Tick Tock Sheptock

REPOSTED from August 27th, 2009 in lieu of my recent trip to Florida for my mom's 75th birthday..... TREAT: My mother's sermon on her 75th birthday Millions of people around the world have heard about my advocacy efforts for the homeless community of Washington, DC. I've been quoted or written about in the New York Times, Washington Times and Washington Post. I've been on WPFW Radio, NPR (National Public Radio) and CNN. I've even been on a Russian TV station that broadcasts to 100 million people.Few are they who know anything substantial about me as an individual. So, here it is. I was born in Atlantic City, New Jersey. At the age of 8 months old, my skull was fractured by my biological mother. I then spent 5 years in a foster home, before being taken in and eventually adopted by Rudy and Joanne Sheptock. With the focus of this post being a recent reunion with my adoptive mother, I won't delve into the details of my childhood or what it was like growing u...

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...

MY APOLOGIES if you already received this blog post, as I WAS fixing a technical problem. I'VE FOUND A WAY AROUND THE TECHNICAL PROBLEM THAT WOULDN'T ALLOW ME TO SEPARATE MY POST INTO PARAGRAPHS. I THINK WE'RE BACK TO NORMAL FUNCTIONING NOW... .. Last year I received a call from Pam Fessler of NPR (National Public Radio). She'd interviewed me twice in the past. But this time she wasn't asking for an interview. she just wanted to ask me a question. It would turn out to be the toughest question to date that I've ever had to answer as a homeless advocate. She said, "Eric, I used to be the White House correspondent for NPR. Now I cover poverty. And it seems that, ever since I started covering poverty, everybody wants to hug me. Why is that?" I was completely dumbfounded by the question, but have never been in the habit of denying a person an answer to a question -- especially a question about homelessness. If I don't know the answer, I try to poi...

I'm proud to say that I was instrumental in reuniting a homeless woman and her daughter (now 30) who hadn't seen each other in 25 years. The daughter did a Google search which turned up her mother's name and mine in the same article. The daughter then contacted me by e-mail (as my personal/contact information is very easily found through a Google search). I connected her to the man who wrote the article and he completed the connection. Here is a blog post I did in 2009. JOE YOUNG, the reporter whose article started the process whereby MYRA DIGGS and her daughter were united last month (right before Christmas), asked me in 2009 to post his article on my blog. Little did I know that it would lead to this reunion of a mother and daughter who hadn't seen each other in 25 years..... Everything below this line was written (or copied and pasted) April 28th, 2009: The following is an article by Joe Young, a writer for the Washington Informer and Afro. It is part of a se...

On Saturday, September 10, President Obama and his daughters paid a visit to DC Central Kitchen located in the basement of the Federal City Shelter which is right on the edge of Capitol Hill. The kitchen feeds 5,000 of the many impoverished, socio-economically disadvantaged people in our nation's capital every day. And it was a grand event indeed. While many were excited about the fact that our commander-in-chief would take time out of his busy schedule to visit those who are overlooked all too often in our society, others were a bit more analytical of the situation and less apt to praise him. The excitement began on the night of September 9th when the Secret Service came out to survey the building, making sure that it was safe, planning their route and choosing places to post their officers and snipers. The next morning, as the homeless left the building which sleeps up to 1,350 homeless people (one-fifth of DC's homeless population) in 3 separate shelters and also houses t...

When will the national movement implement "stronger tactics" that effectively usher in the "revolutionary change" that we are working toward? Well, Gerald Celente of Trends Research Institute (a think tank on worldwide socio-economic trends) has predicted that this country will see food riots, tax rebellions and revolution by 2012. And his long track record for accuracy has some people worried. But you don't need to be a well-paid academic to see that societal conditions are ripe for revolution. The news is chock full of reports of increasing unemployment, a worsening housing market and struggling families. The U.S. economy is so bad that Obama himself recently told people in a small town in Iowa that he doesn't believe that Washington knows best (and it doesn't). People have begun to polarize around Tea Party/Congressional demands on the one hand and the demand for the state to fund human need on the other, with there having been a strong u...

In case you didn't already know, politics are about power. Politicians are always looking forward to the next election unless serving their last allowable term. (Lame ducks seem to be those most likely to follow their conscience[?], as they can't run again anyway.) politicians are most likely to address the concerns of those who help them to remain in power. They kowtow first and foremost to those who contribute the most to their campaigns -- corporations. Next in line are wealthy individuals. Eventually and at long last, there are the voters. If you don't fit into any of these categories, your discontentment becomes an issue of "mind over matter". As you voice your opinions, the politicians don't mind; because, you don't matter. (Being a taxpayer doesn't impress them all that much; because, the government will MAKE you do that anyway.) Then there is the issue of "political will". Once a politician has taken the oath of office, they be...

It's been more than 40 years since Martin Luther King, Jr. began his "POOR PEOPLE'S CAMPAIGN" which he never got to see through to its fruition, due to his assassination. It's been more than 20 years since the homeless marched to Washington, DC en masse. This might begin to explain why the powers that be seem to have forgotten about the poor, homeless and dispossessed. In some instances it seems more like they have waged an all-out "war on the poor". Let's face it: politicians often speak of helping the middle class, while neglecting those living in abject poverty. When they do acknowledge our existence, it is only to say that they are going to stop funding some much-needed social service. It's high time that we came out in large numbers and had a real show of force. Coincidentally, as I sat down to write this blog post earlier today, I went to my Facebook fan page entitled "Homeless Homeless Advocate Eric Jonathan Sheptock" and ...

On April 14th, 2011, the Coalition of Housing and Homeless Organizations (COHHO) held its monthly meeting. We discussed the devastating impact that Mayor Vincent Gray's proposed budget cuts to Human Services for FY 2012 will have on DC's poor and homeless community. (There were about 30 people in the room of which about 5 were homeless or formerly homeless.) A formerly homeless man asked, "Who's going to tell the many poor and homeless people in DC about the cuts that are going to affect them?" In response to his question, several people said that they would remain after the meeting to plan an outreach strategy. I secured a meeting room in the basement of the CCNV (Community for Creative Non-Violence) Shelter and we scheduled a meeting for April 26th.(There were about 30 people in the room of which about 25 were homeless or formerly homeless.) That Tuesday we decided to meet every Monday thereafter. At the May 2nd meeting we had about 50 people present. The...

A NEW, "REVOLUTIONARY" WAY OF ENDING HOMELESSNESS Some of the shelters in Washington, DC are threatened with closure in less than a year. The "Doom's Day" Date is April 1st, 2012. This is nothing new. We've been here before. But it's definitely much worse this time around. When the Randall Shelter was closed the 801 East Shelter was opened as a replacement. (I believe it was in early 2005, the year I moved to DC and a year before I became a homeless advocate.) When the DC Village Family Shelter was closed in October of 2007, families were placed in a housing program (though I've been told unofficially that some have since been ejected from the program and are sleeping in cars with their little ones). When Franklin School Shelter was closed, the Permanent Supportive Housing program was initiated and has since housed at least 1,200 people. But now the conmversation is about closing several shelters which hold at least 1,300 homeless people total. Pro...