Can you stand another cool holiday story?

Of course you can.  This one from the Herald is not at all sentimental but will choke you up anyway.

It was lying on its side in the grass between the sidewalk and the street near Two Keys Tavern on South Limestone.

When Robert “Shorty” Eads found the ring in August he knew the owner would want it back. The 2011 Georgetown College football Final Four ring was more than just jewelry — someone had worked hard for that ring.

“I know it meant something to somebody,” Eads said recently. “If it was the last thing that I did, I was going to get that ring back to its owner.”

So Eads spent the next three months trying to find its owner. He called Georgetown College’s athletics department. No one called him back. He got on the internet and searched Facebook. 

Nothing.

Eads, a former electrician who has been homeless for eight years, had his backpack — where he keeps everything he owns — stolen four different times over the next three months. He lost everything. But not the ring.

“I always kept it on me,” Eads explained.

 

Eads has worked on the city’s End Panhandling Now jobs van almost since the program began in May 2017. The program puts would-be panhandlers to work picking up trash and litter and pays them. Frustrated that no one would call him back, Eads asked Jarrod Jones, the supervisor of the jobs van, for help in November.

Jones, a retired Lexington police officer, posted photos of the ring on Facebook. Other retired police officers saw Jones’ post and got on the case. The ring itself had clues. On one side was “Schmitz” and the number 15.

Don Schmitz was at home in Union in Northern Kentucky when his phone rang a week or so before Thanksgiving.

“I almost didn’t pick it up,” Schmitz said. It’s usually a telemarketer.

But he did. On the other line was a police officer. Was Mr. Schmitz related to a Georgetown College football player?

“I said, ‘Wait, did you find the ring?” Schmitz said.

SNIP

Don Schmitz drove to Lexington one Sunday before Thanksgiving and met Jones and got his son’s ring back. He gave Jones $100 to give to Eads. Schmitz said he would have given him more, but he is temporarily out of work right now because he needs a shoulder replaced.

“I would have liked to have met him,” Don Schmitz said of Eads. “I can’t thank him enough. It was a Christmas gift to all of us. There are still good people out there.”

Eads could have pawned the ring.

“If anybody needed the money, it’s him,” Don Schmitz said. “Instead, he kept it and the diligence and the homework it took to get it back to us... He really made our Christmas.”

Tyler Hurst, executive director of the New Life Day Center, the homeless day shelter that oversees the jobs van program, said people often equate morality with wealth. Eads doesn’t have a home. But he never lost his moral compass, he said.

“Robert is a great guy,” Hurst said. “People sometimes only see who that person is today. They don’t know about that person’s past. And they don’t see who they can be.”

The van gives people like Eads a chance to have a job. So many give up and think they can’t get work or no one wants to hire them, Hurst said.

“This gives people purpose,” Hurst said.

The program has also cut the number of panhandlers on Lexington streets, according to recent counts. In May 2017, there were between 150 to 160 panhandlers on Lexington streets within a 12 hour period. In November 2018, there were 21, 11 of whom were picked up and given a job on the van.

The city of Lexington funds the van but also relies heavily on donations to Lexgive. com to pay the would-be panhandlers.

Eads has been a longtime employee on the van. Hurst said they are working to get him off the street.

Homeless People Cleaning Up Lexington Work Harder Than Governor I Got Mine Fuck You

Another entry for the "Poor People Do All the Real Work" file.

Tom Eblen at the Herald:

When I climbed in the Panhandler Jobs Van for one of its twice-weekly runs, two men and a woman were already in the back seat, eager to earn $45 and an $8 fast-food lunch for five hours of picking up trash along the roadside.

As we rolled down Main Street toward the day’s job site along South Broadway and Harrodsburg Road, driver Jarrod Jones stopped twice when he saw panhandlers. Four more men and two women squeezed into the van.

At the corner of South Broadway and West Maxwell Street, several men folded their signs when they saw the van coming. Jones slowed, but didn’t stop. 

 “We don’t have any room left,” he yelled. “Sorry.”

When Mayor Jim Gray announced the Jobs Van program in April, I was skeptical. I doubted many of the dozens of men and women who started begging on street corners after the Kentucky Supreme Court struck down Lexington’s panhandling ordinance in February would stop “flying signs” if offered work. 

