An old My Turn of mine published in the Burlington Free Press years ago (which I had also previously blogged to the North American Homeless News Network blog, here as well as Green Mountain Daily blog, here):
Homelessness Marathon blog
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
Why Not Do The Right Thing?
On January 18th I spoke before the Kansas City Task Force on Homelessness and laid out my vision of what Kansas City (or any city) might do instead of following failed Federal policies. The "White Paper" linked below is a follow-up to that talk, setting out my ideas in print. It may be found at:
http://news.homelessnessmarathon.org/2011/02/why-not-do-right-thing.html
Of course, the broadcast invites other opinions, but I am hoping this will be a basis for starting some discussions.
http://news.homelessnessmarathon.org/2011/02/why-not-do-right-thing.html
Of course, the broadcast invites other opinions, but I am hoping this will be a basis for starting some discussions.
Thursday, March 18, 2010
True Dilemmas and Popularity
I usually feel about the obscurity of this blog some admixture of self-pity and relief. "O' woe is me," I say to myself, "I am sixty and my genius still isn't recognized." That's not exactly what I think, but who'll blame me for trying to make myself look better? Yes, I am a pathetic specimen, but I also feel that I am fortunate, because I get to write anything I want without the hassle and constraints that would come with people caring what I say. Just the same, today is a day when I could use a lot of people weighing in with their opinions. I am facing a decision, and I don't know what I should do.
Perhaps I have put that too simply, because I am really facing a wending-winding path of decisions that I don't know how to traverse, but it all begins at the ending of a previous entry, where I mentioned that I might have more to say about this most recent broadcast later. Well, this is later, and I can tell you that there was a major flaw in the last broadcast, something that absolutely must be corrected, even though, by all accounts, the broadcast went well. That flaw is that we did not achieve our principle mission.
Every so often I have to write down the Homelessness Marathon's "Mission" for potential grantors. It's not something I take too seriously, because our enterprise, like any other, is more of a living, breathing entity than something that can be summed up in a sentence or two. To me, formulating a mission statement has a quality about it like taking cash for your children, but on this point I have long since capitulated.
The mission statement for the Homelessness Marathon goes something like this: "Our mission is to promote a national dialog about poverty and foster a consensus to address it." In our last broadcast, we did not do either of those things, so we did not succeed at our mission. We did, however, achieve other organizational goals.
From what I've heard, the homeless people involved were happy with the event and with their participation. We had more affiliates than ever before. The technical quality of the broadcast was good, and through this broadcast, the door opened to some potential alliances. That's not to say that there couldn't have been people dissatisfied with what we did, but I haven't actually heard from any.
I didn't hear from the press either, and there's a lot that may be said about that. Cass Community said it was using its publicity people to try to interest the press in the broadcast. Just a month before they had conjured up a TV truck for the opening of their new "Green Gym," the exact same site where we originated our broadcast. Dennis from WHFR told me that he personally placed calls to the print and broadcast media. I saw e-mails from the MWRO, forwarding a release I had sent out to two Detroit weeklies. I, myself, made a couple of attempts to interest publications, and I even had an Op-Ed on the Detroit Free Press's website (http://www.freep.com/article/20100223/OPINION05/100222041/1336/OPINION/Poverty-Is-anyone-listening) So it is reasonably certain that the media had every reason to be aware we were in town. They just didn't show up, and the question is, why not and what can we do about it?
Partly, this lack of interest is anomalous. We got less attention from the Detroit media than we've ever gotten anywhere before. But the lack of interest in us is mostly chronic. We don't usually get much press.
Yes, you never really know what impact you had. I hope we inspired someone somewhere to do something good. I hope we uplifted a spirit or two. I hope we put on a show that will be remembered in the annals of broadcasting, but none of those things is our mission. We're supposed to be promoting a national dialog and fostering a consensus to end poverty. If we come into an impoverished city and the vast majority of its inhabitants never even know that we were there, we haven't succeeded.
I must say this outcome plays into the irritating tendency of some people to dismiss us out of hand. Why shouldn't WDET have thought it was all right to not even answer my letter? They corrrectly identified me as someone who wouldn't have much of a platform from which to denounce them. Sure, I could have said anything I wanted on my own show, but the TV and newspapers weren't going to pick any of it up, and they're the real media players in town. Similarly, if Mitch Albom never responded to my invitation, well, he isn't required to answer every message from every no account crackpot with a radio show.
And what can I do about it? Here is where I start to get into trouble. My first instinct is to get frustrated with the local activists. In Detroit, they didn't see much reason to make a big deal out of the Marathon. As a rule, the activists we've worked with have made little effort to get the broadcast noticed. They have been very helpful with getting homeless people to the site or even providing the site -- Cheri Honkala, then the head of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, and now of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign as well as the Marathon's board -- provided the venue for our first national broadcast (our second broadcast overall). And activists have been helpful with networking and defining issues. But they haven't done much to get us noticed.
No one builds a campaign around our arrival, no one even pickets us, which would, at least, get us publicity, no matter how unpleasant it might be. It always seemed to me that the activists ought to see possibilities in our arrival, but they don't. In reality, I don't think the activist community understands much about putting on a show, but I have sought to involve them in it anyway. I could give a thousand reasons for this, but in the end, it all comes down to limited choices.
Choice number one is to motivate activists to support us. This is what I've been trying to do for years, without success. Paul Boden -- the director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project and also on our board -- told me that organizing is not a matter of doing the same thing tomorrow that didn't work yesterday, and he's right. I have to give this up, and what makes me really undertand that I have to give it up is realizing that it would be a bad thing if I succeeded. If I ever want to lead an advocacy group, that is my right, and I may want to do just exactly that someday. But as long as I am in reportorial mode, I cannot be creating the events I am covering. And trying to directly motivate activists would make the Homelessness Marathon look manipulative no matter what. It's just a bad idea, and I should finally recognize it.
Choice number two is to just keep doing the show without worrying about the impact. The problem with that is that doing the show is a ton of work, for which I don't get paid, and my main associates get only a tiny sum (this year I paid Michael, our technical director, and Jessica, who could have just about any title she wants, a wopping $500 for their weeks of work, so they, at least, wouldn't lose money on the work they were missing to come to the broadcast).
