Tick Tock Sheptock

On Tuesday, August 23rd at 1:51 PM much of the east coast of the United States experienced an earthquake. As a homeless advocate, I must say that I'm glad that there weren't any reports of serious damage to non-governmental buildings and, as far as I know, no one was made homeless by this earthquake. However, the wall near my bed at the CCNV Shelter now has a hirzontal crack and I'm wondering how much of this large building which holds 1,350 homeless people (one-fifth of DC's homeless population) has now been compromised. At the time that the quake struck, I was walking down the sidewalk toward the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library where a lady friend and I were planning to feed and show the movie "Freedom Riders" to a large group of homeless people. As I passed by the construction site which is adjacent to the library, I noticed that many of the workers were standing idle and heard one of them say that he heard a rumble which he thought was a su...

On Tuesday, June 28th I went to DC's Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library to speak to a group of over 100 teenagers who are part of the Summer Youth Employment Program about homelessness -- to do a sensitivity training of the youth about the homeless issue. (This is the same program which former DC mayor Adrian Fenty pitted against the homeless last year when he shifted homeless funding into it.) This portion of the SYEP is one of the many steps that the MLK Library has taken in recent years to better serve its homeless patrons. While there, I was saddened by the news that Pam Stovall, the associate director of the library had passed. She lost her battle with breast cancer on Sunday, June 26th. As Audrey Middleton broke the news to me, she said, "I just received an e-mail from Pam on Thursday. Everyone was saying, 'When Pam comes back, we're going to do this and tell her that.' Then, next thing you know, we get word that she passed". Pam Stovall was a ...