Streetvibes April 2004 Edition

April 2004

St r e e t v i b e s Protesting the Iraq War - Around the Globe, Millions Gather on One-Year Anniversary Hundreds of thousands of people worldwide rallied March 20 against the war in Iraq. Hundreds gathered in downtown Cincinnati on the one-year anniversary of the American-led invasion.

There were over 300 events in the U.S and protests in more than 60 countries. In more than 600 cities and towns around the world, people took to the streets to say yes to peace and no to preemptive war and occupation, calling for an end to the occupation of Iraq and President Bush’s foreign policies. Hundreds of thousands of activists also raised their voices at rallies in London, Cairo, Tokyo and other cities in Europe, Asia and elsewhere.

In the United States,

Chicago police in full riot gear lined downtown streets as thousands of war opponents marched about two miles to the city’s Federal Plaza. The Rev. Jesse Jackson told Chicago demonstrators to express their opposition to the war by voting against President Bush.

In Europe, one of the biggest protests was in Rome, where up to 300,000 marchers jammed the streets.

Protesters demanded that Italy withdraw its 2,600 troops from Iraq.

And in London, two protesters climbed the Big Ben clock tower. Early Saturday morning, the two anti-war demonstrators wearing climbing

notable protests included a 100,000 person march and rally in New York City. The event was peaceful, unlike a demonstration one year earlier that drew 100,000 people and produced several clashes between demonstrators and police.

An event in held in San Francisco was attended by more than 50,000 people.

In Crawford, Texas, where President George Bush owns a ranch and often vacations, 1000 protesters converged to repudiate his militaristic policies and call for a diversion of the billions of dollars that are being spent on war to domestic programs like schools, health clinics, housing and homelessness.

Military families and veterans led a protest that drew 1500 to Fayetteville, North Carolina, outside the Fort Bragg military base.

gear scaled the Big Ben clock tower at the Houses of Parliament and held up a small banner that read “Time for Truth” before coming down several hours later.

(The Big Ben stunt sparked concerns about security around the capital’s landmarks, which is supposed to be at a high level to guard against a possible terrorist attack) London’s Metropolitan Police estimated that some 25,000 people took part in the rally between Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square in the center of the British capital.

In Cincinnati, hundreds of protestors

story and photos by Jimmy Heath

met downtown at Cincinnati’s Fountain Square to join the March and Rally Against War and Occupation.

The message during the event in downtown Cincinnati was that even though rally organizers support US troops, they do not support US policies that sent American troops into Iraq. The war in Iraq has claimed the lives of two tristate residents – over 500 American soldiers have died since the invasion, and 10,000 Iraqis have been killed in the conflict.

Banners listing the names of individual soldiers who have died in Iraq were displayed on Fountain Square.

The rally program included a series of speakers, a memorial to those who have died in Iraq, and a short march followed by another gathering on Fountain Square.

Rally participants marched around the block to the Federal Building and then back to Fountain

Square while pounding on drums and chanting anti-war slogans.

Although police estimated the crowd size at 250, organizers say the numbers were much closer to 800.

Over three dozen groups were represented at the rally. The collaborative effort was intended to give strength to individual organizations participating in the event.

“Each person at the rally represents someone else who could not be here,” says Sister Alice Gerdeman CDP, of the Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center and coordinator of the event.

“I was pleased with the spirit of the participants, and with the energy generated by this event.

The real measure of success will be when people take this energy and are able to change policy,” said Gerdeman.

(For more information call the Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center at (513) 579-8547 Visit their website at: www.ijpc-Cincinnati.org.)

Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless

STREETVIBES The Tri-State's Homeless Grapevine

Streetvibes, the Tri-State's alternative news source, is a newspaper written by, for, and about the homeless and contains relevant discussions of social justice, and poverty issues. It is published once a month by the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless.

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The Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless is a group of shelters, agencies and individuals committed to ending homelessness in Cincinnati through coordinating services, educating the public and grassroots organizing.

GCCH Staff Georgine Getty - Executive Director Brendan Goodwin - Administrative Coordinator Andy Erickson - Education Coordinator Elizabeth Linville - Civil Rights Coordinator Janice Faulkner - Receptionist Mary Gaffney - Receptionist

Streetvibes Jimmy Heath, Editor Photographers Mary Burke, Anthony Dent, Jimmy Heath, Berta Lambert

Cover Iraq War protestors march in Cincinnati, March 20, 2004 - photo by Jimmy Heath Streetvibes accepts letters, poems, stories, essays, original graphics, and photos. We will give preference to those who are homeless or vendors.

Subscriptions to Streetvibes, delivered to your home each month, can be purchased for $25 per year.

Address mail to: Streetvibes Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless (GCCH) 117 East 12th Street Cincinnati, OH 45202 (513) 421-7803 e-mail: streetvibes@juno.com web: http://homeless.cinci.com

STREETVIBES

Reader Mail My daughter and I go to Findlay Market almost every Saturday. We have met two very nice vendors there that we talk to every week.

One is Julie and she tells us about her new grandchild and we give each other a hug. She always has a smile for everyone.

The other vendor is Robert Manassa. He is always very nice and tells us when he has a new poem in the Streetvibes. We have quite a collection on our refrigerator. He always has an uplifting message. When we don’t see them we look for them. We feel like they are our friends.

Inge & Sandy Seybold Greetings, Over the last 25 years of my adult life, I have been homeless about 10 years. Sometimes it was by choice, but quite often by necessity, so I have a pretty good feel about the issues involved.

Whether it be poverty, drug abuse,

alcoholism, fear of the authorities, or any other reason, homelessness has become a cancer in our society.

As a spiritual man, my life revolves around helping others better themselves, and any contribution to your newspaper may help achieve that for some people.

Please add my name to your mailing list, and if possible, I would like to submit some articles for your consideration. Unfortunately, I am not able at this time to send either money or stamps to help defray your costs. Hopefully, my future submissions will help counter that problem.

Gary Hallford California State Prison Vacaville, California Mr. Hallford will be placed on our mailing list. Unfortunately, we don’t have the resources to fill all subscription requests from Prisoners. If you would like to sponsor a prisoner for Streetvibes, subscriptions are $25 per year. If you like, you can designate a prisoner or we will pick one for you - editor.

Dear Streetvibes Community: After more than 1 ½ years paper and continue to educate as the Administrative Coordinator others about the pressing problem at the Greater Cincinnati Coalition of homelessness in Cincinnati. To for the Homeless, I have decided to the vendors—you are the heart of move on. I’ve decided I wanted to this program and I have enjoyed try life in a new city and was getting to know each of you. You offered a great job in Boston always liven up the office and coordinating a fair trade program provide great insight into the for an organization that works in El development of this program. Best Salvador. So as I begin to wrap up of luck to all of you and thanks for my business here and your dedication to pack up my the Homeless apartment, I keep Coalition. finding myself To the reflecting on my time donors, funders, here at the Homeless members, Coalition. As the supporters and all Administrative the homeless Coordinator, I was advocates of always the guy in the Cincinnati: Yours back of the office is not an easy job in sitting in front of the this city. I am so computer all day – I proud of the Brendan Goodwin would tell people diversity in our that I had the boring membership and job at the Coalition, but I really supporters—it truly represents a have loved every minute of it. I am strong grassroots effort of ending continuously amazed at what this homelessness and is unique to this small organization has been able to city and this country. Thank you, accomplish throughout its history, thank you, thank you for your but especially in the past year. donations, volunteer work and There are so many people to say support of the work of the goodbye to and to thank that I Homeless Coalition. In a city that think I have to break it into groups. continues to criminalize and shun To the Streetvibes those experiencing homelessness, Community: Thank you for your your efforts and your voice are support of this newspaper—I hope what is making real, systemic that you take the time to learn more change in our community. about the program so that you To Over-the-Rhine: This understand exactly how you are neighborhood has been my place of affecting people’s lives through work as well as my home for three your support. Additionally, I hope years now. Thank you for you take what you read in this welcoming me into your

April, 2004

Streetvibes Vendor Comment Cards She [Streetvibes vendor] was very well groomed and spoke up so everyone could hear her. Keep up the good work. God has people out here who will hear our cry!

I always buy Streetvibes ‘cause it wouldn’t take much to be homeless. All it takes is to miss the rent. I always give money to street persons.

Streetvibes is a great tool for those who need money for food, etc. All the vendors I have met were polite and never pushy.

Write Us! We’d like to hear from you....

Send letters or comments to: Streetvibes@Juno.com, or write the Coalition office attn: Streetvibes Letters 117 East 12th Street Cincinnati, Ohio 45202 community full of history, struggle and activism. I am proud to have been a resident of this neighborhood that never gets the respect it has earned. You, my neighbors, have taught me so much about life—its struggles and its rewards and I will continue to look for neighborhoods as diverse and rich to call my home.

To the staff of GCCH: Thank you for the support, the laughs, the crazy made-up games that we played to relieve stress and for your un-ending dedication and compassion. I will miss coming into the office on a Sunday afternoon to finish up some work and finding half of the staff is there as well. I have never worked with a more talented, fun (and funny) staff before. Thank you for your friendship and I look forward to continuing to support your work here at the Homeless Coalition.

I just realized that the only other time I have contributed to Streetvibes in the form of an article, was my introduction letter when I first started. You have seen me behind all of those fundraising ads each month asking for you to attend an event, or buy our book, or donate money, so this is a little different. BUT… in the true spirit of my job at the Homeless Coalition, I have to do it one more time… please go to page 11 of your Streetvibes and show your support through a financial donation.

Thank you again, everyone.

I will miss you all and I wish you the best in your work in the future.

Sincerely, Brendan Goodwin

Page 2

Lesson on Vine Street

by Gray Dog On a bright, bittercold day in Cincinnati, some winters ago, I saw a woman and four children gather to cross at Fourteenth and Vine. Around them were the traffic in motion on Vine, the traffic at rest on Fourteenth, the vigilant and reposed dope boys leaning against the boarded windows of the pool hall, the walkers with their canes or their strollers or their bags of groceries. Around them all was a maze of brick and neon, signboards, walk lights, glass, vinyl, plywood, chrome, paper, asphalt, plastic, and, in the path of a passing truck, a plume of diesel smoke descending.

The corner of Fourteenth and Vine in Cincinnati is a busy corner, one of the busiest, at the heart of the ghetto that erupted in April, 2001 in response to the police killing of Timothy Thomas.

Thomas, an unarmed Black man wanted for traffic offenses, died just a few short blocks away in an alley off Republic Street, a darker, quieter place where you will see fewer people. But at Fourteenth and Vine, at any hour of the day or night, it is not at all uncommon to see women and children and all manner of people crossing or waiting to cross, many of them so

ordinary as to slip easily from memory, others so extraordinary as to stay in mind for a long, long time. And I have carried the image of this woman and these children, almost photographically, for over two years now. They stay with me, in part, I suppose, because of a little riff of drama between the woman, who was tipsy, and the oldest of the children, a girl with a proud, wary eye.