Choice number three is to find some other way to bring the Marathon to the public's attention.
Choice number two is, of course, an acceptable option, and it is not incompatible with choice number three. When my efforts to get the show noticed fail, I am consoled that I at least did the show, and I feel good about that. But at the end of the day, what is my strategy for making the dialog of the show a dialog for America? I wish I knew.
Perhaps I have put that too simply, because I am really facing a wending-winding path of decisions that I don't know how to traverse, but it all begins at the ending of a previous entry, where I mentioned that I might have more to say about this most recent broadcast later. Well, this is later, and I can tell you that there was a major flaw in the last broadcast, something that absolutely must be corrected, even though, by all accounts, the broadcast went well. That flaw is that we did not achieve our principle mission.
Every so often I have to write down the Homelessness Marathon's "Mission" for potential grantors. It's not something I take too seriously, because our enterprise, like any other, is more of a living, breathing entity than something that can be summed up in a sentence or two. To me, formulating a mission statement has a quality about it like taking cash for your children, but on this point I have long since capitulated.
The mission statement for the Homelessness Marathon goes something like this: "Our mission is to promote a national dialog about poverty and foster a consensus to address it." In our last broadcast, we did not do either of those things, so we did not succeed at our mission. We did, however, achieve other organizational goals.
From what I've heard, the homeless people involved were happy with the event and with their participation. We had more affiliates than ever before. The technical quality of the broadcast was good, and through this broadcast, the door opened to some potential alliances. That's not to say that there couldn't have been people dissatisfied with what we did, but I haven't actually heard from any.
I didn't hear from the press either, and there's a lot that may be said about that. Cass Community said it was using its publicity people to try to interest the press in the broadcast. Just a month before they had conjured up a TV truck for the opening of their new "Green Gym," the exact same site where we originated our broadcast. Dennis from WHFR told me that he personally placed calls to the print and broadcast media. I saw e-mails from the MWRO, forwarding a release I had sent out to two Detroit weeklies. I, myself, made a couple of attempts to interest publications, and I even had an Op-Ed on the Detroit Free Press's website (http://www.freep.com/article/20100223/OPINION05/100222041/1336/OPINION/Poverty-Is-anyone-listening) So it is reasonably certain that the media had every reason to be aware we were in town. They just didn't show up, and the question is, why not and what can we do about it?
Partly, this lack of interest is anomalous. We got less attention from the Detroit media than we've ever gotten anywhere before. But the lack of interest in us is mostly chronic. We don't usually get much press.
Yes, you never really know what impact you had. I hope we inspired someone somewhere to do something good. I hope we uplifted a spirit or two. I hope we put on a show that will be remembered in the annals of broadcasting, but none of those things is our mission. We're supposed to be promoting a national dialog and fostering a consensus to end poverty. If we come into an impoverished city and the vast majority of its inhabitants never even know that we were there, we haven't succeeded.
I must say this outcome plays into the irritating tendency of some people to dismiss us out of hand. Why shouldn't WDET have thought it was all right to not even answer my letter? They corrrectly identified me as someone who wouldn't have much of a platform from which to denounce them. Sure, I could have said anything I wanted on my own show, but the TV and newspapers weren't going to pick any of it up, and they're the real media players in town. Similarly, if Mitch Albom never responded to my invitation, well, he isn't required to answer every message from every no account crackpot with a radio show.
And what can I do about it? Here is where I start to get into trouble. My first instinct is to get frustrated with the local activists. In Detroit, they didn't see much reason to make a big deal out of the Marathon. As a rule, the activists we've worked with have made little effort to get the broadcast noticed. They have been very helpful with getting homeless people to the site or even providing the site -- Cheri Honkala, then the head of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, and now of the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign as well as the Marathon's board -- provided the venue for our first national broadcast (our second broadcast overall). And activists have been helpful with networking and defining issues. But they haven't done much to get us noticed.
No one builds a campaign around our arrival, no one even pickets us, which would, at least, get us publicity, no matter how unpleasant it might be. It always seemed to me that the activists ought to see possibilities in our arrival, but they don't. In reality, I don't think the activist community understands much about putting on a show, but I have sought to involve them in it anyway. I could give a thousand reasons for this, but in the end, it all comes down to limited choices.
Choice number one is to motivate activists to support us. This is what I've been trying to do for years, without success. Paul Boden -- the director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project and also on our board -- told me that organizing is not a matter of doing the same thing tomorrow that didn't work yesterday, and he's right. I have to give this up, and what makes me really undertand that I have to give it up is realizing that it would be a bad thing if I succeeded. If I ever want to lead an advocacy group, that is my right, and I may want to do just exactly that someday. But as long as I am in reportorial mode, I cannot be creating the events I am covering. And trying to directly motivate activists would make the Homelessness Marathon look manipulative no matter what. It's just a bad idea, and I should finally recognize it.
Choice number two is to just keep doing the show without worrying about the impact. The problem with that is that doing the show is a ton of work, for which I don't get paid, and my main associates get only a tiny sum (this year I paid Michael, our technical director, and Jessica, who could have just about any title she wants, a wopping $500 for their weeks of work, so they, at least, wouldn't lose money on the work they were missing to come to the broadcast).
Choice number three is to find some other way to bring the Marathon to the public's attention.
Choice number two is, of course, an acceptable option, and it is not incompatible with choice number three. When my efforts to get the show noticed fail, I am consoled that I at least did the show, and I feel good about that. But at the end of the day, what is my strategy for making the dialog of the show a dialog for America? I wish I knew.
Thursday, February 25, 2010
arriving home
The broadcast is over now. We were happy that it went well and people made nice comments. I have a few more things to say about it, but for the moment, I will only report on something I found out about upon my return home. We live in a rural area, and before I left for Detroit, I bought a new pick-up truck.
