Linda's Hearth

COFFEE: Is It Good or Safe? CAFE LIFE Doesn't Discriminate Between Homeless and Housed People

2012-01-23T09:18:00.000-08:00

Maybe Humanity's Unity And Growth

Hangs On The Culture of Coffee Beans?

Around Occupy Santa Cruz, and in fact all around town in the City of Santa Cruz, there has been a refreshed QUESTIONING: to Coffee or not to Coffee? People were taught that it's like a drug and if overused, like a dangerous drug. Yet in recent years, one is just as likely to read in the newsprint of commerce that Coffee is GOOD FOR YOU as you are to read otherwise.

Because I often work with and around homeless people, I forgot it was "unhealthy", and so have developed a "habit" which requires a cup of Joe every morning. Among the actually and truly "poor" in our area, both coffee and candy don't get put through the psychic ringer of critical popular opinion when mentioned, as it does in other circles. I have to be careful about sugar, I'm told I am someone who could become diabetic if I am not careful with my blood sugar. So I DO be careful. On the other hand, I understand the greater tolerance of people who generally and essentially have NOTHING, and who thus show gratitude (generally) when people share with them, even if what is shared are these quasi-sinful chemicals.

I've been thinking about how different this scenario -- open-early coffeehouses in every business district -- has changed the face of our day to day commerce. It seems apparent that the stricter the downtowns and shopping malls get about "move along and spend", about not sitting nor "loitering" nor "lodging"; then the more abundance comes to cafe-land. More customers, more cups of caffeine drunk.

But a hot cup of coffee isn't really the main attraction!

It seems to me that the larger, housed population has followed homeless people's lead where it comes to coffee drinking. In short, people are using the acceptance of coffee drinking to create and expand social space.

Homeless people have been obliged to cultivate acceptance by the Barista folks, in order to turn their coffee drinking spots into their living rooms, their dens, their offices, and even -- tho' harder to accomplish -- their bathrooms. And now in 2012, everyone else seems to be doing it, too.

Rents are high, here where my family lives in the County of Santa Cruz. So the people who must work for their means of support are being forced into ever-smaller, or ever more populated, homes.

When I was busy raising my children not too many years back, we were living near Barson and Ocean Streets in a small, converted (from motor court), subsidized, 9-unit apartment building on a one-block residential street near the gateway to this town's Boardwalk and the crowded Beach Flats neighborhood. I came to realize that within any given year, my neighbors each and all took turns inviting relatives or friends to sleep on their kitchen floors. I'm saying, there wasn't even enough space to offer "couch surfing", yet the nature of our transient and fluctuating society means sometimes we have to put people up.

And we who live "below the poverty line" nonetheless live within the same pressures and expectations as those who feel they are still in a middle class. Poor people ALSO have guests who have driven a long way to see their gran'kids or nephews, and who can't afford a hotel room (especially here, most of the year!). Poor people also want the chances to do a favor for their mechanics or their chimney rebuilder or the person from church who shortly needs a ride to the airport in the wee hours, just like people with an adequate income, they want to survive in this society.

They just don't have much to work with, but they live within the same societal pressures, demands and expectations. People who are housed but poor, who have to move, are likely to be homeless for a few months, unless they have relatives who are better off (or some similar pressure-release valve). And this "few months" assumption presumes there won't be FURTHER stressors in the transition.

For much more than a decade now, homeless people and other poor or low income people have been using the cafe scene as an extension of our homes and workplaces, because we had no choice. It seems this wasn't very often noticed -- the bad word, "homeless" was used more and more to talk ONLY about those already destroyed on the streets, or those with a bad attitude (sooner or later everyone has a bad day...) or those who appear to be bums or drunks or loaded and very confused.

I am NOT a different person when I am homeless than I am when I am housed. My goals, my values remain the same. I spend a LOT longer looking for places to go to the bathroom, but I am still a human being. As we wake up and smell the coffee, we could look around, and begin to notice people at the cafe -- reading the paper, paying their bills, interviewing a future employee, looking for a space away from the younger children for a moment, hoping to make a new friend -- homeless or housed, we are learning to share by extending our lives into what had been considered "public" space. As we learn to share in such an "organized" situation where the rules are known and the cost of a Cup o' Joe is a few dollars, we are also learning to take care of ourselves without the security blanket of private housing. And THIS gives me hope: hope that more and more people will become free to check out the Occupy Movement and in other ways plan for a more self-and-others future; and more people will realize they don't need as much STUFF as they've been taught to have; and more of us will realize that the distinctions between housed and homeless people are mostly imagined.

Leaderless Leaders: Occupy the World, Vacate the Porta Potties, get with the plumbers and builders asap

2012-01-13T00:13:00.000-08:00

Shamus Cooke photo

Theory and Practice in

the “Occupy Movement”

by Shamus Cooke

For a movement that started with one strategy and a couple of slogans, Occupy has preformed brilliantly. Having based itself on the examples of Egypt and Wisconsin, the Occupy Movement has raised the political consciousness of millions and created a large layer of new activists. But the uninterrupted string of successes of Egypt and Tunisia haven’t materialized for Occupy. We’re in a lull period. Next steps are being considered and some tactics are being re-thought.

This is where revolutionary theory comes into play: a set of ideas that help guide action. Sometimes theory is learned unconsciously, where it resembles a set of non-ideological “assumptions” about movement building and politics. Occupy’s theory began mostly with assumptions, many of them true.

One assumption was that previous political theories have failed — that past social movements contained deep ideological flaws. There is more than some truth in these conclusions, but other truths were thrown out as well.

The youth who built Occupy were born as the Berlin Wall was falling; “communism” had failed. Mass disillusion followed the loss of a socialist movement that had inspired dozens of revolutions in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe when half the globe declared itself for “socialism.” Many socialist-leaning countries inflicted heavy damage on capitalism while a few had crushed it outright.

The United States spent the 20th century fighting these movements: the Korean and Vietnam wars, the failed invasion of Cuba, the dirty wars in Central America, countless CIA coups in South America, Africa, Asia and elsewhere (the history of the CIA is a history of fighting “socialism” by any means necessary). A U.S. domestic war was waged by the FBI and police against socialists and other left activists during McCarthy’s Red Scare of the 1950s. Nuclear war against the USSR and China was a button push away during the Cuban Missile Crisis. All of this madness was in the name of fighting socialism and revolution.

The U.S. wars against these socialist movements was not irrational. A very real fear existed that capitalism was in danger — that corporations would instead be run in the public interest. In some countries capitalism was destroyed. But what replaced it seemed no better, and in some cases worse. Why? The popular (corporate) explanation is that any break from capitalism equals “authoritarianism.” Another popular argument is that without rich people running the economy it would cease to run; there is no alternative to capitalism, we were told.

This analysis is biased, shallow, and stupid. The truth makes far more sense anyway.

To this day no wealthy country has had a successful socialist revolution. Many have come close, especially several European countries before and after WWI and WWII. The 1968 general strike in France pinned capitalism to the floor, but its life was spared; corporations were allowed to continue to run social life, the super-rich remained so.

Real socialism cannot exist in a poor country. If Haiti implemented a “socialist” economy tomorrow it would still suffer under post-earthquake rubble, mass homelessness and life-sucking poverty. A “healthy democracy” cannot exist in these conditions. A socialist economy cannot transform mud into gold.

But capitalism took centuries to transform poor countries into rich ones, and even today a tiny minority of rich countries dominate a hundred plus poor capitalist nations. Poor capitalist countries — like their poor socialist counterparts — suffer from a chronic democracy deficit, forever destined to remain poor.

If Haiti were to leave capitalism, however, it would be allowed to escape the profit motive of development; items could be built with social need in mind, not simply profit. China and Russia were able to develop into powerful countries by escaping capitalism. Eventually, however, their undemocratic leaders decided to give capitalism a second chance; these leaders wanted to exchange their bureaucratic privileges —access to better food and nicer cars, etc. — for the billions of dollars that come with ownership rights (it’s no coincidence that China and Russia are #2 and #3 on the “nations with the most billionaires” list).

Occupy is right not to embrace the fake socialism of the past, undemocratic as it was. But past socialist experiments contained progressive elements that shouldn’t be forgotten.

For example, revolutionaries learned that they could not let a tiny group of super-rich shareholders own and run giant corporations that employed thousands of workers and made socially useful goods. Instead, these companies could be made into public utilities, run by the workers, engineers, and office staff that already do all the work for the benefit of society in general.

Revolutionaries also learned that organization and collective action was instrumental in overcoming the organized opposition of the rich. Capitalism can only be overthrown by a real revolution that draws into action the majority of working people, using the tactics of mass demonstrations, mass strikes, mass civil disobedience, and other mass actions that help to give shape, organization, and unity to working people. Once a powerful and united movement emerges, it must ultimately challenge the corporate elite nationally, which means wresting the levers of state power from their hands and using new organizational methods to make the post-revolutionary country more democratic.

How have these lessons been ignored by Occupy?

In reaction to the non-democratic USSR, Occupy eschews “centralization” in favor of “decentralization.” Instead of decentralization simply meaning “democracy,” in practice it often means “disorganization” and extreme individualism. Any powerful social movement must inevitably be organized; and although Occupy seems to realize this with its useful experiments in direct democracy, the movement as a whole remains incredibly disorganized and uncoordinated.

This is important insofar as disorganization prevents collective action. The Pre-Occupy Movement — what little there was — consisted of “issue-based activism,” i.e., different groups working disconnectedly towards various goals. Occupy has the power to change this, to create real power for working people. Initially, Occupy had united all the various left groups while bringing in new blood. But the old habits of issue-based, fragmented activism were hard to break.

Many Occupiers are content with “autonomous” actions, i.e., small groups acting independently of a larger body towards various ends. Small actions have their time and place, but a powerful movement is one that inspires. Working people are given hope when they sense that a movement is able to achieve victories for working people, i.e., when it is powerful. And working people are only truly powerful when they are united and acting collectively in massive numbers (the corporate elite uses divide and conquer tactics for a reason).

One reason that Occupy is fearful of centralization (organization) is because being organized inevitably creates leaders. And since much of Occupy is “anti-authoritarian” (again in response to the failed USSR), “leaders” are not welcome. But leaders exist within Occupy regardless of intentions; saying that Occupy is a “leaderless movement” does not make it so.

The inevitable leaders of Occupy are those who dedicate their time to the movement, organize events, are spokespeople, those who help set agendas for meetings or actions, those who set up and run web pages, etc. In reality there already exists a spectrum of leadership that is essential to keeping the movement functioning.

Occupy needs both leaders and organization while still operating entirely democratically. It already has leaders who refuse to accept the title as such, much like Noam Chomsky does, the famous anti-authoritarian and leader of the anarchist left, who thinks that by saying he is “not a leader,” he ceases to be one. In reality his massive authority continues to exist outside of his humble intentions.

Occupy seems, at times, so fearful of power or creating leaders that many Occupiers would focus on neutering the movement, so as to prevent Occupy from ever having real power, and therefore preventing the movement from ever making real change. The left has long suffered from the self-induced fear that, if we have actual power, we’ll become like our oppressors, since “absolute power corrupts absolutely” (a hangover from yet another shallow analysis of past socialist experiments).

In Occupy, this expresses itself by a fanatical fear of the movement being co-opted. Yes, Occupy should be wary of Democratic Party representatives in sheep’s clothing, but this fear has infected and has spread throughout Occupy and now includes internal finger pointing and accusations of “co-opting,” creating more unnecessary divisiveness.

It is a healthy impulse to strive towards greater democracy and away from charisma-based leadership, but any idea taken to its extreme can become nonsense. To denounce real organization and leadership “on principle” is to vastly oversimplify the real processes of movement building while erecting unnecessary barriers in Occupy’s path to real power. To self-mutilate a movement because of leader-paranoia is similar to euthanize a puppy because of its potentially dangerous sharp teeth. In fact, true leaders can only emerge in the context of real democracy; both need the other.

There is no blueprint for movement building, but general principles can be erected based on the revolutionary experiences of the past. The key strategies of Occupy should be based on those ideas that unify and promote collective action against the 1%.

Ultimately Occupy needs to organize for power; we need a greater power to displace the current power of the 1%. This doesn’t mean that we must adopt the same forms of power utilized by the state, but that new ones must be created, while using EVERY opportunity within the existing structure to organize, educate, and mobilize working people.

Luckily, an upcoming action has the potential to put the above ideas into action. The current struggle of the Longview, Washington ILWU Local 21 is a chance to see real power in action. The Longview Longshoremen have asked for Occupy’s support to create massive mobilizations against the union busting corporate-conglomerate EGT. Hopefully this action has the potential to unite Occupy in practice over a concrete struggle. If the action— or actions— are effective it will prove that Occupy needs to organize and mobilize in large numbers over issues that connect with working people — proving that theory is best learned in action.

Shamus Cooke is a social worker, trade unionist, and writer for Workers Action (www.workerscompass.org)

2012-01-10T08:45:00.000-08:00

Men And Women's Differences Extend To Personality, Study Claims

Posted: 1/9/12 05:56 PM ET

by Claire Gordon, found at Huffington, Women

The research, conducted by Marco Del Giudice of Italy's University of Turin and Irwing and Tom Booth of the UK's University of Manchester, involved getting 10,000 Americans to take a questionnaire that measured 15 different personality traits. According to their analysis, men are far more dominant, reserved, utilitarian, vigilant, rule-conscious, and emotionally stable, while women are far more deferential, warm, trusting, sensitive, and emotionally "reactive." The two sexes were roughly the same when it came to perfectionism, liveliness, and abstract versus practical thinking.

"If you translate it into the simplest terms," said Irwing, "only 18 percent of men and women match in terms of personality profiles, and that's staggeringly different from the consensus view."

The consensus view, most persuasively set out in a 2005 study by Janet Shibley Hyde, a professor of psychology and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, demonstrated through a meta-analysis of 46 other studies that men and women were actually very similar, not only in personality traits, but in other realms of supposed gender difference, like self-esteem, leadership, and math ability.

In the early 1970s, Hyde became one of the first researchers to focus on the psychology of women. "Before that, psychology had been a psychology of men," Hyde told The Huffington Post, and many theories had been developed based on entirely male samples. So she began to study women, and the differences between women and men, and was surprised at how small those differences turned out to be. "I mean, I was trying to study difference," Hyde said.

Hyde says the final figure Irwing, Del Giudice, and Booth came up with -- the "global sex difference" -- is "really uninterpretable, it doesn't mean anything."

In past studies on this topic, researchers would simply add up all the survey responses, according to Del Giudice. This led to imperfect results because of careless responses and misreadings. Through a sophisticated method called "structure equation modeling," the researchers claim they were able to remove this random error. When asked if he could translate this concept for a lay person, Irwing replied: "I teach courses on this and it takes me approximately 20 hours."

Past research also usually compared one variable at a time, Del Giudice said. He believes this method led to underestimations of the sex difference because when you actually combine all personality traits, with all their small discrepancies, the result is a much more significant difference. For example, if you were to examine the difference between men and women's body types using the traditional method, you would look at torso circumference and waist-hip ratios and torso-leg ratios, one by one. In Del Giudice's method, you would crunch all these figures into one much larger number. And that's what he did with personality.

"They kind of globbed together all these personality dimensions and said there was a big difference," Hyde said. "They're throwing together apples and oranges and dishwashers to get this thing in 15-dimensional space. We don't know what 15-dimensional space looks like."

But Del Giudice contends that his team didn't measure "a haphazard list of traits." Rather, they considered 15 facets that could offer a reasonably complete picture of a person's personality.

Irwing thinks that some researchers in the past may have been biased in their methods, in order to reduce any gender difference. "It's for totally laudable reasons," he said. "People are very concerned, or were very concerned, that women didn't get equal opportunities, and that there was a lot of bias in selection processes."

"People are afraid that studies like ours will turn the clock back," Irwing added.

____________________________________________

"Men and women are more

alike than different -- that's been

the consensus view for many years

among the researchers who study

personality differences between the

sexes." But a new study claims this

wisdom is wrong."

- researcher Paul Irwin

_____________________________________________________

Hyde is one of those people. "This huge difference is not only scientifically false," she said, "it has unfortunate consequences for places like the workplace and education and heterosexual romantic relationships."

But the authors stand by their results, and are currently drafting a lengthy response to Hyde's objections. "I think distorting science because of what you would like to believe, or because of what you think the political consequences are, is very dangerous," said Irwing.

The study doesn't speculate as to whether the alleged differences are due to nature or nurture, although Irwing points out the results are consistent with standard evolutionary theory. Even if these differences aren't indelibly printed in our genes, Hyde believes there's still cause for alarm.

If men and women have wildly different personalities, "then how can we do the same job men can, and deserve equal pay for equal work?" she asked. "A married couple have marital difficulties, and they go to the therapist, who says 'he's from Mars, you're from Venus, you'll never be able to communicate. It's hopeless.' If you have a gender similarities point of view, you just need to work on communicating.

TWENTY TWELVE

2011-12-31T04:33:00.000-08:00

REMEMBERING SOME OF MY PAST,

DREAMING ABOUT THE FUTURE

How I Came To Be Here

And What I Am Seeing Ahead

For Us All

When I was a youngster in Viers Mill Village, Maryland, virtually in the shade of the Nation's Capitol, I used to occupy parades. Or at lease hang close to the curb and soak it all in! Then again when I became 20 and my daughter was one year, in the District of Columbia we took in a Springtime's bouquet of civic and popular parades and street celebrations.

Like Santa Cruz, Washington DC is a Garden City. I haven't visited those National Parks and Monuments since Mitch Snyder died. It was great for learning about society's values and having fun at the same time, when I was younger. Because I lived near two different states and the quasi-state 'District of Columbia', there were almost THREE of every majorly supported holiday -- Parades and Festivals -- and often triplets of associations of folks doing such civic things.

I *loved* being a walker in Washington DC, when I worked and lived there in my twenty's, tho' never enough free time to fully absorb the history and beauty and spirit of such a low-rise, partially intentional, city. Despite the palpable prejudice and racism and caste-system housing policies, it was really a "welcome to the big World" for me. Didn't know back then how rarely a whole City organizes it's architecture around aesthetic values in this Country; do you know DC law forbids building hi rises that obscure the Washington Monument and other landmarks?

When the Cherry Blossoms came in, it seemed like everybody went out walking the City's downtown parks. Suddenly even the quiet, benched bag-lunch folk felt like having a festival. I think back, and yet can't quite attune whether most of those other ped-cruising folks were tourists, or were local workers on break like myself, just unusually open, an enchantment by the Cherry trees in bloom?? Felt like spring fever, times one hundred.

We need to care as much about how people's concourse is restricted or commercially defined as we do about our families' viability or about how to outgrow our automobile dependence. "Our Government Our Selves," may be my new motto for twenty-twelve?

Representative Democracy - what's the challenging hex about that? Yes, there's need for fixing those mega "train wrecks" (infrastructure) now falling from neglecting our civic duty of vigilance. What has already been done in our names, it seems to me, is a DIFFERENT problem from that of beginning to share power and make decisions together as a People. Repairing the broken and neglected systems, and adopting new ways of sharing power, both important. Can we not lift and enlighten each other in the heft of this work? If only enough of us can work together and keep on learning to share moreso as we go, including new and more effective ways of communicating.

Democratic workplaces, Town Meetings, intentional households, we can do this! Maybe the dream of the 1950s is going or gone: but sharing power with everyone instead of just financiers is one of those "ideas" who's time has come. Let the breaking down of California's, and the Nation's, safety net become seeds for learning to appreciate and find ways to tend this (perhaps inevitable?) civic transmigration.

But perhaps this thought's a sweeping digression?