The woman was white, the children were black, and it seemed the woman was an interloper in this scene. She looked like someone’s grandmother, but she did not look like theirs. And the oldest girl, who may have been twelve, was clearly in charge. She had the smaller children linked, hand to hand, lined up at the curb like marchers. They were packed, identically, in bright insulated coats, hooded, bundled, and immobilized like fine china packed for shipping.

They were bright-colored beauties, admirably protected and prepared for the bitter cold air of Vine Street.

But the woman was barehanded, dressed shabby, out of season and out of fashion in a camel-colored cloth coat with a kerchief knotted at her chin.

Twenty years ago, she would not have looked out of place, for she

would have looked like many Vine. Some of them are the major, women among the thousands of get-in-the-news terrible, but most Appalachian migrants who shared are the small, usual, almost this neighborhood with growing manageable, easily unnoticed sort numbers of African-Americans. of terrible.

She reminded me of women I have Two blocks down seen in coal camps, or in country Fourteenth is Washington Park stores, or outside storefront School; two blocks up Vine Street churches on Wednesday nights is Saint Francis Seraph. Children after services. These are knotty, are on these streets much of the strong-minded, sharp-tongued time. And it seems to me a terrible women, hard-scrabble matriarchs, thing that a child should witness, the moral and emotional centers of day after day, such physical and struggling displaced families. They moral damage, such a daily are woman of great density, The corner of Fourteenth and Vine in made solid by Cincinnati is a busy corner, one of the grief and wisdom. busiest, at the heart of the ghetto that But this erupted in April, 2001 in response to the woman had lost police killing of Timothy Thomas... that solidity; she had not that focus.

She was the center, it seemed, of disillusionment in which nothing. She teetered unsteadily to matriarchal figures are made either the right, then back to the left, then pitiable or fearsome by addiction, again to the right as she leaned men drift hollowly toward the next toward the youngest child, the fix, young men waste arrogantly on wide-eyed one, and extended a the corners, the young women shaky hand to take him by the become young mothers become mitten. For a moment, the old prostitutes. woman wobbled, and it seemed she This of course is not the might mislead this wide-eyed one whole story of Vine Street. I have into the teeth of the traffic. friends up the street who are a The girl, from her end of hard-working, church-going family the line, watched with a dubious eye.

Many terrible things happen cont. on page 7 at the corner of Fourteenth and

Gray Dog....

Because over 8,000 childen in Cincinnati are without a home every year.

Homeless Awareness Week May 10 - 14, 2004 Schedule of Events Monday, May 10 - Join us for a screening of Dark Days, an award-winning documentary depicting the lives of homeless men and women living in abandoned train tunnels in New York City. A discussion by formerly homeless Cincinnatians will follow. 7-9pm at Kaldi’s Coffee House (1204 Main Street, Over-the-Rhine).

Tuesday, May 11 - Homeless Civil Rights Day. The rights of homeless individuals are being disregarded in many cities across the U.S. Cincinnati has been ranked the 6th Meanest City for its treatment of homeless individuals. Help us spread awareness to combat the criminalization of homelessness. Meet us at the GCCH offices on Tuesday at 11:30 am (117 East 12th Street).

Wednesday, May 12 - Book Club. Pick up a copy of The Street Lawyer by John Grisham and join us for our book club. We’ll discuss the book and how it relates to real homeless issues right here in Cincinnati. 6:30 - 8:30pm, Meeting Room 3A at the Cincinnati Public Library (800 Vine Street).

Thursday, May 13 - Armchair Advocate Day. Fight to end homelessness without leaving your own home. Educate yourself and others by surfing the internet and letter writing. Visit www.nationalhomeless.org, www.homeless.cincy.com and other web sites to find out how you can become involved. Write letters to the editor, councilmembers and state representatives stressing the need for affordable housing to end homelessness.

Friday, May 14 - The Homeless Awareness Music Extravaganza!

Enjoy the Soul Mission Chorale, Winton Woods High School Choir, Stepp’n Out and Nu-Vue, Jake Speed and other great performers. 7 - 9pm at Christ Emmanuel Christian Fellowship (2324 May Street in Walnut Hills).

All events are free and open to the public. For more information, call the Homeless Coalition - 421-7803

STREETVIBES

April, 2004

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Page 3

April, 2001 Did Cincinnati’s Civil Unrest Change City Politics? story and photos by Jimmy Heath

19 year-old Timothy Thomas was wanted on misdemeanor arrest warrants and running from police in Over-the-Rhine on Saturday, April 7th, 2001 when he was shot by a Cincinnati policeman.

Police Officer Stephen Roach, who had never fired his weapon on duty, shot and killed Thomas in a dead-end alley off Republic Street.

Thomas appeared to be reaching for his waistband during a confrontation with the policeman in the alley, according to early police Man on 12th Street with picture of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King III. reports.

Timothy Thomas was the fourth black man killed by Cincinnati said Rev. Damon Lynch III, pastor of Over-the-Rhine’s New Prospect police since November of 2000, and the fifteenth such victim since Baptist Church, referring to the latest shooting death.

1995. Thomas was the father of a three-month-old son.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Mike Allen, who denounced This month is the third anniversary of the shooting of Thomas. participants as “law-breaking thugs who should be prosecuted His death fueled nearly a week of civil unrest and rioting in urban vigorously,” announced he was indicting 63 people arrested on felony Cincinnati. charges, ranging from aggravated rioting, breaking and entering, Violence erupted on Monday, April 9th, 2001 following a police weapons possession, inducing panic and other misdemeanor offenses, news conference about the Thomas shooting. Angry residents crowded such as resisting arrest and disorderly conduct.

Cincinnati City Hall, targeting their rage All of these events led the evening news programs - the against the Mayor, City Council members, and violence, the fear, the images of rampaging “thugs” and burning police representatives. The protesters filled the dumpsters. The media continued to descend on the scene to record the council chambers, some standing on tables and mayhem throughout the week - eventually the whole world knew what chairs screaming at city leaders, almost was going on in Cincinnati. preventing them from leaving during the threeLocal and nationally recognized civil rights activists came to hour confrontation.

Over-the-Rhine calling for peaceful discussions and an end to violence Thomas’s mother, Angela Leisure, took on the streets. It made for good TV and painful politics. The death of the podium at one point and demanded an Thomas was the shot heard around the world, with Cincinnati suddenly explanation for the shooting of her son. “You thrown into the international spotlight. His death was a rallying point Timothy Thomas took him from his family and his son and we for national discussions on police violence, poverty and racism. want to know why. And don’t get me wrong, even when you tell me why, it’s not going to make it better.” The lack of answers fueled additional anger and frustration in the assembled crowd and the waiting community.

That evening, (Monday night) after a makeshift march from City Hall, hundreds of angry protesters assembled outside police headquarters in downtown Cincinnati. Police in riot gear and on horseback sprayed the crowd with a chemical irritant and fired at the protesters with beanbag shotguns. A brick was thrown, breaking the glass front door of police headquarters.

Ten arrests were reported.

The rioting became more serious Tuesday afternoon and evening as crowds took to the streets again. Clothing shops, restaurants and convenience stores were broken into and looted. The fire department stayed busy putting out building and garbage can fires.

Most of the unrest was focused on the downtown, West End and Over-the-Rhine neighborhoods - some of the poorest communities in the city.

Cincinnati NAACP President Norma Holt Davis said the fatal shooting of Thomas by a Cincinnati police officer lead her to only one conclusion. “It appears the police force has declared war on African-Americans,” she said.

“Fifteen black males have died at the hands of Cincinnati police in the past six years. Before the Protestor confronts Cincinnati policeman on Central Parkway, Over-the-Rhine. healing process can ever finish, the wound reopens,”

STREETVIBES

April, 2004

Civil Unrest

Page 4

When protestors first took to the streets, the events in Cincinnati were put in the context of a “race riot.” However, when the discussions turned to racism, the frustration of the oppressed and the poor, the gleam of the story started to wear thin.

A lot of people on the streets saw themselves as fighting the oppressor white society which is not quite the same as fighting against white people. Is it possible that Timothy Thomas would have never been shot in the first place if he had been white?

Nearly 800 people were eventually arrested for violating the four-day curfew imposed by Mayor Charlie Luken when he declared a state of emergency on Wednesday, April 12.

Over 1,000 people attended the funeral on Saturday, April 14 for Timothy Thomas at New Prospect Baptist Church in Over-theRhine. More than a funeral, it was a media and political show-and-tell event. The Mayor was there and so was the Governor of Ohio, along with other political bigwigs and throngs of reporters.

Following the service, mourners joined with hundreds outside the church and marched peacefully through the Over-the-Rhine neighborhood where Thomas was shot. Some 1,000 people of all races participated in the march. Conspicuously absent from the march were the politicians.

Politically, nothing much has changed. The poor neighborhoods, predominately African-American communities, still feel the frustration of being black in a white dominated City Hall and police force. Some inner-city residents are just as frightened of the police as they are of the drug thugs and street-corner-gangsters Many of the thugs and looters, who were “vigorously” prosecuted three years ago have long-since been released from jail after serving out their sentences, only to return to the street filled with prison-anger and resentment.

Many businesses in Over-the-Rhine, even after three years, continue to struggle with the stigma of the event with many fearful Ms. Fanny Stovall, from her apartment at 15th and Republic Street, money-spending white suburbanites staying away from the downtown Over-the-Rhine. Her raised fist, she later told me, was not an act of area in droves. defiance, but of resolve and determination.

People frequently ask me if things in Over-the-Rhine have returned to normal. Sadly, things have slowly returned to the same as how tenuous the relations are between the police and the Africanbefore - if “normal” is a war zone, a crime zone, and a drug-filled American community. And it reveals dissatisfaction in the areas of zone. education, jobs and economic opportunity, housing and community The most obvious thing is the slow and agonizing lack of leadership. With this crisis has come the opportunity for improvement. progress in community and police relations. Although the police have Cincinnati must make real changes in each of these areas if the city is adopted less lethal methods for subduing suspects (they are now armed to grow beyond the turmoil of that fateful week three years ago. with the recently approved Taser stun guns), the sense of isolation and Many Americans, particularly white Americans, are quick to lack of communication dominates the relationship between the police deny race as the primary motive in almost any negative act against a and the community, even to this day. person of color (unless the person committing the act is wearing a The police division’s leadership has been criticized as white sheet). Police brutality cases are just a symptom of the illness. unresponsive and uncaring. It is simplistic to dismiss the deaths of Cincinnati city government continues to struggle with the ‘distasteful’ black people at the hands of police as unfortunate and unavoidable symptoms of poverty and racism, confronting the issue with window aspects of police work. The police must come to understand the dressing, sound bites and half-hearted attempts at reconciliation. In frustrations and fears that these incidents engender in the communities Cincinnati government, denial may be the most serious affliction. it patrols. Even more significant from the perspective of black Cincinnatians is that no city police officer has ever been convicted of a killing. (There has been only one reprimand.)

