Streetvibes vol 18 by Clermont Sun Publishing Company

S e p t. 1 1 t h - 2 4 t h , 2 0 1 4 | V o l . 1 8 I s s u e 1 9 ( N o . 2 8 6 )

advocating justice | Building community

The Streetcar Track Bicycle Trap| 3 This issue sponsored by Judge (Retired) Mark P. Painter

INSIDE THIS ISSUE

DIRTY DUKE SPILLS AGAIN| 4

HUNGRY | 5

CRIMINALISATION OF HOMELESSNESS IN USA CONDEMNED BY THE UNITED NATIONS | 8

ROSA PARKS ARTIFACTS SOLD FOR $4.5 MILLION TO BUFFETT SON | 9

Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition 113 E. 12th Street Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

streetvoice | 12

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Want to Hear Something Ridiculous? JOSH SPRING

Executive Director

hat is your definition of “ridiculous”? MerriamWebster Dictionary defines it as: “arousing or deserving ridicule: extremely silly or unreasonable”. If you ever meet someone struggling to understand what “ridiculous” means, you can just tell them this story. Every weekday I walk from home to the Coalition office and from the office home via Walnut Street. One of the best parts of this walk, outside of all the individuals and families found spending time together on the sidewalk in front of their homes, are the ten or so flowering pear trees along the sidewalk. Each of these trees are probably fifteen to twenty feet tall. They have big, boastful tops, with beautiful flowers. Children play in their shade and folks generally enjoy their beauty. In a neighborhood consisting primarily of bricks and concrete, trees are especially valuable. I really should have written the description above in past-tense. Recently I was walking to the Coalition office and noticed that contracted workers were cutting down the trees. By the time I walked home, they were all cut down. Every single beautiful tree for two blocks was gone. At the same time, contracted workers were tearing up the sidewalk, running new lines for the expensive housing coming to the street. I figured the decision had been made to take down these trees as a part of the sidewalk work. I was angered by this because I was sure, they could have just worked around the trees and more importantly, no one asked those who consider that sidewalk their front yard if they had an opinion. Come to find out, the sidewalk work was not the ill-gotten reason. Here comes the punch-line to this ridiculous story. The City of Cincinnati

plans to plant new, small trees on the mercer commons side of the street (west side) and does not want the trees on the east side of the street to be of a different height. Said another way, the City of Cincinnati never asked neighbors what they wanted, paid a company to cut down and haul away all of the beautiful, tall trees in a two-block stretch and will pay a company to plant all new trees on both sides of the street; all because they don’t want the trees to be different heights. That is the definition of ridiculous. It’s also poor planning, wasteful spending, and dis-respectful to neighbors. Using the City of Cincinnati’s Cut down logic, if you have a yard and you plan to plant a couple new trees in it, you should first pay someone to cut down and up-root all of your existing trees and then pay someone to plant all new trees so that they are all of a uniform height. While there are many issues that are more important than this one specifically; this issue speaks to a bigger problem. As a society we so desire that perfect, totally clean Hollywood (and totally fake) look; that we make completely ridiculous decisions and actions. The terrible part is that often these ridiculous decision do more than remove beauty and shade, they criminalize people for experiencing homelessness and poverty, condemn

Streetvibes is an activist newspaper, advocating justice and building community. Streetvibes reports on economic issues, civil rights, the environment, the peace movement, spirituality and the struggle against homelessness and poverty. Distributed by individuals experiencing homelessness or on the edge of homelessness, in exchange for a $1.50 Donation. Streetvibes is published twice a month by the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless (GCCH), a 501(c)3 non-profit organization that works to eradicate homelessness in Cincinnati. 113 East 12th St. Cincinnati OH, 45202 Ph: 513.421.7803 FAX: 513.421.7813 WEB: www.cincihomeless.org BLOG: streetvibes.wordpress.com EMAIL: streetvibes@cincihomeless.org Editor: Justin Jeffre Executive Director: Josh Spring Director of Development: Leslie Moorhead trees on Walnut. Photo: Josh Spring low-income affordable housing, displace households, cut funding for basic human rights to instead fund the expensive desires of people with more financial means and more and more and more. Let’s join together in putting our collective decisions through the ridiculous filter first.

Streetvibes Editor

pplied Information Resources is currently talking with groups such as Common Cause/Ohio, the League of Women Voters, and the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless about launching an informal coalition to promote campaign reforms locally and in Ohio. Bill Woods of AIR, Inc. believes local networks need to be organized in order to work on restoring our democratic process to a healthier condition. “Extreme gerrymandering of Congressional and state legislative districts and the huge amounts of money donated to campaigns by Fat Cats,” he explains, “are moving us dangerously close to becoming a plutocracy.” Both Woods, who stepped down

as chair of Common Cause/Ohio in 2012, and AIR’s Alice Schneider, a former President of the League of Women Voters, were leaders of the Fair Elections Coalition, the group that won voter approval of a campaign reform Cincinnati City Charter Amendment in 2001. According to Schneider and Woods, the impact of “big money” and the computer precision of gerrymandering have made reforms even more critical in 2014. “The first step,” they say, “is to better educate the public about what is happening and what can be done to reform the system. The two major parties,” they conclude, “are so caught up in the realities of Fat Cat fund raising that it will take a grassroots citizen movement to bring about the adequate changes needed to preserve democracy in this country.” Besides the successful campaign

Distributor Program Manager: Anna Worpenberg Layout: Jeni Jenkins, Uncaged Bird Design Studio Reception: Chris Fowler, Steve Reams Clarence Daniels Charles Carpenter Maintenance: Pete Roper CONTRIBUTORS THIS ISSUE

-Josh Spring, LSW Executive Director

Putting Political Reform On The Public Radar Screen JUSTIN JEFFRE

Director of Education: Michelle Dillingham

reform Charter Amendment of 2001, Schneider and Woods were involved in the 2012 failed State Constitutional Amendment to reform the redistricting process in Ohio. “That Amendment proposal,” according to Woods,” may have been too complex for voters to digest, and it was overshadowed by the Presidential election.” Circumstances, however, are changing. “For years, redistricting and gerrymandering were topics that were too esoteric to attract the attention of average Ohioans,” adds Schneider, “but the Republican majority drew up such an unfair group of Congressional and state district boundaries in 2011, that people are beginning to see the need for change.” Both think that now is the time to be organizing locally around issues like redistricting reform and the public financing of elections. ------------------------

THE VOICE OF THE STREET...UNSILENCED

Writers: Josh Spring, Justin Jeffre, Michael Earl Patton, Michelle Dillingham, Jason Haap, Joseph C. Sommer, Michael Tee, Mimi Daria, Ricardo Taylor, James Brown, Bill Woods, Kim Green, Willa Denise Jones Syndicated Writers: Carey L. Byron, Mary Wisniewski, Angela Moore, David Krause Photography/Artwork: Josh Spring, Justin Jeffre, Lynn Williams, Robert Mann, Zafirah Mohamed, Lucy Nicholson, Aimee Willhoite, Reuters, Bill Woods Thank You For Reading Streetvibes And Supporting Our Mission To Build Community And Advocate Justice. Streetvibes and The Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless do not endorse candidates for public office.

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The Streetcar Track Bicycle Trap MICHAEL EARL PATTON

Contributing Writer What does this sign mean?

It was a pretty tight fit. I could still move along the flange gap but I would have lost almost all control of a moving bike. If my tire had been just a little bit wider, the gap just a little bit more narrow, or the air pressure just a little less, the tire would probably have jammed in place. A rider moving at any speed would be then flung over the handlebar. That is what happened to Jim Luken, who also contributes to Streetvibes. Other than some “serious road rash” on his leg and shoulder he was okay. I know of one other person who had an accident with his bike tire getting caught in the flange gap. When I tried calling him at his office I got the automatic message that he would be out for several weeks due to medical issues. There may be others, and this is happening with only about half of the rail in place. A hundred years ago the problem was carriage wheels being trapped in the gaps. Streetcars on city streets generally used grooved rail, which was quite successful according to a 1901 handbook I have. Here is a figure from that book along with a tracing of the actual shape of the groove from a short surviving section of the rail over by Music Hall. Compare that groove to the modern-day flange groove, which I also

bviously it is some kind of warning and has something to do with bicycles, but what? I knew the antraced from a contour gage. swer, but that was because someone The flange gap today is twice as who had taken a spill from his bike deep as the old-style groove. It also had told me. I asked several people has steeper sides and instead of being recently, ranging in age from 10 to 85, all smooth metal, one side is made of and no one knew. I got answers such concrete which has a rough surface. It as watch out for potholes, be careful appears to be a very effective trap for of storm sewer grates, and don’t go bicycle wheels. perpendicular across the streetcar From what I’ve read the designtracks. ers of today’s streetcar systems in the The last one is simultaneously United States are aware of the advanthe closest to the truth and also the tages of grooved rail but often choose farthest away. Crossing the streetnot to use it as grooved rail and it’s no car tracks by going perpendicular to longer made here. (I also brought up them is the safest way the subject once with to cross. Ironically, the one of the Cincinnati above sign is alongside streetcar consultants the East-bound lanes of at an open house. Central Parkway shortly He declined to talk before a rider would about it.) A requirecross the tracks on Walment for receiving nut. Thus the sign apfederal funding is pears to be warning the that a certain perrider against a behavior centage of the cost that is actually the safest has to be due to comway to cross the tracks. ponents made in the The sign is supposed to United States. Using be warning bicyclists rail made in the Unitnot to ride close alonged States helps meet side the streetcar tracks that requirement. because a wheel might Otherwise there slip into the flange gap would be more effort beside the rails and the required, and possirider could lose control. bly more expense, in Recently I took my sourcing other combicycle to the tracks on ponents domestically Henry Street in Overto compensate for the-Rhine. The pictures buying foreign-made show my bike wheel nesgrooved rail. tled firmly in the flange The danger is gap. also increased today I tried twisting the compared to the old handlebar to see if I system because hiscould pop the wheel torically, streetcars back out of the slot. ran down the middle Even without putting of the street. The any weight on my bike present design often I could not do it – I was has the streetcar runeven starting to twist the ning down the curb Bicycle tire in groove next to track. Photo: Michael Earl Patton tire off its rim.

