Homeless Among Us

Update: Earlier I reported the CRC as the Del Mar event sponsor. From the Coast News,

"The Alliance for Regional Services (ARS), a collaboration of North County agencies and philanthropic organizations that combine resources to provide better services for the homeless at a cheaper cost, hosted the event for the second year in a row."

Councilwoman Barth and soon to be Councilwoman Shaffer are both involved in Community Resource Center (CRC) activities. Barth has put out a call to find volunteers for the Holiday basket effort and Shaffer just finished donating her campaign volunteers donations to CRC.  Today I read about the recent event at the Del Mar Fairground to provide services to the homeless.

The CRC is a part of countywide efforts to go beyond charity. From an article last May in NCT:  

"The group's main focus has been its winter homeless shelter program, but two weeks ago, alliance members held a workshop to expand its vision and mission.”

"How do we identify emerging needs and gaps in services, and create solutions for those?" Stump said the group also wants the alliance to be seen as an advocacy group for North County, becoming more strategic than reactive. “

At Our Mayor post, Hand Back the Keys to the Car, I wrote about public sentiment being likened to a thoughtless teenager, a brat when I read the article's comments.  It is time to bring humanity back into our common cultural language.  If we pay attention to the most vulnerable of our communities, we'll be able to identify and strengthen our resilience to the ongoing stresses for all: debt, disease, unemployment, mental health, family discord and political importance.

Bureau of Labor statistics (though somewhat improved) aren't that wonderful in this long-running recession looks particularly bad for marginalized voters of color, women and teenagers. Most everyone, whether well off or struggling, knows someone whether a relative, co-worker or friend who is in some dire straights.

As a community it would behoove us to bring this reality into our discussions of local economic transitions.  More minimum wage employment in national chain businesses are the death of communities.  How do we wean ourselves off this desperate dependency? It's not a simple answer because the old models are broken.

The following video via Treehugger is a brain tease and a design highlight in looking at commerce and storefront design much differently.

When Curro Claret was commissioned by Camper to redo one of their Barcelona shoe stores, he decided to let a group of people in risk of social exclusion have a go at it. The result of this open design project is a very positive one. Together with Arrels Fundació, Curro Claret and the group of ex-homeless people designed and built a new shop interior almost exclusively from recycled materials.

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Grand Bargain

Nationwide the progressives who elected Barack Obama to a second term are poised with facts and documented sources to fight the President. It is understood that his pattern if not stated intention is to negotiate with the Republicans in the House and the Senate over the fiscal cliff - that isn't a fiscal cliff in reality. The falsely named Grand Bargain involves the Simpson Bowles report and (among other things) the recommended cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicade.

These three programs are the most important contributions to the 20th century US of A and progressives will be calling, petitioning, demonstrating, tweeting, blogging, interviewing, filming and fighting for facts.  Those things have nothing to do with the deficit. The defense spending and the Bush tax cuts due to end in December are where the money needs to come from, not on the backs of the most vulnerable and the middle class.

How is this related to our local issues?  Above all, Social Security checks are a major part of any community's steady income during this recession and this is especially true with the numbers of Baby Boomers going into retirement now.  Regardless of our local economy's ups and downs, the SS checks are being used each and every week all over town.  Medicare and Medicade are the same story for our local economy and especially our healthcare professionals, pharmacies and Scripps hospital.

More from NYT economist Paul Krugman with some good excerpts here.

[ . . . ] Mr. Obama should hang tough, declaring himself willing, if necessary, to hold his ground even at the cost of letting his opponents inflict damage on a still-shaky economy. And this is definitely no time to negotiate a “grand bargain” on the budget that snatches defeat from the jaws of victory. 

In saying this, I don’t mean to minimize the very real economic dangers posed by the so-called fiscal cliff that is looming at the end of this year if the two parties can’t reach a deal. Both the Bush-era tax cuts and the Obama administration’s payroll tax cut are set to expire, even as automatic spending cuts in defense and elsewhere kick in thanks to the deal struck after the 2011 confrontation over the debt ceiling. And the looming combination of tax increases and spending cuts looks easily large enough to push America back into recession. 

Nobody wants to see that happen. Yet it may happen all the same, and Mr. Obama has to be willing to let it happen if necessary. [ . . . ]

It’s worth pointing out that the fiscal cliff isn’t really a cliff. It’s not like the debt-ceiling confrontation, where terrible things might well have happened right away if the deadline had been missed. This time, nothing very bad will happen to the economy if agreement isn’t reached until a few weeks or even a few months into 2013. So there’s time to bargain. 

[ . . . ] Republicans are defying the will of the American people. And he just won his big election and is, therefore, far better placed than before to weather any political blowback from economic troubles — especially when it would be so obvious that these troubles were being deliberately inflicted by the G.O.P. in a last-ditch attempt to defend the privileges of the 1 percent.

Most of all, standing up to hostage-taking is the right thing to do for the health of America’s political system. 

So stand your ground, Mr. President, and don’t give in to threats. No deal is better than a bad deal.

Good idea, great response & fantastic results

It started with Lisa Shaffer's good idea to deal with the pollution that is the yard sign post-election by asking all supporters to drop off signs at two location. She found organizational support from Councilwoman Barth and other key volunteers and the community of Shaffer and Kranz voters brought 400 signs. These Shaffer signs, towering over little miss Levan, will be repurposed. The paper signs were recycled and the metal stands will be sold back to the local printer.

The added bonus was this great haul of food donated at the sign drop-off site at Lisa's request, shown here in her car, before she headed to the Community Resource Center.

