Homeless Voice; Billy Albert

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FLORIDA’S LARGEST STREET NEWSPAPER Our Purpose: To Help the Homeless Learn How to Help Themselves

Story and photos by Andrew Fraieli

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Part of the International Network of Street Papers

The COSAC Foundation’s Motel 8 in Lake City

America’s First Nonprofit Motel

n Lake City, Florida a new motel called Motel 8 has been opened, and it’s completely run by formerly homeless. Sean Cononie, the head of the COSAC foundation which has been helping the homeless since 1997, says it is “America’s first nonprofit motel.”

He started the project hoping to give the homeless skills for the hotel industry and the opportunity to give them a job.

The project took only two months to complete having “bought it, fixed it up and remodelled it within two weeks,” he says. “People think that the homeless are bums, but it couldn’t be farther from the truth.” For proof he continues that there’s currently four formerly homeless that work the motel full-time and “I’m trusting the people working there, to open it up, they’re cleaning it, fixing it,” and just dayto-day functions. “It’s the first project where I’m not really there.”

There is no doubt in Cononie’s voice as to the possible success of this newest addition to the COSAC foundation, “We’ve been doing this for over 20 years, our first shelter was a hotel,” he says.

This first shelter was an apartment complex the foundation bought in 1999 in Hollywood, Florida and hosted about 300 homeless, some for as long as eight years. In 2015 the Hollywood shelter was closed though and another was opened in Haines City, with the Veteran’s Inn being opened in Lake City in 2017.

The Veteran’s Inn was created because, as Mark Targett the Assistant Director states, “1 out of every 4 homeless men has served in the military,” and is now partly funded by the profits of the Motel 8.

The aspect of homeless who are capable of working becoming employees of the shelter is a unique aspect of the foundation and covers most jobs at the different shelters, the motel being no exception.

“The homeless have always participated [in the different projects]. We train them, they’re very capable,” Cononie says. “The idea is that if someone came to the motel we can keep them for the night and put them somewhere to work.”

He continues that the motel is about 70% full every night, and that customers “know that its run all by formerly homeless, they’re usually impressed.”

Fulfilling a need after the last hurricane hit

Florida, they even built a pet shelter area of the motel for homeless who may need a place to take care of their pets, and they built it in a day.

The motel hasn’t seen any formerly homeless leave to go onto bigger and better things yet, but the project is still in it’s infancy. With multiple shelters and their previous hotel lasting 13 years before being disbursed in 2015, it’s only a matter of time.

Room number 10 at Motel 8, one of a couple different style rooms

The Homeless Voice | Vol. 20 Issue 4 2018 1

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About the Homeless Voice

The Homeless Voice houses, feeds, and finds jobs for anyone who is homeless. We serve up to 500 homeless daily and serve over 45,000 meals each month.

The Homeless Voice distributes a street newspaper in all major cities throughout Florida including Tallahassee, Lake City, Jacksonville, Tampa, Orlando, Daytona, Ft. Lauderdale, and Miami.

The Homeless Voice Newspaper has three functions.

1-Educate the public on homelessness and poverty issues

2-Provide temporary employment to those without a job

3-Raise additional funds for the Florida based shelter We have grown into a multifaceted agency that feeds, shelters, and arranges for each homeless person to receive the necessary access to social and noncompulsory religious services to enable a return to a selfreliant lifestyle.

For the small percentage of people incapable of living independent lives, we provide a caring and supportive environment for their longterm residency.

Staff:

Publisher: Sean Cononie | Editor in Chief: Mark Targett Executive Editor: Sara Cunningham | Creative Director: Andrew Fraieli COSAC Foundation | PO Box 292-577 Davie, FL 33329 | 954-924-3571 Cover photo by Andrew Fraieli

~Cathy’s Prayer List~ Brian Jeff Betsy Romeo Maggie The Kalins Devon Diane Karm Jefferson Wilson Amy & Mr. Jason Lorena

Lilly Beth Ann The Coakleys Eddie Mercer Bob Michael Loffredo Natacha Lewis Westfall Family Donlon Family Geralyn Lois

To add a name to Cathy’s Prayer List, text 954-410-6275 2

The Homeless Voice | Vol. 20 Issue 4 2018

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The Homeless Voice | Vol. 20 Issue 4 2018 3

Is A

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criminalizing Homelessness

national epidemic

Laws are being passed that restrict what the homeless don’t have an option to avoid

Editorial by Andrew Fraieli

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omelessness is not a choice.

