Race, American Style

I was born in the mid -1950s, so I grew up and came of age in the 60s and 70s. An era that saw many American cities, from Watts in California to Harlem in NYC,  go up in flames as long simmering racial tensions exploded like a powder keg.

The first place I lived, where I grew up, was a working-class manufacturing-based city. Like my parents, most of my neighbors were first or second generation Americans from Ireland, Poland, Italy, Germany.  Blacks lived in their own sections of the city, cut off socially and economically. Something I, we, didn't understand.

The Blacks, or Negroes, as they were called at the time, did not populate the places where my family and neighbors immigrated from. So American Blacks to them -- who lived in the worse and most run down sections of the city -- were viewed with curiosity, suspicion, fear, and incomprehension.

This was in the Northern United States, so there was not the racial animus of them toward us or us toward them that exists in the American South due to their peculiar tragic history. We simply lived in two separate worlds within the one America.  Seemed to be just the way things were done here. What we knew of slavery was that it was unpaid labor. My dad, like most of the other men in our neighborhood, were trade unionists. They all agreed that was a raw deal. And we were taught in school that slavery was the cause of the American Civil War that then 'freed' the Black American slaves.

We moved when my mother received a modest inheritance from her family in England to a ‘working-class suburb’, something I’m not sure exists any longer.

The town was divided roughly 50-50 between Whites and Blacks. But once again the Blacks lived in separate sections of the town that were run down and derelict compared to the white neighborhoods.
I was a teenager now and athletic, so many of my teammates and friends were Black. I certainly didn’t see anything different in their character, intelligence or anything else. So why were they living like they were?

I honestly didn’t get it (and I know that most white Americans don’t ever get it) until I read Toni Morrison’s novel Beloved (which would earn her a Nobel Prize). The plot of the novel unfolds around  the true story of a Black woman so maddened with  despair and fear that she intentionally kills her two-year daughter when she thinks that the child will be taken away from her and, like her, raised as a slave.  Death was the better, bitter option. Consider the level of crazed fear that it would take for a mother to do that to her child? Changed my perspective on slavery completely

In the way only Toni Morrison can convey, she describes -- in harrowing detail -- how someone could come to feel that way. What the impact of generations of enslavement does to the human psyche.  A brutal, sadistic and systematic dehumanizing of a part of the American population simply because they were Black.


This is not what we were taught about slavery in American history classes.

Another telling thing I heard recently that sheds much light on our present situation  in America is that Blacks were enslaved in America longer than they’ve been free (by a hundred years). You don’t – I don’t care who you are – get over that kind of trauma in two or three generations. Especially when the virulent and vicious racism that characterized the slavery era did not end with the Civil War of the 1850s or the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Just look at the nightly news or drive through the 'black section' of any major city in America.

I experienced this just last week when I went to the State House in Trenton, N.J. (the state capitol) to lobby for housing rights and affordable housing. In order to get to the lavishly appointed State House from the highway I had to drive through a neighborhood that was no different in kind than the blighted ghettos of the 1960s that sparked the riots.

I went to college in the South and have lived in the South as much as the North. I know people who are proud of their Confederate heritage without being racist. In order to comprehend that you have to understand that the Civil War was  about the South trying to become independent of Northern economic dominance and exploitation. Slavery was a part of that economic equation.

There is a line in the novel Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier in which a young woman from the North confronts a Southern Confederate soldier and asks him how he could fight against freeing the slaves. He replied, “Ma’am, if you think that’s what this war was about than you have a much higher regard for human nature than I do.”

Like all wars, it was basically about money. But even with that said, I think it is time for Southern States to remove their Confederate flags from State buildings and public places. They should be removed now if for no other reason than as an admission of the extraordinary damage that the centuries of torturous enslavement did to a large part of the American population, and continues to do; as well as a concession to the demands of Black Americans to finally live with the respect, dignity and equality they earned by enduring centuries of  blood, sweat and tears while at the same time making invaluable contributions to the distinct political, artistic and cultural life of America.
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Social Services Misuse Tax-Payer Money & The Public Trust

Even though the liberal and progressive policies initiated in the 1960s and 70s did effectively reduce poverty and homelessness in America, they also created a system that insists poverty be resolved almost exclusively through the political agencies of the federal and state governments.

