Only A General Strike Will Secure The Right To Safe, Legal Abortion

Yesterday I endangered the 20 people I was with, standing on the pavement thinking about the government. I yelled at an older man in a car with NY license plates who was mansplaining that Maine still has access to safe medical abortion. I asked him if he had a uterus and then told him "If you don't have a uterus then shut the f up" (yes, I said f not the f word). Luckily he did not become angry and shoot anyone. He just said, "Nice language, lady" and drove away.

I've apologized to the event organizer for losing my temper. 

The incident made me realize how deeply angry I am about the attack on people who can get pregnant, by attackers who can't. 

I was disappointed by the coverage in the local paper which focused on the need to vote harder for Democrats. Really? Y'all still falling for that bullshit that got us to where we are today?

Honestly, though, I just became a hair more willing to vote for the Democratic incumbent for governor, a woman who has disappointed numerous times with her craven pandering to big business. Her challenger is the old incumbent, a man who arguably was channeling 45 before that demagogue had even made it to the White House. Rude, crude, and would definitely strip Maine of reproductive rights if he were able. (And ranked choice voting does not apply to the election for governor in our state.)

Some of my friends are posting as former wards of the state about their hellish experiences in foster care. They are challenging the narrative that adoption is a magic wand that solves unwanted pregnancy problems. They are reminding us that they were kicked to the curb after aging out of the system at 18; many ended up unhoused, exploited, addicted, or dead.

I'm also reminded of the now decades old statistical analysis pointing out that access to safe, legal abortions caused the U.S. crime rate to plummet. (If you've not heard about this theory before, you can listen or read about it here on the Freakonomics site.) There's no doubt that policing and incarceration are systems built to keep white people at the top of the heap. Unfortunately, those are constants in the U.S. But did legalizing abortion in the 1970's have a ripple effects on the rate of violent crime 20 years later?

As a teacher for 25 years I had occasion to know many families. The vast majority of people love their kids -- even moms and dads who didn't particularly want children to be born into poverty and who are struggling themselves after a bad childhood. Parents and other caregivers (increasingly grandparents after their own child succumbs to substance use disorder) don't always make the choices that seem wise to their teachers. Educators are a middle class bunch, mostly raised by parents that had resources and took the job seriously. We are often judgmental about the suffering we see and who's causing it. 

If you haven't lived a childhood full of trauma it can be hard to empathize with those who have. The scars are invisible, but they are deep.

I worked with children in dire poverty for many years. Subsequently, I wrote a novel about their struggles and triumphs; the book includes trafficking, sexual assault, unwanted pregnancy, and abortion. My protagonist experiences all of the above but she triumphs in the end because she's a bad ass who's able to find her way into nurturing communities. She has a safe, legal abortion while other characters are forced to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Now I'm revising while trying to find an agent and/or publisher. If you have any suggestions for me, I want to hear them.

You can buy this cool poster here on the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) website.

I could end this post by saying, see you on the streets, but I'm pretty sure only a general strike will turn this ship around. Easy for a retired person like me to say, but if all the women and girls who could manage it stayed home from work next week, within a month Congress would have passed and the president would have signed a law guaranteeing the legality of abortion throughout the U.S.

We must hit our corporate overlords in the pocketbook by withholding labor in order to get their attention.

Of course then Democrats would lose the ability to fundraise off the abortion political football. And I'm pretty sure we're all clear on which they value more: $$$$ or basic human rights. Under their leadership, what's the only wealthy country on the planet that doesn't have universal health care? Of which abortion on demand is just one component.

🚨#BREAKING: Secret Service Takedown a protestor during ⁦POTUS motorcade

📌#LosAngeles l #California

A Protester has jumped out in front of a motorcade as the Secret service tackled her to the ground. The woman said she was protesting for women's rights pic.twitter.com/TdVitVNwvh

— R A W S A L E R T S (@rawsalerts) June 9, 2022

The fervor of this young person attempting to communicate with the president's motorcade in Los Angeles this month is what's needed now. What are they shouting? 

"An abortion ban will not stop abortions! Only safe ones!!!"

