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The downside of success

By Timothy Busby on
First-person   Opinion   YSA youth contributions
People measure success in many different ways. For some people it’s marriage and children. For others it is making money. For many it’s just paying the bills due each month. And then you have people, such as myself, who believe that success is in the friendships you make, and in fulfilling the basic necessities needed in order to survive.

Housing and Dignity residents respond to eviction in their own words

By Needa Bee, Kaleeo Alcatar, and Jodii Everett Le’Grande on
First-person   Opinion
On Thursday December 6, without warning, the city administration violently evicted the 13 residents of the Housing and Dignity Village (HDV), a service hub at Elmhurst Avenue and Edes Avenue in deep East Oakland. Over 20 Oakland Police officers were present to lead residents away in handcuffs, as Public Works employees worked overtime to destroy everything on site.

The homeless Christmas day

By Andy Pope on
First-person   Opinion   YSA youth contributions
It looks as though we’re closing in on Christmas again, folks. That’s bad news in my book, and (I daresay) in the corporal book of homeless people everywhere. Take my holiday experience several years ago, for example. I spent Christmas Day stuck out in the rain, with services closed for those of my ilk, not to mention the usual five-in-the-morning “indoor resources” being closed (Starbucks, McDonald’s, etc.).

When you gotta go

By Andy Pope on
First-person   Opinion
When I was homeless in the Bay Area, I had an awfully hard time getting myself to a bathroom on any kind of regular basis. It wasn’t so bad when I only had to go No.1, as we used to call it. I could usually find some kind of bush to duck behind, and the cleanup process wasn’t nearly so involved. Also, the sense of stigma or shame attached to the act of having to pee outdoors wasn’t nearly so severe as the corresponding sense of shame involved in having to go No.2.

Finding serenity on the street

By Timothy Busby on
First-person   Opinion
I have spent the last six and a half years of my life homeless, and the last three and a half years living solely on the street. I have put a great deal of effort into gaining first-hand knowledge of the mentalities of individuals I have met.

Rx for Shortened Lives, Ruined Health, Damaged Minds

Features   First-person
The mental health system has a long history of subjecting mental health consumers to electroshock therapy and antipsychotic drugs that have extremely damaging long-term effects on the mind and body. Every few years, powerful new neuroleptic drugs are prescribed before the full range of their mind-damaging side effects are fully known.