One person, one vote ~~ we may have to scramble with the learning curve, but I'm betting on a future wherein we will have managed all that. And a future wherein registered lobbyists within the Beltway either starve, get a job at the Food Court, or find another Country to cheat on.

Now that the state and it's courts have turned their mostly-elected backs on local 'Redevelopment Agencies' -- what's to stop regular ol' people from having an even more civic, more culture-friendly, more aesthetically-driven; even more intentional, more inclusive, public, collectively run, redevelopment body to plan and promote our own 'populist' agenda?Let us create and restore access to each other -- it may have to be in real time -- and invest ourselves through neighborly and community management systems, into an infrastructure we put together ourselves? We need to keep from losing more of our natural, systemic and potential treasures?

Don't let the Body Politic hemorrhage further. I mean this as a deeper question, not a recommendation nor suggestion.

We are taught to believe that everyone who possibly can must have a JOB unless wealthy or totally disabled; even in prison we are extruded into assembly line functionaries rather than evaluated for potential talents and special skills. I believe we need to dump this shared assumption ~~ one's job status or employability is no longer the standard of what makes a whole and contributing person in our world.

In our minds it is, but when we test real information against our assumptions we find that people's imaginations, their resourcefulness or lack of it, their ability to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse, their knowledge about where things come from and where things go, this stuff all proves way more important than whether they're getting paid for a structured performance or production goals until the next company or agency downsize. In the near future as we can so far glimpse it, these more INHERENT abilities will prove meaningful more and more.

Our habitat continues to change -- fast now, right before our noses -- and our capacity to maintain civil society continues to become stressed within and without. We are finding that a person's integrity means more than how much silver he's carrying in his pocket or whether he belongs to a family or system that has health care benefits. In short, maybe we are finding our true selves erupting through cracks in "the system" we have almost all (RIP Richard Quigley) been depending on.

I'm going out to plant a Cherry Tree, to remember my past, and to put my own leetle pawprint into our future. There's plenty to do, and I'm sure tired of leaving the form and shape of everything around us up to the insurance companies and consumption-pushers. Ready to put some live current into a new democracy of action. Happy New Year, whether you come and play with me or not!

India Joze Restaurant Hosts Benefit to Fight the Lodging Law, Keep Linda Out of Jail, and Support the First Amendment of our Constitution

2011-11-29T10:19:00.000-08:00

OCCUPY THE FIRST AMENDMENT FOR DINNER

and Help Dislodge California's Lodging Law

Join Me For An Incredible Dinner,

4:30 pm at India Jose Restaurant on Sunday, December 4th

Help me invite people whom-else may want to come?! Entertainment will be fun ~ music, Lodging news, I'll read a poem, hopefully introduce lawyers

Comments about the Lodging Trial that has been postponed and an update on County vs OccupySC with Lodging Citations here too.

It will be the BEST food, treat yourself and help us offer a little money to my attorney

Cost is $15 to $50 per plate per person, sliding scale. Call me, 831 331 1153 or email me at homes4everyone@yahoo.com to secure a place if you're coming, or just show up Sunday at

418 Front Street, Santa Cruz, CA ~ India Joze Restaurant

March leaving Occupy Santa Cruz Blue Dome Wednesday, November 30

2011-11-29T09:31:00.000-08:00

March To Picket Banks And
Occupy A Foreclosed Home

Occupy our Homes!

Wednesday, 2:00pm -- 5:00pm
Courthouse Steps, Water Street

Marching in Solidarity with Occupy Santa Cruz

Join us to picket corporate banks around downtown Santa Cruz and then to march to a foreclosed property. While many people are denied basic needs like shelter and social space, capitalism forces many spaces to remain empty and unused.

Meet Up at the Blue Dome, 2 pm for a march leaving by 2:30.

Bring signs, all of your friends, and your own vision for a more beautiful world.

99%, rise up! Together we are unstoppable

Human Rights Leader on Occupy Santa Cruz

2011-11-28T21:52:00.000-08:00

David Sweet: Occupy an innovative approach to a centuries old quest

by David Sweet

Santa Cruz Sentinel, November 28, 2011 01:30:57 AM PST

There must be hundreds of thousands of old geezers like me around the country who've been opposed all our lives to a system that can cough up gazillions for war, incarceration and corporate welfare, but can't find the means to guarantee housing, health care, high-quality education and a job with a living wage to a great many citizens.

Such people today, though we may be a bit incredulous still, are exhilarated despite ourselves by this fast-growing "Occupy Wall Street" movement. A readable, fascinating book about Occupy, just published by the Yes! magazine people and available for 10 bucks at your local bookstore proclaims "This changes everything!" Maybe it does, or will. It's unlikely just to dry up and blow away. But where's the program? What are the demands?

The answer comes back loud and clear from the occupations everywhere: concrete demands would miss the point entirely. They could be met, or negotiated with the powers that be. But the powers that be are the problem. What the Occupiers want is a change in the system itself -- from one that works pretty well for many people, to one that works well enough for most everybody.

And it's clearer to them, so far, than to lots of us, that in order to achieve that change we have not only somehow to elect competent, responsible and incorruptible legislators, we have to get together and talk with our neighbors, no matter how different they are, figure out what we want, get to work in a

patient, nonviolent way to try and get it, and especially be prepared to stick with that work for as long as it takes. The democracy we need is not so much representative as full-time participatory.

This makes the Occupy movement, however it talks about itself, or is talked about by others, a brand new, innovative, extraordinarily promising development in the centuries-old worldwide movement for human rights. The human rights movement wants a system that is centered not on power and profit, but on the dignity, worth, equality and enormous potential of all people everywhere. A system that protects rather than raping the natural environment that sustains us. Every step in the long history of that human rights movement has been made possible by the many individuals like Occupiers today who are willing to join in exercising, at whatever cost to themselves, the responsibility we all have to proclaim, protect and promote the common good.

Americans have contributed as much as anybody, and more than most, to the international movement for human rights: to the abolition of slavery, child labor, lynching and racial segregation, to establishing the eight-hour day and the rights of women, gays and lesbians and the disabled. Many times in the past our government itself, yielding to popular pressure, has contributed quite a lot to broadening and establishing some human rights in national and international law -- even though its policy has generally been to ignore, oppose or drag its feet about them.

One great moment in the history of America's and the world's struggle for human rights was the elaboration under United Nations auspices, and by a commission chaired by Eleanor Roosevelt, of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, given to the world on Dec. 10, 1948.

The Declaration's birthday will be celebrated on Saturday, Dec. here in Santa Cruz with a parade down Pacific Avenue followed by an informative and enjoyable Human Rights Fair in the Galleria on Front Street. Occupiers, geezers exhilarated or not, the simply curious and the public at large are urged to attend.

Local community activist David Sweet taught Latin American and world history at UC Santa Cruz for 30 years.

Sunday General Assembly, Occupy Santa Cruz, a glimpse

2011-11-13T23:09:00.000-08:00

November 13, 2011 ~~ San Lorenzo Park from steps of courthouse, near Water St. The Sunday General Assembly, OCCUPY SANTA CRUZ

OCCUPY WALL STREET MAKES MORE SENSE - Rolling Stones writer Matt Taibbi

2011-11-13T18:29:00.000-08:00

Published on Friday, November 11, 2011 by Rolling Stone

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests

Much more than a movement against big banks, they're a rejection of what our society has become

by Matt Taibbi

R

I have a confession to make. At first, I misunderstood Occupy Wall Street.

The first few times I went down to Zuccotti Park, I came away with mixed feelings. I loved the energy and was amazed by the obvious organic appeal of the movement, the way it was growing on its own. But my initial impression was that it would not be taken very seriously by the Citibanks and Goldman Sachs of the world. You could put 50,000 angry protesters on Wall Street, 100,000 even, and Lloyd Blankfein is probably not going to break a sweat. He knows he's not going to wake up tomorrow and see Cornel West or Richard Trumka running the Federal Reserve. He knows modern finance is a giant mechanical parasite that only an expert surgeon can remove. Yell and scream all you want, but he and his fellow financial Frankensteins are the only ones who know how to turn the machine off.

That's what I was thinking during the first few weeks of the protests. But I'm beginning to see another angle. Occupy Wall Street was always about something much bigger than a movement against big banks and modern finance. It's about providing a forum for people to show how tired they are not just of Wall Street, but everything. This is a visceral, impassioned, deep-seated rejection of the entire direction of our society, a refusal to take even one more step forward into the shallow commercial abyss of phoniness, short-term calculation, withered idealism and intellectual bankruptcy that American mass society has become. If there is such a thing as going on strike from one's own culture, this is it. And by being so broad in scope and so elemental in its motivation, it's flown over the heads of many on both the right and the left.

The right-wing media wasted no time in cannon-blasting the movement with its usual idiotic clichés, casting Occupy Wall Street as a bunch of dirty hippies who should get a job and stop chewing up Mike Bloomberg's police overtime budget with their urban sleepovers. Just like they did a half-century ago, when the debate over the Vietnam War somehow stopped being about why we were brutally murdering millions of innocent Indochinese civilians and instead became a referendum on bralessness and long hair and flower-child rhetoric, the depraved flacks of the right-wing media have breezily blown off a generation of fraud and corruption and market-perverting bailouts, making the whole debate about the protesters themselves – their hygiene, their "envy" of the rich, their "hypocrisy."

The protesters, chirped Supreme Reichskank Ann Coulter, needed three things: "showers, jobs and a point." Her colleague Charles Krauthammer went so far as to label the protesters hypocrites for having iPhones. OWS, he said, is "Starbucks-sipping, Levi's-clad, iPhone-clutching protesters [denouncing] corporate America even as they weep for Steve Jobs, corporate titan, billionaire eight times over." Apparently, because Goldman and Citibank are corporations, no protester can ever consume a corporate product – not jeans, not cellphones and definitely not coffee – if he also wants to complain about tax money going to pay off some billionaire banker's bets against his own crappy mortgages.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the political spectrum, there were scads of progressive pundits like me who wrung our hands with worry that OWS was playing right into the hands of assholes like Krauthammer. Don't give them any ammunition! we counseled. Stay on message! Be specific! We were all playing the Rorschach-test game with OWS, trying to squint at it and see what we wanted to see in the movement. Viewed through the prism of our desire to make near-term, within-the-system changes, it was hard to see how skirmishing with cops in New York would help foreclosed-upon middle-class families in Jacksonville and San Diego.

What both sides missed is that OWS is tired of all of this. They don't care what we think they're about, or should be about. They just want something different.

We're all born wanting the freedom to imagine a better and more beautiful future. But modern America has become a place so drearily confining and predictable that it chokes the life out of that built-in desire. Everything from our pop culture to our economy to our politics feels oppressive and unresponsive. We see 10 million commercials a day, and every day is the same life-killing chase for money, money and more money; the only thing that changes from minute to minute is that every tick of the clock brings with it another space-age vendor dreaming up some new way to try to sell you something or reach into your pocket. The relentless sameness of the two-party political system is beginning to feel like a Jacob's Ladder nightmare with no end; we're entering another turn on the four-year merry-go-round, and the thought of having to try to get excited about yet another minor quadrennial shift in the direction of one or the other pole of alienating corporate full-of-shitness is enough to make anyone want to smash his own hand flat with a hammer.

If you think of it this way, Occupy Wall Street takes on another meaning. There's no better symbol of the gloom and psychological repression of modern America than the banking system, a huge heartless machine that attaches itself to you at an early age, and from which there is no escape. You fail to receive a few past-due notices about a $19 payment you missed on that TV you bought at Circuit City, and next thing you know a collector has filed a judgment against you for $3,000 in fees and interest. Or maybe you wake up one morning and your car is gone, legally repossessed by Vulture Inc., the debt-buying firm that bought your loan on the Internet from Chase for two cents on the dollar. This is why people hate Wall Street. They hate it because the banks have made life for ordinary people a vicious tightrope act; you slip anywhere along the way, it's 10,000 feet down into a vat of razor blades that you can never climb out of.

That, to me, is what Occupy Wall Street is addressing. People don't know exactly what they want, but as one friend of mine put it, they know one thing: FUCK THIS SHIT! We want something different: a different life, with different values, or at least a chance at different values.

There was a lot of snickering in media circles, even by me, when I heard the protesters talking about how Liberty Square was offering a model for a new society, with free food and health care and so on. Obviously, a bunch of kids taking donations and giving away free food is not a long-term model for a new economic system.

But now, I get it. People want to go someplace for at least five minutes where no one is trying to bleed you or sell you something. It may not be a real model for anything, but it's at least a place where people are free to dream of some other way for human beings to get along, beyond auctioned "democracy," tyrannical commerce and the bottom line.

We're a nation that was built on a thousand different utopian ideas, from the Shakers to the Mormons to New Harmony, Indiana. It was possible, once, for communities to experiment with everything from free love to an end to private property. But nowadays even the palest federalism is swiftly crushed. If your state tries to place tariffs on companies doing business with some notorious human-rights-violator state – like Massachusetts did, when it sought to bar state contracts to firms doing business with Myanmar – the decision will be overturned by some distant global bureaucracy like the WTO. Even if 40 million Californians vote tomorrow to allow themselves to smoke a joint, the federal government will never permit it. And the economy is run almost entirely by an unaccountable oligarchy in Lower Manhattan that absolutely will not sanction any innovations in banking or debt forgiveness or anything else that might lessen its predatory influence.

And here's one more thing I was wrong about: I originally was very uncomfortable with the way the protesters were focusing on the NYPD as symbols of the system. After all, I thought, these are just working-class guys from the Bronx and Staten Island who have never seen the inside of a Wall Street investment firm, much less had anything to do with the corruption of our financial system.

But I was wrong. The police in their own way are symbols of the problem. All over the country, thousands of armed cops have been deployed to stand around and surveil and even assault the polite crowds of Occupy protesters. This deployment of law-enforcement resources already dwarfs the amount of money and manpower that the government "committed" to fighting crime and corruption during the financial crisis. One OWS protester steps in the wrong place, and she immediately has police roping her off like wayward cattle. But in the skyscrapers above the protests, anything goes.

This is a profound statement about who law enforcement works for in this country. What happened on Wall Street over the past decade was an unparalleled crime wave. Yet at most, maybe 1,500 federal agents were policing that beat – and that little group of financial cops barely made any cases at all. Yet when thousands of ordinary people hit the streets with the express purpose of obeying the law and demonstrating their patriotism through peaceful protest, the police response is immediate and massive. There have already been hundreds of arrests, which is hundreds more than we ever saw during the years when Wall Street bankers were stealing billions of dollars from retirees and mutual-fund holders and carpenters unions through the mass sales of fraudulent mortgage-backed securities.

It's not that the cops outside the protests are doing wrong, per se, by patrolling the parks and sidewalks. It's that they should be somewhere else. They should be heading up into those skyscrapers and going through the file cabinets to figure out who stole what, and from whom. They should be helping people get their money back. Instead, they're out on the street, helping the Blankfeins of the world avoid having to answer to the people they ripped off.

People want out of this fiendish system, rigged to inexorably circumvent every hope we have for a more balanced world. They want major changes. I think I understand now that this is what the Occupy movement is all about. It's about dropping out, if only for a moment, and trying something new, the same way that the civil rights movement of the 1960s strived to create a "beloved community" free of racial segregation. Eventually the Occupy movement will need to be specific about how it wants to change the world. But for right now, it just needs to grow. And if it wants to sleep on the streets for a while and not structure itself into a traditional campaign of grassroots organizing, it should. It doesn't need to tell the world what it wants. It is succeeding, for now, just by being something different.

As Rolling Stone’s chief political reporter, Matt Taibbi's predecessors include the likes of journalistic giants Hunter S. Thompson and P.J. O'Rourke. Taibbi's 2004 campaign journal Spanking the Donkey cemented his status as an incisive, irreverent, zero-bullshit reporter. His books include Griftopia: A Story of Bankers, Politicians, and the Most Audacious Power Grab in American History, The Great Derangement: A Terrifying True Story of War, Politics, and Religion, Smells Like Dead Elephants: Dispatches from a Rotting Empire.

Published on Friday, November 11, 2011 by Rolling Stone

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests

Much more than a movement against big banks, they're a rejection of what our society has become.

by Matt Taibbi

I have a confession to make. At first, I misunderstood Occupy Wall Street.

What both sides missed is that OWS is tired of all of this. They don't care what we think they're about, or should be about. They just want something different.

Published on Friday, November 11, 2011 by Rolling Stone

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests

Much more than a movement against big banks, they're a rejection of what our society has become.

by Matt Taibbi

I have a confession to make. At first, I misunderstood Occupy Wall Street.

What both sides missed is that OWS is tired of all of this. They don't care what we think they're about, or should be about. They just want something different.

Francis Fox Piven ~~ Is Occupy Wall Street Movement Helping Poor People Yet?

2011-11-08T11:05:00.000-08:00

Can OWS end America's war against the poor?

by recasting extreme inequality as an ethical
issue, the movement could bring about a new kind
of moral economy

By Frances Fox Piven, November 7, 2011

We've been at war for decades now - not just in Afghanistan or Iraq, but right here at home. Domestically, it's been a war against the poor, but if you hadn't noticed, that's not surprising. You wouldn't often have found the casualty figures from this particular conflict in your local newspaper or on the nightly TV news. Devastating as it's been, the war against the poor has gone largely unnoticed - until now.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has already made the concentration of wealth at the top of this society a central issue in American politics. Now, it promises to do something similar when it comes to the realities of poverty in this country.

By making Wall Street its symbolic target, and branding itself as a movement of the 99 percent, OWS has redirected public attention to the issue of extreme inequality, which it has recast as, essentially, a moral problem. Only a short time ago, the "morals" issue in politics meant the propriety of sexual preferences, reproductive behavior, or the personal behavior of presidents. Economic policy, including tax cuts for the rich, subsidies and government protection for insurance and pharmaceutical companies, and financial deregulation, was shrouded in clouds of propaganda or simply considered too complex for ordinary Americans to grasp.

Now, in what seems like no time at all, the fog has lifted and the topic on the table everywhere seems to be the morality of contemporary financial capitalism. The protestors have accomplished this mainly through the symbolic power of their actions: by naming Wall Street, the heartland of financial capitalism, as the enemy, and by welcoming the homeless and the down-and-out to their occupation sites. And of course, the slogan "We are the 99 percent" reiterated the message that almost all of us are suffering from the reckless profiteering of a tiny handful. (In fact, they aren't far off: the increase in income of the top 1 percent over the past three decades about equals the losses of the bottom 80 percent.)

The movement's moral call is reminiscent of earlier historical moments when popular uprisings invoked ideas of a "moral economy" to justify demands for bread or grain or wages - for, that is, a measure of economic justice. Historians usually attribute popular ideas of a moral economy to custom and tradition, as when the British historian E.P. Thompson traced the idea of a "just price" for basic foodstuffs invoked by eighteenth century English food rioters to then already centuries-old Elizabethan statutes. But the rebellious poor have never simply been traditionalists. In the face of violations of what they considered to be their customary rights, they did not wait for the magistrates to act, but often took it upon themselves to enforce what they considered to be the foundation of a just moral economy.

Being Poor By the Numbers

A moral economy for our own time would certainly take on the unbridled accumulation of wealth at the expense of the majority (and the planet). It would also single out for special condemnation the creation of an ever-larger stratum of people we call "the poor" who struggle to survive in the shadow of the over-consumption and waste of that top 1 percent.