By "new," I mean new to us. We are a bit more flush these days than we have been before. We bought our first pick-up off a junkyard lot for $400, and it ran just fine for a while before dying. This one, a '97 club cab with four-wheel drive, cost $2200 from Clayton, who lives around the corner, does agricultural work, fixes up cars and is a friend. I had him add-on a four wire towing coupler, and he had a truck cap that more-or-less fit, so the whole thing will come to around $2400. At that price, you don't ask for a good paint job, though this one is in pretty good shape, bright red with a stripe down in side. I have reminded everyone that you can pick up women in a truck like that, and Clayton, displaying the local dry wit, reminded me that Ellen could drive the pick-up too.
Because the truck needed a final brake adjustment, it was to be delivered to me upon my return from Detroit, and I had visions of my new life, tooling around in the bright red pick-up, but the beginning of my new tenure as a well-wheeled country gentleman will have to wait. A thief struck and stole the muffler and catalytic converter off my soon-to-be truck. There's been a little rash of that around here. It is a reminder that you can't even drive around in a showy, high-off-the ground '97 without being a lot better off than some folks who will get under it with a torch for the risks and rewards of stealing its parts.
We are living in increasingly desperate times, and doing the Marathon never fails to remind me how fortunate I am.
By "new," I mean new to us. We are a bit more flush these days than we have been before. We bought our first pick-up off a junkyard lot for $400, and it ran just fine for a while before dying. This one, a '97 club cab with four-wheel drive, cost $2200 from Clayton, who lives around the corner, does agricultural work, fixes up cars and is a friend. I had him add-on a four wire towing coupler, and he had a truck cap that more-or-less fit, so the whole thing will come to around $2400. At that price, you don't ask for a good paint job, though this one is in pretty good shape, bright red with a stripe down in side. I have reminded everyone that you can pick up women in a truck like that, and Clayton, displaying the local dry wit, reminded me that Ellen could drive the pick-up too.
Because the truck needed a final brake adjustment, it was to be delivered to me upon my return from Detroit, and I had visions of my new life, tooling around in the bright red pick-up, but the beginning of my new tenure as a well-wheeled country gentleman will have to wait. A thief struck and stole the muffler and catalytic converter off my soon-to-be truck. There's been a little rash of that around here. It is a reminder that you can't even drive around in a showy, high-off-the ground '97 without being a lot better off than some folks who will get under it with a torch for the risks and rewards of stealing its parts.
We are living in increasingly desperate times, and doing the Marathon never fails to remind me how fortunate I am.
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
First Thoughts After
The broadcast is over now. It went reasonably smoothly with few technical glitches and ended with comraderie between those involved. But the funny thing about doing this is that after months of work and staying up all night to make it happen, I really have no idea how it sounded. Being a host is not the same as being a listener. I don't listen to the broadcast in the way that the audience does. I listen for the verbal cues that permit me to take the broadcast in this direction or that one. I won't know to think until I review the recordings, which will take a while. For now, it is enough to have gotten through it and feel okay about what has happened. I am content.
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
nerves, butterflies and what forges iron
In the end, on the night before the broadcast, I am just another guy on the eve of an event. There are differences, of course, between this and getting ready for battle or for a sporting event or a theatrical performance, but they all have their similarities too. One of them is being on the verge of something you don't know what it will mean in your life, because you can't know how it will come out.
In between trying to sew up last details, I think about what is the "this" and what is the "life" in the question of what will this mean to my life? These days, I am happy in my life, and that helps me along. And in the background are the people this show is for, which is to say my family, my country and especially its poor. They are not in the foreground, because just like a soldier or an athlete or an actor, one has to keep ones mind on the task ahead and on maintaining the mental ability to engage it. But at the same time and at the risk of sounding insufferably sappy, I think that, amidst all the mysteries of the cosmos, love is still the best explanation for a lot of what we do if not all of why we're here..
As to why, when love is everywhere, there should be such suffering in the world, well, being up late at night may fill you with questions, but it doesn't make you wise.
In between trying to sew up last details, I think about what is the "this" and what is the "life" in the question of what will this mean to my life? These days, I am happy in my life, and that helps me along. And in the background are the people this show is for, which is to say my family, my country and especially its poor. They are not in the foreground, because just like a soldier or an athlete or an actor, one has to keep ones mind on the task ahead and on maintaining the mental ability to engage it. But at the same time and at the risk of sounding insufferably sappy, I think that, amidst all the mysteries of the cosmos, love is still the best explanation for a lot of what we do if not all of why we're here..
As to why, when love is everywhere, there should be such suffering in the world, well, being up late at night may fill you with questions, but it doesn't make you wise.
Monday, February 22, 2010
More On Race
It is a bit peculiar to me to find myself writing about race less than 48 hours before the broadcast. I think this is an occupational hazard of doing a blog and being a white guy in Detroit. Detroit is certainly known for more than its economic decline and one of the other things it is known for is its vibrant black culture. So the idea that I would have an encounter with race doing this work in Detroit is hardly a startling one. What's more startling -- to me, anyway -- is that this possibility never occurred to me. Be that as it may, I do actually have a few things to say about race, so I think I may as well say them.
When I wrote that last post about how the thought that I might have any appeal to a black audience just about made me giggle, I felt like I might be misunderstood. If anybody is going to not like what I say, I would hope it would at least be the thing I actually said, so I will try to offer here some explanation, whether or not it is actually necessary. I have had black people in my life, and the way I would summarize those relationships is that, for the most part, they had nothing whatsoever to do with stereotypes. So when I say I wouldn't think of myself as the kind to be popular with black people, I mean I wouldn't expect myself to be the type to interact with black people in the stereotypical ways white people might be portrayed as interacting with black people or the ways in which white people, themselves, might think they ought to interact. I would hardly be the first to be involved with black people without trying to act like a black person. There's lots of people, for instance, who have fallen in love across racial lines when they weren't expecting to, so involvement with another race isn't something you have to be looking for in order to find it.
Before I go any further down that road, I must mention that this series of happy experiences with black people hasn't let up. We were on the ropes as far as having any kind of a video webcast was concerned, and all of a sudden, we have a crew of four or five black people working on this. It is just extraordinarily fortunate that we have them at all, and it is even more extraordinary that everybody seems to like each other. I will happily throw in a plug for them. They go by the name of Pulsebeat TV and I just genuinely like them all. I might add that I haven't actually met anybody I don't like in Detroit, and I've never been accused of being just like Will Rogers. That's just the way it has worked out here, which is a big reason why this has been a very happy experience. It's been so happy, that I cant let my fear of a crash landing keep me from enjoying it.