I wasn’t the only one.

“I didn’t think this would work,” said Steve Polston, a retired corporate turnaround specialist with a Harvard MBA who organized the Jobs Van program in his volunteer role as board chair of the non-profit New Life Day Center.

“Honestly, I didn’t expect hardly anybody to work,” said Jones, a former Lexington Police officer Polston hired last spring to drive the van and manage the work crews with help from former boxer Charles Jones.

“It’s proved me wrong,” he added. “I've had maybe four or five people turn me down. From the beginning, we’ve had so many people that want to do it, but we don’t have the room and have to turn them away.”

SNIP

 So far, Gray is impressed with the results in Lexington.

“There’s a perception that people who are panhandling want to do it,” said Gray, who also spent a morning with a work crew. “All you have to do is talk to people on the van. They don’t want to (panhandle). But they have challenges.”

SNIP

The men and women I met on the Jobs Van said it has been a godsend.

Errol Gill, 52, came to Lexington from Detroit four years ago. He said he has worked as a handyman and dishwasher. He sleeps where he can. The night before we talked, he said he slept in Cheapside Park.

“What we’re doing now is a blessing; it really is,” Gill said. “I don’t want to be out here no more on the streets. I’m too old for this.”

Steven “Hillbilly” Dykes, 54, feels the same way. He has lived on and off Lexington’s streets since the 1980s. “People want to work,” he said. “I think they ought to run this van more than two days a week.”

Dykes has battled alcoholism and served time for manslaughter in the 2008 death of another homeless man. 

“I was one of the officers that arrested Hillbilly,” Jarrod Jones said. “And now he’s by far my hardest worker.”

I'll pay the $45 and lunch for Gov. Bevin to do that job for just one day.  I bet he doesn't last an hour.

ead more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article173302211.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article173302211.html#storylink=cpy

SNIP
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article173302211.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article173302211.html#storylink=cpy“We don’t have any room left,” he yelled. “Sorry.”When Mayor Jim Gray announced the Jobs Van program in April, I was skeptical. I doubted many of the dozens of men and women who started begging on street corners after the Kentucky Supreme Court struck down Lexington’s panhandling ordinance in February would stop “flying signs” if offered work.

I wasn’t the only one.
“I didn’t think this would work,” said Steve Polston, a retired corporate turnaround specialist with a Harvard MBA who organized the Jobs Van program in his volunteer role as board chair of the non-profit New Life Day Center.
“Honestly, I didn’t expect hardly anybody to work,” said Jones, a former Lexington Police officer Polston hired last spring to drive the van and manage the work crews with help from former boxer Charles Jones.
“It’s proved me wrong,” he added. “I've had maybe four or five people turn me down. From the beginning, we’ve had so many people that want to do it, but we don’t have the room and have to turn them away.”

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article173302211.html#storylink=cpyWhen Mayor Jim Gray announced the Jobs Van program in April, I was skeptical. I doubted many of the dozens of men and women who started begging on street corners after the Kentucky Supreme Court struck down Lexington’s panhandling ordinance in February would stop “flying signs” if offered work.

I wasn’t the only one.
“I didn’t think this would work,” said Steve Polston, a retired corporate turnaround specialist with a Harvard MBA who organized the Jobs Van program in his volunteer role as board chair of the non-profit New Life Day Center.
“Honestly, I didn’t expect hardly anybody to work,” said Jones, a former Lexington Police officer Polston hired last spring to drive the van and manage the work crews with help from former boxer Charles Jones.
“It’s proved me wrong,” he added. “I've had maybe four or five people turn me down. From the beginning, we’ve had so many people that want to do it, but we don’t have the room and have to turn them away.”

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article173302211.html#storylink=cpyWhen Mayor Jim Gray announced the Jobs Van program in April, I was skeptical. I doubted many of the dozens of men and women who started begging on street corners after the Kentucky Supreme Court struck down Lexington’s panhandling ordinance in February would stop “flying signs” if offered work.