Sadly, all that makes the news is the drama of life on the streets in the inner-city. We don’t often hear the stories of the families and the senior citizens and the majority of residents in Over-the-Rhine and other poor Cincinnati neighborhoods that are law-abiding and working hard to support their families - trying to build something for themselves and their neighbors.

We only hear the horror stories of shootings, robbery and drug dealing. The drama that feeds the evening news is taken as truth by middle-class Cincinnati.

Even in the face of overwhelming historical precedent, American denial about the role that race or racism plays in these, and similar events, remains strong. Despite repeated warnings from civil rights leaders and black police officers in Cincinnati, the police department’s official response was that the shootings must be considered individually rather than as a pattern.

Tragic as the death of Mr. Thomas was, the rioting that swept the city was about more than the loss Children on Vine Street, last summer. of one young man. It was about the deep rifts that separate citizens and city government. It shows just

STREETVIBES

April, 2004

Civil Unrest

Page 5

Page 5

The Peace Village

by Dr. Steve Sunderland

A similar path of ignorance involves Jewish education about the uniqueness of being a Jew and the similarities, roots, and connections to Christian history. Jewish education of Christianity and Christian education of Jewish religious complexities is almost non-existent. How many Christians understand why some Jews continue to have faith in religious values? Being a Jew is a complex human activity that can be defined and discussed if there is an interest and if there can be a form of respect and welcoming.

How many Christians have ventured into Jewish synagogues to learn about the roots of their

Teaching and Learning in a Minefield The reactions to the movie, “The Passion of the Christ,” have been and continue to be remarkable, and not only in the press and our letters. Many educators are realizing that a large and important part of Western education has been poorly done, if done at all. Just recently, many educators acknowledged that we knew almost nothing about Islam and that it was time to begin to place ourselves into curricula studies and experiences in mosques, along with talking to Imans and others interested in teaching about this great religion and its many interpretations around the US and the world. This educational effort has been thrilling for many of us who have been conscious of the impact of ignorance being transformed into education about religions in the daily life of learners and Dr. Steve Sunderland worshipers in our faith in Judaism and/or just to midst.

What many of us have not experience the critical and realized, until this movie revealed defining holidays of Jewish people? How many Jews have it so sharply and painfully, is that feel “invited” in observing in a there are also explosive reactions non-religious way the Easter to being a Jew and being a Christian based on ignorance. As experience? The absence of educators, many of us have taught comfort in exploring these major faiths adds to the friction in our about intolerance and avoided religious communities, lays the certain negative themes in groundwork for perpetual Christian history and documents misunderstandings, and continues and their power in the formation to explain why simplistic of Western attitudes toward generalizations, often offensive people who believe and don’t and violent, persist amongst many believe in Christianity. It has Jews and Christians about each been an unwritten law that other and each other’s religious Christian brutality and Christian beliefs. examples of heroism and Where there is ignorance tolerance be slighted and even of basic human actions, we can ignored, especially in public expect the creation of stereotypes education. that keep people “content” in their What has also been lost prejudice. Where bias is acted and avoided has been an upon in the form of friendships understanding of the values of Christianity, the reasons that many denied, employment lost, or negative acts going unchallenged, people have been drawn to this the reality of peace is lost and we faith and the meaning of being a are all walking on a “minefield.”

Christian in the best of senses.

Our “survival,” many of us Educators do not know how to believe, is determined by holding teach about faith and spirituality onto our prejudice and keeping without fearing that the “teachings” will be interpreted as close “to our own kind,” hoping that our group can protect us. proselytizing. As a result, the Knowing that courage to venture basics of Christian life, the ways the holidays define and illuminate too far away may wind up in pain faith, and the ultimate concerns of and wounding, or worse, keeps many people from any form of a Christian believer are just movement. Many leaders outside the general education of reinforce this situation, retelling most people.

STREETVIBES

April, 2004

stories of those who have been know either what is being said “blown up” by trying to ask about and/or what to say in return. This the best path toward safety and is the reality that many of us are in freedom. Many people choose to because this is often the first be a “by-stander” in the minefield, peaceful discussion with others choosing to wait for others to lead who may differ from our beliefs. or protest the conditions. Some Asking questions that people refuse to accept the communicate our interest, our conditions of immobility and seek confusion, and our feelings of to find new ground for journeying being in some danger can be to safety. Step by step, we can see asked in ways that promote peace these people moving toward and friendship if we ask knowledge, risking that each step ourselves, if we can, “Just how can be followed by those behind am I asking this question?” Often with safety. I want to write about many of us change a question into an educational process that helps a statement, and may slip into this us move together, with safety, form and need to be self-caught, if with guidance, and with the faith we can. Questions to and with that through education an each other are steps in the important new experience of minefield. When we see peace can be achieved. ourselves exploding and others Listening With the Ears of exploding, we need to stop and a Peace Friend - Discussions of pause, repair, address the wounds, this movie in general and and proceed with caution.

Christian and Jewish religion in I love reading letters from specific has worked best when the my old students reminding me of listening assumes an attitude of what kind of teacher I was. I peaceful friendliness. I try and wince when I read them, knowing start by alerting us to the what I left out, or chose to avoid minefield of not hearing what is because of my fear, or, what I was often said, beneath the words and just ignorant about that would in the words, and not heard have made a difference. Most of because our ears are stuffed with us as teachers are learners, riding our tongues readied to respond. the waves of the uncertain and The listening that I am reaching enjoying the ride toward glimpses for may not involve an immediate of understanding in the eyes of response; sometimes going our students, friends, and coaround a circle and just teachers. We return to teaching introducing one’s self from a faith and learning because we have position is enough to unclog our faith in the connection between ears. Sometimes we best listen education and peace, just as we when someone who has been or is search the Scriptures because we frightened has a chance to speak have faith in the connection to with support of the group, with peace that arises in the beauty of a the stated realization that the phrase. Now, we stand on a group supports their right to say different ground, perhaps a what has hurt or frightened them. minefield, and we are called to Listening to these words, in make the connections again. peaceful attitudes, often allows Shalom, Salaam, Paz. others to join in and share what Dr. Steve Sunderland, they might have been hiding in professor of Social Work at fear. Whenever this form of the University of Cincinnati, disclosure happens, it is often is the Director of The Peace useful for the people who didn’t know that such feelings of fear Village, a group of individuals could exist, to make statements of from the national and not knowing. Peace Friends do international community not want to cover up their feelings committed to examining all or their areas of not knowing issues of Peace in the world. people and there can be fruitful Dr. Sunderland also heads up time used to listen to just the Posters-for-Peace which themes of fear and support. engages people in expressing Quality Questions are their visions of Peace, in their Acts of Peace and Not War Sometimes it is shocking that own words, through the people feel so deeply and so creation of posters. differently about their religions and the religious Only $25 per month... beliefs of Call Streetvibes @ 421-7803 others. Some people have (Business Card Size, ad ready copy) never heard Reach 18,000 customers per month! such remarks and don’t

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Peace Village

Page 6

Proposed federal funding will devastate voucher program

by Elizabeth Linville The Federal Budget for 2005, released by the Bush Administration in February, calls for huge cuts in the funding for housing vouchers. The voucher program, which is commonly referred to as Section 8, allows families to move into rental housing and pay 30 percent of their income for rent, while the government subsidizes the rest.

The city of Cincinnati has nearly 25,000 individuals experiencing homelessness each year. Currently, there are only around 7,000 vouchers available through CMHA. This new budget will hurt the program in a variety of ways: it will reduce the number of households that will be assisted by a voucher, it could increase the amount of rent tenants are required to pay, and it may force housing authorities to shift their assistance to higher income families.

This budget will result in the loss of approximately 250,000 vouchers nationwide. In Ohio, we will lose 12% of our vouchers.

This means a cut of 10,340 from the 85,300 vouchers in use today.

It currently takes some households over a year to receive a voucher.

With the new cuts, the time on a waiting list could drag on even further.

In addition, the budget proposal calls for policy changes in the administration of the vouchers that could damage the program even further.

Public Housing Elizabeth Linville Authorities will be given flexibility in determining how to administer the voucher program. In order to administer the program, the budget

proposal will allow them to eliminate the requirement that tenants pay no more than 30% of their income for rent. Increased rent could force families to live in overcrowded, substandard housing or to turn to the shelter system for housing.

Another change the Housing Authorities may have to make because of the budget cuts is to focus the voucher assistance on higher income families. These families would require less financial assistance than lower income households.

What does this mean for Cincinnati? The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities recently released this information. As of July of 2003, Cincinnati had 7,375 vouchers. The proposed cut will decrease voucher funding by $5,062,417. If the cuts are made by eliminating available vouchers, 894 would be lost. If they are made by increasing the rent burden

to voucher holders, the annual rent would increase an average of $672 for each household.

There is a growing housing crisis in this country. Over 2 million households utilize housing vouchers across the country. 40% of the individuals utilizing vouchers are elderly or disabled; the majority of the rest are low-income families with children. According to a recent survey of Ohio shelters, there has been a 30% increase in the need for shelter. This number will likely increase even further with these budget cuts. The current administration may think that they cannot afford to continue to fund this program, but can the elderly, the disabled and children afford to lose this housing assistance? If you are interested in helping raise awareness on this issue, go to www.cohhio.org to send an alert to your representatives in congress.

National Homeless Advocate Censored by Assistant Secretary of HUD Donald Whitehead, the first formerly homeless AfricanAmerican Executive Director for the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH), was barred from a HUD meeting, on Tuesday March 16th, in which he had been invited to speak on the Continuum of Care consolidation plan. Senior members of the Department’s national office elected to censor Mr. Whitehead, asking him to leave the meeting.

NCH provides a wealth and diversity of knowledge that represents a perspective shared by many in the advocacy world, but not by HUD. NCH has been highly critical of HUD’s controversial Chronic Homelessness Initiative as well as their proposed FY2005 budget that seeks to eliminate 250,000 section 8 vouchers, due to the detrimental effect these programs and cuts will have on the

growing numbers of homeless children and families. NCH joined in a letter signed by other prominent national, state and local advocacy groups including, NAACP, National Organization of Women, Volunteers of America, and Child Welfare League of America raising concerns regarding HUD’s present position on the provision of homeless assistance funds.

The fact that Donald

Gray Dog....

and loud music, and in a thousand other turnings from her path. So she had a very adult duty and she would have to answer to someone if anything went wrong. She was wise to be wary of such a woman.

It seemed at that moment, deference, fear, anger, suspicion, and defiance all warred within her as she studied what that unstable woman might do next.

And that is all I can tell you. What more do I know of them? Nothing at all. I had a task before me at the time. I jaywalked past them to the hardware for a pound of nails and I did not look back. I stood in line to pay my money and did not think, as I think now, that I had witnessed a moment of afflicted grace.

What do I mean by calling such an ordinary, fragment of living by such a title? Only this: We make a mistake if we look for sanctity and respectability only in the Mother Teresa mode. We make another mistake if we see in the failures of a place like this corner only failures. There is to be found here something of sanctity and something of failure in almost

everyone.

