Streetvibes August 2005 Edition

August 2005

STREETVIBES “Outsider Art” Provides a Voice Ron English, a resident artist of downtown Cincinnati, knows the power of his craft and the effect it has on people who view it. “My hand just starts to move and I don’t know if I am in control of it. It’s like a dream” says 50 year-old English.

Ron, a Streetvibes vendor and talented artist, is like many low-income artists in Cincinnati who struggle to find an outlet for their voice and art, while making some spare change on the side.

Ron collects scraps of cardboard and paper to create his portraits with pencil and pastel. The drawings he creates are stunning images of the way he sees the faces of people. (see cover) The development and recognition of so-called “naïve” art has a long and quirky history, populated by interesting and sometimes startling characters. Most of these artists are untrained in conventional art forms and use the tools of art as a way to sound their voice and experience. Some of these so-called “outsider” artists express themselves as musicians, spokenword poets, writers and painters.

Peaslee Neighborhood Center, in downtown Over-the-Rhine, collaborates with musicians and artists in order to bring art to local lowincome people and children.

Peaslee has worked with a professional artist from the Cincinnati Art Academy to create mosaics for public display, and there is a current project to involve aspiring neighborhood artists and children on mural projects.

Also in Cincinnati, Vulcan’s Forge, a project of the Recovery Initiative, focuses on the positive and creative aspects of individuals and is a support system and a source of inspiration for low-income and mentally challenged people.

The Recovery Initiative believes not only in Vulcan’s Forge but also that the process of recovery is closely linked to artistic expression.

A number of studies have indicated a higher incidence of artistic expression among persons with mental illness when compared with the general population. Due to society’s marginalization of certain groups and the stigma Ron English associated with mental illness, clients of these programs have few ways to express themselves. Vulcan’s Forge and other programs represent a rare Dr. Hans Prinzhorn collected thousands of works by psychiatric opportunity for participants to not only enhance their own individual recovery patients and his book, “Bildernerei der Geisteskranken” (Artistry of the but dispel public misconceptions about persons with mental illness.

Mentally Ill), published in 1922 became an influential work amongst Surrealist The list of programs in Cincinnati goes on. Yet this “outsider” art and other artists of the time. remains ‘out’ of mainstream art circles.

The development of the awareness of forms of creative expression that exist outside accepted cultural norms, or the realm of “fine art,” began “Art” Cont. on Page 2 with the researches of psychiatrists early in the 20th century.

Lessons from London Bombings show right was right all along, pundits say Many pundits insisted that “partisanship” should play no part in the discussion of the July 7 terrorist attacks in London. But it seemed like business as usual in the right-wing media—as commentators used the attacks to score political points for their side and promote their pet agendas.

On Fox News Channel’s Special Report (7/7/05), Jeff Birnbaum seemed hopeful that the attacks would mean a rise in the polls for George W. Bush: “I think that there has been a plunging poll rating for Bush’s policies in Iraq and even for the president’s job performance overall, in part because the American people forgot that there really is a war on terror, or they didn’t believe Bush’s oft-repeated reminders from the stump that, in fact, we were in war and we had to act that way. I think this will—it takes away all of the credibility problems that the president has been having. And popular support, I think, will begin to rise for him again.”

Birnbaum’s co-panelist, Bill Sammon of the Washington Times, agreed: “I think the entire conversation changes now. You know, we were talking about Gitmo and whether the prisoners had sufficient comforts.... That debate is obliterated. And now we’re back to, guess what? Good and evil. I mean, this is what Tony Blair, and Jack Straw, and all these people were talking about. They’re talking about using words like wicked and evil, the words that Bush was mocked for using by his detractors when 9/11 happened. But that’s where the conversation’s back to. We’re not talking about global warming. We’re not talking about Gitmo. We’re back to the basics.

We are at war.”

Oddly, Birnbaum’s response to that was to predict a dip in partisanship: “I think, in fact, partisanship, at least in the short run, will be diminished.” That would be true if one were defining partisanship merely as criticism of Bush, since praising Bush and criticizing his “detractors” is apparently not partisan. Fox panelist Fred Barnes made that point even clearer by noting an exception to the non-partisan trend: “Not for Jane Harman,” Barnes interjected— referring to the Democratic Congresswoman who had suggested that the war in Iraq was not making the U.S. or its allies safer.

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough seemed to declare (7/7/05) any and all criticism of the White House unacceptable: “Earlier today, you had Hillary Clinton, senator for New York, coming out and actually criticizing George Bush, criticizing our government, saying that we’re just not spending enough money on counterterrorism.”

The clip that followed was a dry recitation of federal domestic security budgets cuts— hardly an unimaginable topic for discussion after the London attacks.

Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity also lamented that the left had dared to criticize the Bush administration (7/7/05): “I have felt at almost every step of the way from the very beginning, they have often undermined the president’s war on terror. And they have accused him of targeting civilians for assassination, accused him of starting a war for political gain, accusing him of being responsible for torture policies when no such thing came true. It seems like they’ve always looked to politicize it, which has hurt our effort to unite and combat this.”

“Lessons” Cont. on page 5

Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless

Streetvibes Streetvibes, the TriState’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.

Becoming a Streetvibes Vendor is a great way for homeless and other low-income people to get back on (or stay on) their feet. Streetvibes Vendors are given an orientation and sign a code of conduct before being given a Streetvibes Vendor badge. Vendors are private contractors who DO NOT work for, or represent, the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homleess. All profits go directly to the vendor.

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 Allison Leeuw - Administrative Coordinator Andy Erickson - Education Coordinator Rachel Lawson - Civil Rights VISTA Kate McManus - Civil Rights VISTA Mary Gaffney - Reception Melvin Williams - Reception Susan Smith - Volunteer Streetvibes Jimmy Heath, Editor Photographer Jimmy Heath Cover Mural by Ron English, on display at the Contact Center, Over-theRhine 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://cincihomeless.org

Page 2

The Atomic City of Cincinnati

by Martha Stevens We will remember for a long time the deaths of innocent Londoners on July 9, victims of the Iraq war. Some Americans also remember each August 6 the attacks on innocent civilians by our own country.

This August marks the 60th anniversary of the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The U. S. targeted city streets, and many thousands were instantly incinerated. Counting the deaths from the lethal fallout on the outskirts, over 200,000 were lost.

We have not had an atomic bomb dropped on Cincinnati — exactly — and yet we have the distinction, among U. S. cities, of having fellow citizens die from atomic fallout. In the 60’s a basement chamber in our teaching hospital was turned into an effectual bomb site.

Radiation was beamed at

“Art” Cont. from Page 1 One artist who was particularly affected by the works Prinzhorn presented was Jean Dubuffet. Together with others, including Andre Breton, he formed the Compagnie de l’Art Brut in 1948 and strove to seek out and collect works of extreme individuality and inventiveness by creators who were not only untrained artists but often had little concept of an art gallery or even any other forms of art other than their own.

Raymond Thunder-Sky, who displayed his work art BASE Gallery in Over-the-Rhine, was already famous, at least from one side of Cincinnati.

Few knew his name, but he was a familiar figure to most persons employed downtown in the past 30 years. He was a shy, quiet, rotund man carrying a toolbox, wearing a hardhat, dressed in what seemed to be an endless array of outlandish clown costumes, each with a proper ruffled Elizabethan collar.

Some called him the construction clown. You could see the construction clown wherever a new building was going up or an old one was coming down. Wherever the city’s skyline was changing, the construction clown would be there.

It turned out he was making detailed drawings of what he was seeing, vividly depicting cranes and beams and riveted joints with bright markers he carried in his toolbox, adding captions to explain what was being demolished and what, exactly, would take its place.

Raymond’s work epitomized Dubuffet’s concept of Art Brut, or “Raw Art.” His art was in its “raw” state, uncooked by cultural and

low-income cancer patients by the U. C. College of Medicine with funds from the U. S. military. Of the 90 patients exposed, over their whole bodies or sometimes half their bodies, 21 died within about a month.

Doctors wanted to find out whether troops caught on the edges of a nuclear blast could fight on, whether a pilot could still fly a plane.

Death from radiation is not easy. Those who died vomited up their insides for up to 48 hours, felt like their skin was on fire, became mentally confused. Their immune systems were destroyed, and “they went steadily downhill,” as the doctors often put it, and succumbed in the end to infection.

Certain patients were already in a dying state when exposed and were the most abject victims of all.

An African-American woman named Katie Dennis lived only seven days after her radiation. She was 52 with four daughters still at home. The

nurses on her floor wrote that before radiation, she was weak and lethargic, mostly sleeping when pain was not too severe. When they rolled her into the radiation chamber, she was so frightened of the huge machine there that she was administered shock treatment before her radiation could take place.

Afterwards, her pain continued and she bled from the rectum; the next day she vomited “thick dark brown material” and complained all night of pain in her leg.

On day seven she had a fever and constant pain. “Her eyes roll back in her head,” they wrote, and she could barely respond to her name. Later that day Katie Dennis died.

Surely we don’t want to set off a nuclear war. Yet we read that our government is not reducing its arms but busy creating new, more “usable” nuclear weapons. Why is it, we must ask ourselves, that the U. S. does not cooperate in arms control.

artistic influences. Dubuffet’ built up a vast collection of thousands of works - works which bore no relation to developments in contemporary art and yet were the innovative and powerful expression of a wide range of individuals from a variety of backgrounds.

Today the increased awareness of all these forms of expression has led to a network of small organizations in both Europe, the United States and Cincinnati, devoted to the preservation of such works and the support of their creators.

The diverse influence of all these forms is now apparent in the work of an increasing number of “trained “ artists who have turned their back on changing trends and fashions to try and form a truly singular reality for themselves.

Michel Theo, Curator of the Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne, France has written the following: ‘“Art Brut”, or “outsider art”, consists of works produced by people who for various reasons have not been culturally indoctrinated or socially conditioned. They are all kinds of dwellers on the fringes of society; homeless, low-income, or otherwise displaced by “conventional” society Working outside of the fine art “system” (schools, galleries, museums and so on), these people have produced, from the depths of their own personalities and for themselves and no one else, works of outstanding originality in concept, subject and techniques. They are works which owe nothing to tradition or fashion.”

A firm distinction should be made between “art brut” and what is known as “naif art”. The “naif” or

primitive painters remain within the mainstream of painting proper, even if they fail to practice its style.

However, they accept the subject and even its values, because they hope for public, if not official recognition.

“Art brut” artists, on the other hand, make up their own techniques, often with new means and materials and they create their works for their own use, as a kind of private theatre, like Cincinnati’s Ron English, who gathers his art materials and ideas from the street. These artists choose subjects which are often enigmatic and they do not care about the good opinion of others, even keeping their work secret.