I'm Reading A Very Dangerous Book: How Civil Wars Start

Cars were weaponized in Charlottesville in 2017, resulting in the death of people protesting the Unite the Right rally. Several states have since legalized running protesters over with a motor vehicle.

I'm reading a very dangerous book. It jumped off the recommendations shelf of my public library because its title is something I've been thinking about lately: How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them (Penguin Random House, 2022) by Barbara F. Walter, professor of International Relations in the University of California system. To say that she's pushing a neoliberal agenda would be putting it mildly. 

The book purports to share findings from research into civil wars and the conditions that precede them. The concept leans heavily on "democracy" in that the author claims nations rapidly democratizing or moving rapidly away from democratic governing structures are most vulnerable to civil war. Do I need to mention that the domestic demons in her book are 45 supporters that cannot or will not accept his defeat at the polls in 2020? Prior to that the U.S. was a beacon of democracy for the whole world [sarcasm, mine not hers].

The extent to which a government entirely captured by business interests and operated for their benefit while denying basic rights like health care and housing could be called democratic I will leave you to ponder.

What's so dangerous about this book?

As with most powerful propaganda of our day, the danger lies in the multitude of information conveniently left out of the author's narrow frame. As one example of what I mean, let's consider how civil wars of the last few decades are presented completely devoid of reference to CIA meddling or to "color revolutions" orchestrated by neoliberal foundations paving the way for business.

Walter poses the question, "When does sporadic vioence escalate into civil war?" and then ignores the influence of outside forces. She is worse than willfully ignorant because she's deliberately misleading the public, including students, who may read her book while swimming in the sea of misinformation provided 24/7 by U.S. corporate media.

She tells us helpfully that "The CIA has been studying this question for decades, in an effort to quell insurgencies around the world -- in effect, to stop civil wars before they start." Gosh that would be news to Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and the nations that once made up Yugoslavia. Their experience: the U.S. covertly funds insurgencies to effect regime change that favors neoliberal economic interests. Also Ukraine, where U.S. governmental agencies have literally been arming neo-Nazi militias for over a decade to fight their ethnic Russian neighbors in the Donbas.

But the central thesis of Walter's book is not telling lies about the ways and means of U.S. foreign policy. It is ringing the alarm bell to let us know that the U.S. is poised on the brink of civil war right here at home. 

No shit. 

Anyone who's been paying attention since, say, the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, five years ago is well aware of this growing danger. 

To take our temperature in the current moment, here's a report back from Couer d'Alene, Idaho where white supremacist groups organized to disrupt a PRIDE event, and antifascists organized to prevent them. There were inklings of this in Maine this year, too, where nothing of consequence happened in the streets but online saw a lot of sabre rattling, bulletproof vest displaying, and boasting about plans to counter PRIDE in Portland with a "white lives matter" rally.

Portland City Councilor Victoria Pelletier, a Black woman, explained her understanding of this illogical counter messaging:

Basically there are groups here and there are individuals here that want to make their presence known in opposition to anything that is celebrating any marginalized identity..

It could be PRIDE, it could be a Black Lives Matter protest..any event that is in celebration of a group that has been historically under-represented.

"Bikes lie on the ground after a car struck multiple Black Lives Matter protesters in New York City on Dec. 11."
 Timothy A. Clary/AFP Getty Images Source: Slate.com

One of my favorite jeremiad authors, Chris Hedges, has roots in rural Maine. He often writes about how neoliberal economic policies have abandoned the working class in places like the one where he grew up. One of Hedge's recent essays, "America's Gun Fetish" is worth a read in the context of civil war abrewing. Austerity drives radicalization, and as white people lose power and feel backed into a corner economically, they turn ever more toward violence.

My neighbors in rural Maine have been noticing an influx of heavily armed men "from away" i.e. not from Maine who spend an inordinate amount of time shooting weapons after purchasing some acres in the woods. One group has filled the trees in a neighbor's wood lot with bullets. Another shoots in the general direction of people growing food nearby. To say that these woods are full of doomsday preppers would be putting it mildly, and there seems to have been an influx since the COVID shutdowns of early 2020. Property values in Maine have skyrocketed, and it isn't not just wealthy urbanites acquiring second and third homes.

