Toledo Streets Issue #7

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Attacking Homeless People Violence is epidemic, and some don’t even want to count, pg 9

Down the Rabbit Hole with Tim Burton, pg 5

JULY 2010 Local

Criminal Crops, pg 3 Siege on Stony Ridge, pg 4 Local non-profit “excellent”, pg 5 Because 1Matters, pg 6

National

Interview with The Soloist’s Steve Lopez, pg 3

Poetry

A room with a view, pg 7

Reviews

Rescue: the real 911, pg 4

Extra

Living faith, pg 10 Hoboscopes, pg 15 Sodoku, pg 15 We are a 501(c)3 non-profit under fiscal agent

You can find us online:

toledostreets.org

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Toledo Streets - The Paper with a Mission

July 2010

Justice?

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It’s getting dark and you are alone.

This makes you nervous, because you still haven’t found a safe place to sleep.

The shelters are overcrowded and rough, and your last camp was rousted by some authority figures who didn’t want you getting too comfortable on their turf - bad for business, the neighborhood... name your reason. It all boils down to one thing, one question: Where can I go?

You finally find a somewhat likely spot - it’s off the beaten path but not too rough. Time to make your “bed” and get as comfortable as possible. When you eventually drift off to sleep, your last thought is a prayer for a safe night.

Sometime after midnight, you are woken up by a steady stream of moisture on your face. You sputter as you turn around to find the source. There’s a man looming over you, with a couple of his buddies behind him, laughing. You’re being urinated on.

What do you do? If you scramble

Amanda F. Moore, Managing Editor out of the way, will that provoke them into more abusive action? How drunk are they? Or are they drunk at all?

Some of your homeless friends have talked about being beaten up before, a couple of them severely. You’ve heard of one guy here in Toledo who had his humiliation videotaped and put on YouTube. And there was a lady here last year who lived in her car, and she got harrassed by a couple of guys who ended up stealing her keys. Then there are the stories you’ve heard about the homeless folks who didn’t survive. Life may not mean much to you on some days, but who wants to die like that?

You shield yourself as best you can while the man finishes doing his business on you. He kicks you a couple of times while you lay there, cowering. Nothing too forceful, and after a couple expletives and more laughter, the three men saunter off to God knows where.

It’s already been a couple of days

since you had a chance to wash up, but now you reek of someone else’s urine, not to mention your saturated clothes. You clean yourself up as best you can, changing into the only other set of clothes you had stuffed into your backpack. You find a different spot, and settle in again - with any luck, you can still get a few more hours of shut-eye, though every sound keeps rousing you.

All in all, though, you reflect back on it and consider yourself lucky. Maybe your prayer was answered after all.

-- All over the country, the unhoused are targeted for hate crimes. Please note Ken Leslie’s article “Because 1Matters” on page 6, and an in-depth national view through Margo Pierce’s “Attacking Homeless People” beginning on page 9.

Still, and always...

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS SMALL CHANGE. Cover photo courtesy of Robin Charney.

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July 2010

Toledo Streets - The Paper with a Mission

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A duet, for musician and writer Farming in the city: Interview with The Soloist’s Steve Lopez

Criminal Crops?

Rosette Royale Real change, seattle - You never know what you’ll find when you walk down the street. And there was Steve Lopez, in 2005, doing just that, making his way through L.A. when he heard it: music. Nearby stood a man - homeless, playing for what seemed to be beauty’s sake - drawing his bow over the strings of a beat-up violin.

Lopez stopped and listened.

He introduced himself to the violinist. And from that moment on, both men’s live became interwoven.

That violinist was named Nathaniel Ayers and Lopez, a columnist for the L.A. Times, Steve Lopez, Photo courtesy Real Change wrote about their encounter.

Soon after that, he wrote stopping to hear the music. another column. Then another and another. As he continued, over the RC: I heard you came across Nathaniel months, to chronicle their relationship, Ayers when you were out looking for a complex portrait of Ayers unfolded: a material for a column. childhood in Cleveland; a scholarship SL: Yeah. I was in downtown Los to Julliard, the premier New York arts Angeles and I heard music. So I turned academy; the onset, in his early 20s, of and looked and here’s a guy living out paranoid schizophrenia; homelessness; of a shopping cart and he was playing a nights on Skid Row. violin that was missing two strings. And Readers loved the columns and he looked very determined. So it just buoyed by support from a newspaper begged the question: Who is he? editor, Lopez, already an author of So all of that made me very curious books, wrote another one: “The Soloist: and I went over and introduced myself A Lost Dream, an Unlikely Friendship and that was how it started. He was and the Redemptive Power of Music” very wary of me and he looked a little (Putnam, 2008), which detailed their at frightened, but he calmed down a little times chaotic yet inspiring relationship. bit. I said, “Why do you play right here?”

From that, a recent hit movie was born.

And he points across the street and he All of which has kept Lopez busy and says, “There’s the Beethoven statue and I humanized Ayers. play here for inspiration.”

As part of his busy schedule, Lopez will be coming to town this Sun., May I realized - because he had some clear 27 for an event at Town Hall. Before mental issues - that it was going to take his arrival, however, we tried to set up a while. So this just began a series of a time to talk. But scheduling those meetings over the course of several minutes to chat took some work. So, weeks, and every time I met with him while in a cab en route to the airport, he was a little more comfortable and Lopez revealed, via cell phone, how a little more forthcoming. I wrote my his life has been affected by a man who first column with no idea that there’d lives on the street, a man for whom be a second one, or a third one, or a Beethoven provides salvation, and praised the gifts that can arise just from “Lopez” continued on page 11

William James O’Fahey When we think about the price of a cucumber or tomato in any market in Toledo, I think it well to consider the REAL costs of growing produce, and how much more we would pay if American free markets were actually free!

There’s a lot of folks arguing about “illegal” immigration from Mexico, and there are police departments around America that get Federal hand-outs of money to help deport undocumented workers, but steering clear of the political maneuvering around this issue, I think it well to consider a couple of points.

One-third of the agricultural work force in the U.S. consists of hired farm workers and half of these workers are here illegally (Source: North Carolina State University Analysis, May 11, 2010). Illegal immigration is the very lifeblood of the big corporate model of produce farming. Without illegal immigration the entire philosophy of American agribusiness would have to change. Wages for pickers would have to rise significantly, and fieldworker health, such as exposure to pesticides and herbicides, could no longer be ignored. This would make tomatoes and cucumbers and such more expensive.

A second thought has to do with the trade agreements that the U.S. government has penned with the Mexican government. We now know that millions of Mexican farm families have been displaced because of U.S. government handouts of money to giant U.S. corporate farms. These so-called “subsidized” crops from the U.S. (mostly corn and the “4 whites” - milk, sugar, soybeans, and cotton) are unfairly dumped on Mexican markets at prices so low that unsubsidized Mexican farmers can’t possible compete.

Cheap food hurts poor people, but threequarters of the world’s people are rural farmers. When unfairly subsidized imports undercut their products, they starve…

“Wealthy countries do far more harm to poor nations with these subsidies then they do good with foreign aid” (Tina Rosenberg, Why Mexico’s Small Corn Farmers Go Hungry, North Carolina State, Online March 2003).

Therefore, what we have is not a “free market” at all; in fact, many of the guys screaming the loudest about free markets and illegal immigration are actually getting the biggest U.S. government handouts.

Observes Dr. Robert Peace, Professor of Accounting at North Carolina State, and author of the recent paper on U.S. farm subsidies (5/11/2010), “We have agricultural subsidies at the federal level that are huge. For example, corn is highly subsidized. Because of U.S. subsidies, and the North American free trade agreement, big U.S. corporations can sell corn in Mexico cheaper than Mexican farmers can grow it.

As a result, since farm workers can’t make any money farming in Mexico, they come to the United States as migrant workers.”

Finally, and very simply, it is precisely these displaced Mexican farm families, victims of a government manipulated scam to profit corporations that utilize high-fructose corn syrup and cheap chicken and cattle feeds… it is many of these Mexican farm families who are “illegally” picking our produce there in Northwest Ohio.

If the white man who owns this corporate farm says, “You can’t have wealth without work?”

You ask why it’s only Carlos, the brown man (and his kind), who truly labor and exert.

And the factory farm boss will say, “You don’t understand, my white family refuses To pick cabbage, spinach, broccoli... or what your fancy chooses.