This toddling, someone’sgrandmother-looking woman has, I think, a sad, unknowable story. It would seem her grandmother brain has been unmoored by cheap wine or maybe OxyContin. Her addled angels have failed to protect her and she has been marked and shamed in ways I cannot know.

Perhaps, in the way of the intoxicated, she hoped, in that bright and penitential day, to bring herself a moment of resurrected wholeness. Perhaps she was trying awkwardly to do right, a saintly inebriate, blind guide, unprotected protector, a broken Bodhisattva, a being holy and deluded in a place where even blessedness is fractured. We here, after all, to do such kindness as we can. We are here to guide each other through perilous crossings. But the corner of Fourteenth and Vine is a place of conflicted blessings. We are wise to be wary of each other.

The corner of Fourteenth and Vine is a sad place, full of wounded people. But there is brightness, even sanctity, a grace in affliction, even here.

cont. from page 3 with no pull toward any of this. In the streets around, there are a number of halfway houses, treatment centers, and transitional housing units where the work of recovery hums along. There are innocence and strength in these streets, but they are in the background, and quiet. Little of this is out on the street; none of it is as vivid and compelling as what is out on the corner where damaged and corrupted life staggers, weaves, toddles, struts, pimp walks, and cruises by at every hour.

This girl, with her defiant, almost adolescent eye, had a task: to weave these children from one place to another through the color and danger of the street. And was that damaged woman one of their dangers? The girl seemed to think so, and she knows her world much better than I. She knows her world much better than a child should know it. There are dangers in the dope boys, in the traffic, in the sexual predators cruising day and night, in the distractions of neon

STREETVIBES

April, 2004

Whitehead, one of the nation’s most well respected homeless advocates, was denied the opportunity to address advocates who are designing a plan to address homelessness in the DC Metropolitan area is surprising.

Whitehead said, “If we are to move forward, and achieve notable progress in our goals for strengthening the social fabric of America, this type of censorship must end.”

20 YEARS SERVING THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Empowering our neighborhood children through peace, art and education Peaslee Neighborhood Center 215 East 14th Street Over-the-Rhine Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

(513) 621-5514

Page 7

Page 7

Homeless News Digest

by Adam Holdorf, Patty Lane Three 11-year-olds got caught up in a lie that sent a homeless man to jail for eight months. According to the Contra Costa Times, the girls didn’t want to get in trouble for being late to school, so they covered it up by saying they were attacked by a homeless man in a park in Garden Grove, California. Eric Nordmark, a 36-year-old selfdescribed nomad, was jailed for eight months on assault and child molestation charges before one of the girls finally came forward to say she and her friends made up the story. Nordmark maintained his innocence while in jail and recalls his incarceration as “very terrifying.” While Nordmark says he doesn’t hold a grudge against the girls, he has not decided on whether he will sue them or the city. The girls are being referred to Juvenile Court.

A federal class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of homeless children and their parents says that welfare programs in Suffolk County, NY, move homeless children from school to school, and schools resist enrolling and busing them.

The suit claims local schools are failing to provide homeless children with suitable clothing shoes, books, food, and transportation to enable them to attend school and is “depriving homeless children of a chance for a better future,” according to the New York Times. The state receives millions of dollars in federal aid to educate the homeless, according to advocates.

The suit also addresses a prerequisite for school requiring proof of a permanent address for school enrollment, which “results in children being turned away at the school house door,” say the plaintiffs. The suit seeks compliance, not monetary damages.

Eight homeless veterans received full military honors at a special funeral service held outside San Diego. According to the San Diego Union Tribune, local Vietnam veterans, members of the 82nd Airborne, and even Pearl Harbor survivors came to show respect for their military “family” - some serving as honor guard, others as pallbearers. The number of homeless veterans dying in the region has increased, although no one knows why. The Homeless Veterans Burial Program

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gave more than 80 homeless veterans dignified services and funerals over the last several years.

Other cities have similar programs.

“I think we all fear dying alone,” says Al Pavich, president of the Vietnam Veterans of San Diego.

He attends many of these memorials and tells the UnionTribune that his organization offers treatment, job training, and counseling to homeless veterans.

An estimated 270,000 veterans are homeless.

The health of some homeless workers in Florida may have been put at risk when the owner of a downtown St. Petersburg building hired them for a demolition job. The Tampa Bay Tribune reports that county officials may levy more than $15,000 in penalties against the owner, who is accused of hiring a number of homeless to remove crumbling asbestos pipe insulation without proper safety precautions.

Asbestos can cause life-threatening problems, including cancer or scarring in lung tissue.

Regulations require that workers wear protective clothing and treat asbestos before stripping it off pipes. Officials discovered the violations last year while inspecting the apartments.

Dignity Village, the 60person tent city placed on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, was designated a legal campsite by a four-to-one vote of the Portland City Council on

April, 2004

Thursday, February 26.

According to KOIN-TV (koin.com), the new legal status gives the camp the right to stay at its current site next to the Portland Airport. In public testimony before the council’s vote, homeless residents of the tent camp spoke out in its favor: before the camp, “when I became homeless, I went into the woods,” said village treasurer Tim McCarthy. “I was all alone - this was the first chance I had to be around other people in the same situation.” Campers have requested a 10-year lease on the city-owned land they currently inhabit, which is also used as a leafrecycling yard; the council will respond in a few months. The delay in the lease negotiation “made it possible … for the council to skirt the [issue of the] inadequacy of the site,” charged the Oregonian in an editorial, “and its own ethical responsibility to clean it up if the city intends to become the camp’s sponsor.”

Story, Editorial and Art Submission Deadline for the May, 2004 edition of STREETVIBES is Friday, April 9th

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I sing the song of hope, wishing for peace and happiness.

Of spiritual feeling and happiness.

For God’s wisdom and Salvation, kindness and freedom of prayer.

And in the minds and hearts of men, they dream of brothers and fathers and of son’s respect.

Honoring humanity is to be the keeper of Love, and to redeem yourself of temptation of sin.

To renew the soul of damnation, so they be right, and of Heaven.

by Ronald English, Streetvibes Vendor

Nonviolence is not a garment to be put on and off at will.

Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being. Mahatma Gandhi You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.

Indira Gandhi

Page 8

Keep The Faith and Never Give Up

by Mary Gaffney

through his biography, but his teaching.

I sit at my desk as usual, His story is not only about talking to my friends, the homeless, his biographical who I am around life, but about every day - it seems life through faith today that some are in God and His heavy laden, down unchanging with personal hand. Suffering problems. Thinking through cancer that they may have and radiation found a job or a therapy over the place to stay, they years has not sometimes feel stopped him Ms. Mary Gaffney defeated when things from don’t come through. accomplishing his goals. He I talk to my friends about earned his Doctorate of Education this person who I am now going to from the University of Cincinnati, speak about. This gentleman I along with his wife, Monia Posey, have known since a young child. who also received her doctorate.

He was reared in church - St John They hope to start a charter school A. M. E. Zion Church. He is for urban children. known all over the city and in every For it is said, “I can do all neighborhood. He is Reverend Dr. things through Christ, who Michael Posey. strengthens me.”

He has been the pastor now As I close this for this for many years at the church. With month – to my friends, the readers hope and faith in God he has and especially the homeless accomplished many things, not only children; never say “I can’t do.” Iif

you say that, have you really kept the faith?

It is said that before His word fails, heaven and earth will pass away.

As we enter the Lenten season and celebrate the sacrifice of his death and raising, like the blooming of the flowers and trees, we celebrate new life for the coming new year.

The ultimate measure of a person is not where one stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where one stands in times of challenge and controversy.

Martin Luther King, Jr

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April, 2004

Page 9

Page 9

Out With The Old, In With The New.... story and photos by Mary Burke In February, a three story brick building at 302 Mulberry Street in Over-the-Rhine was demolished. Earlier in the week several bricks had fallen off the building onto the street and sidewalk below, which might

have prompted the owner or the Cincinnati Building Department to take action.

According to the Hamilton County Auditor, the building was constructed in 1875. Douglas M. Spitz is the owner. County records show he purchased the then 122-year-old

Before....

building on February 27, 1997 for $12,000.

Simultaneous to this demolition, five new townhouses are being constructed at 126 through 134 Mulberry, just a block west of 302 Mulberry Street. The townhouses are listed for sale at a price range of

$209,900 - $259,500. Each townhouse boasts a view of the city and brick & stone facades.

The brick walls at 302 Mulberry were 3 bricks thick and the building, now demolished, provided a view of the city.

After....

New condo up the street We’d like to hear from you....

Send letters or comments to: Streetvibes@Juno.com, or write attn: Streetvibes 117 East 12th Street Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

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National Homeless Civil Rights Organizing Project (NHCROP)

117 East 12th Street Cincinnati, OH 45202 homelesscivilrights@yahoo.com Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless (513) 421-7803 April, 2004

Sensitivity to the immense needs of humanity brings with it a spontaneous rejection of the arms race, which is incompatible with the all out struggle against hunger, sickness, under-development and illiteracy.

Pope John Paul II

Page 10

This Mother’s Day how will you show your mother that you really care?

Mother’s Day is May 9. Whether she is a mother, a grandmother, an aunt, a wife, or a sister, Mother’s Day is our chance to show the special women in our lives how much they really mean to us.

Mother’s Day is also a chance to honor the spirit of mothering. Mothers are there to make sure we are clothed, clean, fed, safe, and warm. They are there to tuck us in and kiss away tears. They are there to read to us, to listen, and to steer us down the right path.

Nationally, 3.5 million people experience homelessness over the course of a year. Homeless families make up over 40% of that population. This year in Cincinnati alone, over 5,000 families and over 8,000 children will experience homelessness.

The above drawing was created by Asherah, age nine. She was one of many participants in our Mother’s Day card contest for homeless youth. Children across Ohio participated in the contest. Asherah was a resident of the Salvation Army Family Shelter in Cincinnati at the time she drew this picture. Her family is one of 5,000 in Cincinnati that will experience

You can honor your mother by helping the families who need it the most.

The Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless has been working for 20 years to eradicate homelessness in Cincinnati. We firmly believe that by coming together as a community, we can reach this goal. Please help us as we work to erase homelessness from the childhood memories of 8,000 kids in Cincinnati this year.

By sending this completed form along with your donation, Asherah’s Mother’s Day card will be sent to the person you designate below. The card will inform the recipient that a donation has been made in his or her name to the Coalition for the Homeless. ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Donor’s name, address, and phone number ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Name and address of the person to whom we should address the card ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Who should the donation be placed in honor of/in memory of?

Who should we say the card is from?

If you would like the card sent to an additional person, please indicate on another sheet of paper the same information as above. Send this form along with your donation to: The Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless, 117 East 12 Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

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April, 2004

Page 11

Page 11

Family Violence Option Campaign Builds Momentum

by Lynn Williams OEC Organizer From Rep. Jean Schmidt; “I wish the Family Violence Option would have been in place when I was going through a domestic violence crisis. It would have helped me get my life back together much sooner,” stated Catrina Weber, a member of the Ohio Empowerment Coalition Steering Committee who spoke at the OEC’s Press Conference held at the Statehouse on February 17 .