To be clear, the extent of poverty in America is much more than local communities can deal with on their own.  The need for federal intervention is therefore not based on a political philosophy – as many claim – it’s a necessity. But anti-poverty policies too often isolate people in poverty and force them to work through an insulated, technocratic bureaucracy that most people receiving assistance call  “social services.”  

In 2009, after caring for a terminally ill parent, I became homeless and destitute due to circumstances beyond my control.  Social Services  provided Special Response Emergency Housing,  a motel room.  Motel owners located where I live on the Jersey Shore subsidize their incomes during the off-season (winter) by taking in ‘clients’ from Social Services.

So I am in a motel room in a seasonally deserted town I’m unfamiliar with and told that I have three months to find permanent housing. Social Services would provide rental assistance through a federal permanent housing program if I could find an apartment owner willing to accept this arrangement.

I soon found out that most apartment owners would not take me in under these circumstances, for three purported reasons. One, they claimed that if they took me in then they’d be legally obligated to take in anyone Social Services sends to them; and, two, they said Emergency Housing Assistance is unreliable and they take forever to pay rents. Also, as I would soon learn myself, Social Services is notorious for arbitrarily changing its policy regarding housing assistance.

Most people in a situation like I was in give up and return to whatever it is they were trying to get away from – abusive spouses, violently dysfunctional families, drug- and crime-infested neighborhoods. And then there are those – such as the survivors of natural disasters, and those who lost jobs and had homes foreclosed, and veterans who were denied benefits –  who have no place to return to and all too frequently end up wandering the streets during the day and setting up tents on public land at night. Because these people are no longer enrolled in any housing program, this is a statistical ‘success’ by the officials administering the program, even as the number of homeless people rises.  This is a cynical misuse of tax-payer money and a betrayal of the public trust in Social Services to work on behalf of the members of our communities  facing financial crises and housing insecurity. 

While I was still in my home and recovering from the loss of my mother, I became a member of a small nondenominational church that administered a community homeless outreach program.  Local apartment owners utilized the outreach as a way of ‘screening’ prospective renters. They were willing to rent to people with rent subsidies, but first they wanted to be assured that they are not opening their doors to former rent truants, violent criminals, drug users, or other problematic tenants. 

That’s how I secured ‘permanent’ housing within three months. I’m not sure what I would have done if I had not been able to combine federal government assistance with community support.

But then I received a letter from The Board Ocean County Social Services last year informing me that the “permanent” housing program I was in was being terminated. No explanation was given; no recourse offered. Trying to find alternatives before I became homeless, I applied to several federal affordable housing facilities. Miraculously, it seemed, just a few days after being told I no longer had an affordable, permanent place to live, I received a letter informing me that an affordable housing unit was available.

People assume that my   local social services board coordinated this move. They didn’t. If you are fortunate enough to find a Social Services case worker who is helpful in assisting you with obtaining SNAP benefits and other basic necessities, as I was, they are still powerless over influencing the outcome of your ‘permanent’ housing situation.  Critical decisions about that are made arbitrarily; and not only to your chagrin, but to that of the caseworker who invested time and energy trying to secure your housing.  These kinds of practices are detrimental not only to the morale of Social Services’ clients, but to its workforce. It’s a top down problem, not a bottom up one. We need social services, and we need the people who administer them to do a better job of providing programs and policies that work in people’s lives.

I work with the homeless outreach in my former community; but seeing as I am a firm believer that poverty and homelessness are both national and local issues, I am in the process of developing an outreach for the poor and homeless in my new community.