There’s no agribusiness folks who’ll do this job Pickin’ ripe tomatoes or corn on the cob.”

And if they do, they’ll want to be paid (That horror of Wall Street) a liveable wage.

Do you know how much a peach would cost If pickers were paid a wage that is just?

Besides, we’ve heard it all before, your naïve justice cries and bays And the political men on the radio call it “liberal clichés”.

“The increase of Wall Street is built from the ground of slaves and sweatshops and the blood of the brown.”

But you tell the agribusiness boss a farm is a family, All hands pick the peppers for pickling from Grandpa down to deaf Timmy.

Why there’s a farm family down the street, they set three crosses on a hill by the highway.

And all the children and grown-ups believe “Criminal” continued on page 10

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Toledo Streets - The Paper with a Mission

Rescue: the real 911 My ‘maiden voyage’ with Lifeline Ministries was “My View of the Bridge,” (inaugural issue of Toledo Streets). It was the first time Steve North and I showed up with supplies and complementary items that would help, if you were living outside: food, firewood, blankets, etc. Robin Charney was with us as well, documenting everything as only she can, one frame at a time; and O’Fahey, who is simply a magnet, and is able to talk to and relate to most anyone.

Right off, I talk to a guy and he’s super depressed, thinking suicidal thoughts.

That’s not something every day for me, so I said very clearly, carefully even: “Hold on a minute, I’ve got somebody I want you to talk to.” Then I went immediately to Steve, who is the kind of man you want to tell your story to. I am no pastor. I have not saved any lives. Besides, I believe in Steve North. What I did was to turn it over to a power greater than me. My point is, if I am not skilled in the process of rescue, I should defer to someone else. Someone capable.

You do the same thing when you call 911.

This one is for all of us who work at helping others. We work with people who are broken somehow, so the onus is on us to be consistent, and on the same page. So, Good Samaritans, Pastors, Missionaries, Teachers, Social Workers, Grass Roots Organizers, Psychologists, and even temperamental Tent City Folks. Whoever.

Bet you’re thinking I’ve been busy. Well, yeah, I have been. Busy becoming more than I have been. Growing. Steve would say: “Speak to those things that matter most.”

While Dorenda would say: “Some things are a pretty big deal.” And while I’ve just had one seminar, and one review on rescue, it is a pretty big deal, and I’m sure it’s one of those things that matter most.

As a foundation, we must have rules, so I need to tell you the ‘rules of engagement’. But first things first: THIS IS NOT ABOUT RELIGION! It is about spirituality. It is about your relationship with God. It is the approach of every 12 step program of recovery. So, slowly, and with feeling: “Engage.”

Rules of Engagement 1. The Church is the most powerful certainty on this planet. You are most powerful.

2. Biblical rescue is an intensive, both in content and behavior.

3. This course assumes the attendee has a

Bonfiles

close personal & intimate relationship with Jesus Christ through prayer, the study of God’s word, and intimacy of worship.

4. All new disciplines, including biblical rescue, require a 2+2=4 approach and attitude, (what got me here will not keep me here – or take me to the next level).

5. Ask God to increase your absorption rate throughout these sessions.

6. Each of us guards an inner door of change even Jesus refuses to open, who instead chooses to wait patiently on the outside.

There are many powers greater than me, but I refer now to the author of this ‘rescue template’, Dan Rogers, President & CEO of the Cherry Street Mission Ministries, and friend to Toledo Streets. Many of you know Dan, and some of you have even experienced these seminars on ‘rescue’, and know first hand how revolutionary – innovative – is his approach. From the opening bell, I felt as if I were fighting for my life. The seminars are arduous and challenging. One of the reasons I go to New Harvest Church is I am challenged there. The work I do personally with God begins to restore me.

This work with rescue, is the beginning of a transformation. That is what Dan Rogers does for me. . .

A couple of things: there is no rescue if an individual has not asked to be rescued, and it is never about what you or I might want for someone else. It is about what they want for themselves.

This is more thoroughly advanced in the following precepts: 1. The rescuee must take full responsibility.

2. New beliefs stimulate & produce new behaviors.

3. Slow is smooth, and smooth is fast.

4. Learn to ‘slow the shutter speed down’.

5. You cannot solve a crises at the same speed in which it was created.

6. There is ‘yellow tape’ in every conversation.

7. The significant & life altering issues of people are in the ‘deep end of the pool’.

With our focus on the ‘deep end of the pool’, the ‘who’, everything is moving so fast it threatens to overwhelm you. Certainly, I am overwhelmed; lucky for you, I’ve got the author, Dan Rogers with me, to guide you through the instruction.

Here’s a tip: suspend what you think you know. (To be continued...)

July 2010

Siege on Stony Ridge View from the inside

Nic Botek, TFDL On May 3rd, 2010, an eviction deadline had come up for a homeowner in the quiet working class town of Stony Ridge. A home was being taken. Along with countless others hit by the economic downturn, Keith Sadler was unable to keep up on payments for a house that he had been living in for 20 years. His work in the auto industry had crippled him and he was forced out of his job with little compensation. After tirelessly trying to negotiate a deal with banks, he succumbed to a foreclosure, but this story of profit above people and systematic exploitation would not end as most do.

The Toledo Foreclosure Defense League had chosen this home to be a line in the sand. Six months of barricading and planning would make this action one that would resonate farther than this small group of activists could have imagined.

In the early morning of May 2nd, seven activists including the homeowner locked themselves in 5947 Fremont Pike with food and supplies preparing for whatever may come.

A press conference and speak out with national housing rights advocacy groups Take Back the Land and Moratorium Now! was scheduled that evening, and local media were present. Throughout the week local and national media would report on the event. Live footage streaming from inside the house kept a human face on the action. Support locally and nationally kept spirits high and passed the time.

In the early morning of Friday, May 7th, the inevitable raid happened.

Being the only one awake, I was a bit scared. Crashes came thundering in from all sides, people were scrambling to gather themselves and prepare for the breech. It took roughly 5 minutes for the S.W.A.T. Team in full battle gear to break through our barricades, but they would have one last surprise when they came in.

We had constructed devices out of PVC pipe and cement that would keep

us locked together and unable to be arrested until they were removed. The look on the S.W.A.T. Team members’ faces when they yelled “HANDS UP”, then realized we couldn’t comply, was truly priceless. After two hours of meddling and cutting they carried us off the property.

With our comrades, neighbors and local media watching, we were taken to the Wood County Jail. Cops and criminals alike supported what we had done (although police had to condemn breaking the law, some could not hold back their honest feelings).

Later that day we were released on an OR bond to a flurry of hugs and congratulations by supporters outside the jail.

Weeks later, we went to trial facing 120 days in jail for criminal trespass and obstructing official business.

Tensions were high, but we said our piece to the judge and collectively pleaded no contest. (Although some were critical of our plea, let me state for the record, our battle is not in the courtroom - it is on the streets.

Whether the court room legitimizes what we did or demonizes it, is of no consequence to us). We were all given 12 months probation with 120 days suspended on the condition of “good behavior”. (Hopefully we won’t be put in jail because our definitions of “good behavior” are quite different than the judge, but I digress.)

Our good behavior is not a battle for one home, it is a battle for all homes. As more and more are kicked to the streets and those already homeless sleep in front of boarded up people-less houses, we have a duty to correct this injustice. Free Homes for all People!

We are always looking for more help, more material support, and honest debate. If you would like to get involved in a broad range of activities please contact us at http://www.defendtoledo.org, or call 419-720-7305.

July 2010

Toledo Streets - The Paper with a Mission

Page 5

Local Mobile Food Pantry Wins Down the rabbit hole with Tim Burton Non-Profit Excellence Award

Laura Kelly

Food For Thought staff (Assistant Director Matt Wahlgren, far left, and Executive Director Tana Schiewer, far right), along with board members Steve North (left) and Amanda Aldrich (right) with Senator Fedor.

Food For Thought, a local provider of food to the area’s impoverished, has been granted the Ohio Non-Profit Excellence Award. The honor was given on behalf of the Ohio Association of Non-profit Organizations in recognition of the non-profit’s mobile food pantry.

Applicants throughout the state competed regionally in two categories: small to mid-size (Less than $1 million budget) and large (greater than $1 million budget). Honors were then divided amongst Northern, Central and Southern regions. Food For Thought received the Northern Region Small to Mid-Size award.