People do not choose, or generally plan, to lose their home or source of income. People do not choose to rely on public property as a place to sleep at night, they do not choose to have the sidewalk as their living room and the park as a restroom. What people do choose is to make laws making this illegal, laws that force homeless people into a corner and give cause for them to be repeatedly arrested when they have no options.

In San Francisco an ordinance was passed in 2010 that made it illegal to sit or lay on the sidewalk between 7 A.M. and 11 P.M. A year later, a report was published by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors that of the 152 citations recorded, the most of any station, “90 percent … issued were to repeat violators of the law, and more than half were issued to just four individuals.”

The report continued saying, “Repeatedly fining and arresting this handful of individuals, who are often chronically homeless and have significant health conditions, has not resulted in significant behavioral changes.” This is a law that repeatedly caused these people to be charged a fine and more blemishes to be put on their record, not to mention the mental strain and worry of being found and arrested when trying to sleep at night, with no seeable benefit from it.

Further in the report it states that of over 50 merchants surveyed in the Haight district, “58 percent said that the number of individuals sitting in front of their business has stayed the same or increased since the law passed.” Most of the endorsers of this law were merchant associations according to Ballotpedia, and a year later this law has done nothing but further criminalize people who have nowhere to go.

Previously, in Idaho though, there was an ordinance stating it was illegal to camp or sleep in parks or other public places, until six homeless people sued the city challenging the ordinance in 2009, according to The New York Times. Just recently on September 4th, a three-judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit released a 32-page opinion on the matter.

The panel states that to enforce a statute prohibiting the homeless from sleeping outside when they have no other means of shelter fell under the 8th Amendment clause of cruel and unusual punishment. They state as well, “The panel held that, as long as there is no option of sleeping indoors, the government cannot criminalize indigent, homeless people for sleeping outdoors, on public property, on the false premise they had a choice in the matter.”

The 9th circuit covers the west coast — including San Francisco, Arizona, Nevada, Idaho and Montana, so this opinion of the court will affect all laws in these states, helping to stop the criminalization of the homeless. Unfortunately, this still leaves many loopholes for the police and state to take advantage of, which the panel describe.

According to the opinion, the ordinance was amended in 2014 saying the homeless could not be arrested for sleeping on public property when there was no available shelter space.

But, the panel tells how “individuals could still

“

it illegal to possess ‘any shopping cart, laundry cart, dairy case, egg basket, poultry box, or bakery container with a registered name…’ for fear of imprisonment up to a year.”

be turned away for reasons other than shelter capacity, such as for exceeding the shelter’s stay limits, or for failing to take part in a shelter’s mandatory religious programs.”

There is also the issue that police are only able to tell when a shelter is full when these shelters call the police to tell them, says the panel. One of the three shelters in Boise’s “internal policy is never to turn any person away because of a lack of space” therefore it has never reported full. Since not all shelters are full, legally, “Boise police continue to issue citations regularly under both ordinances.”

In the end it was a strong step forward but still with enough holes that almost nothing has changed. The panel’s opinion will affect other laws in other states though — whether it will affect San Francisco’s 7 A.M to 11 P.M ban is still not decided — and hopefully have a stronger effect.

Loopholes used against the homeless is enough of an issue when its an ordinance itself that police are getting around. When the ordinance has nothing to do with the homeless and is used as a way to harass or arrest them it is even worse as well as more difficult to challenge.

A strong example being that in Florida — as well as Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania and others with varying punishments — it illegal to possess “any shopping cart, laundry cart, dairy case, egg basket, poultry box, or bakery container with a registered name…” for fear of imprisonment up to a year.