THE VOICE OF THE STREET...UNSILENCED

lane, which is precisely where bicyclists are taught from a young age to ride. The two – bicyclists and streetcars – do not mix. One more comment on the choice not to use grooved rail: I remember about 15 or 20 years ago when the city had a program to replace many of the storm sewer grates because the slots ran parallel to the curb and were traps for bicycle tires. A few times I rode my bike with a group and we even were taught a special hand signal to communicate to those behind us when we came upon such a grate. Those grates now have slots that run diagonally, greatly reducing the danger. It was worth the expense then to reduce the hazard to bicycle riders, it is hard to see why a similar problem isn’t worth the trouble now. Given that the hazard is present and real, what can be done? One obvious thing would be to fix the warning signs so that they communicate the actual hazard. Jim Luken, whom I mentioned above, also suggests big painted signs between the rails. Another suggestion is to paint designated lanes for bicyclists that are well away from the streetcar tracks. There is a report available on the internet, “Bicycle Interactions and Streetcars” (http://www.altaplanning.com/wp-content/uploads/Bicycle_Streetcar_Memo_ALTA.pdf), which surveys Portland bicyclists about their experience with the streetcar and reviews some of the best practices internationally. There is, however, no discussion of grooved rail which is extensively used in Europe. In any event, there are a few things which still can be done to alert bicycle riders of the danger or to mitigate the hazard. Except for the completely confusing signage, it appears that Cincinnati has failed to do any of them. ------------------------

Dirty Duke Spills Again

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JUSTIN JEFFRE

Streetvibes Editor

Fuel in the Ohio River. Photo: Justin Jeffre

ccording to Duke Energy they spilled approximately 9,000 gallons of fuel in the Ohio River on August 18th when they did a fuel transfer 20 miles southeast of Cincinnati at the W.C. Beckjord Station in New Richmond, Ohio. Duke originally estimated that it was 5,000 gallons that was spilt. It should be noted however that it wasn’t Duke Energy that first discovered the spill, it was residents that could smell the strong odors of the spilt fuel. Most of the fuel spread down the river before clean-up crews even began so only a small fraction of it will actually be cleaned up. Duke’s interest is in downplaying their spill. They are more concerned with profits and public relations than keeping the environment clean. Peter Tennant, the executive of the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, told the Cincinnati Enquirer that spills like this occur once every few years. Duke Energy also spilt 27 million gallons of contaminated water and 82,000 tons of toxic coal-ash into North Carolina’s Dan River in February and another coal-ash spill was reported in West Virginia. Soon after that the Water Shed Alliance caught them

dumping toxic waste water into North Carolina’s Cape Fear River. Duke was cited for deliberately dumping 61 million gallons into that river. Duke told representatives in North Carolina it would take decades and cost $10 billion dollars to clean up their mess and it would leave utility customers footing most of the bill through higher energy costs. Duke Energy is a $53 billion company that uses just 1% of solar energy despite the fact that 3 out of 4 Americans want the nation to use more solar energy.

Polluted Politics

On top of that, Duke is lobbying hard to stop solar energy by targeting Net Metering. Net Metering is when people with solar panels on their roof tops sell the surplus energy they’ve produced back to the utility company. The utility companies are forced to buy it from them by law. It was created to encourage the use of solar power as it is currently required in about 43 states. As consumer advocate Ralph Nader once said, “The use of solar energy has not been opened up because the oil companies do not own the sun.” Energy companies oppose solar panels on roof tops and solar in general because

Clean up attempts. Photos: Justin Jeffre it competes with their profits. Duke Energy has taken a page out of the billionaire Koch brother’s playbook. They use a strategy created by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) where they have been encouraging legislation in the states like Oklahoma, Arizona, Kansas and North Carolina to create new sir taxes on solar panels. Duke executive Paul Newton even declared that, “Solar customers aren’t paying their fair share.”

That Giant Sucking Sound

That giant sucking sound you hear isn’t clean-up crews for Duke Energy’s multiple toxic messes, it’s the revolving door between government and industry where Duke Energy hires people like former Blue Dog Democrat Heath Shuler to be their representative in Washington D.C. and North Caroli-

na Gov. Pat McCrory worked for Duke Energy for 28 years before he became Governor. Once in office McCrory fired every single member of the Environmental Commission. According to the Associated Press, North Carolina’s environmental agency blocked lawsuits over Duke’s coal-ash pits three times, eventually shielding all 31 pits from potential lawsuits. It’s time for us to clean up our dirty political system which allows polluters like Duke Energy to destroy our mountains, air and water ways. We can’t afford to subsidize the greed and degradation of our planet. To find out more about what you can do go to www.dirtyduke. org. ------------------------

Keeping up with the Contact Center JUSTIN JEFFRE

Streetvibes Editor

n August 9th the Contact Center, in partnership with the Over-the-Rhine Community Council and other community groups and churches, held their 29th OTR Community Festival in Washington Park. The Children and Youth Talent Contest showcased the outstanding artistic talents of the neighborhood youth. They say this was one of their best years yet, and they have already started making plans for next year’s 30th Anniversary Celebration. On August 14th the Contact Center held a sidewalk Birthday Party for Social Security with cake, hot dogs & other picnic food. They leafleted information about the Social Security Program and the “Strengthening Social Security Act” that they’re organizing in support of as a way to increase revenue for this program through taxation fairness.

A large “Happy Birthday, Social Security, Age 79” sign with twinkling lights and red, white & blue balloons decorated the front window of their office on Vine Street. Afterwards they walked down to U.S. Senator Rob Portman and U.S. Representative Steve Chabot’s offices to deliver Social Security Birthday cards and 500 Strengthening Social Security Act petition signatures. They let their office staff know that the signatures represented Ohioans in the 1st Ohio Congressional District who are committed to America strengthening and expanding Social Security so it is solidly funded for years to come. Then they stopped by U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown’s Office to thank him for his strong support already of The Strengthening Social Security Act and delivered a Birthday card for Social Se-

OTR Community Festival. Photo: Lynne Williams. curity. The Contact Center is a non-profit community organizing agency whose mission is to end poverty. They are a membership organization of low and moderate income people. Through the empowerment of their members, they work to bring about economic

THE VOICE OF THE STREET...UNSILENCED

and social justice. They work together through education and action to use their member’s collective voice to effect positive social change as well as providing leadership opportunities to low-income members to be the primary “change-makers.” ------------------------

No. 286 | S e p t . 1 1 - 2 4 , 2 0 1 4

COALITION CLIFFNOTES

LOCAL

In order to change the world, you have to get your head together first.— Jimi Hendrix

Hungry MICHELLE DILLINGHAM

Staff Writer

ast week I made a quick stop at a local fast food joint to pick up a warm “homecooked” meal for my family. A disheveled, tired, and slightly overweight middle-aged white woman prepares my order while I stand watching. Our eyes meet and I try to offer a warm smile – I worked for many years in the thankless fast food industry, so my empathy comes easy and is genuine. Taking my cue she hesitantly says, “Boy it’s hot out today,” I quickly respond “No kidding!” wanting to assure her I’m accepting of her small talk. As she seals a piece of chicken into a plastic container she quietly says, “I wish I could eat a piece of chicken, I’m so hungry.” I say, “No employee discount huh?” As she hands me my bag she says, “Yeah, they have half off but I still can’t afford it.” I take my bag, and feebly say “Yeah... Well, have a good day”. Walking out the door two thoughts occur concurrently: people can’t even make a damn decent wage, and I should have bought her a chicken dinner. Crap. The U.S. Department of Agriculture just released a report on food insecurity that shows from 2011 to 2013 16% of Ohio households reported an “uncertain ability to provide nutritious meals”. That’s a fancy way of saying nearly 1 in 5 Ohioans aren’t getting enough to eat. But wait, it’s getting worse. “The foodbanks association said the number of Ohioans served through emergency-food networks was 13 percent higher during the second quarter of this year than in the last three months of 2013. (Columbus Dispatch 9/4/14 “Ohio rates among the worst states when it comes to hunger problems”).

The front page of our local paper the Cincinnati Enquirer last week covered how our neighborhoods have been hit by the recession. They listed the top earning neighborhoods and the lowest earning neighborhoods based on income tax-return data gathered by the IRS. Many of us already know about a third of Cincinnati incomes fall below the federal poverty line. The Enquirer article drills down into this reality by showing incomes by neighborhood. They list the 10 lowest earning neighborhoods and reveal their annual incomes range from $29,529 in Queensgate/West End, down to $17,851 in North Fairmount/ Camp Washington. The article rightly points out many households are not even reflected in the neighborhood summaries, since they don’t earn enough money to file income taxes. No wonder our city is in what I would call a “quiet” affordable housing crisis. Quiet because we don’t hear enough clamor about the lack of housing, and the silence is deafening for the hundreds of families who are one flat tire or illness away from eviction. This year’s “Happy Labor Day” sentiments felt awkward, like singing happy birthday to grandma as she lies in hospice. We smile and want to celebrate, but it’s hard to keep up appearances when the grim specter of death is so close. Today, only 11.3% of American workers are protected by union representation through collective bargaining. Wage stagnation, wage theft, misclassification, and underemployment are rampant, so there is hardly much to celebrate. And boy are we feeling it when we go cash that paycheck.

