knust’s book, but a quick googling reveals that it must certainly be Unprotected Texts: The Bible’s Surprising Contradictions about Sex and Desire which is the latest book by Knust, an American Baptist pastor and New Testament professor at Boston University.

Liberal-Christian blogger Hugo Schwyzer tells us about Knust’s book in his post “Sex, Lies and Exegesis” [a title so clever I've kiped it for THIS HERE blogpost, the very one that you have your eyes on right this minute. Only, unlike Schwyzer, I am making no judgment of what might be true],

Knust is writing for those of us who take the Bible seriously. If there’s a consistent charge thrown by theological conservatives against their liberal brethren, it’s that those of us who advocate for an inclusive sexual ethic don’t take a sufficiently rigorous or reverent approach to Scripture. Knust dismisses that charge, reminding her readers in the introduction that
…the Bible is not only contradictory but complex…biblical teachings regarding desire, marriage, and the human body are entirely inconsistent and yet thoroughly fascinating. The Bible does not offer a systematic set of teachings or a single sexual code, but it does reveal sometimes conflicting attempts on the part of people and groups to define sexual morality, and to do so in the name of God.

I am sure that Knust and her book, along with Rob Bell and his controversial book Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, are driving many conservative Christians batty. The underpinnings of conservative Christianity are under assault since both these books do not go gentle into that dark night of a fight. Both writers get their licks in at conservatives' understanding of the Bible, using a cudgel and a thick fist.

From a comment to Kristof’s follow-up column, a scholarly reader informs us that Aramaic has just 400 words! This is the basis of the great difficulty in getting a solid, absolutely-accurate translation of the Bible. The English language, in contrast, has something like 200,000 words allowing us to be very nuanced and precise in what we say. Not so Aramaic, a simple language that can leave what’s said to be easily misunderstood. Anyway, that is why there are a great many translations of the Bible.

Nowadays, thanks to technology and globalizion, those that study the original wording of the Bible's texts — such people are called exegetes — are in a whirlwind; they are being inundated with massive amounts of new information and a colossal amount of data, passed to them from everywhere, that they are able to fit together, using computers, to understand [they think, anyway] what the Bible really, truly says and means.

Now, back to Kristof’s original Sunday column. Here is some of what’s revealed [only some of which is controversial, maybe]:

The Bible never mentions abortion.
The people of Sodom were condemned, not for homosexuality or blasphemy, but for idolatry, threatening words and a lack of compassion. Says the quiz answer sheet: “'Sodomy' as a term for gay male sex began to be commonly used only in the 11th century and would have surprised early religious commentators. They attributed Sodom’s problems with God to many different causes, including idolatry, threats toward strangers and general lack of compassion for the downtrodden. Ezekiel 16:49 suggests that Sodomites “had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”
The Bible limits women to one husband, but other than that is all over the map. Mark 10 envisions a lifelong marriage of one man and one woman. But King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines (I Kings 11:3). And Matthew (Matthew 19:10-12) and St. Paul (I Corinthians 7) both seem to suggest that the ideal approach is to remain celibate and avoid marriage if possible, while focusing on serving God. Jesus (Matthew 19:12) even seems to suggest that men make themselves eunuchs, leading the early church to ban enthusiasts from self-castration.

It is perhaps the case that the most controversial element in all this is whether or not the Bible is internally contradictory. Conservative Christians insist it is not, whereas their liberal brethren seem wholly inclined to find contradictions and interpret the Bible in a manner that is, perhaps, more freewheeling — if that's the right word.

-----

Notes:

"Sex, Lies and Exegesis" is a riff on the title of a popular movie in 1989, Sex, Lies and Videotape.

Knust's book title, Unprotected Text, is a riff on the common phrase unprotected sex.

According to the Oxford Dictionaries website:

The Second Edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary [OED] contains full entries for 171,476 words in current use, and 47,156 obsolete words. To this may be added around 9,500 derivative words included as subentries. Over half of these words are nouns, about a quarter adjectives, and about a seventh verbs; the rest is made up of exclamations, conjunctions, prepositions, suffixes, etc. And these figures don't take account of entries with senses for different word classes (such as noun and adjective).

This suggests that there are, at the very least, a quarter of a million distinct English words, excluding inflections, and words from technical and regional vocabulary not covered by the OED, or words not yet added to the published dictionary, of which perhaps 20 per cent are no longer in current use. If distinct senses were counted, the total would probably approach three quarters of a million.

Information re Homeless Connect this Saturday

2011-05-16T19:49:00.000-07:00

Following is information from Sacramento Steps Forward's flyer regarding Homeless Connect this Saturday:

Homeless Connect 2011

May 21

Sacramento City College

10 AM – 3PM

Free Transportation to and From the Event

. . . . . . . . .

What to Expect this Year:

Housing Referrals

Child Care

Job Readiness Information

Interview Ready Clothes Closet

Foot Washing

Art Station

Mental Health Assessments & Info on Services

On-Site Rapid HIV Testing, STI & Hep C testing

Massage

Yoga

Free Book Give Away

Vision Screening & Reading Glasses

Free Bras & Bra Sizing

Harm Reduction Services

Pet Care

Haircuts

Breast & Cervical Health Information

Veterans Services

And Much More!

. . . . . . . . .

TRANSPORTATION INFO.

No drugs, no alcohol, no weapons, no threats, no violence

Childcare (for children 3-17), pet kenneling and personal item storage will be provided at the event

Free shuttles will run from 9:15 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. every 15 minutes to and from the event

Look for the signs at shuttle stops!

