Decriminalizing homelessness

July 23, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

A homeless woman in California begs for help for herself and her child.

In most cities, it’s a crime to be homeless.

People who don’t have housing are chased out of parks and out from under bridges; they’re shooed away from coffee shops, even when it’s freezing or steamy hot outside. In many communities, police slash their tents — anything to get rid of the reminder that not everyone is doing well.

Last month in Rhode Island, though, the state passed a Homeless Bill of Rights, assuring that people will be treated with dignity whether or not they have a place to call home. The new law prohibits governments, police, healthcare workers, landlords or employers from treating homeless people unfairly because of their housing status.

That’s a huge leap, considering most places are taking more steps to criminalize homelessness by passing laws against sleeping on the street, loitering and panhandling.

Here in Asheville, I have talked to homeless people who came here because they heard this is a kind city. In many ways it is, but it has laws against sleeping in public places and panhandling.

People who don’t have homes usually don’t have jobs either because so many employers now do background checks and deny employment to anyone with bad credit, nevermind someone who has no home.

Heather Johnson, a civil rights attorney with the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty told Huffington Post that her organization has noticed a sharp increase in laws around the country prohibiting panhandling, sleeping outdoors or loitering.

“We’ve seen a lot of egregious examples lately,” she said. “People are having their civil rights violated every day in cities across the country.”

The Denver City Council voted in May to prohibit eating or sleeping on public or private property without permission. In Dallas, city officials prohibit people from giving food to the homeless unless they register with the city first. Officials in Berkeley, Calif., have proposed a ban on sitting on sidewalks.

So, where are these people supposed to go? What are they supposed to do?

I’ve met a number of people who are homeless. Most have really tragic stories. Many are veterans who came back from war unable to cope with everyday life and denied the care they needed.

I’ve met women who were beaten by their husbands or boyfriends, who can’t go back to that relationship but have nowhere else to turn.

I know many people who have a mental illness but can’t get the care they need. Some of them lost their insurance because they lost their jobs.

I don’t know of anyone who is homeless by choice. I do know a number of very sad stories of misfortune that could happen to any of the rest of us.

Rhode Island got it right. How about the rest of the nation?

 

 

What fuels these mass murders?

July 20, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living One comment

The theater where a 24-year-old man burst in and opened fire last night, killing 12 people and injuring as many as 50 more.

Last night in Aurora, Colo., a 24-year-old white man burst into a theater that was showing the new Batman movie, threw a smoke bomb and then started shooting into the crowd. He had a handgun and he had an assault rifle.

Before he was done, 12 people were dead and up to 50 were wounded. Later it was discovered that his apartment was booby-trapped with sophisticated bombs.

The shooter had no criminal record, according to news reports, except for a traffic ticket. I’m not using his name here because he doesn’t deserve the fame attached to his deeds.

So, the National Rifle Association can say no one could have known he would behave this way, so gun control couldn’t have prevented this tragedy. Things happen, after all. People will be people.

There’s only one problem with that logic: It’s flawed.

If the assault weapons ban was still in force, he might have gotten off a couple of shots, perhaps killed one or two people, but the devastation would have been far, far less.

When you look at the number of gun homicides in the United States as opposed to other countries, it’s shocking.

The US averages about 10,000 homicides by gun each year, plus 4,000 by other means. In other countries, gun murders are as follows, according to www.gunpolicy.org: Canada, 173; Germany, 158; France, 142; Palestine, 105; Israel, 61; Australia, 30; Cuba, 27; The United Kingdom, 11.

So, why are gun-related deaths in the US so high? Perhaps it’s because we have so damn many of them, and so many are illegal. We have some gun laws on the books that aren’t enforced strictly enough and we have loopholes that allow people who shouldn’t have guns to get them, especially at gun shows.

We also have a huge illegal market in guns, which manufacturers say they aren’t involved with in any way. Perhaps they aren’t intentionally involved, but they have to know what’s going on. There are far more guns on the streets than there ought to be and we need to insist gun makers keep better track of where their weapons go. Somebody has to be accountable, and it  might as well be the people who are making money off this carnage.

I’ve never said we need to outlaw all guns, but we do need tighter regulations and we do need to ban weapons of war such as assault rifles. These weapons aren’t needed for protection from burglars and they’re a little too powerful for hunting. The only reason they even exist is to kill a lot of people — and they’re very efficient at that.

The NRA has had altogether too much say in the laws that govern weapons, and they no longer represent the law-abiding gun owner; they stand for the manufacturers. Why else would they insist people need the “freedom” to own assault weapons?