Anecdotal evidence, I know. 

Here's another piece: Sen. Susan Collins and her husband just put their Bangor home on the market following an incident where someone scribed a polite appeal to protect women's reproductive rights in chalk on her sidewalk. She called the cops (who, to their credit, said no crime was apparent in chalking a public sidewalk) and then the city public works department showed up at taxpayer expense to clean away the offending message.

Is Collins retreating to make her home in a gated community? Time will tell.

We know that member of Congress are scared, Supreme Court justices are scared, and little children in schools have been scared for years now. I'm scared every time a gunman mows down Black grocery shoppers or Jewish worshippers or anyone else targeted for their race, religion, or ethnicity. 

A nation built on attempted genocide of indigenous people and enslavement of kidnapped African people, a nation that continues to kill and imprison Black, Brown, and indigenous people at alarming rates, probably has such bad karma that it could only end in violent discord.

One of the more chilling depictions of the rise of Nazism in Germany. It's fiction, but based on true events. Not sure why this book is not more widely known.

I know from reading about the rise of Nazism in Germany that one day you're saying hi to your neighbors and the next day they're spouting hate speech and you're left wondering what the hell happened.

Now I have a moral dilemma about How Civil Wars Start: return the book to the library to do its work on young minds, or throw it in the trash where it belongs?

Leave your opinion in the comments.

Pathways To Progress Talk Show With Portland Maine City Councilors #mepolitics

Some of you know that I host a monthly television program in Portland, Maine with two newly elected city councilors. Pathways to Progress runs on cable tv (channel 5) and now streams live on the Portland Media Center site. 

This month Councilors Victoria Pelletier and Roberto Rodriguez joined me to talk about racism in the schools and in local politics, and threats that were circulating on the eve of the city's annual PRIDE celebration (which occurred without violence, thankfully). 

We also talked about a theme near and dear to both their hearts: role modeling for young BIPOC leaders who will follow.

Enjoy! And expect our next show July 29 at 7pm EDT on portlandmedia.org/live.

 

Direct link if embedded video does not work for you: youtu.be/ONhMEXBnJLM.

Calling For A Radical Break With The Status Quo Of Incrementalism -- Cheri Honkala

While Democrats march around in Washington DC pretending they care about quality of life for poor people, it's important to remember who actually walks the walk as opposed to just talking the talk.

A joint press conference held by the Philadelphia-based Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign with the Black Alliance for Peace, shared these words of wisdom via zoom on June 16, 2022. Note that the PPEHRC operates as the Poor People's Army, a well-established organization that has struggled and won housing for single mothers and their children. Details about attending their August boot camp to learn how it's done are at the end of this post.

Poor People's Army, Philadelphia (Source: PPEHRC Facebook)

PPEHRC and BAP Joint Press Conference June 16, 2022 

Statement from Cheri Honkala 

Today is our day to break silence regardless of the fear of the consequences. We are honored to take this step along with the Black Alliance for Peace & dear Pastor Keith Collins from Church of the Overcomer. We have no choice but to be here today – not because we want to be here, but because we have a responsibility to our ancestors & brothers & sisters struggling for survival at home and abroad. We come here today on the days before the weekend where many children, like my son, will grieve their father on Father's Day because this system and the reform path took his life and never gave him a chance. It is because of this ongoing war at home, literally not symbolically, that we can no longer afford incrementalism. We must make a radical break with a system that is killing our family members. 

The drug war has taken more lives than have been lost during Vietnam. My son doesn't weep alone this Father's Day. He weeps with children in Palestine, Yemen, Africa, Venezuela, and all over the world because we continue to stand silent as our violent government continues to deny the basic necessities of life and fails to prevent human rights violations at home and abroad. There is no reason for gun deaths in our country. There is no reason for hunger or homelessness – this is the land of plenty. If we wanted to, we could address all of these issues but we live in a country that continues to kill the dreams of children all over the world. 