Some facts: early in 2011, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that 14.3 percent of the population, or 47 million people - one in six Americans - were living below the official poverty threshold, currently set at $22,400 annually for a family of four. Some 19 million people are living in what is called extreme poverty, which means that their household income falls in the bottom half of those considered to be below the poverty line. More than a third of those extremely poor people are children. Indeed, more than half of all children younger than six living with a single mother are poor. Extrapolating from this data, Emily Monea and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution estimate that further sharp increases in both poverty and child poverty rates lie in our American future.

Some experts dispute these numbers on the grounds that they neither take account of the assistance that the poor still receive, mainly through the food stamp program, nor of regional variations in the cost of living. In fact, bad as they are, the official numbers don't tell the full story. The situation of the poor is actually considerably worse. The official poverty line is calculated as simply three times the minimal food budget first introduced in 1959, and then adjusted for inflation in food costs. In other words, the American poverty threshold takes no account of the cost of housing or fuel or transportation or health-care costs, all of which are rising more rapidly than the cost of basic foods. So the poverty measure grossly understates the real cost of subsistence.

Moreover, in 2006, interest payments on consumer debt had already put more than four million people, not officially in poverty, below the line, making them "debt poor." Similarly, if childcare costs, estimated at $5,750 a year in 2006, were deducted from gross income, many more people would be counted as officially poor.

Nor are these catastrophic levels of poverty merely a temporary response to rising unemployment rates or reductions in take-home pay resulting from the great economic meltdown of 2008. The numbers tell the story and it's clear enough: poverty was on the rise before the Great Recession hit. Between 2001 and 2007, poverty actually increased for the first time on record during an economic recovery. It rose from 11.7 percent in 2001 to 12.5 percent in 2007. Poverty rates for single mothers in 2007 were 49 percent higher in the U.S. than in 15 other high-income countries. Similarly, black employment rates and income were declining before the recession struck.

In part, all of this was the inevitable fallout from a decades-long business mobilization to reduce labor costs by weakening unions and changing public policies that protected workers and those same unions. As a result, National Labor Board decisions became far less favorable to both workers and unions, workplace regulations were not enforced, and the minimum wage lagged far behind inflation.

Inevitably, the overall impact of the campaign to reduce labor's share of national earnings meant that a growing number of Americans couldn't earn even a poverty-level livelihood - and even that's not the whole of it. The poor and the programs that assisted them were the objects of a full-bore campaign directed specifically at them.

Campaigning Against the Poor

This attack began even while the Black Freedom Movement of the 1960s was in full throttle. It was already evident in the failed 1964 presidential campaign of Republican Barry Goldwater, as well as in the recurrent campaigns of sometime Democrat and segregationist governor of Alabama George Wallace. Richard Nixon's presidential bid in 1968 picked up on the theme.

As many commentators have pointed out, his triumphant campaign strategy tapped into the rising racial animosities not only of white southerners, but of a white working class in the north that suddenly found itself locked in competition with newly urbanized African-Americans for jobs, public services and housing, as well as in campaigns for school desegregation. The racial theme quickly melded into political propaganda targeting the poor and contemporary poor-relief programs. Indeed, in American politics "poverty," along with "welfare," "unwed mothers," and "crime," became code words for blacks.

In the process, resurgent Republicans tried to defeat Democrats at the polls by associating them with blacks and with liberal policies meant to alleviate poverty. One result was the infamous "war on drugs" that largely ignored major traffickers in favor of the lowest level offenders in inner-city communities. Along with that came a massive program of prison building and incarceration, as well as the wholesale "reform" of the main means-tested cash assistance program, Aid to Families of Dependent Children. This politically driven attack on the poor proved just the opening drama in a decades-long campaign launched by business and the organized right against workers.

This was not only war against the poor, but the very "class war" that Republicans now use to brand just about any action they don't like. In fact, class war was the overarching goal of the campaign, something that would soon enough become apparent in policies that led to a massive redistribution of the burden of taxation, the cannibalization of government services through privatization, wage cuts and enfeebled unions, and the deregulation of business, banks and financial institutions.

The poor - and blacks - were an endlessly useful rhetorical foil, a propagandistic distraction used to win elections and make bigger gains. Still, the rhetoric was important. A host of new think tanks, political organizations and lobbyists in Washington D.C. promoted the message that the country's problems were caused by the poor whose shiftlessness, criminal inclinations and sexual promiscuity were being indulged by a too-generous welfare system.

Genuine suffering followed quickly enough, along with big cuts in the means-tested programs that helped the poor. The staging of the cuts was itself enwreathed in clouds of propaganda, but cumulatively they frayed the safety net that protected both the poor and workers, especially low-wage ones, which meant women and minorities. When Ronald Reagan entered the Oval Office in 1980, the path had been smoothed for huge cuts in programs for poor people, and by the 1990s the Democrats, looking for electoral strategies that would raise campaign dollars from big business and put them back in power, took up the banner. It was Bill Clinton, after all, who campaigned on the slogan "end welfare as we know it."

A Movement for a Moral Economy

The war against the poor at the federal level was soon matched in state capitols where organizations like the American Federation for Children, the American Legislative Exchange Council, the Institute for Liberty and the State Policy Network went to work. Their lobbying agenda was ambitious, including the large-scale privatization of public services, business tax cuts, the rollback of environmental regulations and consumer protections, crippling public sector unions, and measures (like requiring photo identification) that would restrict the access students and the poor had to the ballot. But the poor were their main public target and again, there were real life consequences - welfare cutbacks, particularly in the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, and a law-and-order campaign that resulted in the massive incarceration of black men.

The Great Recession sharply worsened these trends. The Economic Policy Institute reports that the typical working-age household, which had already seen a decline of roughly $2,300 in income between 2000 and 2006, lost another $2,700 between 2007 and 2009. And when "recovery" arrived, however uncertainly, it was mainly in low-wage industries, which accounted for nearly half of what growth there was. Manufacturing continued to contract, while the labor market lost 6.1 percent of payroll employment. New investment, when it occurred at all, was more likely to be in machinery than in new workers, so unemployment levels remain alarmingly high. In other words, the recession accelerated ongoing market trends toward lower-wage and ever more insecure employment.

The recession also prompted further cutbacks in welfare programs. Because cash assistance has become so hard to get, thanks to so-called welfare reform, and fallback state-assistance programs have been crippled, the federal food stamp program has come to carry much of the weight in providing assistance to the poor. Renamed the "Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program," it was boosted by funds provided in the Recovery Act, and benefits temporarily rose, as did participation. But Congress has repeatedly attempted to slash the program's funds, and even to divert some of them into farm subsidies, while efforts, not yet successful, have been made to deny food stamps to any family that includes a worker on strike.

The organized right justifies its draconian policies toward the poor with moral arguments. Right-wing think tanks and blogs, for instance, ponder the damaging effect on disabled poor children of becoming "dependent" on government assistance, or they scrutinize government nutritional assistance for poor pregnant women and children in an effort to explain away positive outcomes for infants.

The willful ignorance and cruelty of it all can leave you gasping - and gasp was all we did for decades. This is why we so desperately needed a movement for a new kind of moral economy. Occupy Wall Street, which has already changed the national conversation, may well be its beginning.

To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch. com here.

Frances Fox Piven is on the faculty of the Graduate School of the City University of New York. She is the author, along with Richard Cloward, of "Regulating the Poor and Poor People's Movements." Her latest book, just published, is "Who's Afraid of Frances Fox Piven? The Essential Writings of the Professor Glenn Beck Loves to Hate."

Piven is renown for her support of the Welfare Rights Movement in the 70s-80s, and has always shared her professional and academic accomplishments on behalf of "welfare moms" like I was for so long. My heroine! ~~Linda's Hearth

Call for Solidarity from Occupy Santa Cruz for the San Lorenzo Campers.

2011-11-04T18:31:00.000-07:00

What is Occupy Santa Cruz?

October 30th, 2011 ·

We gather together as Occupy Santa Cruz in solidarity with the worldwide Occupy Movement. We are individuals committed to promoting justice. We have no leaders. We recognize the right of ALL voices to be heard: our diversity is a source of strength. We present a united front in our non-violent approach to addressing the problems we face and generating solutions beneficial to all. Please join us in creating a better world.

We gather 24/7 on the steps of the Superior Courthouse on Water Street.
General Assemblies are held daily at 6pm, and on Sundays at 2pm in San Lorenzo Park.

Justice Seekers and Free Speech Advocates! Your Solidarity Needed to Face Increasing Police Pressure on Occupy Santa Cruz

November 4th, 2011 ·

At today's "Empathy Cafe" workshop on the lawn of the courthouse, we discuss methods for strengthening our community through compassionate communication

Visits from the Santa Cruz County Sheriffs have been increasing, and in the past 24 hours, four of our occupiers were issued lodging citations for resting on the grounds of the Courthouse. Coinciding with the arrival of rainclouds, we sense an increased attempt to dismantle and silence our occupation through harassment and attrition.

The General Assembly has decided that we will hold our space, and assert our right to free speech and free assembly. We will continue to gather daily, we will continue to seek justice, we will sleep when we are tired, and we will refuse to disappear quietly.

We need, now more than ever, support from Santa Cruz and abroad. Rain shelters, warm clothes and blankets, and home cooking are as appreciated as ever. But even more importantly than that: we need your presence, your participation, and especially your vocal and public support as we continue our community-building in the face of adversity. There are an infinite multitude of ways to support this movement, and they all begin with sharing your voice.

We hold General Assemblies daily, and we look forward to conducting more workshops, more rallies, more outreach to other communities, and much more discussion of an equitable and harmonious future. Come be with us!

Mission Statement of Occupy Santa Cruz:

We gather together as Occupy Santa Cruz in solidarity with the worldwide Occupy Movement. We are individuals committed to promoting justice. We have no leaders. We recognize the right of ALL voices to be heard: our diversity is a source of strength. We present a united front in our non-violent approach to addressing the problems we face and generating solutions beneficial to all. Please join us in creating a better world.

Linda's Hearth note: a masthead for Occupy Santa Cruz website is displayed above this release. The whole world is watching.

OSC lodging tickets: Cops cite tourists

2011-11-04T10:01:00.001-07:00

Occupy Santa Cruz protestors arrested outside court

By Stephen Baxter - Santa Cruz Sentinel

Posted: 11/03/2011 08:49:51 PM PDT

SANTA CRUZ - Two men in their 30s were ticketed on suspicion of lodging as part of the Occupy Santa Cruz protest after deputies found them in a tent near Santa Cruz County Superior Court.

The men were from outside the county and were found about 7:30 a.m. Thursday on the Water Street side of the courthouse, said sheriff's deputy April Skalland.

Demonstrators have been camping in about 100 tents on city land at San Lorenzo Park near the courthouse. Santa Cruz police said they have not issued any tickets in the park for camping or lodging.

"People have the right to protest, but lodging's a completely different story," Skalland said.

Also Thursday, deputies ticketed a homeless man on suspicion of lodging on the grass behind the courthouse, Skalland said. He was not associated with the protest.

Linda's Hearth note: I believe April Scalland's "reasoning" will be disproved in court.

Occupy Wall Street: Sparro Kennedy Sticks Up For Homeless and Mentally "Ill" People

2011-11-04T08:36:00.000-07:00

Sparro Kennedy Fights For Occupy Wall Street's Homeless, Mentally Ill

First Posted: 11/3/11 12:50 PM ET Updated: 11/3/11 03:31 PM ET

by Trymaine Lee trymaine.lee@huffingtonpost.com

Before Sparro Kennedy knew it, she was grabbed and thrown to the ground. All 4 feet, 5 inches of her was sprawled out like a rag doll behind a tent in Zuccotti Park, home base for the Occupy Wall Street protests. No one reacted: not a peep, a yelp or even a gasp from the dozen or so onlookers. No one rushed to her aid or tried to chase off her attacker. They all seemed a bit bored, as if this were as a common as an uptown bus. Even her attacker stood by impotently as Kennedy wiggled slowly to her feet.

"See what I have to go through?" Kennedy said, dusting herself off.

For Kennedy it was just another day at the office, or tent rather, which serves as headquarters for the Comfort Community, where occupiers come for donated clothing, supplies or to sign up for showers. Getting into arguments, the occasional shouting match, or tussle is an everyday occurrence for Kennedy, who has waged a fight within the movement on behalf of Occupy Wall Street's most vulnerable participants: the chronically homeless and the mentally or emotionally unstable. Kennedy herself is homeless, currently living in the tent in the park that she shares with a dog and two other people.

She is a constant presence around Comfort Community and the tent city that Zuccotti Park has become. She's like a little voluble mother figure with dozens of sometimes unruly "babies," many of whom she said believe more in the movement than in taking their meds.

"There's a push to drive out the homeless and those with special needs," Kennedy said. "Our responsibility as a community is to make sure that everyone has a voice and that nobody is left behind. I'm here to make sure of that."

As Occupy Wall Street has grown, it has attracted its fair share of the chronically homeless who want to take part in the protests or who crave the food and camaraderie that hundreds of occupiers have brought to the park. Among that number are also many with special psychiatric, emotional or medical needs, Kennedy said. Some within the movement view them as troublemakers. These people, who have been marginalized in mainstream life, are being marginalized again here, Kennedy and others claim. This, she quipped, in a movement that purports to represent the 99 percent who have been victimized by American greed and all manner of corporate meanness.

She said many of the people who are leading meetings or voting on legislation for the movement do not live in the park, are not true occupiers, and only come to hoist the occasional sign or vote during meetings. (Who else would pass a rule barring sex in the park, other than those who aren't sleeping in the park? she asked.)

"We have people who are coming from everywhere, from all different types of backgrounds, all different types of educational experiences, and they are coming together, but there are still vestiges of the system that we are trying to break and a culture that we are trying to evict from our psyches," she said. "Those aspects are still present in the movement. They are using these preconceived notions and ideas to express how they feel things should be done. And that doesn't always mean what's right for everyone."

So she said she speaks loud at meetings, harangues those who won't pay attention to the needs of those who hear voices, scream out for help, or seem a bit too confused or detached for comfort. She half-joked that she has been prone to "cuss people out."

"I'm here to make sure that this movement does not leave behind the people really dealing with reality out here," Kennedy said. "Some people have lived in a bubble all of their lives. Well, now that bubble has been popped."

Late yesterday morning, Kennedy buzzed about the maze of tarpaline and tents in Zuccotti Park, dressed in an aqua-blue head wrap and turquoise leggings. She had a cigarette in one hand and a cell phone in the other. She was coordinating press for Comfort Community, checking on the delivery of supplies and putting out logistical and emotional fires, of which there seem to be thousands each day.

As a coordinator with Comfort Community, she helps to order supplies, field donations and make the occasional clothing run with donated money. This afternoon was to include a shopping run for shoes. She said organizing the supplies can be a major effort, with bag loads coming in daily, including some rather curious donations, like the occasional pair of stilettos or, a few weeks ago, 1,000 pairs of thong underwear in all colors and sizes.

"For a few days you saw a whole bunch of uncomfortable people walking around here," she joked.

She said she deals with the hoarders and those with other compulsions, those who feel the need to ask for "three coats, four pairs of pants and thirteen pairs of shoes, all in different sizes."

Kennedy, who said she graduated from Michigan State University a few years back, is rather evasive about her age. "I never tell, baby," she cooed.

She said she moved from New Orleans to New York in August for a cushy job as a belly dance fitness instructor at a studio in nearby Mt. Vernon, NY. Then about a month after she moved, the program was cut and she was laid off. With no paycheck and no job, Kennedy found herself homeless. Then she caught wind of Occupy Wall Street on Facebook and joined the movement in its second week.

She started off doing protest dances in the middle of the park but soon got sucked into the action. She is no stranger to activism, she said, having worked with community groups and in various sustainability actions in the past.

Though she doesn't have a job or a home with a solid roof, she said that she is happy.

"Yes, I am happy. It's crazy, but I am," she said. "I'm part of this wonderful community, this crazy family that loves and hates each other all at the same time. But we do love each other."

As she sat on a bench a few blocks from Zuccotti, eating the rare treat of a Chipotle steak burrito, her phone rang, signaling another fire to put out.

It was about Josh, a young man she suspects has Asperger's syndrome or schizophrenia, mixed with a serious case of immaturity. He had taken a bag of clothes from a volunteer at Comfort Community. A few days earlier he had stolen cash from the donation jar. The group wanted to vote him out of the community of comforters. Kennedy made her way through the camp and behind the big Comfort supply tent.

Nearly a dozen people stood around Josh, who was in his early 20s with his shoulder-length hair pulled into a pony tail.

"How many vote to have Josh leave the community?" Kennedy asked. Every hand went up. "We love you, Josh, but you have to leave our tent. We love you. But it's time for you to go."

"It's not your group, Sparro," Josh blurted out.

"You're right. It's his and his and hers, and mine," she said, pointing around to each person in the circle.

As she turned to walk away, Josh grabbed her by the collar and threw her to the ground. No one seemed surprised.

"have you no decency? ... Turns out, not really,

2011-11-02T16:04:00.000-07:00

what the Occupy Movement reminded me of

by Jon Carroll

Wednesday, November 2, 2011 in San Francisco Chronicle

I've been trying to think of what the Occupy Movement reminded me of. It is, as others have noted, not a particularly common sort of protest - it's worldwide now, and there seems to be no formal operational plan, and it seems to have drawn many people who would not otherwise be protesting, even on behalf of causes they believed in.

It came to me finally. It's a reference from my childhood, when Boston attorney Joseph Welch confronted Sen. Joseph McCarthy over his hectoring of a young law partner of Welch's. "Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

I think that is the root of it. We are accustomed to living in a capitalist system; we understand that there are winners and losers, rich people and poor people. But we did think, perhaps foolishly, that all Americans were on the same path and that a sense of common decency would restrain the banks and the brokerages and, yes, the U.S. government from destroying an at least marginally functional financial system.

But there was no decency; there was only the lust for profits. When people realized all the scams that had been perpetrated on them, whether their personal fortune or mortgage or retirement plan was at stake or not, they became embittered. The high unemployment rate, the profits that banks were still making - and their plans to bleed their customers even drier - and the willingness of the president of the people, oh please, to make the banks whole again after their obscene excesses - became the catalysts for the "at long last, have you left no sense of decency?" nationwide movement.

And it turns out: not really.

Listen to the political rhetoric. Jobs, jobs, jobs, they say. And how would these jobs be created? Tax breaks for the wealthy, a proven loser in the job creation category, but ever so attractive to the wealthy donors who make up the core constituency of both national parties. Even now, Barack Obama seems to be more interested in raising campaign funds than in confronting the malefactors.

(I am not saying that there's not a dime's worth of difference between the two parties, although Obama's stance on regulation is just a little muddled for the card-carrying leftie he's supposed to be. There are many social issues on which I prefer the Democratic position; Democrats don't attack scientists as money-grubbers, and one must always think of the people Obama would not nominate to the Supreme Court.)

We feel bereft. The institutions we had counted on have become ugly villains. And so, hopeful as ever, optimistic Americans, the Occupy folks have taken to the streets for the redress of grievances. They have thought to assemble peacefully, make speeches, leaflet, set up tent cities.

And of course, police came to remove the protesters against the status quo. Because the police always do, because they answer to the same big-money people that the politicians do. Jean Quan's dreadful public performance, her tone-deaf statements, her cowardly retreat at exactly the wrong moment, was so sad, particularly when she said, in the aftermath of her police riot, "Oakland is a progressive city."

(Oh, poor Oakland, why hath God forsaken thee? Two bad mayors in a row, and not a lot of strength sitting on the bench. My hometown never can catch a break.)

Occupy is basically a middle-class movement, I think, and mainly white. This is not one of those protests where black ministers take up most of the time on the podium. Maybe African Americans are just unsurprised by the depredations of banks and brokerages, and don't see how a march can change anything. And they may, of course, be right.