These photos were on Shaffer's Facebook page and are shown here for those not on Facebook and to simply enjoy this progressive approach to make simple acts say large things. I look forward to the model of hundreds of small, simple ways we can all help each other choose easy ways to live deliberately. Gratitude hardly covers it for our new Councilwoman and that dynamic cadre of volunteers.

You Are Not A Loan.

 Rolling Jubilee Website:

A bailout of the people by the people

Rolling Jubilee is a Strike Debt project that buys debt for pennies on the dollar, but instead of collecting it, abolishes it. Together we can liberate debtors at random through a campaign of mutual support, good will, and collective refusal. Debt resistance is just the beginning. Join us as we imagine and create a new world based on the common good, not Wall Street profits.

Learn more or contribute.

77.5% Of US Households Are In Debt

62% Of All Bankruptcies Are Caused By A Medical Illness

Student Tuition Debt Is Over $1,000,000,000,000

1 In Every 7 US Citizens Are Pursued By Debt Collectors

The Ratio of Household Debt to Income Is 154%

40% of Indebted Households Used Credit Cards To Pay For Basic Living Expenses

A couple of the many videos available on the Rolling Jubilee website.

We Got This

This weekend a bunch of the supporters for Lisa Shaffer responded to her campaign request to bring yard signs to a couple drop off points.  Supporters were also asked to bring food donations for Community Resource Center.

She and others worked with different sources to find a place to sell back the wire sign holders, a place to donate the placticized signs for repurposing, and the paper signs for recycling.

Besides this being a good idea, it yet again shows the importance of a ground organization where people trust each other, follow through on good ideas, spread the work load and have a good time doing it. Lisa and Tony were out of town, yet this effort was handled with enthusiasm. Signs for Shaffer, Kranz & Roberts and a few others were all part of the mix along with the food donations.

This is a segue to a very big national story we posted about yesterday, the growing importance of Inter-Occupy or Occupy Sandy ground operation and organization. It has taken the Occupy movement more than a year and thousands of meetings, conflict resolutions, communication training and unending patience around the country to keep working through the realities of what community really means.  This demonstrates their unbelievable success of being able to do and not just talk.

As Abby Zimet of Common Dreams writes,

With thousands still without power, water and heat in the New York area, Occupy Sandy's ongoing and ever-expanding relief effort has been hailed as Occupy's finest hour and a triumph of doing over talking - one so efficient they're now training National Guard and city representatives of the same administration that not so long ago was hassling and pepper-spraying them. Evolution is real. So is the notion of mutual aid. Cool video.

Gone in Minutes, Devastation Lasts a Long Time

Remember a couple of weeks ago how Shaffer and Kranz were set up at their campaign launch press event with two strangers carrying Occupy signs? Remember how Mike Andreen comment trolling and anonymous mailers supporting Stocks and Muir sent around fake headlines, ideas and images of Occupy riots to smear Shaffer and Kranz as extremists? As Shaffer said long before this and during these attacks, learning about Occupy Wall Street and the Tea Party were of course something she was interested in learning about in this campaign.

Sadly, like so many other positive forces for democracy demonized by the mighty media Wurlitzer of rightwing fear blasting misinformation at an anxious conservative base, our candidates had to put distance between themselves and any kind of dissent that could be negatively construed in the last days.

It's how campaigns work when the opposition party leaders refuse to publicly denounce the use of lies and incendiary images and rhetoric to manipulate.  It's dumbing down critical thought and culturally perpetuating their base's worst instincts.

How stupid are these guys? For the past week we have been reading a seeing the remarkable work of Inter-Occupy groups in New York City. Interview from Smart Planet follows:

Back in October of 2011, it was hard to predict that Occupy Wall Street would reappear, just over a year later, as a hurricane relief effort outshining the Red Cross and FEMA in the immediate aftermath of the storm.
[ . . .]
One of your organizers, Joan Donovan, said Occupy Sandy Relief is “truly a 21st Century relief organization“. This sentiment has been repeated by media outlets over the past week. What are the characteristics of Occupy Sandy Relief that separate it from larger organizations like FEMA and the Red Cross?

Andrea Ciannavei: FEMA and the Red Cross have to deal with a lot of bureaucracy. Occupy has a network of organizers who are already there and have access to local community groups. Someone can show up, get sensitivity training, and offer support an hour later. 

Occupy Sandy also asks for in-kind donations first – supplies, generators, food, clothes – things that people can actually give and use right away. While FEMA and the Red Cross have substantial resources, they may not be able to deploy them in less than 24 hours. 

Michael Badger: Over the past year Occupy has developed a community of trust. We had to work to develop that. But now we all know each other so we united around Occupy Sandy very quickly. We don’t need to spend time managing each other because of this level of trust. 

It seems like a lot of Sandy Relief is happening without residents, press, or the city knowing who is in charge. Should we be re-imagining what leadership looks like? 

Michael Badger: I absolutely think so. A leader in the traditional sense is somebody who figures things out and tells people what to do. One of the things we talk about is shared leadership. This means supporting each other to be leaders and to lead along side each other. We need to afford communities to be able to really stand on their own.

The truth is that Occupy has taken many different forms of the 99%'s fundamental needs for community involvement and protest across the country, most notably protecting families in foreclosure actions. The other desperately needed relief in our nation is debt relief for the young, specifically school loan debt.  Here is the solution that is ready to roll out thanks to Occupy groups across the country.

Even with all of the challenges, these involved people have found it is a remarkable thing to be alive right now.

Happy Day

Let us all enjoy the delicious fruits of our labors, rest, reflect, celebrate and enjoy! 

Taking a break . . .