People have come to use the phrase Outsider Art to refer to the creative work of artists who are selftaught and/or those who, for a variety of reasons, are what would be considered impervious to being taught how to make art. The innocent, the self-taught, the visionary, the intuitive, the eccentric; the schizophrenic, the developmentally disabled, the psychotic, the obsessive, the compulsive.

No matter how powerful and true an artwork might be, if concern for fame, cleverness, or creativity is as important a motivation for creating the work as is personal discovery and expression, then the work will be contaminated with a kind of cultural poisoning and it will not be Outsider Art. Now, as we recognize and lionize the creative individuals who are making this body of work we call Outsider Art, we run the great risk of turning what is so wonderfully outside into just another segment of the mainstream inside.

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

Homeless News Digest

illnesses while trying to cross the desert are counted separately.

In North New Jersey, Stella Souhlakis, before she was committed to Bergen Regional Medical Center in February, she used magic marker for eye liner.

Compiled by Jimmy Heath She wet her pants. She has a child “I daydream a lot, she never sees. Some homeless worrying,” Reg said during an In Tucson, James Huggins, 59, facilities won’t accept her.

“If interview at the Uptown Salvation spends his days in city parks. she [goes] to the Bergen CAP Army shelter where he’s been His cart carries mostly old food Shelter on Kansas Street [in staying with his mother and two and a bag of aluminum cans, Hackensack], they’ll put her out siblings for the last month. “I was which he sells. within a day or so, for bedwetting,” worried about getting a home and At least two local shelters said Robin Reilly, a longtime coming back with my family.” are bending the rules to keep the homeless advocate.

For two years, suburban more vulnerable homeless out of the Souhlakis is among the homeless families have had Project hard-core homeless, as some call blistering sun.

REACH to fight for their children’s them. Many suffer from mental Marlene Moreno, outreach education. worker for Travelers Aid Society, illness or addiction. In Director Diane Nilan and drives a truck into washes in the Hackensack, the number is growing her small staff would contest school - just as the region’s overcrowded early mornings bringing water and districts that denied enrollment to sunscreen to the homeless. services become less available. homeless students based on The heat is “more Four of these people, in permanent residency requirements. fact, have died this year. After years dangerous than last year” for Last month, the Illinois State in the streets, many of the homeless homeless people, she said, because Board of Education killed the “it has been so hot for so long,” have deteriorated to the point Aurora-based program supported referring to 36 straight days of where they can no longer sustain by federal funds. Oversight was 100+ heat in Tucson. The streak themselves. transferred to regional education likely will last, according to the It’s no longer just a offices.

National Weather Service. problem, some say. It’s a crisis.

“We had great cooperation Not all vulnerable homeless people Public officials and mental from the huge majority of are willing to go indoors, however. health advocates and professionals superintendents and school On Jan. 31, 2000, the city are wrestling with the question: districts, but there were also made it illegal to sell or give away What are we going to do about superintendents who were not food in city parks without a permit Souhlakis and the growing number happy that the law forces them to from the city Parks & Recreation of New Jersey homeless just like accept these students,” Nilan said.

Department and approval of the her?

Last year, Project REACH Pima County Health Department.

“I don’t want to do another helped 350 homeless children with The ordinance makes it more funeral,” said Reilly, who gave the families, and 20 homeless teens, get eulogy for William “Magoo” difficult for church groups and others who want to give food to the into schools.

Schmidt in April, saluting the city’s homeless who congregate in the so-called mayor of the homeless.

In Phoenix, a record heat parks. Food now must be wave so far has led to the deaths “prepackaged by the In Philadelphia a of 18 people, most of them manufacturer.” Reenie Ochoa, a homeless naked man who homeless, leaving officials parks & recreation administrator, commandeered a police car and scrambling to provide water and crashed it on Market Street said neighborhood groups shelter to the city’s transient complained that homeless people during a Tuesday afternoon rush population. brought trash, debris and “some hour has died For the first time in years, criminal activity” to city parks. The There are homeless people city also modified drinking fountains homeless shelters opened their in Philadelphia who think that so the homeless can’t wash clothes doors during the day to offer incident is giving them a bad respite from the blistering sun, in them anymore, she said. reputation, and they say there are a which has delivered above-average lot of homeless people who are not Huggins said he hopped a ride on a freight train and arrived in temperatures every day since June bad people, they’re just down on 29. Police began passing out Tucson four years ago. He lives a their luck. Robert Anderson was thousands of water bottles donated eating dinner at Chosen 300 vagabond life even though he has by grocery stores, and city officials Ministries. It’s an organization that lung disease and has to use an set up tents for shade downtown. inhaler to help him breathe. provides prayer and meals for “I don’t know why I’m not During the hottest part of people, mostly men, with no homes. burnt to pieces,” said Chris Cruse, the day, he sleeps under a tree in a Anderson says he slipped 48, after taking refuge in a shelter. city park, he says. into drug addiction and while he’s Fourteen of the victims now clean, establishing himself is In Chicago, almost 9,000 were thought to be homeless. difficult: “I made some wrong “Most of us just run from students are homeless. For choices — and the choices I made air-conditioned box to airmuch of the last two years, Reg have affected me greatly.”

Benton, a soft-spoken 12-year-old, conditioned box, so it’s hard to Brian Jenkins is executive imagine how omnipresent the heat bounced among his grandmother’s director of Chosen 300: “The only really is for the homeless here,” said difference between us and them is house, his dad’s place and two Phoenix police Sgt. Randy Force. homeless shelters with his mother. that we’re about one and a half In all of last year, the state Few people knew he was paychecks away from being homeless — his clothes were clean, Department of Health Services homeless ourselves.” documented 34 heat-related deaths his hair groomed. But the signs This man who asked to among Arizona residents. were there. His grades slipped. remain anonymous says a domestic The number of illegal He stormed out of class one day. situation put him in the street. But immigrants killed by heat-related He even threw a chair in anger. you wouldn’t know it by looking at

Streetvibes

him: “I got a teamster’s job, so I’m not your average run-of-the-mill don’t-wanna-do-nothing type of individual.”

Now he’s struggling to save for his first and last month’s rent and a security deposit: “I just looked at an apartment. It’s a thousand dollars a month.”

For decades, panhandling and homelessness have been as much a part of the San Francisco landscape as the bridges and fog. But now the nation’s “Homeless Czar” is looking toward the Bay Area for possible solutions to America’s homelessness problem.

In 2002, an estimated 8,640 homeless people were residing in San Francisco, often living in such decrepit conditions that their existence threatened the city’s tourism industry.

However, the situation has improved. According to a study conducted by the city earlier this year, the number of homeless in San Francisco dropped by around 28 percent. City officials have attributed the reduction to a series of new programs.

“Historically, [San Francisco] had the worst street homelessness problem in our country,” said Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness. “But it’s had some of the most innovative ideas.”

The city replaced welfare handouts with initiatives such as the controversial “Care not Cash” program, which provides housing and other support services; and “Project Homeless Connect,” which enlists corporate volunteers to help the homeless find jobs.

The greater involvement of the business community and the public is one of the challenges around our country,” said Mangano, a former music agent who was appointed by President Bush in 2002. That’s why ‘Project Connect’ is so important. It brings the business community and the public into that larger partnership with government to get the job done.”

“It’s not only the individuals we’re serving, it’s the people that are helping serve those individuals whose lives are changing because thousands of them now feel empowered and part of the solution,” said San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom.

Mangano said that he has begun putting together an interagency council from several local, state and federal agencies to study success stories like San Francisco to help develop a national strategy to combat homelessness.

Page 3

Kansas: School-age Children Line Up in Bread Lines Hungry school-age children stand in bread lines every week in Wichita, KS, in what has become “a tradition of summer.”

“You see more and more every year,” observed Wendy Glick, who runs the Lord’s Diner, which offers free supper to all who need it.

“Families come in. You can tell they’ve never done this kind of thing before.” Glick says hundreds of children show up.

Poor children, who stop receiving their two free school meals per day in summer, look elsewhere for food.

Clinton Moss, the new director of the Bread of Life food pantry, reported that when she “drove to the pantry at 7:30 this morning, we already had families standing in line.”

The pantry opens at 10:00 a.m. .But while summer food sites in neighborhoods can be more convenient than a pantry, participation is low.

The Wichita school district gave out a total of only 41,000 breakfasts and 61,000 lunches over the entire 2004 summer, while 26,426 Wichita children a day qualify for free school meals.

New York: Encouraging Future Success of Homeless Children

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The Parent-Child Home Program of Eastern Suffolk BOCES has the nation’s first mobile early childhood outreach program to serve homeless families who live in shelters and other emergency housing arrangements.

The first strategy the program uses for children in at-risk families is to reduce hunger and improve access to health care.

The program, serving 5,000 children in 145 support! Get your STREETVIBES sites nationwide, is designed to prepare T-Shirt Today! children for school and help them overcome language and literacy barriers.

Lack of Affordable Housing and Shelter Demand is Major Homeless Problem in Vermont

(Back shown here.

Shirt not actual size)

Only $15 We will send your Streetvibes T-shirt to your door All proceeds benefit the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless and the Streetvibes newspaper. Call 513.421.7803 x 16, or come in to our office at 117 E 12th Street in Over-the-Rhine Page 4

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In Rutland, Vermont, homeless shelters are experiencing an unusually high demand this summer.

Occupancy usually declines in the warmer months when homeless people move to campgrounds and other outdoor areas to live.

The Open Door mission in Rutland and Burlington’s Committee on Temporary Shelter has been full for more than a month.

Officials are reviewing their records to see what is driving the increased need.

Rita Markley, head of the Committee on Temporary Shelter, says she’s seen a rise in the number of women who are homeless.

She also has noticed a trend in the number of people who have been laid off from full-time jobs.

A shortage of affordable housing also is the major problem

Two Homeless Men Burned in Prague

by Jarmila Pribylova Prague, Czech Republic – Two homeless men were recently set on fire and severely burned while sleeping in public. On a night in early June, an unknown person poured oil over a homeless man sleeping on a bench and set fire to him. The victim tried to run and find people to ask for help before he collapsed. He suffered third-degree burns on most of his body. His injuries were so severe he has not yet been identified.

His health state is critical.

One day later, an unknown person doused and set fire to another homeless man, a former vendor of the street paper Novy Prostor who fell asleep in a tram. The tram driver used a fire extinguisher to put out the

fire and called an ambulance and the police. The driver said he noticed a person run away when the tram stopped. The victim is now hospitalized with severe burns covering 20 to 25% of his body, including his left hand, belly, back, face and neck.

Although the crimes are nearly identical and were committed within 24 hours of each other, police are not certain if these cases are connected.