I have plenty of friends who own guns — some of them have large collections of antique and newer guns. They use them for target shooting and for hunting and they have no need or desire for assault weapons.

I challenge anyone who opposes a ban on assault weapons to face family members of the people who died or were injured last night — including the family of the baby who was shot — and explain why these weapons need to be legal and available.

There’s a reason the United States has more gun deaths than any other nation: We allow almost anyone to have guns, and not just for home protection; we allow them to have assault rifles.

I’m tired of the old “guns don’t kill people …” excuse. People with guns kill people, and the more powerful the guns, the more people they kill.

Why outsourcing is such a big deal

July 17, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

Initially, North Carolina was the beneficiary of outsourcing — finding cheaper workers to enhance a company’s profits.

In the 1800s, textile mills in New England ditched higher-paid workers by opening mills in North Carolina and then fighting workers’ efforts to make a living wage here.

In the 1990s, trade agreements like the North American Free Trade Agreement allowed companies to shift jobs to places where they could pay workers a fraction of what they made in the United States and where they were more free to pollute with total abandon and to ignore safety standards.

Once China was allowed into the World Trade Organization in 2000, jobs started going there as well.

Corporations no longer felt any responsibility toward their workers or their country; they became multi-national and their loyalty is to the bottom line.

Meanwhile, jobs continued to be shipped overseas, driving up competition for jobs that were still here, which drove wages and benefits down.

Mitt Romney’s company, Bain Capital, was in the thick of this. In fact, it has been called a pioneer in the outsourcing of jobs.

North Carolina has lost about 10,800 jobs each year to China alone — 108,000 in the last decade alone; nationally some 1.6 million jobs were lost to China.

Before the economic meltdown in 2008, a large percentage of jobs in North Carolina were exactly the type that were being outsourced — textile and clothing manufacturing. Now many of those jobs are outsourced and not coming back.

The jobs that are being created — food service, home health aides and cashiers — are low-paying and do not create a path to the middle class as manufacturing jobs did. And that is why our economic recovery has been so anemic.

Mitt Romney doesn’t want us to know about his dealings at Bain Capital because those dealings were part of the reason for the lack of jobs we have now. Making money by taking jobs out of the United States is not the kind of business experience we want for our United States.

 

What are you hiding, Mitt?

July 16, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

So, what is Mitt hiding?

I go away for one week and all kinds of fun breaks out in the presidential campaign.

Mitt, in trying to talk his way out of the realities of his tenure at Bain Capital, now has his lackey saying he retired retroactively. He wants us to vote for him because of his extensive business experience, but he doesn’t want us to know about his extensive business experience.

Romney claims he left Bain in 1999, but there’s plenty of evidence he was there after that, until 2002, actually. The thing is, he doesn’t want to be associated with the worst of the outsourcing and layoffs for which Bain was responsible during that time.

In fact, there’s a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, dated Feb. 11, 2001, signed by Mitt Romney and filed in 2002 claiming, that Mitt Romney was the sole owner and shareholder of Bain Capital and that he was CEO, president and managing director.

Either he lied in the SEC filing — a crime — or he’s lying now.

And when President Obama refers to that evidence, Romney demands an apology as though he’s completely innocent of all the damage Bain has done to American companies.

He wants us to believe he’s on the up and up, that he has nothing to hide, but he won’t release his tax returns.

He seems to forget that we have recording devices and paper trails and that we can see how many times he has flip-flopped and outright lied about his record.

He said the other day that John Kerry only released two years of tax records, but a quick look back shows that Kerry released 20 years of tax records. For somebody with as much business experience as Romney has, that’s pretty bad basic math.

Even members of his own party are calling in Romney to release his tax records and come clean about Bain.

I suppose he’s probably hoping he can stop all the attention by naming a running mate. I’m not certain that will help now. He needs to come clean.

 

A victory for the people

June 29, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

Now that I’ve had a little time to breathe, let me say, “Whew!”

I was surprised to see the Affordable Care Act left intact and shocked to learn Chief Justice John Roberts was the swing vote.

I had agreed to participate in a press conference in Charlotte with Health Care for America Now and Action NC, so I was getting ready to leave the house when news of the decision came down.

I didn’t know whether to jump up and down hollering, “We won! We won! We won!” or cry, so I did a bit of both.

At the press conference, I told Mike’s story and I talked about how much I miss him. But I am overjoyed that other mothers won’t face the deaths of their children the way I did. I’m grateful that fewer people will suffer and die because they can’t get access to care.