Anyway, to get back where I was, I don't know any rap songs and I don't know any black slang, but then, of course, the question arises as to why would anyone think those things should be the hallmarks of a white person being involved with black people? It is a well-known phenomenon that scads of white youth affect black mannerisms; listen to hip-hop and rap and what not; dress in the latest African-American styles, which the last I knew involved baggy pants, though it has probably moved on long ago; and even walk down the street, whether that street be in Peoria or Pocatello, like they are strolling down 125th. What are they doing?
Surely a part of what they're doing, or at least, what some of them are doing, is a genuine tribute to black culture. It seems like African-Americans have given America half of everything it holds sacred, though that is surely an exaggeration. So why shouldn't white people focus on this perennial wellspring?
Just the same, my own theory is that the largest part of it has to do with white guilt. At a certain age, I think everybody realizes that there are oppressed and oppressors here in the Land of the Free. America's white children, just like Anne Frank said of everyone, are genuinely good at heart, so they want to identify with the oppressed instead of the oppressor. The trouble with that, though, is that it's just a phase. For the most part, after a few years of pretending to be gangstas, they go on to take their places in the existing order without challenging it. There's nothing new in this. I personally lived through the shocking revelation that not everyone who ever said "Groovy" in the 60's stayed a hippie.
Otis Maclay., an engineer and computer person (among other things) who is helping us and is associated with the Pacifica radio network, was sitting in my room last night talking about the importance of the 73rd psalm, so with Michael also listening, I read it from the Gideon Bible in my room. I recommend it. Otis is right to focus on that one. Others psalms and other parts of the Bible have other messages, but this one speaks powerfully about how nothing has changed in the worldly world. The ways by which people abuse each other certainly haven't.
I don't think anybody will contradict me when I say that in this society we are all screwed up about race, though I do give America a lot of credit for getting farther in dealing with it than a lot of other countries. It is actually, I think, one of the few ways in which we still lead the world. Many people would rightly argue that we have yet many steps to go, and from my own, non-philosophical perspective, I will vouch for the truth of that. I may be a white guy, but I'm a white guy who regularly visits the poorest parts of town, the soup kitchens, and the shelters, and who once a year, sees before him a line of desperately poor and homeless people. I can state, as a simple matter of fact, that what I have seen is disproportionately made up of people of color. So if anybody says we have further to go delving into issues of race in this country, I for one agree, but even so, I think the focus on race no longer serves us well.
There have certainly been times when the focus on race was absolutely necessary, none greater than the period leading up the Civil War, when it was impossible to discuss slavery without noting, one way or the other, that the slaves were of African descent. But that is not where we are now.
Those for whom the need to resolve the issues posed by race is synonymous with the quest for social justice have found themselves outplayed and trumped by people who would manipulate racial issues to perpetrate injustice. To my mind, this was never clearer than during the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas. You had Strom Thurmond, a longtime segregationist, standing staunchly behind a black man married to a white woman, something which, in Thurmond's youth, had been a de facto capital offense in his native South Carolina. Had Thurmond changed his stripes? No, if he had, he might have given some credence to Anita Hill.
My own conclusion was that during the Thomas-Hill hearings, you could see the economic skeleton under the flesh of race hatred. As I see it, the powers that be wanted Thomas because he would do their bidding, and they hid their wolf beneath his black sheep's clothing. Nonetheless, there were black people who believed and even testified, in so many words, that, ultimately, Clarence Thomas would do the right thing because he was black. They were wrong.
Without Clarence Thomas's vote halting the Florida recount, George W. Bush would not have made it to the presidency, where he launched a war on Iraq under false pretenses with the help of a black National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, and a black Secretary of State, Colin Powel. If you approve of the war and are a supporter of the Bush Administration, that's your right, but it would be hard to argue that the actions of Thomas, Rice and Powell had anything to do with righting the wrongs of the Middle Passage, no matter that Thomas invoked the specter of a "high-tech lynching for uppity blacks" in accusing anyone who opposed him of racism.
Today, you cannot discuss racial issues on their own, without explaining why what you are talking about is different from what Thomas, Powel, Rice, and now Michael Steele represent. And you can't explain that without invoking the issue of class, so as far as I can see, you may as well just invoke the issue of class right from the start. It is more inclusive -- people are suffering so broadly now that we should be focusing on everyone -- and it is also more precisely targeted on the challenge before us.
When I wrote that last post about how the thought that I might have any appeal to a black audience just about made me giggle, I felt like I might be misunderstood. If anybody is going to not like what I say, I would hope it would at least be the thing I actually said, so I will try to offer here some explanation, whether or not it is actually necessary. I have had black people in my life, and the way I would summarize those relationships is that, for the most part, they had nothing whatsoever to do with stereotypes. So when I say I wouldn't think of myself as the kind to be popular with black people, I mean I wouldn't expect myself to be the type to interact with black people in the stereotypical ways white people might be portrayed as interacting with black people or the ways in which white people, themselves, might think they ought to interact. I would hardly be the first to be involved with black people without trying to act like a black person. There's lots of people, for instance, who have fallen in love across racial lines when they weren't expecting to, so involvement with another race isn't something you have to be looking for in order to find it.
Before I go any further down that road, I must mention that this series of happy experiences with black people hasn't let up. We were on the ropes as far as having any kind of a video webcast was concerned, and all of a sudden, we have a crew of four or five black people working on this. It is just extraordinarily fortunate that we have them at all, and it is even more extraordinary that everybody seems to like each other. I will happily throw in a plug for them. They go by the name of Pulsebeat TV and I just genuinely like them all. I might add that I haven't actually met anybody I don't like in Detroit, and I've never been accused of being just like Will Rogers. That's just the way it has worked out here, which is a big reason why this has been a very happy experience. It's been so happy, that I cant let my fear of a crash landing keep me from enjoying it.