The Czech Police have recently recorded an increase in attacks against homeless people. In some cases, offenders threw flammable bottles into shacks or shelters where homeless people were sleeping. Last year groups of

muscular young men routinely attacked homeless people with baseball bats.

Jakub Chudomel, a therapist who works with Novy Prostor, sees these new attacks as an extension of a disturbing trend: “Violence against unarmed, defenseless people (i.e. a sleeping homeless person) is an expression of pathological violence.

Verbal attacks against the homeless can be explained by a hidden fear of getting into a similar situation.

Harassment and attacks by skinheads always act together, in group.”

But Chudomel sees these current cases as something different, more disturbing: “Pouring a flammable liquid onto a sleeping person is something else. The

offender is most probably a sadist who is also timid and introverted.”

Chudomel speculates that this attack suggests cowardice, quiet aggression, and possibly sexually explained pyromaniacal tendencies. “The offender,” he said, “is a monster dangerous to his surrounding.”

Chudomel predicts that if the offender or offenders are not caught, similar attacks will likely follow.

Since the attacks, homeless people living in Prague are frightened and cluster together at night so that some of them can always stay awake and guard the others.

Edited by Paula Mathieu, Spare Change News, Boston Reprinted from Novy Prostor

instead of fighting the war of our lifetime. But, while the rock stars preach, our enemies scheme.

While movie stars practice politics, suicide bombers plan on how to kill the most innocent people with a single blast. You know, our leaders may ignore antiterrorism at G8 conferences these days, but, of course, that suddenly changes when the first reports of explosions come in.

Then, suddenly, that idiot Bush starts looking a little bit better than the likes of the Chiracs and the Schroeders standing next to him. And Tony Blair, well, he suddenly seems to have a more realistic grasp on global realities than, say, Bob Geldof.”

Scarborough added: “We’re not a serious people.

Some concern themselves more with terrorists’ rights than civilization’s future. Reporters work overtime demeaning the very troops who protect our land.

And rock stars replace grim Cassandras, like Bush and Churchill, as the prophets of pop cultures. The results are almost always disastrous.”

This lecture comes from a cable news host who has devoted much of his program in recent weeks to the search for Natalee Holloway, the Alabama teenager missing in Aruba.

“Lessons” cont. from page 1 While Hannity was lamenting such “politicization,” he was also practicing it: “And doesn’t events like this actually prove that the president is actually right, inasmuch as we knew Saddam used chemical weapons and biological weapons against his on his own people.

We knew he wouldn’t abide by the cease-fire agreement or the U.N. resolutions.”

Other outlets found it an opportune time to promote White House policies. The Washington Times editorialized (7/8/05): “The London attacks, like the train bombings last year in Madrid, required a high degree of coordination and detail, suggesting a plot planned well in advance. And yet here we are arguing whether to dismantle key provisions in the Patriot Act.” On the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page (7/8/05), Daniel Henninger seized the moment to back the White House’s candidate for U.N. ambassador: “If the U.S. Senate wanted to send a signal of resolve and seriousness to whoever bombed London, Democrats would join with Republicans their first day back to dispatch proven anti-terror warrior John Bolton straight to the U.N. They won’t.

They’ll keep playing political fiddles while London burns.”

Fox News Channel’s Bill O’Reilly was more hopeful that the London killings would change the minds of those he disagrees with. “My first thought was AlQaeda trying to disrupt the G-8 summit in Scotland,” explained O’Reilly (7/7/05). “My second thought was now maybe Europe will wise up. The terrorists are the evildoers, not the USA.” (In contrast, Fox’s Brit Hume said his “first thought”

when he heard about the attack was: “Hmmm, time to buy” stock market futures—Media Matters, 7/7/05.)

When O’Reilly wasn’t criticizing the governments of France and Germany for being soft on terrorism, he was blaming the press: “The anti-American press both here and in Europe is actually helping the terrorists by diminishing their threat.” To make his point even clearer, O’Reilly asked one guest, “Have you read The Guardian lately? I mean, it might be edited by Osama bin Laden. I mean, that’s how bad that paper is.”

O’Reilly seemed to almost be blaming the victims, wondering why Islamist terrorists would even bother attacking Europe: “What good does it do to Al-Qaeda to alienate Europe when Europe has basically been, not on their side but certainly putting the U.S. as the big villain and de-emphasizing, as I say sanitizing, what Al-Qaeda has done. What good does it do AlQaeda to alienate, you know, the BBC and all of these major organizations that have basically not dealt with the threat in a realistic way?” O’Reilly’s guest, Steven Emerson, expanded on that: “In certain respects, BBC almost operates as a foreign registered agent of Hezbollah and some of the other jihadist groups.”

MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough similarly lamented the lack of seriousness about terrorism: “We stop listening to the warnings of the Churchills and the Bushes and, instead, we focus on speeches by rock stars and by Hollywood actors. When our world leaders get together, they focus on global warming and the causes of the moment,

Streetvibes

Page 5

Firecats Review

movie. It looks terrible with the Legally Blond lady, but Napoleon Dynamite!

Fire Cat Magenta: I read the book, it was cute.

Fire Cat Blue to Fire Cat Clear: You’re going to see March of the Penguins, aren’t you?

Fire Cat Clear: I probably will.

Fire Cat Magenta: It looks good.

Fire Cat Chameleon: Plus you can listen to Morgan Freeman for two hours.

Fire Cat Black: Morgan Freeman is pretty sweet. He was in Batman. He’s been doing some real duds lately but Batman was good.

Fire Cat Magenta: He said he only did it because he got a lot of money.

Fire Cat Black: Oh, I wish I didn’t know that. Hey! This is random, but people are boycotting Spielberg and War off the Worlds because Tom Cruise is so psycho.

Fire Cat Lavender: How is he psycho?

Fire Cat Black: He’s just so psycho – he’s against all drugs.

Fire Cat Lavender: We should make our own Fire Cat religion.

Fire Cat Clear: Wait, so we boycott Spielberg until he stops using Tom Cruise in his movies?

Fire Cat Black: I guess so.

Fire Cat Clear: I can do that.

Conclusion: 7 out of 8 Fire Cats agree – go see Devil’s Rejects

20 YEARS SERVING THE NEIGHBORHOOD

Fire Cat Blue: I so want to see The Devil’s Rejects – scary, scary.

I also want to see Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Johnny Depp’s big shiny teeth – scary, scary.

Fire Cat Magenta: The rest of the summer looks like crap.

Fire Cat Clear: What about The March of the Penguins?

Fire Cat Blue: No! Fire Cat Chameleon: I want to see the new Batman movie but I read, you know, literature.

Fire Cat Magenta: You can do both, I do both.

Fire Cat Chameleon: But I’m a snob.

Fire Cat Black: It’s too much work to be a snob.

Fire Cat Lavender: Must Love Dogs, but I’m so kidding. It’s a romantic comedy.

Fire Cat Black: With John Cusack?

So disappointing.

Fire Cat Magenta: He used to make good romantic comedies.

Fire Cat Blue: No such thing!

Fire Cat Chameleon: High Fidelity.

Fire Cat Lavender: I’d like to retract my recommendation for Must love Dogs.

Fire Cat Blue: No going back now - and High Fidelity sucked!

Maybe I’m too old.

Fire Cat ?: I saw Barton Fink last night.

Fire Cat Blue: I love that movie!

Were you so not expecting that one scene? I wasn’t.

Fire Cat Black: What is that?

Fire Cat ?: It’s those brothers.

Fire Cat Blue: The Cohen Brothers.

Fire Cat Lavender: Can we note something in the review about Fire Cat Chameleon’s weakness as his OCD disorder?

Fire Cat Black: Oh my god!

Napoleon Dynamite is in some new

Thanks to a Volunteer

Bush’s War Machine Must Be Held Accountable

by Ms. Mary Gaffney To my Streetvibes friends, who each month are so kind and thoughtful by buying the paper that helps support low-income people and homeless individuals and families, thank you again.

And to a most gracious and beautiful person by the name of Susan Smith, thank you.

As a volunteer here at the Miss Mary Gaffney Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless.

Each Wednesday, she brings in food and pastries to serve to our guests here at the office.

As a tradition, people patiently wait for her arrival at the office. She brings in not only pastries, but full dinners and beverages for everyone who visits.

The staff and everyone want to thank Susan Smith for her generosity and concern for her fellowman.

by Sierra Black The Downing Street Memo tells us only what we already know: that the Bush administration planned, well in advance of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, to invade that sovereign nation and overthrow its legitimate government in the interests of “regime change” – otherwise known as the desire to see a friendlier leader controlling the vast oil resources of Iraq.

What makes it so special then? Why all the fuss and bother?

Why are we hearing the word “impeachment” and the word “Bush” in the same sentence now when other damning testimony has failed to elicit such a strong response?

Many critics of the Iraq war have pointed to the Downing Street Memo as the “smoking gun” in the increasingly damning case against the Bush administration and the lies it told this country in the run-up to war. The key phrase seems to be, “The intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

Richard Clarke and Paul O’Neill have both been lambasted in the media for asserting what the Downing Street Memo proves: that the Bush administration had made a firm decision to attack Iraq and forcibly remove Saddam Hussein from the seat of power by flexing the military might of the world’s one remaining superpower. The memo explicitly states that at the time of the writing, in July 2002, “military action was now seen as inevitable.”

Summer Movies

Susan Smith

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The memo goes on, famously now, to discuss the plans being made to sell this war to the world. A military coalition had to be built to share the costs and casualties, and a legal excuse had to be created for the sake of the world court, of which Britain is a member. The United States, having disdained the world court, was much less concerned about the legal basis of its actions.

It seems that in our modern age, there’s an obsession with the paper trail. These pieces of paper replace the reality of civic action and a tough press corps willing to follow not only hard leads but also hunches.

The Downing Street Memo merely confirms what the American public has known all along.

If the memo itself was a secret, the policy certainly wasn’t. It was clear all along that the Bush administration and hawks in Congress wanted war, and they were willing to go unusual and probably illegal lengths to get it. The press played nice with an administration, seen as sacrosanct after the horror of 9/11, and the public went along for the ride.

As the Minneapolis Star Tribune stated in an editorial following the revelation of the Downing Street memo, “President Bush and those around him lied, and the rest of us let them. Harsh? Yes. True? Also yes.

Perhaps it happened because Americans, understandably, don’t expect untruths from those in power.”

It’s an explanation the administration is perfectly happy with.