I wasn’t the only one.
“I didn’t think this would work,” said Steve Polston, a retired corporate turnaround specialist with a Harvard MBA who organized the Jobs Van program in his volunteer role as board chair of the non-profit New Life Day Center.
“Honestly, I didn’t expect hardly anybody to work,” said Jones, a former Lexington Police officer Polston hired last spring to drive the van and manage the work crews with help from former boxer Charles Jones.
“It’s proved me wrong,” he added. “I've had maybe four or five people turn me down. From the beginning, we’ve had so many people that want to do it, but we don’t have the room and have to turn them away.”

Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/local/news-columns-blogs/tom-eblen/article173302211.html#storylink=cpy

Who's Worth A Million?

PZ Myers has the quote of the week:

Nobody is worth hundreds of millions. Nobody. The life of the CEO making all that money is worth no more and no less than the life of the drunk homeless guy who offended Justin Keller by leaning on his car. The person who had the capital and the support to be able to go to college, make profitable connections, and get the investments to begin a startup is not working harder than the person who is doing two minimum wage jobs and getting periodically laid off by a volatile economy, and I am disgusted by these people who have failed to learn these basic lessons in life.

But greed and short-sighted selfishness and a lack of empathy seem to make up the recipe for financial success, which allows these oblivious parasites to foster more greed and short-sighted selfishness and lack of empathy.

Fucking Bitches Ruin Everything

Not to mention bitches fucking.

Listen, you freakazoid motherfucker: Send back to the state every fucking penny of tax dollars you've gotten for running a "homeless shelter." Because you're not running a homeless shelter.  You're running an anti-woman sex-shaming center that ISIS would love.

A homeless shelter in Williamsburg will no longer accept women as a way to stop people from having sex.

The director at Emergency Christian Ministries said people are having sex at the shelter and they cannot accept that.

"It seems like these last days it's getting worse ... the ungodly type," Director Billy Woodward said.
About 10 to 12 women were asked to leave the shelter over the past two weeks.

Woodward said they have more men than women at the shelter, so he decided to send the women to a female-only facility nearly 30 minutes away.

Woodward said in some cases, they will not accept children either.

"Right now, no because of the female factor," Woodward said.

However, Woodward added he would accept a male child if his father and he were homeless.
Some say this decision does not make much sense.

The shelter is the only place in Williamsburg for people without a home.

 NOW can we stop giving tax dollars to freakazoids to fail to perform public services?

Things That Are Illegal Only When Poor People Do Them

If poor people stopped working, this country would come to a screeching halt.  Nothing that really needs to get done - the cooking, the cleaning, the caretaking, the cashiering - would happen, and that would keep anything else from getting done.

If rich people stopped working, nothing would change.  Because rich people don't work.  They just scheme new ways to steal all the money from working people.

Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars:

Towns will do anything to harass homeless people now. This is one of the more egregious examples I've seen, taking place in Portland, Oregon:

This past July, a homeless Portland woman was charged with third-degree theft when she plugged her cellphone charger into an outlet on a sidewalk planter box in Old Town.

Cases in which people are charged with theft for plugging electronic devices into private outlets are uncommon, but defense attorneys say they’re another example of resources wasted for frivolous offenses.

In this case, the theft was first reported by Portland Patrol Inc., and two Portland police officers followed up to issue the woman and her co-defendant, a homeless man who was also charging his cellphone at the planter box outlet, citations to appear in court for third-degree theft of services — a Class C misdemeanor.

According to the Electrical Research Institute, it costs about 25 cents a year to charge the average mobile phone. If the phone in this scenario had gone from zero charge to full charge, the cost would have amounted to mere fractions of a penny.

“Jackie,” (who did not want her real name used), says she was shocked when four uniformed officers all agreed her actions warranted not only their response, but also charges and a court summons.

Jackie has never been convicted of a crime. If this charge led to a conviction, it would mean the difference between checking “no” or “yes” to questions about criminal history on a job or housing application.

Her attorney, Metropolitan Public Defender Stacy Du Clos, says Jackie’s main concern at the time was how this pending case might hurt her chances of getting a roof over her head – she’s homeless and on several waiting lists for affordable housing units.

Additionally, a theft charge is more likely to be associated with shoplifting or taking personal property, not plugging a charger into an electrical outlet. Jackie says the charge would give the wrong impression of what she had done, should someone see her record.