The Press Conference was held to draw public attention to the need for the Family Violence Option in Ohio. Rep. Jean Schmidt, who has agreed to introduce the FVO legislation, was unable to be present due to campaigning in her District, but she released a public statement for the Press Conference. Her aide, Ben Larocco, was present to read Rep. Schmidt’s statement as follows: “The effects of physical, mental and emotional abuse affect hundreds of thousands of families each and every year, sadly many in Ohio are included in that countand those are the ones we know about-likely hundreds more silently endure this trauma, hoping one day for a glimmer of hope.

It is my intent to try to help these victims- victims of abuse and neglect, of physical battering and emotional conflicts – victims through no fault of their own have become part of a destructive cycle that tears away at the very heart of families today.

I am told that currently th

well over half of the women receiving welfare have experienced physical abuse by an intimate partner at some point during their adult lives, with as many as 30 percent of these women reporting abuse in a current relationship.

Many of these women want to escape the cycle of abuse, to begin anew, and yet they find difficulty in doing so because of requirements on our state welfare system.

In the coming months I plan to introduce legislation that will allow Ohio to adopt the Family Violence Option. This permits the waiver of requirements for a victim of domestic violence when complying with those requirements would make it more difficult for the victim to escape domestic violence or would unfairly penalize the individual.

Additionally, the bill will address the need for a state system that will screen victims of domestic violence and refer them to appropriate counseling and supportive services. Allowing these individuals to escape the environment of abuse is essential in their return to healthy, fully productive citizens.

I look forward to working with all involved on this legislation and I am honored to be involved in the effort to break the chain of family violence in Ohio.”

The Press Conference followed a day long Presidents Day Training to build media skills of leaders from the OEC. The leaders then participated in the Press Conference the next day. Groups

Possible House Hearings on Exempt Status for 501(c) Groups In a March 2 speech to the Federation of American Hospitals, House Ways and Means Committee Chair Bill Thomas (R-CA) said he wants the committee to investigate the benefits tax exempt groups give taxpayers, and consider whether more specific requirements should be imposed in exchange for exempt status. A committee spokesman said nothing has been scheduled.

Thomas’ speech raised the issue of similar activities by nonprofit and for-profit entities, such as credit unions and banks, saying, “Frankly there’s been a lot

of activity over the last decade in the tax-preferred area - the 501(c)(3)s, (c)(4)s, (c)(6)s - that requires a broader examination of just what is it the taxpayers are getting for their money.” He said the issue was raised recently in a dispute between the American Hospital Association and the Department of Health and Human Services over hospital charges to uninsured patients. A committee spokesman said the scope of any inquiry would be broad, and not confined to credit unions and hospitals.

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April, 2004

included Appalachian People’s Action Coalition (APAC) of Athens; Stop Targeting Ohio’s Poor (STOP), Cleveland; Empowerment Center of Greater Cleveland; Community Organizing Center, Columbus; Cincinnati Welfare Rights Coalition; Miami Valley Full Employment Council, Dayton; Bethany House Family Shelter, Cincinnati; Drop-Inn Center Full Circle Program, Cincinnati; and endorser group Action –Ohio Coalition for Battered Women, Columbus.

The FVO is a state option that the Federal welfare law, otherwise known as Temporary Assistance to Needy Families or TANF, permits states to implement to protect domestic violence victims who apply for public assistance. Forty states, including Ohio’s neighbors Kentucky and Indiana, have already adopted the Family Violence Option. Many studies have shown that domestic violence is prevalent in a majority of families who apply for public assistance. (Source: Welfare Information Network) As many as 60% of women receiving public assistance have been domestic violence victims as opposed to 22% in the general population.

(Source: “A Review of Research on Welfare and Domestic Violence,” Journal of Social Issues, 2000) The Family Violence Option will: Ensure that public assistance recipients are screened for domestic violence by trained caseworkers

Make support services available to recipients Allow recipients affected by domestic violence to be eligible for exemptions from welfare time limits and work requirements by participating in alternative programs to help put their lives and the lives of their children together.

“Right now there is no requirement that domestic violence victims who apply for welfare in Ohio will receive supportive services to assist in overcoming this barrier.”

“Some counties provide a lot of help, but unfortunately, other counties do little or nothing. The FVO would improve this situation by requiring counties to assist domestic violence victims,” said Katy Heins, Director of the Contact Center.

The Ohio Empowerment Coalition is urging the Ohio Assembly and Governor to protect domestic violence victims in Ohio by adopting the Family Violence Option. A statewide Mobilization Conference/Lobby Day will be held on May 6 at the Trinity Episcopal Church, 125 E. Broad Street, in Columbus to continue mobilizing on the FVO Campaign. For more information about the Conference and/or the Family Violence Option Campaign call the Ohio Empowerment Coalition at 1-877862-5179.

Rep. Jean Schmidt may be contacted at 614-466-8134 or write her at 77 South High Street, Columbus, 43215.

Know Your Rights Brochure Available!

The Know Your Rights Brochure is now available at the Coalition’s office. The brochure is a legal guide for Cincinnati’s homeless and covers a person’s basic rights when interacting with the police, as well as some local laws that might be of interest to the homeless population. If you are a homeless person or if you work with homeless people and would like to obtain free copies of the brochure for yourself or your agency, please call 421-7803, or stop by the Coalition office and pick one up.

Politics

Page 12

Manifest Destiny

by Adam Holdorf, Real Change newspaper UC Berkeley International Studies professor Chalmers Johnson has been a Cold Warrior for much of his career. When the Soviet Union crumbled, he expected the United States declaring itself the winner of the US-Soviet face-off - to pack up its Cold War military outposts, consummate its nuclear disarmament treaties, and devote itself to peacetime pursuits.

Appalled by U.S. foreign policy in the 1990s, he began to wonder: had America’s arms race against the Soviets masked some more fundamental purpose?

The result of those musings was his 2000 book, Blowback: the Costs and Consequences of American Empire, which ignited a brush fire among foreign-policy wonks over to what degree U.S. citizens are endangered by their country’s foreign policy in places such as the Middle East. Then came September 11, 2001. People asking “Why do they hate us?” had, in Blowback, an answer. The network of American military bases on every continent except Antarctica; the secret and not-sosecret wars which have taken civilian lives from Panama to the Philippines - the price of American hegemony, he had warned, is terrorism against its citizens.

Now, writes Johnson in The Sorrows of Empire, “it no longer seems necessary to issue warnings; instead a diagnosis, even an autopsy, may be more appropriate.” The American Empire - the military’s untempered and untethered operations, the Bush doctrines of “preventive war” and unilateralism - is all about us.

And no regime change in the White House will make it go away. “A revolution would be required,” he writes.

But Johnson finds hope, too - in the millions of marchers who opposed the Iraq War; in the antiglobalization movement that debuted in Seattle in 1999; in the vehement disagreement of 30 percent of the American public to our nation’s policies.

RC: You have said that you began thinking of the United States’ foreign policy as one of empire when you visited Okinawa.

Johnson: I was invited by the governor of Okinawa, the poorest, most southerly island of Japan, after the incident of September 4, 1995, in which two Marines and a sailor had abducted, beaten, and

STREETVIBES

raped a 12-year-old girl. The When George Bush says we nuclear weapons [with regard to Pentagon would have you believe are the greatest force of good in Iraq]. the 1995 rape was a single, unusual history, or when he says “You’re Third, a tradition of deceit incident. The truth of the matter is either with us or against us,” which by the government in speaking to that the rate of sexually violent is a line Lenin liked too, but it the public. I would cite above all crimes in Okinawa leading to court actually comes from the Bible February 5, 2003, when Secretary martial is about two per month. we’re talking about a passionate of State Colin Powell sat in the One of the things I remember most ideological error that is leading us United Nations Security Council vividly is the locals’ deep and into, my opinion, very very and issued a long statement that, as abiding belief that they were being dangerous straits. we now know, was an utter tissue victimized by both the Japanese Security of Defense of lies. Our Secretary of State has government and by the Pentagon.

Rumsfield in October said that “we simply no credibility left on earth.

The island was essentially a military don’t have a metric” - his phrase, Fourth, bankruptcy. colony between 1945 and 1972. meaning a measure - we don’t have Everyone knows what is happening The Japanese government, which a metric for whether we are to the American federal deficit; it is wishes to have the alliance with the succeeding against terrorism. But I catastrophic. As Herbert Steinman, United States but does not want to think we do have a metric: in the who was once Chairman of the have American troops located very eight years between 1993 and Council of Economic Advisers once close to its own citizens, essentially 2001, including the attacks of 9/11, said, “Things that can’t go on dumps them all in the equivalent of Al Qaeda carried out five major forever don’t.” Whatever you Puerto Rico. bombing incidents around the think of the Constitution, I My first in reaction was that world. Since that time, in just two guarantee you an economic crisis is Okinawa must be exceptional. As a years, down to including the something that everyone will have result of studying American bases suicide attacks in Istanbul against to come to grips with when it around the world, I concluded that the British consulate and the HSBC occurs, and it could happen at any the real tragedy of Okinawa was Bank, Al Qaeda has carried out 17 time. not that it was unusual or atypical - major bombings. The situation of RC: You’re saying that the fault it was far too typical of the sexually terrorism is clearly worse now lies deeper than with the current violent crimes, environmental since 9/11, and reveals the administration. Do you see hope pollution, noise, bar brawls, drunk inappropriateness of an overly for change in your lifetime? driving accidents that are militarized response to terrorist Johnson: I think it’s perfectly associated with our overseas bases. incidents. possible to imagine the removal of RC: Are there lessons for our RC: You say it would take “a President Bush and his occupation of Iraq in this? revolution” to return to some of administration. He seems well on Johnson: It’s really interesting how the principles that were his way toward discrediting much the American press has tried expressed in the Declaration of himself. But no matter who to suggest that our bringing Independence - a declassified replaces him, we’ll have enormous democracy to Japan under General CIA budget, for example. Is it difficulties standing up to the MacArthur after World War II is a too late for the democratic vested interests of the Pentagon, model for our activities in Iraq. principles that founded our the intelligence agencies, and the I’ve wanted to always say that if republic? military-industrial complex. If you you believe that, then you’ve got to The Pentagon would have you believe the 1995 rape was a leave Okinawa single, unusual incident. The truth of the matter is that the entirely out of the rate of sexually violent crimes in Okinawa leading to court discussion, because the last martial is about two per month. One of the things I remember thing we ever did most vividly is the locals’ deep and abiding belief that they was bring were being victimized by both the Japanese government and by democracy to the Pentagon...