While failing to respond to John

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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 Conyers’ demand, backed up by the signatures of 100 of his congressional colleagues and over half a million American citizens, for a formal explanation of the memo and it’s implications for America’s foreign relations disaster around Iraq, the Bush administration has blithely suggested to reporters that the memo is simply business as usual. They know what we know, that there’s nothing new to see here, and that they won’t be called to account for it because we are too afraid to confront our political leaders during wartime.

This war will not end, however, until the criminals who started it are forced to account for their actions, in a court with more authority than the informal court of world opinion, where Bush and his cronies have long since seen their reputations hung for their offenses against not only the accepted standards of legal behavior of one country toward another, but their simple disrespect for the intelligence of the people they lie to on a regular basis.

Only when we truly hold this war machine accountable for its actions can we hope to see a significant change in policy and a return to peace.

Sierra Black is a Spare Change street newspaper columnist and a regular contributor to “What’s Left,” a weekly radio program on WMBR 88.1 FM. Her website is www.sierrablack.com. © Street News Service: www.streetpapers.org

They Died for Their Country

by Paul Rogat Loeb “They died for their country,” read the white granite memorial in the Concord, Massachusetts town square, honoring local men who died in the Civil War. Newer headstones mourned Concord men who gave their lives in other wars — practically every war America has fought — belying the recent baiting of quintessentially blue-state Massachusetts as a place whose citizens lack patriotism. I was in town, on the first anniversary of Sept 11, speaking at a local church that had lost one of its most active members on a hijacked plane, a man named Al Filipov. It was clear then — and clearer now — that these honored dead would not be our nation’s last.

I thought of Concord when George Bush urged us, this past Memorial Day, to redeem the sacrifices of our soldiers in Iraq by “completing the mission for which they gave their lives.” But what if this mission (which will, of course, claim more lives) itself is questionable, and founded on a basis of lies?

Forty-eight Concord men died in the Civil War, which the memorial called “the War of the Rebellion.” They indeed died for their country, turning the tide at battles like Gettysburg and helping end the brutal oppression of slavery.

The World War II vets, listed on a nearby plaque, helped preserve the freedom of America — and the world. We owe a profound debt to the farmers and artisans who won our freedom in America’s Revolution, and whose sacrifices were marked, a few miles away, with an exhibit on the battles of Lexington and Concord.

It’s easy for those who have lived through too many dubious wars to forget the power of their sacrifices.

But not all the Concord deaths served such lofty purposes.

Three Concord men died “in the service of their country” during the Spanish-American war. This war of empire took 600,000 lives alone in our subsequent occupation of the Philippines and our suppression of the first Asian republic, prompting Mark Twain to suggest that the Filipinos adopt a modified version of our flag “with the white stripes painted black and the stars replaced by the skull and cross-bones.” Five Concord men died in Vietnam joining 58,000 other Americans, one to two million Vietnamese, and four million who died after we overthrew a longneutral Cambodian government and paved the way for Pol Pot. One died in our 1965 invasion of the Dominican Republic, which helped prevent the return of a democratically elected president and installed a corrupt oligarch who would rule for nearly three decades.

The American soldiers who died in these wars were as brave as their compatriots in the Civil War or World War II. They undoubtedly had as much integrity in their personal lives. But their courage and sacrifice made the world neither safer nor freer. Since my visit to Concord, the memorial has added another name, a 25-year-old first lieutenant, killed a month after our forces rolled into Iraq in March of 2003, around the time that Bush spoke under that “mission accomplished” banner on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln It’s tempting to assume that all the sacrifices of our soldiers are worthwhile. But mere courage guarantees no inherent moral rightness: German and Japanese soldiers fought bravely in World War II. The September 11 hijackers were willing to surrender their lives to

murder 3,000 innocent people, including Al Filipov, whose widow would initiate the peace and justice lecture series where I spoke. Even when we’re told our soldiers are fighting for freedom, we have to look at the broadest consequences of their actions. For instance, an international Pew Center survey right after our Iraqi invasion found that we’d so embittered the Islamic world that majorities to near-majorities in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia and Egypt now said they trusted Osama bin Laden “to do the right thing in world affairs.” They now viewed him as a hero, not a murderer.

Unfortunately, those who initiated the Iraq war now use each additional American death to justify the need to stay. If we challenge this war, we’re told we’re being disloyal to the troops, undermining their resolve and disdaining their sacrifices.

We heard this as well during Vietnam, after which the media rewrote the history of the antiwar movement to imply, through images like protestors spitting on soldiers, that those working to bring the troops home were their enemies.

By time the first Gulf War began, these images were omnipresent. Even young anti-war activists told me, “We won’t spit on the soldiers this time.” Yet when sociologists Jerry Starr and Richard Flacks, who worked extensively with Vietnam vets, tried to track down the story, they couldn’t find a single incident of a vet who said he was actually spat upon. And when syndicated columnist Bob Greene invited responses on the subject in a column that reached 200 papers, he found only a handful.

The power of such useful myths may erode as military families and veterans play an increasingly visible role in the current antiwar

movement, though veterans and families played a key part in the Vietnam-era peace movement as well. Every time I’ve marched against this war, I’ve ended up next to someone carrying a picture of a relative in uniform, a son or brother, husband, nephew, or niece, often someone facing the involuntary servitude of being unable to leave the military long after his or her original service term had expired. But unless we can convince our fellow citizens to separate the lives of the soldiers from the policies that place them in harm’s way, they’ll continue to be held hostage to the choices of leaders who are insulated from the human costs So let’s remember the debt we owe to those who have died for freedom as well as those who risk and sacrifice in the name of protecting us all. But not all wartime deaths advance human dignity, and not all sacrifices are worthwhile. If those who die for a worthy cause are indeed heroes to be honored, those who send our brave young men and women to die in wars of empire and dominion squander their courage, their trust, and ultimately their lives.

To use their losses to justify further needless deaths is to betray the best of what the soldiers enlist to protect.

For not all of America’s wars have been worth dying in, nor are those we now fight.

Paul Rogat Loeb is the author of The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen’s Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear, winner of the Nautilus Award for best social change book of last year. He’s also the author of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in a Cynical Time and three other books. This piece originated on www.TomDispatch.com See http://www.theimpossible.htm for more on Paul’s work.

Am I the Cause of Homelessness - a personal reflection

by Susan Smith I am not an absentee landowner who makes money by profiting from poorly maintained housing and I don’t shop at certain big box retailers known for low prices and low wages.

I also tip very well in restaurants. After all, most of us that work get paid whether we’re nice that day or not. Lawyers get paid even if they lose and the client goes to jail. Restaurant staff, however, must depend on there being enough customers who feel generous enough to tip them to make enough to live.

I have been wondering lately whether my buying habits contribute to homelessness in this country as well as poverty throughout the world.

I like to shop for the bargain stretching my dollars so I can buy more. As I have talked to many of my friends I’ve found they do the same thing. By careful shopping we can have items A, B, C, and D,

rather than having to make a choice.

These are rarely necessities in life such as food, but perhaps another pair of shoes when I already have a closet full. I am able to do this if the prices are low enough. But careful shopping is not the only component of a bargain. The item must also be produced for a lower cost, and it is this that makes me think I am contributing to the homeless problem.

I can remember a time when people looked for the ‘Made In USA’ slogan. Now we manufacture very little in this country and many people seem to believe that products manufactured in other countries are not only cheaper, but better. These American made products seemed to last at least as long as the items we buy today whether they be toasters, refrigerators, shoes, or cars. Many of these manufacturing jobs are now done off-shore, not, I suspect, because they make better products, but because wages are lower. In

order for me to get a bargain on that pair of shoes I really don’t NEED, they must be produced cheaper. By my looking for that bargain am I in a sense not willing to pay the wages for someone in this country to manufacture them? I think so.

Many of you may counter this with the fact that we are creating jobs in poor undeveloped countries where the cost of living is lower. This may be true, but if the wages paid are so low that these people are kept in poverty, I don’t think I’ve helped them very much. Let’s face it – the reason I want cheap shoes, grapes, bananas, coffee and electronic products is not to help poor people in other countries, it is because I am greedy and want more. I don’ think I should have to take all the blame for my greed, however, because I am bombarded by countless images every day that I not only want these items, but need these items. This product or that product will make me

Streetvibes

smarter, sexier, happier, and more loved. I don’t suppose it is because these are things one must look inward for instead of outward. This thought may be anti-capitalist.

I live surrounded by greed and have been greedy myself. Not only have I contributed to the suffering of others but also to the destruction of the earth. In ‘The Earth As It Is,’ Leonard Buff asks, “Is it possible to live in peace and happiness when you know that twothirds of human beings are suffering, hungry and poor? To be human we have to have compassion. This solidarity is really the defining factor of our humanity and is gradually being lost in a culture of material values.

It’s not only the cry of the poor we must listen to but also the cry of the earth. The earth and human beings are both threatened. We must do something to change the situation…”

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Japan: Vendor Profile He is from Ikeda city in the Mr. Kazuhiro Tomizawa. 46 years old, selling Big Issues in Sakai,Osaka. has been selling them from the first edition, which makes his sales career one of the longest in Osaka. His sales pitch is Nakamozu station, which is at the south end of the Midosuji subway line.

He used to sell at the Yodoyabashi business area, but his sales amount was decreasing there because there were many other Big Issue sellers. There are many sellers around Osaka station or around Namba. He thought, “I must go south from Tennoji if I want to sell more.” He decided to take up this sales spot far from central Osaka.

He has been selling Big Issues at Nakamozu for six months.

His sales pitch is at Nakamozu station the south end of the Osaka subway line where it connects to overland line. During the morning rush hour many office workers hurry by. “They pay me while they are running so that they won’t waste even one second.

The customers remember me standing here for a long time. Some customers come within the first three days of the publication date of each issue, “ he said. He says that he sells fifty or sixty copies per day in the first week of the publication dates.

north of Osaka Prefecture. He is the first son of a dry cleaning shop owner and he has one younger brother. He inherited his parent’s business and rented it out, but he had to close the shop five years ago because of the bad economic situation. He sold his house three years ago and became homeless. He saw a leaflet about Big Issue sales at Osaka station and he thought, ”I have to do something about my situation.” He decided to become a Big Issue seller.

He commented, “I didn’t have any experience of working in another place. I don’t like working under other people and I don’t like having my time controlled by others.”

This interviewer was impressed by his well-pressed checked shirt and told him that it suited him. “Well I am the son of a former dry cleaning shop owner,” he laughed.

So far he hasn’t found the sales work hard. He says, “It is fortunate that from the first time there have been a lot of customers.” Mr. Tomizawa took care to answer each question sincerely. He said he does not like talking about himself, but he had accepted this interview. “My customers say that they would like to see me on this page (“From The

Streets”, a page for a vendor story) soon. I guessed that my turn would come some day so I readily agreed to be interviewed. I hope my customers will be pleased,” he smiled shyly.