Food For Thought’s mobile food pantry serves multiple cities and neighborhoods throughout Lucas county by providing three to four bags of groceries to low-income families. The 17-foot trailer stops at four regular locations each month, including: Monclova Community Center, Lake Township Fire Department, NuVizion Church and Cedar Creek Church-Toledo Campus.

The mobile pantry also participates in the CARE (Community Asset and Resource Engagement) Team, a unique partnership created by Commissioner Tina Skeldon Wozniak, United Way

of Greater Toledo, Lucas County Job and Family Services, along with other agencies, to provide a variety of services to different neighborhoods.

Representatives from the organization also met with Senator Teresa Fedor and were announced during a Point of Personal Privilege at the Ohio Senate Session. Senator Fedor expressed her appreciation for the group’s efforts. Toledo Seagate Food Bank was also nominated and received recognition as a finalist for the Northern Region Large Group Award.

Food For Thought is a local nonprofit organization serving Lucas County through multiple avenues.

Beginning as a small Saturday morning gathering, Food For Thought now serves sack lunches, including their famous PB&J, to around 350 individuals every Saturday morning in downtown Toledo. Their choice mobile food pantry allows them to serve hundreds of families per month by providing a variety of food and resources to those that may not otherwise have access to a pantry. The Oregon food pantry housed in space donated by New Harvest Christian Church helped feed nearly 1000 families last month alone.

For more information, please visit www.freelunchtoledo.com.

The Big Issue in Scotland - When it was announced two years ago that twisted auteur Tim Burton was to follow up his bloody musical Sweeney Todd with a brand new take on Alice in Wonderland, few were taken aback by the combination of director and project.

It felt somehow inevitable that the artist who gave us modern fables such as Edward Scissorhands, The Nightmare Before Christmas and Big Fish would at some point get round to taking on Lewis Carroll’s fairytale.

However, according to the man himself - talking to The Big Issue in a plush room at London’s Dorchester hotel - he wasn’t the slightest bit interested in going down the rabbit hole until recently.

“A few years ago I don’t know if I would’ve wanted to do Alice in Wonderland,” he says, fluffing his trademark wild hair and constantly shifting in his chair, “but the idea of doing Alice in Wonderland in 3D seemed like the perfect mix. It seemed like the trippiness of that world would be great in 3D.” With 20-odd alternate versions of Alice already out there, Burton faced an uphill climb to make his version stand out, even with the bells and whistles afforded by 3D. So far he hasn’t been helped by the controversy over whether UK cinemas would even show the film, which overshadowed his artistic vision with a political row about how long studios should wait after cinema releases before getting the DVDs out.

The dispute was resolved at the 11th hour - on the same morning as The Big Issue interview with Burton.

Burton says the wrangle was “terrible”, but he’s thoroughly confident in the film itself.

The director has never shown any trepidation in taking on sacred cows - as his adaptations of Batman, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and (the probably best forgotten) Planet of the Apes reveal - but Carroll’s classic children’s tale is so beloved that tinkering with The Mad Hatter, the March Hare and the Jabberwocky is

bound spark some outrage. However, the very fact all those other versions are already out there made Burton feel he had a carte blanche.

“I didn’t feel like there was a definitive version,” he explains. “I knew the world of Alice, not through the books but through music and bands.

To me it felt like it was open territory because it’s so in our culture.”

With that in mind, Burton has let the tinkering run riot, ditching almost all the original plot to make a sort of sequel to Carroll’s story.

Picking up with Alice 12 years after her first (by now forgotten) outing with the White Rabbit, just as she is proposed to by a weak-chinned Lord with “delicate digestion”, we follow her return to a Wonderland ravaged by the dictatorship of the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter).

Aided and abetted by the Mad Hatter - Johnny Depp, in a wild performance that incorporates at least three different unhinged characters, the angriest of which comes with an abrasive Scottish brogue - Alice must allow the downtrodden inhabitants of her childhood fantasy world to reassert themselves.

It’s a remarkably brave call and extremely effective. Giving a mission to our heroine strings all the strangeness together - giving the crazies a purpose, from the Hatter and the Red Queen to the monstrous Bandersnatch and even thelittle hedgehog croquet ball.

Burton says the aim was to make us relate to each character, just as he did. “It’s nice with each character to feel what they’re about - to not make them all just mad. Each one has their own sense of madness. In all the other versions everybody’s crazy and the girl’s just, well, meh.”

Burton’s Alice is anything but indifferent. The film climaxes with her in full-on Joan of Arc mode, and the director says her journey reflects his own travels, from uncomfortable beginnings growing up in the bland Californian suburb of Burbank, to his “Burton” continued on page 8

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Toledo Streets - The Paper with a Mission

Because 1Matters H. B. No. 509 (As introduced)

In April, we held a homeless protection summit in Cincinnati. About 20 people from across the state attended.

Michael Stoops with the National Coalition for the Homeless, Brian Davis with the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, and myself were presenters.

Sadly, while we were there Josh Spring from the Cincinnati Coalition had to leave the forum to deal with a tragic event that happened the night before.

A man walked up to an unhoused individual and without provocation attacked our friend, body slamming him to the ground and beating him mercilessly.

The Cinci police said it was the worst beating they have ever seen when the victim did not die. He has come out of his coma but there is not enough bone left unbroken in his face for reconstruction.

It was videotaped by a security camera and the man who did it has been captured in Las Vegas.

Why? Why? Why? What sick pathology causes one to just beat another human being to near death with no provocation, for no reason?

Here in Toledo miscreants videotaped themselves urinating on or spray painting individuals sleeping on park benches and then posted it on YouTube.

While in other states beating the unhoused has become sport, last week Ohio House bill 509 was introduced in the state house.

Credit for this statewide goes to Brian Davis with the Northeast Ohio Coalition with the Homeless and Rep Mike Foley for getting this to the table in the first place.

It is co-sponsored locally by Representative Barbara Sears. This is the bill both our city council and county commissioners passed resolutions of support earlier this year. Giving credit where due, thank you Tom Waniewski for getting it into council, co-sponsored by Joe McNamara, Lindsay Webb and George Sarantou; and Tina Wosniak is credited for getting it on the commissioner’s agenda. Both council and the commissioners were unanimous in their support. Thank you all.

Last year when the bill was introduced it died on the vine. With 15 representatives sponsoring and cosponsoring it this year, we are certain it

128th General Assembly Regular Session 2009-2010 H. B. No. 509 Representatives Murray, Foley Cosponsors: Representatives Sears, Pillich, Hagan, Walter, Harris, Heard, Williams, B., Domenick, Skindell, Winburn, Fende, Gerberry, Harwood

A BILL To enact section 2927.121 of the Revised Code to create the offense of intimidation of a homeless person.

BE IT ENACTED BY THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF OHIO: Section 1. That section 2927.121 of the Revised Code be enacted to read as follows: Sec. 2927.121. (A) As used in this section, “homeless person” means either of the following: (1) An individual who lacks a fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence; (2) An individual who has a primary nighttime residence that meets any of the following criteria: (a) A supervised publicly or privately operated shelter designed to provide temporary living accommodations; (b) An institution that provides a temporary residence for individuals intended to be institutionalized; (c) A public or private place not designed for, or ordinarily used as, a regular sleeping accommodation for human beings.

(B) No person shall violate section 2903.04, 2903.041, 2903.05, 2903.11, 2903.12, 2903.13, 2903.14, 2903.21, 2903.211, 2903.22, 2903.31, 2905.01, 2905.02, 2905.03, 2905.11, 2905.12, 2907.01, 2907.03, 2907.05, 2907.06, 2909.01, 2909.02, 2909.03, 2909.05, 2909.06, 2909.07, 2911.02, 2913.01, 2913.02, or 2917.01 of the Revised Code if the offender commits the violation with the intent to cause harm to any victim of the violation because that victim is a homeless person.

(C) Whoever violates this section is guilty of intimidation of a homeless person. Intimidation of a homeless person is an offense of the next higher degree than the offense the commission of which is a necessary element of intimidation of a homeless person.

July 2010 Ken Leslie will get heard.

The hearings are yet to be scheduled.

As state senator Teresa Fedor is working for the same bill in the state senate we are hoping to arrange joint testimony.

Fortunately we have a caring local community who will not accept such behavior.