“It’s just my sense of right and wrong, and it just feels so damn wrong,” says Jackie.

SNIP

"Jackie" has muscular dystrophy and is living on the street while waiting for a housing slot to open up. What a great country we are.

Defying Koch-Sucking Governor, Wisconsin Town Charges Left

As an atheist in Kentucky, I have no discrimination protections. I can be fired from my job, denied a mortgage or car loan, barred from renting an apartment, thrown out of a restaurant or hotel or gym or public park. I could be turned away from the voting booth.

That I am not is primarily due to a carefully created and maintained reputation as a nasty troublemaker, not to anyone's respect for my atheism.

Scott Keyes at Think Progress:

There is no shortage of hardships that many homeless people regularly encounter, from the apparent — crushing poverty and mental illness — to the more subtle — navigating bureaucracy and finding a public restroom.

But homeless people in Madison, Wisconsin may soon have new legal protections against one of the most nefarious problems: discrimination.

On Tuesday, the Madison Equal Opportunities Commission will consider whether to add homelessness and atheism to its list of protected classes, according to the Wisconsin State Journal.

If the measure, proposed by Alderwoman Anita Weier, is adopted, it would protect both homeless people and atheists against discrimination in employment and housing. If an individual or business is found to be discriminating against homeless people or atheists, Weier’s bill would impose a fine and restitution.

Discrimination against homeless job applicants is particularly pervasive, preventing many from breaking out of a cycle of poverty. For instance, though homeless individuals can use the address of a shelter on their resume, some employers are on the lookout for these addresses and avoid such people. Even setting aside discrimination based solely on their status as homeless, such individuals often have major employment gaps on their resume or a felony on their record, severely diminishing their employment prospects. Similar factors prevent many individuals from securing housing.

Notably, though, Weier’s bill only extends protections against discrimination in public areas and places of business to atheists, not homeless individuals. According to the State Journal, Weier opted against extending protections for homeless people because of incidents that have taken place in public buildings, such as urinating or defecating in public.

Hey, Ky House Speaker Greg Stumbo:  Are you sick and tired of all those freakazoid, Koch-sucking, teabagger bills flying out of the repug Senate just to make dems crazy?  Fight fire with fire: Send  the repugs some bills that will make their tiny heads explode. Mandating abortion on demand at public expense.  Outlawing charter schools. Barring all voting restrictions.

Start with one extending civil and human rights to homeless people and atheists.

Effective Appeal

ummagumma.co:

 

How to Panhandle Freakazoids

ummagumma.co:

(Source: rorschachx, via teachthemhowtothink)

How Not to Cure Homelessness

Beautiful Lexington, Ky, recently hired someone to figure out how to cure homelessness in the Capital of the Bluegrass.  Lexington is not only way more beautiful than fucking Fort Lauderdale, Florida, it is also way the fuck smarter, which is why I am sure it is not going to follow the example of the Capital of Teenage Spring Rape and Puking.

So what should you do if your town has a homelessness problem? Should you (a) increase city spending on things like affordable housing; (b) form some public-private partnerships to increase job possibilities; or (c) pass a law barring the homeless from leaving their filthy homeless possessions around anywhere? Oh fuck yes of course it is (c) for Fort Lauderdale, which is pretty certain that if you just take away the meagre possessions that homeless people have you can simultaneously strip them of the tiny amount of dignity they have left AND they homeless will just magically disappear and their city will be real pretty-like once again.

Of course it gets worse. Read the whole thing.

Curing homelessness, by the way, is not difficult, expensive or fucking rocket science, as more than one rational city has proven.

The Crime of Feeding Homeless People

Make no mistake; this is precisely what the repugs want: poor people dead from starvation, and those who want to help them in jail.

A pastor determined to live out the Bible’s dictate that we feed the poor was shut down by local police because he didn’t have a permit to serve food.

Twice a month, Rick Wood, a pastor at The Lord’s House of Prayer in Oneonta, Alabama, gets in his truck and drives around Birmingham with more than a hundred hot dogs and bottles of water, handing them out to the homeless. Wood has been serving those in need for the past six years because he wants to put Matthew 25:35-40 — “For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink,” a scripture verse he has plastered on the side of his truck — into action.