One of the benefits of selling Big Issue is to meet many kinds of customers. He is happy that he has increasing opportunities to exchange pleasantries with many people.

This interviewer asked him how he maintains good relations with his customers. He answered, “I do nothing special except to make sure I receive the money and give the correct change.” This is the essence of good business practice and he carries it out perfectly. Another point is that he has small change prepared.

He always prepares thirty one hundred yen coins. There is a convenience store near his sales pitch and he goes there to buy drinks when he has some 1000 yen bills he needs to break.

He has no particular plans for his future. “It is quite difficult for me to have a dream…” he murmured.

He went on, “I dare to say that I would like to take a leisurely trip somewhere. I don’t like airplanes. I’d like to take a relaxing train journey somewhere in Japan. A hot spring resort would be nice where I could totally unwind.”

He sometimes talks to his brother over the phone. ”My mother is somewhere in Osaka. I’d like her to see this page. There have been some good times in my life. The shop which we ran was ranked first or second place in Ikeda. These days the cleaning shop business is facing difficult times.” Now he is planning on saving money but, smiling wryly, he added that that would be difficult to do. He said that many sellers had to quit the work, but he would like to continue it as long as there are customers, “So I will not give it up,” he said. He spoke lightly but his words showed his strong will to continue this work.

Reprinted from The Big Issue Japan © Street News Service: www.street-papers.org

Got The Vibe?

Former Mayor, Qualls again a frontrunner as head of Morning Glory ride She was the president of the

by John Zeh With fellow guy and gal pals on the right track, sister and former Mayor Roxanne Qualls will help benefit the region’s Sierra Club chapter at its annual Morning Glory Ride on Sunday, August 7.

The popular eco-event will begin at 6 am at Sawyer Point, the Queen City*s downtown riverfront park. Participants will ride a new route after a vegetarian breakfast prepared by Wild Oats Natural Marketplace in Norwood.

Qualls was elected to Cincinnati City Council in 1991, and won most votes in the 1993 race, making her mayor. Her involvement in the Queen City and the surrounding area has been quite extensive.

OKI Regional Council of Governments, director of the Cincinnati Citizen Action and its Toxic Action Project, owner/manager of Crafters painting and remodeling company, executive director of Women helping Women, director of the Northern Kentucky Rape Crisis Center, community coordinator of the Northern Kentucky Senate on Aging, and honorary chair of the Sister Cities Association.

Folks able to volunteer for the ride should contact steve@steverindsberg.com or call him at 513-621-9136. Volunteers get a free breakfast.

To register to ride, or to learn more, go to:http:// www.morninggloryride.org

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

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This beautiful, original artwork depicts the vibrant role that Streetvibes plays in downtown Cincinnati and neighboring communities. Created by local artist and activist Mary Ann Lederer in collage form, this colorful 18" X 10" reproduction can be yours to own for only $10. Commemorating Streetvibes 100th issue, proceeds from this limited time offer will go to support the Streetvibes Program and Vendors.

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Talbert House’s Turtle Creek Center & Director honored with services that meet and exceed Best Warren. TCC clients begin to Halfway Houses, during the state awards Practice standards. As a re-entry support their families, pay court costs ceremony. “Because of the passion certified program, the Turtle Creek Center is a great place for an offender to begin his journey home, and stay home for good,” said Linda Janes, Chief of the ODRC Bureau of Community Sanctions, during the 13th Annual Clifford Skeen Awards ceremony.

Turtle Creek, a 72-bed halfway house, opened in January 2003 as an alternative to incarceration for low-level adult male felony offenders for 15 Southwestern Ohio counties: Adams, Brown, Butler, Clark, Clermont, Clinton, Fayette, Greene, Highland, Miami, Pike, Preble, Ross, Scioto, and

and provide restitution to their victims through employment.

WARREN COUNTY—Talbert TCC creates a “step-down” House was honored to receive two from prison so inmates will have a awards from the Ohio Department of greater likelihood of successfully reRehabilitation and Correction entering their community and become (ODRC) at a July 14 awards contributing members of society. ceremony in Columbus. The Turtle From July 2004 to June 2005, 73 Creek Center (TCC), located in percent of TCC clients successfully Lebanon, won the 2005 Clifford completed the program, a rate well Skeen Award in the Halfway House above average for halfway houses. category, and Mary Spottswood, Throughout her 26 years of Talbert House Director of Regional experience, Spottswood, a Maineville Corrections, won a Professional resident, has demonstrated her Achievement Award. commitment to the fields of chemical “In a very short period of dependency and community time, Turtle Creek Center has indeed corrections. Spottswood started at made great strides, providing quality Talbert House in 1990 as the director of the Substance Abuse/Mental Illness (SA/MI) program and has been the Director of Regional Corrections since 1996. She served as president of Ohio Community Corrections Association and has a bachelor’s in Psychology from Bowling Green State University and a master’s in Public Administration from Xavier University.

She was named Talbert House Employee of the Year in 1999. “She is the Talbert House accepts the 2005 Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction consummate (ODRC) Clifford Skeen Award in the Halfway House category for its Turtle Creek professional at work,” Center (TCC) and a Professional Achievement Award for Mary pottswood. Pictured said Alicia Handwerk, left to right: Jennifer Burnside, TCC manager; Reginald Wilkinson, ODRC ODRC Deputy director; and Mary Spottswood, Talbert House Director of Regional Corrections.

Administrator of

Health Care Victories In Ohio State Budget

by Lynn Williams, Ohio Empowerment Coalition Organizer The Ohio Empowerment Coalition, united with the Ohio Family Coverage Coalition, is resting briefly after a long & arduous Spring “fighting” to get basic health care programs for Ohio’s low-income adults back in the State Budget. We succeeded in getting a “mixed-bag” of victories. We must remember that all of these programs are just a tip of the health care system that should be available for Ohioans & all America.

Just the fact that oftentimes state legislators seemed completely indifferent to the fact that there are people in our Society without basic health care, completely appalls us.

Then, too, we were happily surprised

by State legislators who were willing to go out “on the limb” to offer amendments on DMA and Parent Coverage, including Sen. Thomas Neihaus, Sen. Joy Padgett and Sen. Robert Spada. Of course some legislators never needed convincing as

they already supported health care for the poor. Sen. Mark Mallory and Rep. Catherine Barrett are among these, and many thanks to them.

Please bear in mind that the Governor, the Ohio House of Representatives and the Ohio Senate did not vote to restore the Disability Medical Assistance (DMA) program in the State Budget. It took a small committee of House/Senate leaders, the “the conference committee” to partially restore the Disability Medical Assistance Program. The DMA program is a last thin thread safety net for medication dependent adults with income of $115 or less per month.

(We won’t soon forget, Governor Taft, of your plan to cut off health care to the very poor & disabled, while giving millions in tax breaks to the top 1% wealthy!)

We asked for $141 million to fund the DMA program; $60 million was approved. Ask yourself whether this is really a victory.

Parent Coverage for working

parents above 90% of the Federal Poverty Level was definitely not a victory; it was eliminated. So much for all the talk about successes of welfare reform if you make more than $14, 481 a year and have a family size of three. Families who had received welfare and along with welfare, Medicaid coverage for their families, are told they are “doing the right thing” by working, but may become completely destitute if a health care crisis hits and they lack health care insurance. We all know horror stories about this, that sadly, are reality, and directly affect members of the Ohio Empowerment Coalition. The policy as it is now punishes anyone who has earnings above 90% of FPL if they lack health care coverage on their jobs.

The Good News is that partial dental and full vision programs for adults on Medicaid were restored in the State Budget. At this point, it looks like only emergency extractions will be covered in dental care.

Streetvibes

and dedication she has toward advancing community corrections, she is always participating in endless meetings, workgroups and always challenging herself and others to push the boundaries just a little further.”

The Clifford Skeen Award is given by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to demonstrate commitment to community corrections as a viable alternative to incarceration. The award was first presented in 1993.

The award is given in honor of the late, eight-term Ohio Representative, Clifford Skeen, who sponsored the Community Correction Act passed by the Ohio Legislature in July 1979.

The purpose of this act was to reduce the number of non-dangerous offenders being sent to state prisons.

Talbert House won its first Clifford Skeen Award in 2000 for its halfway house programs in Hamilton County.

“We are honored that Talbert House received both these prestigious awards. Turtle Creek Center and Mary Spottswood are invaluable to our mission and both exemplify why Talbert House continues to be a state and national leader in the area of community corrections,” said Neil Tilow, Talbert House president.

Since 1965, Talbert House’s mission is to be a progressive, multi-service, community-based nonprofit agency. Talbert House serves a broad population and develops and delivers services in mental health, community corrections, substance abuse and welfare-to-work. These services have two basic purposes: to improve social behavior and enhance personal recovery and growth.

The Governor had proposed completely cutting off these programs to adults on Medicaid. This is not everything we wanted, but it does show the power of people working united together to get health care saved in Ohio.

Any look at what the current health care system in America is charging can make a healthy person’s blood pressure soar. Thousands of dollars per year can be charged for life-saving treatments, such as kidney dialysis. A heart attack can cost $25,000 in medical bills, the bill alone enough to bring on a second heart attack.

America has the most technologically advanced health care industry in the world and yet we have 45 million uninsured people in the U.S. That is the real immorality. Do we value human life or not? The State Budget is not the end all.

For more information or to learn how you can get involved call the Ohio Empowerment Coalition at 1-877-862-5179.

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Homeless Man Gives to Haiti’s Children

by Eric Alan Barton Somewhere down a maze of rutted dirt roads in a rundown Portau-Prince neighborhood, past the red gate that keeps out the armed thugs, and through a courtyard of packed gravel, a 23-year-old guy from Broward County, Florida steps through the doorway of the sanctuary he created.

Aaron Jackson looks out of place at first. A white kid with a black ski cap, baggy jeans, and oversized white undershirt, he seems a better fit for the Aventura Mall than this concrete home in Haiti. But then he’s overtaken by a swarm of kids.

As they tug on his hands, crawl onto his back, and jump into his arms, it suddenly seems as if there’s no place he belongs more.

“They love to be picked up,” says Jackson, his eyes as blue as Easter eggs and his brown hair a messy mop that matches an untrimmed beard. “They love any attention you can give them.” He sits down in a folding chair, taking two, then three of the kids onto his lap.

They steal his hat, and the boys wrestle for it, the oldest, 7-year-old Ritchy, soon wearing it proudly. The kids pat his hair like they’re petting a dog.

“It’s soft,” 5-year-old Rico whispers in Creole.

Jackson flips him over to tickle his stomach, and as Rico screams with laughter, Jackson points out the boy’s belly, which looks as bloated as an overfilled balloon.