Maybe a lot of prosperous humans thought they were too big to fail, but they weren't. Their supposed allies on Wall Street were merely panderers. The supposed agreement between provider and customer was believed to provide a modicum of security. But at long last, it turned out that they had no decency.

A lesson I learned early, back when I was protesting and vigiling to beat the band, is that no one in authority cares about redress of grievances - unless said grievances are submitted in writing at least three weeks before the next meeting. Disorder makes them nervous. The presence of unauthorized people makes them nervous. So inevitably they will stand with the forces of the status quo, whether or not their personal interests match those of the authorities they're protecting.

But democracy should be occasionally disorderly. It should enlist the power of the people to protect the people. More Thursday.

The Occupy Movement continues, in better order and with more sincerity than the government.

Hark, in thine ear: change places; and, handy-dandy, which is the justice, which is the thief? Thou has seen jcarroll@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Legal Eagle Ally Asks Board of Supes to Honor and Support Occupy Santa Cruz

2011-11-02T15:25:00.000-07:00

RESOLUTION IN SUPPORT OF OCCUPY SANTA CRUZ
(Linda's Hearth: presumed DRAFT until this parenthetical disappears)

WHEREAS, the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors in its representative capacity serves to support and foster those values and beliefs held by the people of Santa Cruz County and,

WHEREAS, Santa Cruz County has a long and cherished tradition of preserving and defending the individual rights and civil liberties of all those who work and strive for social justice; and

WHEREAS, it has been and remains the policy of the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department to support and protect the principles of free speech and freedom of assembly so cherished by our community, and

WHEREAS, Occupy Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Department have been and continue to be engaged in a cooperative and respectful dialogue to address the rights and concerns of the all members of our community and,

WHEREAS, it is the sense of the Board of Supervisors that our community is alarmed and concerned about the recent events in the City of Oakland and,

WHEREAS, Occupy Santa Cruz is committed to a philosophy and mission of nonviolence in pursuit of its goals, and

WHEREAS, Occupy Santa Cruz has galvanized our community in an unprecedented action that reflects the finest principles of free speech and freedom of assembly,

BE IT HEREBY RESOLVED that the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors supports the efforts of Occupy Santa Cruz to peacefully work for social justice and create true economic change.

18th Annual Peace & Unity March, Watsonville

2011-10-26T20:17:00.000-07:00

Saturday, October 29, 2011

18TH ANNUAL PEACE & UNITY MARCH IN WATSONVILLE!

Residents Say Remaining Proactive Against Violence Has Made Big Difference!

Event will honor local residents who lost their lives to domestic and street violence.

On Saturday, October 29, 2011, hundreds of local residents will be joining the 18TH ANNUAL WATSONVILLE PEACE & UNITY MARCH which will take place at noon on the Watsonville Plaza. The Peace ceremony begins at NOON. We march at 1PM SHARP. Several community leaders, family members of victims of violence and youth will be addressing the effects of violence on our communities.

“This march is an ongoing effort to stop the destruction of our youth and community by violence,” said Sandino Gomez, an organizer of the Watsonville Peace and Unity Coalition. “It creates a community consciousness about becoming actively involved in reducing violence and improving our neighborhoods for our future generations.”

“Remaining proactive against violence has made a tremendous difference,” said Yovanna Bravo, an event organizer. “After this march first began seventeen years ago, we have seen other efforts emerge throughout our city to bring peace and unity to all our homes, schools, and neighborhoods, and to keep awareness and action focused on building positive community here in Watsonville.”

ALL FAMILIES WHO HAVE LOST LOVED ONES TO VIOLENCE ARE INVITED TO SET UP AN ALTAR BEFORE THE PEACE CEREMONY BEGINS AT NOON. This yearly event continues to be organized by a coalition of concerned students, parents, community-based organizations, churches and families who have lost their loved ones to community violence. We will never forget the names of our loved ones lost.

We will also be presenting the “Barrio Warrior” award to one of our local educators, artists and community advocates, Jovita Molina!!! It is an honor to give Jovita this award for her tireless organizing, cultural work and participation in improving our community.

Joining the march this year will be a special interfaith contingent of indigenous people and their supporters from many different countries and belief systems who have united in their opposition to nuclear weapons and nuclear energy, including Buddhist monks from Fukishima, Japan. They will be joining the Peace and Unity March on Saturday October 29^th. For more information about the walk and those involved please see www.canuclearwalk.com

This will also be a Day of the Dead celebration. Community is invited to set up Dia de Los Muertos altars.

We hope you can cover our 18-year anniversary of this very important event that is primarily organized by Watsonville residents and youth!

WHAT: The 18th Annual Watsonville Peace & Unity March

WHEN: Saturday, October 29, 2011

TIME: NOON Opening Ceremony, 1PM March Begins

WHERE: Ceremony on City Plaza & March will take place throughout various neighborhoods.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

18TH ANNUAL PEACE & UNITY MARCH IN WATSONVILLE!

Residents Say Remaining Proactive Against Violence Has Made Big Difference!

Event will honor local residents who lost their lives to domestic and street violence.

This will also be a Day of the Dead celebration. Community is invited to set up Dia de Los Muertos altars.

We hope you can cover our 18-year anniversary of this very important event that is primarily organized by Watsonville residents and youth!

WHAT: The 18th Annual Watsonville Peace & Unity March

WHEN: Saturday, October 29, 2011

TIME: NOON Opening Ceremony, 1PM March Begins

WHERE: Ceremony on City Plaza & March will take place throughout various neighborhoods.

Saturday, October 29, 2011

18TH ANNUAL PEACE & UNITY MARCH IN WATSONVILLE!

Residents Say Remaining Proactive Against Violence Has Made Big Difference!

Event will honor local residents who lost their lives to domestic and street violence.

This will also be a Day of the Dead celebration. Community is invited to set up Dia de Los Muertos altars.

We hope you can cover our 18-year anniversary of this very important event that is primarily organized by Watsonville residents and youth!

WHAT: The 18th Annual Watsonville Peace & Unity March

WHEN: Saturday, October 29, 2011

TIME: NOON Opening Ceremony, 1PM March Begins

WHERE: Ceremony on City Plaza & March will take place throughout various neighborhoods.

Occupy Santa Cruz Human Chain at Lighthouse on West Cliff Drive

2011-10-25T12:30:00.000-07:00

Occupy Santa Cruz forms human chain at Lighthouse Point

By Cathy Kelly - Santa Cruz Sentinel

Posted: 10/23/2011 04:44:58 PM PDT

Woody Carroll, employed in the UC Santa Cruz film department, wants the... (Dan Coyro/Sentinel)

SANTA CRUZ - About 150 Occupy Santa Cruz protesters joined hands Sunday at Lighthouse Point Sunday in a human-chain demonstration against greed and inequity.

Organizers said they were showing that the local arm of Occupy Wall Street is "united in peace and pushing for economic justice and accountability in the United States." Event literature protested the consolidation of wealth in the hands of a few, with trillions of dollars poured into prisons and wars while vital social services are slashed.

The gathering included people of all ages and levels of involvement in the mushrooming movement. More than one participant noted they were part of the 99 percent, utilizing an Occupy slogan about the broadness of a movement for those who are not among the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans.

Woody Carroll, 51, carried a flag as rode his bike up to join a short pre-chain rally. Carroll, who works in the UC Santa Cruz film and digital media department, said it's the first Occupy Santa Cruz rally he has attended.

"Like most Americans, I'm angry and I'm looking for a way to express that to express solidarity with Occupy Wall Street," he said. "Our political process has been bought and sold. There is too much influence by corporations and the rich.

"It's in the fabric of Americans to protest and demand redress. You do what you can where you are."

The demonstration began with music by the Sadza Marimba Band and a brief noon rally before the group

stretched out along the railing fronting Monterey Bay, lining up toward Pelton Avenue and reaching bleachers erected for next week's Cold Water Classic. West Cliff Drive was bustling on a sunny fall day, and several motorists honked horns as they drove by.

Bonnie Loya and Lynn Martin were walking together down West Cliff when they decided to join the chain.

"It's great," said Martin, a 63-year-old school custodian. "It's about time. We've been grousing about things since before Obama, and we haven't really done anything so visual. I think it's wonderful."

Demonstrators held a series of signs that made sense only when held together. One multi-sign message talked of the ripples created by a pebble cast into a pond, while another called for campaign reform and one stated that "all sentient beings have the right to pursue happiness and live in peace and freedom."

Those in the chain sang several songs in unison, including "This Land is Your Land."

Joy Binah, 56, a Santa Cruz artist and farmer, helped organize the event.

Binah has been seeking a mortgage modification from Wells Fargo Bank since November, and said she has had to reapply every 60 days because the bank does not act on her request.

She added that she would join the movement even if she had no loan problems.

"We have 1 percent of the population controlling the remainder, and the time has come to put an end to the oppression," she said. "Wouldn't it be wonderful if we could connect these groups across the United States?"

Others spoke of lost homes, lost jobs and lost faith in government.

An organizer of Occupy Santa Cruz, Noah Shepardson, said the Santa Cruz group held its first general assembly Oct. 4.

Based at the courthouse steps along Water Street with a camp in nearby San Lorenzo Park, the movement has held several marches and protests at Santa Cruz branches of national banks.

Shepardson said the human chain went well, and that more are in the works.

"It was excellent," he said. "There was a really good turnout and we got a lot of good public support. I think a lot of people who spent time out there on West Cliff got at least a little glimpse of what we're about."

Occupy American Cities to End Homelessness' Gravest Dangers for Already Displaced People

2011-10-24T11:27:00.000-07:00

Published on Sunday, October 23, 2011 by TomDispatch.com

Throw Them Out With the Trash: Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue

by Barbara Ehrenreich

As anyone knows who has ever had to set up a military encampment or build a village from the ground up, occupations pose staggering logistical problems. Large numbers of people must be fed and kept reasonably warm and dry. Trash has to be removed; medical care and rudimentary security provided -- to which ends a dozen or more committees may toil night and day. But for the individual occupier, one problem often overshadows everything else, including job loss, the destruction of the middle class, and the reign of the 1%. And that is the single question: Where am I going to pee?

Some of the Occupy Wall Street encampments now spreading across the U.S. have access to Port-o-Potties (Freedom Plaza in Washington, D.C.) or, better yet, restrooms with sinks and running water (Fort Wayne, Indiana). Others require their residents to forage on their own. At Zuccotti Park, just blocks from Wall Street, this means long waits for the restroom at a nearby Burger King or somewhat shorter ones at a Starbucks a block away. At McPherson Square in D.C., a twenty-something occupier showed me the pizza parlor where she can cop a pee during the hours it’s open, as well as the alley where she crouches late at night. Anyone with restroom-related issues -- arising from age, pregnancy, prostate problems, or irritable bowel syndrome -- should prepare to join the revolution in diapers.

Of course, political protesters do not face the challenges of urban camping alone. Homeless people confront the same issues every day: how to scrape together meals, keep warm at night by covering themselves with cardboard or tarp, and relieve themselves without committing a crime. Public restrooms are sparse in American cities -- "as if the need to go to the bathroom does not exist," travel expert Arthur Frommer once observed. And yet to yield to bladder pressure is to risk arrest. A report entitled “Criminalizing Crisis,” to be released later this month by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, recounts the following story from Wenatchee, Washington:

"Toward the end of 2010, a family of two parents and three children that had been experiencing homelessness for a year and a half applied for a 2-bedroom apartment. The day before a scheduled meeting with the apartment manager during the final stages of acquiring the lease, the father of the family was arrested for public urination. The arrest occurred at an hour when no public restrooms were available for use. Due to the arrest, the father was unable to make the appointment with the apartment manager and the property was rented out to another person. As of March 2011, the family was still homeless and searching for housing."

What the Occupy Wall Streeters are beginning to discover, and homeless people have known all along, is that most ordinary, biologically necessary activities are illegal when performed in American streets -- not just peeing, but sitting, lying down, and sleeping. While the laws vary from city to city, one of the harshest is in Sarasota, Florida, which passed an ordinance in 2005 that makes it illegal to “engage in digging or earth-breaking activities” -- that is, to build a latrine -- cook, make a fire, or be asleep and “when awakened state that he or she has no other place to live.”

It is illegal, in other words, to be homeless or live outdoors for any other reason. It should be noted, though, that there are no laws requiring cities to provide food, shelter, or restrooms for their indigent citizens.

The current prohibition on homelessness began to take shape in the 1980s, along with the ferocious growth of the financial industry (Wall Street and all its tributaries throughout the nation). That was also the era in which we stopped being a nation that manufactured much beyond weightless, invisible “financial products,” leaving the old industrial working class to carve out a livelihood at places like Wal-Mart.

As it turned out, the captains of the new “casino economy” -- the stock brokers and investment bankers -- were highly sensitive, one might say finicky, individuals, easily offended by having to step over the homeless in the streets or bypass them in commuter train stations. In an economy where a centimillionaire could turn into a billionaire overnight, the poor and unwashed were a major buzzkill. Starting with Mayor Rudy Giuliani in New York, city after city passed “broken windows” or “quality of life” ordinances making it dangerous for the homeless to loiter or, in some cases, even look “indigent,” in public spaces.

No one has yet tallied all the suffering occasioned by this crackdown -- the deaths from cold and exposure -- but “Criminalizing Crisis” offers this story about a homeless pregnant woman in Columbia, South Carolina:

"During daytime hours, when she could not be inside of a shelter, she attempted to spend time in a museum and was told to leave. She then attempted to sit on a bench outside the museum and was again told to relocate. In several other instances, still during her pregnancy, the woman was told that she could not sit in a local park during the day because she would be ‘squatting.’ In early 2011, about six months into her pregnancy, the homeless woman began to feel unwell, went to a hospital, and delivered a stillborn child."

Well before Tahrir Square was a twinkle in anyone’s eye, and even before the recent recession, homeless Americans had begun to act in their own defense, creating organized encampments, usually tent cities, in vacant lots or wooded areas. These communities often feature various elementary forms of self-governance: food from local charities has to be distributed, latrines dug, rules -- such as no drugs, weapons, or violence -- enforced. With all due credit to the Egyptian democracy movement, the Spanish indignados, and rebels all over the world, tent cities are the domestic progenitors of the American occupation movement.

There is nothing “political” about these settlements of the homeless -- no signs denouncing greed or visits from leftwing luminaries -- but they have been treated with far less official forbearance than the occupation encampments of the “American autumn.” LA’s Skid Row endures constant police harassment, for example, but when it rained, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa had ponchos distributed to nearby Occupy LA.

All over the country, in the last few years, police have moved in on the tent cities of the homeless, one by one, from Seattle to Wooster, Sacramento to Providence, in raids that often leave the former occupants without even their minimal possessions. In Chattanooga, Tennessee, last summer, a charity outreach worker explained the forcible dispersion of a local tent city by saying, “The city will not tolerate a tent city. That’s been made very clear to us. The camps have to be out of sight.”

What occupiers from all walks of life are discovering, at least every time they contemplate taking a leak, is that to be homeless in America is to live like a fugitive. The destitute are our own native-born “illegals,” facing prohibitions on the most basic activities of survival. They are not supposed to soil public space with their urine, their feces, or their exhausted bodies. Nor are they supposed to spoil the landscape with their unusual wardrobe choices or body odors. They are, in fact, supposed to die, and preferably to do so without leaving a corpse for the dwindling public sector to transport, process, and burn.

But the occupiers are not from all walks of life, just from those walks that slope downwards -- from debt, joblessness, and foreclosure -- leading eventually to pauperism and the streets. Some of the present occupiers were homeless to start with, attracted to the occupation encampments by the prospect of free food and at least temporary shelter from police harassment. Many others are drawn from the borderline-homeless “nouveau poor,” and normally encamp on friends’ couches or parents’ folding beds.

In Portland, Austin, and Philadelphia, the Occupy Wall Street movement is taking up the cause of the homeless as its own, which of course it is. Homelessness is not a side issue unconnected to plutocracy and greed. It’s where we’re all eventually headed -- the 99%, or at least the 70%, of us, every debt-loaded college grad, out-of-work school teacher, and impoverished senior -- unless this revolution succeeds.

Barbara Ehrenreich is the author of This Land Is Their Land: Reports from a Divided Nation. She won the 2004 Puffin/Nation Prize. Her seventeenth book, Bright-Sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America (Metropolitan Books), has just been published. Her bestselling book Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, 10th Anniversary Edition, has just been released by Picador Books.

Linda's Hearth note: I truly appreciate all that I have read from Ehrenreich. My recently deceased friend, Shannon Casamo, introduced me to Barbara Ehrenreich's writing in a Ms Magazine long ago, when she and I were working out our partnership as welfare rights activists. Shannon was already working for homeless people through Peter Carota's beach flats food outreach, and I was homeless with two sons at the time. Read Nickel and Dimed - on (Not) Getting By In America about the same time I was watching the 2009 financial crashing and the arrogance of contemporary financiers. Wish I could meet this woman before the Lodging Trial I'm facing?

In this article, I see for the first time in print, words from a writer who isn't part of the movement to end persecution of homeless people (I am including our legal support folks), who realizes that our federal and other policies of making homeless people "go away" is killing them. Barbara Ehrenreich, thank you for being true to your intellect. I believe it can help save some of these destroyed lives.

CounterPunch.org Claims MILITANT LIBERALISM of Occupy Wall Street Movement Does Not Grasp Class Disparities

2011-10-22T10:44:00.000-07:00

Weekend Edition October 21-23, 2011

A Look at the Occupy Movement

In a Manner Neither Forceful Nor Foolish

by RON JACOBS

I first got wind of the Occupy Wall Street action back in its planning stages. I didn’t give it much thought, but considered it a potentially positive thing, especially if it began with a fair number of people participating or somehow captured the mainstream media’s attention. As it continues to unfold, I must admit that the continued growth of the movement has exceeded my expectations exponentially. I have yet to spend a night at an Occupy encampment. However, I have participated in a couple assemblies in Burlington, VT and am in touch with a few occupiers in Manhattan, Washington, DC, San Francisco and Asheville, NC. These contacts have provided me with an overview of the movement and what it hopes to achieve.

It is impossible to put every one involved in this movement into one ideological box. In its current state, it is reasonable to portray the Occupy movement as one where multiple ideologies are competing to be heard. Libertarians and socialists; anarchists and liberals. They are all present and they are all vocal in their attempts to represent the movement. Yet, if there is one dominant trend in the literature, speeches, and encampments of the movement, it would be that of militant liberalism. Perhaps it is best to look at the anarchist classic The Floodgates of Anarchy for a definition of this political trend. In a backhanded manner, the authors Christie and Meltzer describe militant liberalism by “its inability to understand the class struggle, without the recognition of which social change is impossible.” No matter what those signs one might see about the class war, the reality of the movement at this point is better revealed in its mantra regarding the 99% and the 1%. This oversimplification of who owns the so-called means of production ignores the relationship of the so-called 99% to that means and does not demand a change in that ownership to those that actually produce the wealth.

Some in the mainstream media, along with various loudmouths on the far right, have criticized the Occupy movement because it has too many demands. What does it really want, they ask? This is a legitimate criticism and further illustrates the underlying liberalism of the movement in its current form. Every ill that the movement has highlighted: foreclosures, bank bailouts, unemployment, austerity measures and (rather belatedly) the wars of Washington, are related to one phenomenon. That would be the current manifestation of the economic formation known as monopoly capitalism. Call it what you want, globalization, global capitalism or imperialism, the fact is that all of the ills highlighted by the Occupy movement are economic at their most fundamental. The only way to cure them is to end the economic system which by its very nature created them.