Shuttles stops

A. (near) Loaves and Fishes, Ahern St between North C & North B Sts
B. Salvation Army, on North B St between Dos Rios & Ahern Sts
C. Alkali Flat/La Valentina Light Rail stop, on D Street between 12^th& 13^thSts

D. 1500 C Street, passengers should gather near the corner of 15^th & C.
E. (near) Volunteers of America A Street Shelter, next to Guest House Homeless Clinic

---

Information is taken, in cut-and-paste fashion, from the "event flyer" cited in an email from Sacramento Steps Forward.

What Libby could have gotten with her $1.5 million instead of a huge box to hold stale donuts

2011-05-08T13:52:00.000-07:00

“The C-X75 is absolutely at the forefront of technology, it's as good as you can get right now,” said Tata Chief Executive Officer Carl-Peter Forster at a London press conference.

The magazine TechLand tells us that a new hybrid Jaguar costs $1.5 million -- on the low end of information I've gotten on the cost of Libby [Chief Exasperating Officer of Loaf & Fish] 's new toy, the so-called Welcoming Center at Loaf & Fish.

The vehicle can go from 0 to 60 in under three seconds. And, we're told, it will go 200mph "on flats." No information was available on how fast it could go in high heels.

Consider that in contrast to Libby's Welcoming Center which doesn't move at all.

A sea bass

Also, whereas the Jaguar is as cute as a sea bass, Libby's big box is as ugly as any of the other over-priced buildings in the L&F jumble-of-boxes Compound/Mall/Maul. [I'm told the Wash House cost about $300,000. How can that be!?]

If you're vain and stupid enough to buy a freaking toy with money that donors gave to help the freaking homeless, a Jaguar is better that a humongous freaking box! I mean, Jesus, Libby. Isn't it obvious?

The ugly-as-hell Taj McLibby. Except that there aren't any really cool slides in a children's playground, it looks just like a deluxe place to buy fast food -- or maybe because of the round green logo, the spot to buy a Vanilla Bean Frappaccino.

There should have been a vote of the homeless while so many of us were outside this past winter freezing our buns on the cold pavement. What pure-vanity project would you want the stupid organization, Loaf & Fish, to throw money away on? (A) Box (B) Cool Car. It's just a guess on my part, but for some reason I think we homeless would have VOTED OVERWHELMINGLY FOR THE COOL CAR. You think!?

Update: Word from "the street" is that the Sac homeless overwhelmingly would have prefered the cool car, even as they know they would never have gotten a chance to drive it or ride shotgun.

SN&R publishes remarkable first-person story of life in Homeless World Sacramento

2011-04-29T15:11:00.000-07:00


	Buckner as pictured online at SN&R's webspace.

There is an amazing first-person essay in this week’s Sac’to News & Review that ‘hits on’ central crimes of Loaves & Fishes and its disgraceful leader. The crimes are those of “Warehousing the Rabble” and “Collective Punishment.” The essay, titled “Sacramento's coldest season” [online; in hardcopy it's titled, simply, "the coldest season"], by Christopher Lee Buckner, relates suffering he endured at Loaves & Fishes and at Sac Steps Forward’s Winter Sanctuary during this winter when he was homeless. Happily for Christopher, he is now back in an apartment and back in college – otherwise, for the outrage of saying something negative about the horrors of the Libby Fernandez administration at Loaves, he would be subject to denial of survival services. Some Overlords in Homeless World don’t tolerate essential American freedoms.

For the record, I have never met the writer, and I don’t know that he has ever heard of me. It doesn’t take social networking for knowledge to spread that Loaves & Fishes is a bumbling nightmare that undermines the efforts of homeless people to aright their lives. Homeless people, individually in large number, experience the dunderheadedness of how many so-called homeless services operate, and then the homeless people suffer the deprevations visited upon them by the massive waves of ineptitude.

Writes Buckner early on in his essay,

I spent the winter of 2010[-2011] at Loaves & Fishes’ Friendship Park, as one of the many misfortunate outcasts forced to call the streets my home due to unforeseen circumstances. I became a stranger in a strange land, forced to live among the forgotten and forsaken through one of the coldest and wettest seasons of my life. The park was meant to be a safe place that offered protection away from the elements. Truthfully, it was a cage, meant to keep those that no one wanted to see away from the civilized world.

Yep. “Warehousing the Rabble,” it’s called. It's a polity, first identified by John Irvin in the 1980s, of massively wasting homeless people's time to keep us out of public view and out of trouble. Enlightened societies/metropolises have moved away from this extra-legal and backward policy, but Sacramento at Loaf & Fish is 'Warehousing the Rabble' Central.

I'm told by my pals "out here" that they recognize the events Buckner writes about in his essay and that they occurred on New Year's Day, 2011.

Two paragraphs later, Buckner writes,

The closing of the park was not a rare occurrence. While the rules were clearly posted and many individuals did respect them, there were always those that felt the rules that governed the rest of us did not apply to them. As a result, the whole had to suffer because of the individuals’ mistakes.


	This is the new Welcoming Center / Admin offices / Warehouse that Loaves & Fishes built during the past 12 months or so, in lieu of doing anything to shelter the homeless during the particularly cold and wet winter of 2010-2011. The cost was btw $1.5 and $2 million, dependent on whom you ask. This is L&F's way of giving homeless people the finger.

