Skip to main content

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

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."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

More obstacles revealed in effort to make Mather cottages habitable

Mold, asbestos and lead paint, oh my! The 35 cottages out at Mather Community Campus seem closer to being condemned today than ever again being inhabited. But the expectation that some of the cottages can and will be restored to house homeless families before spring abides. A report in the Sacramento Bee tells us ... Some [of the cottages] have extensive mold, a county analysis showed. It's not clear how the county planned to deal with lead paint and asbestos, [Rancho Cordova] Councilwoman Linda Budge said. Still, hope of getting some of the cottages in shape such that homeless families can move in is in play, though not before New Year's day.  Word of where the money might come from to make needed restorations has not been forthcoming, though it is known that the Winter Shelter Task Force hopes to hold a fundraiser to boost the pool of funds to meet the need to keep homeless people warm and safe. At the end of October, placing families, totalling 105 individuals, was

Ron Russell and Summerhills Realty

Readers of this blog should be aware that I am receiving some information that Summerhills Realty and someone named Ron E. Russell is using this blog as a reference in an effort to scam homeless people.  Be aware that Mr. Russell and his business is cited as a possible perpetrator of fraud by a website called Ripoff Report .  See this webpage .  Also, there is this claim of fraud against Ron Russell Properties at the website BizClaims - Latest scams, frauds and complaints . Please be aware that the information of being 'ripped off'' may be coming from only one source is coming from multiple sources, with perhaps as many as twelve persons/couples now pursuing legal action after paying thousands of dollars for services and receiving none of the services that were promised/contracted. While I know neither Mr. Russell nor Summerhills, I do know that an inordinate number of “in links” from readers of this blog have come via summerhillsrealestate.com for quite some time.  I

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