Tick Tock Sheptock

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have now held the first of three presidential debates . This means that those suffering from "election stress disorder" will soon find relief after hearing Mr. Trump's senseless rants for over 15 months as he eliminated 16 other GOP candidates (most of whom were more qualified than he is to become president). Then again, they might jump from the frying pan into the fire by having even more.....MUCH more to worry about if Trump were to win. Sadly, a Trump victory is not completely unrealistic given the fact that the candidates are in a virtual tie less than six weeks before election day. Though Mr. Trump gave his best performance to-date on September 26th (which isn't saying much),  he still got "Trumped" by Secretary Clinton . However, political scientists don't think that the debates will move the needle of public opinion -- no matter how well Hillary Clinton does or how poorly Donald Trump does. (Let's hope the...

Though the media tends not to disclose the socioeconomic status of criminals who are not homeless, they almost always discuss when the perpetrator of a crime is homeless -- even when the crime committed is not directly related to their homelessness. (Sadly, Americans who assert that poverty breeds crime are more interested in locking up the poor criminals than they are in employing petty criminals after the fact or addressing poverty in blanket form before the fact. Think solutions.) This practice by the media of mentioning someone's homeless status (especially if it's a violent crime) does much to contribute negatively to societal biases and stereotypes concerning the homeless. While the media does indeed cover stories of homeless people being attacked as they sleep outside, the general public seems only to remember the stories of homeless people committing crimes and to forget about the many cases in which homeless people are victimized by housed people (often wayward adoles...

(At events organized by activists and advocates) I, Eric Sheptock, will be in Philadelphia, PA during the week of the Democratic national Convention. I've been asked to speak about homelessness. Though I tend to speak off the cuff, here are some thoughts that I'll convey at organized events and elsewhere while in our nation's first capital: The Black Panther Party which celebrates its 50 th anniversary this October was begun in response to police brutality in Oakland, CA in 1966. They created armed resistance to a corrupt police force; but, like Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah, they transitioned into affording social services to the poor – namely school breakfast to Black children. They also began to teach people about the negative effects of capitalism and racial inequality. In short, they were stopped dead in their tracks by J. Edgar Hoover whose most effective tactic was having the feds to offer school meals without the ideology. The effects of discouraging the...

In this post I'll attempt to show patterns and draw parallels between several major events of the past 100 years on either side of the Atlantic. I hope to provoke thoughts about lessons that the world should have learned by now. I'll also make some political predictions – things that I hope for as well as unfavorable things that I foresee happening: It's a madder, madder, madder, madder world . That truth is especially evident when one looks at the last 100 years – from World War I right up to Brexit and the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign season. The logic of the world's most learned political elites has been turned on its head time and time again – leaving any reasonable person to wonder if there's any hope of us voting for and/or appointing a set of leaders who can display a sufficient level of geopolitical sanity and if it's possible for those who don't come from privileged backgrounds to do any better . After all, numerous entertainers have brou...

I apologize if the title gave you any false hope. I have no Earthly reason to believe that Donald J. Trump will die in the foreseeable future. [Sob!!!] I surely am not taking any steps to bring about his death. Though it would make many Americans ecstatic, it would also ensure that the (not-so-) Secret Service pays me a visit -- guns drawn. That said, this blog post is purely hypothetical and intended to give Americans and the world a ray of hope amidst all of the political and socioeconomic turmoil of our day. [Just to be clear, I foresee a Clinton/Sanders presidency beginning in 2017 (which I predicted at least six months before the mass media ) and Bernie spending his last two years on Earth formulating Wall Street regulations and social service reforms . Let's hope.....and VOTE . After all, a Sanders vice-presidency might have a positive trickle-down effect that makes it easier for DC Mayor Muriel Bowser and other mayors to end homelessness in their respective cities.]...

Let's be clear: I don't like Donald Trump. Truth be told, it's not because he is an aspiring dictator. After all, I liked Hugo Chavez BECAUSE he tried to become a benevolent dictator who operated above the fray of congressional bickering and BECAUSE he succeeded and sending the message to greedy capitalists that, if they harvested oil or other resources from Venezuela, they would have to put money into his country's economy and thereby help the poor. Dictators tend to be very organized thinkers who are good at uniting their administrations under consistent themes that run across all departments of their respective governments. A certain friend who is retired from USAID has told me that he felt safe while walking the streets of Moscow at 2 AM when Russia had a dictator; but, he wouldn't dare do that now. He emphasized that dictators don't tolerate street crime. That said, a dictator is as good as his theme/agenda. In a free country like the “Untied States” peop...

On December 6 th , 2015 I spoke at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in DC about the possible closure of the CCNV Shelter c. 2018 and the need to connect able-bodied homeless people to living-wage jobs. I told them about a federal effort to connect homeless people to employment in 1988. That effort ended with about half of the homeless people who took advantage of the program obtaining employment and half of THAT group remaining employed for at least 13 weeks. All in all, a quarter of the homeless people who sought employment through this program remained employed for at least a quarter of a year. 25% is a failing grade anywhere in the world (except the baseball stadium). No robust effort to get homeless people working has been made by the feds in the last 27 years – when Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were in diapers and I was just months into my eventual six-year tenure as a tractor driver (similar to an airport luggage train but used to haul hospital freight) at Shands Hospit...

With me having spent, at this point, a full 20% of my almost 47 years advocating for the poor and homeless, it stands to reason that I'd be able to conceptualize my stance and my concerns pertaining to the issue of homelessness. As it turns out, I can and will. After all, no one knows with certainty how long they have to live and it would be a crying shame if, after all these years, people only knew about my specific demands and not about my broader principles. Mitch Snyder passed away in 1990, after 16 years of advocacy. He, like me, was almost 47 . Now the shelter which his leadership helped to create is on the verge of being closed. Toward the end of the CCNV Task Force process , the current director read a long letter which he claimed represents the will of CCNV's board and administration. It was, among other things, a diatribe against DC Government for “trying to push CCNV around”. It didn't call me out specifically, in spite of my pronounced role in causing th...