And, this, this is “Collective Punishment.” Here is the blogpost “Loaves and Fishes’ program of ‘Collective Punishment’” I wrote in July, 2010, that, with this blogpost, resulted in me being 86ed for life from Loaves & Fishes Mall of Services. Sister Libby, like a Middle East dictator, can’t tolerate anyone criticizing her outrageous behavior. In addition, she doesn’t want donors and potential donors to know how money gets wasted by her and her crew.

As I said, Buckner is also critical of Winter Sanctuary, which sheltered homeless people on the floor at various churches in our metropolis. For the benefit of sleep, homeless people have had to spend sixteen or seventeen hours per day getting a legal, sheltered place to sleep. This is outrageous. It devours a person’s day and can make the escape from homelessness impossible.

Hooray, you, Christopher Lee Buckner! Thanks for letting the public in on what is really going on in Homeless World Sacramento with your revealing essay. [And thanks, too, to SN&R for putting the truth out there! Please, please keep it up SN&R!] 90+% else of what gets published re homelessness in Sacramento is purely homeless charities’ press releases. It is wonderful to get the fresh air of what is true and real in your essay, Christopher. [And, I must unabashedly add, from this online publication, Sacramento Homeless blog].

Readers, please read the whole of Buckner's essay! Splendid information, splendidly written. The truth of things, the unblinkered truth: "Sacramento's coldest season."

Modern day Shadrachs, Meshachs, and Abednegos

2011-04-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

A regular preacher at Union Gospel Mission with the unlikely first name of Darwin – Darwin Ellis – told us last night that End Times are near, beginning with an era of terrible tribulation. The Enemy, Satan, is amassing his soldiers and we must be warriors to confront his evil. Horrible times are coming very very soon. We must make ready.


	A depiction of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego in the furnace. Jesus is there as the Fourth Being, protecting the three Israeli boys from the deadly flames.

Or, I should say, he alluded to all that in the most foggy, frustrating and obscure ways possible.

Guys in the chapel seats weighed in with approval [“Amen!” “Praise Jesus!”] here and there as Ellis spoke of supporting Jesus, following Jesus and preparing for difficult battles, but nobody can have known what he was really talking about. The Enemy, in terms of the Who and What of the organizations and people of today was left out. In was a sermon minus anything specific. It was obscurity lost in a foggy mist of obscurity. WHAT are you talking about!?

The Scripture Ellis read from had to do with Shaddrach, Meshach and Abednego, the Israeli boys who were loyal to God, angering King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon, who had them tossed into an impossibly-hot furnace. But because of their loyal, abiding faith, they were protected, and could be seen with a fourth being, Jesus, protecting them from the lick of the flames.

And, thus, according to Ellis, we in the mission congregation should be modernday Shadrachs, Meshachs and Abednegos, faithful and courageous, unafraid in the face of a coming cataclysm.

What WAS Ellis talking about!?

For months now Ellis has been on the same topic, spoken in increasingly obscure ways. But in his first sermons on the topic of “preparation for tribulations,” I’ll call it, last October and December, he was somewhat specific on who all were in Satan’s Camp.

Here, from my notes,

Ellis's October sermon was opaque to us, seeming to have to do with serious criticisms he had about specific, unnamed other preachers who were "wolves in shephards' clothing."

Ellis's Dec message was that a spiritual war is immanent -- but from the details it sounded like he meant a political war. He used 1 Kings 18: 20-40 as being prophetic of a coming war, with enemies including those relating to the worshipers of Baal and Ashteroth/Astarte (which, he said, translates, today, to supporters of Universal Heathcare, sex, sexual immorality, and ecology/'supporters of efforts to confront Global Warming') Reaction from the congregation was silent to cold, with the exception of just a few. Ellis made evident his disappointment at not being better received.


	The cover story for Time magazine's Apr 25, 2011, issue was about Pastor Rob Bell of Mars Hill, a megachurch in Michigan.

Last night, Ellis again alluded to preachers who were the enemy, citing those who lived Large [though that’s not how he termed it] and some unspecific preacher(s) who has/have mega-churches. Possibly, though he didn’t say so, Rob Bell, who is getting a lot of press lately, and is the pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church, a megachurch in Michigan, is on Ellis’ mind as an Enemy of God.

Ellis said of these Enemies that they make the Good sound Bad and the Bad sound Good. Bell is in the news for his books that certainly seem to confront traditional Christianity. His latest, Love Wins, denies the existence of Hell and (from what I understand) preaches a Universalist message that the good news of the Gospel is "better than we could ever imagine." Also, from what I've just learned online, Bell is one of several central figures in the so-called Emergent Village Movement that teaches many things that confront standard Christianity.

A critic of Bell, tells me that these are some of the principles of Emergent Village:
1. There is no hell. (In one of Bell's books prior to Love Wins he refers to hell as a temporary state of "Pruning".)
2. We should accept the “truths” of another religion and another can accept the truths of Christianity while staying in their own religion and by doing that, we will all go to Heaven.
3. The Bible is up for interpretation.
4. Virgin birth of Jesus was not necessary.
5. Cannot define when same sex marriage would be illegitimate.
6. People who believe in the second coming of Christ are distorted, deadly and terrible, blaming the Middle East conflict on those who believe in the second coming of Christ.
7. Fundamental Christians are harmful in the fact that they believe in the end of the world, and contribute to it’s destruction, thus bringing in a “self-fulfilling prophesy” when we “should” be trying to preserve the earth and nature.
8. God is a “chick”. Etc…
9. They teach that Islam and Christianity believe in the same God.
10. Their main focus is obviously, interfaith coupled with good works of men and purpose for living
apart from foundational truths found in The Bible.