When Dr. Herbert Hurwitz at Duke University Medical Center adopted Mike and gave us two more years with him, he asked that we write to our legislators and ask them to support access to quality health care for all Americans. I had already done that, but I wrote again. And I wrote some more. Then I did it again.

I felt Mike’s spirit with me when I heard the news. I felt like he was dancing around the family room with me. I was thrilled that 30 million more people will have access to health care thanks to this law, but at the same time, I wish I could have shared the moment with my son.

My son’s illness, his lack of ability to get insurance, or care when he got sick, and ultimately his death set me on a path of lifelong health care advocacy. Too many people say I’m being political about it, but this shouldn’t be political. This is about saving lives — some 45,000 or more of them each year. This is a moral issue because it is about saving human lives. How can anyone claim to be pro-life and be against providing health care to everyone?

How can you say you believe life is precious so you’re against abortion and then turn around and say my son didn’t deserve help?

How can you vilify the poor by calling them lazy bums when you’ve never sat down with them and heard their stories? Is it because opponents of health care reform are so afraid they might be caught between the cracks one day that they have to blame the victims to feel more secure in their own safety?

Mike’s story makes a lot of Tea Party people furious because he wasn’t a lazy bum (nor are most of the other people who are being denied care). I’ve been called a lot of nasty names — and so has Mike — by people who don’t want to admit that it could happen to anyone, including them. They don’t want the stories out there because the stories don’t go with their narrative and they don’t want to change their narrative. That would require disagreeing with what Fox News tells them to believe.

The only reason health care became so political is that big business has co-opted the political process.

People don’t seem to understand that their health care policy premiums have helped pay for this corruption of our system and that the new law will put a cap on the insurance industry’s ability to do that. They must spend 80 percent of the money we pay them on direct care now.

This law is a good start on the road to access to care for everyone, just as Medicare was supposed to be in 1965. The plan was that Medicare would slowly expand downward in age until everyone was covered. Since that never happened, this new path became necessary. It’s a bit of a round-about way to achieve the goal, but OK, I’ll work with it.

Today begins the work toward getting the other 21 million access to care. Let’s start by letting people buy into Medicare if they want.

 

The Court has no regrets

June 26, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

On Monday, the US Supreme Court asserted its belief in Citizens United by refusing to allow the state of Montana to control the unfettered political spending by corporations within its own borders.

These conservatives, who whine about federal laws that override “states’ rights,” insist that all states abide by this destructive and clearly wrong-headed mandate that corporations share the same rights as human beings.

What this means is that the lies that will be sponsored by both sides (but more from the right, I daresay) will be aired on television, radio and the Internet.

Last election cycle, my state representative, Jane Whilden, was done in by an out-of-state ad that claimed she traveled to China on public funds. The story was a complete fabrication; Jane paid her own way to China and she could prove it, but she couldn’t afford an ad to rebut the lie and no one in the local media thought it was a story with printing or airing.

Tim Moffitt, the Republican and Tea Party darling who unseated her, claimed the ad only ran once (I heard it several times) and that he had no idea it was going to run.

Part of the problem here is that lies in ads don’t seem to matter to news media whose owners profit from the ads. People in the news media are far less likely than they were even a few years ago to question candidates’ exaggerations, or even outright lies like the Jane Whilden trip top China story. They don’t seem eager to counter lies with truth.

Citizens United has turned our Democracy upside-down, giving corrupt corporations complete control over our election process.

We need to amend the Constitution to take corporate money out of elections. It’s the only way we’ll ever get election finance reform. Of course, corporations will fight any move to amend tooth and nail, but it really is our only hope.

We won’t get any help from the media because it’s all owned by huge corporations that make staggering profits from the unfettered spending on political advertising.

It’s obvious we have to change the court or change the Constitution. If Romney wins the White House in November, any hope of changing the court for another 40 years is lost.

 

What would Jesus teach?

June 21, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

The move toward vouchers to send children to private schools is both foolish and dangerous.

First of all, when you take money out of the public school system, it weakens that system and its ability to teach the children who are left.

What’s worse is the stuff some of these schools are teaching children.

When I was in school in Massachusetts during the 1950s and ’60s, the children who went to Catholic schools learned science. They got an education that was at least as good as what we got in public schools, and I don’t remember any of their parents asking for their tax money back.

Today, parents want their children to get an education that denies science and suppresses any form of creativity, AND they want our tax money to pay for it.