But last month, Wood was stopped from handing out food by local police because he was in violation of a new city ordinance, passed in December, that regulates food trucks. The new regulation requires food trucks to get a permit, which can cost as much as $500. Though the ordinance is specifically targeted at retail food vendors, rather than charities, the city nevertheless used it to block Wood.

He was livid. “That makes me so mad,” Wood said in an interview with ABC 33/40 News. “These people are hungry. They’re starving. They need help from people. They can’t afford to buy something from a food truck.”

The pastor accused Birmingham of wanting “to chase them out of the city.”

ABC 33/40 News’ video has more:

If you read this blog, you know I cut religious people not a micrometer of slack for any reason whatsoever. But when their humanitarian and Democratic actions speak louder than their freakazoid beliefs, they will find me beside them in the trenches every time.

It's Not Like Poor People Are Really Human

Stealing from and humiliating homeless people is not shooting them dead in cold blood, or tasering them to death for nothing, but it reveals the same vicious, psychotic mindset that has no place in public servants being paid tax dollars to protect and serve the populace - the entire populace.

Carimah Townes at Think Progress:

Months after their conduct was discovered, two police officers were disciplined for making a game of stealing signs from homeless people in Midland, Texas — and many believe the cops’ punishment was not harsh enough to fit the offense.

In the town with an estimated 300 homeless people, investigators reported 8 signs in Officer Derek Hester’s patrol vehicle, and Officer Daniel Zoelzer was discovered to have trashed an additional 10. Both officers claimed that they took the signs after issuing trespass warnings, but no such warnings were recorded in 2013. Text messages between the two show the officers expressing concerns about being found out, although one of the men’s texts read, “Oh I don’t care lol I’m not worried.” After an internal investigation, which was not originally publicized, Hester and Zoelzer were suspended for three unpaid days.

Zoelzer and Hester were first probed when another, unidentified cop reported Hester for procuring brass knuckles and refusing to turn them in as evidence; the police department learned of the game when looking into the matter. The suspension occurred two months after the police department first heard about the officers’ misconduct, but despite backlash, Police Chief Price Robinson contends that the disciplinary measure was satisfactory.

Police Chief says three days' suspension is sufficient punishment for treating like dogs people they were supposed to be helping.

I think we've identified the source of the problem, and it's not homeless people.

Midland's also oil country, and an old hangout of Smirky/Darth's.  I'll bet Dubya and Cheney think what those cops did is fucking hilarious.

But Midland's full of poor-bashing amateurs compared to Georgia, where they want the poors to just die in the streets.

Now Here's Someone Who Deserves Life in Prison

Right after he bankrupts himself compensating his fellow citizens for destroying their property.

Scott Keyes at Think Progress:

Much like Batkid, Hawaii has found its own superhero. Except that instead of protecting the powerless from harm, he roams the streets with a sledgehammer and looks for homeless people in order to literally smash their possessions.

Remarkably, this vigilante isn’t just some random Hawaiian, but five-term State Rep. Tom Brower (D).

Noting that he’s “disgusted” with homeless people, Brower told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser about his own personal brand of “justice”: “If I see shopping carts that I can’t identify, I will destroy them so they can’t be pushed on the streets.” Brower has waged this campaign for two weeks, estimating that he’s smashed about 30 shopping carts in the process.

“I want to do something practical that will really clean up the streets,” he explained to Hawaii News Now as he showed off his property destruction skills:

Uncontent to just destroy homeless people’s items, Brower is also on a mission to wake those he finds sleeping and tell them to sleep somewhere else. “If someone is sleeping at night on the bus stop, I don’t do anything, but if they are sleeping during the day, I’ll walk up and say, ‘Get your ass moving,’” he said.

No, of course he hasn't been arrested or even given a ticket for littering. Unlike the people whose belongings he so enjoys destroying.

It’s no stretch to assume that if Brower were found roaming middle-class neighborhoods and smashing items in people’s homes, he would find himself both out of office and behind bars. But segments of society view homeless people as less important and undeserving of the dignity of having their possessions kept safe.