“See?” Jackson says, touching Rico’s belly button, which

sticks out like a hitch-hiker’s thumb.

“He’s still got this big tummy. The worms do it. Even though they’re gone, it takes months for his stomach to go down.”

Eventually, the worms might have killed Rico. Back in January, Rico and his 7-year-old sister, Minouche, were living at a Port-auPrince orphanage. It had run out of food and had no medicine to treat parasites that Haitian children regularly catch from drinking and playing in puddles. When Jackson took the siblings from the orphanage, he gave them a remedy that costs about 5 cents in the United States, a pill that wiped out the worms in one day. Now, Rico has added weight to bones that once showed through his skin, and he’s rarely without a smile across cheeks that have become almost plump for the first time in his life.

Rico and Minouche Morena joined five other children who share the three-bedroom home Jackson rents in Port-au-Prince. After traveling to Haiti a half dozen times over the past two years to hand out medicine and food to the poor, Jackson opened the makeshift orphanage in December. He pays for it by scraping together donations from family and friends, and by using almost every dime of money he made as a golf caddy.

Jackson’s commitment to the orphanage has cost him nearly everything. He wears secondhand clothes, has a car that no longer runs, and owns almost no personal possessions. Last year, when money

G8 – The Basic Facts With words like G8, GCAP and white band floating around the media, it’s little wonder some of us are a little confused about the global events that took place last month.

What is the G8?

The G8, or the Group Of Eight, is comprised of seven of the world’s leading industrialized nations – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK, the USA – and Russia.

It began life in the early 1970s when an oil crisis and global economic recession prompted financial officials from France, Italy, Germany, Japan, the UK and the USA to meet to discuss what to do.

In 1975 it was agreed that such meetings would be held annually, attended by the heads of states of the six countries. The group was known as the G6. When Canada joined in 1976 it became the G7, and with the addition of Russia, the G8. The G8 has no official headquarters or permanent staff, and the presidency of the group rotates between the member nations annually.

What is the G8 Summit?

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The G8 summit is the annual meeting of the group and is used predominantly to discuss providing a stable framework for global economic growth. Topics of discussion at past summits have also included global security, peace in the Middle East, the redevelopment of Iraq, and global warming. Although the G8 can form and suggest policies, it is up to the individual countries whether to adopt them.

Why did this year’s G8 Summit take place in Scotland?

Each year, a different member of the G8 is president and this year is the turn of the UK. As part of a country’s presidency, it plays host to the summit and Tony Blair decided to hold the UK’s summit in Gleneagles, Scotland from July 6 to 8.

What did the G8 discuss?

The talks themselves are secret, but we do know that Tony Blair, who headed the summit, wanted to focus on climate change and issues facing Africa. We also know that environment secretary Margaret Beckett, has pledged

was tight and he either had to give up the orphanage or his own place, he moved out of his apartment. He now sleeps on the floor of a homeless shelter.

Meanwhile, he’s building a school in southern Haiti and has plans to open a health clinic on the northern coast. And even more ambitious, Jackson has handed out 20,000 deworming pills since he began his efforts in Haiti two years ago. “I know it sounds crazy,” Jackson says, “but I want to deworm every person in Haiti.”

Few places need the help more. Just a two-hour flight from South Florida, Haiti is the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country, where most get by on $1 a day and only one

in five has a job. The seemingly endless political unrest has led to the murder of more than 700 people in the past eight months, and a kidnapping epidemic has escalated to the point where armed thugs snatch up to a dozen people a day.

On a recent trip, Jackson traveled the war-torn city of Port-auPrince to hand out medicine and food in the corners of the city where few foreigners venture, where people live in squatter villages built from scraps, and where the strain between residents and thugs seems ready to explode. Those who accept his donations have no idea that, back in America, Jackson is hardly better off himself: homeless and often penniless.

Jackson sits on the mattress he sleeps on at a Hollywood, Florida homeless shelter.

£50,000 to sustainability projects in Africa to offset the carbon dioxide emissions caused by ministerial motorcades, flights and accommodation.

Why is there so much anger and protest surrounding the G8?

The countries in the G8 are often seen as acting only in their own interests and those of big business, rather than thinking of the millions of people who are kept in poverty by the trade barriers they set.

Campaigners want them to keep issues such as fair trade, global debt and global poverty to the fore when making decisions.

What is the Make Poverty History Campaign?

Make Poverty History is a global campaign that was launched on January 1 2005 with the aim of eliminating poverty across the world.

It is supported and funded by more than 200 charities, campaign groups, religious and faith groups, trade unions, politicians and celebrities – a coalition known as the Global Call To Action Against Poverty. It believes that economic policies, rather than natural factors, are responsible for world poverty, and hopes the UK presidencies of the G8 and the

Streetvibes

European Union will encourage people in the Western world to take action.

How can governments help?

Firstly, they can introduce ‘trade justice’ – that is, ending export subsidies that damage the livelihoods of poor rural communities across the world; introducing laws that stop big business profiting at the expense of people and the environment; and fighting for rules that ensure governments, particularly those in poor countries, can choose the best solutions to end poverty and protect the environment, even though these might not always be free trade policies. Secondly, they can drop the debt. GCAP believes the unpayable debts of the world’s poorest countries should be cancelled in full, by fair and transparent means so that poorer countries can instead concentrate on helping their own people. The members of the G8, excluding Russia, have just pledged to cancel the debt of more than 30 countries – but campaigners say this does nothing for at least 40 other countries that also need 100 percent debt relief.

the kids,” says Briski in a hybridised For the eight years that British-US accent. “I was followed her first trip to Calcutta, concentrating on my own Briski doled out love and photography – the women and the compassion. Beyond teaching the environment – but the kids were children composition, color and depth

by Ghiti Loebenstein in weekly photography workshops, Zana Briski, director of Born constantly fascinated by my camera, and after the first trip I thought I she tended to their welfare and into Brothels, spent eight years would teach them.” steered many of them away from an teaching, filming and helping to care When she returned to almost-certain future in prostitution. for the children of Indian prostitutes.

Calcutta, she brought gifts of point“The kids are hungry to learn In the heaving rickshaw of and-shoot cameras. For much of the and share and express themselves.

Calcutta’s red-light district rests the next eight years, the city became her They had an awful lot of fun,” she underbelly of India. The dilapidated home.

“India is a very different place; says. Despite their youth, they also neighbourhood is cramped with grasped the significance of being able people, but there’s more than just dirt I call it Planet India,” she says. “But at the same time, I felt at home there. to record their lives on film. “Their and decay in her streets. Packed with Living in the red-light district was not pictures have now been seen around a light-fantastic of coloured saris, easy in terms of health, danger, sleep the world, so it’s very empowering spilling water, strewn shoes and the or food but it was also such an honor for the children.” perennial dance of bodies ducking to be included in a world that most Initially focused on teaching and weaving through the day, the people don’t photography, brothel-lined streets are also a have access to. I Briski started photographer’s dream.

“Living in the redfilming Born Into This visual maelstrom caught have undying light district was not respect for these Brothels soon the eye of US-based photographer women and after beginning Zana Briski in 1998. She had no easy in terms of children.” her work with the obvious ties to India, and says her health, danger, sleep Born and kids. “I was decision to go there was “karmic… I or food…

I have raised in London, really impressed felt called.” Calcutta’s brothels are Briski moved to filled with the children of working undying respect for by them, and I New York 15 knew I needed to women, and it was the bright-eyed these women and years ago to document what wonder of these kids that eventually children.” was going on,” captured her attention. Struck by the study she says. “I had squalor of their circumstances, Briski photography; apart from the time in Calcutta, she never even picked up a video camera spent eight years tutoring them in before, but I went back to the US photography and encouraging them to has lived there ever since. Talking about the comparisons between her and bought [one].” get an education. east and west homes, she quips that Although an amateur Her experience is filmmaker, Briski obviously has a documented in Born Into Brothels, an “New York is just another brothel.”

But she sounds decidedly weary. photographer’s eye. Whereas visuals exquisite but heart-wrenching film cousually take second place to content directed by Briski and her compatriot Whether this exhaustion is from the flight she got off just moments before in documentary films, Born Into Ross Kaufmann. Created completely out of circumstance, the film went on our interview, or from the years she’s Brothels is composed of vibrant, vital devoted to the lives of the Calcutta imagery. It was the only creative to win multiple festival accolades children, is hard to say.

“It’s affected outlet that Briski allowed herself including awards at Sundance, me in every way. It really took over during the eight-year project, as she Sydney and the 2005 Academy my life, and it wasn’t really anything I all but abandoned her own Award for Best Documentary. “I planned to do, I’m just recovering.”. photography. “There was no way I never really thought of working with

The Angels of Calcutta

could teach the kids, take care of them and [still do] all the rest of it, so now I’m really dying to get back to [photography]. Really, that’s what I do and who I am.”

Determined to help redirect the course of the children’s lives, Briski threw herself into finding schools for them – a difficult task considering most schools refused to admit prostitutes’ children. Despite Briski’s near-perfect success rate, by the film’s end all but two of the children had voluntarily left or been taken out of school.

Briski’s work has continued since the film’s release. The two kids that stayed in school are now both fluent in English and one of them will soon be attending high school in the US. Briski is planning to build a school in Calcutta and now presides over Kids With Cameras, an organisation set up to empower underprivileged children from all over the world by teaching them photography.

In light of her exuberant commitment to a cause that she stumbled upon, it’s hard to discount Briski’s allusions to a fated calling.

“On my second trip to India I was introduced to the red-light district, and that was that,” she says. “I had a very personal response to it, as if I recognised the place. I usually say I was an Indian prostitute in a former life…” If that’s the case, Born Into Brothels is a gallant demonstration of karmic duty.

For more info on Kids with Cameras, visit www.kids-withcameras.org Reprinted from The Big Issue Australia.

Selling Spare Change in a Heatwave

by Edward Larsen I’m a vendor and now current writer for Spare Change Street Newspaper. I am happy to say it’s finally summertime and also one of the best times of the year for vendors to sell papers – unless of course, the weather gets too hot.

Today I would like to share with you what it’s like to sell SCN. It is a full-time job for myself – and perhaps other vendors as well. On average, I work about 40 to 50 hour per week, and to be honest it’s the best job I have ever had. On an average day, I travel about 30 minutes to an hour on the T, depending if the T is running on time, to buy papers from the SCN office on Mass. Av e. just outside of Harvard Square, in Boston I have to get there at some point during my selling day, but certainly before the offices close at 5 p.m., but I normally try to get there between 2 and 3 p.m.