This sounds ridiculous because it is.

The law states that whoever possesses one of these items “shall be presumed to be in possession of stolen property.” It implies that there is no way someone would have a milk crate unless they stole it, and that somehow this warrants being put in jail.

It is ridiculous enough of a law that if a police officer didn’t arrest someone for the issue no one would notice or care, but it still exists, and they can acknowledge it when convenient. It can be used to discriminate, detain, and harass, as has happened in Miami, Florida.

“Punishing people for sitting on a milk crate is just another way Miami is criminalizing homelessness,” Jackie Azis, staff attorney at the ACLU of Florida told Miami New Times. It was in reference to the multiple homeless people the Miami New Times interviewed who had been put in jail for just that.

“It appears the city is still using laws to harass homeless individuals in an effort to remove them from sight,” Azis continued. The punishment and enforcement of this law is more of the issue than the law itself as protecting private property is, of course, not horrible, but the vagueness of the law allows these harassing situations to arise.

Between the laws in San Francisco that exist purely to superficially remove the homeless without actually solving any problems, to the many milk crate laws around the country that give police the ability to repeatedly harass the homeless, the criminalization of the homeless is rampant.

If more time and money was spent trying to solve the problem of homelessness rather than use police forces’ time and taxpayers money to try and be rid of homeless people, something might actually change.

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he visual of a mother and child walking down the street, then her gently leading the child to the other side to avoid someone sitting with a sign is easy to picture. The mother doesn’t mean to be cruel, it’s uneasy suspicion. But what does this teach the child?

They’ll ignore these people on their own, rather than ask if they need help, they’ll be too embarrassed, rather than acknowledge them and say hello. This happens so often that some people on the street have learned to ignore it, but not everyone. These people on the streets are human, but by habit, they’re seen as part of the sidewalk, and they become worse because of it.

Billy Albert works at the Veteran’s Inn for the COSAC Foundation and has for 18 years. Part of his work there is going out into the streets and trying to bring people to the shelter, some who have been ignored for too long.

“We try to get so many people off the street and help them. Some of them are so — how do I put it — the world has alienated them so bad that they don’t even want to go anywhere or be anywhere, they just want to be in their own world,” Billy says. “And that hurts like hell, seriously. They’ll say yes, and you look for them, and they won’t be there. They’ve gotten to the point that they ‘yes’ people to death. What brought them to that situation is another thing and that bothers me to no end too.”

Mr Stratton — who declined to give his first name, and now works and lives at the Veteran’s Inn as well — has the perspective of forgiveness to being ignored like this, “Well, you know, I learned to just turn the cheek. Hey, they could be worse off than me. People don’t realize that, when you criticize somebody you’re actually in more misery than they are.”

“The way that I see it,” Mr. Stratton continues, “people better think on something; they can have everything in the world — right now — and the very next day you get a paycheck, get your envelope, you open it up, and you see that pink slip. You could have that same criteria of that person you criticized.”

Where Billy and Mr. Stratton have either witnessed or been affected by this alienation, Mike Asterman — having worked with the homeless for 50 years now — has been able to ignore it.

“I really can’t say being ignored as been a problem or anything for me — you know, everyone has got their own temperament. You have to kinda see

Photo and Story by Andrew Fraieli

Mike Asterman works and lives at the Veteran’s Inn as well. He is cousin’s with Mr. Stratton and has been working with the homeless for 50 years. His favorite color is blue, and besides the bible, he enjoys “certain western authors, certain science fiction authors, just depends on the title and if it jumps out and grabs me, I’ll read it.”

Mr. Stratton currently works and lives at the Veteran’s Inn in Lake City run by the COSAC foundation. He’s been at the shelter for 18 years, a retired chef, having graduated from UF with a culinary degree, and a veteran with ten years in the Navy. He has two kids, a boy and girl who are 41 and 31.

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Invisible

The

through the facade, so to speak, and after a few years of me working with the homeless I was able to see through that.”

