Tick Tock Sheptock

Of late I've thought a lot about and said a lot about the need to be mean and forceful in order to get government and others to do what poor people need done in order to afford to live. And while I have talked for my full eight years of homeless advocacy about what able-bodied homeless people need in order to find meaningful employment (with the last five years being well-documented on-line), I recently decided that homeless employment is ALL that I'll focus on. At the October 21 st meeting of DC's Inter-agency Council on Homelessness (ICH) I announced that decision and explained that there are many people speaking up for other sub-populations of the homeless community. I also said that we should get the homeless working before they reach retirement age. That statement actually drew a little laughter, speaking of which, there were several times during that meeting that well-paid people broke out into laughter. Some of the homeless and formerly homeless people were act...

Councilwoman Muriel Bowser won DC's Democratic mayoral primary yesterday. She will face off with Councilman David Catania (Independent – at-large) in November with him being a strong contender for the mayor's seat. I'm inclined to believe that Catania will do less harm to and possibly more good for the poor of our nation's capital than Bowser will do. But this is a Democratic city and since “Home Rule” was passed in 1973, the winner of the Democratic primary has become mayor. Pity. But, as I said in my blog post yesterday, who becomes the chief executive doesn't determine the direction of the city. In much the same way that the primary job of the sheriff of Philadelphia is to evict people from their homes, the primary job of the mayor of Washington, DC is to push poor people out of the city through a mix of draconian policies. I see a 20-year plan which was devised by the business community behind closed doors coming to fruition. Mayor Anthony Williams (1999-2007...