Anyway, to get back where I was, I don't know any rap songs and I don't know any black slang, but then, of course, the question arises as to why would anyone think those things should be the hallmarks of a white person being involved with black people? It is a well-known phenomenon that scads of white youth affect black mannerisms; listen to hip-hop and rap and what not; dress in the latest African-American styles, which the last I knew involved baggy pants, though it has probably moved on long ago; and even walk down the street, whether that street be in Peoria or Pocatello, like they are strolling down 125th. What are they doing?
Surely a part of what they're doing, or at least, what some of them are doing, is a genuine tribute to black culture. It seems like African-Americans have given America half of everything it holds sacred, though that is surely an exaggeration. So why shouldn't white people focus on this perennial wellspring?
Just the same, my own theory is that the largest part of it has to do with white guilt. At a certain age, I think everybody realizes that there are oppressed and oppressors here in the Land of the Free. America's white children, just like Anne Frank said of everyone, are genuinely good at heart, so they want to identify with the oppressed instead of the oppressor. The trouble with that, though, is that it's just a phase. For the most part, after a few years of pretending to be gangstas, they go on to take their places in the existing order without challenging it. There's nothing new in this. I personally lived through the shocking revelation that not everyone who ever said "Groovy" in the 60's stayed a hippie.
Otis Maclay., an engineer and computer person (among other things) who is helping us and is associated with the Pacifica radio network, was sitting in my room last night talking about the importance of the 73rd psalm, so with Michael also listening, I read it from the Gideon Bible in my room. I recommend it. Otis is right to focus on that one. Others psalms and other parts of the Bible have other messages, but this one speaks powerfully about how nothing has changed in the worldly world. The ways by which people abuse each other certainly haven't.
I don't think anybody will contradict me when I say that in this society we are all screwed up about race, though I do give America a lot of credit for getting farther in dealing with it than a lot of other countries. It is actually, I think, one of the few ways in which we still lead the world. Many people would rightly argue that we have yet many steps to go, and from my own, non-philosophical perspective, I will vouch for the truth of that. I may be a white guy, but I'm a white guy who regularly visits the poorest parts of town, the soup kitchens, and the shelters, and who once a year, sees before him a line of desperately poor and homeless people. I can state, as a simple matter of fact, that what I have seen is disproportionately made up of people of color. So if anybody says we have further to go delving into issues of race in this country, I for one agree, but even so, I think the focus on race no longer serves us well.
There have certainly been times when the focus on race was absolutely necessary, none greater than the period leading up the Civil War, when it was impossible to discuss slavery without noting, one way or the other, that the slaves were of African descent. But that is not where we are now.
Those for whom the need to resolve the issues posed by race is synonymous with the quest for social justice have found themselves outplayed and trumped by people who would manipulate racial issues to perpetrate injustice. To my mind, this was never clearer than during the confirmation hearings for Clarence Thomas. You had Strom Thurmond, a longtime segregationist, standing staunchly behind a black man married to a white woman, something which, in Thurmond's youth, had been a de facto capital offense in his native South Carolina. Had Thurmond changed his stripes? No, if he had, he might have given some credence to Anita Hill.
My own conclusion was that during the Thomas-Hill hearings, you could see the economic skeleton under the flesh of race hatred. As I see it, the powers that be wanted Thomas because he would do their bidding, and they hid their wolf beneath his black sheep's clothing. Nonetheless, there were black people who believed and even testified, in so many words, that, ultimately, Clarence Thomas would do the right thing because he was black. They were wrong.
Without Clarence Thomas's vote halting the Florida recount, George W. Bush would not have made it to the presidency, where he launched a war on Iraq under false pretenses with the help of a black National Security Advisor, Condoleeza Rice, and a black Secretary of State, Colin Powel. If you approve of the war and are a supporter of the Bush Administration, that's your right, but it would be hard to argue that the actions of Thomas, Rice and Powell had anything to do with righting the wrongs of the Middle Passage, no matter that Thomas invoked the specter of a "high-tech lynching for uppity blacks" in accusing anyone who opposed him of racism.
Today, you cannot discuss racial issues on their own, without explaining why what you are talking about is different from what Thomas, Powel, Rice, and now Michael Steele represent. And you can't explain that without invoking the issue of class, so as far as I can see, you may as well just invoke the issue of class right from the start. It is more inclusive -- people are suffering so broadly now that we should be focusing on everyone -- and it is also more precisely targeted on the challenge before us.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
In Detroit for the Broadcast
We are in the thick of it now. As always, the final stages of preparation for the broadcast are very intense. We arrived at the broadcast site to find that the phone block was of a type we were unfamiliar with. So there was some immediate panic and a quick call to the phone company to make sure they could send a repairman out to install the jacks for us. But after a while, we figured it out, and in the process of doing so, realized we couldn't find two of the lines we had ordered. So it's a good thing the repair guy is coming, even if we don't need him for the jacks. But the point is that, in that moment, we were confronted with something that could take down the entire broadcast. It didn't, but for me, at least, it's a shock to the system, like hearing that the plane your uncle is on might just have crashed and then hearing an hour later that no, it was another plane.
Immediately after that, my e-mail account crashed, and of course it would only do that right when I am awaiting e-mail confirmation as to whether or not the City of Detroit will send representatives for an on-the-air dialog with the homeless people on site. The answer to that turned out to be yes, but I only got the e-mail after frantically calling people at my very good ISP until finally the boss took care of it.
In other words, it's just one shock after another, and I think any event planner will recognize this as a more-or-less normal kind of scenario, although other planners may have a higher percentage of routine events than we ever seem to be able to pull off. But for all of that, I've been enjoying myself immensely.
My son, Michael, is our chief engineer. He has been involved with every broadcast, sleeping outside on the pavement in sympathy with the first one, when he was just thirteen. Oh well, you know, tomorrow who knows what will be with any of us, but so far, it's been a blast being with him, and I feel like a lucky father to have this event that we can share.
The people at Cass Community Social Services are incredibly nice, really all of them. I have kind of given up trying to be something other than a gorilla, at times, but I am striving these days to be a gorilla who can stay in the social preserve. And one of the nice things about being at Cass Community, is that whenever I look my wildest, they have a kindly glint in their eyes like they saw sixteen worse cases before breakfast.