Where the Wealth Is

From Divine Irony:

"There is $118 trillion of wealth in the United States alone, or about $375,000 per American. For every homeless person in the country, there are 28 empty homes waiting for them right now. Laws and culture deny them a roof over their head, not a dearth of roofs. It is our legal system that funnels a disproportionate amount of wealth to a small handful of people, not the benevolent hand of a just and caring god."

- Steal This Article (via theamericanbear)

In other words, religion is what keeps the poor from killing the rich.

Homeless, Disabled Veterans Don't Make a Profit for VA

That's the real issue in Los Angeles, where a judge just cancelled nine contracts the VA has with private entities paying to rent space that is supposed to be used to house disabled veterans.

The land was donated in 1888 explicitly for housing homeless vets, and for the next eighty years, tens of thousands of vets lived there, at the Pacific Branch soldiers’ home. But for the past several decades, the dormitories have been empty, and over the years the VA has leased parts of the site for other purposes. Meanwhile, homeless veterans have been sleeping on the street outside the locked gates. (Disclosure: I’m on the board of the ACLU-SC Foundation.)

Particularly in need of help are vets with severe mental disabilities and those suffering from PTSD, brain injuries and other disorders. Housing is key to treating their medical problems, and there’s a regional VA medical center across the street from the empty dorms in Brentwood. The VA, however, argues that it has no legal or other obligation to provide housing for mentally disabled vets. It has acknowledged in court that it is required to provide medical services, but it argues that it has no responsibility to provide housing, even though these vets are too disabled to get to the hospital’s outpatient clinic on their own.

Under the order, nine leases are void, including Twentieth Century Fox Television and UCLA and the private Brentwood School, which have sports facilities on VA land. The judge gave the lessees and the VA six months to terminate the leases—or appeal his decision. The ACLU is urging the VA not to appeal: “Every day an appeal is pending the VA is putting the needs of private school students and college students over our veterans,” Rosenbaum said.

I'm actually going to cut the VA some slack on this one, as disgusting as its behavior is here.  And that's because the VA - like all government agencies and institutions federal state and local - is being starved of public funding and forced to grub for money like a corporation.

The problem is corporations are pure profit-making machines that reject all activity that does not make money.

Are you turning a profit, you homeless disabled veterans?  Then fuck you.

That's what austerity and tax cuts for the rich and lying about the deficit and bailouts for Wall Street but foreclosure and bankruptcy for Main Street and "running government like a business" will get you:

Disabled veterans sleeping in the streets.  And the equivalent in every other government service.

If you ran a corporation as if it were a public service, you fail to make a profit. And when you run public services like a corporation, you fail to provide public service.

Businesses aren't public services, and government agencies aren't businesses. Profit-making has no more place in government than a social safety net has in a corporation.

More Compassionate Conservatism At Work

There is no budgetary, public safety or public health excuse for this. It is vicious, unadulterated hatred. With a sidedish of stormtrooper authoritarianism.

Conservatism at its purest.

Scott Keyes at Think Progress:

A group that for years has handed out food to the homeless in Raleigh every weekend was threatened with arrest if they continued their charity work.

This past Saturday, Rev. Hugh Hollowell and other members of Love Wins Ministries (LWM), a Christian organization based in Raleigh, shuttled over hot coffee and 100 breakfast sandwiches to feed the needy downtown. Though a Raleigh city ordinance prevents anyone from distributing food in a park without a permit, LWM had a “good working relationship with the Raleigh Police Department” and had disbursed food from the sidewalk for the past six years, according to the group’s website.

However, this weekend was different, for reasons that are not yet clear. As LWM was setting up, they were approached by Raleigh police officers who informed them that if they tried to hand out their breakfast sandwiches, they would be arrested. As 70 needy people watched and waited for breakfast, LWM was forced to pack up the sandwiches and leave without distributing any food. They were told that a permit would cost $1,600 every weekend for use of the park, but the officer allegedly told them it was unlikely their application would be approved regardless.

As LWM notes, there are no soup kitchens in Raleigh that are still open on the weekends, so their work has been pivotal in making sure hungry people get a meal on the weekends.

