Tick Tock Sheptock

Though the media tends not to disclose the socioeconomic status of criminals who are not homeless, they almost always discuss when the perpetrator of a crime is homeless -- even when the crime committed is not directly related to their homelessness. (Sadly, Americans who assert that poverty breeds crime are more interested in locking up the poor criminals than they are in employing petty criminals after the fact or addressing poverty in blanket form before the fact. Think solutions.) This practice by the media of mentioning someone's homeless status (especially if it's a violent crime) does much to contribute negatively to societal biases and stereotypes concerning the homeless. While the media does indeed cover stories of homeless people being attacked as they sleep outside, the general public seems only to remember the stories of homeless people committing crimes and to forget about the many cases in which homeless people are victimized by housed people (often wayward adoles...

Let's be clear: I don't like Donald Trump. Truth be told, it's not because he is an aspiring dictator. After all, I liked Hugo Chavez BECAUSE he tried to become a benevolent dictator who operated above the fray of congressional bickering and BECAUSE he succeeded and sending the message to greedy capitalists that, if they harvested oil or other resources from Venezuela, they would have to put money into his country's economy and thereby help the poor. Dictators tend to be very organized thinkers who are good at uniting their administrations under consistent themes that run across all departments of their respective governments. A certain friend who is retired from USAID has told me that he felt safe while walking the streets of Moscow at 2 AM when Russia had a dictator; but, he wouldn't dare do that now. He emphasized that dictators don't tolerate street crime. That said, a dictator is as good as his theme/agenda. In a free country like the “Untied States” peop...

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should say that I come to the discussion about terrorism as one who realizes that the world society is a sinking ship that has hit the icebergs of capitalism and political ignorance with all of its occupants now fighting their way to the uppermost deck and many getting thrown overboard into the freezing waters below. My homeless advocacy is more about teaching people what led to this titanic catastrophe than it is about averting disaster at this point. It was a warm June day in Washington, DC as I stood in the hospital room of homeless advocate Michael Stoops and watched the news about Donald Trump's 2016 presidential bid. Though he wields much influence in my birthplace of Atlantic City (another sinking ship), I've never cared for his show “The Apprentice”. However, when I knew he was running for the highest office in the world, I began paying attention to him and jeering at his outlandish statements; thereby bringing to bear the first ...

On December 6 th , 2015 I spoke at St. Luke's Episcopal Church in DC about the possible closure of the CCNV Shelter c. 2018 and the need to connect able-bodied homeless people to living-wage jobs. I told them about a federal effort to connect homeless people to employment in 1988. That effort ended with about half of the homeless people who took advantage of the program obtaining employment and half of THAT group remaining employed for at least 13 weeks. All in all, a quarter of the homeless people who sought employment through this program remained employed for at least a quarter of a year. 25% is a failing grade anywhere in the world (except the baseball stadium). No robust effort to get homeless people working has been made by the feds in the last 27 years – when Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were in diapers and I was just months into my eventual six-year tenure as a tractor driver (similar to an airport luggage train but used to haul hospital freight) at Shands Hospit...