Ed, my plan 1) is to send you to a re-education camp to study petit bourgeois
consciousness ....of which you are a prime example.
2) maintain my admittedly stretched sense of humor related to your Maoist,
Revolution fantasies.
3) remind you ...for a second time...that I have never taken you seriously.
4) I came up through the ranks of the 60 and 70s love affair with communism
and socialism that can happen with some of us. Yep, was a member of a Marxist
-Leninist work group which , in short order...if you count a couple years as
short order....realized the anointed leaders of that group spouted ML rhetoric,
but the two of them had never really worked. They lived off of their husbands.
As the few of us who were sincere went off to do factory work and try to
organize....they sat on their butts and spouted crap in our meetings. My up
close intro to the " cult of personality."
Oh, before that was my naive anarchist phase ( boy I was young and naive). Nuff
said on my realization that anarchism would not actually work. But I got the
usual readings done...Emma Goldman, etc.
My upbringing taught me about fairness and compassion. My mother had grown up
dirt poor...never felt sorry for herself. That value system probably is what
initially drew me to the claims of justice and equality that the self
proclaimed revolutionaries in Mpls spouted.
Turns out many of those local revs wound up with fairly cush jobs. Since I
really did want to make the world a little better ( or at least try), I did
unpaid union organizing. Walter Mondale, that bastion of Liberty...crossed our
picket line when we were guards on strike at the Walker years ago.
Served as a union steward at jobs.
Then on to taking over vacant government buildings with homeless and formerly
homeless person. CJ Sparrow was a talented leader , he had been homeless. After
I was fired from St. Stephens Shelter from my advocate job......one can be too
much of an advocate for those provider outfits...CJ and I....not a dime to our
names started the house takeovers. You know who quickly joined us? Homeless
people. I did not see you there Ed. The non profits and providers avoided us
like the plague. Social justice and poverty pimping do not mix. UNTIL....wait
for it....we forced the city into negotiating with us. They arrested
us....hauled us out but darn...we would just go back and take over the
buildings or if they locked us out...we occupied the grounds around the
building. Then once the non profits saw the ability to negotiate they came to
the negotiations to get buildings and funding for housing. Providers still
hated us. For a while...I got burned out....not so with Cj and other folks.
They continued. I came back a while later and by that time the organization had
become Up and Out of Poverty. Cheri Honkala and Mark Thisius were active
leaders along with CJ. The takeovers continued. One of the lasting reminders of
those actions ( disclosure I was till on my break) is the Exodus Hotel in
downtown Mpls....for homeless persons. It was due to the unrelenting takeovers
that the Exodus came into being. Non profits gained more housing and money for
housing due to the takeovers. I was never paid for that organizing, did not
want pay. No one made much money. Some just enough to have time to organize.
in 1992 a coalition of groups took over and occupied the downtown armory: Up
and Out,
ACT UP, the anarchist group. We held it for two weeks. Our intent was to have
the armory, which the county wanted to tear down and use for a jail....to
instead implement Mayor Fraser's armory Gardens Proposal....which was for it to
be a resource center and some housing inside for poor and homeless families.
Our focus was "Justice Not Jails"...,hmmm....did not see you there Ed.
Our focus was also to publicize the inadequate services for,poor and homeless
persons .....and of course none of the homeless providers supported us.
Now as to the plan you keep squeaking about Ed.despite myself, Guy and Jim over
many years and many posts spelling out our recommended plan...you are just too
lazy to go back and read those posts, Ed.
So, here we go! 1. Exponentially increase culturally sensitive outreach to
homeless persons. I.e. KOLA, reaching out to the multiple other minority and
communities of color for them to determine effective outreach.
2. Focus on building relationships with homeless persons versus "putting
them" in housing that will set them up to fail. Specifically: and here is a
novel idea, ask them what they need. I have worked with homeless persons who
struggle with paranoid schizophrenia....one woman was in a church shelter for
FIVE YEARS. She had been at the shelter three and a half years when I came to
work there. And she had been ignored.
With the help of an exceptional county social worker ( who on his own regularly
came to the shelter) we built enough trust to have her let us get her on social
sec, eventually meds and an apartment. That was in the late 1980s. I happened
to see her a few years ago at her job. She was doing supportive employment, had
her own place. She said she kind of remembered the shelter and she told me how
much she enjoyed her current life.