From the poor in Kensington, Philadelphia to the poor all over the world, we stand with you today. We see you. We hear you. These wars of sanctions and allocating billions for war need to stop, and they need to stop now.

How dare we stand by as billions are spent on war when children all over the world, and here in Kensington, go without water, health care, food or a place to lay their heads tonight. 

We understand we are on the precipice of an economic revolution. Robots and computers are replacing human labor faster and faster. The potential exists for a society where everyone has the basic necessities of life and where war and famine are prevented and where problems are collectively solved. We are calling for a radical break with the status quo of incrementalism and doing business as usual. We are moving forward in the tradition of other forward thinking pioneers and ancestors. We are building a Poor People’s Army. Today we reconfirm our commitment to building this Poor People’s Army and ask you for your support in doing that. Join with us and the Black Alliance for Peace. We will be holding a Boot Camp in Philadelphia August 12-14 and we encourage you to join us in this endeavor. We intend to map out our plans to take back the basic necessities of life by taking land, taking housing, taking food and ensuring that everyone gets educated around a People’s Centered Human Rights model. The ruling class has betrayed us thousands of times – what makes us think this will be any different. We want to move away from the US exceptionalism that keeps us from uniting from the rest of the world. Now is the time in our lives for all walks of life – artist, faith people, and musicians to get off the treadmill that is taking us nowhere. Everyone has lost someone to preventable causes. It’s time we put an end to a system that is killing us and create the kind of cooperative society that we can all flourish in.

 

Statement from Ajamu Baraka

Black Alliance for Peace 

Thank you all for attending this morning. And thank you PPEHRC that has been at the forefront of the domestic struggle human rights in this country, and especially we want to acknowledge the visionary leadership of our dear sister and comrade Cheri Honkela. 

It is indeed an honor to for BAP to be a part of this gathering to lean our voice to call for a shift in priorities away from the cult of death and oppression represented by the policies of this administration from the streets of Philly to the completely avoided, and we say in BAP, the manufactured war in Ukraine. 

We say this morning as groups are gathering this weekend to supposedly to challenge this state’s continued avoidance of the issue of poverty, that poverty and its eradication can not occur without the acknowledgement that it will take fundamental structural change by popular forces that are independently organized and prepared to challenge the entrenched power of capital operating through the duopoly and currently through the Neoliberal Biden administration. 

Dr. King reminded us of the connection between racism, materialism (capitalism) and militarism – he referred to these as the giant triplets. In remind the movement of these fundamental relationships and declaring his opposition to the war in Vietnam he earned the wrath of the entire liberal establishment and had his life taken from him one year to the date of his declaration to break the silence on war. 

This ultimate sacrifice is the model that must be assumed if one if serious about human rights. One can not have one foot in the establishment, echoing its most backward positions on issues like the war in Ukraine, and the other foot with the people declaring solidarity with the people suffering from the rapacious greed and violence of a ruling class operating through the two capitalist parties.

One has to make a choice – you are either with the people all the way – or with the enemies of human rights, democracy, and global social justice. 

Today PPEHRC and BAP declare our firm commitment to the life-affirming values of equality, social justice, cooperation, participatory democracy, self-determination, and non-oppression represented by the PCHR framework. 

However, we recognize that we are not going to realize PCHRs by just criticizing the rulers or begging for them to recognize HRS. We understand that the realization of HRs must come about as the result of struggle. 

That is why BAP is joining hands with PPEHRC in their efforts to build a Poor Peoples Army, a non-violent army dedicated to ground working class and poor people in the PCHR framework and collectively through our own agency creating the conditions where we can experience the full range of HRs. 

People-Centered Human Rights (PCHR) are those non-oppressive rights that reflect the highest commitment to universal human dignity and social justice that individuals and collectives define and secure for themselves through social struggle. 

The people-centered framework proceeds from the assumption that the genesis of the assaults on human dignity that are at the core of human rights violations is located in the relationships of oppression. The PCHR framework does not pretend to be non-political. It is a political project in the service of the oppressed. It names the enemies of freedom: the Western white supremacist, colonial/capitalist patriarchy. 