The facade is a front that many people put up in public, he says, with a different one for home, “So, you know, you kinda have to be able to differentiate between the two, and figure out which of these two faces is the real person.”

Mike is a pastor who’s chosen to live and work almost exclusively in the streets, “my ministry is out there,” he says.

His perspective wasn’t always like this though, “When I was first out on the streets working with people, yeah, it kinda bothered me. But, over the years, of all the different types of people I’ve associated with, it became second nature to me to ignore that.”

Where Mike and Mr. Stratton have learned to ignore the ignoring for the most part, Ramona Montayne still finds it painful, “When I’m ignored I want to fall into — I don’t even want to fall into a hole — I want to be removed like I never existed; if I fell into a hole I’d still be there, trying to dig my way out. I just want to disappear.”

Both Mike and Mr. Stratton say that people could be just one or two paychecks away from being in a situation like they were. Ramona says that to put that perspective into someone’s mind, it would depend on who it is, “If I knew them I’d try to bring up someone in their circle that you know was starting to see difficulty or had a little difficulty and you know multiply it in your mind. Use that little difficulty and say all it takes is one thing to put them in this bigger hole than the hole their in.”

Being ignored is a painful, embarrassing situation for Ramona, as it is for many people and as it would be for many people.

Anyone living on the street has either learned to ignore the alienation, or succumbed to it for the worst. Pushed away from society, criminalizing what they have to do to survive, and day to day people pretending they do not exist.

“Your homeless people are the most persecuted people,” says Mr. Stratton. “They see them sleeping on the street, sleeping on a bus, sleeping in an alley.

Some of those people don’t have no income, they look in dumpsters, panhandle for a couple dollars.

Some are recovering drug addicts, alcoholics, some are vets. Society has turned against them.”

In the end, Billy asks, “When did the homeless stop being human?”

e Homeless

Ramona Montayne has been at the shleter for 16 years, her personality has changed over the years, as well as her favorite color. “I used to love blue but that was just because I was boy-crazy, even as an eight to ten year old. I started liking yellow becuase my mom talked about how it was the color of sunshine, andI liked that and jumped on tha bandwagon. Nowadays its green, or pink. I finally felt like I’d given into my own when I realized I liked pink. I never wore it because I thought it was too girly.”

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The Pottinger Agreement and How It Affects the Homeless

A 1988 lawsuit in Miami improved police treatment of the homeless but has recently been under fire.

By Andrew Fraieli

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he homeless population in Miami has recently been the subject of much debate, specifically on the agreements and lawsuits that protect them from a past history of police harassment. Before a lawsuit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) in 1988, police would routinely destroy the property of homeless living on the street and arrest them on misdemeanors of trespassing on public property — sleeping outside.

In May of this year, according to the Miami Herald, the city filed a motion to abolish the rulings that came about from this lawsuit — called the Pottinger Agreement — stating that they are outdated. The ACLU argues that the police still violate the original terms of the agreement, and, in return, filed a motion urging the federal court to enforce it.

One of the arguments against the Pottinger Agreement is that the police are capable of treating the homeless humanely without some kind of limitation. “We’re in a different world now,” Miami Commissioner Ken Russell told the Miami Herald.

“At least it’s fair to have the discussion of whether it’s still necessary.” But even as this argument is made, the Miami New Times reported city workers throwing away a homeless veteran’s only belongings.

The city worker was part of the Miami Homeless Assistance Program taking part in a street “cleanup”.

Around April, these bi-weekly clean-ups were consisting of damaging and throwing away people’s property that live in those places, Benji Waxman, a Miami lawyer and volunteer at the ACLU, told Miami New Times.

Waxman continues saying the workers and police officers have started an “aggressive campaign” across the city chasing the homeless away from where they live. The trashing of the homeless’ property, he says, is a direct violation of the Pottinger Agreement.

Eugene Ramirez, director of communications for the City of Miami, said, “All property and people are treated with dignity and respect, if our outreach staff finds any documents in clean-up areas, they collect them and bring them to the office for safekeeping.

They leave a notice where the property is found so people can come collect their items.”

