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POPSFighting For The Welfare State This makes me really proud to be Danish. Anyway, why ARE we so happy? Well... we all know how we are all are in the grip of the worldwide economic crisis at the moment, right? Well, despite this, a huge number of Danes are now calling for the government to please let us pay more taxes! "Please raise taxes, so we can afford more!". :p .Now... I know this might seem odd and counter-intuitive to some, but please lend me your ear and I'll try to explain.... :) In a society like for example the US, where Wall Street reigns supreme and the gap between rich and poor just grows every day, how can it be expected that there is anything in it all, for the little guy? Capitalism is all good and fine, but money shouldn't be the goal, but merely the means. It's not about how much you have, but how much you give.
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POPSConvert The UN Building Into NYC Homeless Shelter
wallowing in desperate poverty, with crime so rampant and violent that the police won’t even venture into them. And you have the nerve to come here and investigate us ? The United Nations has become nothing less than a shabby podium used by corrupt third-world demagogues to do what they could never do in any other way - attempt to destroy and bring into disrepute the United States. We’re being nibbled to death by ducks. And we’re letting it happen. Not only that, we’re paying for it. I’d like to see the Obama Administration tell the U.N. to pound sand (but they won’t). Take your investigation to somewhere that needs it, and that list is endless. North Korea, Darfur, Tibet, Cuba….I could go on almost ad infinitum about third world hell holes where people have no rights whatsoever, where food is something that may or may not come your way today - or tomorrow. Where “housing” consists of whatever you can scrape together to try to keep out the cold, where women . .
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POPSAmericans are being sacrificed on the altar of big business First manufacturing, then IT. And, even in midst of the worst "recession" since the Depression, it continues on. Yet we, the still employed, don't care. We stock our homes with foreign made goods and spend our money with companies that are slaughtering our middle class. The irony is starting to show itself. Good luck to our children with the future. They are going to need it.
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POPSThe Housing Crisis Ann Arbor Why do individuals have to result to such when there's enough land and money in this nation to serve everyone equally, What will it take for everyone to put their differences aside and address these issues as one to the corporate profit driven government.
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POPSCanadian City Uses Feces to Repel Homeless
It's tough to believe that anyone -- especially a city official -- actually thought this was a good idea. But it's downright bizarre that a plan so ridiculous, so "bird-brained" was actually implemented; city officials located the dung, transported it, spread it, so on and so forth. It was only after the negative press that the city manager had it cleared (and deodorized the area, apparently). To many, this bird dung story will be kind of funny, really nasty, or completely outraging. But to me, it's just really sad. Sad for the people who usually sat outside of those city buildings, most likely because they had nowhere else to sit. Now the whole world knows what city officials really think of them, perhaps even what they equate them to. Sad that it takes an extreme story of such hate and ignorance to bring the issue of homelessness to the front of people's minds. And sad because this story really isn't about homelessness at all. Because homelessness should be about not ha
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POPSSF First's P.O.W.E.R. Group of Former SF Homeless Interviewed on KALW Radio 91.7 FM
This fascinating group is made up of� dedicated, independent and capable local residents, formerly homeless, homeless, advocates, staff and contracted workers from SFDPH, Mental Health, SF First, SF Hot, SF MOST, CATS and has the support of local businesses who supply coffee and organic berries, vegetables and bread products for their weekly foot massages, coffee socials and P.O.W.E.R. Team Lunches at Dolores Park Church in the Mission District, where Ali from local Public Radio Station KALW 91.7 FM, attended and recorded part of this Radio Broadcast linked below. POWER stands for Peer Outreach Workers Exemplifying Recovery... you can see them at work at the main SF Public Library where they monitor health and safety to assist their peers who may need services or hear some advice from someone who has recently walked in their shoes, who's been there. This is empowerment in action which works because the team members were treated with love, kindness and healing for a year or
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POPSIs It Now a Crime to Be Poor? The City Council in Grand Junction, Colo., has been considering a ban on begging, and at the end of June, Tempe, Ariz., carried out a four-day crackdown on the indigent. How do you know when someone is indigent? As a Las Vegas statute puts it, “An indigent person is a person whom a reasonable ordinary person would believe to be entitled to apply for or receive” public assistance. By far the most reliable way to be criminalized by poverty is to have the wrong-color skin. There’s no minimum age for being sucked into what the Children’s Defense Fund calls “the cradle-to-prison pipeline.” Leonardo Vilchis of the Union de Vecinos, a community organization in Los Angeles, suspects that “poor people have become a source of revenue” for recession-starved cities, and that the police can always find a violation leading to a fine. The safety net, or what’s left of it, has been transformed into a dragnet.
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POPSOne Small County In Michigan Ilsadago1 wrote: "coffeesnob wrote:" "In the year 2000: 85,000 people died (alcohol related) 17,000 people died (ALL illicit drugs usage combined) What is not "realistic" about that? Numbers are numbers, dead people are dead people." It's not always about how many deaths there are. It's the crimes committed to get, make, distribute and buy the drugs. It's the children permanently made ill by inhaling the fumes produced by a meth lab. It's the cost of medical, dental, substance abuse and mental health care. It's about the loss of employment, inability to care for children financially, hunger, homelessness and lack of basic needs. It's the lengths people will go to to feed the habit - it's not about getting 'high', it's about not getting dope sick. They will do ANYTHING to not get 'sick'. Death is the least of the problems.
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POPSFlorida City Caught Criminalizing the Homeless When I worked in downtown San Diego during a visit by then Pres. Clinton, the cops rounded up all the homeless in the downtown area and shuttled them up to LA. Presumably so the Pres would not have to see any of his ‘subjects’ living on the street. Sadly, this kind of cruelty towards people who are homeless is not restricted only to St. Petersburg. Take a glimpse at the list of the Top 20 Meanest Cities: http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/crimreport/meanest.html See if your town is on the list.
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POPSForeclosure Crisis Hits Poor Renters Hard: Evicted Families Have to Fight to Live Together "The National Alliance to End Homelessness has predicted that at the current rate, the recession will result in 1.5 million additional homeless people within two years". Why is there always enough money to wage wars and give handouts to big business yet working people and their kids - through no fault of their own - are left to fend for themselves on the streets. It's absolutely shameful.
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