The demands for clean water; safe and accessible food; free quality education; healthcare and healthiness for all; housing; public transportation; wages and a socially productive job that allow for a dignified life; ending of mass incarceration; universal free child care; opposition to war and the control and eventual elimination of the police; self-determination; and respect for democracy in all aspects of life are some of the people-centered human rights that can only be realized through a bottom-up mass movement for building popular power. 

That is the historical task we face, and the historic responsibility that we have assumed for ourselves and call on everyone to recognize this task and come off the fence. 

Neither party represents the needs and interests of the people and that understanding must be front and center in our analysis and our politics. 

That is and will be the message of the Poor Peoples Army that will guide us to victory!

 

Press conference recording (Direct link if embedded video does not work for you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm0-sc3CvLg)

Statement from Pastor Keith Collins

Minister with the Inner City

Faith Congress & Lancaster Mennonite Conference

Excerpt:

And someone once said, Why is it that we reject the charity model? Shouldn't the Church support charity? 

Well. the reason we reject the charity model is very simple.

Charity is vertical charity is from the top down, and in charity the people that are on the top remain on the top and the people that are on the bottom usually remain on the bottom or very close to the bottom.

We believe in a faith-based model, that that celebrates solidarity.

Solidarity is always horizontal. It respects all those around you, and respects each other person as our equal. It is not a condescending agenda, but it's an agenda that empowers everyone.  

##  

The Biden administration and Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress are called the trifecta because presumably a party in control of those branches can get shit done. Although they ran on empty promises like Medicare for All, forgiving student loan debt, and extensive claims that they would serve actual people's actual needs far better than their Republican rivals, what Democrats have actually delivered is mostly a horrifically expensive proxy war with Russia. The $54 billion or so sent to Ukraine has enriched U.S. weapons manufacturers as working class and low-income people here struggle with soaring housing costs, soaring fuel costs, soaring food costs, and medical bankruptcy. 

A glitzy march on Washington with free sandwiches on the bus does nothing to address the fundamental problems facing poor people in the U.S., and may or may not have served as a get out the vote boost for the midterms. 

How much hungrier will poor people be come November? Will they organize on their own behalf rather than following Democrats down the road to perdition?

If you want to help organize on behalf of housing and other human needs in your area, consider attending the PPEHRC boot camp outside Philadelphia this summer. Learn from the best! And don't forget who your real friends are.

Cecile Pineda, Mimi German, & Me On Homelessness: Past And Present

Photo from Urban Compassion Project in Oakland, California. You can join me in supporting this organization in their collaborative work to meet the needs of unhoused communities including but not limited to removing the trash that housed people routinely dump at encampments.

Today's blog post is a collaboration that was the brainchild of my friend Cecile Pineda (author of Apology to a Whale: Words to Mend a World among many other books). She offers a historical perspective stemming from a trip to India, and she invited her friend Mimi German, co-founder of Jason Barns Landing, a transitional community in Portland, Oregon, to contribute an account of how activists are addressing homelesness in their communities. At Cecile's invitation, I contributed  statistics about the magnitude of our failure to guarantee housing as a human right in the biggest, wealthiest empire ever.

What India Can Teach Us About Homelessness

by Cecile Pineda
(Fact checking by Srinivas Reddy) 
 
I arrived in India in 1988 after a 16-hour flight, my body so allergic to aniline dye, it had broken out in hives. I was met at 2 AM by a turbaned taxist who attempted to take me to my “hotel.” 
 
I was not too tired, and my body not too riddled with hives that I couldn’t keep my eyes open. We must have travelled many miles on the approach to Bombay proper. They were all  lined with shanty towns, “towns”  people had cobbled together from corrugated roofing plastic, corrugated cardboard, and wooden planks that had seen much better wear. I asked my taxist about them.
 
Welcome to India
 
My taxist replied that they were bull dosed at regulator intervals, turned to dust essentially, although the people living there had nowhere  left to go. Within less than a day, my well-meaning taxist assured me, they would be rebuilt and life there would go on.
 