Wilbur Cauley, the homeless veteran, lost all his belongings in the end including his only forms of identification.

Another situation that caused the Pottinger agreement to come under fire came in October from a clean-up of a homeless congregation under the Dolphin Expressway in Overtown. Residents of the area complained in a town hall meeting of open sex and drug use according to the Miami Herald.

The chairman, Keon Williams, of the Overtown Community Oversight Board hosting the meeting was one of the voices against the Agreement on the Friday morning of the cleanup.

Williams and the other residents called the agreement archaic in its restrictions, saying it allowed the area to deteriorate into the poor conditions necessitating an investigation by the Florida Department of Health. According to the Miami Herald, health officials stated there was no significant public health threat but the area was a “sanitary nuisance” that needed a cleanup.

“The rapid gentrification of Miami in the 20 years since the signing of the Pottinger Agreement does not mean that the City can return to the failed policy of trying to use the criminal justice system to address homelessness in Miami,” stated Waxman in the ACLU’s press release in June of their filing of a motion to Federal Court. “Miami may be changing, but one thing hasn’t changed: people do not lose the protection of the law simply because they are poor.”

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History of Pottinger Agreement In the 1980s, Miami had a surging population of homeless up to 6,000 people and a sixth of the shelter beds necessary to house them according to the ACLU of Florida. With this surge of homelessness came a police crackdown of arrests on misdemeanors that these people could not help, and routine destruction of their private property, which the ACLU stated as a deliberate attempt to drive them out of the city.

After a decade of litigation, the lawsuit was approved by federal court in 1998 leading to the Pottinger Agreement and the terms in the sidebar.

Essence of the Pottinger Settlement Agreement These are the protocols that sum up the Pottinger Agreement.

Limitation on Arrests A police officer can only arrest a homeless person for a “lifesustaining conduct” misdemeanor if there is an available shelter bed within the city or one mile of the city limits, the police officer informs the individual of the open shelter bed, and the they decline it.

Protection of Property “If a homeless person is arrested, police must secure their property as they would anyone else’s. It also prohibits the kind of routine destruction of homeless people’s property that triggered the lawsuit.”

Training Police officers are required to be put through training to ensure their awareness of the “unique struggle and circumstances of homeless persons.”

Monitoring Police are required to keep records of their arrests and interactions with homeless people so it can be assured they are following the agreement.

“Life-Sustaining Conduct” Misdemeanors - being in the park after hours -public nudity where necessary to carry on the daily necessities of life, such as bathing or responding to a call of nature (however, lewd, lascivious or indecent assault or act upon or in presence of child is not protected) - fires in parks - obstructing passage on sidewalks - living or sleeping in vehicles - loitering in restrooms - camping in parks - use of facilities for other than intended purpose (e.g., sleeping on a park bench) - temporary structures in park trespass on “public property” other than structure or conveyance.

Information according to ACLU

Miami Homeless Assistance Program Part of the program’s goals, according to their website, are…

- to identify, and engage homeless individuals and to place them into appropriate housing.

- to facilitate employability skills, a work history and instill life management responsibilities to our formerly homeless employees, thereby strengthening their ties to the community.

- to significantly reduce the number of homeless individuals and families in the City of Miami.

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Billy Albert

Photo and story by Andrew Fraieli

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illy Albert’s favorite color is midnight blue. Or maybe maroon too. It’s a hard question he says. This, after elaborating on a bath salts twitching person in the fetal position that he came upon and was able to help.

Helping people in bad situations, mostly the homeless, has become his job and his every day.

Having been at the shelters for about ten years — between the COSAC Foundation’s previous Hollywood shelter and now Veteran’s Inn in Lake City — he has taken many jobs.

In the past — at the shelter — he’s done “security for about four years, every evening, no problem with that. Made sure everyone was safe, not preyed upon by the world,” as well as “three nights a week I would work the front desk.”

“I’ve worn many hats so to speak,” Billy says.

Farther into the past, he held the hat of a military man in the Air Force. Billy served from 1978 to 1987 as a Still Photography specialist in the 380th Bomb Wing, part of the 45th Air Division. He spits out these numbers without hesitancy, numbers that make no sense to me, but define his service to him.