I can't really confirm any of this [I have "requested" Love Wins from the Sacramento Public Library and will report on it when I have had an opportunity to read it.]. And, I don't know if Bell and the Emergent Movement is a target in Ellis's sermons.

What I do think is that preachers at the mission have an obligation to be rather specific when they are rallying us to confront Enemies of Christianity/Jesus that they have identified.

My friend, Steve, has been wholly impressed with Darwin Ellis in the past, but unfortunately he wasn't in attendance for the sermon last night. I will be interested in his thoughts since he is particularly knowledgable about Scripture.

For my part, I am troubled by both what I read online about Bell and about critics of Bell. Also, I should disclose, I am centrally Buddhist, but am what I term a "Skyhooks Buddhist" -- a believer that life is not wholly pushed up from the ground [in a reductionist understanding of evolution] put "pulled" upward by something I try to understand. My effort to understand what "pulls us up" is ongoing and the basis of a great interest in Christianity.

I will post again on this expanded topic as information comes forward.

Homeless: Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake

2011-04-26T12:06:00.000-07:00

Paul Simon and Ladysmith Black Mambazo singing "Homeless." Sung during Simon's "African Tour" in 1987, following the release of his Graceland album.

You could argue that the homelessness they are singing about isn't the homelessness of urban Sacramento -- but, then again, you could argue the opposite.

Strong wind destroy our home
Many dead, tonight it could be you

Those two lines from the lyrics could narrowly refer to a deadly storm, or, symbolically, to devastating events that lead to homelessness and then the dangers of being homeless.

Homeless short

2011-04-26T11:40:00.000-07:00

This is a short film on YouTube that has gotten some attention.

It's interesting mainly because the film seems not to have a point of view. The positions of each of the three men in the film seem foolish. We are left with no direct message.

So, what does the mini-movie do? Nothing much in and of itself, but it opens up a possibility for us to consider what really goes on in the world.

The view of each man in the film has some validity as well as being substantially flawed. And, each man is somewhat representative of many in the real world.

The homeless hater's position is well stated, and includes the usual gross simplifications and harrowing narrow-mindedness. And the liberal-but-ignorant position is well represented.

The homeless man in the film is a tabula rasa onto whom stereotypes, good and bad, can be projected. Certainly, there are some homeless men in Sacramento who are clean, contented and aimless -- which seems to be the disposition of the homeless fellow, if he was meant to have any qualities at all. In real life, homeless people are greatly varied with unmistakably distinct personalities.

One thing that is common, but not in the way depicted in the film, is the homeless man taking on an opinion of himself as expressed by unknowing others. Sadly, homeless people read and start to believe the bathetic crap about themselves in Loaves & Fishes' donations-grab newsletters. Or, we marginalize ourselves as a result from 'established' citizens' cruel looks when we're out in the world.

Trouble in Mudville

2011-04-21T16:48:00.000-07:00

This post has been withdrawn, pending review of some information that it was based upon that now appears contrary to facts.

Homelessness isn't just an issue on the parkway, it pervades communities throughout Sacramento.

2011-04-15T12:32:00.000-07:00


	A homeless man walking along the sidewalk. [Graphic used with permission of sacbee.com.]

The title of this blogpost is taken from a sentence used repeatedly in a series of ten photographs of homeless people, in a so-called photo gallery of ten, "Homelessness Affects Many Sacramento Neighborhoods," taken by a Sac Bee photographer in communities outside the American River Parkway: “Homelessness isn't just an issue on the parkway, it pervades communities throughout Sacramento.”

It is good that the Bee is recognizing that there are homeless people other than those sleeping in Safe Ground camps, or next to Safe Ground encampments or in SG-organized shelters at churches. Yes, Scoopy, only about 100 people are affiliated with SafeGround while, perhaps, 1100 other homeless people live on the streets, by themselves, or in loose confederations having no connection to SafeGround. And there are others of us living in bona fide shelters, or otherwise making do as we can.

I don’t mean to be overly sensitive, but while the photographs are nice, do the existence of the homeless people who are photographed necessarily represent “an issue?” And, what issue is that, precisely? What is the innuendo, here? exactly?


	A man who had spent the night in a doorway. [Graphic used with permissio of sacbee.com.]

The “issue on the parkway” was related to unkempt camping, and homeless folk seeming to have made the American River Parkway inaccessible to joggers, bike riders and other traditional users of patches of property set aside for nature to be its splendid unsullied self. Whereas, the set of pictures seem to all be of tidy homeless folk not on the American River Parkway.

Let us suppose it is 1957 and Sacramento was segregated as it perhaps was, then. And let us suppose that a Bee photographer of that long-ago time took some pictures of Black people outside a southern section of the city where Black citizens were concentrated. And in the series of pictures this sentence appeared repeatedly: “Black people aren’t just an issue in Oak Park, it pervades communities throughout Sacramento.” Would that be cool? Would it be a sentence the Bee would stand proudly by, today, some fifty-plus years later?


	A homeless guy on a bicycle. [Graphic used with permission of sacbee.com.]

I write all this not meaning to correlate 1950s Black citizens with homeless citizens. We homeless, as a group, have problems, and often present problems [it is, perhaps, accurate to say], that Black citizens, as a group, never have. But, I am bothered by the presumption that homeless citizens sleeping where they can must be presented as a “pervading issue,” albeit unspecified.

Sometimes, something that must happen and happens repeatedly isn’t that big a deal. A dog barks in the middle of the night. It’s noticed that the grass needs to be watered because there are brown patches. A crumpled sheet of paper tumbles along the street on a windy day. The air is pervaded by the scent of spring.