By now it was close to 3 AM. My “hotel”  (which turned out to be something of a flop house although the people there would take good care of me, as my friend Pearl, an actress with the Bombay Talkies would assure me) was off Ashoke Kumar in a little side street which for one block only had been whimsically named Jump Rope Walk. After multiple tries not finding it, my taxist proceeded to take me to the middle class hotel district where at that hour, every doorman was sleeping on the threshold and didn’t want to be disturbed. We had tried several threshold-sleeping doormen before I began wondering why I let myself be pushed about by this upstart taxist of 25. “Take me to the Taj,” I said. Replied he, ”you can’t afford the Taj.”  I summoned my most persuasive tone, “take me to the Taj, there’s eight rupees in it for you.”
 
Although by then it was approaching 4 AM, at the Taj I knew there’d be a telephone. I phoned. “Oh, Madam, we have been waiting for you. Just lift the corrugated iron gate,” and the voice described how Jump Rope Walk was to be found. “It’s just off Ashoke Kumar.”  
 
When I lifted that impossibly heavy gate, I found a dhoti- clad boy waiting for me. The foyer was  without light of any kind but he didn’t seem to care.  He disdained carrying my bags so, flashlight held securely in my mouth, we started the ascent of what turned out to be seven floors of factories before reaching the “hotel.” On the first riser, I felt the stair move. Someone was sleeping there. The “rent” was one ana a night. Each sleeping person had paid one ana to sleep on those stairs, all seven flights, every single riser occupied.
 
While I waited for USIA to make ready to hear me read from my newly Viking-published novel, Frieze, I made the short trip to Aurangabad (site of the Buddhist Ajanta caves, and the Hindu Ellora Caves). There was only one train, and it left late at night.  Arrived on the platform, I stepped  over hundreds  if not thousands of sleeping bodies wrapped in burlap all huddled together as I imagine a Middle Passage tight-pack might have been.
 
 
The “Golden” Age of The Maharajas
 
Even before the Age of the Maharajahs, the 9^th century Cholas of South India would think nothing of gifting a human being who happened to be a skilled stone carver to the Sanjaya dynast to decorate his harem in what is now known as Java.  Frieze, my second published novel, chronicles the story of one such carver. 
 
 

Regional Aristocractic Palaces Lining Holy River Ganga

 

 

By the Age of the Maharajas (17^th century to the end of the Raj in 1947) with the help of the British and Dutch East India Company, stealing from the common people become predictably  routine. Maharajas made war against other Maharajahs for territorial gains, kept entire stables just for housing war elephants, erected forts, temples and palaces, harems for wives and concubines, sometimes as many as 1000 (according to rumor they kept them satisfied, each and every one) and established foundations to benefit widows and orphans. 
 
 

Jantar Mantar Staircases in Jaipur

In the 18^th century Rajput King Sawal Jai Singh even built the Jantar Mantar, an observatory located in the Rajasthan city of Jaipur. Some Maharajas built multiple royal cities. Akbar built Agra Fort and the royal city of Fatepur Sikri 
 
 

Inner Courtyard of Fatepur Sikri

 

 

based on a saint’s guarantee that he would sire a  desired male heir. 
 
 

Inner Coridor at Fatepur Sikri

 

 

The city would run out of water ten years later, but it was Akbar’s grandson, Shah Jahan, who took his erection complex to a whole new level, but building the Taj beggared Shah Jahan’s treasury so Aurangzeb after declaring his father incompetent, had him imprisoned in Agra Fort. He made sure there would be no more erection complex as long as his father lived. On a clear day Shah Jahan could still admire the Taj from its distant view across the Yamuna River till eight years later when he died.
 

Taj Mahal

By the 19^th century India had sunk into a state of gothic decay. When the Maharajah of Bangalore built his palace, its walls were studded with precious stones and in true Trumpian style, he had it fitted it with solid gold furniture.
 