Many times over the past 20 years we have said how good, compassionate and giving our community is. This has been consistently exemplified not only by the amazing volunteers and donors, but also by the political leaders who demonstrate they care. How lucky we are to have leadership that too walks the walk of compassion. All of this is what makes Toledo, Toledo!

Yes, there is other crap going on, but we as a community always look past that and come together to be who we are and do what we do.

All because everyone Matters.

Criminal,

continued from page 3 that tilling the soil is closest to God’s way.

So why would you, Mr. Agribusiness Man, get a government check to Buy your mutant seeds, deadly anhydrous nitrogen.

As the family farm down the street grows food for healin’, Your cash crop is high-fructose poison.

And try not to laugh when he talks of “freemarkets”.

Sell some hormone-free milk, ask what the law is ‘cause the law says your label must show A disclaimer that the hormone is safe even if it causes cancer1.

Finally, back to old Carlos and Carlos’ plight, Why one can be Christian and not always Christian right, For if corporate agripower has its way, Then the small family farm has seen its last days.

If we wanna end abortion and suicide and hurt, Begin with honest payin’ jobs, stop wealth without work.

(Source: Safe food by Michael Jacobson, Ph.D, Center for Science in the Public Interest).

1

July 2010

Toledo Streets - The Paper with a Mission

Poetry

a room with a view Bonfiles the veterans skyway bridge smiles down upon the Maumee’s murky water & the occasional speed boat passing beneath its tentacle arms peers down upon Rick & John thumbing its nose as they prepare for a festive summer (w/ lots of company) on the banks of the Maumee. like the Indians before them they work, & they work, & they work hoping to fashion a better tomorrow something different than escalating gas prices, oil spills, waste management, & shelters w/ too many rules too little space & choices that they use to have. . . in the year of the stimulus dollar all this is simply unacceptable to them. theirs is a colorful settlement – reaching far beyond the bare necessities & the hierarchy of need opportunity is a ‘fish story’ beer & wine an anesthetic – this is a place of hope & wisdom(they live very colorful lives & seem to have found a way to leave most of the baggage behind) there is no waiting for this tent city no brown bags, no curfew, and only God can turn out the lights. their enthusiasm for settling seems a bit foolish to me if the answer is living in a tent, with the river the only bailout what then is the question? Still, their color is as rich as my own & I can’t help but wonder whose politics have dictated this circumstance hands that carefully craft gang signs pipes & whistles the weight of my want & warning sighs too subtle for for this outdoor amphitheatre of life on life’s terms so I’ve come here not to enrich their lives but to enrich my own. . .

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July 2010

Burton, continued from page 5 battle against being pigeonholed as he found success.

“I relate to the way she felt,” he explains. “You’re young but you feel like an old soul, you don’t feel comfortable in your own skin. You feel like society is putting you in a box. I’ve always hated that and I’ve always felt that.”

Burton was stifled by his childhood hometown, which later became the inspiration for the pastel-shaded suburbs of Edward Scissorhands, and found escape in drawing and making short films. His talent brought him to the attention of Disney, where he spent a few unhappy years in their trainee programme, animating the foxes’ “wet, drippy eyes” on The Fox and the Hound and creating films that were quickly buried, such as the short Vincent, which was well received at film festivals but was too dark for Disney to get behind.

Finally escaping to make madcap comedy Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, Burton has gone on to blaze his own trail through the movie industry, making some of the most identifiable and inspired movies of the last 20 years. Burton’s old friend and frequent collaborator Johnny Depp is fulsome and lavish in his praise of the director,

when The Big Issue later catches up with him alongside Helena Bonham Carter. “As far as I’m concerned he’s one of the only true artists working in cinema,” says Depp.

“Real artists, a real auteur, is virtually non-existent at this point.

I’ve always admired Tim for his commitment to his vision and the impossibility of compromise and for doing exactly what he wanted, the way he wanted.”

The fact Disney has changed its mind about Burton to such an extent that they’ve let him helm a kids’ film and backed him even when it turned out to be a kids’ film in which disembodied heads are used as stepping stones and monsters have their serpentine tongues cut out - shows how his star has risen.

Depp isn’t the only actor who’ll drop everything at a call from Burton.

Although it can’t have been too hard to get his long-term partner Helena Bonham Carter on board, Alice in Wonderland is bursting at the seams with high-profile talent - all willing to be made to look thoroughly foolish in service to Burton’s vision.

Little Britain star Matt Lucas appears as near-spherical twins

Tweedledum and Tweedledee, for which he submitted to looking like “a round, green pillow with spots”, according to Bonham Carter.

Renowned thesp Alan Rickman brings all his gravitas to voice a blue caterpillar, Stephen Fry is the toothiest Cheshire Cat ever and Barbara Windsor flourishes her sword as a feisty wee dormouse. But saving the best (or worst) for those closest to him, Burton has thoroughly transformed two of Hollywood’s most beautiful stars.

Depp is given an orange fright-wig and unnaturally enlarged yellow eyes, which he esoterically insists comes from his research into the poisoning real-life hatters used to suffer from due to the mercury in the glue they used.

“I found this thing called the hatter’s disease,” says Burton. “The way it would manifest with some was Tourette’s-like symptoms, some would get personality disorder, some darker and weirder. I think there was also an orange tint to the actual stuff, so that’s where the orange bits came from.”

The mother of Burton’s children, meanwhile, is transformed into a bubble-headed tyrant, whose temperament was modelled on their

two-year-old daughter, according to Bonham Carter: “She’s got the big head and she’s a tyrant and toddlers are tyrants. They have no empathy, they’re like dictators and they’re all about ‘me’.”

Bonham Carter says that she and Depp are happy to be grotesque.

“I think we both kind of like it,” she laughs, as Depp nods in agreement. “I like being disfigured. I like being made not to look like what I actually come as. Although, I think Tim just always thought my head was too small.”

Burton’s choice to use so much CGI and green screen comes as a surprise from someone who has previously been such a strong supporter of more low-tech special effects techniques, especially stop-animation. Those who loved the sandworms in Beetlejuice or Pee-wee’s grossly ghostly Large Marge, and fans of The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Corpse Bride, needn’t worry, though.

“You try to pick the medium and the material that fits. All the different techniques made sense to me,” Burton explains of the high-tech approach.

“But I have got other stop-motion projects coming, because I do love it.”

No doubt, just as with every new Burton release, Hallowe’en will be packed with attempts to bring the peculiar computergenerated residents of Wonderland into the real world.

The director’s creations always have lashings of the macabre that suits that time of year. Burton says he debuted his costume as one of the Red Queen’s court last year.

“For me, every day is Hallowe’en,” he laughs.

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Attacking homeless people

Violence is epidemic, and some don’t even want to count If 27 people had been killed in the United States in one year for being African-American or for being Jewish or for being developmentally disabled, there would be a national uproar. In 2008, 27 people were killed in the United States for being homeless, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless.

Where is the uproar?

Homeless people all over North America are being set on fire, beaten, stabbed, shot, strangled, brutalized by police, harassed and raped. Many of these crimes go unreported, and the ones that do come to light might not necessarily be recorded as hate crimes.

That means statistics for tracking the violence in order to find ways to address it are inadequate.

Understanding this phenomenon begins with the source of the assaults and apathy surrounding them.

“People are just being targeted

because they are homeless. It’s a safe crime, it’s almost like vandalizing a street sign,” says John Joyce, coexecutive director of the Rhode Island Homeless Advocacy Project (rihap. org). “The victim doesn’t come and tell the police about it. They’re ashamed of where they’re at in their life right now.

“I can’t understand why, but it’s accepted that it’s OK to assault homeless individuals. It’s just bigotry at its best. People are being targeted because they’re homeless. You’re carrying your life on your back, in your backpack; and people see that and for some odd reason people want to assault people who are more vulnerable.”

During testimony before the Rhode Island Legislature on a bill to require tracking crimes against the homeless and police training on homelessness, Joyce played the Bum Hunter video to show how attacking homeless people has become a form of

entertainment. The bill passed the state house and senate and is expected to be signed into law.

“The victims don’t really want to come forward because the way the police departments think and the community thinks: ‘No one’s going to believe me anyway if I do get assaulted.’ If the homeless community here in Rhode Island knows that the police departments will listen to their complaints, they’ll come forward,” Joyce says.