A time may come one day when very very poor people won't be in doorways or walking on the street with their bedroll. But will that be a good thing? Should the poor folk in our society be fully hidden away?

Rise and Shine Street Fair

2011-04-12T10:33:00.000-07:00


	A handout that was given out Monday, announcing the fair. Click on the pic to enlarge it.

With only a few days' notice to the homeless public, the Union Gospel Mission put out word it will be hosting its annual street fair this coming Saturday.

I've attending the fair the last two years, and can tell y'all it is a fun, worthwhile event -- aimed toward getting us homeless and other poorish folk some things we need in a joyful, music-filled environment.

The street fair is not actually out on the street, which nowadays is rather heavy with traffic, but inside the mission's property which, by Saturday, will be transformed into a pretty "fair"-sized fairgrounds.

Judging by past years' fairs, the "fun, food, music, gifts and raffle" will be there in great abundance. And, there will be a goodly crowd of fair-goers acoming (because those who have been to the fair before are very likely to come again). So, come early [if you're smart] and be prepared for long (but fast-moving) lines and a good, satisfying time with lots to do and see.

The power of words

2011-04-12T09:53:00.000-07:00

Thanks to blogger great James Ure for this:

While the meaning of the film may seem forthright, I do think it is worth a a good bit of chin-scratch pondering.

And, of course, because of the focus of this blog [Homelessness!], and the sometimes-spiked writing style of this blogger [perhaps], a man sitting by a sign hoping to get money is of particular interest.

The "negative" response I have to this film is that it seems to support an "advertising" sensibility and emotional manipulation as opposed to a very straightforward appeal.

Must everything have a sub-rosa element that works on us outside our direct awareness?

On the other hand, it is good for us to be socially aware of each other and to comprehend "the other's" experience.

It is also true that there are times when we must be more aggressive in how we say something to get to the deeper truth of things. Powerful words and powerful connotations are sometimes not only better but quite necessary.

Of the 1%, By the 1%, For the 1%

2011-04-08T13:23:00.000-07:00

Comes to me from bloggers Bill Harryman via Steve Curless

Illustration by Stephen Doyle - THE FAT AND THE FURIOUS: The top 1 percent may have the best houses, educations, and lifestyles, says Stiglitz, but “their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live.”

There has been a wave of blog interest in an article by Joseph Stiglitz, a Columbia professor and 2001 Nobel winner in Economic Science [Economics is a science!?], on the grotesque, obscene disparity of wealth that now exists in America and its ruinous effect on our future.

The article in the May issue of Vanity Fair is titled "Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%," a play on the phrase from Lincoln's Gettysberg Address, which was "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." Stiglitz is suggesting that the lower 99 percent of those people [i.e., us] have been pushed out of our one-time democracy.

The article begins with this stern warning: "Americans have been watching protests against oppressive regimes that concentrate massive wealth in the hands of an elite few. Yet in our own democracy, 1 percent of the people take nearly a quarter of the nation’s income—an inequality even the wealthy will come to regret."

And this sobering statistic gives you some idea of the radical change that has quickly taken place in our was-middle-class nation: "In terms of wealth rather than income, the top 1 percent control 40 percent. Their lot in life has improved considerably. Twenty-five years ago, the corresponding figures were 12 percent and 33 percent." That is, the Top 1%'s percentage of nation income has gone from 12% of all that is to 25%; and their percentage of all the wealth in this country has increased from 33% to 40% of all that there is. At this rate, we, The Bottom 99%, will be left as the wealthy's raggity serfs.

Welcome to Homeless World, all of you in the middle 98%! Pull up a broken bench and sit with us.

Basically -- though Stiglitz doesn't say it this harshly -- the uber-filthy rich are dipping their world in gold and killing off the rest of us like we were cockroaches.

For job-seekers, like so many of us in the homeless class, there is this in our futures:

First, growing inequality is the flip side of something else: shrinking opportunity. Whenever we diminish equality of opportunity, it means that we are not using some of our most valuable assets—our people—in the most productive way possible. Second, many of the distortions that lead to inequality—such as those associated with monopoly power and preferential tax treatment for special interests—undermine the efficiency of the economy. This new inequality goes on to create new distortions, undermining efficiency even further. To give just one example, far too many of our most talented young people, seeing the astronomical rewards, have gone into finance rather than into fields that would lead to a more productive and healthy economy.

Third, and perhaps most important, a modern economy requires “collective action”—it needs government to invest in infrastructure, education, and technology. The United States and the world have benefited greatly from government-sponsored research that led to the Internet, to advances in public health, and so on. But America has long suffered from an under-investment in infrastructure (look at the condition of our highways and bridges, our railroads and airports), in basic research, and in education at all levels. Further cutbacks in these areas lie ahead.

And there's this which should make all of us in the lower-99 mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore:

America’s inequality distorts our society in every conceivable way. There is, for one thing, a well-documented lifestyle effect—people outside the top 1 percent increasingly live beyond their means. Trickle-down economics may be a chimera, but trickle-down behaviorism is very real. Inequality massively distorts our foreign policy. The top 1 percent rarely serve in the military—the reality is that the “all-volunteer” army does not pay enough to attract their sons and daughters, and patriotism goes only so far. Plus, the wealthiest class feels no pinch from higher taxes when the nation goes to war: borrowed money will pay for all that.

Read the whole article -- and while you're doing it think of the new Admin offices soon to be occupied at Loaves & Fishes, built to cater to the very very rich so they can give their pocket change to Libby and not have to view the poor.

