Tick Tock Sheptock

(See SOLUTION below: SNOW STORM MOTORCADE) It's Monday, January 25 th , 2016 and the nation's capital is digging out from Winter Storm Jonas . I'm writing from Starbucks and was elated to find them open today. That brings me to what I knew would be one of the biggest problems for the homeless during the blizzard: lack of access to food . Though I don't have very much money, I have enough to buy a little bit of food if and when I can't make it to a place where free food is served or when such places are closed due to inclement weather. That said, I was able to purchase a cup of coffee, charge my phone and use the wi-fi this morning. Things are getting back to "normal" for Yours Truly, being as I don't ride the transit on most days. (Things still aren't back to normal for those who use the transit system daily.) In past years I've attended DC Government's winter plan meetings. As far as I know, it is only the homeless service prov...

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...

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...