When we hear from people who have experienced poverty, we get better policy.  For example, no one who has lived in acute financial distress would have ever come up with a solution as inane as the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program.  Can you imagine?  “Here’s what we’ll do: we’ll make the process of obtaining assistance more complicated and in the end provide fewer people with less assistance for a shorter period of time!”   Sure, people flew off “the rolls” -- and right into the woods, onto subway platforms and, pen ultimately, into hospital emergency rooms. So many have had their lives cut short because of this. .

Someone recently asked me what my first priority would be for policy reform, and this is it: lobby to get a member of the community who has experienced social service programs such as Emergency Housing Assistance, SNAP, or TANF, on the Board of Social Services. This, I feel, is the only way we can begin to get social service representatives to better understand the needs of their ‘clients’,  and to be held more accountable for their policies and actions.

What we need is another movement  back to people power. One that provides low-income individuals with the political wherewithal  they need to stand up on their own .  In the same way we’ve done it through the legal system for immigrants living in an existential Limbo, and through the justice system for married couples denied their civil rights.  Now we need to find a way to do the same for people living in poverty. Economic viability and housing security are human rights.

The Poor Peoples's Campaign & The March for the Homeless

It seems most fitting to mark this year's celebration of Martin Luther King by announcing that there will be a Global March for the Homeless taking place on April 15th, 2015.

Martin Luther King's assassination took place just at the start of his Poor People's Campaign, which called for housing and guaranteed income for the very poorest people in the United States.In his words: "There is another America. This other America has a daily ugliness about it that transforms the buoyancy of hope into the fatigue of despair. In this other America, thousands and thousands of people, men in particular walk the streets in search for jobs that do not exist."

Our political and financial and cultural elite's collective  response to those remarks? 'Sorry Mister King, you can talk about race, you can talk about war, but Good Good Almighty, you may not talk about the poor -- not in in our America!

'Here's what we'll do, Reverend.  First we'll Martyr you, then Canonize you, and in time that will make everyone forget all this talk about the dreadful plight of poor people in America.' 

Boy, did that work?!

When is the last time you heard a major political leader in America talk openly, not dismissively, about poverty and homeless in America. If you said never, you get an 'A'.

Since King made that speech, the federal government has slashed the housing budget by 74 percent, eroded public assistance and, if you take in consideration inflation, cut wages. King would be horrified to learn that today, every major city in the United States has thousands of men, women and children, wandering around with no place to call home.

So if our politicians don't even want to talk about poverty in America, let alone do something about it -- besides  make it worse -- then let's stop banging on that beat drum.

How?

By re-framing the issue of poverty and homelessness -- as Martin King was trying to do before his untimely death -- as moral agendas, as the civil and human rights issues of our time:

ECONOMIC SECURITY AND AFFORDABLE HOUSING ARE HUMAN RIGHTS.

This will be the theme of our March and our unequivocal demand. Poverty and homelessness will no longer be negotiable items on the table for politicians to play with when they feel like it. As with other social issues that became human rights issues -- civil rights, woman rights, LGBT rights -- the politicians will get on board after the fact and try to appear as if they were righteous all along.

Fine, let them play their game, but  let us not be fooled into thinking any of them will be leaders on this issue. There's going to have to be a worldwide grassroots movement to end poverty and homelessness. And it starts on April 15th, 2015.

Please join us!

https://marchforthehomeless2015.wordpress.com/

World Homeless Action Day

World Homeless Day takes place on October 10th, 2014.

Throughout the last half of the twentieth century until the present many groups that were being unfairly treated by American society – racial minorities, women and gays – made great strides toward correcting those wrongs by organizing and aligning themselves with movements that in effect forced the American public to hear their grievances as well as acknowledge and act on their demands for change and reform.

What the members of these various groups have in common is anger: anger and resentment about being treated as second-rate American citizens. Black Power, Women’s Liberation Rights, and Gay Rights  were aggressive, forward looking movements. The movements grew and became empowered as the result of a weariness on the part of their constituents to wait any longer for the government to make good on its constitutional mandate to provide all of its  citizens with equal opportunities to live without prejudice and succeed.