Migrant Mother after Dorothea Lange Photo: Robert Mann One of the main activities of the Coalition for the Homeless is education. As our Director Josh Spring has been known to clarify for our visitors, “That doesn’t mean we offer education to people who are homeless... they already know about homelessness. We educate everyone else about homelessness...” When we talk about lack of resources, homelessness is simply the last stop on the block. A place more and more Americans find themselves as we head perilously back down the road to the kind of abject poverty we had pre-New Deal. To ed-

HOMELESS COALITION EDUCATION AND OUTREACH “BREAKDOWN STEREOTYPES & ERADICATE MISINFORMATION” The Coalition for the Homeless provides Education and Service Programs that help to portray a more accurate and holistic picture of homelessness in Cincinnati. We believe an educated public can be a more compassionate public, willing to dedicate time and effort towards creating solutions to homelessness. The “Voice of the Homeless Speaker’s Bureau” program is made up of individuals currently experiencing homelessness or who have experienced homelessness, who share their experiences. The program is designed to put a face on homelessness and raise awareness about those struggling in our community. To schedule a speaker, contact Michelle Dillingham at (513) 421.7803 x14

THE VOICE OF THE STREET...UNSILENCED

ucate about homelessness, inevitably we teach about wages and housing affordability. Another Labor Day passes and many of our neighborhoods are more poor, and more hungry. Yet, it is so preventable. For information on how to participate in Hunger and Homeless Awareness Month activities, visit the Coalition’s Education page on our website at http://cincihomeless.org/ activities-and-resources/. ------------------------

Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo

LOCAL

JASON HAAP

Contributing Writer

ature abhors a vacuum. Where there is space, life finds a way of invading. Even sidewalk cracks constantly give way to green. Can the same be true of Cincinnati’s public characters? Years ago, Cincinnati had “The Construction Clown,” otherwise known as Raymond Thunder-Sky. He frequented construction sites, with a hard-hat, metal lunchbox, and a clown nose. After his death in 2004, it was discovered he had been creating artwork at these construction sites, and currently Thunder-Sky, Inc. in Northside serves as a small gallery to celebrate alternative artists and to remember Raymond. With The Construction Clown gone, Cincinnati was left with an empty niche, one filled not long after by “The Hat Man,” otherwise known as Avtar Gill. The Hat Man attended virtually every social, political, or artistic event across the city, commemorating each with a big sign on his hat. Like Thunder-Sky, he became a bit of a local celebrity. In fact, after his death in 2013, his surviving hat signs were featured as an exhibit at Thunder-Sky, Inc.

But now it’s 2014, and nature abhors a vacuum. Who will serve next to fill this niche in Cincinnati’s consciousness? Could it be Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo? This past summer, people across the Cincinnati area started spotting a man with a bicycle, a guitar, and a sign proclaiming his name as “Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo.” Kate Lampe, a local high school teacher and resident of College Hill, has seen this new character near the northern edge of the city. “We first saw Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo riding his bike eastbound on North Bend Road in Mt. Airy,” explained Lampe. “I can’t remember what he was wearing specifically, but I know that he was riding a bike and wearing a sign that declared him Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo and recommended checking out his music on YouTube.” A search of “Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo” on YouTube, though, will only yield two clips - each apparently filmed on the side of a local road by a stranger who found this character and liked his song. Both clips feature the same song, a fantastical tale about “Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo.” “Most of the comments on the

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videos were from people who did the exact same thing as we did,” explained Lampe, who searched his name on YouTube after seeing his sign. “The song was about what we expected. We were amused by him.” As of this publication, Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo’s online appearances are negligible and recent: a Reddit strand where a user asks if others have seen him; an Imgur picture with a title once again asking if others have seen him; an Instagram photo of a local student with Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo; two YouTube clips of the same song performed in different locations. He has apparently been spotted in Colerain Township and Finneytown in addition to Mt. Airy, College Hill, and downtown. Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo. For Lampe, people like this Photo: http://imgur.com/r/cincinnati/lmZrHWo are a welcome addition to local culture. “I enjoy that people Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo the one time, but like Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo are part of would enjoy encountering him again the musical/social atmosphere in Cin- somewhere around the city -- or, at the cinnati,” she explained. “He reminds very least, he could post some more me of street musicians that I have seen YouTube videos!” in London, Oxford, or Chicago.” Could Mr. Dippy Dippy Doo be the “I think that figures like Mr. Dippy next character to occupy the same kind Doo make life in a city more colorful of creative space as The Construction and interesting,” concluded Lampe. “I Clown and The Hat Man? Perhaps think he represents the offbeat quirki- only time will tell. ness that can be found in and around -----------------------Cincinnati as a whole. I’ve only seen

Successful Lawsuit Exposes Bureaucrats and Lobbyists Betraying Employers in Ohio’s Workers’ Compensation System JOSEPH C. SOMMER

Contributing Writer

n May Ohio’s Eighth District Court of Appeals in Cuyahoga County upheld a common pleas court’s decision ordering the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (“BWC”) to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to up to 264,000 businesses. Under the decision in San Allen v. Buehrer, some businesses were owed more than $1 million, and many were owed six-figure amounts. A few weeks after appealing the decision to the Ohio Supreme Court, BWC agreed in July to settle the classaction lawsuit for $420 million. The appeals court said the case involved a “cabal” of lobbyists and BWC bureaucrats who “rigged” the workers’ compensation premium rates paid by Ohio employers. It found that BWC developed and maintained “an unlawful rating system under which excessive premium discounts were given to group-rated employers at the expense of nongroup-rated employers.” The common pleas court said BWC “even admitted” to violating statutory requirements in setting premiums. The court also said BWC was “aware of the inequity in the system” and “aware it was violating the statutory mandate.” Both courts said BWC set up the illegal and unfair program in 1991 and maintained it until 2009. BWC corrected the program only because the filing of the lawsuit pressured it to do so. Unlike 46 states allowing compe-

tition in the workers’ compensation field, Ohio has a monopolistic system requiring employers to obtain workers’ compensation insurance from a state agency – BWC – unless they’re large enough to be self-insured. This meant the vast majority of Ohio employers had to deal with the rigged premium rates set by BWC during all those years. As the appeals court indicated, the pernicious influence of special interests is why the illegal, inequitable, and extremely harmful premium rates were intentionally instituted and maintained for so long. It’s a story of Ohio’s state government allowing a good idea to be hijacked and used for evil purposes by politically powerful special interests.

The noble initial purposes of group rating Ohio enacted a law in 1989 allowing employers to be grouped for purposes of calculating their workers’ compensation premiums. The law’s intent was to make small employers eligible for premium discounts similar to those available to larger employers. In workers’ compensation insurance, the premium rate assigned to an employer is based on its risk of claims losses. A large employer’s risk of loss can be calculated based on its workers’ compensation claims history. If few claims were filed against the employer in the past, it has a lower risk of loss and is charged lower premiums. If there are many claims in its history, the employer has higher risk of loss

and is charged higher premiums. This means large employers can lower their premiums by making their workplaces safer to reduce the number of injuries and claims. For small employers, a problem was that an individual employer didn’t have enough employees for its claims experience to be an accurate predictor of how much risk it brought to the workers’ compensation system. This lack of claims experience “credibility” caused small employers to pay premiums at or nearer a “base rate,” which is determined from the experience of the entire industry the employers are in and not adjusted for an individual employer’s claims experience. Group rating was intended to help small employers by allowing them to enter into groups of employers for purposes of determining their premium rates. Unlike an individual small employer, a group of them would have enough employees for a reliable calculation to be made of the amount of risk they brought to the system. The group’s overall premium rate, and therefore the premium rate for the individual employers in it, could be adjusted based on the combined accident experience of the group. Even for many employers who were large enough to have an individual experience rating, they could obtain larger premium reductions from being in a group than they could from having premiums set based on their own experience. Group rating would also give small employers an incentive to improve their claims experience by

THE VOICE OF THE STREET...UNSILENCED

promoting workplace safety. Fewer accidents and claims would mean lower premiums for all employers in a group. And if an employer did not manage its claims costs, it could be removed from the group and lose the group’s discounted rates. It seemed like a great idea: allow small employers to obtain the same premium savings available to large employers, and at the same time motivate them to provide safer workplaces for their employees.