Making the banks smaller will not end the housing crisis or end unemployment. Nor will it fix the schools or create single-payer health insurance. It may encourage banks to lend money again, but the very nature of capitalism is for smaller economic units to compete for profit for themselves so that they can buy out their competition, thereby beginning the cycle of monopolization all over again. It is the very competition that creates monopolies, which by their creation end competition. The history of the United States–perhaps the ultimate capitalist nation–proves that government induced reforms designed to prevent the excesses of monopoly capitalism are always temporary, no matter how well meaning the reformers original intentions.

It is no longer possible to reform capitalism. Its current ruthlessness is unsurpassed in human history. The countless millions who toil at its mercy along with those that toil despite its existence can no longer be saved by liberal politicians or reformers. Nor can they be saved by green capitalists or those that operate on the Ben and Jerry’s model. While the efforts of these corporations are commendable in their own limited way, the very fact that they subscribe to the capitalist mode ensures their inability to solve the ills that economic system creates. While it is certainly true that some capitalists are crueler than others, the fact is that when times are tight and profits are squeezed the very nature of capitalism forces any corporation desiring to survive to exact some kind of heartlessness if they wish to survive. This is why monopoly capitalism itself is the problem. If the Occupy movement had only one demand that would address all of those demands attributed to it, it should be to abolish monopoly capitalism.

The left should be heartened by the Occupy movement. It should also be wary of those that would turn it into another MoveOn or Progressive Democrats organization. The reign of Obama should have proven once and for all that there are very few differences between the Democrats and the Republicans in the United States, just like there are few differences between the Tories and Labor in Britain or the SPD and CDU in Germany. All of these political groupings sold their souls to the neoliberal pipedream decades ago and no matter what they do or say, they are no longer in control of their politics or the outcome of those politics. Furthermore, the trends towards free market libertarianism within the Occupy movement should be addressed. Small time mercantilism and entrepreneurship has its place and a certain allure, yet the financial giants behind the capitalist libertarian movement are neither small time nor entrepreneurs. They are some of the cruelest capitalists on the planet.

The organic (as in its free flow and non-hierarchical, not what it eats) nature of the Occupy movement is its strength and weakness. Occupying is in itself a radical statement. Yet, as a veteran of numerous occupations/liberations I can honestly say that the fact of occupying can often become the raisin d’etre of a movement, thereby preventing further political action beyond that involved in maintaining the liberated space. Those of us with an anti-capitalist analysis would do well to involve ourselves in a manner that is neither forceful nor foolish.

Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way the Wind Blew: a History of the Weather Underground and Short Order Frame Up. Jacobs’ essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch’s collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. His collection of essays and other musings titled Tripping Through the American Night is now available and his new novel is The Co-Conspirator’s Tale. He can be reached at:ronj1955@gmail.com

Extraordinary Photographer Bob Fitch's Image Inspired New MLK Jr Monument in D.C.

2011-10-16T16:28:00.000-07:00

Pajaro man's photo inspired Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington

Pajaro man's photo inspired Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington

http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_18819976?nclick_check=1

Monterey County Herald

By MARC CABRERA - mcabrera@montereyherald.com

Pajaro photographer Bob Fitch, whose work inspired the MLK Memorial in Washington, at his home on Friday. Photo: REG REGALADO/Herald Correspondent

In 1966, photographer Bob Fitch was summoned to Atlanta for what would become a historic photo shoot with Martin Luther King Jr. Fitch, a 6-foot-tall, self-professed "blue-eyed gringo," captured King with his arms crossed, staring to his right.

An illustration of Mahatma Gandhi hangs nearby and serves as an almost mirror-reflection of two peacemakers measured up eye-to-eye.

King's reflective gaze, captured by Fitch's lens, is the basis for the MLK Memorial that was unveiled in August in Washington, D.C.

Fitch, a 73-year-old Bay Area native who resides in Pajaro, recalled the day he shot the iconic image.

"They called me up one afternoon and said, 'Dr. King's writing a new book. He's got 10 minutes this afternoon. Will you take some photos?'" Fitch said.

"I went down to the office. I positioned the print of Gandhi on the wall, and took this photo," Fitch said. "It's got a warmth and openness. Dr. King was a very affable, approachable person."

The MLK Memorial in Washington was modeled on Bob Fitch's photo. Photo: CHARLES DHARAPAK/Associated Press

Fitch's work with King and the civil rights movement began in the mid-1960s. He worked as a photographer for King at his Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Fitch's assignment became crucial, as racial tensions prevented black journalists from reporting in the South. Fitch traveled through Alabama, Mississippi and Georgia.

Fitch was attracted to the social issues of the time after graduating from a Protestant seminary school. He said he would often arrange for speakers from the South to speak
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at Bay Area churches.

"After school, I decided it's time for me to see this," he said.

Fitch has spent most of his career working for nonprofits, as well as doing some manual labor while continuing to hone his photography skills.

He said he came to know King well. Fitch's wife was a secretary to Coretta Scott King. Toward the end of his assignment with the conference, Fitch traveled with King to various events.

"A lot of people envision him as a dreamer — they latch on to that word, everyone likes to dream — but they really are a little more cautious about the fact that he was an organizer and a doer," Fitch said. "He really wanted to make things happen."

The process to build a King monument took shape in 1996, when President Bill Clinton signed legislation proposing the establishment of a memorial.

Some of Bob Fitch's work is featured on popular campaign posters.
Photo: REG REGALADO/Herald Correspondent

In 2000, San Francisco-based ROMA Design Group's entry was selected as the winning design.

Clayborn Carson, history professor at Stanford University and editor of King's official papers, was part of the team that submitted the winning design.

He said the team selected Fitch's photo for several reasons.

"We wanted the memorial to reflect King's words. ... The idea of him as a thinker, as an intellectual, someone who created words that are on the memorial," said Carson.

The designers drawing plans for the memorial needed something to work with, and Fitch's photo fit their needs.

"We wanted something that was focused on his face and upper body," Carson said. "That photo seemed to fit the bill."

Fitch's original image was modified during production of the memorial. The photo's negative was reversed, with King facing left.

Fitch said the memorial strayed from his personal vision for the project.

"It's kind of harsh. I don't mind it being (a strong image)," said Fitch. "It doesn't portray the warmth and availability to people that gave him his charisma."

The photographer said he has never received acknowledgement from the memorial's organization committee or the King family, which oversaw the project.

"I would have appreciated at least a courtesy call," Fitch said.

But he said he's not bitter.

"I'm honored my work is achieving his goal to help continue to tell the story of the miracle victory of the civil rights movement," Fitch said.

Fitch spends most of his time at home in Pajaro. He is active with the Resource Center for Nonviolence in Santa Cruz.

He recently spent time as a photographer for Assemblyman Luis Alejo's successful campaign.

He previously volunteered at Dorothy's Kitchen in Salinas. A Fitch photo of Dorothy Day, the organizer for whom the kitchen is named, hangs prominently on the kitchen's wall.

Jill Allen, development director for Franciscan Workers, which runs Dorothy's Kitchen, said Fitch's work deserves further accolades.

"I hope he gets all the recognition that he deserves. There's a lot of people who don't know who Bob Fitch is, and they don't know the extent, the volume of photo journalism he's done over the years," Allen said. "He's preserving our history."

Velvet Pistol's PROCLAMATION

2011-10-16T11:50:00.000-07:00

PROCLAMATION

It has been done, Messieurs!

Already the wax mannequins are invading the libraries
The women walk like watery flags
The madmen distribute the images of their spirit
To the disaffected doors of the churches

Laugh
I forbid you to laugh or to grit hour teeth
I forbid you to sell your songs of love

Scatter our tinsel
Eat the flowers and the splinters
Mingle the aliments of these animals
And give them the whole and remnant of the heart

.......Do not conduct our children to school
.......Learn their secret usage of the word

We have already reversed the multiplication asbles
We no longer reenter the house of crime
We are unwearied een in sleep
Hold on to it to say

.......Today is
.......Round about the world
.......For the
.......REVOLUTION
.......of the
.......WORLD.

-E.L.T.Messens

Linda's Hearth note:
These words are a suggested gift from my Beloved to Occupy Santa Cruz,
this poem is from surrealist 1970s Santa Cruz County zine
Velvet Pistol, undated.
Please forgive, and try to ignore, the "....." because I can't figure out how to make tabs stay put. -LL

Malcom X, "You don't have a turn-the-other-cheek revolution. ..."

2011-10-15T11:28:00.000-07:00

You Say You Want A Revolution

by Mark Halfmoon
Monday, August 29, 2011 at 3:45pm

In a headline to a link on Facebook to an August 25th opinion piece in the New York Times about Martin Luther King weeping from his grave by Dr. Cornell West, we're told "Martin Luther King Jr. Would Want a Revolution, Not a Memorial." Perhaps. But is the Ivory Tower professor himself really ready for the reality of a true revolution?

Revolution. How easily the word rolls off the tongue. But jumping up to do it requires a commitment to the possibility of personal loss of comfort, freedom, limbs, and life. And those of your loved ones. This demands a complete certainty of the heart regarding your cause.

Only true personal hardship and fear brings people to the streets in a revolution. People don't want to fight. It's not in human nature to be confrontational toward authority. People have to come to a point that they can't take it any more. When they believe they have no other choice. People don't do it in their spare time, on weekends. It is an all consuming pursuit. People revolt when they see their children killed, are hungry, are brutalized. That's what causes revolutions. Not just some abstract debatable issues.

While the American Revolution was a case of the aristocratic class of the colonies convincing the impecunious to fight against their British rivals by offering them an actual slice of the spoils, the French who were barely surviving in abject poverty were forced to directly alleviate their suffering by violently deposing the source of their misery.

The American Blacks who took to the streets and formed militant revolutionary organizations in the 1960s and '70s were at a point of oppression and degradation they could no longer abide without exploding.

The revolutionary anti-war movement arose when traumatized and damaged young men returned from Vietnam with stories of the horrific discovery that they had been set up to be the enemy, committing atrocities against people in their own land, and fear of the draft swept through the country. People felt it personally and viscerally, and reacted thus.

Finally, if anyone entertains the fantasy that revolution can be peaceful or bloodless, they need to understand that the power establishment being revolted against did not get that memo. There will be violence, whether you are willing to commit it or not. The shock troops of empire are willing to commit it. As well as many of your own allies. Once the ball is in play, the game is on. So it better be what you really want.

You don't have a peaceful revolution. You don't have a turn-the-other-cheek revolution. There's no such thing as a nonviolent revolution. Revolution is bloody. Revolution is hostile. Revolution knows no compromise. Revolution overturns and destroys everything that gets in its way. ~Malcolm X

Tea Partiers not a mob but '99 percenters' called mob, by phony Republicans

2011-10-15T11:12:00.000-07:00

“Mobs” are a Crazy, Liberal, All American Idea

Guest Post by Dr. William Turner

Apparently conservative leaders have taken to calling the Occupy Wall Street protesters and their cousins across the country “mobs.” Think Progress reports that House Majority leader Eric Cantor used that term in speaking about the Ninety-Nine Percent movement, which is who is occupying Wall Street. Some

1. Happily, President Obama’s press secretary had the good sense to point out the gross hypocrisy of persons who celebrated and benefited from the Tea Party protest of 2009-2010 calling anyone a “mob.” I have heard no reports of Ninety-Nine Percenters deliberately disrupting town meetings of members of Congress, as the Tea Party mob did in summer 2009.

2. But the point goes much deeper than that. As White House spokesmodel Jay Carney put it, one man’s democracy is another man’s mob. “Mob,” of course, is a term of derision that persons in power tend to use to try to dismiss any large group of persons who threaten their power. It connotes a group motivated by baser instincts, in contrast to the supposed refinement of the persons in power (I know, extra silly in the current situation, but there it is).

3. One suspects that King James II considered the group that John Locke was a part of, who wanted to chase James off the throne of England, and eventually did so, a “mob.” But that “mob,” or a prominent member of it, produced some of the most important works of philosophy in the Anglo-American tradition, including the book that provided the logic for the American Revolution.

4. Even higher irony still is the fact that the Tea Party in 2009 deliberately took their name and inspiration from the original American revolutionary mob, the men who raided ships in Boston Harbor and threw private property into the water, destroying it (tea is not much use to anyone after it gets wet, as you may have noticed – who wants salted tea?). I guarantee you that King George III, King of England at the time of the original Boston Tea Party, and throughout the American Revolution, regarded the American revolutionaries as a mob. When they closed the Declaration of Independence by pledging their “lives, [their] fortunes, and [their] sacred honor,” they weren’t kidding. They knew that, if they lost the war they had just picked with the world’s leading military power, they would all die.

5. And, of course, there’s one important point that makes the modern Tea Partiers’ pretentions risible in the extreme. Not only is no modern Tea Bagger in any danger of dying for any principle of politics or law in the United States in 2011, but the modern Tea Baggers lack even the justification that their forebears in 1774 had for their protest: taxation without representation. The modern Tea Baggers may find frustrating that they do not control the government, but that fact alone obviously does not mean that they lack representation. They have their representatives in Congress, only not the majority. It’s called a democratic republic. Tough turkey. You don’t always get what you want, and adults just deal with it.

As usual, conservatives want to have their cake and eat it, too. They want to gloat about their electoral victory in 2010 with the help of a group who named themselves after the original American mob, then denounce as a “mob” a group that is truly democratic in that neither they, nor any other powerful institution, in the United States, has any control over.

©2011 William Turner. You can visit Dr. Turner’s blog at: http://beingliberal.net/category/modern-politics/

Occupy Together ~~ every sunrise is a new success

2011-10-14T12:24:00.000-07:00

For Wall Street Protests, What Constitutes Success?

by Alan Greenblatt

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Demonstrators associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement face off with police Friday in the streets of New York City's financial district.

Wall Street protesters avoided a showdown Friday that could have forced them from their Manhattan camp, but they still face the same question that would have confronted them if they had been evicted: Where do they go from here?

The Occupy Wall Street movement has been more successful than even its own organizers would have predicted when they began nearly a month ago. The New York City protest has shown staying power, garnered considerable media attention and inspired satellite protests in more than 100 cities nationwide.

````````Movements don't write legislation. They force open a line of questions that makes it ````````possible for people to imagine new policies. That's always the first step.

``````````````````- Nina Eliasoph, University of Southern California sociologist

Demonstrators have been criticized, largely by conservative politicians and pundits, for questioning institutions — mainly the financial industry and the very wealthy — that loom large in American society. Even sympathetic observers wonder whether the protesters can convert their message of unhappiness about income inequality into policies that actually lead to change.

"The first step of these things is to mobilize community and energy, but at some point that energy and strong feelings have to be focused on what you can actually do to change what it is they don't like," says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University.

Eventually, the protesters will have to build alliances with politicians and institutional forces that, in these early days, they have sometimes spurned. But it's premature to expect them to have a clear agenda at this point, say scholars who have studied past protest movements.

"What starts these movements is a list of grievances," says Rosemary Feurer, a historian at Northern Illinois University. "You don't start with a list of goals, but with a sense of what's wrong."

First, Define The Problem

That's what happened in the past, Feurer says. The populist movements of the 19th century and the early union movement began in a similar fashion: An encampment of people came together, found they shared a sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo and worked to change it.

Figuring out how best to express those complaints — and what action to take — always takes time.

American Mad

A selected list of past American protest movements that had a lasting impact.

Civil rights groups picketed a meeting of the board of education in downtown St. Louis in June 1963 to protest integration policies in public schools.

Abolitionism: Nineteenth-century demands for an end to slavery helped bring about the Civil War and emancipation.

Populism: Farmers and other working people pushed an early "anti-Wall Street" agenda that worked to break up monopoly power.

Unions: The labor movement of the 19th and early 20th centuries gave rise to strikes and proposals such as an eight-hour work day.

Bonus Army: A 1932 encampment in Washington, D.C., of World War I veterans seeking payment for military service; symbolic of the revived labor movement of the 1930s.

Civil Rights: A nonviolent movement that peaked in the 1960s with laws providing equal public access and voting rights for African-Americans; helped inspire feminists, Hispanics and gay rights movements.

Vietnam: The war inspired mass protests on campuses and elsewhere in the 1960s and 1970s.

Tea Party: The conservative movement coalesced around anti-government feelings beginning in 2009 and quickly became influential with the Republican Party.

— Alan Greenblatt

"The practical matter here is that where there will be actual, let's say, specific policy requests we'll be working toward, those have to come out of a discussion of the group that is organic and consensus-driven," says Ed Needham, a media spokesman for Occupy Wall Street.

"We're doing our best to define who we are at the moment," he says. "Once we are able to do that, we can do things on the policy front."

Protesting, Not Legislating

If the Wall Street and other Occupy protests are going to lead to real change, activists will have to adopt both an "outside" and an "inside" strategy, says Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University.

They need to keep pushing from outside the normal political channels, but they also have to learn how to work inside those channels, whether by helping create new institutions with a clear agenda that reflects their goals or, more likely, by working hand-in-glove with existing institutions.

It may take awhile to articulate an actual five-point plan that leads to, say, a greater distribution of wealth. And if history is any guide, such a plan may not come out of the protest movement directly, but from politicians responding to it.

"The concrete success, the actual reforms or changes in the system that result from something like this, don't come from the protest movements themselves," says Ruy Teixeira, a senior fellow with the Center for American Progress, a liberal think tank in Washington, D.C.

Already, Occupy Wall Street has won support from important institutions on the left such as the AFL-CIO, which urged members to mobilize to prevent protesters from being ousted from Zuccotti Park. But the movement has puzzled political observers by seeming to turn away other forms of help.

When Rep. John Lewis showed up last week to address the crowd at the Occupy Atlanta site, protesters praised the Georgia Democrat for his work in politics and civil rights but successfully argued that he shouldn't be allowed to bump the group's "agenda" in order to speak right away.

Lewis, who had other obligations, decided to leave, though he said he took no offense. Recalling his own days as head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s, he said civil rights groups sometimes reached consensus slowly and refused to be deferential to more established leaders.

"It is growing, it is maturing, it will work out," Lewis told reporters at the scene. "It will come of age."

Building Up Support

It may, at any rate, be premature for Occupy Wall Street to join hands with politicians, according to Feurer, the Northern Illinois historian. "The movement has to grow before it can be politically effective," she says.

The protests, however sustained and widespread, are not yet large enough to amount to a real reflection of public opinion.

But the mere fact that more people are talking about income inequality and the growing share of wealth controlled by the nation's richest 1 percent represents a type of victory, says Nina Eliasoph, a sociologist at the University of Southern California.

"Movements don't write legislation," she says. "They force open a line of questions that makes it possible for people to imagine new policies. That's always the first step."

When protests appear to be successful and express important ideas, some people will want to sustain them by moving past street theater toward affecting actual policy changes, says Kazin, the Georgetown historian and author of American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation.

"This always happens with protests that get large. People say, 'This is wonderful and I want to do something with this,' and they become professional activists of one form or another," Kazin says. "Believe it or not, you end up having organizations."

from Hearts and Minds to Occupy Everywhere

2011-10-13T16:19:00.000-07:00

An Open Letter to the Occupiers from a Veteran Troublemaker

by Jim Wallis

Throughout history, often it has been left to the youth of a society to do that, and you boldly have stepped into the role of the emerging generation, which sometimes means saying and doing what others only think. You have articulated, loudly and clearly, the internal monologue of a nation.

Some of you have told me that you expected only to foment a short-lived protest and that you were as surprised by this "movement" as anyone else. Try to listen and learn from those whose feelings and participation you are evoking by encouraging more reflection than certainty.

While there are some among us who may misunderstand your motives and message, know that you are an inspiration to many more.

