I have no heart for someone who starves his folks.

George W. Bush (on North Korea’s Kim Jong II) San Franciscans are tired of homelessness.

It has been an evergrowing crisis for over two decades, and both conservatives and advocates agree that the problem is far beyond public control. In order to end Third World conditions on the City’s streets, many people are now willing to adapt more draconian measures, “tough love” approaches that will tackle the crisis with rolled-up sleeves. If homeless people get ruffled in the process, well, perhaps they won’t congregate here any longer.

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A lawsuit filed to prevent the implementation of Proposition N was heard in San Francisco Superior Court by Judge Ronald Quidachay on February 5, 2003. Proposition N — a ballot initiative which was passed by the voters in November — would cut cash assistance to homeless GA receipts from $350 to just $59 per month with the (pretense? / intent?) that the remaining amount would be put towards direct services.

The issue at hand is the legality of Proposition N.

According to attorney Oren Sellstrom, who represents the plaintiffs in the suit, the State Welfare and Institutions Code allows that only the Board of Supervisors of the county or appointed agency can decide on the standards on how public benefits are rendered.

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Right to a Roof was honored to present five workshops on poverty, homelessness and social justice organizing to the National Student Campaign on Hunger and Homelessness‚ Western Regional Conference at UC Irvine, Feb 7-9th. The NSCHH has been a great national partner to us, bringing great energy and hard work to two North American Days of Housing Action.

Why are students important in the struggle for social and economic justice? Simply put, student activists have always been a part of any important movement. They bring creativity, skills, time and enthusiasm to the mix. Being a student is an opportunity to explore both the system and the self.

The students we met were proof that many will not be fooled in this cynical era into believing that a college education is solely for personal economic gain.

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Having worked with the long-time homeless population that inhabits the nooks and crannies of the streets of San Francisco for the last 18 years, I am continually in awe of the range of strength and intelligence that exists among them. Very seldom do we, as public health workers, mine this untapped innate health that exists at the core of every human being regardless of their present condition.

Those of us that have attempted to put a human face on a specialized outreach team to the most compromised homeless population have been richly rewarded. Once health and not disease drives public health we have found that everyone has the capacity to change and transform themselves. Written off as hopeless, many of the incorrigible, shot-to-the-curb homeless population has risen up like the Phoenix of Greek myth from the ashes of their former selves. Once we go down that road of accepting increasing numbers of people as expendable to the uncaring god of budget deficits, we are in danger of losing our basic humanity as a civilized society. We have long since reached that point in the United States and now must decide if we, in San Francisco, want to be willing coconspirators in the death of caring, humane pubic values. The streets are the most visible barometer of the public health of a community, city, and nation.

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2002 was the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Steinbeck. Throughout his writing career, Steinbeck chronicled the lives of poor people who faced oppression and injustice. The Grapes of Wrath, his greatest achievement, describes the 1930s westward journey of tenant farmers forced from their farms by the banks that owned them. These farmers packed their belongings into ramshackle trucks and headed to California where, it was rumored, there was plenty of work and good pay. The experience they had contrasted sharply with their expectations, and reveals striking parallels with the situation of contemporary homeless people.

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Parece ser que todo el mundo se encuentra en suspenso, hay un desconcierto generalizado, nadie sabe exactamente lo que puede suceder en los próximos meses, lo cierto es que todos sentimos miedo de lo que pueda acontecer, sobre todo los desamparados, los pobres y los emigrantes indocumentados.

Por aproximadamente tres años, Bush y su Gabinete en El Congreso se han dado a la loca tarea de implementar leyes racistas, que están acabando con los anhelos y esperanzas de muchos emigrantes, que vinieron a este país en busca del sueño americano. La mayor parte de ellos son obreros de la clase trabajadora, que no están viviendo un sueño, sino una pesadilla ya que por la falta de trabajo debido a la recesión económica que estamos pasando, muchos se encuentran en desamparo, y tienen que vivir en Shelters y en muchas ocasiones en la calle, porque no tienen la capacidad económica de pagar una renta, porque lo poco que ganan se lo tienen que mandar a sus familias, que esta a la espera de estas remesas para poder sobrevivir, ya que se encuentran en países económicamente desbastados por este sistema .

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When an estimated 19,000 participants in the American Psychiatric Association’s 2003 Annual Meeting pour into San Francsico’s Moscone Center this May, how will the Bay Area respond? Will residents lie back, as if on a huge collective couch? Not if an international network led by psychiatric survivors, mental health consumers and dissident mental health professionals can help it. These activists intend to meet the APA with peaceful but passionate “Mad Pride” by holding a counter-conference and a nonviolent Freedom Rally, and the public is invited.

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America had two separate but equal education systems. There were few people whose voice could be heard above that custom. People who tried to address the inequality of the segregated systems could find no voice, so deeply inculcated was the prejudice, that few could view it as anything but a normality, a part of everyday life.

No one in the media cared to address it, the media mirrored the custom, ignoring the blatant inequality of the division. No one in the U.S.

Attorney General’s office cared to address it; although it violated federal law, custom had trumped law for so many generations that no one could imagine the Basic Rights Amendment of the Constitution actually applied, least of all the highest legal office in the country.

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It started quietly. Just a few of us POOR folk gathered in the Tenderloin in front of the San Christina Hotel — a single room occupancy (SRO) hotel in the heart of the Tenderloin District of San Francisco. It is the residence of one of our very low-income staff writers. I chuckled at the odd juxtapose of people with signs protesting the War cheerily walking towards the march through our “bad” neighborhood.

After a few minutes of handmade sign choosing — I settled on “POOR Magazine says NO to all wars against poor people of color locally and globally.” Our small group began the walk to the Embarcadero to join the hundreds of thousands in San Francisco, in concert with folks in London, New York, San Diego, Australia and hundreds of other cities across the globe. in protesting this new act of criminal oppression proposed by the rich white folk in office: a war in Iraq.

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There are many metaphors and similes one could use when speaking of the Fang family, owners of the San Francisco Examiner newspaper (known as the “Fang-xaminer” to many in the Bay Area) when trying to write about not only their biased editorial policies, but their accruement of wealth and power, the trail of law suits, and the exploitation of the people locally and globally. In the end I think I will have to go with the idea of the crumbs left behind the fairytale characters, Hansel and Gretel, except with a Machiavellian twist.

The Fangs seemed to have obtained the power, to have people of power “in their pockets” or indebted to them through political and corporate interests i.e. money and greed.

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