A cabal of lobbyists and BWC bureaucrats perverted group rating to enrich certain special interests in the workers’ compensation system Rather than viewing group rating as a means of helping small employers and their employees, some in Ohio’s workers’ compensation system saw an opportunity to line their pockets at the expense of those others. And BWC obliged them. As the appeals court said, BWC set up the group-rating program “without sufficient controls to address the plan’s susceptibility to manipulation . . . and the potential for premium inequity.” Although independent actuarial studies in 1990 and 1991 warned BWC about potential premium manipulation and inequity resulting from the program’s design, the agency ignored them. BWC likewise paid no heed to seven additional actuarial studies, is-

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LAWSUIT EXPOSES BUREAUCRATS

{Continued from page 6} sued between 1993 and 2007, finding severe premium inequity in the program and recommending corrections. Premium manipulation and inequity weren’t BWC’s concerns. The agency’s group-rating program was structured and maintained to maximize the profits of organizations sponsoring the groups (“group sponsors”) and companies administering them (“third-party administrators”). Group sponsors are often employer or professional associations such as the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, the Ohio Manufacturers’ Association, and the Ohio State Bar Association. They sponsor workers’ compensation groups that their members can join in order to receive the premium discounts in BWC’s group-rating program. Third-party administrators (“TPAs”) in the workers’ compensation field assist employers with matters such as claims management and safety programs. In regard to group rating, they sometimes are group sponsors themselves and sometimes administer and market the groups of other sponsors. The group sponsors and TPAs knew that the higher BWC set the premium discounts in the group-rating program, the more money they could make. That’s because their fees were often a percentage of the savings the employers received by being in group rating. The sponsors that were employer or professional associations also benefited as a result of employers joining those associations in order to obtain the premium discounts available through their groups. Their membership dues were often substantial, sometimes many thousands of dollars per employer. BWC accommodated the group sponsors and TPAs by allowing premium discounts of up to 95% off the base rates the employers could have paid if not in group rating. This allowed the TPAs and sponsors to reap huge sums from the program. For example, if an employer was paying $10,000 a year in workers’ compensation premiums, a TPA could approach it and offer to get the employer’s premium reduced to $500 a year by placing it in a group with a 95% discount. As a fee, the TPA might take a third of the savings. Thus the employer would see its workers’ compensation costs reduced by over $6,000 a year, the TPA would get a fee of over $3,100, and employers would flock to become dues-paying members of the associations that sponsored the groups making such discounts available. In those ways, the group sponsors and TPAs made out like bandits because of the group rating program’s huge premium discounts, which were unlike anything seen in the workers’ compensation systems of other states. Unfortunately for many employers, setting premium rates to maximize the income of TPAs and group sponsors made the rates inconsistent with insurance principles, which are intended to protect insured entities, not inflate the profits of politically influential special interests.

LOCAL unfavorable claims experience and resulting increased costs were borne by employers not in group rating. Also as a result of removing employers and their new claims experience before the experience could affect a group’s rates, the group’s high discount would not be lowered, and the sponsors and TPAs could continue reaping huge income from it. As the appeals court put it, “for employers who participated in the BWC’s group rating plan . . . it was ‘heads we win,’ and for employers who did not participate . . . it was ‘tails you lose.’” One way nongroup-rated employers lost was by paying higher base rates, which were at least 20% more than they should have been. Additionally, employers that had claims filed against them and were removed from group rating could suddenly and unexpectedly see their workers’ compensation premiums skyrocket. They had gotten used to paying and budgeting for a rate based on steep group-rating discounts, as high as 95%. When those employers would be removed from group rating after incurring a claim, the loss of the grouprating discount, along with a possible

BWC’s corrupted grouprating program placed Ohio employers on the verge of disaster Although the enormous premium discounts available in the group-rating program were great for the bottom lines of group sponsors, TPAs, and employers in the groups, employers left out of groups or removed from them were subject to severe and often ruinous consequences. Because the discounts provided to employers in group rating were so high, those employers were not paying sufficient premiums to cover the risk of loss they brought to the workers’ compensation system. The difference had to be made up by additional premiums paid by employers who weren’t in group rating. As the courts eventually ruled, this was contrary to principles of workers’ compensation insurance and requirements of Ohio law. Contributing to the same problem was that an employer having a workers’ compensation claim could be dropped from its group before the claim could affect the group’s experience rating. This meant the employer’s

penalty rating for the recent claims experience, could cause their premiums to rise astronomically, even 1,000% or more. Many employers simply couldn’t afford an increase in workers’ compensation costs of that magnitude.

BWC’s group-rating monster ravaged Ohio’s economy The high base rates, combined with the loss of the group-rating discounts and the imposition of penalty ratings, were vicious punches blindsiding tens of thousands of Ohio employers when they were removed from group rating. Many thousands of them suffered financial devastation or death. It’s why BWC’s supervisor of rate adjustments told state investigators in 2006 that the group-rating program was “a monster.” After losing group rating, a nursing care company wrote to BWC: “Our rate went up from $10,000 per 6 months to $100,000 per 6 months. . . . We had no warning of the increase until it was time to pay our premium. It was staggering to us. We are a small

{Continued on page 12}

& Invite you to attend

the Gavel Behind the B Meet the Learn Hamilton County the function Court of Common of the common Pleas judicial pleas courts candidates

Monday, Sept. 22, 6 to 8 p.m. At Cincinnati Bar Association Fifth Floor Conference Center (225 E. Sixth Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202) Join us for light hors d'oeuvres and a brief overview of the common pleas courts and meet the candidates who are running for judges in these courts. Real time closed-captioning of the program and speakers will be provided for the deaf and hard of hearing. Space is limited. Please RSVP at becky@lwvcincinnati.org or 513-281-8683. Co-Sponsored by:

The Downtown Residents Council

This event is made possible in part by the Joyce Foundation and the League of Women Voters of Ohio Education Fund

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WORLD

S e p t .11- 24, 2014 | N o . 28 6

Criminalisation Of Homelessness In Usa Condemned By The United Nations CAREY L. BIRON

www.street-papers.org / IPS The United Nations has condemned the criminalisation of homelessness in the USA in a damning new report. Homelessness in America has increased substantially in some cities in the wake of the economic recession leaving thousands more people on the streets. Yet, in many places the authorities have responded by cracking down on activities such as sleeping, loitering and eating in public while simultaneously defunding social services. There was also criticism from the UN that homelessness has disproportionately affected ethnic minorities. In recent years, street papers have been at the forefront in exposing the criminalisation of homeless people across the world. IPS reports.

Men line up to receive food distributed by Coalition for the Homeless volunteers at 35th St, FDR Drive, in New York City. Photo: Zafirah Mohamed Zein/IPS

United Nations panel reviewing the U.S. record on racial discrimination has expressed unusually pointed concern over a new pattern of laws it warns is criminalising homelessness. U.S. homelessness has increased substantially in the aftermath of the financial downturn, and with a disproportionate impact on minorities. Yet in many places officials have responded by cracking down on activities such as sleeping or even eating in public, while simultaneously defunding social services. The new rebuke comes from a panel of experts reviewing the United States’ progress in implementing its obligations under a treaty known as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, commonly referred to as CERD or the race convention. “The Committee is concerned at the high number of homeless persons, who are disproportionately from racial and ethnic minorities,” the CERD panel stated in a formal report released on Friday, “and at the criminalization of homelessness through laws that prohibit activities such as loitering, camping, begging, and lying in public spaces.” This was only the second time that the United States’ record on race relations and discriminatory practices, and particularly the federal government’s actions in this regard, have been formally examined against the measuring stick of international law. The panel not only called on the U.S. government to “abolish” laws

and policies that facilitate the criminalisation of homelessness, but also to create incentives that would push authorities to focus on and bolster alternative policy approaches. The CERD findings were actually the second time this year that new U.S. laws around the criminalisation of homelessness have been criticised at the international level. Similar concerns were expressed by the Human Rights Committee, which warned the cumulative effect was “cruel, inhuman, and degrading”. “These are human rights experts who have seen human rights abuses all over the globe, but still when they hear about these issues in the United States it boggles their mind,” Eric S. Tars, a senior attorney with the National Law Center on Poverty & Homelessness, told IPS. The CERD panel underscored these concerns by requesting additional information from the U.S. government before the country’s next such review, in 2017. The other issues so highlighted included racial profiling and gun violence, areas that have typically received far more interest from policymakers and the media.

Questionable progress The formal review of the United States’ progress on implementing the race convention took place over two days in mid-August, attended by some 30 U.S. officials and dozens of civil society groups. The federal government’s formal report to the committee is available here, while nongovernment analyses lodged with

A man is released by LAPD Sergeant Mark Wright, after store owners complained he was shoplifting but refused to make a private person’s arrest, on downtown Los Angeles’ Skid Row, March 6, 2013. Photo: REUTERS/Lucy Nicholson the commission covering education, housing, gun violence, health care, immigration and other issues, are available here. Observers say the mere act of the government going before an international body to discuss these issues was important, a sense strengthened by the significant delegation and substantive response offered by the administration of Barack Obama. “In many ways it undercuts the idea of U.S. exceptionalism - that we don’t have human rights violations here,” Ejim Dike, the executive director of the U.S. Human Rights Network, a leading organiser around the CERD review, told IPS following the CERD discussions. “In fact we have a lot of human rights violations, and our racial past and unfortunate racial present are indications of these concerns. Sometimes the headlines are so reminiscent of what happened during the 1950s and 1960s that it begs the question of how much progress we actually have made.” Indeed, some metrics of racial discrimination in the United States are currently worse than they were decades ago. An official summary of the review’s discussions between the U.N. experts and civil society groups noted one committee member’s shock “to realize that in spite of several decades of affirmative action in the United States to improve the mixing up of colors and races in schools … segregation was nowadays much worse than it was in the 1970s.” Likewise, recent years have underscored the significant racial disparities that continue to characterise homelessness in the United States, a discrepancy noted by the U.N. panel. This pattern has continued and has even been strengthened in the aftermath of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. In 2010, for instance, AfricanAmericans were seven times more likely to need emergency housing than whites, according to statistics from the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness, a research organisation. Similar discrepancies can be seen in the case of Hispanics and other minority groups. This is important because, unlike U.S. domestic law, the race convention prohibits policies that have the effect of being discriminatory, regardless of whether or not they are meant

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to discriminate.

