Tick Tock Sheptock

On October 31st, 2013 the CCNV Task Force which is headed by DC Councilman Jim Graham will meet on the 3rd floor (3-North) of CCNV which is located at 425 2nd Street NW, Washington, DC. It is located right on the edge of Capitol Hill and is metro accessible, being 2 blocks from the Judiciary Square Metro Station and 3 blocks from Union Station (both on the Red Line). The D6 bus stops right in front of the shelter (as long as the driver doesn't refuse to do so). The meeting is open to the public. Here's a brief account of what got us to this point..... The Community for Creative Non-Violence (CCNV) homeless shelter was established in the 1980's by Vietnam-era veterans who'd renounced violence, thus the name. Through the direct action of Mitch Snyder and dozens of homeless people (many young and old veterans being homeless even in this day and age), a vacant federal building was wrested from the Reagan administration and given to DC Government with strings attached....

It is the mission of SHARC to engage the poor, homeless, formerly homeless, community activists and concerned citizens in advocacy efforts for the poor and under-privileged community with an emphasis on self-advocacy. SHARC's efforts to meet with Mayor Gray Below is an article which I recently wrote and am trying to have published. It describes the trouble that DC homeless advocates are having getting a meeting with Mayor Vincent Gray. I delivered hard copies to the Washington Post and the Examiner on December 10th, 2012. On December 11th Mayor Gray was the first mayor to visit an Inter-agency Council on Homelessness (ICH) meeting. On that day I got a card from his special assistant as the mayor told me to set up a meeting through him. hopefully this will cause things to take a turn for the better..... To whom it may concern, I am Eric Jonathan Sheptock, a relatively well-known homeless advocate in Washington, DC. Since I began advocating in June 2006 in opposition to for...

1 – SHARC has weathered the storm and made the best of a mess. Though Sandy “rained on our parade” by forcing the cancellation of an event which we spent five weeks planning and organizing, it hasn't discouraged us from trying again. We'll come back bigger and better the next time. There is no need to consider what possible shortcomings SHARC may have exhibited during the storm. Given the fact that we had many food donations, the rain date would have been the next day (Tuesday) during which the government was shut down. Sandy was an unpredictable storm which we only found out on the 26th was going hit us on the 29th of October (the day of our event). That said, the five weeks leading up to October 29th were a true show of our increased organizing ability. So, let's give ourselves a hand, dust ourselves off and chart the path forward. As a result of Sandy, SHARC members were able to: begin the conversation around bringing three councilmembers together in a meeting. Th...

We're at no shortage of governmental flaws and failures to talk about -- whether addressing the federal government or state and local governments. We all watched the congressional bickering play out in the summer of 2011 as many people whose lives were destroyed by natural disasters were made to wonder if Congress would add insult to injury by cutting off their assistance, we almost defaulted on our national debt and President Obama urged Congress to play nicely (with people's lives, I must add). While some disasters were averted, Americans (and the whole world, thanks to technology) were made keenly aware of the ineffectiveness of our national government (if they hadn't already known). My anti-capitalist friends and I are left to wonder how much of the dysfunction of government is due to the shortcomings of our elected officials and how much of it is due to them being unsympathetic, intransigent, war-loving, imperialistic capitalists who are deliberately throwing th...

On Monday, March 12th at 10 AM, dozens of people gathered outside of the Wilson Building (DC City hall) to give Mayor Vincent Gray (or his staff) our budget recommendations for Fiscal year 2013. This year we came out about a week and a half BEFORE he is expected to issue his budget proposal to the DC Council, as opposed to the usual manner of reacting to the budget in mid-April AFTER it has been issued. This more PROACTIVE approach is what advocates decided on during a debriefing in June 2011, following last year's budget cycle. I'm glad to see that we're pulling it off. We got at least a dozen of DC's nearly 7,000 homeless people to come out and self-advocate. Several other people who would be directly affected if the mayor were to make cuts to human services spoke about their struggles. They included a blind, single mother of three and a man whose 7-year old daughter is chronically ill and presently in the hospital. Councilmen Jim Graham, Michael Brown and Tommy We...

NOTE: Please read the blog entry below this one, as this is a follow-up to the previous blog post. The investigation into the death of a homeless veteran right outside of Washington, DC's New York Avenue Shelter continues. As if his wrongful death isn't sad enough, those who work for DC Government's Department of Human Services (DHS) and for the shelter have gone into "self-defense mode" and seem to be more intent on covering their tracks than they are on finding out the truth. Should we expect more? also of note is the fact that the homeless and homeless advocates are gathering facts about this case more quickly than the government. DHS is doing its own internal investigation. And we all know how those things go -- self-defense all the way. On a more positive note, I was able to get the name of the deceased. The man's name was Luther "Sarge" Hill and he was ex-military. It's always good to be able to refer to a person by name, as the system ...

Saturday, October 29th was a wet, cold miserable day in Washington, DC. There was a light rain throughout the day. It felt like the temperature was somewhere between 35 and 40 throughout the daylight hours, though I missed the forecast. We even got some snow that evening and had an even colder night. DC Law defines "hypothermia season" in two ways -- by date and by temperature. DC Government's Department of Human Services (DHS) is required by law to provide enough shelter for all people who present as homeless between November 1st and march 31st. However, if it freezes before or after that time frame(including the windchill factor), they must be prepared to provide shelter to all who are in need of it and are within the city limits at that time (regardless of whether or not that person claims to be a resident of the city). But on that fateful day in October, a homeless man in a wheelchair was denied shelter and died in the parking lot behind the shelter. I've yet ...