Thank you, Libby, for your vanity-filled contribution to misery. Here, 25 cents.

Woe, the idiocy. Libby does it again.

2011-04-06T17:55:00.000-07:00

Without giving notice to the homeless until the middle of this morning, Loaves & Fishes announced that it is cancelling many of its services, tomorrow, for a Staff Retreat for the purpose of discussing its mission.

Let me clue you in, Libby: Your mission begins with offering services reliably.

It is fortunate for America that you bombed out of the Air Force or the security of the United States would be imperiled.

This happens over and over and over again.

Loaves & Fishes is not a legitimate organization; it is a whorehouse. A legitimate organization thinks of its customers or those it serves. It has a desire to satisfy the very people it is there for. It wants to do well and bring something of value to the world. Hmmm, come to think of it Loaves & Fishes is much much worse than any whorehouse.

I would need to catalogue all the idiocy that comes from Loaves & Fishes' Board of Directors and Administration, but I am concerned that it would be thicker than a 1960 Sears & Roebuck Catalog -- but let's begin with the building that Libby will let the curtain down on on June 8. A building that cost over $1.5 million to construct.

And, what will it be? A building that will aid the homeless? Why, no. Something like that wouldn'd adequately appeal to L&F vanity. It is described by L&F as the new Welcoming Center slash Administration Building slash Warehouse.

It's brand spanking new. And further removed from where the homeless are; well down the street, so senior staff will never need to see any homeless; for it is not the homeless who are welcomed at the L&F complex, but donors. Come, come all you rich and foolish donors. Open your wallets; give to Libby; and for God's sake don't ask any questions.

Ask Joey and the clear-eyed view of others

2011-04-04T15:26:00.000-07:00


	Joey Garcia of "Ask Joey"

I happily admit it. I’m crazy nuts about “Ask Joey,” the relationships column written by Joey Garcia for the SN&R that persistently urges writers-in to push their “operating level” to a higher plateau.Twice before, I’ve blogged about “Ask Joey” regards matters homeless: “Homeless advice in recent ‘Ask Joey’ columns” [12/1/10] and “Homelessness and shoplifting. Ask Joey, Part II” [12/31/10]. In the current week’s AJ, what has me jazzed isn’t something directly about homeless folk, but something about how we should see others, generally, that Joey Garcia writes in response to a woman’s story of her ragged path in trying to re-connect with a high school gal pal thirty years after graduation.Here, for me [in text I’ve bolded], is the money quote from a swatch of what Garcia wrote, that is solid advice for us all in every kind of interpersonal situation [and as, generally, a high-level manner of experiencing the presence of all others in our life]:

Stop thinking in black and white. Falling in and out of love with someone is not love at all. It doesn’t matter whether the relationship is with a platonic friend, a business associate or a committed partner; extreme emotional swings are a sign of entrenched thinking errors. The work here is to see others as they are with special gifts, unique beauty and distinctive life experiences plus shortcomings, eccentricities and unhealed emotional wounds. After opening your eyes to the truth of a person, your task is to accept that person as one (potential) expression of the Divine.

The words that Joey Garcia uses are carefully chosen and demonstrate a keen understand of the nature of the human animal. I write this (and can write this) with no claim to any such keen understand, myself.Garcia says that we should look at people, whole — with appreciation/acceptance of their talents and foibles. In Buddhism, there's a similar central idea: that we see others as sufferers. The Garcia and Buddha ideas don't sound all that similar, but I submit that they are.We understand ourself as a complicated vehicle, but often tend to denigrate an other due to an aspect of character that nettles us, or through the slit of a single incident where we've locked horns with this other person. The patience that we must have with our complicated, inconsistant, inscrutible self, we tend to deny others. This is a central problem that individuals have.We mustn't limitedly see others "as ourself," (or, as Divine) -- because that is a romanticised, illusory notion and very much not the clear-eyed splendor of what actually, factually is. All people are gloriously and ingloriously screwed up in ways that are uniquely squirrelly and charmy. We mustn't deny [nor overlook] all the fluffy and muddy flawedness.Last year, Kirstin Paisley of Trinity Cathedral vaultedly wrote that the SafeGround homeless were a phalanx of Jesuses. [You can read her essay posted in full at the bottom of this Brian Baker blog post.] Nah. They certainly ain't Jesuses. That's a romantic, "all-white" notion, with no shades of gray, about us homeless who are each very evidently flawed.In another Baker blogpost from about a year ago, we see Judy LewLoose paintings of many Sac'to homeless paired with pics of Jesus holding his cross. Yes. Well. There's the idea that we each have a cross to bear, but I remind Herr Baker that it's not Jesus's. To make too literally impossible connections is romanticism. When he, or anyone, decides that they prefer looking at the homeless through rose-colored glasses [or, through glasses tinted with a gloss of the Savior's blood], then it pretty much means they are refusing to see things as they are, possibly because in their heart of hearts they believe the homeless stink on ice and only A Bid Lie let's 'em see things as they choose to see things.Libby and Joan of Loaves and Fishes, famously, always depict the homeless as pathetic. "They may look like humble clay as they trudge along 12th Street towards Loaves & Fishes," was how L&F's newsletter depicted homeless people last June. But whatever L & J really might think can be lost in their always-on effort to corral donors and sneak away with some of their dollars.The Haters, who come around to post comments to any article in the Bee or SacPress about homelessness, don't let not having any (or much) knowledge of the homeless condition stop 'em from having fully negative things to say, based on stereotypes of homeless people, dating from the '50s, that where probably never valid, even then.

