Sacramento Homeless blog

This from NellaLou of the blog Smiling Buddha Cabaret , in a post called " Zizek’s Cultural Capitalism, Trungpa’s Concept of Idiot Compassion and Lifestyle Activists Massaging Conscience " [though I've 'extracted' just  Žižek 's Cultural Capitalism part]: We are encouraged to believe that tokens of charity benefit those who suffer. Rather than look at the cause of problems, an overbearing system, deluded social psychology, personal abdication of responsibility and faulty philosophical worldview all of which try to alleviate problems of it’s own making using the same methodology that creates and sustains these problems, we simply work the dysfunctional system harder and faster. It’s Ouroboros on every level. The circle gets smaller and smaller as the beast feeds on itself. As social, material, psychological and spiritual resources are consumed fear and panic rise which compels further rigidity and clinging to this outmoded and damaged methodology. If you view ...

Five delegates 1 from SHOC’s so-called “Homeless Leadership Project” and SafeGround [including John Kraintz, who is listed as a “participant” ] were at the US Social Forum which, despite its name, was not about clog dancing, but, instead, turning our country into a communist one. The US Social Forum is a part of the People’s Movement Assembly which is a bunch of wacky, nutty far-far-far-Leftist craziness by people who are completely out of touch with the central lesson of the Twentieth Century: that Communism doesn’t work and is a bloody nightmare . The assemblage was held in Detroit’s convention center and drew massively less than the 20,000 people the sponsors claimed.  People stayed away in droves .  But the Communist Party USA was there , one of the few groups that actually uses the C-word when advocating the C-word. SHOC [aka, Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee] and SafeGround [aka, Safe Ground] are the Frankenstein offspring of Loaves & Fishes an...

A HUGE copy of the picture at right is on the first (title) page of the 75-page National Coalition for the Homeless report Tent Cities in America: A Pacific Coast Report . It's also on page 38 in the Sacramento section [pg 36-43], which is titled "Safe Ground, Sacramento, California / Formerly: American River Tent City." My question is: Why in the world did the writers/producers of the 75-page report use that photogragh, from Tent City, prominently!? It presents homeless people in a disgraceful way that is atypical of what goes on. On the report's title page it is blatant that the woman appears equivalent to not wearing a top, and the man appears to be doing something vulgar or making a vulgar jesture. [Actually, he is just holding a pipe, that is a color similar to that of his pants, in front of this crotch.] I certainly am not holding the two people photographed to blame. But I have to wonder what thinking was going on at the National Coalition for the Homeles...

The only notable thing about the ballyhoed 75-page report, " Tent Cities in America: A Pacific Coast Report " by the National Coalition for the Homeless is the blithering ineptitude of the research and writing.  The writing was probably done with Crayolas. For example, here is the very first sentence in the report, from its Introduction, The journalist Lisa Ling presented a special report for the Oprah Winfrey Show in March of 2009 focusing on Sacramento’s tent city along the American River, now known as Safe Ground. What the hell!? Whether it is intended to say that the American River is now known as Safe Ground , or that Tent City is now known as Safe Ground , it is wrong in either case. The American River continues to flow as the American River, and short-lived, bygone Tent City ― which was also known as the Wasteland , particularly by those who lived there before the media circus ― is still known as Tent City (or the Wasteland). It has not been retroactively renamed Sa...

My article " When you think of Loaves & Fishes, think of Joseph Stalin " has been posted to Sacramento Press. ... but, SP seems to have quickly taken the article down. UPDATE 1/29, 4:45PM : NEW, replacement article, " Communist nonprofits in Homeless World Sacramento ," posted to Sacramento Press. SP is happy with it, hoping for interesting reader reactions. UPDATE 1/30, 9:30AM : Comments are jokey; SP doesn't promote article. While I am mostly satified with what I wrote, I can see that the title I gave the article is a very poor choice and that I should have given the cream of what I had to say up-top. Instead, the piece is draggy reading for people who demand their information quick and to-the-point. Oh well. A learning experience for me. UPDATE 2/1, 9:15AM: Eeha!  I am much heartened.  The article is gathering a long comment stream.  Some people understand what I am writing, while others assume that criticism of Safe Ground has to mean I...