One of you told me in New York City last week, "This is not a protest, but a think tank." Another of your compatriots wanted me to understand that you are trying to build something in Liberty Square that you aspire to create for our global village -- a more cooperative society.

Most telling to me was the answer to the first question I asked of the first person I talked to at the Wall Street demonstrations. I inquired of one of the non-leaders who helped lead the first days of Occupation what most drew him to get involved in the demonstration, and he replied, "I want to have children someday, and this is becoming a world not good for children."

My 13- and 8-year-old boys came to mind when I heard his answer, and I felt thankful. It is precisely those deepest, most authentic feelings and motivations that should preoccupy you, rather than how best to form and communicate superficial political rhetoric.

You are raising very basic questions about an economy that has become increasingly unfair, unstable, unsustainable, and unhappy for a growing number of people. Those same questions are being asked by many others at the bottom, the middle, and even some at the top of the economic pecking order.

There are ethics to be named here, and the transition from the pseudo-ethic of endless growth to the moral ethics of sustainability is a conversation occurring even now in our nation’s business schools (if, perhaps, secreted inside the official curriculum).

Keep pressing those values questions because they will move people more than a set of demands or policy suggestions. Those can and must come later.

And try not to demonize those you view as opponents, as good people can get trapped in bad systems and we've seen a lot of that. Still, you are right for saying that we all must be held accountable -- both systems and the individuals within them. It is imperative that we hear that message right now.

The new safe spaces you have created to ask fundamental questions, now in hundreds of locations around the country and the world, are helping to carve out fresh societal space to examine ourselves -- who we are, what we value most, and where we want to go from here.

Instead of simply attacking the establishment "economists," you can become the citizen economists, like the young economics major I met at the Wall Street occupation who discussed with me new approaches for society’s investment and innovation. We desperately need new vision like hers to come up with alternative ways of performing essential functions.

Keep asking what a just economy should look like and whom it should be for. They are noble questions. But you’d do well to avoid Utopian dreaming about things that will never happen. Look instead at how we could do things differently, more responsibly, more equitably, and yes, more democratically.

Don’t be afraid to get practical and specific about how we can and must do things better than we have in recent years. One of our best moral economists, Amartya Sen, says that "being against the market is like being against conversation. It's a form of exchange." You have begun such a conversation about what markets could and should be. Keep talking.

Even in forums where business and political leaders meet, they too are asking those questions and using terms like "a moral economy" as a way to interrogate our present and failed practices. I’ve been in such a gathering this week -- just days apart from visiting yours -- where the participants slept on featherbedding in five-star hotels rather than in pup tents on the sidewalk. And yet, surprisingly, they were asking many of the same questions you are.

Keep driving both the moral and practical questions about the economics of our local and global households, for that is what the discipline was supposed to be about in the first place.

I know you believe that the leadership on Wall Street, and Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues have all failed you. Indeed, they have failed us all. But while you feel betrayed by both our business and political leaders, don’t give up on leadership per se.

We need innovative leadership now more than ever. And you are providing some of it.

Think of stewards rather than masters of the universe as the model for leadership.

And remember, non-violence is not just a critical tactic but a necessary commitment to moral and civil discourse that can awaken the best in all of us. There is much to be angry about, but channeling that energy into creative, non-violent action is the only way to prevent dangerous cynicism and nihilism that also can be a human response to the injustice and marginalization many people now feel.

The anarchism of anger has never produced the change that the discipline and constructive program of non-violent movements has done again and again.

I remember what it feels like to see your movement as a lead story on the evening news every night, and the adrenaline rush that being able to muster 10,000 people in two hours' time to march in protest against injustice and inhumanity can bring. I was in your shoes 40 years ago as a student leading demonstrations against the Vietnam War, racism, and nuclear proliferation.

I would advise you to cultivate humility more than overconfidence or self indulgence. This really is not about you. It's about the marginalized masses, the signs of the times, and the profound yearning for lasting change. Take that larger narrative more seriously than you take yourselves.

Finally, do not let go of your hope. Popular movements are the only force that truly brings about change in society. The established order is never as secure and impervious to change as those who preside over it believe it to be.

Remember that re-action is never as powerful as re-construction. And whatever you may think of organized religion, please keep in mind that change requires spiritual as well as political resources, and that invariably any new economy will be accompanied by a new (or very old) spirituality.

So I will say, may God bless you and keep you.

May God be gracious to you and give you -– and all of us -- peace.

Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: A Guide for Economic and Moral Recovery, and CEO of Sojourners. He blogs at www.godspolitics.com. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis.

...righteousness like an everflowing stream

2011-10-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

"Even though you offer me your burnt offerings and grain offerings, I will not accept them; and the offerings of well-being of your fatted animals I will not look upon. Take away from me the noise of your songs; I will not listen to the melody of your harps. But let justice roll down like waters; and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream."

- Amos 5:22-24

SC Weekly Reviews Week-young Occupy Santa Cruz

2011-10-12T06:58:00.000-07:00

Occupy Santa Cruz Learns The Ropes

By Tessa Stuart, with additional reporting by Jacob Pierce

Wed, Oct 12, 2011

Photos ~ Chip Scheuer

A movement finds its footing

‘There are liberals. There are Marxists. There are Libertarians. The beautiful thing is that there is a lot of diversity,” said Occupy Santa Cruz protester Patrick Roooney, a 2010 UCSC graduate.

The ideologically mixed crowd remained patient and focused on the speakers Monday evening at the fledgling group’s sixth general assembly meeting. They seemed unfazed by the dizzying array of committees, subcommittees and various interest groups forming. “This is more practical and more functional. They got good practice already from the weekend, and you can see they’re learning,” said Linda Lemaster, a community organizer and one of Monday’s speakers. They discussed whether or not to protest against counter-protestors and Ron Paul supporters. They also covered what to do when police arrive.

“There will be no way to discuss a goddamn thing if there is no protocol for what to do when the police get here!” warned Robert Lewis, a Salinas resident who has been active in camping out. The group eventually decided to leave how to handle the police up to the protestors’ discretion for now.

While the body count has dwindled in the week since the first general meeting in Laurel Park on Tuesday, Oct. 4, there are unmistakable signs that the Occupy Santa Cruz movement is beginning to coalesce after a week of gestation. On Monday morning, Oct. 10, a dozen demonstrators ranging in age from their early twenties to their late sixties sat in camp chairs or milled around the steps of the Santa Cruz County Courthouse.

“The facilitators are getting better,” said Fred Schmidt, adding that while meetings were getting better at staying on track, some members were frustrated at the slow pace imposed by the consensus process. To them, he quoted Jerry Garcia: “‘All good things in good time,’” he said, adding, “Things will happen if you hang out long enough. It’s just the hanging out that takes time.”

The location of the latest demonstration is itself a sign that the group is beginning to focus on its audience. Late last week, protestors were tucked away in San Lorenzo Park; the group decamped for one night to Mission Plaza before re-settling on the courthouse steps on high-traffic Water Street, near the corner of Ocean, and retaining a base in the park.

Many drivers honked or hollered supportive messages to the demonstrators, and several passersby picked signs up to show their support. Two women with young children held official National Nurses United signs that read, “Take it Back. Tax Wall Street;” other handmade signs bearing the messages “Boycott China,” “End the Fed,” and “Stop Funding Wars” were arranged on the steps of the county building.

Scrawled in sharpie on one cardboard sign was a list of demands: free all political prisoners, tax oil companies to pay for healthcare and education, end GMOs, no militarization of the border, end the sleeping ban—a hodgepodge of demands, and a microcosm of a movement that that has become a clearinghouse for grievances.

The Occupy Wall Street movement that began in New York City on Sept. 17 has ignited pockets of collective frustration across the country. At press time, there were 1382 “Occupy” communities registered on the website Meetup.com, the largest in San Francisco, Denver, Phoenix, San Diego, Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Seattle and Portland.

Santa Cruz’s movement started Oct. 4, a drizzly Tuesday, with a crowd that swelled to more than 200 people at Laurel Park. The meeting began with a reading of the manifesto written by Occupy Wall Street before goals specific to Santa Cruz were established.

At times, there was some conflation about where the protestors were directing their anger—some were frustrated at corporations and banks, some blamed city government and the county government, some sloganeered “Vote with your dollars” and others advocated abandoning dollars altogether to subvert the economic hegemony.

A mild-mannered octogenarian proposed occupying the former Borders on Pacific Avenue, a suggestion that was countered with arguments that it would disrupt local businesses and put protestors at a tactical disadvantage to law enforcement. Several other proposals—the Veterans Memorial Hall, Chase Bank on Water Street, the Rittenhouse Building—were raised and voted down before the group finally reached consensus.

The crowed ultimately decided to reconvene Thursday at 10am to occupy the Santa Cruz County Courthouse and San Lorenzo Park. The date, Oct. 6, was chosen in solidarity with other “Occupy” actions happening around the country.

On Thursday morning, protestors began erecting tents in a thicket of oak trees beside the lawn bowling courts in San Lorenzo Park. Literature was distributed among the crowd before the meeting began, including a nine-page handbook titled: “OCCUPY! Your Guide to the International Occupation Movement of 2011” and a map of Downtown Santa Cruz delineating the route Friday’s march would take (Dakota to Laurel to Pacific to Cooper to Front to River to Water to Ocean and back to San Lorenzo Park).

“I think it’s going to be a long process and I know there is a wide range of demands, but two of the things I’d like to see are campaign finance reform and a return to higher taxes like before Reagan,” said Noah Shepherdson, an in-home support services worker who cares for two quadriplegics. “People who are making more than $250,000 a year and paying less than their secretary, that’s just ridiculous.”

By Monday some of the realities of an extended protest were becoming clear. “It’s hard. It’s not just consensus that’s hard, but sleeping outside on the ground is hard,” said Lemaster, adding that she has hopes the protest will make inroads to connect poor people in Santa Cruz with the rest of the community. It’s already happening, she said, and Rooney, the UCSC grad, concurred.

“Regardless of everyone’s political beliefs, the unifying thread is that economic inequality is unacceptable,” said Rooney, “and that big money still has to be taken down.”

With additional reporting by Jacob Pierce.

Occupy Santa Cruz Learns The Ropes

A movement finds its footing

By Tessa Stuart Wed, Oct 12, 2011

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Credit: Chip Scheuer

‘There are liberals. There are Marxists. There are Libertarians. The beautiful thing is that there is a lot of diversity,” said Occupy Santa Cruz protester Patrick Roooney, a 2010 UCSC graduate.

The ideologically mixed crowd remained patient and focused on the speakers Monday evening at the fledgling group’s sixth general assembly meeting. They seemed unfazed by the dizzying array of committees, subcommittees and various interest groups forming. “This is more practical and more functional. They got good practice already from the weekend, and you can see they’re learning,” said Linda Lemaster, a community organizer and one of Monday’s speakers. They discussed whether or not to protest against counterprotestors and Ron Paul supporters. They also covered what to do when police arrive.

“Regardless of everyone’s political beliefs, the unifying thread is that economic inequality is unacceptable,” said Rooney, “and that big money still has to be taken down.”

With additional reporting by Jacob Pierce.

Occupy Santa Cruz Learns The Ropes

A movement finds its footing

By Tessa Stuart Wed, Oct 12, 2011

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Credit: Chip Scheuer

‘There are liberals. There are Marxists. There are Libertarians. The beautiful thing is that there is a lot of diversity,” said Occupy Santa Cruz protester Patrick Roooney, a 2010 UCSC graduate.

The ideologically mixed crowd remained patient and focused on the speakers Monday evening at the fledgling group’s sixth general assembly meeting. They seemed unfazed by the dizzying array of committees, subcommittees and various interest groups forming. “This is more practical and more functional. They got good practice already from the weekend, and you can see they’re learning,” said Linda Lemaster, a community organizer and one of Monday’s speakers. They discussed whether or not to protest against counterprotestors and Ron Paul supporters. They also covered what to do when police arrive.

“Regardless of everyone’s political beliefs, the unifying thread is that economic inequality is unacceptable,” said Rooney, “and that big money still has to be taken down.”

With additional reporting by Jacob Pierce.

Occupy Santa Cruz Learns The Ropes

A movement finds its footing

By Tessa Stuart Wed, Oct 12, 2011

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0 Comments
Email
Share2
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Credit: Chip Scheuer

‘There are liberals. There are Marxists. There are Libertarians. The beautiful thing is that there is a lot of diversity,” said Occupy Santa Cruz protester Patrick Roooney, a 2010 UCSC graduate.

The ideologically mixed crowd remained patient and focused on the speakers Monday evening at the fledgling group’s sixth general assembly meeting. They seemed unfazed by the dizzying array of committees, subcommittees and various interest groups forming. “This is more practical and more functional. They got good practice already from the weekend, and you can see they’re learning,” said Linda Lemaster, a community organizer and one of Monday’s speakers. They discussed whether or not to protest against counterprotestors and Ron Paul supporters. They also covered what to do when police arrive.

“Regardless of everyone’s political beliefs, the unifying thread is that economic inequality is unacceptable,” said Rooney, “and that big money still has to be taken down.”

With additional reporting by Jacob Pierce.

Occupy Santa Cruz Learns The Ropes

A movement finds its footing

By Tessa Stuart Wed, Oct 12, 2011

- A
- A
- A
0 Comments
Email
Share2
0

Credit: Chip Scheuer

‘There are liberals. There are Marxists. There are Libertarians. The beautiful thing is that there is a lot of diversity,” said Occupy Santa Cruz protester Patrick Roooney, a 2010 UCSC graduate.

The ideologically mixed crowd remained patient and focused on the speakers Monday evening at the fledgling group’s sixth general assembly meeting. They seemed unfazed by the dizzying array of committees, subcommittees and various interest groups forming. “This is more practical and more functional. They got good practice already from the weekend, and you can see they’re learning,” said Linda Lemaster, a community organizer and one of Monday’s speakers. They discussed whether or not to protest against counterprotestors and Ron Paul supporters. They also covered what to do when police arrive.

“Regardless of everyone’s political beliefs, the unifying thread is that economic inequality is unacceptable,” said Rooney, “and that big money still has to be taken down.”

With additional reporting by Jacob Pierce.

The Banks Are Made of Marble, With A Guard At Every Door

2011-10-09T12:35:00.000-07:00

To Occupy Santa Cruz, Occupy Wall Street, all my occupying children and brothers and sisters in the US of A and beyond ... restorative justice! Demand that people who stole and cheated and lied to us about it and then told our Congress when it tried to investigate: "you can't stop us because you don't understand money, "its complicated", you need us, or else we will rip up the world economy ...with these powerful HORNS of other peoples' plenty: give us welfare, pay us for our crimes". Don't forget all those Corporate Board members of many corporations, who did their directorial jobs as tho' America was a craps table in Reno and the rest of the world, just five dollar coins to dicker with. Fundamental ethics does not require greater regulation. The Golden Parachute crowd gets a BIG Fail from me. Stealing peoples' lives just to look awesome to one's buddies. NO MORE. Close the banks STILL run by felonious heartless freaks.

Linda's Hearth note: will dress this up w/headlines, photo later

October 8 ~ Occupy Santa Cruz, Glimpses

2011-10-08T11:10:00.000-07:00

Last Night at OCCUPY SANTA CRUZ

by Alex Darocy Friday Oct 7th, 2011 2:38 AM

occupy-santa-cruz-17.jpg

General Assembly

by Alex Darocy Friday Oct 7th, 2011 2:38 AM

chris-doyon-occupy-santa-...

Chris Doyon.

October 7 Beach Gift to Occupy Santa Cruz

2011-10-07T21:24:00.000-07:00

Occupy Santa Cruz, a Tidal Offering

October 7th, 2011 ·

This morning at Twin Lakes Beach, P-sign Paul gives a big thumbs up to OSC as the sun shines and our momentum builds

This morning at Twin Lakes Beach, P-sign Paul gives a big thumbs up to #OccupySantaCruz as the sun shines and our momentum builds.

He was unique. His own person. Our own person.

2011-10-05T18:20:00.000-07:00

steve jobs apple obituary rip

By Mat Honan Oct 5, 2011 7:41 PM 254,343

Steve Jobs Is Dead

Steve Jobs is dead. The Apple chairman and former CEO who made personal computers, smartphones, tablets, and digital animation mass-market products passed away today. We're going to miss him. Deeply, and personally.

Steven P. Jobs passed away on October 5th, 2011 after a long struggle with pancreatic cancer. He was just 56 years old. We mourn his passing, and wish his family the very best.

Let's address this up front: Gizmodo and Steve Jobs had, at best, a tumultuous relationship. Yet no matter how much he may have hated us, we admired him.

No, that's not quite right. We loved him.

He was the reason many of us got into this industry, or even care about technology at all. He made the computer personal, and the smartphone fun. Bill Gates may have put a computer on every office desk, but it was Steve Jobs who put one in every dorm room and bedroom and living room. And then, years later, he repeated the trick, putting one in every bag and every pocket, thanks to the iPad and iPhone. If you use a computer or smartphone today, it is either one he created, or an imitation of his genius.

He changed the way movies are made, the way music is sold, the way stories are told, the very way we interact with the world around us. He helped us work, and gave us new ways to play. He was a myth made man.

Prior to Steve Jobs, computers were alien to most of us. They were accessible to few people without an engineering degree. Not merely because of their complex operating procedures, but also because they were so cold and so inhuman. Jobs understood that they could be something more than that. That while computers would never be people, he could endow them with humanity. He could transform them into machines that not only anyone could use, but that everyday people would enjoy using thanks to the art of great design. He made them something that would be part of our lives. And he did that again and again.

His life story is familiar, but it deserves repeating. He was given up for adoption by his unmarried parents. He grew up in California, and was very much a product of that place and time. He took drugs. He got into phone hacking. Both were precursers to what would always be his interest: changing the status quo.

In 1976 he started Apple in a garage. Together with Steve Wozniak, he shipped the first true fully-built personal computer, the Apple I. He drove development of the Mac, understanding that it was the future of computers. The great thing that we would all see. He brought in a grown up to run the company. And that grown up forced him out of the company that he built and into the wilderness.

While he was gone, he started NeXT computer. The NeXT operating system would form the underpinnings of Apple's OS X, and iOS.

He also started the best movie studio of the past 30 years. Pixar's films were innovative, to be sure. It pushed the boundaries of CGI to such an extent that even today its early films still look great. But technology is only a tool. As with everything else he understood that great technology alone is not enough. It must be human to have an impact. Pixar movies tell stories. They make grown men cry. That was the impact of Steve Jobs.

He became a family man. He reunited with his biological mother, and his sister, the writer Mona Simpson. He married. He had children. He was, by all accounts, a great dad. It was his role as husband and father that helped drive his second act at Apple.

After his return to Apple, the company began shipping iconic product after iconic product. Products that defined a decade. The iMac, OS X, the iPod, iTunes (which was very good, before it was very bad), the iPhone, the iPad. All of these were deeply human products. They reflected his understanding of how technology was used not only in the workplace, but in the home. In his keynotes, product demos typically showed not executives, but families.

He made Apple into the most valuable company in the world.

He never met his biological father.

He accomplished so many things, in so many fields that it's tempting to compare Jobs to someone from the past. A Thomas Edison or a Ben Franklin or even a Leonardo Da Vinci. We tend to do that because it helps us understand. But it does him a disservice. He was unique. His own person. Our own person.

He was our emblematic genius. In 100 years, when historians talk about the emergence of the age of intelligent machines, it is Steve Jobs they will hold up as the great exemplar of our era.