The complexities of social attitudes influence all facets of government in the execution of their role as protector of the common good. This is reflected in an opening statement in Homelessness, Victimization and Crime: Knowledge and Actionable Recommendations, presented in 2008 by the Institute for the Prevention of Crime at the University of Ottawa.

“In 1998 the mayors of some of

Margo Pierce the largest cities in Canada declared homelessness a national disaster,” the report says. “Since then, studies conducted in a number of Canadian cities provide evidence that the number of homeless people on the streets is increasing and consequently that the demands on shelters and other services can be expected to rise. … Those without adequate shelter are more likely than the housed to be victims of violence and, for women, victims of sexual assault.”

What the report can’t provide is uniform, consistent data on the number of crimes committed against homeless people across Canada. Nor can the U.S. government provide that same data. Beyond victims’ reluctance to report, another problem is the apparent indifference of law enforcement to collecting the information. The 2007 Hate Crimes Statistics, the most recent “Attacking” continued on page 10

Clothing Your Community is coming back! This time, we’re focused on “Back to School” and collecting school clothes for area kids.

For more information, visit our site at http://www. cherrystreetmission.org or our Facebook page at http://www.facebook.com/ pages/Cherry-Street-MissionMinistries

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July 2010

Attacking, continued from page 9 annual report compiled by the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program, illustrates this point.

More than 13,000 law-enforcement agencies provided data about biasmotivated crime, with 2,025 agencies (15.3 percent) reporting 7,624 incidents.

“The remaining 84.7 percent of the participating agencies reported that no hate crimes occurred in their jurisdictions,” the report says.

Some states, such as Mississippi – with a deep-rooted past in racial violence – reported zero incidents of hate crimes in the entire state. Delving into what makes a hate crime could begin to explain why jurisdictions don’t want to report these crimes.

Attacked for who they are A hate crime is an illegal act motivated by hatred toward individuals or property because of an identification as or affiliation with a particular race, color, national origin, ethnicity, religious tradition, sexual orientation or physical or mental disability. (Canadian law also includes language as a prejudicial motivation). Crimes can be against people, including harassment, terroristic threats or assault; or against property, such as trespass, arson or vandalism to the building, the grounds surrounding a structure or personal property inside.

The definition of a crime, or illegal activity, motivated by hate seems obvious. But the laws and prosecution of such crimes is the subject of much debate among political leaders, victims’ advocates and activists. The end result – the legal definitions – can be charges carrying stiff or light penalties, depending on where the crimes are committed and the discretion of prosecutors and judges.

The Criminal Code of Canada: Hate Provisions (http://www.mediaawareness.ca/english/resources/ legislation/canadian_law/federal/ criminal_code/criminal_code_hate. cfm) requires specific proof of the criminal act and the intention to commit the crime. In the United States, racially motivated hate crimes were defined as early as 1964 in the Civil

Rights Act but it wasn’t until 2009 that disabilities and sexual orientation were added to this legislation, when President Obama signed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The thing that differentiates a hate crime from others is that it is “based on a characteristic or condition of the victim” by a perpetrator who “seeks to not only commit the crime against the particular victims but to send a message about that victim to the larger community,” according to Sherrilyn Ifill, professor of law at the University of Maryland and a faculty member of the Peter Jennings Project for Journalists and the Constitution. Those defining elements are determined by history, she says.

“We cannot ignore the reality that hate-crime legislation and our view about the particular condemnation that we have for hate crimes comes out of our very particular history. We didn’t just sit down one day and decide if there should be legislation that covers certain kinds of crimes against certain kinds of victims,” she says. “The genesis of the crimes comes out of a history of violence against particular members of our community, particularly racially based hate crimes. It comes out of a very particular time in the history of U.S. violence, in particular, against African Americans, whether it is individualized violence, whether it is mob violence in the form of lynching, whether it is Klan violence – that’s the history it comes out of. So that’s the genesis of it.

“It doesn’t mean that our civil rights laws don’t also cover gender discrimination in the work place, for example. We come to expand those laws out of that history, to add other aspects, to add other pieces of it that strike us in the same way, that go to the core of who, at least, we aspire to be as a society and as a country.”

How we protect, or fail to protect, vulnerable populations in our communities is a demarcation of our progress in achieving that image.

“This is really, in many ways for me, a very critical issue of democracy and freedom – that is, your ability to

Riley Feller, left, and Michael Hesson, right, both 24 years old, were two of the four men who allegedly assaulted and chased 52 year old John Johnson, who’d been sleeping under a highway overpass near a homeless camp in Cincinnati on April 10. Mug shots courtesy of the Hamilton County Sheriff ’s Office.

walk on the street and not be physically attacked for who you are,” Ifill says.

“When we want to talk about freedom and we want to talk about democracy, we tend to think about voting. I think many people take for granted the assumption that you can walk on the street unmolested so long as you’re not committing a crime. There can be no other more corrosive activity to a society that purports to be free and democratic than allowing citizens to be attacked on the street for who they are.”

A push to include homelessness as a classification in U.S. hate-crime legislation is getting a nod from states passing their own hate-crimes legislation. Ranging from mandating reporting and police training (Rhode Island) to tougher sentencing for individuals convicted of hate crime (Washington state), these laws are codifying state concern about homeless people.

The combination of the recent rise in homelessness as a result of the economic downturn and a rise in the reported cases of violent deaths of homeless people has resulted in greater awareness about the risks to people living outdoors, also known as “rough sleepers.”

“The risk of victimization is higher among homeless persons who live on the street as opposed to in shelters …

78 percent of rough sleepers had been

victims of crime during their most recent period of sleeping on the street; however, only 21 percent of these incidents were reported to police,” says the report by the University of Ottawa.

Over the past decade there has been a dramatic increase in the number of violent acts committed against people experiencing homelessness, but coming up with hard data is difficult when there is no standard for reporting such crime and when there is no mandatory reporting, according to the National Coalition for the Homeless. The coalition compiles its own statistics based on FBI crime data, verifying police and media reports and information provided by advocates and support groups. Even though the data is incomplete, it reveals an upward trend that many say justifies the need for more data collection. Canadian law enforcement does not officially compile data on hate crimes against the homeless, either.

National newspapers such as the New York Times and USA Today and wire services such as the Associated Press have recently reported on hate crimes against the homeless in Cincinnati, Ohio.

‘Just a bum’ John Johnson needed 18 stitches in his head and his girlfriend was in fear “Attacking” continued on page 11

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Attacking, continued from page 10

Lopez, continued from page 3

for her life after an April 10 attack at a camp in Cincinnati where they lived.

Johnson, 52, says he was sleeping under a highway overpass at about 3 a.m. when four men attacked him.

“I was awakened by four young men telling me to exit the property,” he says. “As I was complying with them, they started beating me with pipes and bats upside the head and up and down the left side of my body.”

Three of the four attackers have been captured. Charged with felonious assault are Michael Hesson, 24; U.S. Army Private Riley Feller, 24, stationed at Fort Knox, Ky.; and Spec. Travis Condor, 25, stationed at Fort Bragg, N.C. A fourth suspect, also stationed at Fort Bragg, has not yet been caught.

Johnson was attacked a few weeks after the city of Cincinnati trimmed trees obscuring a small homeless camp near Interstate 75. As a result, the handful of people living there were exposed to almost constant public view during daylight hours.

What wasn’t well known was that people at the camp didn’t sleep in the shack that was visible to traffic; they slept under a nearby highway overpass.

The attackers allegedly beat Johnson and chased him up a hill, calling him a “bum” and saying, “We don’t want you here” and “Get a job.”

The assailants threatened a woman staying with Johnson but didn’t harm her.

“This was not some guys out half-drunk, having a good time at my expense,” Johnson says. “These guys were cold and calculated. It was planned.”

The fact that the four attackers knew where to find Johnson indicates that the assault was pre-meditated, according to Josh Spring, executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless (GCCH).

This was the fourth violent attack on a homeless person in Cincinnati in less than a year that GCCH knew of, Spring says.

• In summer 2009 two real-estate agents who were drunk assaulted a homeless man downtown. One knocked the homeless man’s insulin bottle out of his hand.

20th one. Or a book. Or a movie. It all happened organically.

•

•

When police arrived, one of the real-estate agents said, “He’s just a bum.” Both men were convicted of misdemeanors.