Banning sleeping, eating As important as this continued racial pattern is how officials are responding to the new surge in homelessness. Even as the financial downturn in recent years has simultaneously squeezed state budgets and led more people to lose their jobs and homes, the official response has been to strengthen enforcement - to make homelessness more difficult. Over the past three years, for instance, the number of U.S. cities that have banned sleeping in cars has grown by 119 percent, according to findings released in July. Bans on sleeping or camping in public have likewise risen by 60 percent during that same time. “These numbers in general are going up and in some cases going up significantly,” the National Law Center’s Tars says. “The only cases in which those numbers are going down is where some cities have removed ordinances banning panhandling and sleeping in certain areas, and instead replaced them with bans that cover the whole city.” Meanwhile, the financial recession has increased poverty in places where such problems hadn’t previously been visible, in suburban and rural communities. Social services were likely already weak in these areas, and the economy’s broader troubles have led authorities to slash these budgets even further. “First the communities and governments are cutting resources for homeless shelters and related organisations and saying this isn’t the government’s responsibility. But then some are even making it difficult for charities to deal with the issue - for instance, by punishing people for eating donated food in public,” Tars says. “In fact, there’s significant evidence that criminalisation is often more expensive and less effective than providing affordable housing.” Nonetheless, the new focus on austerity budgets in other countries, particularly in the European Union, is seeing governments across the globe increasingly turn to this U.S. model of criminalisation. In June, an Australian researcher noted a new “proliferation” of enforcement-based homelessness laws and policies internationally. ------------------------

WORLD

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Rosa Parks Artifacts Sold For $4.5 Million To Buffett Son MARY WISNIEWSKI AND ANGELA MOORE

www.street-papers.org / Reuters Rosa Parks became a symbol of the black civil rights movement in America when she refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Alabama in 1955, when the US state was segregated racially. Parks died in 2005 and now hundreds of her belongings, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom she was awarded, have been sold for $4.5 million. The artefacts were bought by a foundation controlled by the son of famous billionaire investor, Warren Buffett.

foundation controlled by the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett has paid $4.5 million for hundreds of artifacts belonging to civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks, a lawyer for Parks’ heirs said on Friday. The artifacts, which include Parks’ Presidential Medal of Freedom and a postcard signed by Martin Luther King Jr., were purchased by the Howard G. Buffett Foundation on Aug. 20, said Detroit-area attorney Lawrence Pepper. Personal papers, notes, letters from presidents, and various awards and honorary doctorates were also among the articles, said Pepper. “For lack of a better term, she was

a pack rat,” said Arlan Ettinger, president of Guernsey’s auction house in New York, where most of the material was stored. “She had retained many things from her long and rich life.” The foundation was not immediately available for comment. Ettinger said Buffett was not interested in acquiring the collection for himself, but wants to find an appropriate home for it. Parks, who died in 2005, became a symbol of the civil rights movement by refusing to give up her bus seat to a white passenger in Montgomery, Alabama, in 1955. She later moved to Detroit and worked for Democratic U.S. Representative John Conyers. ------------------------

Homeless targeted in San Francisco DAVID KRAUSE

www.street-papers.org / Street Sheet - USA A plan to clean up public spaces and parks in San Francisco, California, has been targeting rough sleepers in the American state. A new initiative called “Clean, Green and Safe” has seen the number of park patrol officers doubled and paths sprayed with water up to five times a week, displacing the homeless who sleep on the streets.

hat do teenage manual laborers, new patrol officers and cuts in renewable energy have in common? All are coming to the City of San Francisco, thanks to City Supervisor Scott Wiener. On June 26, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed Mr. Wiener’s “Clean, Green and Safe” budget proposal, which will double the number of park patrol officers, grow funding for the Recreation and Parks Department, which has an ongoing program that enlists school students in tree trimming and weed pulling, and gives money to the Department of Public Works, which has an ongoing program that cleans Market Street’s sidewalks five times per week in order to displace sleeping homeless people who could not secure a shelter bed. Mr. Weiner’s effort for a “Clean, Green and Safe” San Francisco conflicts with his recent voting record. This year, Weiner agreed with Mayor Ed Lee to cut all $19.5 million from the renewable energy program, CleanPowerSF, which would have been “the city’s clean power program that will provide San Francisco with a 100 percent, California-certified renewable energy alternative.” The funding cut to CleanPowerSF was viewed as the likely end to its existence. No renewable energy options are available to residents of San Francisco.

“I’ve supported many pro-environment initiatives,” Mr. Wiener’s website says. “San Francisco has led the way for years in finding innovative approaches to protecting our environment.” Mr. Weiner’s budget proposes to add $2.7 million to the Department of Public Works’ funds in order “to keep our streets, sidewalks and public spaces clean and our green landscaping thriving,” according to the San Francisco Forest Alliance. This means the city will continue its new policy of spraying water on Market Street’s sidewalks five times per week, four hours per day during a drought. When asked if the sidewalk cleaning policy will continue despite the policy’s impact on the homeless people who use the sidewalks of Market Street to sleep on, department spokesperson Rachel Gordon answered, “Yes.”

Clean: teenagers performing park maintenance The new budget also proposes to provide Parks and Recreation with approximately $2 million in additional funds for park maintenance, according to the San Francisco Forest Alliance. But, since 2012, local high school teenagers have provided approximately 2,100 hours of manual labor in park maintenance at a rate of

Rosa Parks in a 1988 file photo. Photo: Reuters/File $100 for three days of work. “Workers in San Francisco deserve the right to earn a fair wage,” Mr. Weiner said on his website. But some say paying minors approximately $7 per hour for manual labor work isn’t a fair wage, especially considering San Francisco’s annual overall budget of approximately $8.6 billion, with an additional estimated $2 million specifically for weed pulling and tree trimming. Of the schools represented by the students, 10 were public and two were private.

Safe: doubling the number of patrol officers Lastly, the budget proposes $2.7 million to double the number of patrol officers in the city’s parks. Part of the new patrol officers’ duties will be to enforce the city’s existing law that prohibits sleeping at night in any park. “With this new funding, we will bolster our ability to mitigate these basic quality-of-life issues,” Mr. Weiner said. But when Mr. Weiner says “quality-of-life issues,” he refers specifically to issues for one sector of San Franciscans: the housed. Unfortunately for homeless families in the city, Mr. Weiner’s budget furthers their struggle by providing twice as many park patrol officers at night who will be removing persons from parks which, many homeless people say, are the safest place to sleep at night. Last year the number of homeless families in the city reached a record high, and many have used the city’s parks as a place to stay when no other options are available. Last year the shelter waitlist reached a record high 268 families, which means these 268 families were forced to sleep on the street. Currently, there are 100 beds and 70 private rooms available for homeless families. Doubling patrol officers means

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homeless people will encounter yet another barrier in their daily struggle for human rights. The continued spread of laws and policies over the past two years to remove homeless people from San Francisco in order to “beautify” the city is rampant and blatant. Doubling the patrol officers, and providing $2.7 million for their effort, is another feather in the Board of Supervisors’ gilded cap.

What this means (the subtext) What does “green” mean to you? Does it mean elimination of all renewable energy? Does it mean increasing water usage during the state’s most severe drought when the governor asked all citizens to decrease their water usage by 20 percent? What does “clean” mean to you? Are your hands clean if you employ minors to do manual labor at low pay? Are the city’s weeds being pulled by the poor adults who need “the right to be paid a fair wage,” or are they being pulled by low-pay minors in order to bolster the city’s bottom line? What does “safe” mean to you? Are the homeless families safe after you wake them up from sleeping in a park and tell them to leave but don’t provide shelter for them to go to? Does it make sense to provide more funding for park patrol officers, or would it make more sense to provide more funding for homeless family shelters? What does it mean when “clean”, “green” and “safe” are nothing more than words to paint a politician as good for the people when, in reality, his actions are nothing but detrimental? How is the public supposed to understand the truth when the truth is being hidden so well? As budget proposals like this continue to turn the city dirty, shriveled and toxic, San Francisco’s original colors of peace, love and human rights will forever be stained. ------------------------

LOCAL

America Enters 20th Century MICHAEL TEE

Contributing Writer tion of the extent to which the Wall Street bankers were no longer able to conRemove the regime of capital and trol economic crises. the state would remain, although As former Congressit might change dramatically. man and Presidential Remove the state and the regime candidate Ron Paul once stated, “The essence of of capital would not last a day the Federal Reserve Act is - Robert L. Heilbroner, largely unchanged from The Nature and Logic of Capitalism when it was first hatched years earlier. It was a form of financial socialism that benefited the rich and the he beginning of the 20th cenpowerful. The government would tury was a time of prosperity confer legal legitimacy on a cartel of . . . for some. The national the biggest bankers and permit them economy was thriving after to inflate the money supply at will, the depression of the 1890s. Exports providing for themselves liquidity in doubled between 1897 and 1907 and times of need, while insulating themforeign capital flooded what was the selves against the consequences of bad emerging ‘market economy’. Brokerloans and overextension of credit.” age firms, insurance companies and In his book, In Fed We Trust - Ben banks were booming. J.P. Morgan Bernanke’s War on the Great Panic, merged businesses to create even David Wessel writes, “In an attempt larger ones, such as General Electric to save the economy, the U.S. Conand U.S. Steel. Between 1894 and gress created a National Monetary 1904 more than 1800 companies con- Commission, chaired by Nelson Alsolidated to just 93. A popular joke of drich, grandfather of former governor the day was, “God made the world in of New York, Nelson Rockefeller.” On 4004 B.C. and it was made again in December 23, 1913, after six months of 1901 by Morgan.” political confrontation between bankHowever, in the fall of 1907, in ers and agrarian populists, President spite of Morgan’s efforts, the U.S. Woodrow Wilson signed the Federal economy was failing again. Stock pric- Reserve Act. It authorized the crees tumbled and a number of brokerage ation of twenty or more privately conhouses shut down. Faced with runs on trolled regional banks that would istheir assets, bank managers instruct- sue currency and lend to other banks, ed tellers to count out withdrawals “in with a presidentially-appointed board slow motion.” Many economists inter- overseeing them.”. . . On April 2, 1917, preted the ‘Panic of 1907’ as an indica- President Wilson asked Congress for