They will remember his flaws, too. When Atari hired Jobs and Woz to write the code for the iconic Atari game Breakout, the pair earned a $5000 bonus for completing the work, largely done by Woz. But Jobs kept the bonus a secret, and only paid his partner $375. When his daughter Lisa was born in 1978, he spent two years denying he was her father. His denials forced her and her mother to support themselves on welfare. In the workplace he's often been described as temperamental and even petulant. He could be arrogant and unforgiving.

He was not a god. He was simply a man.

Yet for all his faults, he changed the world. He made it better.

He once famously asked of a critic "what have you done that's so great?" For Jobs, the answer to that question was very nearly unlimited.

Our world will be less interesting, less exciting, and less meaningful without him.

Goodbye, Mr. Jobs. We will miss you so very much.

Linda's Hearth note: thank you to Thomas Leavitt for sharing this obituary.

#Occupy -Santa Cruz gathering to support Wall Street demonstrators and the cities following...

2011-10-04T11:20:00.000-07:00

Occupy Santa Cruz - General Assembly
Tuesday October 4, 2011
5:00 PM - 8:00 PM

Laurel Park 301 Center St. behind Louden Nelson Community Center
occupysantacruz@gmail.com

We are doing this... and need your help. We are the 99%. And so are you.

We will gather to hold our first meeting and general assembly at 5PM on Tuesday, October 4th to bring together energy, ideas and skills/interest to help shift the movement forward in our local area. If you can't make it right at 5pm, come when you can!

Bring your ideas for actions to be decided on as a group. Bring flyers, cameras, notepads/cardboard and markers! Share this everywhere to make sure everyone who would want to know, knows. We need YOU! We will make plans and decisions around the best way to peacefully protest in Santa Cruz.

In the meantime, if you have experience organizing, protesting, designing flyers, or an insane amount of passion, email us! If you want to put flyers up, or help spread the word in any other way, PLEASE do. The time is now. Let's show the big corporations that we do NOT accept their ownership of OUR Nation and show Occupy Wall Street that we support them to the end.

Stream live coverage from "Occupy Wall Street" here: http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution/

Santa Cruz FB Page:
http://www.facebook.com/OccupySantaCruz

Santa Cruz Twitter Page:
http://twitter.com/#!/OccupySantaCruz

Occupy Wall Street:
http://www.occupywallstreet.org/
http://www.facebook.com/OccupyWallSt

Occupy Wall Street is a people powered movement for democracy that began in America on September 17 with an encampment in the financial district of New York City. Inspired by the Egyptian Tahrir Square uprising and the Spanish acampadas.

On September 17th, men and women of all races, backgrounds, political and religious beliefs, began to organize in nonviolent protest. These men and women represent the 99% with the goal of ending the greed and corruption of the wealthiest 1% of America. Occupy Wall Street is a leaderless resistance movement which began as a call to action from Adbusters, a Canadian-based anti-consumerist organization.

The original projections for the protest were to be between 20,000–90,000 participants. However, when only a little over a thousand protestors showed up the first day, it was labeled a bust. In the days to follow, more and more people have joined the protestors as they spend day and night in Liberty Square.

As stated by Occupy Wall Street:

“The beauty of this new formula, and what makes this novel tactic exciting, is its pragmatic simplicity: we talk to each other in various physical gatherings and virtual people’s assemblies … we zero in on what our one demand will be, a demand that awakens the imagination and, if achieved, would propel us toward the radical democracy of the future … and then we go out and seize a square of singular symbolic significance and put our asses on the line to make it happen.”

Linda's Hearth note: I don't know if I can attend, but am interested and hope to follow events. Thanks to The Spoon for this announcement to SCPEL list! As Mother Jones famously said, "Pray for the dead and fight like hell for the living."!

Homeless People Have Right to Sanitation and Survival

2011-10-03T09:06:00.000-07:00

United Nations Human Rights Expert Condemns Cruel Treatment of Homeless People in United States

September 29, 2011 by peopleproject

The UN Rapporteur’s report is the latest in a series of condemnations by international experts of the criminalization and mistreatment of homeless persons in the United States. A growing record of both domestic and international law states that homeless persons cannot be criminalized for basic life-sustaining acts. -Street Spirit Editor Note

by Whitney Gent

National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty

On August 24, in an official report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, a top UN investigator said that the United States’ failure to provide homeless persons access to water and sanitary facilities “could … amount to cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment.” The report was issued by UN Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation Catarina de Albuquerque.

Tim engineered a sanitation system for the homeless community. Every week, he collects heavy bags of waste, and hauls them several miles to a public restroom.

Art by Christa Occhiogrosso

“The Rapporteur’s report is the latest in a series of condemnations by international experts of the criminalization and mistreatment of homeless persons in the U.S.,” said Eric Tars, human rights program director at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty which helped facilitate her visit. “Earlier this year, the U.S. committed itself before the Human Rights Council to doing more to protect the rights of homeless persons. Where is the action to follow the words?”
Albuquerque visited the United States in February and March 2011, and was struck by the “extraordinary lengths” homeless persons had to go to just to remove bodily wastes. During a visit to the Safe Ground tent community near Sacramento, California, she met a man who called himself the community’s “sanitation technician.”

The man, “Tim,” engineered a sanitation system consisting of a seat overtop a two-layered plastic bag. Every week, Tim collects bags of human waste, weighing anywhere from 130 to 230 pounds, and hauls them on his bicycle several miles to a public restroom. When a toilet becomes available, he empties the contents of the bags. Following the disposal, he secures the dirty bags in a clean one, which he then places in the garbage, before washing his hands with water and lemon.
He said the job is difficult, but that he does it for the community — especially the women.
The UN Special Rapporteur’s report states: “The United States, one of the wealthiest countries in the world, must ensure that everyone [has access] to sanitation which is safe, hygienic, secure and which provides privacy and ensures dignity. An immediate, interim solution is to ensure access to restroom facilities in public places, including during the night. The long-term solution to homelessness must be to ensure adequate housing.”

In June 2010, the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness adopted its first-ever comprehensive plan to end homelessness, including a section promoting constructive alternatives to criminalization. However, the criminalization of homelessness by communities persists, and to date, the Justice Department and other agencies have done little to convey the unconstitutionality of these practices to local policymakers.

“This adds to a growing record of both domestic and international law stating that homeless persons cannot be criminalized for basic life-sustaining acts when the community provides no legal alternative,” said Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the Law Center. “But ultimately, we must remedy this situation because we, as Americans, believe that no person deserves to be treated this way.”

http://www.thestreetspirit.org/un-expert-condemns-cruel-treatment-of-homeless-in-u-s-2/

Whitney Gent wrote this article for The National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.
Read the Rapporteur’s Report here.

Federal Court for PeaceCamp2010's Chris Doyon

2011-09-28T21:17:00.000-07:00

TPMMuckraker

Feds: Homeless Computer Hacker Launched 'Anonymous' Attack Over Anti-Camping Law

Ryan J. Reilly | September 22, 2011, 6:55PM

A homeless man upset over an anti-camping law in Santa Cruz took part in a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on the city's computer servers last December, the feds charged Thursday.

As we told you earlier today, the feds arrested two men for hacking attacks today: an Arizona 23-year-old who allegedly hacked into Sony's servers and a California man who Fox News reported is homeless.

The federal grand jury indictment out of San Jose is against 47-year-old Christopher Doyon along with Joshua John Covelli, who had been charged in the previous Anonymous round-up.

Federal authorities couldn't confirm that Doyon was homeless. "At this point, I can only confirm what is in the press release and the indictment and unfortunately the only information I have is that he is a resident of Mountain View," FBI spokeswoman Julie Sohn told TPM in an email.

TPM SLIDESHOW: Anonymous Unmasked

But a quick Google search turns up a story mentioning Doyon as believing it was his "freedom and right" to sleep almost anywhere he wanted outdoors.

"We're not asking for money. We simply want them to lift the sleeping ban and let us sleep," he said, according to a local report. "It won't cost them a dime."

Doyon is charged with participating in a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack against Santa Cruz County's computer servers on Dec. 16. The People's Liberation Front (PLF) allegedly coordinated and executed the attack, according to the feds. The feds explain in a press release:

The City of Santa Cruz enacted Section 6.36.010 of its Municipal Code, entitled "Camping Prohibited," which contained restrictions and definitions on camping within Santa Cruz City. In response to the enforcement of Section 6.36.010, protesters occupied the Santa Cruz County Courthouse premises from approximately July 4, 2011 to Oct. 2, 2011. Law enforcement officers from Santa Cruz County disbanded the protest and several protesters were charged with misdemeanors crimes in Santa Cruz County.
In retribution for Santa Cruz City's enforcement of Section 6.36.010 of the Municipal Code, and Santa Cruz County's disbandment of the protest, the PLF co-ordinated and executed a DDoS attack against Santa Cruz County's computer servers. The PLF referred to these co-ordinated attacks as "Operation Peace Camp 2010." According to the indictment, as part of Operation Peace Camp 2010, Doyon, Covelli and others allegedly conspired to intentionally damage the protected computers hosting the website for the County of Santa Cruz.

Doyon, the feds said, appeared before a federal judge in San Jose today, where he was remanded and had a court date set for Sept. 29.

Lodging Trials: Judge Accepts Considering "Writ of Habeus Corpus"

2011-09-18T20:52:00.000-07:00

Lemaster PC 647 (e) Case
Postponed until October 28th

by Becky Johnson

Santa Cruz, Ca. -- Appearing in court on Wednesday, September14th for a
pre-trial readiness hearing, Linda Lemaster still faces misdemeanor "illegal
lodging" for allegedly falling asleep at PeaceCamp2010 on a single night in
August 2010.

Her pro bono attorney, Jonathon Gettleman, filed a comprehensive writ of habeas
corpus, claiming that 647(e) is vague and overbroad, and that Lemaster's freedom
of speech was truncated when County Sheriff Deputies used the antique "lodging"
law to break up an otherwise legal protest.

Deputy District Attorney Sara Dabkowski again offered to reduce Lemaster's
charges to an infraction with zero public service as a consequence. Having
previewed the Writ a week earlier, Lemaster declined again.

In court, Judge John Gallagher, Dept 2, ordered DA Dabkowski to answer
Gettleman's "well-written, voluminous" brief by October 14th, with Gettleman's
response to hers due by October 21st. A hearing on the 'writ' is set for October
28th. If a trial is to result, the date will be set then. The hearing is to take
a closer look at the Lodging law as applied during PeaceCamp2010.

In related news, Ed Frey and Gary Johnson, convicted of PC 647(e) in May 2011,
have received the court-approved complete transcript of their trial in order to
file their appeals. Frey and Johnson still face the remainder of their 6 month
sentences should their appeals fail.

# # # #

Linda's Hearth note: I was very impressed by the "Writ of habeas Corpus", eighty pages my attorney brought together to bring the First Amendment back into these trials and hearings. As a long time advocate for homeless families and individuals, I felt a kind of validation when I saw the Jones and Eichorn cases, and the ghost of Mitch Snyner in gettleman's citing the Community for Creative Nonviolence's supreme court's decision, in this Writ.

I hope to be able to focus for a bit now, health permitting, on a fundraising
dinner. To raise money for legal costs, but this event also hopes to function as
a thank-you for both attorneys involved so far with this lodging law stuff.

I'm forming a "dinner committee" (and it 'may' not be a consensual one?). If any of
you would like to be contacted or included in planning and carrying out such an
event, e me back with your phone number or preferred contact info (I have
neither a meeting directory nor a computer in my home at present).

If you have not read "my" article in Street Spirit's September issue, here's the
URL to their dynamic website: thestreetspirit.org. Putting "my" in quote marks
because it was largely and sensitively edited (two stories into one!) by Street
Spirit's editor Terry Messman, who deserves equal credit on the writing in this
instance.

warmly, Linda Ellen Lemaster
Housing NOW! in Santa Cruz
P O Box 42, Davenport, CA 95017

THE LODGING LAW Trial Readiness Hearing Sept 14th

2011-09-15T17:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday in court, Judge John Gallagher accepted the Writ of Habeus Corpus filed weeks ago by my pro bono attorney, Jonathan Che Gettleman. He ordered the District Attorney to answer it by Oct 14th. Gettleman's reply will then be due seven days forward: Oct 21.

Then, a hearing about the Writ on October 28th will be held in Dept 2. The writ of habeus corpus attempts to bring together the actual setting and situation, with the incident of my getting a Lodging citation.

I am very much hoping that a closer peek at the Lodging law and it's history, which is as controversial as the law is vague here, will bring greater safety and relief to people all over California, especially homeless people with ever-diminishing safety options for sleeping. Maybe just a baby step, and maybe, God willing, we will effectively expose the misuse of this law?

In the best case scenario on October 28th, it could make furthering the trial unnecessary. Look for article I wrote about PeaceCamp2010 and about these unfolding trials and "trials", at thestreetspirit.org. Or get in touch with me for a paper copy, or -- if you are homeless -- to help vend them, and you get to keep the $1.00 per copy.

PeaceCamp2010 and the 2011 Lodging Trials ~ reprinted from Street Spirit, Sept 2011

2011-09-10T16:34:00.000-07:00

Arrested for ‘Sleepcrimes’ at
Peace Camp in Santa Cruz

Laying down for the right to sleep is dangerous in Santa Cruz. The jurors found all but one of these “sleep criminals” guilty. Actually, it was a homeless man’s dog who was found not guilty. When the courts have criminalized sleeping by the poor, how can anyone sleep well tonight? - ed note, thestreet spirit.org

by Linda Ellen Lemaster

PeaceCamp2010 started on the Fourth of July weekend last year outside the Santa Cruz Courthouse, and lasted until a few days past Labor Day. When I first visited the camp in July 2010, I was moved to offer my support to the ever-changing group of protesters.

People I met in the first week were totally focused on bringing attention to the public about the insidious criminalization of sleeping, camping and lodging used to banish homeless people from any public areas and force them into hiding.

After sheriff deputies banished the demonstration from the lawn in front of the courthouse, the sleep-protesters returned to City Hall, intent on renewing the primary message of the demonstration: to show that the Santa Cruz ordinance that criminalizes sleeping and camping in public is too broad, too prohibitive and too dangerous.

I had recently testified in court as an “expert witness” about homelessness in Santa Cruz, so I had already met some new friends who also turned up at this Fourth of July demonstration, which ultimately kept on going like the energizer bunny.

In early July of 2010, nobody I met realized that PeaceCamp2010 would continue for several months, and then be abruptly terminated by Santa Cruz County sheriff deputies working in four-person teams. Joining the peace camp carried a price. On Sept. 19, 2011, I go to trial for getting a ticket claiming I broke the State of California’s lodging law, 647(e).

PeaceCamp2010 located itself right in front of the Santa Cruz County Superior Court, where citizens traditionally gather to share ideals and to bring concerns to their government.

Local attorney and philosopher Ed Frey was deemed a hero by many homeless people who found their way to the demonstration in support of the right to sleep even while homeless. Frey, with the help of long-standing homeless ally Paul Lee, had found the means to provide a porta-potty nightly at the peace camp, and mounted the rented utility on a small trailer behind his pickup truck.

Frey had been listening carefully to reveries of homeless folks and their allies, hoping to figure out all the “health and safety” issues in advance.

His conclusion was right-on: “potty” was the missing ingredient for sustaining many earlier pro-homeless and anti-sleeping-ban rallies, marches and demonstrations, including several held at this very location.

PeaceCamp2010 was like a living kaleidoscope. While a number of folks stayed with it — the regulars, you might say — a majority of faces at the camp changed every few days. It was run as though we were all adults — most refreshing. Sure, leaders emerged, receded, emerged again. Yet there was a “live and let live” air to this sleep demonstration that seemed to welcome all comers.

Once publicity about the camp began, an average night might find two dozen folks sleeping there, though at times PeaceCamp2010 exceeded 50 folks with blankets and sleeping bags unfurled on the lawn and concrete plaza.

Mass media fuels stereotypes

The demonstration received abundant, even front-page, press coverage. Most of it was negative, in my view: the press was feeding off stereotypes and playing to the resentments of the general housed population. The television news was gentler — vague yet visually honest.

PeaceCamp2010 denizens responded by cultivating Social Media to get their message out.

Later, tensions began to build around antagonisms and fears of County employees and citizens on business at the County offices, many of whom did not appreciate having to see the artifacts of homelessness while on their way to work.

It was apparent that holding a “sleep demonstration” as a legitimate message of protest went far over the heads of most passers-by. We were following a long tradition that reckons sleep in this context as a necessary form of free speech.

So many other venues for protest had not worked locally, and some even backfired — as evidenced by troll-busting murders and assaults in Santa Cruz, by the ever-growing numbers of anti-homeless laws and regulations, and by the broadening acceptance of those overt haters of visibly poor and presumed homeless folks.

I believe our inability to get our message shared in the media, without extreme distortion, in the past 25 years also helps fuel this growing “blame the victim” mentality.

Ultimately, the last few determined, demonstrating sleepers were flushed off the campus of City Hall by the police. Because of the protest, political officials and the city police continued to tighten the rules about being present at City Hall and the Santa Cruz Library. Police were ruthless at best regarding our signs and the personal property they confiscated.

Santa Cruz officials made it functionally impossible for demonstrators to get their belongings back once confiscated, and the police grabbed people’s possessions several times a night.

From Albany, Calif., to Orlando, Fla., most homeless people can’t turn their backs on their belongings for a minute, and police pose as many risks as thieves and desperados. I note the property destruction because over and over homeless people have been protected by the courts on this issue, only to have this “justice” conveniently forgotten when political protesters enter the picture.

Criminal acts of sleeping

Demonstrators had formed the peace camp specifically to protest the laws that criminalize anyone found asleep in public at night. Ironically, during the final days, they were cited and displaced by police using the very laws they were protesting: the State of California’s lodging law, and the City’s sleeping ban ordinance.

Santa Cruz officials continued attacking the remaining few demonstrators for camping on the sidewalk at night. They used many new tricks, including klieg lights and a huge blaring generator that spewed toxic exhaust all night, until finally neighbors a block away complained. They confiscated our protest signs as fast as we could create new ones.

The hostile attitude toward any public presence of homeless people is not new here. It continues despite what now even the courts have ruled is true: a person cannot live without sleeping. Enforcing the sleeping ban while no other alternatives exist is destructive and life-threatening. The County’s purpose in citing demonstrators for sleeping and lodging was to stifle our political expression.

Gary and Star were the troopers throughout the final stages of PeaceCamp2010, stoically enduring until after Labor Day. They and others were arrested and given many citations for trying to continue PeaceCamp2010. Laying down for the right to sleep is dangerous in California.
Ten months later, tickets started cropping up on court dockets like mushrooms after a spring rain. Some charges were swept away, some traded out informally for “lesser” charges. Some who were cited during the sleep-out have disappeared.

By April 2011, local judges had casually determined that California’s anti-lodging law, 647(e), would not be deemed unconstitutional despite the law’s controversial history and its current misuse. Five homeless defendants engaged Ed Frey as their attorney. He also represented himself.

Three homeless men and one homeless woman, plus Frey, went on trial together; ultimately two defendants testified on their own behalf during the four-day trial. Watching Frey interview himself and then answer himself was a highlight of their trial in May 2011.

Humans guilty, dog acquitted

The jurors found all but one of these “sleep criminals” guilty. Actually, it was a homeless man’s dog who was found not guilty, but the jurors let the man go free on behalf of his dog. One juror was unable to accept the fate of a dog in the hands of police, then the pound, due to a criminal homeless sleeper.

The homeless defendant, Bob is his street name, would have had to pay several hundred dollars to avert the dog’s death, with almost zero turn-around time, if the court had convicted him for being “lodged” at our demonstration.