In December 2009 a homeless man reported that a group of youths sprayed his coat with charcoal lighter fluid and threw a match, setting him on fire.

In January 2010 a new Streetvibes vendor was beaten to the point that he had to be placed in a medically induced coma.

“In Cincinnati, hate crimes against homeless people definitely seem to be on the rise,” Spring says. “The National Coalition for the Homeless has been tracking hate crimes … because they saw a turning point where they were occurring more and people were being targeted as a popular thing to do.”

Hate, Violence, and Death on Main Street USA: A Report on Hate Crimes and Violence Against People Experiencing Homelessness 2008 is the most recent report by the National Coalition for the Homeless, which describes “an overwhelming trend” in crimes against the homeless perpetrated by young men and boys.

Over the past 10 years the majority of attacks against the homeless have been committed by teenage boys and youth as young as 10 years old. In 2008, 43 percent of attacks against homeless people were committed by teens aged 13-19, and 73 percent of the accused/ convicted attackers were ages 25 and younger, the report says.

“Some of the accused/convicted have been quoted as saying, ‘It was just a vagrant,’ ‘It was fun,” or they did it because they ‘could,’ ” the report says.

‘We really have a problem’ Neil Donovan, executive director of NCH, says “many smart people” have studied the issue of homelessness in the United States and have told him that it’s not possible to end homelessness to the point where we don’t have to worry about it anymore. The necessary public will and resources are lacking.

However, he says that’s no excuse for ignoring a very real danger in our “Attacking” continued on page 13

And when I wrote the first column, readers responded in a huge way.

They sent emails in the hundreds, and letters, and they wanted to buy the missing strings. My desk at the L.A Times was surrounded by boxes of instruments that people had sent, and when I took them to him, I realized that I had just complicated his life - I was afraid he would get mugged for those instruments, and I thought he could even get beaten to death on Skid Row where he lived.

I felt it was my duty to try to get some help for him and keep him out of harm’s way. That’s when I started this dialogue with a mental health agency called Lamp Community and it took me into this world that I knew virtually nothing about: mental illness and homelessness and public policy regarding those issues.

RC: Had you had any interactions with people on Skid Row before?

SL: When I moved to L.A. to write a column for the L.A Times, I was certainly aware of it. And the word on it was: It was Skid Row, it had always been Skid Row, it was always gonna be Skid Row. There were several thousand people asleep on the street there in the evenings and a lot were there because of the service agencies: mental health programs, rehab and some of the shelters where people could get food or a bed for the night. It was just so much a part of the fabric of the city, and so much accepted, that I didn’t give it a lot of thought.

But here was Nathaniel, living here in this place where, at night, there were thousands of folks on the street, and you would see drug dealers counting cash, prostitutes working out of port-a-pottys, people walking down the street with open wounds, sirens 24 hours a day.

Y’know, I cared about Nathaniel and his welfare, so I found it unconscionable that we could have created this place, and became all the more determined to, not just help him, but to shine a light on all of those issues.

But I’m as guilty as anybody else who knew it was there and looked at it and walked past it and didn’t think to do anything. It took getting to know somebody who lived there and caring about him.

RC: I’ve read that there are an estimated 60,000 homeless people in L.A., which is just an astronomical number. What were your interactions with homeless people before Nathaniel?

SL: Well, it’s unavoidable. When you walk out of the L.A Times building downtown, you almost invariably come across somebody who clearly is living on the street. Occasionally you give somebody a dollar; other times you’re sort of morally conflicted because you think, “OK, it looks like they’ve got an addiction problem. Am I just feeding the habit?” But you don’t know what it is, so you kind of just avoid it. And I think that’s what so many people do: you steer clear of it, you cross the street, you avoid it.

And, I think it was fair to say, I didn’t give [homelessness] a lot of thought.

I knew [L.A.] was a place with a huge homeless population, but part of that I just chalked up to the great climate.

But there are many other factors: It’s an obscene real estate market, it’s a twodimensional economy, it’s haves and have-nots, rich and poor. And it’s very easy in a place like Los Angeles to not be able to pay the rent, to maybe descend into despair, to maybe take a drink, to maybe develop an addiction, to maybe have a mental condition triggered: And you’re on the streets. You just fall out.

That’s what happens in L.A. But we’ve got a problem. We certainly do. It’s at least 60,000 [homeless people in L.A.]; maybe closer to 70, 75.

RC: One of the things that is really striking about Nathaniel and your portrait of him is that he’s dealing with paranoid schizophrenia. How was it to interact with him?

SL: I mean, [paranoid schizophrenia is] certainly a barrier, but we kind of connected. We’re roughly the same age; we had some of the same cultural “Lopez” continued on page 12

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July 2010

Lopez, continued from page 11 references. He was a big sports fan, which I am. And he just can be a very charming, witty, interesting guy. Who happens to have been on a stage with YoYo Ma at one point.

And despite the challenges of dealing with somebody who is schizophrenic, there was often a great deal of humanity in whatever he was saying. Sometimes he’d get very aggressive and it would be a little bit ugly, but then he would say something that would sort of redeem him. It was always an adventure.

RC: On “60 Minutes” you said about your relationship with Nathaniel: “It’s the most meaningful friendship that I’ve had in my life.”

SL: I think the first time I realized how meaningful it was was when I spent a night on Skid Row and I felt I was really looking into his soul. The things that he said and did that night: He recited the “Hamlet” soliloquy in a Shakespearean accent; he said a prayer; he talked very poetically about creativity; he talked about Mozart and Beethoven creating something that lasted for centuries; he looked at people and spoke of them with such compassion and humility. That was when I realized that few people that I encountered had such a profound affect on me.

It was around then that I began to realize that he had something that few of us ever find: a passion for something that he really believed in. He’d been faithful to it through the worst part of a horrible disease. And I found great inspiration in that. Each day - it didn’t matter if he was not on a stage somewhere, it didn’t matter that he got hit with this unlucky break at the age of 20 or 21 - he had no regrets, no self pity.

I was thinking about getting out of the newspaper industry and envying what he had and wishing that I had that kind of a passion. Nathaniel helped me realize that the story that I had - that I was telling about him - was my passion. And I was as safe and sane when I was doing that as he was with the music. It made me realize that I tell stories: I make discoveries and share them with people.

I realized I can probably have a bigger

mark in the mental health field to hold onto this job and to write about what I’ve learned, and share it and to help humanize people.

RC: Thanks to some sort of synchronicity, California was about to put Proposition 63 into action. Could you describe its importance?

SL: That was a tax on the 1 percent of the highest income earners in California, and all of the money was to be dedicated to new services in the mental health area.

It was long overdue because so many mental health agencies across the state were struggling and we had never built the community clinics that we promised when the [psychiatric] hospitals shut down.

It was hard for me to imagine how we could allow that to happen in this society, say, “Well, it’s OK for them to live in the street.” I thought, “Can you do it if they all had pancreatic cancer?” Why is it that on Saturday mornings there’s a 10K race for the cure of everything but paranoid schizophrenia? I just knew that I wanted to keep writing about it and put some pressure on City Hall. So here was Prop. 63.

So it’s another way in which having met Nathaniel seemed like kind of a blessing, a gift. It all was just very nicely timed.

I’m not a religious person. Maybe it’s just the way things were, but I’m grateful it happened when it did.

RC: You talked about readers sending you instruments for him. What do you think - if you’ll excuse the pun - struck a chord with people?

SL: I think people realized that this could have been anybody: Schizophrenia hits one in 100 people.

And here’s Nathaniel, who comes out of the Cleveland public school system and makes it to Juilliard, against tremendous odds. I think that it was, for some people, a story of second chances. And I think everybody can sympathize with that. So they were rooting for him and rooting for me to help him. And they saw also that one person can make a difference.

RC: So you’ve gone from columns to book to movie. How does that all sit

with Nathaniel?

SL: It’s been a concern of mine from the beginning, whether he could handle all of this. And there have been many times where I’ve thought of turning back because he - [Interrupted by taxi driver, to whom he says, “No you keep it.”]

[To me.] I just took a cab to the airport.

The cabby’s been listening to the story.

He’s a bit choked up apparently. I tried to give him a tip and he’s stuffing the money back into my hand. Sorry.

But that first column. It was like, “Can I really help him?” The only way I can help him is to tell this story intimately.

But if I do that, what is the cost to him? And so, I - Hang on. [Becomes distracted.] I’m sorry.