Textbooks from Accelerated Christian Education, one of the biggest sellers of Christian curricula, tell students that humans lived with dinosaurs and that evolution is unproven and has been debunked by the existence of the Loch Ness Monster.

The curriculum, which is also popular among home-schoolers, also teaches that solar fusion is a myth, that a Japanese whaling boat caught a dinosaur, that there are no transitional fossils and that most scientists no longer believe in evolution.

ACE teaches that homosexuality is a learned behavior.

The curriculum’s tests are multiple choice and fill-in-the-blank questions so students won’t be encouraged to think for themselves.

But conservative Christians want your children to learn these lies as “facts.” Once children believe these things, they tend not to question them, even if you put evidence right in front of them.

I grew up in a very fundamentalist church that denied evolution and believed Jesus would return before the Earth’s resources are used up. They lived insular lives because they didn’t want their children exposed to the evils of society.

This curriculum is perfect for them because once their children get through it, there will be fewer thinkers in the world.

If you look at the history of the church, you’ll find a lot of similar behavior. Until the invention of the printing press and the vernacular Bible, Catholics were pretty much forbidden to read the Bible. The church would tell you what to believe, and if you didn’t agree, you could face being burned at the stake as a heretic.

Fundamentalist Christian churches still operate that way. No thinking required — or desired. Children go through their lives not learning to think for themselves and willing to accept whatever is told to them — as long as it’s from an approved source. You can’t argue with them because they’re not operating with real facts but with made-up crap fed to them by “good Christians.”

I don’t want my tax dollars paying for false science and scary religion, and that’s exactly what school vouchers will do.

“Creepy love letters”

June 12, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

Coach Jerry Sandusky and “friends.”

Jerry Sandusky was every single mother’s dream, or so it would seem. He was a golden-hearted man who took an interest in boys, guided them, took them on outings, had them at his house for parties and sleep-overs. He was a mentor and coach.

He was a powerful man in the community, which in my experience makes him suspect.

But then, I’m a survivor of child sex abuse. My abuser also was a beloved member of the community who just adored children, so I have a pretty good icky meter. Most people don’t. That’s why so many abusers get away with it.

They start by grooming the victim. Usually it’s allowing the child to have something parents don’t want them to have — access to video games, a couple of dollars, junk food, alcohol … whatever. Now the abuser is in a position of even more powerful (being an adult is a power position in itself).

The abuse might start with a back rub or a tickling session where private parts are touched “accidentally.” By now, the child might feel uncomfortable, but the abuser has a number of secrets and the child is afraid of parents finding out about the dirty movies or the alcohol, or whatever the abuser has used against the child.

Now the abuser has the child under his control, and the child is certain nobody will believe him (or her). The abuser might actually believe he’s in love with his victim, and the abuse can last for years, as it did in my case. I called a stop to it when I was 12 but it had gone on since I was 3. I never told anyone until I was in my mid-30s because no one would have believed me. When I told my mother, she was shocked, but she did believe me; there was no reason not to. I was almost 40.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked.

“You wouldn’t have believed me,” I said. “Be honest about it; you would have had to choose between me and Grandpa.”

That’s another truth about child abuse; people don’t want to believe they’ve been snowed by an abuser, so it’s easier to accuse the child of making it up.

So, when Sandusky’s Victim One got “creepy love letters” from the coach, he was too afraid to take the letters to anyone in authority. Even with the evidence, who would believe him — a powerless kid — over this bastion of power in the community?

The second victim to testify talked about the refusal of a school counselor to believe him. Honestly, it’s easier to believe the kid is making it all up than to think about taking down someone as loved as Coach Sandusky.

I was a single mom, and I was more than careful about whom I would allow access to my boys. When a neighbor offered Mike a couple dollars to help him clean up his workshop and then told Mike he didn’t need to tell his mom about it, he was flat-out forbidden to go back there.

When a co-worker offered again and again to take Danny on outings, I felt something creepy and declined the offer. Later, that man — also a former coach — would be arrested for having sex with underage boys.

Are all coaches, priests, Scout leaders and friends of kids suspect? Absolutely not; most are fine.

But when someone takes too much interest in kids for no apparent reason, I suspect. When someone wants to be alone with kids — especially if there will be no other adults nearby, I suspect.

There are two things you can teach children that will protect them:

1: They never have to hug or otherwise be touched by someone if they don’t want to. Their bodies are their own and they alone decide who touches them (except for a doctor or nurse during an exam, with you present).

2: Don’t let anyone tell them to keep secrets from Mom and Dad, no matter what. There is never a good enough reason for an adult to tell a child to keep a secret from his or her parents.