In cahoots with the British, all the wealth the Maharajas managed to accumulate they did by stealing from the common people. Which is why after 300 years of stealing, you feel stairs that move in the dark, you step over people wrapped in burlap sleeping in tight-pack formation along railway stations platforms, and you see miles and miles of cobbled together shanty towns piling up along the highways in all of India’s big cities, of which Bombay is but one example.
 
What Three Hundred Years of Stealing from the American Taxpayer by a Congress Held Captive by the Pentagon Will Look Like
 
The Pentagon is not interested in building temples or palaces, some in far better taste than Bangalore’s. It isn’t interested in founding institutions to benefit all the widows and orphans it immiserates throughout the world. It’s only interested in more silos from which to  launch intercontinental missiles, more bunker busters, more supersonic bombers, more drones, more trident-armed nuclear submarines, more tanks, more weapons of mass destruction, more nuclear bombs, more pyroclastic ordnance to use in its covert nuclear wars.
 
Which is why people still wait for state-subsidized child care, why people have yet to see the dawn of state-subsidized Medicare-for-All, why the rights of women to make their own decisions about the use of contraception and abortion is still being contested (where else would the Pentagon get the cannon fodder manpower for operating all that military hardware), why people are forced to live in tents all along highways and railway rights of way of the world’s Number One nation, why incarcerated people are forced to work for slave wages for major corporations (Victoria’s Secrets, Aunt Jemima, Tampax Tampons, Crest Toothpaste, and Angel Soft Toilet Paper to name but a few of hundreds) and what in true slave patrol style, mostly Black, Brown, Asian and trans people are routinely sacrificed by Israeli-trained police.
 
Just imagine what 300 more years of stealing by a Congress held captive by the Pentagon might look like. But as it stands immiseration and homelessness in the U. S. of A., despite their swelling numbers, remain in their infancy.
 

Homelessness by the numbers 

by Lisa Savage
(Lisa was chosen by Cecile as her successor blog writer.)
 
The United States is believed to have more than half a million people unhoused. Accurately counting people experiencing homelessness is challenging, and the most recent effort at the national level dates back to January 2020. The SARS-COV-2 pandemic that followed complicated counting, resulted in innovative shelter arrangements using vacant hotel rooms, and may have lowered the actual number unhoused in part due to a moratorium on evictions, increased unemployment compensation, and limited cash subsidies.
 
“Over a period lasting more than a decade, the nation has not made any real progress in reducing the number of Americans at risk of homelessness.”
State of Homelessness: 2021 Edition
 
But it’s likely that the dip in total numbers unhoused was temporary. Evictions and foreclosures resumed and cash subsidies dried up under the Biden administration, and medical debt in the absence of universal health care continues as the leading cause of default on homeowner mortgages. Housing costs, both rent and purchase prices, are now skyrocketing, pricing people out of housing they have relied upon for years. As of March 2020 home prices in the U.S. had risen 21% over the previous year.
 
 
“A clear question is whether or not it should take a public health emergency to galvanise governments and support systems into making an intense effort to end street homelessness.”
Homelessness and the pandemic (March 2022)
 
Now that inflation is galloping while wages fail to keep up, we can expect even more people will be unable to obtain housing they can afford in the coming years.
 
Who can afford housing?
 
The uber wealthy and those who serve them in government seem to have no difficulty supporting several mansions in different locations.
 
 

Obama's $12 million Home on Martha’s Vineyard

 
The increase in net worth of the 1% has skyrocketed during the pandemic.
 
“As the U.S. crosses the grim milestone of 1 million deaths from Covid-19, U.S. billionaires have seen their combined wealth rise over $1.7 trillion, a gain of over 58 percent during the pandemic.”
Inequality.org (May 2022)
 
And specifically the war in Ukraine has proven highly profitable for big weapons manufacturers, with most posting record profits. This should surprise no one paying attention to their having been called to the White House for a classified planning session and the U.S. sending roughly $53 billion of U.S. public funds for “aid” to Ukraine, i.e. mostly weapon systems.
 
Meanwhile President Biden tweets every day that the U.S. economy has never been better (and is ratioed daily on Twitter for these absurd claims).
 