Human beings, generally, are pretty spiffy, and, indeed, so are the homeless subset of that lot. The great clear-eyed Thomas Merton wrote in text that has been dubbed "The Vision in Louisville" how terrific regular people are that he saw on the street in Kentucky. It's not written from a romanticism sensibility; and it is certainly not Loaves & Fishes' smarmy avarice-headedness. It comes from a grown-up, serious man, writing honestly and with no side effort to say anything that isn't completely truthful.One of the late paragraphs in Merton's "Vision" is this:

Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed …I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other. But this cannot be seen, only believed and “understood” by a peculiar gift.

Merton is all too rare in having that "peculiar gift," that Joey, too, seems to have found. The rest of us should look for it in ourselves.By the way, I certainly don't think it's a Christianity-only thing. The Great Ken Wilber, too, writes, using different lingo, about the "center of our being ... a point of nothingness which is untouched by sin and by illusion, a point of pure truth" that Merton speaks about in his "Vision." Wilber suggests that we may find it as the witness [our true self] that watches our very dreams.

This is what the Class War looks like

2011-03-12T09:02:00.000-08:00

From Daily Kos, via a WilliamHarryman Tweet.

A vivid story of the torment of homelessness told by Sacramentan Sonny Iverson in the Sacramento Press. Read it!

2011-03-10T23:39:00.000-08:00

From Iverson's Google profile.

A longtime homeless man, Sonny Iverson, has posted a four-part narrative of his experience of being ‘on the street’ [and getting off of it] to SacPress:

It’s a splendidly well-written story that I am hopeful a good many will read. While every homelessness story is unique, there are many things about Sonny’s story that reflect upon what is similar to all who fall into the muddy pit of homelessness — that writer and sociologist John Irvin codified as “Warehousing the Rabble” in his book The Jail: Managing the Underclass in American society.

Sonny was first homeless when he was 18, locked out of his father’s home for smoking marijuana. From there he began an extended period in unstable living circumstances as he tried to advance his education in junior colleges.

Moving to San Francisco, his interest in music bloomed, resulting in a musical odyssey to Tennessee where things took a particularly sour turn.

These stages in a fall – from bad to worse to dastardly – would get nods of comprehension from many homeless folk who tumbled down their own not-dissimilar slippity slope. “Yep,” we would say. “Mine was sumpthin like that.”

Writes Iverson:

That people prey on young homeless people to oppress and abuse them is still hard for me to believe. It does make sense though, because who would believe a homeless person, or even care for their welfare? Homeless are a perfect target for predators, because the homeless have no voice, and not many care what happens to them.

Anyway, y’all: Read. Sonny’s. Story. Got that? Read the whole of it, as Sonny relates repeated difficult circumstances as he pulls himself up and out of the mudpit.

Unhappily, and to be expected, the “homeless haters” weigh in in the comments sections of the serial. These folks offer up severe criticisms of the homeless whenever a story relating to homelessness appears in the Sac Bee or Sac Press.

The frustration that Sonny has, and I and other homeless people have, with these criticisms is that the comment writers are so starkly ignorant of the homeless circumstance. Things just are not like what the haters choose to believe and are determined to continue to believe.

Homelessness is a pit where true friends are too few and where the homeless-services charities and county and city services are riddled with ineptitude. There are exceptions, certainly. Thank God for the exceptions. But most of what homeless people find themselves having to do is run around in circles, striving mightily to accomplish what little can be done.

"Why, we are just where we were when we started!" says Alice. "Oh, yes," says the Red Queen; "you have to run twice as fast as that to get anywhere else."

From what I find on the Internet, Iverson was recently or is now an outreach worker for Wind Youth Services in Sacramento. He also wrote a song, titled "My Dreams."

"Serna" beds at Sally's for Parkway campers extended through end of April

2011-03-08T13:06:00.000-08:00


	Logo of the nonprofit organization SafeGround Sacramento, Inc. -- from their website.

According to an article in today's Sacramento Bee, the 32 "Serna beds" that Sacramento County Supervisor Phil Serna raised funds for for Safe Ground¹, but were instead, with one exception, taken by other American River Parkway campers, have been extended an additional month, until the end of April.

Funds to extend availability of the beds comes from Kaiser Permanente [$5,000], "Serna's office," and others, the Bee article tells us.

Except for one member of Safe Ground, that organization's members refused the beds when originally made available in midFebruary. The reason given was that the SafeGrounders didn't want to jump the waiting list at Salvation Army, taking the beds from others who had a better claim of entitlement.

Many SafeGrounders were not reluctant to take beds at Union Gospel Mission once their riverside campground was rousted. To my mind, they certainly had every right to use mission beds, but I also think they had every justification to use the "Serna beds," even as I see it as laudable that most didn't.

Many, including myself, believe that Safe Ground's unflagging interest in having an issue to flog in order to raise funds and claim 'victimization' is at least in part reason why the "Serna beds" were refused. Safe Ground is a product of Loaves & Fishes' highly politicized effort of continual protest, and includes many of the same organization characters, including Libby Fernandez [an SGS board member and L&F CEO], David Moss, Mark Merin, and the lawyer without homeless-services portfolio, Cathleen "Cat" Willliams.

In an interview for SeeJaneDo, Fernandez said that "The ability to protest is written into the mission of Loaves and Fishes. Our philosophy is not to emphasize words, but non-violent action. It’s really about social justice. We walk the talk.”

