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James "Faygo" Clark, social-justice advocate (and emerging Sac Homeless advocate?)

Cover of 3/19 issue
After spending a few weeks away from homeless matters, SN&R has a nice item -- an interview of James “Faygo” Clark – on the next-to-last page in its 3/19/15 issue, in a space that is often used to highlight or introduce interesting Sacramentans.

Clark is described by the interviewer, Editor Nick Miller, as “one of Sacramento’s leading social-justice activists.” He was involved in shutting down Nestle’s water-bottling plant last summer and is nowadays educating himself in regard to Nestle’s longstanding baby-formula scandal in Africa.

He was part of the Occupy Sacramento effort that began in 2011. Now, he is part of an effort to feed the hungry organic food in front of City Hall before Council meetings.

James "Faygo" Clark addressing the
Sacramento City Council on March 17.
James “Faygo” Clark is also a homeless Sacramentan.

In the SNR interview, titled "Meaningful Streets," Clark comes off as very intelligent and highly idealistic.

I don’t know Faygo, which is hardly surprising. There are thousands of homeless guys I don’t know. And now that I am semi-civilized with a microwave and a refrigerator, I’m more than a little removed from what might be going on day-to-day. It follows that this blog – and the Homeless Tom blog, before it – have become more circumspect and less petulant.

Of course, I am wondering if Faygo is now or is likely to become a leader of some sort in Homeless World, thus to make manifest some of the great good things to aid homeless people that abound elsewhere in our country. Central in this quest is for Housing First to get a better foothold in Sac County. I am happy to see that Faygo mentions Housing First as a forward step in the interview.

Now that John Kraintz has for a long time now been 'housed,' following health difficulties AND is fully a functionary of the Loaves & Fishes Machine, it would be refreshing (and possibly a lot more) if someone else from the homeless community became a very visible go-to guy to express what problems there are living out on the streets.  Certainly, there shouldn't just be ONE person in such a role -- homeless folk aren't homogeneous -- but one able visible guy would be a start.

Comments

Slum Jack said…
Glad to hear you're "indoors" now. I was too - kinda' sorta' - for almost three years. That ended fairly suddenly last December.

Looks like Slum Jack is Back. Again. Trying to decide if I'm resuming the blog or not. Quite a bit has changed in just a few years. Unfortunately, that may include that the "public interest" in the very topic has waned.

http://homeword-unbound.blogspot.com/
March 30, 2015 at 9:43 PM
Unknown said…
Slum Jack. Yes, blogging has pretty much gone the way of the dinosaur thanks to Facebook and Twitter and all those other gosh-darn peoples'-attention grabby social network sites. Nonetheless, I still have about thirteen blogs in disrepair that limp along and eat up electrons like they were corn flakes.

Was thwarted from getting into your blog -- permission denied.

Hope you are well enough; chipper, getting enough calories, not doing anything I wouldn't do, and doing those things I would do twice as long right up to the edge of serious danger.

-- Tom
March 30, 2015 at 10:33 PM
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