ThinkProgress left a message with the Raleigh Police Department as to why, unlike in past years, the ordinance was now being strictly enforced, but did not hear back before publication. Police spokesman Jim Sughrue told ABC 11 that “People were simply informed the ordinance prohibits the kinds of actions some groups have been engaged in at the park.”

For her part, the mayor of Raleigh is already taking action. During a rally on Sunday in protest, Mayor Nancy McFarlane showed up and apologized for the encounter, saying, “I’m sorry for the confrontation or whatever happened yesterday, but I think the outcome is going to be good.” She said she would convene a meeting soon about how to rectify the matter. In the meantime, LWM is looking for an alternate downtown location to distribute food on the weekends, such as a private building or parking lot, and asking for any leads to contact them at hugh@lovewins.info.

LWM are not the only people who have been threatened with arrest recently for daring to feed hungry people in public. In 2011, three members of a charitable group Foods Not Bombs were arrested in Orlando for passing out food to the homeless in a public park. Similarly, an 82-year-old Hartford, Connecticut man who had distributed free haircuts to the homeless for the past decade in a local park, was ordered to stop by police officers in June because he didn’t have a license, though he was eventually allowed to continue his charity work after the ensuing media firestorm.

When Repug Austerity Meets Compassionate Conservatism

From Firedoglake:

A deaf, blind and homeless man was given “a one-way ride from a Reno mental hospital onto the streets of San Francisco” last April.

Not Even Medieval Feudalism Was This Cruel

Nine hundred years ago in Europe, lepers were allowed to beg on the streets, as long as they rang a bell to advertise their malady.

No such compassion today in South Carolina.

Think Progress:

Police officers will now be assigned to patrol the city center and keep homeless people out. They will also be instructed to strictly enforce the city’s “quality of life” laws, including bans on loitering, public urination, and other violations. And just to ensure that no one slips through, the city will set up a hotline so local businesses and residents can report the presence of a homeless person to police.

In order to accommodate all the homeless people who will now be banned from downtown, the city will partner with a local charity to keep an emergency shelter on the outskirts of town open 24 hours a day.

However, it’s unlikely the shelter, which can handle 240 guests, will be enough to handle the local homeless population, which numbers more than six times the available beds.

Homeless people can stay at the shelter, but they’re not permitted to walk off the premises. In fact, Columbia will even post a police officer on the road leading to the shelter to ensure that homeless people don’t walk towards downtown. If they want to leave, they need to set up an appointment and be shuttled by a van.

In other words, the 1,518 homeless people in the Columbia-area now have a choice: get arrested downtown or be confined to a far-away shelter that you can’t readily leave. Jail or pseudo-jail.

Not "pseudo-jail." Kidnapping and imprisonment, that's what that is.

And all you Columbia residents who still have a home - for the moment - forget a quick response to your 911 calls.  All your police officers are rounding up poor people and guarding your city boundaries against poverty cooties.

Can't Wait to Hear the Freakazoid Arguments Against This One

It's an indictment of our society that our fellow citizens who have fallen on hard times need a special bill of rights to ensure they are treated as human beings, but that's where we are. Between homeless rights and gun control, Connecticut is leading the nation on progressive legislation.

Scott Keyes at Think Progress:

Here are the bill’s seven protections:

(1) Move freely in public spaces, including on public sidewalks, in public parks, on public transportation and in public buildings without harassment or intimidation from law enforcement officers in the same manner as other persons;
(2) Have equal opportunities for employment;
(3) Receive emergency medical care;
(4) Register to vote and to vote;
(5) Have personal information protected;
(6) Have a reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her personal property; and
(7) Receive equal treatment by state and municipal agencies.

This is no symbolic victory, Michael Stoops, Director of Community Organizing at the National Coalition for the Homeless, explained. “Homeless people are regularly discriminated against in employment and housing,” Stoops told ThinkProgress.

Nate Fox, Project Supervisor for Faces Of Homelessness Connecticut, a group that advocated for the bill, hailed its passage. “Currently, there are certain civil liberties that could be automatically wiped out when you walked into a homeless shelter,” Fox told ThinkProgress. This bill not only fixes that unintended side effect of shelters and other homeless services, it’s also “changed the conversation on how to protect homeless persons’ rights,” Fox said.