And I've been having a lot of singular experiences. Driving to Detroit, for example, I was interviewed twice on one of our affiliates, WRFG in Atlanta. It wasn't really the most advantageous time for interviews, the first for half an hour and the second for a full hour, but they were trying to help promote the broadcast, I certainly wanted to help them with that, and Michael drove while I was talking on the cell phone.
As it turned out, the two interviews went extremely well, and for the second one, I was interviewed by three people at once, or maybe there was a fourth, and they really seemed to like the things I was saying, and I really enjoyed talking with them. What made this more than just a good interview was that WRFG is a community station for a community that is largely African-American. So it resonated with my performance at the COTS shelter, and it just seemed so funny to me to think of myself as someone who's really down with black people. I wouldn't describe myself that way in any case, but the thing of it is that I am so pathetically unhip that the mere thought that I might have any appeal to a black audience just about makes me giggle. I have to add, though, that, if it turned out to be true, I would just think that was great. Who wouldn't?
Immediately after that, my e-mail account crashed, and of course it would only do that right when I am awaiting e-mail confirmation as to whether or not the City of Detroit will send representatives for an on-the-air dialog with the homeless people on site. The answer to that turned out to be yes, but I only got the e-mail after frantically calling people at my very good ISP until finally the boss took care of it.
In other words, it's just one shock after another, and I think any event planner will recognize this as a more-or-less normal kind of scenario, although other planners may have a higher percentage of routine events than we ever seem to be able to pull off. But for all of that, I've been enjoying myself immensely.
My son, Michael, is our chief engineer. He has been involved with every broadcast, sleeping outside on the pavement in sympathy with the first one, when he was just thirteen. Oh well, you know, tomorrow who knows what will be with any of us, but so far, it's been a blast being with him, and I feel like a lucky father to have this event that we can share.
The people at Cass Community Social Services are incredibly nice, really all of them. I have kind of given up trying to be something other than a gorilla, at times, but I am striving these days to be a gorilla who can stay in the social preserve. And one of the nice things about being at Cass Community, is that whenever I look my wildest, they have a kindly glint in their eyes like they saw sixteen worse cases before breakfast.
And I've been having a lot of singular experiences. Driving to Detroit, for example, I was interviewed twice on one of our affiliates, WRFG in Atlanta. It wasn't really the most advantageous time for interviews, the first for half an hour and the second for a full hour, but they were trying to help promote the broadcast, I certainly wanted to help them with that, and Michael drove while I was talking on the cell phone.
As it turned out, the two interviews went extremely well, and for the second one, I was interviewed by three people at once, or maybe there was a fourth, and they really seemed to like the things I was saying, and I really enjoyed talking with them. What made this more than just a good interview was that WRFG is a community station for a community that is largely African-American. So it resonated with my performance at the COTS shelter, and it just seemed so funny to me to think of myself as someone who's really down with black people. I wouldn't describe myself that way in any case, but the thing of it is that I am so pathetically unhip that the mere thought that I might have any appeal to a black audience just about makes me giggle. I have to add, though, that, if it turned out to be true, I would just think that was great. Who wouldn't?
Thursday, February 11, 2010
More on the Capucin Cash (Holy) Cow
I just spoke to Roy Hoelscher. He's the man who made the announcement at the DAC meeting that they, the Capucins, would be accepting contributions for Haiti. He made a mistake, he said regretfully, in terms of the timing of the announcement, because he miscalculated when checks would be arriving. But be that as it may, the results are in.
The soup kitchen serves on the order of 300 every day for breakfast, 500 for lunch and 600 for dinner (what do those numbers, at just one establishment, tell us about Detroit?). The DAC contributions were mixed with the contributions of other patrons, but the patrons are pretty much in the same social strata. Some are squatting illegally, some are in shelters that don't serve meals, some have marginal housing and have to save money, and some, maybe at the top of the heap, are people who have been widowed and come more for the companionship. But even these relatively wealthy widows and widowers are in no condition to be chit-chatting over hors d'oeuvres and aperitifs at the yachting society were they not otherwise engaged at the soup kitchen.
Out of this group, the Capucins were able to raise over $800. I think it is best to provide that figure without commentary.
The soup kitchen serves on the order of 300 every day for breakfast, 500 for lunch and 600 for dinner (what do those numbers, at just one establishment, tell us about Detroit?). The DAC contributions were mixed with the contributions of other patrons, but the patrons are pretty much in the same social strata. Some are squatting illegally, some are in shelters that don't serve meals, some have marginal housing and have to save money, and some, maybe at the top of the heap, are people who have been widowed and come more for the companionship. But even these relatively wealthy widows and widowers are in no condition to be chit-chatting over hors d'oeuvres and aperitifs at the yachting society were they not otherwise engaged at the soup kitchen.
Out of this group, the Capucins were able to raise over $800. I think it is best to provide that figure without commentary.
Monday, February 8, 2010
An Odd Thought
An odd thought came to me, and it brought me back to this blog. The thought was "What if Detroit listened to me?" This thought came to me because I submitted an Op-Ed to the Detroit Free Press. I told them that it was kind of a manifesto for the upcoming broadcast. I got a reply from an editor saying she was interested in the piece. Like everyone in Detroit, she wanted to know who I was, and she also wanted to know about the broadcast. I sent her some information, and I haven't heard anything back yet. I can tell you that if you ain't used to disappointment, you ain't used to being a writer, but whatever happens, she got me thinking.
The piece was about why we should pay attention to poverty. She said that might be all well and good, but if I was going to say that, then I should say what I thought "the most constructive actions" would be. The thought never even dawned on me that anyone in Detroit might offer me a platform to declaim on what I think ought to be done. I can assure you that I told her I would consider it an opportunity. That's when it occurred to me that, you know, I've got this blog, and if anybody's interested, why couldn't I just set myself down and write right here about a few most constructive actions?
So I will set down here what I think the City of Detroit (and cities around the country) should do, but in making this declaration, I must stress that these are my views alone. These are not the official views of the Homelessness Marathon, which has published its own "Declaration of Principles." More important, the fact that I hold these views doesn't mean that these will be the only views presented on our broadcast. I am in the minority. I think anyone following discussions about homelessness in America will know that the positions I espouse, or positions akin to them, are gaining ground, but many guests on our broadcast, including many homeless people, probably will not fully share my views.
