Tick Tock Sheptock

The Committee to Save Franklin Shelter will host a MEETING TO "RECALL" (OUST) DC MAYOR ADRIAN FENTY The citizens of Washington, DC have more than a few reasons to want Mayor Fenty to be FORCIBLY removed from office early. His litany of offenses includes: 1 -- the fact that he is a flip-flop who pretended to care for the poor and homeless and has now been bought and paid for by the developers. 2 -- the fact that he ran on a platform of transparency and accountability and now heads a government that is plagued with scandals and is extremely secretive. (The amount of money lost during his term due to scandals exceeds the amount of money that has been cut from social services within the same time frame. The government could afford to care for the poor if we could get these scandals under control.) 3 -- his many broken promises which include: the promise to keep Franklin School Shelter open as a shelter, the promise to open ...

In Washington, DC homeless advocates tend to align their activities with the annual budgetary cycle. They know that the mayor began to formulate the budget for Fiscal Year 2011 in January 2010 and that there will be budget hearings from February to May. For these several months, advocates for the poor and homeless will do their best to have a sufficient amount of tax revenue put into the budget for the specific populations that they serve. As budgets are cut in the middle of the present fiscal year, many of the same people will return to City Hall to demand that those budget cuts be restored and that the social safety net be preserved. This has been the method to the madness for quite some time. However, that is beginning to change. The safety net is becoming a thing of the past. As indicated in a previous article of mine, DC Government tried to cut the budget for homeless services by 30% a few months ago. But, when Catholic Charities threatened to cease its shelter operations ...

I posted an article that was forwarded to me via e-mail. It makes some very important points about why homelessness is not being ended in our country. Read and enjoy..... Can Life Be Lived in Dignity by Every San Diegan? BY Rocky Neptun November 12, 2009. East Village, San Diego…………… Bill Foster rolls his tattered sleeping bag up carefully, not to disturb the layers of newspaper underneath, avoiding the dirt soiled sidewalk and looks at me with a smile. He knows I’ll be good for breakfast and plenty of coffee. Almost clean-shaven, ruddy-faced without many wrinkles to show his 54 years, Foster often panhandles enough change for only one meal a day. He tells me he’s just no good at it, even after all these years. He sleeps in the downtown because “there is safety in numbers;” having been attacked by territorial transients along the San Diego River bank and by neighborhood youth when he moved to a creek near Bancroft Street in Spring Valley. “I have enoug...

Many groups and organizations are advocating for Washington, DC's homeless community, with some of them consisting mainly of homeless and formerly homeless people. There's Street Sense, DC's newspaper about homelessness and poverty. Homeless people write for and sell the paper. Then there is STREATS (Striving To Reach, Educate And Transform Society)'s views on homelessness. Through STREATS the homeless have educated the public about their issue on DCTV and the internet and have done extensive correspondence with the local and federal governments on behalf of the homeless. A group of homeless people calling themselves the People For Fairness Coalition meets every Tuesday at Miriam's Kitchen to plan how they will assist the weaker among them who often don't use shelters. They take to the streets 3 times per week to deliver supplies. Let's not forget the Committee to Save Franklin Shelter (CSFS) which won its fight against former DC mayor Anthony Williams, only...

The homeless are often looked down on by other members of our society. The have no place to call their own. Neither do they have a place in society. Or do they? Of late they've become pawns in a dirty political game and they've taught at Georgetown University. While the former is quite the undesirable position for anyone to be put in, it is not surprising that the homeless would be used in that way. However, the latter would come as a complete surprise to many. Homeless professors? Not quite. Washington, DC has joined several other states in its quest for same-sex marriage. The DC Council voted 11 to 2 in favor of same-sex marriage on December 1st. According to DC Law, they must vote a second time on December 15th and then the bill goes to capitol Hill for congressional review. Congress then has 30 days to vote on it, or it becomes law by default. When news of the impending vote came out in early November, the Catholic Archdiocese of Washington, DC threatened to end all soc...

What do a Catholic Charities homeless shelter and gay marriage have in common? Some would venture to guess that gay men want the right to identify as women and sleep in female shelters and that butch lesbians want the right to sleep in male shelters. That would be a very well-informed guess. I've witnessed gay men checking into female shelters, though I've yet to see a butch lesbian check into a male shelter. Such rights exist in DC homeless shelters already. However, there is a new and strange twist (no pun intended) to the fight for gay rights. I received the news over dinner last night (before it even hit the airwaves) that Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Washington, DC is considering the possibility of not doing any more business with the city of Washington if the gay marriage bill is passed. Being that the news has hit the airwaves at this point and you can get the story by going on-line, I'll take some time to give you a little of the background on relation...

I first posted this article on March 19th, 2009. New information came out in the headlines this morning stating that Catholic charities might stop doing business with the city of Washington, DC if the gay marriage bill is passed. This would lead to the loss of about 2,000 shelter beds in shelters that are run by Catholic Charities. The homeless have become pawns and bargaining chips in the game of local (and "loco") politics. As I type up my blog post pertaining to this latest development, you can read about why people thought that all DC homeless shelters were threatened in March. I believe that there may be a correlation between what happened in March and what is happening now. I'll explain in my next blog post later today. Read on..... Several homeless people have told me that they read a newspaper article which stated that DC Mayor Adrian Fenty (a man) plans to close ALL DC homeless shelters by 2011. Unfortunately, I didn't read that article myself and h...