I feel that World Homeless Day has the potential to be a seminal event that will help to galvanize all of those fighting to reduce poverty and eliminate homelessness into a Movement called ‘Leave No One Behind’.

It could not come at a more pressing time.  The United Nations estimates that there are more than 200,000,000 people living in the world without secure housing. The National Law Center on Homelessness estimates that more than 3.5 million Americans experience homelessness annually.

According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, homelessness in America actually decreased by 1% from 2009-2012, while in the midst of one of the most severe economic crises since the Great Depression. This was due in large part to the Obama administration’s Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

President Obama gets very little credit or acknowledgement for this. Why? Because it is a political liability for any professional politician to overtly initiate any legislation that will help the poor and disenfranchised in America. There is still a place deep in the American psyche that does  not consider or recognize that food security  and housing are human rights, and instead projects onto them all of the fearful notions and misperceptions that came to be associated with socialism during the Cold War.

That is why this Movement has so much in common with those in the past: It is about breaking down dated ideas that have calcified into hardened prejudices and regressive policies.

Who are the homeless in America? Rather than break it down demographically and provide stats and graphs, I’d like to offer just one example that speaks for many, and is also about a special person with the courage to be an open public advocate and leader in the movement to reduce acute financial distress  and end homelessness in America.

Aaron Elijah Colyer is a United States Marine Corps veteran who in July of this year was threatened with arrest and cited with a nearly $500.00 fine for being in violation of the Alameda Municipal Code, section 8-25.1 "Sleeping/Living in Vehicle." He is fighting the fine and organizing a demonstration in Oakland to raise awareness of the criminalization of homelessness. The demonstration will take place on the same day as Colyer’s court date, and World Homeless Day: 10/10/14.

According to Barbara Thomas, Mr. Colyer’s defense attorney, “On behalf of Mr. Colyer, we are asking the City to rescind this discriminatory ordinance and set aside Mr. Colyer’s ticket and focus on the causes of homeless rather than punish those already homeless due to lack of funds, by issuing a $480 citation for doing exactly what the court has already struck down as a denial of due process as guaranteed by both the United States and California Constitutions.” She pointed to Utah’s highly touted ‘Housing First’  program, which provides housing for the homeless rather than citations. 

Aaron Colyer was sleeping in his van that night because he had moved from Tennessee to California in order to be nearer to his 2 yr old son. When he got to California he discovered that he could not afford the market rate for apartments and was living in his van while he sorted things out.

Did the policeman ask Aaron why he was sleeping his van? No. Did he care? Probably not. All he saw was ‘someone sleeping in a van’ and fined him, further setting back Aaron’s chances of finding affordable housing accommodations.

The telling part of this story is not that Aaron Colyer was arrested for being homeless – that, unfortunately, happens every day in America – but what Mr. Colyer is choosing to do about it.

He is extending the Marine combat oath to ’Leave No One Behind’ to his civilian life.  His mission now is galvanize  the groups advocating for Homeless Rights into a Movement that calls on all Americans to leave no one left behind – veteran or not – to the ravages of poverty, homelessness and despair.

How fitting is that?

We can support Aaron and join the Leave No One Behind movement by connecting with him on his Facebook page: Leave No One Behind #Homelessness is not a Crime   and his website The Church of Occupy.

In Aaron’s words: “10/10/14 is World Homeless Day and as many cities criminalize peoples’ rights to exist, we feel it is necessary to rally in remembrance of those who have died on the streets from lack of shelter, to raise awareness for the need for more shelter as the upcoming winter approaches, and to put out a call to action to establish safe harbors.”

It’s time for us as Americans to join Aaron Colyer in this truly patriotic mission and Movement to Leave No One Behind -- on World Homeless Day, and beyond that.  