Okinawa. It’s certainly a place where no one thanks the United Johnson: That’s what we’re going ask me right now whether I think States for its presence. to find out, in a very short period that’s going to happen, I’m sorry to RC: Your very first quote in The of time. My last chapter called say I really don’t. I think the polls Sorrows of Empire is President “The Sorrows of Empire” has a strongly suggest that 70 percent of Bush saying “Our nation is the discussion of four main sorrows. the public endorses the Bush greatest force for good in One is perpetual war: Bush and Administration and the war policy; history.” You trace that Cheney have mentioned between 30 percent is adamantly opposed. sentiment back to Woodrow 50 and 60 nations on earth that And 30 percent in a country as big Wilson and his League of they would like to bring about as the United States is not a small Nations, and show it’s led many a regime change through preventive number. leader astray. Where did we go war.

One of the things that wrong this time?

Second, the end of the appalls me about the current Johnson: The United States has Republic, in the sense of the political situation is how none of made potentially a fatal mistake hollowing out of the Constititution: the Democrat [presidential after the demise of the Soviet James Madison, easily the most candidates] seem to be offering an Union in 1991 in starting to important author of the alternative to what American convince itself that it is a new Constitution, declared that the behavior in the world should be.

Rome. That we are a colossus single most important article in it None of them have any real afoot in the world, no one can was that the right to go to war had criticism of the size of the Defense possibly resist our military power, to be in the hands of those elected budget, the amount of money we are beyond good and evil, we by the people, never in the hands of spent. Some of them - that is, do not need friends. We begin to a single man. In October 2002, our most of them - voted for war sound like the Roman Empire, Congress voted to give that power powers to be transferred to the which of course was a military to a single man when he felt like it, President [in the case of Iraq]. dictatorship. on his impulse, including the use of

April, 2004

GCCH News

Page 13

Page 13

Spring

Within These Walls....

by Michael Henson First hints: A red haze among the maples.

A great clutter of branches thrown down by a storm.

A row of daffodils that raise their baffled heads out of the cold beds of the garden.

The light, stretched back by the black fingers of the trees at the horizon, stretched back by the rooftops at the head of the alley, ekes out the lingering days.

The winter rains become the spring rains, cold and persistent.

The rivers rise to their banks; they darken with silt.

They boil coldly in their drive to the Gulf bearing downstream anything loose in their path.

Then, a day that ignites green fires at the tips of the sycamores.

A day when the earth shimmers with a dim mammalian pulse.

After the million deaths of winter, partisan births, clandestine cadres, in tens and twelves, here, and here, and in the hedges.

Everything swells.

Everything grows more numerous.

New hungers arise, some small as the belly of a vole, some neatly small as thought.

Others large as a field of wheat.

Still others larger than we dare name.

Everywhere the hungers assert themselves.

They stretch among the root hairs in the compost.

They call from the nests tucked in the branches of the cedars.

They quiver on the dark floor of every pond.

They weep themselves known in the houses of the poor.

by Reenie Ware Gadsden Correctional Facility, Quincy, Florida I’ve developed a relationship with God; I’ve put all my trust in Him, It is God, and only God who can help me conquer sin, We’re all God’s children and we all fall short, Only God can judge us for He truly knows our heart.

I’ve met different people from all walks of life, We’re all fighting sin, to stop doing wrong and instead do right.

I’ve learned to care, love and respect myself, I’ve learned that I am more important than anyone else.

I’ve had a chance to realize just how valuable my life is, A chance to realize it’s not better to receive than give.

Give to one another because it is the right thing to do, To give to those who are less fortunate than you.

I’ve lived, I’ve learned and I’ve changed for the better, I’ve learned that change brings on new challenges.

Within these walls is not where I want to be, However, within these walls is where I’ve regained my sanity.

Tell Me Who?

by Robert Manassa Who woke me up this morning?

Who stops my heart from yearning?

To do the things I know is wrong Who keeps me safe from all harm?

Tell Me Who? Who puts shoes on my feet?

Who gave me food to eat?

Who stops me from living a life of crime?

Who keeps me in check, walking a straight line?

Tell Me Who? Some may say it’s Emanuel, The man who met the woman at the well, I need to find an answer soon, Before I’m met with doom Tell Me Who?

CHILD OF THE UNIVERSE

We See You

by Merry Ferrell Hey you, standing over there.

On every corner, everywhere.

Dealing drugs to your family and friends, Give your brother a hit, he’ll never quit.

Can’t you see, they are losing their mind?

Her looks are gone, his teeth are missing.

They’ve lost their hope and dreams and their Homes.

You think you’re Kool.

I know you are a Fool.

I tried it once, I tried it twice.

I don’t like it.

You say you are looking for the ultimate high.

You’ll never find it, you will slowly die.

The Crack drug slowly eats you from the inside out.

The dealer eats your money and leaves you alone.

No love. No joy. He’s gone.

God held my hand and He held on tight.

He showed me what was wrong and what was right.

I’m never alone.

He shares my Home, my Dream my Joy, my Life.

I firmly believe that mother universe will provide all that I am in need of to sustain this life of mine.

Each of us can harness the talents and energies to accomplish everything we set for ourselves as a goal.

We are each in the space and place we belong in.

Where we are and where we are headed is already pre-destined.

It has been determined by the seeds we have sewn in this life and by those of the past. Its success depends on how well we attend to the crop we have planted within us. when in doubt we must speak truthfully.......in all matters love every one with a open hand......even when it is painful to do so ......look into tomorrow and do what is for the good of all.......including you Great care should be taken of what you manifest.

Do not speak or act anything negative into existence...Knowingly refrain from these activities.

STREETVIBES

April, 2004

Art & Poetry

Page 14

Always with you, Always with me

Brick

by Brett Zwolinski

by jh

mountains we climb and seas we traverse time we buy and life passes by in my mind there is but only one thought... maddening horror, pent up fear illusions, inebriating crimes told again and again, the story of mine whose life are we seeing? how and when did it all begin?

It is the famous bricks, pinning our hopes to cold concrete, broken glass, and scattered dreams.

Because, it is real, it becomes a triumph, breaking the calm with delightful sounds and hope from a child’s voice.

times immemorial, death unveiled empty and bleeding, caroused and cheating to let go...

Now we hold on even tighter grasp for breath of fresh air; ahhh... the spirit released... earth inhaled to our nostrils becoming one with yourself in passionate fit rage and rancor, tearing at flesh killing me softly, taking my breath love is liberty, love is freedom love is mercy, love is justice

Send your poetry to Streetvibes 117 East 12th Street, Cin, O 45202

Please understand my fear I’m the only one standing here When I woke up, I didn’t know what to do I do remember I prayed to you This time and place is new to me There’s no instruction for me to see Please God can I hold your hand At least I won’t be lonely as I stand My feelings and goals are hard to do But God, deep in my heart, there really for you Their paths you make and choices you give Are those that I chose to live You are my master, I am your servant I seek you. I submit to you Even without you in my view With your grace and mercy everyday I can face fear and doubt in every way As everyday goes past My faith in you, I know will last Thank you God in every way Thank you God just for today

It is, because there is a dream, cloaking the desperation with denial and a foolish dance, tapping the broken concrete, like a broken hammer.

It comes to us, because it never dries your eyes, but breaks your heart.

There is enough pain to consume your spirit.

And then it dies because the ancient mantra fortifies the dreadful discourse, allowing humans to pass in the street, asleep.

Gregory Payton

Shutter Speed

by Jimmy Heath

Window Jesus, Over-the-Rhine

STREETVIBES

April, 2004

Art & Poetry

Page 15

Page 15

Spinning the Past, Threatening the Future

by Norman Solomon Political aphorisms don’t get any more cogent: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.”

George Orwell’s famous observation goes a long way toward explaining why — a full year after the invasion of Iraq — the media battles over prewar lies are so ferocious in the United States. Top administration officials are going all out to airbrush yesterday’s deceptions on behalf of todays. And tomorrow’s.

The future they want most to control starts on Election Day. And with scarcely seven months to go in the presidential campaign, the past that Bush officials are most eager to obscure is their own record. In late 2002 and early last year, whenever the drive to war hit a bump, they maneuvered carefully to keep the war caravan moving steadily forward.

There was no doubt; they were a hard-driving bunch. The most powerful squad of the Bush foreign-policy team ran on the fuel of certitude at such a prodigious rate that even their momentum had momentum — maybe, in part, because their lives’ trajectories seemed to demand it. War had been declared

first within themselves.

Perhaps such steeliness has been almost boilerplate in history; excuses for aggressive war have never been hard to come by. In this case, no amount of geopolitical analysis — from media pundits, academics and other commentators — could really do more to shed light than the light bulb comprehension that these people in charge had from the outset made the determination that war it would be.

So, every attempt at civic engagement and demonstrations against the war scenario was, in effect, trying to impede “leaders” who had already gone around the bend. A very big bend. One of the American mass media taboos was to seriously suggest the possibility that the lot of them — Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice and, yes, Powell — were, in their pursuit of war on Iraq, significantly deranged.

Working back from their conclusion of war’s necessity, top Bush administration officials — with assistance from many reporters and pundits — were reading the calendar backwards, hell-bent on getting the invasion underway well before the extreme heat of summer.

There was also political weather to be navigated. Though

much more susceptible to manipulation than the four seasons, the electoral storms would be starting for the 2004 presidential contest, and a secured victory over Iraq well in advance seemed advisable.

The peace-seeking pretense was dripping with charade in the months before the invasion. Journalists kept writing and talking about the chances of war as though President Bush hadn’t already made up his mind to order it. Yet what Bush said in public was exactly opposite to reality — a “one-eighty.” When he talked about preferring to find an acceptable alternative to war, he was determined to bypass and destroy every alternative to war.

Rational arguments would not work to forestall the presidential order to unleash the Pentagon. Despite the obstacles, which included vital activism and protests for peace, the chief executive easily got to have his war — the best kind, to be fought and endured only by others.

Eighteen months ago, looking out at Baghdad from an upper story of a hotel, I thought of something Albert Camus once wrote. “And henceforth, the only honorable course will be to stake everything on a formidable gamble: that words are more

powerful than munitions.” Later, any and all words were to be vastly outmatched by the big guns trained on Iraq.

One afternoon, 14 months ago, inside a little shop in Baghdad’s crowded souk, a young boy sat behind an old desk, brown eyes wide, quietly watching his father unfurl carpets for potential customers, and I wondered: “Will my country’s missiles kill you?”

Key questions of the past are also crucial for the future. For instance, can the United States credibly wage a “war on terrorism” by engaging in warfare that terrorizes civilians?

Close to 10,000 Iraqi civilians have died because of the war during the past year.

Does the mix of mendacity and deadly violence from the Oval Office really strike against terrorism, or does it fuel terrorist cycles?

And, in the realm of news media, how many journalists are willing and able to go beyond reliance on official sources enough to bring us truth about lies that result in death?

Norman Solomon writes a syndicated column on media and politics. He is co-author (with Reese Erlich) of “Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn’t Tell You,” published in 2003 by Context Books.

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Story, Editorial and Art Submission Deadline for the May, 2004 edition of STREETVIBES is Friday, April 9th Streetvibes exists as a forum for the expression of the views and opinions of our readers and supporters. The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the Streetvibes staff or the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless.