The bill now awaits Gov. Dan Malloy’s (D) signature before it can take effect at its scheduled date of October 1, 2013. It will not only play a major role in preventing discrimination against homeless people; it could also have an effect on municipalities like Hartford which currently have anti-loitering and anti-panhandling ordinances.

If it ultimately becomes law, Connecticut will become just the second state in the nation to enact a Homeless Person’s Bill of Rights. Last year, Rhode Island became the first state to do so. Illinois could increase the number to three if Gov. Pat Quinn (D) signs a bill which passed the legislature recently, and other states like Oregon and Delaware are considering similar legislation.

Activists in Kentucky are working on a similar bill that has yet to be filed with the General Assembly.

Three Myths No One Will Fact Check

In accepting the Democratic Party nomination for President tonight, Barack Obama referenced as facts three pernicious conservative myths so embedded in conventional wisdom that no one in the media will call them out, much less debunk them.

So I will.

1.  "Clean coal" as a means of reducing carbon emissions.  That's like promoting "dry water" as a solution to persistent flooding. There is No. Such. Thing. as clean coal. It's a myth, perpetuated by Big Coal for more than 50 years.

2. The Catfood Commission's plans to kill Social Security and Medicare as a means of saving Social Security and Medicare. This was exposed as the lethal con-job it is two years ago, even before Simpson-Bowles died a richly deserved death, yet Obama keeps re-animinating this disgusting zombie and siccing it on us.

3. Extreme poverty improves student outcomes. The lesson here is not how brave and exceptional is a student who won a science contest despite the hardships of homelessness, but what talent and potential is going to waste because we have shredded the social safety net to force children and families into homeless shelters.

How dare you, Mr. President, promote and spread these vicious, destructive myths to the American people. Shame on you. 

Housing Cures Homelessness - Who Knew?

Of course there are underlying causes. But here's the secret: addressing the immediate need makes fixing the underlying causes easier.

From the Smithsonian:

Homeless shelters became widespread during the 1980s, when an economic recession, the elimination of many single-room occupancy buildings and the closure of some mental institutions led to a homelessness epidemic. With strict curfews and spartan conditions, shelters were meant to be temporary. The logic was that people weren’t ready for permanent homes until their addictions and psychological problems were addressed. For some, this strategy made sense. But many avoided treatment and shuttled in and out of shelters.

“It wasn’t working,” says Eric Belsky, a Harvard University housing scholar. “What you needed to do was get people into housing, then provide them with care.” Known as “housing first,” this approach was pioneered in the 1990s by New York City psychologist Sam Tsemberis and later helped to nearly eradicate homelessness in Times Square.

Today even some temporary shelters feel more like home. Michael Bell, a Columbia University professor of architecture, helped guide the redesign of the Andrews House, a 146-unit renovated building that provides short-term housing in New York City. A re-envisioned, state-of-the-art homeless shelter, says Bell, “can go a long way toward producing a psychic level of comfort that would allow someone to open up and begin examining their life.”

When chronically homeless people are suddenly moved into their own apartments, many prefer at first to sleep on the floor. But within six months, most are so much better rested, nourished and dressed that workers from the nationwide 100,000 Homes Campaign have taken to snapping “before” and “after” photographs. “Something changes in their spirit,” says Rebecca Kanis, the initiative’s director. Before long, even those who had been homeless for decades may begin to reach out to estranged family members, seek mental health treatment and search for jobs.

A coalition of community organizations across the country, the 100,000 Homes Campaign aims to permanently house most of the country’s 110,000 or so chronically homeless by 2014. (All told there are about 640,000 homeless Americans, but most are without housing for weeks or months instead of years.) Since 2010, the campaign has placed more than 12,000 people.

Paradoxically, providing permanent housing for a homeless person turns out to be cheaper than many of the alternatives, costing an average of about $15,000 annually—thousands less than a year’s worth of shelter stays—and helping prevent expensive stops in prisons or emergency rooms. Better still, it’s a lasting solution: 85 percent of participants stay in their homes, rather than returning to the street.

Feed the hungry, heal the sick, house the homeless, employ the jobless, educate the ignorant - do that first, and the rest falls into place.