a declaration of war against Germany, stating, “The world must be made safe for democracy.” Only six Senators and fifty House of Representatives voted against the declaration. Nevertheless, opposition to the war was rampant. Hundreds of people in the U.S. opposed it, including grassroots leader Eugene Debs. The latter was arrested in 1918 in Canton, Ohio, where several others were being held for opposing the draft. Debs proclaimed, “Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder . . . The master class has always declared the wars, the subject class has always fought the battles.” Germany, for its part, appealed to Mexico for a wartime military alliance that would facilitate a Mexican ‘reconquest’ of Texas, New Mexico and Arizona. All of this gave the Wilson administration more justification for participation in what was essentially a European conflict. Meanwhile, the struggles of Hispanics - on both sides of a largely unguarded border - raged. A full-scale revolution in Mexico had begun in 1910. Shortly before then, an organization called Partido Liberal Mexican (PLM), under the leadership of the brothers, Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magon, had gained mass support among Hispanics in both California and what was northern Mexico. Many Hispanic activists had rejected assimilation into the dominant ‘white’ republic and were proudly promoting their own heritage within unions, legal defense campaigns and groups such as the El Congreso and the Asociacion Nacional Mexico-Americana (ANMA). Many of the Hispanic leaders were women. Josefina Fierro was born in 1914 to a mother who was affiliated with the PLM and a father who had fought alongside the famous Mexi-

For tickets please call (513) 381-2273 Purchase tickets online at www.cincyshakes.com AD Donated by Mak and Sue Ann Painter season sponsored by the Otto M. Budig Family Foundation

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S e p t .11- 24, 2014 | N o . 28 6

can leader, Pancho Villa. While growing up in Los Angeles she organized boycotts against businesses which refused to hire Hispanics. Luisa Moreno was a native Guatemalan who played a principal part in El Congreso. “The American people, all of them, owe an enormous cultural and physical debt to the Spanish-speaking people,” she once said. The most famous female leader, though, was Emma Tenayuca, born in Texas. In American Dreamers - How the Left Changed a Nation, Michael Kazin writes, “In 1938, already a veteran activist at the age of 21, she led a strike of thousands of San Antonio pecan shellers whose employer had suddenly slashed their wages. She advocated for bilingual education and making Spanish an official language in those parts of the United States where Mexicans formed a majority. She wrote, with her husband, Homer Brooks, an article entitled, The Mexican Question, which boldly stated that the treatment meted out to the Mexicans as a whole, from the earliest days of the sovereignty of the U.S., was that of a conquered people.” Meanwhile, in 1898, the U.S. Supreme Court legitimatized the system of segregation with its ruling on Plessy vs. Ferguson. As a consequence, African Americans would face discrimination in practically all walks of American life. By 1913 there were 79 documented lynchings of Blacks. In 1919, what was called the Red Summer occurred; precipitated by a race riot in Springfield, Illinois. Segregation, or ‘apartheid’, was also a systematic effort to control labor relations in the U.S., justifying the super exploitation of African Americans & suppressing the wages of white workers with the threat of black competition. ------------------------

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Without a Mom MIMI DARIA

Contributing Writer

was about four years old when I realized that I was different. It was when my step uncle, at the time, whispered in a derogatory tone to my stepmother, “What are those kids? Black? Mexican?” She laughed as she whispered, “Shhh, their mother is a Korean.” I think it was the first time that I felt shame surrounding my looks. And it made me wonder, “Who is my mother? And what’s wrong with how I look?” I think I have a few memories of her from my early childhood. I am uncertain if they are memories or childhood fantasies that I conjured up. My dad was very generous about answering all of my questions concerning my mother. “Was she pretty? Was she nice? Do I look like her? “And when I got older the questions were, “Did she hate me because I’m a girl? Why does everyone say she liked my brother better?” Finally, when I became an adult the conversation became, “What was her diagnosis? I found her criminal record online.” Sometimes my friends and I would take the Metro downtown to look through the phone books at Cincinnati Bell to try and find her. We never did. I can’t say that I believed we would find her but I thought about her a lot. It wasn’t until my dad and stepmother divorced when I was eleven years old it became an obsession. I just knew that if I tried hard enough, I would find her, bring her home, and we would be a REGULAR family. My dad gave me a few pictures of her and I thought she was beautiful. In my childhood mind, I was ready to make cookies, go shopping, and be

LOCAL hugged by a woman I would joyously call Mommy. It was the June before my fifteenth birthday that I got the news. I remember it vividly. My dad answered the phone, exchanged a few words, and hung up the phone. Looking back, he avoided eye contact when he said,” That was your grandma. Your mother called and left a number with her. You can call her if you want.” That was the beginning of a long journey of heartache. Eagerly, I called her. We must have talked for an hour. We cried. She apologized for leaving. We made plans to meet downtown on my fifteenth birthday. I told her about school, and my house, and my friends. The morning that I was going to meet her, I asked my brother to come with us. After all, she was his mother too. He replied, “No, I don’t want to see her and you shouldn’t either. She is crazy and violent. Don’t be alone with her.” I was boiling mad. How could he say that? She was nice. I talked to her. What did he mean that she was crazy? We met at the Fifth Street Market at the Westin Hotel. And she looked wonderful. She had thick, dark hair, smooth skin, and was beautifully dressed. We spent the day together shopping, eating, and screaming. It was awful. The language barrier alone was too much for my fifteen year old mind, much less the mental illness, which quickly became evident. That was the last time I saw her. It’s been twenty nine years since that hot July day. Over the years we kept in contact by phone. And once in a while I would send her a letter. As time passed I realized her mental illness was either untreated or had gotten worse or both. The last time I spoke to her, in her very broken English, she

said,” Leave me alone. I am old, sick, and poor. I have not led a good life and have no interest in being your mom. Mourn me like I died and go on with your life. I cannot give you what you want.” I felt my heart break. Before then, I thought that was just an expression. Now I know it’s real. I have never experienced pain like that before or since. And I followed her advice, I mourned. To some people it may seem odd that I would mourn a woman who abandoned me, who rejected me. Many of my friends thought her words to be cruel. I think it was a gift. She knew her capabilities. And slowly, I began to heal. I don’t think it was only about her rejection. I was well into my thirties before I could speak about her without choking up. For many years, I was embarrassed about being abandoned. What kind of kid isn’t wanted by their mother? How can a motherless woman know how to raise children? What could I know about being a wife? Who could I turn to when I had questions about my femininity? I often wondered, is this what women do? I have since realized that because I was abandoned, I formed friendships with older women who were far more suited to teach me the ways of a woman than my own mother. I sought their wisdom many times in life and have come to believe that although I am not perfect, I am capable beyond my imagination. I am worthy of pursuing my dreams and accomplishing my goals. Most importantly, I now know that my mother’s choice to leave was not a reflection of my self-worth rather a symptom of the mental illness that controlled her life. ------------------------

Member Agency Spotlight Faces Without Places

PO Box 23300 | Cincinnati, OH 45223-0300 | (513) 389-0805 Our Mission: To remove barriers to education for children and youth experiencing homelessness. Our Vision: A nation where all children have access to and take advantage of education, breaking the cycle of homelessness and poverty.” Faces Without Places was founded in 1998 to support children experiencing homelessness in Greater Cincinnati. $5,000 was raised to provide a bus to bring children experiencing homelessness to a summer program. Fifteen years later, FwP has provided educational and enrichment programming and crucial services to keep more than 30,000 children experiencing homelessness connected to their education. We remain committed to our long-standing programs, such as our summer camp (in its sixteenth year) and ZooMates (in its seventh year), but are continuously looking for new ways to remove barriers to education for children and youth experiencing homelessness.