But most of all, if your child tells you someone makes them feel creepy, alarms should go off. Never dismiss your child’s feelings out of hand.

 

 

And this creates jobs how?

June 7, 2012 a world of progress, letters, progressive living No comments

Edward Chapman on his first visit to the ocean after being released from Death Row.

Despite claims by the GOP in Raleigh (and in other places) that they’re going to concentrate on job creation, the parade of non-job-creating actions continues.

The latest here is a decision to remove televisions from Death Row because TV contributes to a “life of leisure” on Death Row.

I thought about asking my friend Edward Chapman about that. Ed lived in that paradise known as Death Row for 14 years after being wrongfully convicted of a double murder in 1992.

He was released four years ago without so much as an apology from the state. Chapman is still waiting for his official Pardon of Innocence, which would make him eligible for some compensation for the 14 lost years of his life, but Gov. Bev Perdue has yet to issue the pardon, even though Chapman is innocent of the crimes.

As it is, Chapman lives in a rented house, works hard at a low-wage job and refuses to hold a grudge. Each year since his release, Chapman’s friends have thrown him a party to raise money to help him pay his bills.

You might expect Chapman to be a bitter man, but he isn’t. He is happy to be free and tries to look ahead instead of backward.

His first day of freedom was the day after my son died, so I remember it pretty clearly. I interviewed him a few weeks after he gained his freedom and have been inspired by him ever since.

I have danced with him at the annual Freedom Ball and advocated for him to receive the official pardon.

So, when I saw the story in today’s paper about televisions on Death Row, I could only wish we would stop being so punitive toward people in prison. Too many of them don’t belong there, and the ones who do would be better served by being offered job training and the skills they need to live on the outside.

Court affirms gays’ rights

May 31, 2012 progressive living No comments

Elizabeth Eve and Kathryn Cartledge have been together for 30 years and raised two daughters. Why can't they marry?

A Federal Appeals Court in Boston issued a ruling this morning that the Defense of Marriage Act denies gay couples their Constitutional rights to the same federal benefits straight couples enjoy.

In all, straight couples enjoy more than 1,000 rights and benefits that are denied to gay and lesbian couples, even in states where such marriages are legal.

The Defense of Marriage Act, known as DOMA, was passed by Congress in 1996 when it looked like Hawaii was about to legalize gay marriage. Of course, since then a couple dozen states have followed suit and either passed laws or amended their constitutions to outlaw gay marriage. Eight states have legalized it: Massachusetts, in 2006, followed by Connecticut, New York, Iowa, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maryland, Washington state and the District of Columbia. Maryland and Washington’s laws aren’t enacted yet and still could face popular votes.

In those states that have legalized marriage between any two consenting adults, gay couples are being denied the same federal benefits straight married couples enjoy. That, the appeals court said, is unconstitutional.

The decision won’t go into effect until the US Supreme Court rules on the case, which I find worrisome, considering the current domination of the court by conservative activists.

Part of the problem here is that anti-gay religious people have been able to mobilize the popular vote better than we who support the right of all consenting adults to make the legal contract we know as marriage.

I’ve known all along that the courts and/or Congress are going to have to step in and assert the rights of GLBT people to marry; states aren’t known for expanding the rights of people on their own. Look at the history of the Civil Rights Movement or that of the Women Suffrage Movement. The majority of people seem to want to preserve their own rights rather than extend equal rights to a minority.

When I ask people who oppose same-sex marriage why they think gays should be denied the same rights they enjoy, they invariably quote religion. But if it’s a religious issue, why is it codified into the laws of a nation where the church is supposed to be separate from the state?

They usually either don’t answer or they use the slippery-slope argument. You know, the one: “If we do this, the next thing you know, people will want to marry their dogs.”

But dogs aren’t consenting adults, nor are farm animals, birds, insects — or children. So don’t start with the pedophilia argument either.

If you have a religious objection to gays being married, then you don’t have to allow them to be married in your church. And you don’t have to marry someone of your same gender.

But you can’t deny people their rights because your religion says they’re sinners.

I’ve had this discussion with plenty of “love-the-sinner-hate-the-sin” types. My argument is that people are born to be who they are.

How can you separate someone from the person they were born to be?

I think we’re all on a continuum — we all have tendencies within us. I’m straight. Some people are bisexual; others are gay or lesbian.  It’s how we’re meant to be, and we all deserve the same right to choose our life partners from among consenting adults.

 

 

 

 

« Older Entries   Recent Entries »