The focus of putting people into housing without understanding that they have
needs, for trust, for relationship...that is one of the many failings of our
current approach.
The amount of trauma people likely experienced even before being homeless is
significant.
Our plan over 11 years ago on Decrim was and for me still is 1) stop busting up
the camps , focus on reaching out respectfully 2) create more harm reduction
housing
3) create many more detox locales easily accessed for safely helping people
dealing with alcohol and drug issues 4) recognize that community is a
vital,part of people's lives. One example: when I would occasionally work at
Dorothy Day, I was talking one day with a man who had gotten into a high rise,
subsidized apartment but he got evicted. He told me he was so used to the
people he had gotten to know at the shelter he had been at, both staff and
residents that he got lonely and so invited the people he knew from shelter to
stay with him. Resulting in him breaking the rules about not having others live
there. 5) people struggling with mental health issues can have periods of time
where they decompensate. There is NO HOUSING that adequately deals with this.
If someone lives in an apartment and decomps and their behavior becomes a
provlem...they will lose their apartment. Believe me , I know. I worked as a
supportive case manager where our residents had their own apartments within a
complex with market rate renters. It was great because they were not lumped
into a program, or the stigma of a program. But if their behavior either due to
mental health symptoms or chemical use made it impossible for them to
stay....they lost their apartment. I spoke to my boss about getting funding for
what I called "step down" support (call it whatever you like)....a building
close by where , instead of losing their place...they went to that residence
until stabilized. My idea was that they could still see the people they
socialized with. Also, staff would rotate between the two types of residences
so there would be a sustaining of relationships with trusted staff. My boss
said it was a great idea, but no money. This would actually save money!
Instead of people spending time at inpatient psych units, with strangers and
then be discharged into the streets or temp emergency shelter....the psych care
could be done in a much less traumatizing way.
And if any of you think homeless people are discharged with housing plans from
IP stays , think again. I remember one man I worked with...he struggled with
paranoid schozophrenia and he was a vet. He was staying in a shelter and I was
working with him, and his social worker ( a great person ) to build
relationship and find a place for him. Twice, after myself and the social
worker had told the hospital to call us before they discharged him,,,,they did
not and just put him out on the street. He had our phone numbers but he was too
compromised to call us. We had to hunt for him to try to get back in touch.
There has to be multiple approaches and levels of relationship building,
compassion, respect, and housing.
CJ Sparrow by the way laid out a very detailed plan which I agree with. He
asked me to look it over before he posted it on the forum. Look it over Ed.
Now Ed, given your clear animosity towards me...and despite my effort to tell
you an overview of my plan...which really needs to be a plan created by those
most impacted and their communities....you will likely screech again " what is
your plan?"
You have no clue or do not care to have a clue that the current homeless
experts who have screwed this up for years need to be replaced.
So another part of my plan: fire all of them.
The first time CJ and I and our brave little band of homeless folks and two
young anarchists, did the first HUD takeover, we had no idea if we would face
federal charges...if so I could have kissed my social service work goodbye.
That was one reason our group was so small for that first takeover. Lo and
behold, HUD did not want to deal with charges. And the local judges were
sympathetic!
So there youz go Ed.....YOUR BELOVED PRAXIS....AND IF YOU ARE SO FIND OF WHAT
THE CITY IS DOING...YOU ARE FOOLING YOURSELF.
The city wants this problem, which they participated in creating , gone....the
blind eye they took to the suffering, the complete shutting out of those of the
many of us who advocated for real care and Justice, years ago, well....people
can only suffer so long..until what do they have to lose by coming out of the
shadows and camping so openly?
Come on Ed. Do you think Cam and the rest of them would have seen this as an
emergency needing to be addressed, if people stayed hidden away in the camps?
Look at this way.....your leg gets the first signs of blood,poisoning and the
Dr. ignores it...until it turns to gangrene.....the Dr. still ignores it until
a gun is put to his head and then treatment is provided. The fact that the Dr.
failed to,prevent it is ignored. Instead the Dr. Is hailed as a compassionate
hero...not for the dunce he really is.