Most of us have anecdotal experience of the burgeoning tents and encampments of people who are unhoused  in cities across the nation. From Oakland, California to Portland, Maine those who work with the unhoused say their numbers are increasing rapidly.
 
Much has been made of Russian oligarchs and, particularly, their yachts. What of U.S. oligarchs? Senator Joe Manchin has a houseboat so lavish it might reasonably be considered a home, and it’s hard to determine how many other mansions Manchin owns.
 
Will the oligarchs of the U.S. go the way of the Maharajas of India? Stay tuned.
 

Housing the Houseless

by Mimi German
(Cecile's note: I first met Mimi at an anti-nuclear conference at San Lius Obispo, the site of the Diablo Canyon NPP bordering the sea.)
 
As a volunteer advocate for unhoused people and a co-founder of Jason Barns Landing, a transitional community for unhoused people, how I think we can help the “homeless crisis,” my response is two-fold. First, house people. The second is, love more.
 
We know that we can house people if we choose to house people. Inventory is available if you know where to look and you understand how to use money in a way that actually benefits those who are its intended population.
 
A few months ago, Street Roots, our local newspaper run by houseless people, created a multi-step response regarding how to house our unhoused neighbors. It’s brilliant and chock full of common sense. From their statement, “The humanitarian crisis on our streets requires urgent action. Our homelessness crisis is caused by a lack of affordable, accessible housing, and it is intensified by oppressive forces like racial injustice, health inequities and profound wealth inequality.”
 
We can do better by placing people “in already-built motels and existing housing, which can be quickly converted into the supported permanent housing that people need and want.” 
 
Many people still think that building more shelters is the answer. Shelters do absolutely nothing toward getting people into housing and off the streets. They are too often, dangerous places for women, places high in theft, have addiction barriers, have no support services available, are overcrowded, and shelters have rules regarding open and close times that do not work for everyone, including mandatory rules regarding exiting the shelter all day long from the early hours of morning until 8 pm at night.
 
A further response is to “recognize the leadership of autonomous villages governed by people experiencing homelessness.” Outreach to organized villages and camps working on their autonomous structure to ensure toilets, dumpsters and trash hauling, food support, and medical services along with housing advocacy, gets to these camps.  Support the efforts of the unhoused rather than disrupt or ignore them.


What we’ve done in the recent past is build tarpees for folks to live in, designed by Paul Paul Cheyok'ten Wagner — a member of the Saanich First Nations of Vancouver Island and an artist and inventor.  He designed a contemporary teepee that costs thousands of dollars less than a traditional teepee and uses materials found in any hardware store. We discussed the tarpee idea with the camp and they asked to have them built. We agreed that no money would ever be exchanged for the tarpees and that we would make every concerted to house BIPOC houseless peoplefirst. 

The Houseless Industrial Complex (HIC) needs to be taken out at the knees, buckled to the ground and boot-stomped until its dead. It is because the HIC makes so money off of the unhoused, that we have unhoused folks on the street. It’s cheaper to house people than pay the emergency room visits for each person. But without houseless people, the ‘sweeps’ companies, paid to sweep away the unhoused people from the street and steal their belongings, would be out of hundreds of millions of dollars. In Portland, Rapid Response is the largest contractor with the city. They conduct sweeps. They employ people who have just been released from the Prison Industrial Complex to do the dirty work of sweeping people. The Joint Office of Houseless Services, the pairing of the County and City ‘efforts’ to house people, exists only if houseless people exist. The JOHS makes billions of dollars to make sure houseless people continue to exist rather than to be housed.

Mitigation starts with love and a true understanding of what is needed by unhoused people. How do we get to that understanding? By listening to the people who are in need of housing. We can house everyone over a relatively short period of time. From there, we can bring in the support needed. We need transitional housing that leads directly to permanent housing. The steps are clear. The money is here and has been voted on. At least in Portland, Oregon where I live. We can move forward with the 3000 Challenge or just follow its guidelines. Or we can do nothing and perpetuate the inhumanity of local and State governments across the US. Which is it going to be? I choose housing. I choose love.