Skip to main content

Great article in the Sacramento News & Review about the $100,000 Homeless Man


There is an important story about homelessness in this week’s [2/16/17] Sacramento News & Review that is centrally about the tormented life of Russell Bartholow, titled “The $100,000 Homeless Man.”

Beyond telling Bartholow’s story, the cover article rightly relates elements of the mountain of problems Bartholow shouldered, to dysfunction in the way the police operate, the stunning befuddlement of the courts and awful decision-making at City Hall

These problems continue, unabated, for struggling homeless people of today.

Bartholow died, surrounded by loved ones, in October from self-administered pain medication that a doctor proscribed. Only then was he freed from a cancer that engorged his body and piles of police citations that exceeded $100,000 in fines

The story of their experience for a majority of today’s struggling homeless Sacramentans, is not as extreme as what Russell Bartholow had to forbear, but it has the same features in making people targets of near-sadistic police and unconscionable laws. The mindless formula of bad police enforcing bad law undermines homeless people’s best efforts to put themselves in control, walking a pathway they foresee that can lead them to a good, wholesome, satisfying life of their own making.

Congratulations go to the reporters who penned the piece, "contributors" John Flynn and Matt Kramer -- two fellas whose names I hadn't seen before in SNR. You rock, John and Matt! From the first page of Flynn & Kramer's "The $100,000 Homeless Man":
Bartholow didn't start out homeless. But, like thousands of others in Sacramento County, once he found himself on the streets, he entered an alternate reality where the government couldn't hear him; where those supposed to help, instead focused on erasing his existence; and where the only permanent home the county offered him was in jail.
Russell Bartholow's sad, trouble story is both painful -- because he seems, certainly, to have been a splendid fellow. And poignant -- because his death seems senseless. But it is a Must Read for people in our county who want a more-just and happy experience for the thousands of homeless folk who are struggling from one day to the next during our long and stormy winter. Pick up a copy of the current SN&R.

While the City council members and county supes have made some positive headway at addressing "the problem" of uplifting homeless people's lives, they fail to tackle the central, immediate issues, which include these: (1) Allowing homeless people to sleep where they can in the absence of there being sufficient shelter space or sufficient land set aside for people to set up tents. (2) The police need to be disallowed to confiscate homeless people's property that they need for warmth and shelter. (3) Homeless people must no longer receive tickets and citations for merely being alive and to suffer harassment from hateful police officers.

----

Addendum: A reader of this blog and a friend, Steve, alerted me to an ongoing project by the British newspaper, The Guardian, looking at homelessness in the United States, called "Outside in America." The project is funded by the Bill Gates Foundation. This is a series that interests me and that I am likely to write about in the near future. Having highly responsible outsiders review what America is doing re homeless people vis-a-vis what England is doing can be instructive.

One recent article from this "project" explores how homeless folk are counted biennially in the U.S. and why the count always seems to miss many people. Title of the piece is, appropriately, "How America counts its homeless -- and why so many are overlooked."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Sex, Lies and Exegesis

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...

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 ...

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...