Skip to main content

Loaves & Fishes to Homeless: Drop Dead

Famous newspaper headline from 1975.
Loaves & Fishes indefinite closure of its Friendship Park and other unspecified services continues.

Green Hat Ed was in the North C Street cul-de-sac and informed me that the park would not be open today. A few homeless fellows standing about in the cul-de-sac informed me that they had heard that Loaves & Fishes's park would be closed until Friday, Good Friday. [I guess it's an imitation of Christ. Dead for three days, and then emerging from the tomb!]

Ed told me that 250 leaflets had been handed out, informing homeless folk something of the situation. I did not get one of those leaflets.

Yesterday, I emailed each of the the L&F Board of Directors members; I've received no response. Following is the text:
Dear Board of Directors, and others associated with Loaves & Fishes,

I am writing to repudiate the action of Sister Libby Fernandez this morning in closing Friendship Park, without notice, due to the actions of a very few in Friendship Park, yesterday.

Ms. Fernandez is in the bad habit of dealing with the adult denizens of Friendship Park, and adult users of others of L&F's services, as if they are Children and she (and her staff) are Parents.

This Parent-to-Child transactional mode is repugnant and harmful, irrespective of its specific effects. It would be good if the too-quiescent Board would address this element in isolation, in an effort to re-make management of Loaves & Fishes so that it might be wise and compassionate, rather than precipitant and arbitrarily punative.

It is Nazis in Poland and kindergarten teachers that punish everyone for the actions of a few. Loaves & Fishes should stop acting like a Nazi kindergarten teacher in Poland.

If you are not aware of what happened this morning, allow me to fill you in of what I learned before I left L&F property five minutes after 7AM: A large banner was put up, minutes before 7AM, along the FP bathroom wall, facing the fence gates. It read (something like): "Friendship Park will be Closed Until Further Notice."

A sheet of paper was put up on the chainlink-fence gate telling those waiting to get into the park that the reason for the closure was evidence of alcohol and drug use yesterday in the park. The sheet ended with expression of thanks to those who do not use or deal drugs or drink alcohol in the park.

It is a bizarre sentiment of "thanks," to the great great majority of Friendship Park denizens, when the park is closed without notice, without giving immediate access to rented lockers in the park and without providing information of when the shutdown policy will end.

The current management of Loaves and Fishes is greatly unworthy of the people it should be there to serve. Today, Loaves & Fishes acts as if homeless people exist to serve Loaves & Fishes management. It is disgusting.

Under Libby Fernandez's management, Loaves & Fishes never informs users of its services when facilities it manages will be closed in advance of closure. This has been true for the three-day winterizing closure, staff retreats, and when holidays are taken. I can think of no other business -- I cannot imagine a respectable business -- whether profit or non-profit, acting this way.

Board of Directors: Please wake up and do something.

Respectfully,

Tom Armstrong
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Loaves & Fishes implicates Buddhism and Jack Kornfield in its June Donations Plea.

The Sukhothai Traimit Golden Buddha was found in a clay-and-plaster overlaid buddha statue in 1959, after laying in wait for 500 years. It's huge and heavy: just under 10 feet tall and weighs 5 1/2 tons. At the beginning of their June newsletter , Loaves and Fishes relates a story, taken from the beginning of renowned Buddhist teacher Jack Kornfield's 2008 book The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology . The first part and first chapter in Kornfield's book is "Part I: Who are you really?" and chapter 1 is called "Nobility: Our Original Goodness," which ought to serve as a clue to what the beginning of the book is about, not that that sentiment isn't strewn through-out the chapter, section and book such that what Kornfield is telling us should be crystal clear. Somehow, the not-ready-for-primetime management at Loaves & Fishes have managed to use Kornfield's wise and kindly words in a way that mangles th...
8 comments
Read more

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

Calvin [a "green hat" in Unfriendly Park] makes the argument for continued incompetent management. Hobbes represents me — only, in real life, I don't have that good a coat . In an act of Collective Punishment, Loaves & Fishes closes its park in the morning on New Year’s Day In one respect — and only one — that I can think of, Loaves & Fishes is NOT hypocritical: The management hates the way America is run and wants to turn it into a backward communist country . Consistent with that, Loaves & Fishes’ management runs its facility like a backward communist country. The People’s Republic of Loaves & Fishes. A seemingly minor thing happened on New Year’s Day. A couple of people smoked a joint in Loaves & Fishes’ Friendship Park and one of the park directors, or both of them, determined, at about 10am, that, in retribution, they would punish all the homeless there by closing the park for the day. This is something the managers of the park do all the ...
7 comments
Read more

Far-left visionaries at "Homeless Power Forum" hope to transform America [into Bulgaria?]

Poster from " Hobo Art Show " at Western Regional Advocacy Project website.  Paul Boden, a keynote speaker at the Homeless Power Forum, is WRAP's Executive Director. Yesterday, "Homeless Power Forum: Vision & Survival" was held at the Delany Center at Loaves & Fishes. Thinking it was about to end (I should read my literature, dummy!), I stayed for only the first hour-and-a-half of a 5 1/2 hour program. But that was enough to hear the "keynote speakers," Ethel Long-Scott and Paul Boden, and to sound alarm bells about the direction of the Safe Ground effort. Today, I believe that the confusion that is implicit in the many meanings that have been given to safe ground , also spelled capitalized [Safe Ground], and as one word [SafeGround], is intentional: to lead people in the homeless community in Sacramento from the most positive and favorable meaning, a legal homeless campground, to a hopelessly-naive political far-far left Utopian vision o...
4 comments
Read more