THE VOICE OF THE STREET...UNSILENCED

NOW HIRING Check out these openings! Visit their webpages for more info. Caracole- www.caracole.org - Social Work Supervisor Center for Chemical Addictions Treatment- www.CCATsober.org - Accepting ongoing applications Center for Respite Care centerforrespitecare.org - Accepting ongoing applications Cincinnati Union Bethel www.cinunionbethel.org -Head Start/Early Childhood Education Teachers (Pre-K, 3-5 years of age) City Gospel Mission citygospelmission.org -Volunteer Development Coach - Discipleship Coordinator - Special Events/Public Relations Intern - Youth Ministry Coach Joseph House- www.josephhouse.com -Chemical Dependency Counselor Legal Aid Society of Greater Cincinnati- www.lascinti.org -Staff Attorney Lighthouse Youth Services- www.lys.org -Junior Application Developer (Fulltime) -Senior Accountant (Full-Time) -Chemical Dependency Therapist (Pattime) -Wrap Around Services -Individual Aides (Part-time/PRN) -Resident Manager -Case Manager (Part-time/PRN) -Licensed Social Worker or -Processional Counselor (Full-time) -Licensed Social Work or -Professional Counselor (Part-Time/PRN) -Youth Care Worker (Part-time) National Church Residences nationalchurchresidences.org - Service Coordinator (2) Society of St. Vincent DePaul of Cincinnati- www.svdpcincinnati.org -Assistant Store Managers -Cashiers -Clothes Hangers and Shelf Stockers -Donation Door Attendants and Floor Associates Tender Mercies www.tendermerciesinc.org - Accepting ongoing applications YWCA of Greater Cincinnati www.ywca.org - Workforce Development Educator - Grants Manager - Grant Outcome & - Evaluation Specialist - Payroll & Grant Billing Specialist

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Street Life: What in The World? RICARDO TAYLOR

Streetvibes Distributor & Contributing Writer

he world wasn’t created for me specifically, however, I am a part of it, so the question is not what the world owes me, but, what do I owe the world? Now comes the philosophical injunction. Whose world is it? The reality is, each individual has their own world, given the circumstance of a host of variables. Given this conclusion, it is not only evident, but practical, to accept this grace of character, for which individuality is the norm! It is what it is, or so they say! In this sense our individuality gives each of us our own judgments, beliefs, determinations and choices. So how is it that we complain? Complaining about this or that, it’s my world, so you can just get your own! Whose world is it anyway? It is obvious that the world is the perception of the individual and therefore both different and the same to us all. Beyond this the question becomes valid! What in the world? So, shall we see how this all works? As individuals we have ideas which fit our personal desires, in so much to say that “I am” first and therefore have the pick of the litter! As natural as this may be it’s a fallacy, simply because “I am” only a single entity in the larger scheme. It is because of this

simple, but realistic realism that the world flows as it does. What in the world? Lying to your mother, stealing from your brother, using your best friend; no regards for the rights of others, claiming a street corner! In the relief line complaining, dissatisfied about things you get, when you haven’t done one thing to earn in the least! Disrespecting your elders while cowering amongst your peers, at the top of your game with your hand stretched out for hand me! What in the world? Yes we all know the examples, it’s the reasoning we don’t understand. The world is immense; temptation and vice are wide. Too often we are tossed in the mix without the slightest clue of what we are getting into. Yet, always with the most of intent we diverge. Divulging into the unknown, knowing from our self-demand [it’s my world] we are in command! We walk the walk, talk the talk, and care less who else gets it! Yet our makeup doesn’t fit the scheme, always, and I say always we are asking why? What in the world? From the beginning of life until its end, it’s my world according to me. Yet, what about everyone else? Oh, they think the same, so it’s the way it goes at least until that wrench in the cog goes then it’s what in the world?

Riccardo Taylor. Photo: Aimee Willhoite. Our individuality always tells us that we are more or, above their thinking or representation, again until we find ourselves in controversy, or if you will limbo. Whose world is it really? What in the world? I should win every time, they are #@$%^* up! What’s wrong with them, it’s my world don’t they know? Doing what you want, regardless of others, can only garner conflict. Still, so many individuals continue to transgress, screaming why me when the negativity they create comes back

to them! Entitlements for possessions you neither have nor own, what in the world? The madness of life continues, with the reports of the most aggression, incidences straight out of a horror story as if the these things are of the norm! We all play apart in a world which was not created for us, yet, we all have a role in it, what in the world is your part? ------------------------

Tear Drop

JAMES BROWN

Streetvibes Distributor & Contributing Writer

For thou hast delivered my soul from death, mine eyes from tears, and my feet from falling.” - -Psalm 116:8

was born on the west side of Detroit on Nov. 13th, 1970. I’m still here. I’ve been through hell and back by my heavenly father breathing his air. I was stabbed in the heart on July 2nd in 1994 and had two heart attacks in 2006. I’ve been selling Streetvibes for

LAWSUIT EXPOSES BUREAUCRATS

{Continued from page 7} home care agency, with less than 200 employees. There is no way we can survive with this type of premium per year.” A remodeling and home improvement company said removal from group rating “will most likely put our company out of business and with it end . . . the jobs of 35 employees all of whom are the ‘breadwinners’ for their families.” Those companies were far from alone. The owner of a landscaping company told BWC: “I am writing to appeal our rating increase of 1000%. This increase will certainly put us out of business.” An auto-parts business wrote: “Businesses cannot be exposed

over five years, since May 7th, 2009 until now. I’m so blessed and thankful for being able to be here today. I just wish all my people who are in prison or gone were still here to see what is going on in the world.

James Brown. Photo: Aimee Willhoite.

-----------------------to this type of liability in Ohio and expect to survive. This sevenfold increase in our rates is going to be devastating to our company.” A landscaping company whose rates increased tenfold said: “As a small business such a charge is crippling to our survival.” A seller of cookies and desserts told BWC that “a 95% increase in our rates will truly break us.” A cleaning company said: “Our premiums will increase from $17,700 to an estimated $46,500 a year. This could put us out of business.” The complaints kept coming to BWC for years from companies in various industries. An installer of concrete said “the additional workers’ compensation costs will probably cost us the business.” A property management company said “the full cost . . . without the group rating program will

be too much for us. We will not be able to afford it and run our business.” The president of a painting and decorating company said that as a result of losing group rating, “I will be forced to go out of business.” The owner of a masonry company said the costs were “forcing me to dissolve my family business and only source of income,” resulting in “possible bankruptcy.” A vision-care company exclaimed: “There is absolutely no way that we can afford this. . . . We would have to shut our doors for good if we have to pay this amount!!” Those are just a small sample of the avalanche of complaints that BWC received for years from employers who had been removed from group rating and seen their premiums soar. In October 2007, the then-new BWC administrator, Marsha Ryan, sent a customer advisory to Ohio em-

THE VOICE OF THE STREET...UNSILENCED

ployers to warn of the perils of being removed from group rating. It said that in 2006 “over 6,700 employers saw their premiums increase by an average of 697 percent after they were eliminated from their group.” She also reported: “More than 31 percent of these employers either canceled their workers’ compensation policy or filed bankruptcy.” If BWC’s statistics from just 2006 are multiplied by the nearly 20 years the agency was illegally and unfairly operating the group-rating program, it means the program likely forced tens of thousands of Ohio employers out of business, in addition to inflicting incalculable financial damage on countless others. Small wonder that after review-

{Continued on page 13}

No. 286 | S e p t . 1 1 - 2 4 , 2 0 1 4

STREET VOICE WARNING - CAMPAIGN ADS MAY BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR HEALTH Are you prepared for an obnoxious fall With midterm elections casting a pall? Get set for thousands of vile TV ads, Designed so candidates look like cads. Each Fat Cat throws in several million, And soon we’re talking about a billion. These ads create more heat than light, While real issues are kept out of sight.

BILL WOODS

Contributing Writer

GAZA An early silence Air strikes The aftermath People fleeing Anger Assassinations Another day of death In Gaza Years of war Death toll count’s high Another day that could end your life Gaza

LAWSUIT EXPOSES BUREAUCRATS

{Continued from page 12} ing BWC’s premium rates, Deloitte Consulting issued a report in 2009 saying: “We are unaware of any other state that has a program which functions as poorly as the existing group rating program does in Ohio.”

The lawsuit achieved only partial justice, without affecting much of the injustice The $420 million settlement provides help to thousands of employers harmed by the rigging of premium rates. Employers who weren’t in group rating are being reimbursed for some of the excessive premiums they paid as a result of the illegally large discounts BWC gave to group-rated employers. But this does nothing to correct much of the massive injustice that was done. For one thing, the common pleas court’s final calculation of damages, based on directions from the appeals court, was $651 million. The settlement amount of $420 million is $231 million less than what two courts said was owed. Moreover, the damages were awarded only for the period from 2001 to 2008. The statute of limitations prevents remedies for the same wrongdoing that the courts said was going on at BWC from 1991 to 2000. That’s a huge amount of injustice for which there’s no remedy. Plus, no remedy is available for many thousands of employers forced out of business by the illegal premium rates. These employers are simply gone, along with the jobs their employees had. They are innocent victims of the wrongdoing but aren’t receiving anything. Additionally, although the illegal, unfair and rigged premium rates enabled group sponsors and TPAs to reap huge ill-gotten

gains, they don’t have to pay anything back. The amount the courts ordered reimbursed to employers is coming not from them but from premiums paid to BWC by all Ohio employers. Further, BWC officials have not been held accountable for intentionally designing, implementing and maintaining the unlawful and inequitable system that caused massive heartache and destruction for so many years. They kept their well-paid positions and may retire with generous public pensions. Although guilty of misfeasance, malfeasance, and violations of the public trust, they haven’t even been publicly identified. Finally, there’s no indication the state government is interested in investigating how this disaster occurred, holding anyone accountable, or ensuring that protections exist to prevent similar injustice and devastation in the future. The bottom line is that despite BWC’s agreement to pay $420 million to illegally charged employers, the entire circumstances of the nearly 20-year wrongdoing still show far less justice than unredressed injustice. The victims are receiving too little or nothing for the intentional harm done to them, and the wrongdoers are suffering no consequences and laughing all the way to the bank. That appears to be how it is when the wrongdoing is committed by politically powerful special interests in Ohio.

KIM GREEN

Streetvibes Distributor & Contributing Writer

A FRIEND To be called a friend is sometimes very hard to be To be a friend is an honor with many responsibilities To have a friend is someone you can depend on To have a friend with you when all hope is gone Being human beings we all fall short of God’s grace Being human plus a friend can be a difficult race Due to difficult circumstances in every person’s life To put trust and faith in someone can be only strife So for me I keep the faith and never forget to pray As I sing that old hymn what a friend we have in Jesus Each and every day!!

