Struggling on the Streets Without the Right to Rest
Lucy is 76 years old, and she is way past tired. Years of living on the streets have taken an irreparable toll on her. She slowly walks down a busy downtown street in San Francisco.
Opinion
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Why Selma Was a Crucial Turning Point for Democracy
Many former slave-holding states in the South blocked black citizens from voting by requiring literacy tests, exacting poll taxes, and using intimidation to exclude black voters. After one hundred years of struggle, the march in Selma culminated in the effort to overcome this injustice.
The Martin Luther King We Didn’t Know
Martin Luther King believed that the founding principles of the United States required the creation of what he called “the beloved community” — a society that is not driven by making profits, but one that was built by developing relationships of mutual concern and care.
Rx for Shortened Lives, Ruined Health, Damaged Minds
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.
Defending Freedom from Police State Abuses
When citizens are fed up with errant police behavior to the extent that petitions are circulated for a new police reform act, we could see a change in how people are treated. We need to make the law enforcement branch of government accountable to citizens and to the law.
Are Homeless People Beautiful?
We all find sunsets and meadowlarks and fields of flowers beautiful, whether we are rich or poor, housed or homeless. How did beauty become a cudgel to beat people up?
Remember the Children Born On Our Streets
The International Day for Human Rights, held at St. Mary’s Center, was an occasion to honor the memory of people who had died homeless on our city streets during the past year. But more than that, it was a time to reaffirm a commitment to the fight for social change.
Sorrow in the Spring: Memories of Dr. King’s Memorial
As I write of the memorial services for Martin Luther King, Jr., we’re in a similar crisis today, as Ferguson, Missouri, joins the ranks of Memphis, Watts, Selma and far too many other locations where our nation’s racism has given us a shameful record of violations of human rights.
Why So Many Are Trapped in the Cycle of Poverty
People with low incomes are fairly likely to overdraw their bank account. The banks have learned to ruthlessly make a massive profit off this fact, and in the process, have ruined the lives of poor and disabled people. This cycle of economic need and mounting debt has jeopardized many people.
A Republican’s Sojourn on the Street
Neel Kashkari spent seven days sleeping on park benches but managed to not disturb any of his free market, anti-regulation Republican principles. If he’d stuck with it a little longer, he would have learned that the tattered safety net for which he has such disdain needs more, rather than less, funding.
Exposing the Untold History of Psychiatric Atrocities
Over its history, Street Spirit has published a series of in-depth reports on many different kinds of psychiatric abuses that have been carried out in the name of healing, yet often end up damaging and disabling people for life. In light of renewed calls for forced psychiatric detention under the guise of "helping the mentally ill," we are collecting and re-publishing these stories in a new section "Psychiatric Abuses and Human Rights".
Laura’s Law and the Danger of Forced Detention
How much sweeter “Laura’s Law” sounds than Forced Detention or Treatment! Yet it all sounds an awful lot like the usual government arguments used to justify surveillance, control, invasion of privacy. Who is to say this new law won’t be used to punish and isolate the indigent and the ill?