I usually buy about 100 papers for 25 cents a piece, and that number usually lasts me about two to three days. On a typical day, I can sell around 60 newspapers. From June 10 to 12 was the first official heat

wave of the summer, with temperatures well into the 90s and high humidity. I’m a very pale person, which means I really feel the heat and humidity like most people do, plus I get easily burned by the sun. I also have a chronic medical disability – Chrone’s disease and colitis, as well as an ostomy. On Saturday, despite the heat, I went to work. Sales were slow because of the transition in temperature, and people were hot and irritated. I went to one of my usual spots, the corner island of Cambridge Street, across from the MBTA near the medical complex. Very few people stopped to talk to me. Everyone was in a rush to get inside the favors of air conditioning.

I had been selling the paper for more than two hours and had maybe sold, if lucky, 10 newspapers.

The heat was starting to make me dizzy, so I decided to take a break, hoping for a better time later. I decided to ride the T, hoping for some air conditioning and a place to sit for a few hours. When I got on the Red Line to ride between Braintree and Alewife, I was

disappointed that the temperature in the train was barely any cooler than outside.

The AC was on but just not working well, and all the hot bodies soaked it up pretty quickly. But at least I was sitting for a bit. I pulled out my Walkman from my bag and tried to listen to the radio. I like to listen to Air America or the college music stations. I never listen when I sell – that would be disrespectful – only when I’m resting. Many people on the train looked unhappy and hot – small kids fussing, families with irritated looks, people coming to or from work, looking hot and tired. At one point the AC vent from above dripped some runoff water onto my head and the heads of a few other passengers. The others seemed disgusted, but for me that day, the dirty water was the coolest and best blessing. I savored it.

Getting restless, I went back to my spot to try to sell for a few more hours. I pulled out all the stops.

I refer to men who walk by as “young fella” and the women as “kiddo.” I think these are friendly terms, but still respectful. A lot of

Streetvibes

older people like to be called young or kiddo. I worked for several more hours but sold only another 10 papers.

Despite the poor sales, I decided enough was enough and to call it quits around 8 p.m. By this time I was dehydrated, felling intoxicated by the sunburn. It was too hot to eat. I divorced myself that day from my typical appendage, a bottle of coke or Pepsi, and opted for Gatorade, water and juice. I walked down to the Charles River (on the Boston side) and drank my liquids while sitting on a bench and watching the evening lights come on.

There I crashed my head and tossed and turned from the mugginess and stickiness.

Occasionally, spotlights from the police or patrol boats on the river would shine into my eyes. With my jacket for a pillow, I tried to get a few hours sleep and hoped to do better selling papers the next day at the Gay Pride Parade.

Edward Larsen is a Spare Change News, Boston vendor.

His e-mail address is scnvendor@hotmail.com.

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Streetvibes Vendor Code of Conduct About the Greater Cincinnati All Vendors Sign and Agree to a Code of Conduct Coalition for the Homeless and Report Any Violations to GCCH - 421-7803 Streetvibes....

1. Streetvibes will be distributed Vendors must not tell customers earned. This program has helped for a $1 voluntary donation. If a customer donates more than $1 for a paper, vendors are allowed to keep that donation. However, vendors must never ask for more than $1 when selling Streetvibes.

2. Each paper purchased from the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless (GCCH) costs 30 cents. Papers will not be given out on credit. Old papers can not be traded in for new papers.

3. Streetvibes may only be purchased from GCCH. Never buy papers from, or sell papers to other vendors.

4. Vendors must not panhandle or sell other items at the same time they are selling Streetvibes.

5. Vendors must treat all other vendors, customers, and GCCH personnel with respect.

6. Vendors must not sell Streetvibes while under the influence.

7. Vendors must not give a “hard sell” or intimidate anyone into purchasing Streetvibes. This includes following customers or continuing to solicit sales after customers have said no. Vendors must also never sell Streetvibes door-to-door.

8. Vendors must not deceive customers while selling Streetvibes. Vendors must be honest in stating that all profits go to the individual vendor.

that the money they receive will go to GCCH or any other organization or charity. Also, vendors must not say that they are collecting for “the homeless” in general.

9. Vendors must not sell papers without their badge. Vendors must present their badge when purchasing papers from GCCH. Lost badges cost $2.00 to replace.

Broken or worn badges will be replaced for free, but only if the old badge is returned to GCCH. 10. Streetvibes vendor meetings are held on the first weekday of the month at 1pm. The month’s paper will be released at this meeting. If a vendor cannot attend the meeting, he or she should let us know in advance. If a vendor does not call in advance and does not show up, that vendor will not be allowed to purchase papers on the day of the meeting or the following day. Five free papers will be given to those who do attend.

11. Failure to comply with the Code of Conduct may result in termination from the Streetvibes vendor program. GCCH reserves the right to terminate any vendor at any time as deemed appropriate. Badges and Streetvibes papers are property of GCCH, and must be surrendered upon demand.

The mission of the North American Street Newspaper Association (NASNA) is to support a street newspaper movement that creates and upholds journalistic and ethical standards while promoting self-help and empowerment among people living in poverty. NASNA papers support homeless and very low-income people in more than 35 cities across the United States and Canada.

Streetvibes Vendor: 70 Cents (70 cent profit goes directly to the vendor)

Homeless Coalition

30 Cents Printing and Production: 30 cents (this cost does not cover expenses)

Page 12

The Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless (GCCH) was formed in May of 1984 for one purpose: the eradication of homelessness in Cincinnati. What started out as a coalition of 15 volunteers meeting weekly in an unheated church basement has since grown into a Coalition of over 45 agencies and hundreds of volunteers dedicated to improving services for homeless individuals, educating the public about homelessness and empowering homeless individuals to advocate for their civil rights and housing needs.

Streetvibes is a tool of GCCH used to help us achieve our goal of ending homelessness.

On the one hand it is a selfsufficiency program geared towards the homeless and marginally housed individuals who are our vendors. Streetvibes vendors buy the paper for 30 cents per copy and sell it for a suggested one-dollar donation, keeping the profit that they have

hundreds of people find and maintain housing. The vendors also sign a code of conduct stating that they will behave responsibly and professionally and they proudly display their official Streetvibes badge while selling the paper. Our vendors put a face on “the homeless” of Cincinnati and form lasting friendships with their customers.

On the other hand, Streetvibes is an award-winning alternative newspaper and part of the international street newspaper movement. Focusing on homelessness and social justice issues, Streetvibes reports the often-invisible story of poverty in our community. Streetvibes is also proud to include creative writing, poetry, articles, photography and interviews written by homeless and formerly homeless individuals. Streetvibes enjoys a loyal reader base that respects the honest portrayal of the joys, sorrows, and challenges facing the people of Cincinnati.

Streetvibes is a member of the:

The International Network of Street Papers (INSP) unites street papers sold by homeless and people living in poverty from all over the world. INSP is an umbrella organisation, which provides a consultancy service for its partner papers and advises on the setting up of new street papers and support initiatives for marginalised people.

Where Your Dollar Goes...

The Streetvibes program maintains a minimal overhead cost so that our vendors can keep as much of the proceeds as possible.

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

Streetvibes

Just how many poor people are there in the world?

852 million people are hungry, up from 842 million a year ago.

In the developing world, more than 1.2 billion people currently live below the international poverty line, earning less than $1 per day.

The gross domestic product (GDP) of the poorest 48 nations (that is, a quarter of the world’s countries) is less than the wealth of the world’s three richest people combined.

The developing world now spends £13 on debt repayment for every £1 it receives in grants.

Seven million children die each year as a result of the debt crisis.

40 million people across the world are infected with HIV or AIDS. 104 million children don’t go to primary school, and 860 million adults (most of them women) cannot read or write.

Obese Soldiers Jeopardize National Security (’Military Says Obese Recruits Put Nation at Risk) Overweight recruits are becoming a national security issue.

Nearly two out of 10 men and four out of 10 women of recruiting age weigh too much to meet Army recruiting standards. In addition, those who become soldiers often gain weight, because all branches of the military have many sedentary jobs.

An Army nutritionist said: “This is quickly becoming a national security issue... We’re going to have a harder time fielding an Army.” Many already in the military who were required to shed pounds by their supervisors resorted to potentially harmful remedies such as rubber suits, appetite suppressants, laxatives, and induced vomiting.

Edible Schoolyard Comes to the Capitol (“Keep These Kids From Eating Veggies? Try.” The New York Times, July 6, 2005) Alice Waters, the “queen of California cuisine,” has declared “allout war on the burger-and-soda school lunch.” She initiated her first battle against unhealthy eating in Berkeley, CA by creating a one-acre garden at a local school in 1995. As part of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, she planted a vegetable garden on the National Mall, about 80 by 120 feet, to send her antiburger message to legislators, parents, and kids from the nation’s

capital. Ms. Water plans to further promote her Edible Schoolyard concept and grow vegetables at 16 more schools in Berkeley, providing nutritious lunches for more than 9, 000 students. She hopes that it will be a pilot for the nation, citing BrillatSavarin’s maxim that the destiny of nations is dependent on how they nourish themselves. “We’re going to show a whole generation of kids how to cook and how to eat, and our country will be the beneficiary,” Ms. Waters said.

Pennsylvania: Proposed State Budget Would Cut Food Charities Funding by 14 Percent

The ACLU Probes FBI on Freedom Issues The ACLU has launched a probe to expose and prevent FBI spying on people and groups simply for speaking out or practicing their faith. As a first step, the ACLU and its affiliates have filed Freedom of Information Act requests in more than a dozen states.

Although the FBI has refused to turn over most of the files, the ACLU has obtained evidence that confirms the FBI and local police, working through Joint Terrorism Task Forces, are spying on political,

Cold Homecoming

by Cydney Gillis A dirty little secret is finally out: While George W. Bush has (“State considers cutting food aid for been waging war in Afghanistan and Iraq, he’s been cutting medical the hungry,” Post-Gazette.com, July services for the veterans coming 2, 2005) home. ` The state senate adopted a Or, at least, grossly budget plan from the governor that underestimating how many veterans might push more people over the would need — and be entitled to edge into hunger. If approved, the — medical services from the plan will trim $2.4 million from the State Food Purchase Program, which Department of Veterans Affairs.

Last month, in a major blooper for translates into a 14-percent cut in the Bush Administration, the VA funding for local food assistance charities. Last March 500 pantries revealed it had budgeted for serving reported a 23-percent increase in 23,553 returning veterans in fiscal people using their services. For 2005 — far short of the 103,000 needy rural areas, where state funding now expected. accounts for nearly half of the food The VA said the number inventory, the proposed plan will was based on figures from 2002, dramatically curtail the frequency of when the U.S. was supposed to be food distribution and the amount that out of Iraq in six months. It’s an is provided. Pennsylvania Hunger error that’s put the VA’s Health Action Center’s Sue Mitchem said: Administration $1 billion short this “Sadly, the last resort for families with year — with estimates it will be hunger is about to be weakened.” $2.7 billion short in fiscal 2006.