STREETVIBES

April, 2004

Editorial

Page 16

Buy Me Love

have allocated an entirely of “reality” television, but the cyberspace? Why are we so manufactured romantic symbolism profits are undeniable. Television accepting of this marketplace of

by Hannah Kane to these objects. networks don’t have to pay human product? According to one The Beatles proclaimed in Stranger still is the fact that study, conducted by Andrea Baker enormous salaries to reality 1964 that money can’t buy me we buy into the diamond industry’s of Ohio University, Lancaster, the television “stars,” and advertisers love. J-Lo echoed that sentiment in messages about the relationships are anxious to get the attention of average commitment time for 2001 when she argued that love between men and women and the young demographic that has couples who meet online is don’t cost a thing. In 40 years, pop money. The diamond industry’s latched onto the genre. In fact, the accelerated—they tend to fall in music has maintained its belief in advertising is unabashedly sexist, popularity of these shows have love and marry within a year to a the sacredness of love. Love is heterosexist, and materialistic. year and a half. As is the case with caused executives to rethink the something that shouldn’t be Feminist, GLBT, and antiway television is made. Reruns are many other new technologies, we purchased. It should remain consumerism movements, however, can’t get enough of those gadgets, out, new “casts” are in. And this untainted despite our culture of have failed to prevent diamonds, a means there will be no shortage of inventions, and innovations that capitalism and commodification. frivolous luxury, from somehow help us to maximize our time. Why “real” television love stories for us But love has fallen victim to glittering their way into mainstream should it be any different regarding to gossip about, or to participate in the same consumer culture that consciousness. Perhaps the true for those who are inclined. our quest for love? turned religion into glow-in-theirony of the diamond industry is the So, if anyone is looking to An even more recent dark Jesus keychains and major fact that, despite claims that “a prove the Beatles wrong, there is a addition to the love industry department store sales that diamond is forever,” diamonds can arrived with the reality television wealth of evidence to point to that commemorate formerly religious in fact be shattered, chipped, boom of the past several television supports the theory that love is holidays. discolored, or destroyed. indeed for sale. Nowadays, one can seasons. Picking up where “Love Love is the final frontier in There’s more to peddling buy love via romance novels, love Connection” and “The Dating the war between what we hold love than just diamonds. Before Game” left off, hit shows like “The song compilation albums, dating sacred and what we are willing to you even consider giving or services, personal ads, lingerie, Bachelor,” “The Bachelorette,” manufacture, brand, and bargain wearing a ring, you have to find the “Joe Millionaire,” “Average Joe,” romantic comedy films, sex toys, for. And the truth is, it’s a losing right person. And the masterminds magazines, and more. And that “Blind Date,” “Elimidate,” “Who battle. behind internet dating want to help Wants to Marry a Multidoesn’t include the abundance of eIn a world of internet dating you. For a fee, services like solicitations that appear in our Millionaire?,” “Who Wants to and television marriages, love is match.com and love.com will allow Marry My Dad?,” (are you inboxes every day, inviting us to becoming decidedly less romantic. you to enter your specifications and exhausted yet?) are changing the grow, augment, join, and other But we first took the heart out of find the perfect mate. If you’re the less-than-pure verbs, all of which way America dates. Dating is no love long ago. In 1948, De Beers type of person who already knows longer a private affair between two will make us more attractive to told us that a diamond is forever what you’re looking for (no taller people, as millions of viewers tune others. For those of us looking for and we, blinded by the 14 sparkly than 6’2”, no shorter than 5’10”; a more conventional form of love, in each week and discuss around carats of a history-making PR brown eyes, please; smokers need perhaps we can find comfort in Jthe water cooler the next day. campaign, agreed. not apply; wanting to adopt Lo’s heartfelt lyrics—provided, of Dating is no longer a personal In 1888, De Beers children), then you might as well course, we can get past the glint matter as some shows give the Consolidated Mines, Ltd. was speed up the Darwinian process from her $3 million 6.1 carat Harry viewing audience the power to created to capitalize on the and get on with the virtual determine the romantic fates of the Winston pink diamond engagement enormous diamond mines that had matchmaking. ring. lovelorn. Dating is no longer recently been discovered in South This is more than a niche Hannah is a senior at romantic as cameras zoom in on Africa. Before 1870, diamonds market - some people are getting Emerson College, and doesn’t first kisses and microphones were truly a rare commodity; the rich off of other people’s desire for amplify the sweet nothings. No, watch as much TV as one might only known sources were in the romance. Singles looking for love assume. Reprinted from the dating is not what it used to be. riverbeds in India and the jungles of spent over $300 million on online February 2004 issue of What’s Reality television has made it Brazil. After the South African personal ads in 2002.

Up, Boston. weird, perverted, voyeuristic, mines were discovered, De Beers Why are people so willing cynical, cliché, and profitable. quickly monopolized the global to put themselves on sale in People question the reality industry and organized a massive advertising campaign in an effort to maintain the now mythical Berta’s Art Corner perception that diamonds are precious and scarce, and thus maintain a high market value.

Much has been written about “conflict diamonds” or “blood diamonds,” detailing the horrific labor and human rights abuses that characterize the diamond industry. Despite the controversy, 85 percent of American women own a piece of diamond jewelry. The industry’s advertising campaigns consistently and effectively portray the diamond as the most meaningful expression of love and devotion. Considering the fact that diamonds serve an entirely utilitarian purpose (industrial precision-cutting) and have little intrinsic monetary value, and that the diamond industry has managed to maintain its extraordinarily high prices all these A wire wall Sculpture, 1821 Race Street, Findlay Market in Over-the-Rhine years, it’s almost bizarre that we

STREETVIBES

April, 2004

Editorial

Page 17

Page 17

Handling of Huntington Meadows a Crime

by Brian Garry (Ed. Note; The former Huntington Meadows housing complex was closed last year and low-income tenants were moved out. New condominiums are planned with neighborhood churches taking the lead in development of the site.)

In Huntington Meadows we have black on black crime on a

“high level.” It’s the black church against the black people. It’s the black church against poor people.

Where were those churches during the whole scandalous, criminal, and planned closing of Huntington Meadows? This community of people surrounded their churches.

The churches should have stood up for the residents. Search the newspapers and see if there are any quotes from these pastors

“standing up for” their defenseless neighbors in need.

Now the churches are pawns in the hands of politicians and “developers” that are part of a racist and classist plot to rid the city of poor and black people. Our city council said that they “had no money” for the former residents, yet they have 13.5 million to wreck it down and build expensive single family houses?

The closing of Huntington Meadows was criminal, as will come out the in lawsuit filed in federal court.

The deal with the churches developing the area is hypocritical at least. These churches did not stand up to fight the immoral closing of Huntington Meadows and they are now reaping the benefits of this hideous mass eviction. Show me a quote from that time period from one of those pastors advocating that the people not be kicked out of their homes.

The church should protect the rights of the poor, not stand on their backs to climb up the economic ladder.

A Broken Promise: the limits of work in the new economy

by Timothy Harris A recession, the old joke goes, is when your neighbor is out of work, but when you lose your own job, that’s a depression. So what happens when one in four full time workers often has to choose between rent, food, and utilities, and at least that many more are excluded from the economy altogether? That’s when the joke really stops being funny.

Two recent books offer an fresh look at the demise of the American Dream. Beth Shulman’s The Betrayal of Work examines the trend toward low wage work and how all of us, in the long run, pay the hidden costs. Keeping Up with the Dow Joneses, which describes the growing equality gap, the burgeoning prison state, and the system of workfare, is more ambitious but ultimately over-reaches. Its critique of neo-liberalism offers less of a unifying theme than a long list of things we’re against. It is this tone of “we leftists” against the world that undermines this book’s appeal. The Betrayal of Work, on the other hand, begins with the common sense notion that a fair day’s work should draw a fair day’s pay. While this hasn’t been the case for at least two decades, the problems of low wage work, says Shulman, go far beyond the minimum wage. Benefits in the low wage service sector are mostly nonexistent. The work is often demeaning and dangerous with management by intimidation being the norm. There is little to no flexibility to deal with sickness, childcare, or family problems. Little training or chance for advancement is available.

Shulman brings what could be a dry policy discussion to life with by allowing three workers to speak for themselves. Single mom Linda Stevens once dreamed of being a business lawyer, but now struggles to raise a daughter while working fulltime in a food court and part-time as a clerk. “I work hard,” she says. “I take care of my customers. But I feel

like I’m being stabbed in the back.

The owner keeps telling me that we are family. But this is no way to treat family.”

Janitor Flor Segunda supports a disabled husband who is only able to work occasional day labor and three children on $6.00 an hour. She has worked for the same employer for six years. Bob Butler sharpens knives at a poultry processing plant. At $8.20 an hour, he is one of the factory’s most highly compensated workers. “They care about the chickens more than us,” he says.

The Betrayal of Work makes three arguments for a more just economy: Low wage work is not just somebody else’s problem. We all pay because society subsidizes low wage industries by picking up the social costs of widespread poverty.

Similarly, we all benefit by low wage work in ways that are deeply unfair.

A moral society does not maintain cheap prices in the midst of affluence at the expense of the most desperately poor. Finally, bad jobs do not have to remain bad jobs.

The manufacturing sector

was filled with lousy jobs as well before organized labor created the 40-hour week, benefits, and the family wage. There is no reason, she argues, that the service industry cannot be unionized as well. In fact, this is the only strategy likely to yield results. The service sector needs to organize, and the more privileged middle-class needs to move beyond single-issue fragmentation to support the struggles of the working poor.

The alternative is a never-ending race to the bottom in which we all lose.

Keeping Up With The Dow Joneses documents a divided society as well, where the growing gap between rich and poor is buttressed by a system geared to profit for the few at the expense of the many.

Author Vijay Prashad unites the attack on organized labor, the expanding prison-industrial complex, and the rollback of welfare that was completed under the Clinton administration under the rubric of neo-liberalism.

The book veers from the overly general to the weirdly specific.

For example, Prashad takes the militant Kensington Welfare Rights

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Union to task for not having a “program for the transformation of the state.” This sort of sectarian squabbling, however well meant, is probably interesting to a couple dozen people, and no one - outside of those few who have actually used the phrase ”this historic juncture” in the course of casual conversation - cares what they think. Real social transformation requires a broadbased movement that has appeal beyond the left ghetto.

If practical program is what you’re looking for, Shulman offers specifics. Where Prashad merely instructs us to “build socialism,” the final chapter of Betrayal of Work offers a “Compact With Working Americans.” This includes policy recommendations as broad as strengthening the right of workers to organize and as specific as expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit.

While much of the platform goes well beyond what mainstream Democrats would now support, it’s amazing what can happen when enough people shove hard in the same direction.

Reprinted from Real Change

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Please call our office at 421-7803 for more information about the program. Many thanks for your support.

Streetvibes exists as a forum for the expression of the views and opinions of our readers and supporters. The opinions expressed herein are not necessarily those of the Streetvibes staff or the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless.

