Month: January 2016

January Poetry of the Streets

Poetry
BEATITUDE/ Believing that love/ silently expressed/ will be heard/ and silently answered,/ we need not celebrate/ by trumpet blast,/ tambourines, a dance/ around the block,/ need not kneel to pray/ in the garden of moonlight./ Love/ in its own quiet way/ feels like enough.

Penciled Out of Existence by Some Grand Authority

Commentary
Our society doesn't want to be inconvenienced by someone who is suffering or is impoverished. As a disabled person, it feels as if I have been penciled out of existence by some grand authority, one which expects me to disappear into nothingness, or end up jailed, homeless or just dead.

Reflections on the New Year—Elegies, Praise, Poems

Poetry
I have been thinking again about the French notion of liberty, fraternity (though now we’d say solidarity) and equality. I think I understand in a new way that these can be taken not just as political values, but also as a partial guide to how to conduct our lives.

The New Housing for the Homeless: Prison Cells

Opinion
No politician wants to be accused of working to eliminate jobs! So, the pressure to keep the prisons full is great. Criminalizing homelessness could be seen as a double win — keeping the prisons full while also “solving” the homelessness issue by giving homeless people beds in prison.

San Mateo County Renters Fight Rising Evictions

Features   Uncategorized
“With the current market and the housing crisis, we’re seeing landlords and investors taking advantage of the weak legal protections, exploiting the holes that exist in the law in order to turn a quick profit,” says Daniel Saver. “In the wake behind them, there’s a trail of human cost. It’s destroying communities.

Laura’s Law Turns a Psychiatric Diagnosis into a Crime

Commentary
Laura’s Law criminalizes mental illness and is spreading like cancer across California, county by county. Those labeled “noncompliant” can be subjected to forced medication and court-ordered involuntary treatment. In essence, they become captives of the criminal justice system even though they have committed no offense.

In the Shadow of Bell v. Boise

Features   Uncategorized
Our entire community, unhoused and housed alike, is living in the Shadow of Bell v. Boise. Homeless people are being criminalized in violation of their Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment. The hope is that we can all emerge into the sunlight, equally free.

Liberty City and the Christmas Miracle

Opinion
Thanks to the initiative of homeless people, the sleep-in grew into several weeks of relative safety for people otherwise being shoveled out of parks like trash or hustled off public streets by the merchant groups’ hired patrols. The homeless people developed a functional government and crafted “no drugs or alcohol” rules.