So with that disclaimer, here is my six point plan for Detroit:
1 - First do no harm. Stop causing evictions by shutting off water or anything else. This freeze can be for a limited term, say a year, with the understanding that people will not be evicted again until there is some alternative plan in place for them.
2 - During the period of this eviction moratorium, the city should commission a study as to whether eviction is even cost effective. This doesn't have to be some jackass commission that drones on interminably. A good reporter could prepare a dossier on this in a month. The queston is, what happens when people get evicted? Do emergency room health care costs go up? I believe that more than one study has shown that emergency room costs go down when homeless people are housed, so it stands to reason that emergency room costs go up when housed people are made homeless. The costs of policing go up too as does the cost of remedial education for children made homeless in this way. Knowing the relative costs involved doesn't alter the moral imperatives, but it may make them easier to attain, and beyond that, having a lot of, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" type discussions creates the misimpression that poverty issues are only of philosophic and not practical importance. For all the City of Detroit knows (or pretty much any American city knows), it may be shooting itself in the financial foot every time it evicts someone. Isn't it a no-brainer for the City to at least find out?
3 - Adopt a "Safe Address For Everyone" (SAFE) approach to municipal homelessness. Leaving your own people to die in the streets so destroys the soul of a city that one wonders how anyone thinks Detroit can have a renaissance just by bringing in developers and walling off the rich part of town from everyone else. These are the schemes of quick buck artists not civic boosters. If anyone was asking me, I would say that Detroit should lead the nation by looking around and saying, "We've seen the results of people just watching out for themselves and we're not going to do it anymore." Oh God, wouldn't I like to see it. Detroit, you could be raising the torch of hope for our entire nation as surely as the Statue of Liberty beckoned to the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
4 - Immediately implement SAFE policies, aimed at getting all of the homeless people into safe spaces. This work must begin immediately, because people are dying and it can't wait, so a great deal of the planning and cost analysis will have to be done on the fly. A multiplicity of approaches will have to be tried. In some places, tent cities can be erected (there's plenty of vacant land) with a central warming shelter for when it's too cold. In some places, people can be moved into abandoned homes. In some places, abandoned businesses can be turned into dormitories. In some places the city can build a trailer park or pay landowners to host trailers. In some places, apartments can be turned into group residences, and so on.
5 - Pay for getting everyone into a safe space. There are lots of twists and turns to the question of how much this will cost, because, for one thing, it is not altogether clear that a SAFE policy will cost the city a cent. Here are some reasons:
- Getting everyone into a SAFE space will probably reduce emergency room costs, and the crime rate is likely to drop (though there would surely be policing costs involved with the new SAFE spaces -- whether tent cities, dormitories or whatever, these spaces should be treated as regular neighborhoods with regular patrols).
- The City could open the door to volunteer labor. If it wasn't for volunteer labor, the Gulf Coast of Mississippi wouldn't be nearly as rebuilt as it is. People I talked with down there variously estimated the contribution of the volunteers at 80-95% of the help with housing construction. There's a lot of people who would like to help rebuild Detroit, too, if they only knew what to do, and this would give them some direction.
- A SAFE policy could bring business to Detroit. I'm a New Yorker, and I must say that, as much as I love New York, it amazes me that all you had to do was sing a jingle about "I love New York, " and people came. The adoption of a SAFE policy in Detroit would attract tourists who want to see the work in progress. It would attract capital from private donors and foundations that want to be a part of this new development. And Detroit will have succeeded in doing what every business-minded city in the country wants to do, which is to make itself stand out. And what a way to stand out! What better climate could there be for attracting business than to be the city where people are committed to taking care of each other and there's a new spirit of enthusiasm about the future?
If Detroit has to pay out some money at first or even in the long run to implement a SAFE policy, the City does have some budgetary resources it can apply. Giving everyone a chance to survive is more important than filling minor potholes, and if most people feel that way, a few bumps on the road to a better city won't be so painful. Detroit can also take money away from municipal expenditures on permanent housing, because getting everyone into a safe space is more important than getting a few people into permanent housing, especially when, as is currently the case, a small amount of permanent housing is purchased at the cost of leaving thousands of people on the streets. Most funding for permanent housing doesn't come from the city, though, but from the State and Federal governments. The City of Detroit should be prepared to impound those monies and other Federal monies to fulfill SAFE goals.
The idea of impounding money may seem radical, but when it comes to allocations for the poor, it's old hat. Cities around the country have many times just been unable to figure out how on earth to spend money intended for the homeless, and the unspent monies have then gone back into general funds so that they could be used for stuff like picking up garbage in rich neighborhoods. During the Reagan Administration, when Sam Pierce was the head of HUD, ten or twenty billion dollars intended for low-income housing were siphoned off to build golf courses and shopping malls for rich Republican donors. In that case, Pierce's deputy and others went to prison, but that's the exception to the rule. More recently, Haley Barbour, the Governor of Mississippi, impounded roughly six hundred million dollars worth of Community Block Development Grant funds intended for post-Katrina low-income housing and spent it on expanding the port at Gulfport. Well, he hasn't gone to jail, and I don't see anyone putting Dave Bing in jail either, if he reverses this process and impounds Federal monies intended for other uses and actually spends them on the poor.
6 - As everyone in Detroit is getting into some kind of SAFE space, Detroit should have a conversation with itself about what comes next. The steps I have outlined here are only a start.
There you have it. With beliefs like these, some people will think I probably can't walk and chew gum at the same time, and, unfortunately, they'd be right. The last time I chewed gum it pulled a crown out, so I can't even chew it sitting down anymore.
The piece was about why we should pay attention to poverty. She said that might be all well and good, but if I was going to say that, then I should say what I thought "the most constructive actions" would be. The thought never even dawned on me that anyone in Detroit might offer me a platform to declaim on what I think ought to be done. I can assure you that I told her I would consider it an opportunity. That's when it occurred to me that, you know, I've got this blog, and if anybody's interested, why couldn't I just set myself down and write right here about a few most constructive actions?