Afterwards he shed the helmet of the military and donned the cap of a photo-mechanic at a printing company in Pompano, then making sets and eventually taking product photos himself. It was a job — he at one point did work on the 1980s Olympics in Lake Placid — but also a hobby of his.

“One time, I took a picture of a squirrel sitting in a tree and what happened was, I took the picture, and made an ortho [red-insensitive photo on film]

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of it. It came out unbelievable where the background was completely white and the tree and squirrel was just black, but with detail! That one was my favorite.”

Eventually, he ended up not wearing a hat all, “I lost my residence and went to visit my brother working at a labor hall.

I was living in cardboard for three years while I was working in that labor hall. I’d be helping my brother, sometimes mentally, sometimes financially.”

He elaborated on the cardboard after I asked, “I lived in between a big V in a tree with cardboard above me, and the cardboard was plasticise — rain wouldn’t get on me. And I had moskovi ducks as my alarm clock, they have to be the earliest risers in the world — I’d be the first in line for job opportunities.”

Eventually his brother brought him to the Homeless Voice in Hollywood where he donned his took his first hat as security.

Now though he works the paper, “Day to day, well, I go out and sell the paper; I mostly coordinate where we put it.

We are trying to open up more places so when we get new people they know who we are, so it doesn’t look like we are just asking for money.”

But this not just a job to Billy.

“It’s helped me, it’s seriously helped me. I felt like I was contributing something for the greater good so to speak, I was helping people who were there, that needed it. Right now, when they need help, I help.”

The paper is meant to raise awareness and inform people about the homeless, it’s also a way of giving people who come to the shelter work. This is the hat he wears today, and “the more people are informed the more they see that it is for a greater good for those who can’t help themselves,” Billy says.

He revels in his job, taking care of the people in the shelter, and doing whatever he can to help. “I enjoy when people tell

me what we’re doing is good. We’re helping people into the shelter that need it and off the street.”

I had a second interview with Billy, during which I was able to meet him in person. At 67 years old, he has a very youthful sounding voice behind his blue-gray eyes. After awhile another client at the shelter came over and Billy asked if he’d gone to the doctor’s.

He had not, and Billy was quite concerned.

“Are you kidding me! Man, you make sure you eat something. I’m serious, you may need to go to the hospital, I mean that, seriously. I don’t want you caving in on me on the street there, God forbid.

Seriously, you know that.”

As the client left, I asked Billy for another story of him helping someone.

“Like the time I got my hip broke? Well, some guy was beating the heck out of some girl — his girlfriend I guess out in front of the place — and I went out there to just look and find out what was going on.

The guy came over to me, you know, and gave me the bum-rush and I go flying through the air and when I come down my femur — the top of my femur — is fractured. So I was screwed up for a little while, that’s why I walk with a limp for the rest of my life.”

He continues to don many different hats for the shelter, some new like helping renovate the COSAC Foundation’s recently bought motel, but old and necessary hats too.

“I still do the laundry, the shirts, make sure everyone has the papers they need, water, their lunches.

That’s my heart and soul, to put on a good face for this.”

Tammy Cononie

Independent Beauty Consultant Enriching Womens Lives ™

Check out our new Homeless Outreach iPhone App! Download our app, snap a photo and tag your location

11965 Swooping Willow Rd Jacksonville, FL 32223 904-607-0971 ccononie@yahoo.com

We are in Need of Donations 4700 SW 51st Street Suite 208 Davie, FL 33314 Phone: (954) 924-3571

Canned Goods Coffee Peanut Butter Water Grocery Store GC’s Boost or similar shakes Mayonnaise Eggs liquid Pancake syrup Soda

Call or Drop off Tuesday-Saturday 11 am- 6pm The Homeless Voice | Vol. 20 Issue 4 2018 11

What do you think goes through the mind of the homeless person you may ignore?

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Billy Albert Donning hat after hat at the shelter to help anyway he can.

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