Last month, led by Washington Democrat Patty Murray, the U.S. Senate voted an emergency supplement of $1.5 billion for VA. The House followed with a bill authorizing $975 million.

While the two bills wait to be reconciled — Congress is in recess this week — Sheila Sebron and the veterans she works with continue to wait for services.

Sebron is a volunteer advocate with the National Association of Black Veterans.

During her service in the Air Force between 1977 and 1984, she was injured in an auto accident — an event that left her knees permanently blown.

When she’s in pain, Sebron sometimes suffers flashbacks of the accident — a symptom of posttraumatic stress disorder for which the mother of two says she had to fight the VA for treatment.

Like the Vietnam War, waves of combat vets are now

“Don’ t Leave Home Without t...”

I

Streetvibes

environmental, anti-war and faithbased groups. The ACLU thinks the public deserves to know who is being investigated and why. They have sued the FBI and the Department of Justice to get those answers.

ACLU clients comprise advocates for causes including the environment, animal rights, labor, religion, Native American rights, fair trade, grassroots politics, peace, social justice, nuclear disarmament, human rights and civil liberties. When the FBI invades the privacy of political and religious groups in the name of fighting terrorism, the ACLU believes that these acts are abuses and threats to our trust and freedom.

returning home with PTSD, Sebron says — only to face long waits for help, if they can get any at all. At the Seattle VA, which is $11 million in the hole this year, Sebron says there are currently 18,000 people enrolled. Their wait for an appointment can range from five months to one year, depending on their disability rating. The higher the rating, the quicker the service.

Sebron, who’s lower on the list but suffering from depression in the wake of losing a loved one, has had an appointment for a mental consultation she needs bumped back twice in the past two months.

And that’s for a veteran with a disability rating. Sebron says anyone not currently in the system is out of luck. A current hiring freeze at the Seattle VA, which is leaving vacant positions open for now, is only making the situation worse, she says.

“The reality of an exploding body and the mistakes — that you intended to kill the bad guys and it turned out to be a family in a house.

They didn’t have time to process it.”

The flashbacks, Sebron says, are like having images of memories superimposed over events happening in the here and now — something she describes as surreal.

Despite the reports of long waits for service and care, Megan Streight, a spokeswoman for VA’s Northwest Health Network (which includes Washington, Oregon, Idaho and Alaska) says facilities in the region have actually had a drop in demand over the past few months — and that the VA is mostly meeting its guidelines of providing all eligible veterans with an appointment in 30 days.

Reprinted from Real Change News

Page 13

He’s There

by Robert Manassa I want to tell you a story - it won’t take long.

You may have read about him in a book or even in a song. this man turned water into wine, Get ready people, to share in his glory divine This man was hung on the cross one day Not even one word he had to say He didn’t even fight nor did he fuss To stay there on the cross, that was a must So when your so-called friends let you down just look toward heaven’s way for a true friend Jesus – he will never-ever let you down Remember he won’t fail you – He’s always around

Broken Glass

by Evanne Fisher I’m so Angry I slam the door The glass breaks.

It falls to the floor Like sleet from the sky.

Like the shattered pieces of my life, The broken glass lies at my feet As I look down, I see all of my hopes and dreams Splattered there amongst The glistening pieces of glass.

I reach down to pick up the pieces of my life, The glass cuts my hands, Blood everywhere Dripping Flowing into the vast darkness

They All Asked about You

by Michael Henson I went down to the city of lights, they all asked about you.

The preachers, the sellers, the man with pale flowers, the police gliding by in their big white cruisers, they all asked.

The prostitute sighing her continuous sigh, the girl with one eye bruised, the children of the cobbled alley, the postman with the heavy news, they all asked.

They all asked about you.

I went down to the city of sea, they all asked about you.

The mussels and starfish, the sharks and the barnacles and the otters in their castles of kelp, they all asked.

The fishermen winching at their sodden nets, the women stitching at the shore, the cold gulls above them, screening the sands, and the briny things clustered in the scuds of foam, they all asked.

They all asked about you.

I went down to the city of oblivion, they all asked about you.

Someone mumbled through an opium haze.

Someone muttered through an alcoholic mist.

They all asked.

The boy lowered his bag of glue and the crackhead his pipe of dreams.

The needle-freak set down his shivering spike and a girl let smoke drift from her mouth.

Each addled neuron knew your name.

They all asked.

They all asked about you.

Where I’ve chosen to live.

I went down to the city of poets, they all asked about you.

In iambics and sestinas and in yawping free verse, they all rhythmically asked.

There was one who risked all for seven broken lines, one who stood coughing in an empty tower, one who built pyramids of abstract syllables, and one whose voice was a broken trumpet.

All of these and a chorus of lyrical Greeks, they all asked.

They all asked about you.

Don’t be sad or start to cry. Don’t think to hard or wonder why. Just walk with me for just one mile, and at its end I’m sure you’ll smile.

Then I went down to the city of earth, they all asked about you.

The ants and the centipedes, the pill bugs and slugs chewed out the words with their loamy mouths.

Mute as the mole in their vegetal manner, they all asked.

Even the dead, in their earthen cathedrals, lit their dark candles and chanted for you their continuous psalm.

They all asked.

They all asked about you.

I was lying on a torture rack and a friend was lying on one close by. We were trying to carry on a civilized conversation, but it was rather difficult as two employees of the place were giving the two of us their full attention. Their supervisor came in. He cussed them up one side and down the other telling them what a mess the place was, how they were getting blood all over the place and how they weren’t following proper protocol. He told them that if they didn’t straighten up that he’d see about having one of us on the racks switch places with them. I said, “No way! A, these working conditions are deplorable, B, you treat your help like crap, and C, I know damn well you don’t pay union scale.

by Jba

The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common But leaves the greater villain loose Who steals the common from off the goose.

The law demands that we alone When we take things we do not own But leaves the lords and ladies fine Who take things that are yours and mine.

The poor and wretched don’t escape If they conspire the law to break; This must be so but they endure Those who conspire to make the law.

The law locks up the man or woman Who steals the goose from off the common And geese will still a common lack Till they go and steal it back.

—Anonymous

Writers!

Submit your Poetry to STREETVIBES email your writing to Streetvibes@juno.com

Page 14

Streetvibes

One check away

Why is there so much month left at the end of the money?

James Chionsini twinkling stars cant keep you warm when your sleeping in the park till he break of dawn newspaper pillow and a plastic tarp watching for the pigs that come out after dark lost your job got jacked and robbed your landlord said that’s not my prob doctor bills kill you can’t afford the pills now you’re shaking heart breaking drink as much as you spill waiting on the first to quench your thirst alleviate the discomfort of an asphalt earth trying to find a shelter to get some rest but nowhere seems safe without a knife proof vest

by JH Who is the man that staggers in the park?

The old man, with gray hair…

The poor gentleman that lives in a flea-bag hotel.

The man that reminds me of my father, my dad…

He’s tall and thin.

Had an egg-sandwich for breakfast.

In his tiny room, downtown.

if you could just get back to square one start to heal the disease that’s got you on the run feeling invisible going insane scowls and nightsticks fall like rain

This thin man, this papa, the gray-haired guy, staggers in the park, on a brutal, hot day…

The homeless

by Don Foran Ten men clamber out of the creaking van, Their sweaty bodies meeting a kiss Of cool night air.

They drift, silently, sullenly Toward the darkened church.

Mattresses lie, two or three to a room, Along walls decorated with children’s Drawings and almost casual crucifixions.

Carl, Eddie, Jake and the others Throw their worn packs and bags Onto the makeshift beds, and John, It’s always John, is first to ask If he can have his sack lunch now, Not in the morning as we had planned.

“Sure,” I say, almost as anxious as he To assuage this remediable hunger.

Several echo John, and soon all Are feasting on pb and j; apples, celery, And other healthy fare remains on the table, But they’re happier now, even communicative.

One thanks me for setting a new pair of white socks On each mattress. Another offers a juice cup To a friend. “Lights out!” Rick calls at ten, And no one argues, no one hesitates. Sleep Knits once more the raveled sleeve of care, Obliterates the hurt, soothes the jangled nerves.

Tomorrow will be another day, Another cheerless day embroidered With small triumphs, fragile dreams.

Harold

Suicide I want to swim with the fish For all eternity Or I could fly with the birds Up in the sky so high I could also go to the doctor And get these pills filled All I would have to do Is take them all I could park my car in the garage And let the carbonmonoxide take me I could huff on house hold cleaners And let the fumes consume me I could overdoes on acid And get a trip before I die I could stand in a pit of fire And smell my burning flesh Or maybe jump off a building With the wind rushing past me I will do it today Or maybe I will wait till next week...............

In The Darkness Hiding in the darkness of the night, This is how I’ve been forced to live my life In the blackness I conceal, All my problems that are real Afraid to let my feelings show, Afraid to let anyone know The pain I have been forced to endure, Is not as easily hidden as before As the problems continue to grow, I contemplate just letting go

He sits on the bench, with his counterfeit friend, and he falls on the ground, with the heavy limpness of a cruel torture.

On the asphalt, in the shade of the trees, this old man falls.

The deception of life, and the deny of death.

I feel the spirit of this man, myself, on the ground, the hot, cruel asphalt…

I want to go home A place where I can be me Where warmth envelopes my soul when I open the door A place where I can be free.

I can’t wait for you to love me Lord In a tangible physical way Your arms wrapped around my aching body Taking my pain and grief away I have never felt safe here Never feel like I belong I’m weary and I’m tired but I’ll keep plugging along.

I just want to feel a piece of your love here In someone close to my heart but I keep getting disappointed The hurt pierces like a dart I know I’m not perfect Lord but please teach them your grace I’m so tired and weary of falling on my face.

Please put it in their heart to share your love with me so I can taste just a little bit of what is meant by “free”.

This is a battle I can not win, So why should I bother to post-pone the end

Streetvibes

Page 15

357-4602

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

SHELTER: Both Anthony House (Youth)

SHELTER: Men City Gospel Mission 241-5525 Garden St. House 241-0490 Joseph House (Veterans) 241-2965 St. Francis/St.Joseph House 381-4941 Mt. Airy Center 661-4620 Volunteers of Amer. 381-1954

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

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

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

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 Dana Transitional Bridge Services, Inc 751-9797

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) 961-4080 St. John’s Housing 651-6446

Need Help or Want to Help?

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

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

Outsider Art

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August 2005

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