So I will set down here what I think the City of Detroit (and cities around the country) should do, but in making this declaration, I must stress that these are my views alone. These are not the official views of the Homelessness Marathon, which has published its own "Declaration of Principles." More important, the fact that I hold these views doesn't mean that these will be the only views presented on our broadcast. I am in the minority. I think anyone following discussions about homelessness in America will know that the positions I espouse, or positions akin to them, are gaining ground, but many guests on our broadcast, including many homeless people, probably will not fully share my views.
So with that disclaimer, here is my six point plan for Detroit:
1 - First do no harm. Stop causing evictions by shutting off water or anything else. This freeze can be for a limited term, say a year, with the understanding that people will not be evicted again until there is some alternative plan in place for them.
2 - During the period of this eviction moratorium, the city should commission a study as to whether eviction is even cost effective. This doesn't have to be some jackass commission that drones on interminably. A good reporter could prepare a dossier on this in a month. The queston is, what happens when people get evicted? Do emergency room health care costs go up? I believe that more than one study has shown that emergency room costs go down when homeless people are housed, so it stands to reason that emergency room costs go up when housed people are made homeless. The costs of policing go up too as does the cost of remedial education for children made homeless in this way. Knowing the relative costs involved doesn't alter the moral imperatives, but it may make them easier to attain, and beyond that, having a lot of, "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?" type discussions creates the misimpression that poverty issues are only of philosophic and not practical importance. For all the City of Detroit knows (or pretty much any American city knows), it may be shooting itself in the financial foot every time it evicts someone. Isn't it a no-brainer for the City to at least find out?
3 - Adopt a "Safe Address For Everyone" (SAFE) approach to municipal homelessness. Leaving your own people to die in the streets so destroys the soul of a city that one wonders how anyone thinks Detroit can have a renaissance just by bringing in developers and walling off the rich part of town from everyone else. These are the schemes of quick buck artists not civic boosters. If anyone was asking me, I would say that Detroit should lead the nation by looking around and saying, "We've seen the results of people just watching out for themselves and we're not going to do it anymore." Oh God, wouldn't I like to see it. Detroit, you could be raising the torch of hope for our entire nation as surely as the Statue of Liberty beckoned to the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."
4 - Immediately implement SAFE policies, aimed at getting all of the homeless people into safe spaces. This work must begin immediately, because people are dying and it can't wait, so a great deal of the planning and cost analysis will have to be done on the fly. A multiplicity of approaches will have to be tried. In some places, tent cities can be erected (there's plenty of vacant land) with a central warming shelter for when it's too cold. In some places, people can be moved into abandoned homes. In some places, abandoned businesses can be turned into dormitories. In some places the city can build a trailer park or pay landowners to host trailers. In some places, apartments can be turned into group residences, and so on.
5 - Pay for getting everyone into a safe space. There are lots of twists and turns to the question of how much this will cost, because, for one thing, it is not altogether clear that a SAFE policy will cost the city a cent. Here are some reasons:
- Getting everyone into a SAFE space will probably reduce emergency room costs, and the crime rate is likely to drop (though there would surely be policing costs involved with the new SAFE spaces -- whether tent cities, dormitories or whatever, these spaces should be treated as regular neighborhoods with regular patrols).
- The City could open the door to volunteer labor. If it wasn't for volunteer labor, the Gulf Coast of Mississippi wouldn't be nearly as rebuilt as it is. People I talked with down there variously estimated the contribution of the volunteers at 80-95% of the help with housing construction. There's a lot of people who would like to help rebuild Detroit, too, if they only knew what to do, and this would give them some direction.
- A SAFE policy could bring business to Detroit. I'm a New Yorker, and I must say that, as much as I love New York, it amazes me that all you had to do was sing a jingle about "I love New York, " and people came. The adoption of a SAFE policy in Detroit would attract tourists who want to see the work in progress. It would attract capital from private donors and foundations that want to be a part of this new development. And Detroit will have succeeded in doing what every business-minded city in the country wants to do, which is to make itself stand out. And what a way to stand out! What better climate could there be for attracting business than to be the city where people are committed to taking care of each other and there's a new spirit of enthusiasm about the future?
If Detroit has to pay out some money at first or even in the long run to implement a SAFE policy, the City does have some budgetary resources it can apply. Giving everyone a chance to survive is more important than filling minor potholes, and if most people feel that way, a few bumps on the road to a better city won't be so painful. Detroit can also take money away from municipal expenditures on permanent housing, because getting everyone into a safe space is more important than getting a few people into permanent housing, especially when, as is currently the case, a small amount of permanent housing is purchased at the cost of leaving thousands of people on the streets. Most funding for permanent housing doesn't come from the city, though, but from the State and Federal governments. The City of Detroit should be prepared to impound those monies and other Federal monies to fulfill SAFE goals.
The idea of impounding money may seem radical, but when it comes to allocations for the poor, it's old hat. Cities around the country have many times just been unable to figure out how on earth to spend money intended for the homeless, and the unspent monies have then gone back into general funds so that they could be used for stuff like picking up garbage in rich neighborhoods. During the Reagan Administration, when Sam Pierce was the head of HUD, ten or twenty billion dollars intended for low-income housing were siphoned off to build golf courses and shopping malls for rich Republican donors. In that case, Pierce's deputy and others went to prison, but that's the exception to the rule. More recently, Haley Barbour, the Governor of Mississippi, impounded roughly six hundred million dollars worth of Community Block Development Grant funds intended for post-Katrina low-income housing and spent it on expanding the port at Gulfport. Well, he hasn't gone to jail, and I don't see anyone putting Dave Bing in jail either, if he reverses this process and impounds Federal monies intended for other uses and actually spends them on the poor.
6 - As everyone in Detroit is getting into some kind of SAFE space, Detroit should have a conversation with itself about what comes next. The steps I have outlined here are only a start.
There you have it. With beliefs like these, some people will think I probably can't walk and chew gum at the same time, and, unfortunately, they'd be right. The last time I chewed gum it pulled a crown out, so I can't even chew it sitting down anymore.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