James Abro  is the author of An Odyssey in the Great American Safety Net, a personal memoir of homelessness and recovery. He is the founder of Advocate for Economic Fairness and 32 Beach Productions.  He works locally with faith-based Homeless Outreach groups, and nationally as an advocate for Homeless Rights.  He is a regular contributor to Rebelle Society  and Talk Poverty.

Be Forewarned: Oz is not for sale...

But Oz never did give nothing to the Tin Man
That he didn't, didn't already have

America(the band),  1974

If you read any of my previous articles for Rebelle, and this website, than you know that I’ve been through a very challenging personal ‘Odyssey’ and that I am always on the lookout for ways to heal, mend and move forward.

Recently, I had an encounter with a truly gifted teacher and healer, who opened me up in a very personal and vulnerable way, and then gave me a pamphlet listing the programs she offers on 'tuning into one's divinity', and their cost. Afterward, I wrote this to her:  "at this point in our collective spiritual evolution, I feel it should be untoward for anyone to charge someone else for teaching them how to be 'more spiritual'. There's such a void, such a longing to fill, that I'm sure one can make a fortune. Even if you say that's not why you are doing it. It amounts to that in the end.  I've watched this phenomenon all my life. It truly sickens me.

"Let me cut to the chase further:  I have as much experience and knowledge of the things you are talking about, but I choose to use that energy directly with the people I meet every day. There's no program; no cost.  There's only Life getting better through the personal exchange of two human beings being fully open with one another. Therein lays 'real spirituality'.

"The whole present Gestalt of bringing 'spiritual awareness' to people assumes that they don't have it, and need it (and if they can afford to, pay for it).

"It may not happen in my lifetime, but I'd like to help blast that tripe into the deepest part of the ocean forever."

I then went onto to recommend her to read Rebelle Society and Chris Gross’s meme Indie Spiritualist.

From my perspective on Life, it seems to me that when people have their basic needs met – food, clothing, 

shelter – they then rise up on their hind legs, look skyward, and want for spiritual and sexual fulfillment. (Not necessarily in that order.) 

There are people among us who are either innately blessed with adept knowledge and skills in these areas, or they practiced until they mastered them.

I know from experience that being around spiritual adepts, like Yogis, hastened by own spiritual growth simply by osmosis. This past weekend I spent Father’s Day at Muktidham, The Abode of Liberation, where Shrii Kripalvanandji did the last four years of Kundalini yoga sadhana. Just being there for an hour in silent meditation revitalized me in ways a hundred yoga classes, or books, would not. The real thing is palpable.

In the same way, I’ve had special sexual partners who opened me up to states of ecstasy and bliss that I would not have encountered on my own, or with ordinary partners.

And here’s my point: when you sell spirituality or sex you not only sully the practice but dissipate its potency.

How?

Because, the only way to truly advance in one’s knowledge and experience of these aspects of Life is to be intimate with the source of the teachings and experience. Without that intimacy, it is just mechanical spiritual practical or rote Eros.

I’m not saying it is never all right to pay for guidance in these areas: if you have a physical or emotional dysfunction that prohibits you from advancing personally, then yes, by all means get the therapeutic help you need.

But by and large that is not the case.

One should not charge money to get into Oz if, for no other reason, than that sooner or later, your ‘clients’ are going to figure out that Oz is free. I’ve watched this happen over and over; what was once cherished, and rightly so, becomes yet another disappointment, something you overpaid for and lost energy on.

It doesn’t have to be that way. But rather than leave you with a rather dour cautionary note, I’d like to offer  a brief video that shows two people in a loving relationship sharing their spiritual intimacy. You don’t even have to listen to their words: just observe the sparks in their eyes, and the barely containable joy in their smiles: http://thecoolvegetarian.com/blog/2014/05/the-key-to-powerful-lasting-love-gabriel-cousens-shanti-gold-cousens-video/

Have a Blissful Day!