But one woman's "social justice" is for others screwy politics. If Fernandez and her crowd had their way America would quite literally be transformed into a soviet-style nation, stripped of its freedoms.
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Footnotes:
1 The term "Safe Ground" or "SafeGround" is used for multiple, often-conflicting purposes by the organization of that name, which is also, more-formally known as "Safe Ground Sacramento." In this article Safe Ground means either the nonprofit organization or the tent encampment that was and often still is on the American Parkway or nearby.

The Weirdness of Union Gospel Mission’s Warming Center

2011-03-06T15:41:00.000-08:00

I’m not saying that staying at the Mish¹’s Warming Center is bad; indeed, it’s the best – to my mind based on my few stays there and at Sally’s² Warming Center.

What’s weird about it has been the late-spring announcement that it would be open through to the end of winter and all that has transpired (and not transpired) subsequently.

Make no mistake: I am a big fan of the mission. It may not be making a conservative Christian out of me, but it is a purposeful, successful institution in the Homeless World Sacramento matrix. Its task – its mission, if you will – is to win souls for Christ, and it succeeds in its quest with a goodly number of the guys out here. The mission turns around the lives of some people who were, stubbornly, on the hard road to disaster.

My take on one prime reason why the mission has success:

Union Gospel Mission’s objective is a great match to the target, homeless adult men in Sacramento. The mission teaches order and authority to a population, many of whom are in chaos. It gives meaning to people’s lives for those who find no meaning in their lives. It sets off, in sharpest contrast, the dysfunction of a life of addiction or of being acclimated to prison culture with striving for The Good.

Mission administrators might not approve of my ‘notion’ of one important element in why the Mission succeeds, but, no matter, it succeeds for them in their terms, and I respect that. [You can read why I think the mission succeeds in the sidebar in this blogpost.]

The Weirdness

On February 9, or thereabouts, it was announced that the mission would be opening its Warming Center every night for the duration of winter. This was greeted with great approval by those in the chapel that evening. But it was also learned that the guy managing the nightly Center would be a member of the Mission Board of Directors son-in-law, someone who had no connection to the mission previously.

Nowadays, because of the very bad economic situation in Sacramento, there are many Mission Rehab Program graduates hanging around who need employment. Four beds in the “guests³” dorm have been ‘given over’ to unemployed graduates. And it’s true that there are many unemployed graduates at the mission’s Eagle’s Nest Ranch. And, the mission lists as one of its goals the employment of Rehab grads. Too, there are graduates in good standing who work only sporadically who stay as guests, off and on.

At least a half dozen of the Rehab grads who are around are skilled, very capable individuals who would have been very appreciative if offered temporary work and would have been terrific Warming Center managers.

In short, there was frustration felt, by some, in that the mission seemed to have veered off what is most central: cultivating men in the Christian message, saving their souls, and restoring their lives.

A few days later it was learned that the “duration of winter” Warming Center would be open “just on weekdays.” Now, that seemed weird. The weather is not a respecter of days of the week. To paraphrase the Bible [Matthew 5:45], “God causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous," and is indifferent if it is a weekday or a weekend-day.

It occurred to people that the ‘five times a week’ thing was scheduled for the convenience of the manager and not as a function of combatting the misery of bad weather that homeless people endure.

About a week later, it was announced that the Warming Center would be open every day of the week, with the Warming Center manager being on hand on Wednesday-thru-Sunday nights with someone else being in charge on Mondays and Tuesdays. The Center would be open through the 19th of March [the last day of winter], and longer if the weather was bad. [In Homeless World Sacramento, March 31 was when formal “Winter Shelter” traditionally ends. “Winter Sanctuary,” Sacramento Steps Forward’s 2011 program that provides sleeping space on the floors at area churches, is funded to last through March 31.]

On Thursday March 3, we were told the Warming Center manager called in sick, complaining of a cold or the flu, and, with little notice, the Warming Center was not open that night. On the 4th, the Warming Center was again not open.

Last night, it was announced that the Warming Center would only be open if night temperatures are expected to drop into the low 30s, or below. [This was the ‘prompt’ in the past that the mission had used to open its Center.]

The Thing’s the Thing

In the past this blog has, rightly, been extremely critical of Loaves & Fishes for losing sight of its purpose. I am hopeful that the mission will keep its eyes on the great good worthy goal of helping the poor – and, especially, the most miserable subset of the poor, the homeless – and not be distracted by other, albeit worthy, aims.
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Footnotes:
¹My Natomas friend calls the mission “the Mish,” which has caught on with me. Sometimes, when out in public, I call the mission “the Ponderosa” when talking to my homeless pals. It’s not that I’m embarrassed by the mission or my connection with it, it is just that you get weary of being a “targeted homeless” person in public.
²“Sally’s” is the common ‘street’ name for Salvation Army’s shelter.
³“Guest” is what the mission calls non-Rehab guys who use UGM’s shelter, or men (and women) who use others of the mission’s many services.

Thor

2011-02-22T06:59:00.000-08:00


	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*

2011-02-18T14:47:00.000-08:00


	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:

All of 'em [meaning, the homeless] are bums.
They don't want anyone's help.
They live down by the river by choice, not circumstance.
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.
---
* 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

2011-02-13T15:21:00.000-08:00


	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!!

2011-02-11T11:41:00.000-08:00


	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

2011-02-09T13:47:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-08T08:00:00.000-08:00

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

2011-02-04T15:15:00.000-08:00


	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.

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

2011-01-27T10:20:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-24T16:27:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-23T15:42:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-22T12:12:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-18T09:37:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

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.
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* 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.