[Pictured to the left of the 666 is attorney Mark Merin; to the right of the 666 are Tracey Rice-Bailey and Paula Lomazzi] In the viddie, Jack Hirschman reads his 1987 poem " Home ." [Listeners to the poem should note that the nature of being homeless has changed more than a little over the course of 23 years.] And here a glowing article, a decade ago, about Hirschman in SF GATE , the online presence of the San Francisco Chronicle: " Dean of S.F.'s Marxist Poetry / Jack Hirschman is lauded abroad unknown at home ." And, here , Hirschman in wikipedia, where we are told that Hirschman is, today, "an avowed Stalinist and has translated the youthful poems of Joseph Stalin into English (Joey: The Poems of Joseph Stalin [Deliriodendron Press, 2001])." [Though the book of translated poems is not listed on Hirschman's bibliography at the Poetry Foundation website , I am pretty sure the wikipedia statement is true. When Stalin was a young poet he wa...

Your browser is not able to display this multimedia content. Video from the 1/20/2010 "homeless" protest in San Francisco on the first aniversary of the Obama Administration.  The protest was a tactic determined by Nelson Peery of the League of Revolutionaries for a New America to further communist goals to overthrow capitalism in the United States. [See Peery's piece in the Nov&Dec09 issue of Ralley, Comrades! ] John Kraintz of Safe Ground is a speaker featured six minutes into the viddie.  He speaks for two minutes. Here is what John [a fast learner of the populist politics of hate and division] says, Hi, I'm John from Safe Ground Sacramento.  I came down here with a simple message, today. [starts screaming] YOU ARE THE LEADERS YOU'VE BEEN LOOKIN FOR.  REPEAT AFTER ME.  WE ARE THE LEADERS WE'VE BEEN LOOKIN FOR. [Crowd repeats the sentence.] C'MON, THEY'RE HARDLY HEARING DOWN THERE. WE GOTTA BE LOUDER....

Here, from YouTube, is KCRA's tepid report on the Safe Ground march to Chavez Park and rally there. I don't think the report made the airwaves, but here is what they put together: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXiyOBKUT5k There's no mention in the film of my counter-revolutionary effort to the Safe Grounders' revolution-seeking ambitions.

This flier was one of two (the other one's here ) I handed out at the safe ground rally at Caesar Chavez Park on Dec. 29. [Links have been added to aid readers of this blogpost.] To Homeless Citizens of Sacramento: You need to be made aware that efforts are ongoing to indoctrinate you into believing communist ideology and involve you in a "class struggle" to overthrow the United States government. [I kid you not!] Loaves & Fishes senior management and Board of Directors are more than passively aware of the effort; they are not blameless. SHOC's so-called Homeless Leadership Project, with the safe ground movement that stems from it, is a central focus of the indoctrinating scheme. Both Paula Lomazzi and, more centrally, Mark Merin-organization attorney Cathleen "Cat" Williams, both with SHOC, write for People's Tribune , a publication that comes out in hardcopy and can be found online [peoplestribune.org]. SHOC meetings, where Ms. Williams pres...

Flyer to be distributed at the Safe Ground rally at City Hall on Dec 29 at ~2pm: Some Things You Should Know About 'Safe Ground' written by Tom Armstrong of Sacramento Homeless blog sacramentohomeless.blogspot.com Since "Safe Ground" and the organizations that sponsor it – Loaves & Fishes; Francis House; and SHOC (which is, itself, sponsored by the Sacramento Housing Alliance) – are all nonprofits that frequently seek donations from the public, you should be made aware that specific political beliefs, that carry national aspirations for change in America, are the core of the so-called Safe Ground Movement. To the local media's discredit the politics that infuse much of the homeless-help industry in our metropolis is not told to the public. I believe this is so because the media fear the damage that might result to several charities who certainly direct the great majority of their effort to doing vital good work: saving the most disadvantaged ...

While what is left of communism in the US is no more than a collection of posturers and grievancers who are as arrogant and thoughtless as communists have ever been, and while there is zero chance that America will become a communist country at any time while any current American is still alive, it remains wildly bizarre and worrisome that communist ideations are alive and thriving at the heart of some homeless-help agencies in Sacramento. Following is the meat of an email I sent to the Directors of L&F and (thru Greg Bunker) Francis House earlier this month.  The complete text is posted here .  Very recently, I have learned that the newspaper that Cat Williams and Paula Lomazzi, both of SHOC, write for -- the People's Tribune -- is a publication of the Communist Labor Party of America (or, what little remains of it)[evidence: here , here  & here ]: As much as we are on the same side on most issues, I am greatly concerned about the radical politics at the core...