STREETVIBES

April, 2004

Editorial

Page 18

FRAC - Food Research and Action Center News One of the most disturbing and extraordinary aspects of life in this very wealthy country is the persistence of hunger. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports, based on a national U.S. Census Bureau survey of households representative of the U.S. population, that in 2002 ,11.1 percent of all U.S. households were “food insecure” because of lack of resources. Of the 12.1 million households that were food insecure, 3.8 million suffered from food insecurity that was so severe that USDA’s very conservative measure classified them as “hungry.”

Since 1999, food insecurity has increased by 3.9 million individuals: 2.8 million adults and more than one million children. In 2002, 34.9 million people lived in households experiencing food insecurity, compared to 33.6 million in 2001 and 31 million in 1999. See FRAC’s analysis of and a link to the full report: Household Food Security in the United States, 2002 Definitions: What Do Hunger and Food Insecurity Mean in the United States?

Very simply, hunger is defined as the uneasy or painful sensation caused by lack of food.

When “hunger in America” is discussed, people are referring to the recurrent and involuntary lack of access to sufficient food due to poverty or constrained resources, which can lead to malnutrition over time. In some developing nations where famine is widespread, hunger manifests itself as severe and very visible clinical malnutrition. In the United States hunger manifests itself, generally, in a less severe form. This is in part because established programs help to provide a safety net for many lowincome families. While starvation seldom occurs in this country, children and adults do go hungry and chronic mild undernutrition does occur when financial resources are low. The mental and physical changes that accompany inadequate food intakes can have harmful effects on learning, development, productivity, physical and psychological health, and family life.

STREETVIBES

New phrases have emerged over the last two decades to describe the widespread but less severe hunger problems we typically face in the United States.

Food security is a term used to describe what our nation should be seeking for all its people assured access at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life, with no need for recourse to emergency food sources or other extraordinary coping behaviors to meet basic food needs. In a nation as affluent as ours this is a readily achievable goal.

EDITORIAL: EFFECTS OF FOOD INSECURITY ON PATIENTS (American Academy of Family Physicians, March 1, 2004) In this editorial David H. Holben of Ohio University College of Health and Human Services and Wayne Myles of Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine, discuss the role physicians can play with patients who may suffer from food insecurity or hunger. The editorial suggests ways in which physicians can determine if a patient experiences food insecurity or hunger, the effects food insecurity and hunger have on health and development, and which federal food assistance programs physicians can refer patients to if a patient is thought to be experiencing food insecurity or hunger. http://www.aafp.org/ afp/20040301/editorials.html#3 TEXAS AGRICULTURE DEPARTMENT REVAMPS RULES ON WHAT FOODS SCHOOLS CAN SERVE TO STUDENTS (USA Today, March 4, 2004) The Texas Department of Agriculture released new regulations for school food service to reduce the fat and sugar content of foods eaten by students at school. The regulations include limiting the number of times foods such as French fries are served, limiting portion sizes (e.g., 12 oz limit on soft drinks), and the sugar/syrup content of foods such as flavored milks and canned fruit. In August 2003, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs banned “foods of minimal nutritional value” from Texas elementary schools and during lunch time at middle schools. The new rules will affect some 4.2 million school children.

These regulations will go into effect in August 2004 at schools that participate in the National School Lunch Program, School Breakfast Program and After School Snacks. http:// www.usatoday.com/news/health/

April, 2004

2004-03-04-schoolnutrition_x.htm The link to the regulations is: http:// www.agr.state.tx.us/foodnutrition/ policy/food_nutrition_policy.pdf BERKELEY, CALIFORNIA MIDDLE SCHOOL STUDENTS GROW, PREPARE OWN MEALS (New York Times Magazine, March 7, 2004) On the campus of Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School, in Berkeley, California, students grow and prepare their own school lunches, getting a “seed to table experience” that reinforces the connection between the earth and the food we eat. The program is part of the “Edible Schoolyard” program inspired and led by Alice Waters, organic chef and owner of Berkeley’s Chez Panisse restaurant. Waters hopes that these predominantly low- to middle-income students will learn about the food they eat and consume more fruits and vegetables. http:// www.nytimes.com/2004/03/07/ magazine/07WATERS.html (free registration required) REPORT FINDS THAT PUBLIC ASSISTANCE DOES NOT COVER BASIC EXPENSES FOR MICHIGAN FAMILIES (Grand Rapids Press, Grand Rapids, MI, March 8, 2004) A study by the Michigan County Social Services Association, designed to measure the buying power of people receiving public assistance, found that families enrolled in TANF and food stamps ended up about $900 short each month when trying to cover basic expenses.

These expenses include rent, utilities, food and transportation.

The 2004 Market Basket Survey found that a family of three needed to pay $1,733 in basic expenses each month, more than twice what the average family receives in benefits. http://www.mlive.com/news/ statewide/index.ssf?/base/news-3/ 1078440003205080.xml NORTHWEST INDIANA FOOD PANTRY OFFERS ETHNIC FOOD CHOICES, SERVICES TO SPANISHSPEAKING CLIENTS (Times, Munster, IN, March 11, 2004) The Village Food Pantry in Valparaiso, Indiana started a weekly Spanish Food Pantry on Fridays in order to assist Spanishspeaking clients by serving them staple foods from their native countries (e.g., pinto beans, rice, corn flour and jalapenos). The Spanish Food Pantry also assists

FRAC News

families in obtaining benefits like food stamps, health care and other services. The food pantry is also working to translate its client paperwork into Spanish. The first Spanish Food Pantry night was attended by 21 percent of the pantry’s regular clientele. http:// nwitimes.com/articles/2004/03/ 11/news/porter_county/ fa546ff4355c933186256e540006be04.txt NEW HAMPSHIRE STATE LABOR COMMISSIONER URGES LEGISLATORS TO RAISE MINIMUM WAGE (Portland Press Herald, Portland, ME, March 9, 2004) Labor Commissioner James Casey tried to salvage a bill that would increase New Hampshire’s minimum wage to $6 an hour, pointing out that, at $5.15 per hour, the state’s minimum wage is at least $1.10 below all other states in New England. Casey said that an increase would be “the right thing to do, the compassionate thing to do.” He also noted that no other New England state “has reported higher unemployment as a result” of a minimum wage increase. An estimated 31,000 workers in New Hampshire earn minimum wage. http://news.mainetoday.com/ apwire/D816E9GG2-67.shtml WISCONSIN FOOD PANTRY SEES INCREASE IN NEEDY PEOPLE (Wisconsin State Journal, Madison, WI, March 8, 2004) The St. Vincent de Paul Society food pantry in Madison has seen a significant increase in the number of needy people. The number of clients at the pantry has increased 35 percent in one month and more than 20 percent over the previous quarter.

According to society director Ralph Middlecamp, the reasons for the jump in need are because many people who were working two jobs to get by have lost one in the slow economy, and an increasing number of Chicago residents are moving to Madison.

“Chicago is undergoing some hard times economically, and the city is also tearing down some of its housing projects,” Middlecamp theorized. http:// www.madison.com/archives/ read.php?ref=wsj: 2004:03:08:345387:FRONT To subscribe to the weekly FRAC News Digest go on the web: http://capwiz.com/frac/mlm/.

Ben Winter Food Research and Action Center (202) 986-2200 x3019 phone (202) 986-2525 fax Email: bwinter@frac.org

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TREATMENT: Both N.A. Hopeline 820-2947 A.A. Hotline 351-0422 C.C.A.T. 381-6672 Talbert House 684-7956 Transitions, Inc 859-491-4435 VA Domiciliary 859-559-5011 DIC Live-In Program 721-0643

TREATMENT: Men Charlie’s 3/4 House 784-1853 Prospect House 921-1613 Starting Over 961-2256

TREATMENT: Women First Step Home 961-4663 Full Circle Program 721-0643

HOUSING: CMHA 721-4580 Excel Development 632-7149 Miami Purchase 241-0504 OTR Housing Net. 369-0004 ReSTOC 381-1171 Tender Mercies 721-8666 Tom Geiger House 961-4555

SHELTER: Both Anthony House (Youth) 357-4602 Caracole (AIDS) 761-1480 Friars Club 381-5432 Drop Inn Center 721-0643 Haven House 863-8866 Interfaith Hospitality 471-1100 Lighthouse Youth Center (Teens) 861-1111 St. John’s Housing 651-6446

Mt. Airy Center 661-4620 Volunteers of Amer. 381-1954

Need Help or Want to Help?

If you need help or would like to help please call one of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless members listed below.

SHELTERS: Women and Children YWCA Battered Women’s Shelter 872-9259 (Toll Free) 1-888-872-9259 Bethany House 557-2873 Salvation Army 762-5660 Welcome Hse. 859-431-8717 Women’s Crisis Center 859-491-3335 SHELTER: Men City Gospel Mission 241-5525 Garden St. House 241-0490 Joseph House (Veterans) 241-2965 St. Francis/St.Joseph House 381-4941

Formed in 1984, The Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless is a membership organization. Our member groups serve the homeless through emergency shelter, transitional living facilities, permanent housing, medical services, social services, soup kitchens, and mental health/addiction services.

The Coalition also consists of individual citizens who want to take an active role in ensuring that Cincinnati is an inclusive community, meeting the needs of all of its citizens. Join the fight to end homelessness; contact the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless at (513) 421-7803, 117 East 12th Street Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

OTHER SERVICES: AIDS Volunteers of Cincinnati 421-2437 Appalachian Identity Center 621-5991 Beech Acres 231-6630 Center for Independent Living Options 241-2600 Churches Active in Northside 591-2246 Cincinnati Health Network 961-0600 Community Action Agency 569-1840

Contact Center 381-4242 Emanuel Center 241-2563 Freestore/ Foodbank 241-1064 Fransiscan Haircuts 651-6468 Goodwill Industries 771-4800 Coalition for the Homeless 421-7803 Hamilton Co. Mental Health Board 946-8600 Mental Health Access Point 558-8888 Hamilton Co. TB Control 632-7186 Health Rsrc. Center 357-4602 Homeless Mobile Health Van 352-2902 House of Refuge Mission 221-5491 Legal Aid Society 241-9400 Madisonville Ed. & Assis.

Center 271-5501 Mary Magdalen House 721-4811 McMicken Dental Clinic 352-6363 Our Daily Bread 621-6364 Peaslee Neighborhood Center 621-5514 Project Connect Homeless Kids 357-5720 St. Vincent De Paul 562-8841 The Emergency Food Center 471-4357 Travelers Aid 721-7660 United Way 721-7900 VA Homeless 859-572-6226 Women Helping Women 872-9259 MIDDLETOWN/HAMILTON (Butler County) St. Raphaels (Food Bank/Soup Kitchen) 863-3184 Salvation Army 863-1445 Serenity House Day Center 422-8555 Open Door Pantry 868-3276 New Life Baptist Mission (Soup Kitchen) 896-9800 Hope House (Homeless Families/Singles) 423-4673

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