I would talk to his sister, the director at Lamp and say, “Can he handle it?” The thing that kept us all moving forward was that Nathaniel seemed to - at least in part - like the attention, although he had trouble processing it at times. More importantly, we thought this story is not just about humanizing him, but lots of people like him. And how can we not advance this cause? So he is, for the most part, handling it really well.

[Then Lopez announces that to go through airport security, he must shut off his cell phone. He promises to call back in five minutes. But when I phone him 15 minutes later, he says he’s been bumped to an earlier flight. Can he call me back? Sure, I say. About 80 minutes later, the phone rings.]

RC: So we were talking about Nathaniel handling all the attention. Has he seen the movie?

SL: Yeah. He was at a screening and then he was at the premiere, but he doesn’t look at the screen. He’s got a fear of two-dimensional images: it’s a symptom of the illness. It looks to him like there’s ghosts up there.

RC: So he hears it like he hears music.

SL: Yeah. He’s gonna buy the soundtrack rather than the DVD. RC: Did he give you any opinion about what he heard?

SL: The first time we saw it was pretty extraordinary. He said he didn’t want to see it. But a bunch of people from Lamp Community are in the movie: The director insisted on having real people instead of actors playing people with a mental illness. And they were very excited about going to see it, so he at the last minute decided to go.

He loved the music. At times he grumbled about certain depictions, and I reminded him that it was a fictional representation of a real story. So it was kind of a test for him. Part of what you need to advance your recovery is to be able to develop some insight into your own condition. I think that watching the movie at the screening and then later at the premiere helped him develop some insight into his situation.

RC: So several years have gone by.

Where do you and Nathaniel go from here?

SL: I’ll tell you where we go: right back to where we were. We hang out. We’re there for each other. I have taken a couple trips to the San Francisco Bay area because of family health issues, medical emergencies. And when I’m dealing with all that Nathaniel is a great friend.

He told me he wanted me to write his sequel. [Laughs.] I said, “Well, we’ll talk about it.” I don’t know if that’s going to happen anytime soon. So it’s just more of the same. All of which will be easier now that the movie is behind us.

And it’s me hoping that he continues just to make more progress with his continued recovery. There’s no cure.

This is not going to just go away one day.

But he shows - despite occasional backpedaling - a steady arc.

It’s just been amazing to see a guy who four years ago was living on the streets playing a two-string violin who now has a dozen instruments and will get into a car, which he never wanted to do when I first met him. Or go to a concert. So all of these signs of progress are very encouraging. I just hope to be there for him to help him continue to improve.

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Attacking, continued from page 11 communities.

“It really is a matter of life and death,” Donovan says. “There are examples of individuals, solely because of their status as un-housed, (who) are at risk of loss of life. When that happens, that rises to a special level of attention, and it’s really our responsibility to protect the health and well being of our un-housed brothers and sisters.”

This is one of the reasons NCH is working with the Southern Poverty Law Center to lobby for national legislation to amend the Hate Crimes Prevention Act to include homelessness as a classification reported by law enforcement. A strong and vocal supporter of this effort is Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University and a former staffer at the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“As a criminologist, there are certain types of data that we rely upon, and homicide data is one of them; and what we’re seeing is that more homeless people (are) murdered in apparent hate crimes than all of the other traditional hate-crime victims combined in any given year. And what I mean is race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, etc.,” Levin says. “If that’s the case, then we really have a problem where the law should protect them. And we should have a federal law reflect it, because in many areas the homeless are not treated as victims – they’re treated as criminals themselves.

“The fact of the matter is, is that we have clear and very disturbing issue of violence against the homeless that is done by folks who are responding to prejudice.”

The criminalization of homelessness (See “Being Homelessness is Against the Law,” edition of April) makes activity such as sleeping in a public place or even sitting too long in one location a crime, punishing people without a permanent address with fines and jail time.

“There is a tendency to focus on crimes committed by homeless people without also examining their heightened vulnerability to victimization – rates that are higher

than for the housed,” the University of Ottawa report says.

The perverse reality of homelessness is that being victimized by hate crimes makes further victimization likely. Noting that homelessness “disrupts important social bonds and impairs personal

homeless people can “de-select” themselves from being homeless – that is, opt not to be homeless.

“Their concern is that homeless people can de-select themselves from that group by getting housing,” he says.

“Of all the groups that have current protected status that it would seem

“Homelessness shouldn’t be over-thought, over-analyzed and over-solved. The reason that we have homelessness is because of a lack of accessible and affordable housing, jobs with a universal living wage and health care for all. The solution is the reverse of that.”

- Neil Donovan networking” for successful interpersonal interaction and efforts to leave the streets, the report explains that this means many people are trapped in that environment.

“Victimization on the street is psychologically distressing and can lead to depression and low self-esteem, which in turn contributes to apathy and feelings of futility, making it more difficult to escape further abuse,” the report says.

Resistance to adding the homeless to hate-crimes legislation is coming from some unlikely places. Brian Davis, executive director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, says the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) opposed adding homelessness to the hate-crimes law in Texas, arguing that it would water down the law.

“In Texas, the legislation came before the General Assembly, and the Anti-Defamation League opposed it. That’s the only time I know of that they’ve publicly come out in opposition to a hate-crimes bill, and the bill died,” Davis says. “They don’t want to cheapen existing hate-crimes statutes or open the door to frivolous claims.”

Davis says the ADL argued that

would not speak up would be the group that you could de-select yourself from – namely, religion.

“The other concern is that, as we all know from working with the homeless, it’s not so easy to de-select yourself from being homeless. In many cities, there are serious barriers to getting housing.”

This notion that homelessness is a mutable condition is a “red herring,” according to Levin.

“In discrimination jurisprudence, which is the antecedent to hate-crimes legislation, mutability was never a prerequisite,” he says. “Certainly race is the genesis of these kinds of protections. It’s never been regarded, nor does the 14th Amendment … say the mutability was not the be-all requirement. It’s really a red herring.

“I think what we need to look at is, ‘Is there a problem, a manifestation of prejudice and discrimination due to certain socially identifiable characteristics?’ If that’s the case, then we should address it.”

The 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution includes the language that “all persons” are included in the clause, “No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges

or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law; nor deny any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.”

In 2009 a group of six juveniles attacked a 30-year-old homeless man sleeping next to railroad tracks in Lynn, Mass. The boys, ages 11 to 14, threw bricks, stones, bottles and sticks, inflicting life-threatening injuries.

Police charged the juveniles with armed assault with intent to murder, aggravated assault and battery with a deadly weapon, assault with intent to maim with a dangerous weapon and a civil-rights violation.

Robyn Frost, executive director of the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, compared the vulnerability of homeless people to that of groups protected by hate-crimes legislation, such as African Americans and homosexuals.“At a time when increased numbers of individuals and families without housing is at an all time high…

I think that it has escalated this issue right to the top, right next to any one of those particular populations that are now designated.”

The brutality of the attack in Lynn could be kind of tipping point, leading Massachusetts to reconsider adding homeless people to groups protected by hate-crimes laws – a move they had earlier rejected.

“The biggest tipping point right now is you’ve got such high populations in Massachusetts who are extremely vulnerable because they don’t have housing, and I think this issue right now is affecting far greater numbers of people,” Frost says. “So I think the combinations of issues sadly like occurred in Lynn and the combinations of numbers are actually skyrocketing could be a good tipping point to re-file it.”

‘Shallow motives’ That protection can be provided through legislation and education, according to Levin.

“The same types of offenders are committing the same hate crimes “Attacking” continued on page 14

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Toledo Streets - The Paper with a Mission

July 2010

Attacking, continued from page 13 against the homeless that we’ve seen with other victim groups, yet it appears, from the limited data that we have, that the homeless are among the most violently victimized of any victim group out there,” he says. “Therefore, we need not only education, but educational initiatives to protect the homeless … training for social services and law enforcement as well as for young people in schools.

“The more we can educate young people at critical times in their lives about what prejudice is and that they might actually experience it, the more they’re able to address their feelings when they feel certain prejudices.

Moreover, the more that we can say that this is not socially acceptable and institutionalize that, as well as institutionalizing the message that there might very well be punishment as well, I think serves a later good.

The word’s already out there that the homeless are potential victims.”

Levin says laws can serve as a deterrent because the effectiveness of a deterrent depends on the circumstances of the crime and the offender.

