Tick Tock Sheptock

Michelle Obama recently told Oprah Winfrey that America is entering a period of hopelessness and we have reasons to agree and to disagree. However, as a Black man, I will boldly say that we should avoid wallowing in pity while sitting on the dock of the bay and waiting on the world to change (even though it has a nice rhythm to it). We must force change. Before we can do that, we must know what we are changing, what we are changing it from and what we are changing it to . Otherwise we're hopelessly stupid and lacking any notable ability to do any critical thinking. That leads nicely into my first set of observations. In 2008 Barack Obama ran for president on a campaign promise of "hope and change". The mere vagueness of his campaign slogan and those of other politicians at all levels of government is a sign that those in power are either hopelessly stupid and impotent or hopelessly evil -- like a "political epicurean paradox " . As if to play a cruel joke...

(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...

  "I don't condone it; but, I understand it."   -- Various people responding to the 7/7/16 Dallas Massacre No sooner had I written about how "It's a madder, madder, madder, madder world" when we had a week of murders by White police of Black men who either did not have guns drawn or were even complying with orders from ofcrs. JERONIMO YANEZ and JOSEPH KAUSER. Then, fed up by White police shooting and killing unarmed Black men, MICAH JOHNSON (and possibly others) used the sniper skills afforded him by the U.S. military to kill A DOMESTIC ENEMY . Apparently, unlike American active-duty soldiers , he and any accomplices he might have had were good marksmen who didn't kill any civilians. Taken together with what we know about the DC Sniper and how he was possibly upset that he was flunked in sniper school (having only been designated an "expert shooter") or may have had a host of reasons for being upset, I suppose the military wil...

In 1987 Ronald Reagan and the 100 th Congress were pressured by the aggressive tactics of the Mitch Snyder Movement into passing the McKinney-Vento Homeless Services Act. This act allows homeless service providers to obtain surplus federal real estate through its Title V provision. It also mandates that school districts be prepared to counsel and assist homeless students. In response to the act's provisions, the U.S. Dept. of Labor (DOL) performed the Job Training Homeless Demonstration Project beginning in 1988 – an effort that ended with 25% of the homeless who took advantage of the program being employed for at least 13 weeks. There are other innumerable effects of the McKinney-Vento Act which are still being felt by the homeless and their service providers today. However, it's worth noting that, while Mitch Snyder and company should be lauded for the progress they made by bringing the plight of the homeless (some of whom were eating from trashcans near the White House)...

Before homeless advocate Michael Stoops had his debilitating stroke, He would introduce me to the college and university groups that had come to learn about homelessness by swaying and moving his hands from side to side as if he were playing a six-foot tall keybord as he said the following: “I've been doing this work for forty years. And, if we don't start doing more than feeding and sheltering the homeless, then in forty more years when all of you are MY age, you'll still be talking about wanting to end homelessness.” That succinct spiel had come to replace an earlier and shorter one in which he would say, “We here at the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH) are trying to work ourselves out of a job”. As it turns out, he did just that on June 7 th ,2015, though not in the way that he had hoped. With the CCNV organization having begun in 1970; Mitch Snyder having joined them in 1974; NCH having been established in 1982 and a host of other advocacy organizati...

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...

In case you don't follow the news and didn't see my first blog in three months yesterday, Pope Francis will visit the Untied States later this month. Though my church of the past 10 years is Episcopal (also called "Catholic Light"), I am all over this pope -- as are many non-Catholics. He epitomizes the anti-Capitalist principles of Christ -- which is surprising when you consider the fact that he comes from a country whose economic system is similar to ours. Then again, it's not so surprising when you consider the fact that Latin America has given us such saintly people as Oscar Romero and Hugo Chavez -- the latter being more of a revolutionary, and thus, more my type. I can appreciate the pope's penchant for confronting Capitalism -- even if he isn't calling for full-on revolution. That said, global Capitalism is the root of much social injustice and many other evils in the world . I don't know what the pope will say to Co...

on April 29 th (my late father's 83 rd birthday) Street Sense did a screening of three short films it made about DC homelessness. There will be a second screening on August 26 th (my living mother's 78 th birthday). I was in the third film giving my critical view of DC Government's ostensible efforts to end homelessness in the nation's capital. I mentioned the failed 10-year plan as well as the reluctance of mayors Fenty and Gray to assist able-bodied homeless people at acquiring living-wage jobs – the latter point having also been reiterated by others in the film. During the Q & A that followed, I gave a slightly wordy lead-in before asking my question. I told people that I like to ask the hard, challenging questions and that I have a little bit of a mean streak. Some indiscernible mumbles followed. I'm guessing some people disagreed with my use of the phrase “a little bit”. If so, they have a point. I referenced a DC preacher who quoted Frederic...

The fact of the matter is that, if we can't have conversation about contentious but important issues, then we can't come to agreement on those issues and they'll always be contentious. So I'll touch on a few of those issues here with a focus on police shootings of unarmed Black men. I hope this blog post gets people talking more productively about these issues and brings us closer to resolving them. I hope that our governments will begin to proactively reverse the damage done to poor people in general and to Blacks in particular or that poor people will start a revolution which ends with them taking more than they would have gotten through civil reparation “RAP-arations”. Simply put, anyone who tells those who are reacting to the violent police shootings and deadly beatings of unarmed people that they should remain calm and just vent on social media is not only out of touch with reality but also grossly illogical. When the police who have sworn to “serve and pro...

As I watch events in Ferguson, MO play out in the media, I am reminded of the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., during an interview with Mike Wallace on “60 Minutes” in which he said, “A riot is the language of the unheard. The U.S. Government has failed to hear that the economic plight of the American Negro has worsened over the past few years”. It's crystal clear to the socially and politically conscious that governments in the U.S. are defending the interests of corporations, not defending or enriching the lives of all American citizens. On the contrary, poor people who want a better life often become capitalist cannon fodder. (Just think for a moment about the Citizens United Supreme Court ruling.) Once a group is socioeconomically deprived, American governments add insult to injury and compound their suffering. They treat poor people as if their poverty is the result of a character flaw, as opposed to a set of systemic flaws in American governance. They aim to pu...