Shortly after the verdict, the jury foreman said that a woman juror who loves dogs hung the jury in relation to Bob’s lodging charge. (The other 11 had not come around to her viewpoint.) The other four defendants were found guilty.

Becky Johnson’s blog, One Woman Talking, describes the post-trial interview with jurors: “A homeless person should not have to gas their dog, to use one of our local homeless shelters for the night. Eleven jurors disagreed. No one can sleep well tonight in Santa Cruz County.”

Lucky for Bob this time — he will not have to face six months in jail for being asleep at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. at the Courthouse. Unlucky for Santa Cruz, where dogs seem to get better legal protection than do its uprooted people.

The other four defendants, including attorney Frey, were found guilty, based partly on the district attorney’s sleight-of-hand display of two theoretically potential — but not actually accessible — shelter beds on a hypothetical night. Her careful chart was developed to thwart an otherwise viable Eichorn necessity defense.

I also question the value of the expert witnesses selected by the district attorney, given their paychecks rely heavily on City and County grants.

A month flew by, and Frey and Johnson returned to the scene of the trial for their sentence. Early in June 2011, in a tense moment, they were carried away in chains to jail, where they were stuck for two weeks due to a $50,000 bail. Each.

Attorney Peter Leeming finally got Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge John Gallagher to reconsider the hefty bail imposed on Frey, in that he was presumed employed and not homeless by the legal system. The $50,000 bail was changed to $110 through this intervention, so the two men were released, pending appeal.

I joined with PeaceCamp2010 to help bring attention to the unsafe situation endured by homeless people on the vanishing margins of society, and to wake folks up about the criminalization of homeless people for ordinary behaviors, such as sleeping, or being visible in public.

Now, I could be found guilty of the “criminal” act of lodging, like Ed, Gary, Star and Art, because I was cited while allegedly sleeping when sheriff deputies came to bust up the sleep demonstration on August 7, 2010.

My trial is slated for September 19. Attorney Jonathan Che Gettleman is working pro bono to defend me. I hope he will be allowed by the court to focus on free speech rights so there is some relevant context with this lodging charge.

The trial of the PeaceCamp2010’s Lodging Five prevented any explanation of the context of their demonstration, except for a hostile and untrue comment from the district attorney, suggesting that gathering citations by protesters was a “competition or game.”

From my perspective, muffling the true reason for our demonstration by using legal maneuvers is an absurd misuse of the court system. I resent the way the legal system is burying our protest just when people were beginning to engage in real dialogue about critical issues.

The legal system plays fast and loose when its targets are presumed homeless and thus powerless. Accuracy and truth become homeless when the power brokers are allowed to redefine social and political events to suit their purpose instead of sharing the history with its rightful heirs — all of us.

Linda's Hearth note:
this written by Robert Norse of HUFF: Activist Linda Lemaster faces a jury trial starting on September 19th for "illegal lodging"--that is, being present and falling asleep at a peaceful homeless protest in front of the County Courthouse in a City that had no walk-in emergency shetler available for 95% of its homeless population.

Her story is available in hard copy in the September issue of Street Spirit (available from HUFF at 831-423-4833) and on line at www.thestreetspirit.org .

Linda has a blog at http://www.hearthbylinda.blogspot.com/ which has numerous stories about PeaceCamp2010.

More can be found on indybay.org/santacruz by searching for "Norse" and on Becky Johnson's blog at http://www.beckyjohnsononewomantalking.blogspot.com/ .

photo caption from Street Spirit, Sept 1, 2011 ~

Remembering Sonya Magill, from Karen of Little Red Wagon blog

2011-08-29T22:04:00.000-07:00

Monday, August 8, 2011

Sonja Ann Magill~

Studio Menagerie "Unicorn" Ceramic Wall Hanging

Little Red Wagon wrote:

I found this recently at an estate that was being prepared for sale by a friend that is a general contractor. I rummaged through the house to find anything that was collectible or most unusual to rescue from the fate of "Let's not talk about it."

The artist of this amazing ceramic sculpture is the late Sonja Ann Magill of Studio Menagerie'[d. July 23, 2009], Santa Cruz, California. It has an incised mark that reads: copyright symbol 1980, STUDIO MENAGERIE'. I found another posting online of a similar piece by a lady who purchased it at Macy's during a 'Clearance Sale'.

Her life was short and will be missed by collectors of her work and anyone that collects mythological creatures, such as unicorns. I hope by posting this here on my blog that it will root out others that can add a story or two to her legacy as an artist, because there was not much information about her life that I could find online.

Thanks for stopping by and happy treasure hunting!

Posted by Karen Scott at 6:35 PM

Hi Karen, and Little Red Wagon,

Linda's Hearth note: I'm finally replying to your note to my blog regarding Sonya's work. I really LOVE this Unicorn, so glad to read of your 'rescue'. Well, I dig all her work, but this especially has a story in my life. One of Sonya's neighbors along the Pacific Coast was Chris Matthews. Chris was a local politician and successful playwright, who also created an "Irish" bar/pub called The Poet and The Patriot which proved successful. When I first met him, he was involved with cooperatively building housing in Santa Cruz County, a place with ridiculously overpriced homes, rationally and comparatively speaking. Mythic and generous personality. Sonya and I went to Chris' memorial service together not so long before she passed on ~ with a few thousands of others.

Anyway, so Sonya Magill/Studio Menagerie gifted Matthews with one of her unicorns when his pub opened. I've never been much of a drinker, "oversensitive", yet THIS pub became my "neighborhood" bar in downtown Santa Cruz because it was poet-friendly and politically enticing. Christened my youngest child there. Chris hung the lovely porcelain (sp?)Unicorn front and center above his wrap-around, redwood bar.

Well, it was a bar, right? More than once, the unicorn got hurt in the late nite action there. Sonya diligently created a new Unicorn for the Poet and Patriot at least twice, maybe oftener. the last time I looked in there, tho' both artists have passed on within a year of each other, there was still a Unicorn above the bar, centered over the long mirror, complimenting many signs of Eire and solidarity.

I am SO glad you saved this piece! I like your website. thank you for the note, I hope people see it a lot.

National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty: Meanest Cities and the United Nations

2011-08-29T20:20:00.000-07:00

Janell.Ross@huffingtonpost.com

U.S. Cities Criminalize Homelessness,

Violate Human Rights Agreements

Can You Guess Where THIS Tent City Is?

by Janell Ross

The challenges poor and homeless Americans often face accessing clean drinking water and restroom facilities violate international human rights standards, according to a report issued by a United Nations investigator this month.

Catarina de Albuquerque, a U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Human Right to Water and Sanitation, visited the United States in late February at the invitation of the U.S. government.
She found homeless individuals around the country not only struggle to access running water and restroom facilities but increasingly face criminal and civil sanctions when they improvise solutions.

The right to safe drinking water and restroom facilities is a part of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. The U.N. report's findings detail just a few of the ways that U.S. cities and counties are failing to meet these obligations because of how they opt to deal with homelessness, said Eric Tars, human rights program director at the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty.

The most recent federal homeless count data available is from January 2010. It shows there were 700,000 individuals in the U.S. who were homeless. The Department of Housing and Urban Development report found that homelessness grew very little between 2009 and 2010. But the share of families who lack a place to sleep continued the rapid expansion that began during the recession. Between 2007 and 2010, the number of homeless families grew by 20 percent.

The nation's elevated unemployment rate and the large number of foreclosures have increased demand just as municipal and state budget problems have led to a reduction in services available to the poor and homeless. As a result, many communities -- in particular suburban communities where services for the homeless are often nonexistent -- are confronting an increasingly visible homeless population forced to sleep in city parks or take up residence in one of a growing number of tent cities, Tars said.

Some cities have begun to regulate tent cities issuing temporary permits that allow churches or other organizations to host the homeless for few months. But in many more cities, developers, business district boosters and city councils have clashed with the homeless, encouraging police to issue more frequent tickets for violations such as sleeping in public, loitering, littering or public urination and defecation, Tars said.

This year, in Sacramento, Calif., city efforts to discourage homeless individuals and families from taking shelter in a growing tent city have included shutting off the water supply to nearby a fountain and locking or removing public restroom facilities, he said. A spokesperson for the city of Sacramento did not immediately return request for comment Friday.

In 2009, Sacramento drew national attention when the "Oprah Winfrey Show" aired a segment describing the number of newly homeless people moving into that city's homeless encampments, said Amy Williams, spokeswoman for the city manager's office. But the city has not had problems with homeless individuals misusing public facilities and has not shuttered restrooms of cut water to fountains, she said. In 2009, Sacramento did temporarily close its park restrooms because of a budget problem. At that time, at least one city park's restrooms were not reopened due to community complaints about the homeless, the Sacramento Press reported.

In 2009, a Gainesville, Fla., a developer convinced the city to begin enforcing a nearly 20-year-old ordinance barring some social service agencies from distributing more than 130 meals per day. For two years, one downtown shelter was forced to turn homeless individuals away from its soup kitchen line. The city changed the policy this month to allow soup kitchens to serve an unlimited number of meals during a limited number of hours each day.

In 2007 Los Angeles began an initiative to reduce crime downtown, leading police to issue thousands of citations to homeless individuals for things such as flicking the ash from a cigarette onto the sidewalk (cited as littering) to urinating or drinking in public, said Tars. Those citations have been overwhelmingly issued to poor and homeless black people, he said. When downtown art gallery crawls bring to the area upper-income city residents who frequently walk from one gallery to another with full wine glasses in hand, police do not take action, he said.

In 2009, the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty issued a study of the crackdown and others like it around the country that named Los Angeles the No. 1 "meanest city" for its treatment of the homeless. A spokesman for Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa called the report "short-sighted and misleading" at the time, Reuters reported.

"Rather than doing good things like providing more housing, more shelter, more assistance, cities are using these measures to push problems out of view," said Tars.

Tars said the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty is planning a series of cases to challenge ordinances that criminalize activities -- such as using the restroom, sleeping or accessing water -- that can not be avoided or handled in private if a person is homeless.

"What this [U.N.] report will allow us to do is go into court and argue that these laws violate international standards and amount to what a U.N. investigator said was cruel and unusual punishment," Tars said.

First Posted: 8/26/11 03:42 PM ET Updated: 8/26/11 05:03 PM ET This article has been updated to include comment from the Sacramento City Manager's Office.

Linda's Hearth note: thank you to Gary J. and Robert N. for bringing this article to my attention. this information comports with my own research and my understanding of the ever-worsening scene for homeless people.

Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams

2011-07-07T00:55:00.000-07:00

Nighttime had fallen in the Smoky Mountains

In today's excerpt - Hank Williams (1923 - 1953), the brightest light in country music history and a true avatar of America's rural roots, died in the back of a moving car in the early morning hours of New Year's Day, 1953, at twenty-nine. He lived hard - drugs and alcohol, his hardscrabble upbringing, health problems, and his stormy marriage to Audrey spilled out in his songs. The first unabashed country music sex symbol, his leg gyrations and other stage movements were radical for their day. He was overlooked by official Nashville, there were only four mentions of Hank Williams in the Nashville newspapers during his lifetime. They left the Opry and the burgeoning music business to their own devices in those days - it was only "hillbilly" music, after all, something the pooh-bahs of the "Athens of the South" still held with contempt. But the working classes had lost their poet, a proletarian prophet who had touched their souls with his simple heart-breaking lyrics. That was Hank's true audience, the waitresses and the route salesmen and the farmers and the truck drivers of the world, and they began to be heard from almost immediately in their clamor to buy his records in the aftermath of his passing. Of his ten No.1 records, four of them came in the six months following his death:

"Nighttime had fallen in the Smoky Mountains. Hank was worn out, partly from the beer and nips of bourbon and the residue of alcohol that by now was nearly always present in his system, and he and Charley Carr [the teenager he had hired for the night to drive him] arrived at the Andrew Johnson Hotel at seven o'clock, about the time the show would have been opening in Charleston [had the snowstorm not delayed them]. Two porters had to assist Hank to the room they shared.

"The teenaged driver now had a genuine crisis on his hands. They were more than five hundred miles from Canton, up in northern Ohio, and he assumed the weather was much the same between there and Knoxville. The first thing he did was order two steaks from room service, and Hank took only a few bites before going to steep, finally rolling off the bed and falling onto the floor. When Hank began hiccuping, sending his body into convulsions, Carr's call to the front desk summoned a doctor, who came to the room and injected two shots, one of vitamin B6 and one of B12.

"Then Carr managed to contact the promoter, one A.V. Bamford, who told him the Charleston show might be canceled and strongly advised that they get back into the car and continue driving to Canton; the two o'clock matinee was a sellout, four thousand tickets already sold at $2.50 each, and if Hank didn't make it he would owe $1,000 on a penalty clause. The doctor who had given Hank the vitamin shots said he was okay to travel, so at 10:30 a porter came to the room with a wheelchair, sat Hank in it, and delivered him to the car. Hank managed to get out of the wheelchair and crawl into the backseat without anyone's help, cuddling up with the blanket Carr wrapped around him, and off they lurched into the storm. ...

"[Three long hours into the trip], Carr presumed Hank was in a deep sleep as the two-lane highway twisted away from Bluefield, tires humming, telephone poles zipping past in the glare of the headlights. He happened to look over his shoulder for a glance at the form in the backseat - Hank was stretched out on his back, his hands folded across his chest, nothing unusual - and when he noticed that the blanket had fallen away he reached over with his right hand, still driving with his left, to fumble for the blanket and cover Hank with it. It was then that he inadvertently touched Hank's hand. It was stone cold.

"Terror hung in Carr's throat. This was more than he could handle alone. He needed help. Seeing a sign reading 'Oak Hill 6,' his heart pumping furiously, he floored the Cadillac. At the edge of the tiny town there was a cut-rate gas station. He brought the ear to a screeching stop, rushed inside the station, and asked the old man on duty if he would come take a look at the fellow in the backseat. 'Looks like you've got a problem,' the man drawled after he had done so, and directed Carr to the Oak Hill Hospital. There, he parked around back, walked into the hospital, and asked two interns to come out and check on his passenger. They followed him to the car and needed only a glance at Hank's rigid body. 'He's dead, all right,' one of them said. 'But isn't there something you can do to revive him?' said Carr. 'It's too late,' he was told. 'The man's dead.' ...

"[At the autopsy], The doctor almost casually noted that there were needle marks on the arms and that Hank had recently been severely beaten and kicked in the groin. No drugs were found in the blood, just traces of alcohol. A coroner's jury later confirmed that Hank died of 'a severe heart condition and hemorrhage,' and let it go at that."

Linda's Hearth note: I remember everything from the long morning of my childhood, from the moment my Daddy told me Hank Williams had died. This book excerpt from Delancy Place, a blog I like.

Author: Paul Hemphill

Pages: 181-185, 191-192

Hank Williams singing "Hey Good Lookin' "

Lovesick Blues: The Life of Hank Williams

by Paul Hemphill by Viking Adult

Hardcover

If you wish to read further: Buy Now

Should you use the above link to purchase a book, delanceyplace proceeds from your purchase will benefit a children's literacy project. Delanceyplace is a not-for-profit organization

Linda's Hearth

COFFEE: Is It Good or Safe? CAFE LIFE Doesn't Discriminate Between Homeless and Housed People

Leaderless Leaders: Occupy the World, Vacate the Porta Potties, get with the plumbers and builders asap

The People's Record

by Shamus Cooke

Theory and Practice in

the “Occupy Movement”

by Shamus Cooke

Men And Women's Differences Extend To Personality, Study Claims

TWENTY TWELVE

India Joze Restaurant Hosts Benefit to Fight the Lodging Law, Keep Linda Out of Jail, and Support the First Amendment of our Constitution

OCCUPY THE FIRST AMENDMENT FOR DINNER

and Help Dislodge California's Lodging Law

Join Me For An Incredible Dinner,

4:30 pm at India Jose Restaurant on Sunday, December 4th

Help me invite people whom-else may want to come?! Entertainment will be fun ~ music, Lodging news, I'll read a poem, hopefully introduce lawyers

Comments about the Lodging Trial that has been postponed and an update on County vs OccupySC with Lodging Citations here too.

It will be the BEST food, treat yourself and help us offer a little money to my attorney

March leaving Occupy Santa Cruz Blue Dome Wednesday, November 30

Human Rights Leader on Occupy Santa Cruz

David Sweet: Occupy an innovative approach to a centuries old quest

Sunday General Assembly, Occupy Santa Cruz, a glimpse

OCCUPY WALL STREET MAKES MORE SENSE - Rolling Stones writer Matt Taibbi

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests

Much more than a movement against big banks, they're a rejection of what our society has become

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests

Much more than a movement against big banks, they're a rejection of what our society has become.

How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love the OWS Protests

Much more than a movement against big banks, they're a rejection of what our society has become.

Francis Fox Piven ~~ Is Occupy Wall Street Movement Helping Poor People Yet?

Call for Solidarity from Occupy Santa Cruz for the San Lorenzo Campers.

What is Occupy Santa Cruz?

Justice Seekers and Free Speech Advocates! Your Solidarity Needed to Face Increasing Police Pressure on Occupy Santa Cruz

OSC lodging tickets: Cops cite tourists

Occupy Santa Cruz protestors arrested outside court

Occupy Wall Street: Sparro Kennedy Sticks Up For Homeless and Mentally "Ill" People

Sparro Kennedy Fights For Occupy Wall Street's Homeless, Mentally Ill

"have you no decency? ... Turns out, not really,

Legal Eagle Ally Asks Board of Supes to Honor and Support Occupy Santa Cruz

18th Annual Peace & Unity March, Watsonville

Occupy Santa Cruz Human Chain at Lighthouse on West Cliff Drive

Occupy Santa Cruz forms human chain at Lighthouse Point

Occupy American Cities to End Homelessness' Gravest Dangers for Already Displaced People

Throw Them Out With the Trash: Why Homelessness Is Becoming an Occupy Wall Street Issue

CounterPunch.org Claims MILITANT LIBERALISM of Occupy Wall Street Movement Does Not Grasp Class Disparities

In a Manner Neither Forceful Nor Foolish

Extraordinary Photographer Bob Fitch's Image Inspired New MLK Jr Monument in D.C.

Pajaro man's photo inspired Martin Luther King Memorial in Washington

Velvet Pistol's PROCLAMATION

Malcom X, "You don't have a turn-the-other-cheek revolution. ..."

You Say You Want A Revolution

Tea Partiers not a mob but '99 percenters' called mob, by phony Republicans

Occupy Together ~~ every sunrise is a new success

For Wall Street Protests, What Constitutes Success?

American Mad

Related NPR Stories

from Hearts and Minds to Occupy Everywhere

...righteousness like an everflowing stream

SC Weekly Reviews Week-young Occupy Santa Cruz

Occupy Santa Cruz Learns The Ropes

By Tessa Stuart, with additional reporting by Jacob Pierce

A movement finds its footing

Occupy Santa Cruz Learns The Ropes

A movement finds its footing

Occupy Santa Cruz Learns The Ropes

A movement finds its footing

Occupy Santa Cruz Learns The Ropes

A movement finds its footing

Occupy Santa Cruz Learns The Ropes

A movement finds its footing

The Banks Are Made of Marble, With A Guard At Every Door

Linda's Hearth note: will dress this up w/headlines, photo later

October 8 ~ Occupy Santa Cruz, Glimpses

October 7 Beach Gift to Occupy Santa Cruz

Occupy Santa Cruz, a Tidal Offering

He was unique. His own person. Our own person.

Steve Jobs Is Dead

Syndicate

Steve Jobs Is Dead

#Occupy -Santa Cruz gathering to support Wall Street demonstrators and the cities following...