The class-action lawsuit Anthony Lehr, et al. vs. City of Sacramento and Sacramento County, et al ., which was tentatively partially settled last August, is now at a stage where homeless people should submit claims if their property was confiscated by county employees subsequent to Aug 2, 2005, and was not returned. The Lehr lawsuit was filed in federal court in August, 2007, by famed Sacramento attorney Mark Merin on behalf of homeless people whose belongings had been destroyed by city and county officials. The suit claims that these homeless people were denied basic constitutional rights, specifically [quoting Merin from a Bee article ] "the 14th Amendment's protection against loss of property without due process and the constitutional right to be heard before it is destroyed." The county has reached a settlement with the plaintiffs; the city and plaintiffs have not reached agreement. SHOC [Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee] has been given the responsibl...

Ultimately it was hoped to make articulate speech issue from the larynx without involving the higher brain centres at all. This aim was frankly admitted in the Newspeak word duckspeak […]. Like various words in the B vocabulary, duckspeak was ambivalent in meaning. Provided that the opinions which were quacked out were orthodox ones, it implied nothing but praise, and when the Times referred to one of the orators of the Party as a doubleplusgood duckspeaker it was paying a warm and valued compliment.   ― Orwell, 1984 When the term "safe ground" originally began tumbling out of mouths or onto pieces of paper it meant something specific ― if only because it had to because things hadn't gotten complicated by hearing/reading the term more than once. It was a friendly term ― spoken in Friendship Park, by gum. It had to be friendly, didn't it? It was safe , after all, and safe is better than dangerous. safe is good, doubleplusgood, while dangerous is unsafe and ungo...

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...

A tip of the hat to the Safe Ground Campaign. It has done well, despite the problems I believe it has given itself. Right now, the mayor and homeless-help agency leaders are publicly in accord, trying to put together a plan, based on a set of key-issue areas, that can bring Stepping Stone, a legal homeless transitional-living place, into being within the next six months. Perhaps 35% of the public,  the Democratic Party of Sacramento County , and the Bee editorial board , are on-board with Safe Ground. Our compassionate mayor, despite getting knocked around, has put his political career and strong-mayor initiative at risk in pronouncing his strong support for Safe Ground. The scuttlebutt in Friendship Park is that Safe Ground* is likely to manifest sooner (in three months) rather than later (in six months). Instead of U-Dome s or EDAR s or canvas tents, the expected camping/housing structures are Tuff Sheds [see picture, which is just one of many Tuff Shed models], w...

According to today's news, 16 or 17 of the homeless folk camping at the so-called Safe Ground* campsite on C Street near 13th were arrested and their tents and belongings seized. It's an unhappy situation. Had the campers been arrested for doing their best to live in a city/county that allows no space for them, I would be outraged. But, truly, the event is not that: It is orchestrated political theatre, motivated in big part by the vanity of a far-left-wing lawyer and homeless-aid-industry narcissism where homeless people are manipulated and used to spur donations, and to give homeless-aid nonprofit executives liberal cache on the progressive cocktail-party circuit. [That's my informed guess, at least.] As incredible as it sounds, the "Safe Ground movement" is involved with communist politics. It's 1917 all over again at Loaves & Fishes . Cathleen Williams , an attorney herself, wife of "Safe Ground movement" lead attorney Mark Merin, has c...

Mayor Kevin Johnson at Safe Ground campground. [ twitpic : share photos on Twitter] For the second week in a row, I attended the Tuesday meeting of the SHOC Homeless Leadership Project effort to achieve safe ground , at the Delaney Center at the Loaves & Fishes facility. [ Here , my account of the prior week's mtg, which provides much the same news that was today's Top Story in the Bee .] I was reluctant to attend. Though I endorse core objectives of the group – support for a currently existant encampment of homeless people, called Safe Ground; and the mayor's effort, with Stepping Stone, to create a legal homeless encampment in Sacramento – the group evidences a lot of troubling Leftist attitudes and practices. Nonetheless, I was encouraged to attend and it became known to me that people were fully aware I was a blogger. [Both the prior week and today I introduced myself as being with Sacramento Homeless blog. Today, Paula Lomazzi of SHOC commended my article " A...