WILLA DENISE JONES

Streetvibes Distributor & Contributing Writer

[Part 1 of a 2-part series. Next month Streetvibes will show how even more BWC lawbreaking, unfairness, and callousness hid the group-rating program’s problems from the public, the media, and state legislators for years.] ------------------------

THE VOICE OF THE STREET...UNSILENCED

PUZZLES

S e p t .11- 24, 2014 | N o . 28 6

CROSSWORD PUZZLE NO. 51 Across 1. Lower part of a skull 4. Small viper 7. Globe 12. Couch 13. Poker stake 14. Farewell remark 15. Canoe stabilizer 17. French artist 1834 -1917, Edgar ___ 18. Beer 19. English composer 1862 -1934, Frederick ___ 21. Frequently 22. For each 23. Form of security 24. Bucket 27. Affirmative 28. Composer famous for his Water Music 30. Salvage 33. West African country 36. Giant 38. Biblical brother 39. Spoil 40. Film director, ___ Preminger 41. Stringed instrument 43. Is obliged to pay 45. A mix of boys and girls, in short 46. Bohemian composer, Antonin Leopold ___ 48. Attempt 50. Water jug 51. Ripped 53. Gremlin 56. Skill 58. Polish composer Frederic ___ 60. Observe 61. Bind 64. Worldwide 66. Drama set to music 67. A telephone connection 68. Female relative 69. Sometimes given for thoughts 70. Expert 71. Obtain

Down 1. Unit of electical energy 2. Later 3. Armed conflict 4. Can be acute or obtuse 5. Beer mug 6. Lima is the capital 7. Batch 8. Type of Poem 9. Opera by Giuseppe Verdi 10. Part of a tree or book 11. Fine particles 12. As seen on TV 13. Type of discrimination 16. Not working 20. Health resort near a spring 25. Insect 26. Foolish conduct 27. Color 28. Charter 29. Tardy 30. Pouch 31. Lying in 32. Type of fabric 34. Berserk 35. Body of rules 37. Indicate assent 42. Metal-bearing mineral 44. Attempt with effort 47. Part of a circle 49. First name of philosopher, Descartes 51. Bracer 52. Speak up 53. Publish 54. Intended 55. Fur 56. At the peak 57. Mature 59. Polynesian dance 62. Large vase 63. Salary 65. Type of music, usually for piano

SODOKU PUZZLE NO 15- MEDIUM

PUZZLE SOLUTIONS ISSUE 285 CROSSWORD PUZZLE NO. 50

SODOKU PUZZLE NO 14- MEDIUM

THE VOICE OF THE STREET...UNSILENCED

PUZZLES from puzzlechoice.com

RESOURCES

No. 286 | S e p t . 1 1 - 2 4 , 2 0 1 4

Shelter: Women and Children

1730 Race Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

Central Access Point Bethany House

381-SAFE 557-2873

St. Francis Soup Kitchen Churches Active in Northside

535-2719 591-2246

Grace Place Catholic Worker House

681-2365

FreeStore/FoodBank

241-1064

Mercy Franciscan at St. John

981-5800

Madisonville Ed & Assistance Center

271-5501

Salvation Army

762-5660

YWCA Battered Women’s Shelter

872-9259

St. Vincent de Paul

562-8841

1841 Fairmount Ave, Cinti, Ohio 45214 6037 Cary Ave, Cinti, Ohio 45224

1800 Logan St. Cinti, Ohio 45202

131 E. 12th Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

Shelter: Men

City Gospel Mission

1419 Elm Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

Mt. Airy Shelter

4600 Erie Ave, Cinti, Ohio 45227 Serves area codes: 45226, 45227, 45208, 45209 1125 Bank Street, Cinti, Ohio 45214

Treatment or Supportive Recovery: Men Charlie’s 3/4 House

241-5525

2121 Vine Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

Caracole (HIV/AIDS)

1821 Summit Road, Cinti, Ohio 45237

Drop Inn Center

217 W. 12th Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

661-4620

682 Hawthorne Ave, Cinti, Ohio 45205

Starting Over

CMHA Excel Development OTR Community Housing

114 W. 14th Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

569-9500 761-1480 721-0643

721-4580 632-7149 381-1171

Tender Mercies 721-8666

27 W. 12th Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

Tom Geiger House Volunteers of America Anna Louise Inn 421-5211 Cincinnati Union Bethel 768-6907

961-4555 381-1954

300 Lytle Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

Food/Clothing

Lord’s Pantry Mercy Franciscan at St. John

621-5300 981-5800

OTR/Walnut Hills Kitchen & Pantry

961-1983

Our Daily Bread

621-6364

1800 Logan St. Cinti, Ohio 45202

OTR: 1620 Vine Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202 Walnut Hills: 2631 Gilbert, Cinti, Ohio 45206

961-2256

Treatment or Supportive Recovery: Women

Interfaith Hospitality Network 471-1100 Lighthouse Youth Crisis Center (10-17 y/o) 3330 Jefferson Ave Cincinnati, OH 45220 961-4080

Housing:

784-1853

Prospect House 921-1613

Shelter: Both

Lighthouse on Highland (18-24 y/o) 2522 Highland Ave Cincinnati, OH 45219

4230 Hamilton Ave, Cinti, Ohio 45223 112 E. Liberty Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

St. Fran/St. Joe Catholic Work. House 381-4941 1437 Walnut Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

First Step Home

2203 Fulton, Cinti, Ohio 45206

961-4663

Treatment or Supportive Recovery: Both AA Hotline CCAT

351-0422 381-6672

Joseph House (Veterans)

241-2965

830 Ezzard Charles Dr. Cinti, Ohio 45214 1522 Republic Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

Hamilton County Mental Health and Recovery Services Board 946-8000 Recovery Health Access Center 281-7422 Sober Living 681-0324 Talbert House 641-4300

Advocacy

Catholic Social Action Community Action Agency Contact Center

421-3131 569-1840 381-4242

Franciscan JPIC Gr. Cinti Coalition for the Homeless

721-4700 421-7803

Intercommunity Justice & Peace Cr. Legal Aid Society Ohio Justice & Policy Center Faces Without Places Stop AIDS

579-8547 241-9400 421-1108 363-3300 421-2437

1227 Vine Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

117 E. 12th Street, Cinti, Ohio 45202

Health

Center for Respite Care

621-1868

Cincinnati Health Network

961-0600

3550 Washington Ave, Cinti, Ohio 45229

2825 Burnet Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45219

THE VOICE OF THE STREET...UNSILENCED

Crossroad Health Center

5 E. Liberty St. Cinti, Ohio 45202

381-2247

Health Resource Center 357-4602 McMicken Integrated Care Clinic and Mobile Medical Van 40 E. McMicken Ave, Cinti, Ohio 352-6364 McMicken Dental Clinic 40 E. McMicken Ave, Cinti 352-6363 Mental Health Access Point 558-8888 Mercy Franciscan at St. John 981-5800 1800 Logan St. Cinti, Ohio 45202

NAMI of Hamilton County PATH Outreach

Other Resources

351-3500 977-4489

Center Independent Living Options Emmanuel Community Center

241-2600 241-2563

Peaslee Neighborhood Center

621-5514

Franciscan Haircuts from the Heart

381-0111

Goodwill industries Healing Connections Mary Magdalen House

771-4800 751-0600 721-4811

People Working Cooperatively The Caring Place Talbert House United Way Women Helping Women Off The Streets

351-7921 631-1114 751-7747 211 977-5541 421-5211

1308 Race St. Cinti, Ohio 45202

215 E. 14th Street, Cincinnati, OH 45202 1800 Logan St. Cinti, Ohio 45202

1223 Main St. Cinti, Ohio 45202

Hamilton/Middletown St. Raephaels Salvation Army Serenity House Day Center Open Door Pantry

Northern Kentucky

981-4200 863-1445 422-8555 868-3276

Brighton Center

859-491-8303

ECHO/Hosea House Fairhaven Resuce Mission Homeward Bound Youth Mathews House Homeless & Housing Coalition Parish Kitchen Pike St. Clinic Transitions, Inc Welcome House of NKY

859-261-5857 859-491-1027 859-581-1111 859-261-8009 859-727-0926 859-581-7745 859-291-9321 859-491-4435 859-431-8717

Women’s Crisis Center VA Domiciliary VA Homeless

859-491-3335 859-559-5011 859-572-6226

799 Ann St. Newport, KY

205 West Pike Street, Covington, KY 41011

S e p t .11- 24, 2014 | N o . 28 6

treetvibes is distributed by individuals who purchase the paper for 50 cents per copy and sell it for a $1.50 donation, keeping the profit they have earned. Becoming a Distributor is a great way for individuals who are financially poor to get back on (or stay on) their feet. This program provides supplemental income for those unable to secure other employment. Money earned helps meet basic housing, food and health care needs. The program is a hand up for people who are often in a place of getting only a hand out, or even no hand at all. All Distributors wear a badge and usually a vest and can be found selling the paper in Downtown Cincinnati, Clifton, Northside, Northern Kentucky and at area churches.

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KIM GREEN SINCE 1/2010

LARRY FILES SINCE 6/2012

LARRY BROWN SINCE 10/2007

LEE MCCOY SINCE 7/2009

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MARY MUELLER SINCE 5/2005

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LEVY

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SAMUEL JACKSON SINCE 10/2006

TARA HILL SINCE 4/2014

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TONY THOMAS SINCE 3/2005

VICTOR MUMPHRY

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WILLIAM SIMMS SINCE 4/2014

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