“Since most hate crimes – the attacks against the homeless – are done mostly by people with shallow motives, the prospective of punishment actually very well can be a deterrent. … If someone’s out for a thrill and … if there’s a message that’s out there that says, ‘Guess what? You’ll be prosecuted,’ that will deter some of the offenders. It won’t deter all of them, but people with shallow motives for committing crimes and little benefit are among the most deterrable.”

The Homelessness, Victimization and Crime report from the University of Ottawa concludes with a number of “actionable recommendations.” These suggestions fall in line with what many homeless advocacy groups across the continent have been recommending:

•

•

•

Housing and supports, which include “providing advocacy and advice for homeless people; invest more resources at all orders of government into strategic tools to measure and reduce homelessness in Canada.”

“Invest in programs to help at-risk youth to stay in school and acquire life skills; improve mental-health services for those with persistent mental illness; and educate the public about homelessness.”

“Provide training for police and other enforcement personnel on best practices for intervention with homeless people; implement comprehensive drug strategies … and repeal legislation that excludes youth with behavior problems from mainstream education.”

“This synthesis of the research literature and the recommendations are aimed at policy makers in all orders of government to assist in reducing homelessness, victimization, criminal offending and public disorder,” the report concludes.

Donovan of the NCH takes a similar position.

“Homelessness shouldn’t be over-thought, over-analyzed and oversolved,” he says. “The reason that we have homelessness is because of a lack of accessible and affordable housing, jobs with a universal living wage and health care for all. The solution is the reverse of that.

“Any further explanation, any further complicating factors, really are distractions and frankly avoidance of the problem. What we really need to do is … respect people by staying focused on the issue.”

Helping people get off the streets makes for fewer targets, but it won’t address the essential issue, according to Ifill.

“I think people want to believe

The woman pictured above (name withheld) witness the April 10 attack near this homeless camp in Cincinnati.

Photo credit: Jon Hughes/Photopresse.

that hate crimes are a thing of the past, and understandably so,” she says. “But the reality is that they’re not, and that only by our attention and only by very vigorous law enforcement response – prosecution by prosecutors of hate crimes, reporting not only by law

enforcement official but by citizens who see and know when hate crimes occur – are we going to be able to get our hands around this.”

“The more we can educate young people at critical times in their lives about what prejudice is and that they might actually experience it, the more they’re able to address their feelings when they feel certain prejudices.” - Neil Donovan

July 2010

Toledo Streets - The Paper with a Mission

Hoboscopes Gemini | According to Greek mythology, Orpheus was the greatest musician ever to live. His songs could make the rivers dance and the gods weep. When he descended into The Underworld to rescue his recentlydeceased wife, it was because of the beauty of his songs that he was allowed to leave with her. It was, however, his inability to follow simple instructions that separated them forever. Musicians!

Seriously. When Hades says “don’t look back,” you just don’t look back. You may be great at what you do, Gemini, but sometimes you have to follow somebody else’s rules to get what you want.

Cancer | Spoiler Alert! This hoboscope may contain spoilers about as of yet unseen developments in your immediate future. If you don’t want to know what’s going to happen next, don’t keep reading! Many key plot points and character developments may be revealed!

I was recently in attendance at an advance screening of the days to come. if you are a fan of your day to day life and feel uncomfortable knowing about events before they occur, now is your chance to stop reading! Many major plot twists …

Hey! Why are you sticking your fingers in your ears and going “lalalalala”? I’m not gonna give away anything major! Come on, Cancer! Oh, never mind.

Leo | In the ancient Epic of Gilgamesh, the eponymous hero seeks out the sole survivor of the world’s great flood to discover the secret of his long life.

The survivor, a fellow by the name of Utnapishtim, tells Gilgamesh that if he can stay awake for 6 days and 7 nights, he will be granted immortality. Gilgamesh, unable to meet the requirements of this mystical Babylonian sleep-study, falls asleep and remains mortal. Sometimes all you have to do is stay awake, Leo. It isn’t about the quality of your time or the depth of your devotion. Wake-up, show-up and don’t lie down until the task is accomplished (For the record, I tried the staying-awake-forsix-nights thing. Still mortal. In fact, maybe a little more mortal than before.)

Virgo | The leatherback sea turtle might lay up to 1,000 eggs in a single breeding season. Of course, most eggs

Page 15 Mr. Mysterio

never make it to turtlehood, but laying 1,000, one can hope you’d end up with a few. You’ve got a lot of great ideas, Virgo.

Not all of them are going to make it in the open sea, but that’s no reason not to put them out there. Just don’t get too attached. Leave them in the sand and keep moving, the good ones will come back to you.

Libra | Band-Aids and Kleenex have more in common than just being shoved together in your bathroom trash. Both are brand-names of items that have become inseparable from the products they make.

Despite the best efforts of advertisers, nobody reaches for a facial-tissue or an adhesive-bandage. So what kind of product would a “Libra” be? Something useful? Something necessary? Associate yourself so closely with the characteristics you admire that people began to confuse your name for what you want to be.

Scorpio | You remember Noah, right Scorpio? You know, old guy, big boat full of animals? Yeah, that’s the one.

Noah went through a lot to survive a devastating disaster. The thing was, after spending months stuffed in a boat with every living creature, it was tough to know when the whole thing was over.

So Noah sent out a dove. You’ve been through so much lately that it’s hard to know if you’re still treading water, or just floating in the kiddie pool. You’re gonna need some confirmation that the worst is over, so you might need to start asking around. Make a phone call or two, reply to those e-mails that have been piling up, maybe even set up a coffee date. I’ll bet you an olive branch you’ll find some solid ground to stand on.

Sagittarius | In a single day and night of misfortune, the island of Atlantis sank into the sea. That’s some lousy luck, Sagittarius, and I think maybe you can relate. That sinking feeling you’ve had lately really isn’t your fault. Sometimes it just takes extraordinarily out of control circumstances to help you understand you actually aren’t in control. So, now that we’re at the bottom of this, what can we do to get back up? Look around for some flippers and maybe a balloon. We’ll get you back topside in no time.

Capricorn | You’ve been working hard to appear put together, Capricorn, but you aren’t having any fun. It might just be that those things you consider your greatest flaws are actually your best outlet for enjoying life. Laugh loud, eat your fill, dance like fool. Was it Leonard Cohen or The Baha Men who first said “There’s a crack in everything, it’s how the dogs get out.”

Aquarius | Sometimes it takes a near death experience to make you want to contemplate making big life decisions like marrying the mother of your two children. The stars say don’t rush into any big commitments, Aquarius. Just because you’ve had a brush with your own mortality, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t keep your options open. I mean, you’ve still got plenty of time for something better to come along, right? I mean, you do, right?

Pisces | The 1995 film Waterworld was made famous not by it’s epic dystopian vision of a post global-warming induced worldwide aquatic catastrophe, nor it’s detailed creation of a new humanity that is driven by a symbolic desire to find the location of the mythical Dryland, it is instead remembered primarily for it’s enormous cost, it’s near-complete failure at the box-office and it’s relatively poor payoff as a watchable film. Similarly, pisces, your recent exploits, though they have some redeeming qualities, may primarily be remembered for how expensive they were. If you’ve been told you’re going over-budget, it’s probably best to quit now and work with what you have.

Aries | In 2005, researchers at the University of Maryland Medical Center found that laughter causes a dilation of the endothelium of

blood vessels resulting in an increase in blood flow. Scientists believe this may be due to beta-endorphin like compounds released by the hypothalamus.

Researchers determined that, even though none of that is very funny, it still made them want to laugh more. So go ahead, Aries, laugh. It may not be the best medicine, but it does reduce inflammation and decrease platelet aggregation!

Taurus | You’ve been staying up late all week, Taurus, editing the Wikipedia article for “The Meaning of Life.” I know you think you’ve got a a few things figured out, but you’ve been answering a lot of questions that nobody’s asking. Why not try listening to the voices of those around you instead of just trying to talk over all of them. Find out what the question are and, if you find out you don’t have the answers, at least you’ll be in good company.

Mr. Mysterio is not a licensed astrologer, an elected official or a classically trained chef. His column appears courtesy of The Contributer, Nashville, TN. Want more sprinkles of suspect sorcery?

Follow Mr. Mysterio on twitter at: http://www.twitter.com/mrmysterio

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