Young brother I know, he’s pretty low — a foster care graduate with no place to call home. He’s trying his best, on the jobtraining tip, volunteers here and there.

He’s now in a shelter, and doesn’t like it too much, but he’s hopeful, and he is saving up his dough. I talked to him about the city’s plan — to cut his cash assistance down to fifty bucks and no change. He’s got one of those real expressive faces and it went from shocked and surprised to crumpled and crushed. He asked me why? I tried to explain, and he could only say, “But I don’t do drugs! He shook his head in a struggle to exclaim “How will I eat?” and a little later “How will I move into a place of my own?” I didn’t know what to tell him, but ain’t it just like the welfare system to find another new way to kick a brother when he’s down?

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Too damn bad when at the end of the day all the thoughts in your head are just the things that they say.
Henry Rollins

More than a century after the emergence of Citizen Hearst and yellow journalism, most of us have learned to take our morning newspaper with a grain of salt (well, make that two). Being critical and seasoned media consumers, we know better than to entirely trust the newscast and to believe everything it says in the paper: we have been warned about the concentration of power in the communications industry, and, wading through marshes of violence and sexual depravity, we clearly identify sensationalism when it bleeds in front of us. Overall, we assume that harmful side-effects of our media intake are limited to a tolerable minimum.

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In the Early seventies Bill Withers wrote and recorded a song about the love, respect and feelings about his grandma and how he use to take care of her at a tender age of six, the piece was entitled Grandma’s Hands. Every time I listen to Grandma’s Hands I feel proud about how families in the Black community treasured and took care of our elders. So what happened! Now the message of the late Bill Withers has vanished from our community and grandma’s hands are in the handcuffs of city bureaucrats, sheriffs, people in the nursing home industry and others outside our homes. Our respect, love and duties to our elders are still present in our communities, but like gentrification, not only our streets but our homes are being invaded by outsiders who are making rules on how, where and with whom we should live and take care of our own.

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During this year of severe budget cuts city-wide, where various programs are being targeted 100% and others’ funding is decreasing so much that it will be impossible to operate, the constant question being posed by those being cut is “how are City staff determining who should be cut”? The original thought was that the budget deficit could run as high as over $200 million, and other estimates have been around $175 million. As of two weeks ago the estimate seemed to have dropped to $130 million, but obviously it’s a moving target.

One of the many disturbing things about these cuts is the rationale behind how they are being made. The Mayor’s Budget Office issued directions to all city departments telling them to come in with a baseline budget 5 1/2 % lower than last year, then to add another 10% of provisional cuts. These directions were supposedly given to all departments, regardless of function within the City’s infrastructure. At the department level, it seems the staff took an approach of cutting areas which were seen as “enriched services” (as opposed to “core services”), rather than sharing the burden amongst all programs.

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Alas 2 de la tarde el 21 de marzo del 2002, Sergio llegó a su hogar en la ciudad de Sur San Francisco, y encontró a su esposa Maria, esposada, mientras que tres agentes de la migra la sacaban de su casa. Sus hijos, de edades 5 y 10, lloraban aterrorizados, sin saber si volverían a ver a su mamá. Uno de los agentes le exigió ver los papeles de Sergio, y aunque le dijo que no tenía, el agente no lo arresto. Pero por las siguientes 24 horas, Sergio frenéticamente buscaba por ayuda legal, incentidumbre de los cambios tremendos que les esperaba a su familia. Durante todo este tiempo, Maria en detención esperaba la llamada de Sergio mientras que la migra le exigía a que firmara los formularios de la salida voluntaria.

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Soy James Abou Nader. Les escribo desde Bethlehem. Es el 5 de Abril y la hora local es 9:49pm. Vine con algunos amigos al campo de Antiochian Orthodox hace unos años atras y ahora les escribo a todos, ansioso por ayuda para nuestra gente en Palestina. Los tanques israelíes y personal militar hallanaron nuestros hogares, entraron a la casa de mi hermana y su esposo, al rededor de las 2:30 de esta mañana. Ellos comenzaron a atacar a mi hermana, uno de los hombres militares trato a mi hermana de una forma inapropiada, él la violó en distintas formas. Mi hermana tiene 4 meses de embarazo y por seguro perdera a su bebe. Cuando termino de violarla, dos militares más hicieron lo mismo. Cuando ella se resistía y los peleaba, ellos la golpeaban más en el estómago.

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Irish Rose, bartender at the Dubya Hotel, a high-class watering hole pandering to people with money, power, and celebrity, gave Jim Phinn, the man with 12 million pig cells in his brain, his double scotch.

“Any side effects yet, Phinn, from that xenotransplant for your brain hemorrhage a few years ago?” asked Irish.

“Nope, other than a craving for table scraps now and then. I still can’t stand the smell of ham and eggs.”

“How’s your new job working out, Phinn?”

Business was slow and Irish Rose enjoyed talking to her regular customers. Her regular customers sometimes didn’t enjoy the conversation as much as she did.

“Stupid question, Irish,” he said. “I work for San Francisco’s Homeless Coordinator, so you know I deal with people who are a sandwich shy of a picnic and this one is coordinating the picnic basket. With some difficulty, I may add.”

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Fund continues to pick up steam. Regular STREET SHEET readers will recall that the Trust, if passed through Congress, will create over 1.5 million new homes over a ten-year period. The national “Housing Winter,” actions contributed to over two-dozen new Congressional co-sponsors, direct action helping the very capable lobbyists at the National Low- Income Housing Coalition and the National Coalition for the Homeless make their case.

Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi has issued a “Dear Colleague,” letter about the Trust, thanks in large part to the local public actions and postcard campaigns. Keep up the pressure, help us make sure that Ms. Pelosi uses that formidable new-found whip for housing justice!

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Since the infamous sale and all its disreputable backroom “horse trading” became lost among the many examples of what little regard San Franciscans hold for ethics in business OR politics — the word on the street has been that the Fang family took a $60 million plus payment from the Hearst Corp. to kill the Examiner, leaving San Francisco a “one Hearst” town. We even joked around the office that we would organize a pool to bet on the date we predict that the new Examiner will go under.

But I do remember eagerly purchasing the first edition of the Fang’s Examiner at the corner store near the COH offices. I was intrigued because I had only begun editing the Coalition’s paper, and I was curious to see what changes would be evident once Hearst’s corporate tentacles were pried from the Examiner’s pages.

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The North Mission community and advocacy groups have been working for several years on the question of how best to serve the homeless and those at risk of becoming homeless in their community. There was much brainstorming and in that time frame the mayor was opening drop-in centers in other parts of the city.

There was a large meeting in 1999 with community groups, the community, DHS, and other groups, when the model changed from a drop-in center to a resource center. The idea was to offer resources to people living on the streets, SRO tenants, day laborers, sex workers, and other very low-income people. These resources would be offered on site so that it would not become just another place to go to get referred to another place. The idea was that this center would be user friendly, and that the users of the center would be extensively involved in the policies of the center.

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