AUSTIN ADVOCATE

"Real Change" Initiative
By Kirk Becker

The Downtown area businesses are renewing the "No Panhandling" campaign again -- signs in the windows, leaflets on the tables, and a special presentation at the new Convention Center Hotel.

The current repetition of the campaign is joined by downtown area social services providers and is worded much more sensitively than previous iterations of the campaign. They even acknowledge the Advocate as a worthwhile enterprise.

The downtown area businesses market a carefree joy-joy atmosphere with an emphasis on spontaneity. They don't have sales; they have promotions, with carefully crafted opportunities for impulse purchases.

While it may be an impulsive act to give money to somebody who asks for help, the mere visibility of destitute people tends to cloud the joy-joy atmosphere that the business community works to hard to develop. Some of the panhandlers really are struggling just to get by; some of them see the party and don't see why they can't play too!

The "No Panhandling" campaign emphasizes donating money to the social services providers as a more effective way to help the people who need help than giving money directly to the people who ask for help. The reality includes a friend of mine walking along 9th Street on the day after Christmas, with the remainder of his $156/month social security retirement check, complaining that he needed to use the restroom, and that the restroom at the Salvation Army was closed for cleaning, and that there wasn't anything else open (except for the Advocate -- yeah, us!).

Few people enjoy going to a Laundromat and doing laundry -- most homeowners have their own washer and dryer, and large apartment complexes have washers and dryers on-site. Laundry at the Salvation Army and the ARCH is free, but there is frequently a 2-4 hour wait for an open washer before a person can even start doing their laundry. (Through a quirk of human nature, most housed people wash and dry their clothes before they go through and sort out the things they no longer want to keep -- dumpster divers almost never do laundry, but they usually manage to stay clean.)

The "No Panhandling" campaign has two premises -- that spare change can help alcoholics and drug users support habits to self-destructive extents, and that the way to help people is to so impoverish them that they become completely dependent for their very survival on caring professionals who will guide them to self-sufficiency if they ever get sufficient funding to help everybody. The first premise has a lot of truth in it; the second premise wouldn't be true even if social service providers were fully funded.

Off The Hook
As this article is being composed, news comes that Ms. Kroc, widow of the founder of McDonald's, has donated $1.5 Billion to the Salvation Army. OK, the social services providers are now fully funded, people can go back to giving money to panhandlers.

Actually, that's not accurate. Ms. Kroc's donation was designated as "seed money" to stimulate the development of inner-city recreational facilities such as Austin's Millenium Youth Complex. As a consequence of Ms. Kroc's donation, the Salvation Army needs to raise seven more money with an even smaller percentage dedicated to helping the homeless.

Better Ways to Help
In the same spirit of futility as the "No Camping" campaign, I'll offer my own suggestions for helping the homeless.

*) Give up on the capital gains. People want to buy a house, live in it for 30 years, and then sell the house for more than they paid for it originally. The house becomes a big part of their retirement savings, and the profits from selling the house are even tax-free.

The problem with the emphasis on capital gains is that it promotes "enhancement" of property values throughout and between entire neighborhoods. Consequences of the effort to maximize neighborhood-wide property values include increased infrastructure costs for sprawling developments, rejection of affordable housing, and ultimately fewer people paying increased tax and utility costs.

*) Buy American. If there was any way that the City could meet the public demand for roads but still save money by building the roads in India and China, the City would do it. One reason taxes are so high is because governmental obligations so often involve functions that cannot be outsourced by their very nature.

Give up on the "best qualified employee" thing. In a competitive marketplace, some people always lose. Hiring randomly among all adequately qualified job applicants would give opportunity to each as well as opportunity to all. Good enough ought to be good enough, and this is an area where consumers' expectations need as much adjustment as employer practices.

My friend with the $156/month retirement has applied for numerous jobs, but the only people who ever hired him were exploitive managers looking for somebody to abuse.

*) Be Grateful. Most people who can afford to give money to either panhandlers or social service organizations work very hard for their money, and there's no need to feel guilty about having it. Still, we all know that were lucky to be living in this city in this country with this economy. We can help each other out, and we can try to make our community ad nation even better, which is the only way to accomplish the "real change" called for by the "No Panhandling" campaign.

*) Stop Donating "Seed Money". Donors donated entire buildings to the University of Texas, and now U.T. has to double tuition just to pay for all the things inside them. Many times people can accomplish more by just trying to help than they can by trying to do good.

I'm not suggestion that we shouldn't start new projects, but many times the people charged with implementing new projects spend more effort fundraising than implementing the original plans. This problem is especially significant in the creation of low-income housing programs, where developers try to combine several seeds to create a garden, with each seed wanting it's own brand of bottled water, special fertilizer, and rays of sunshine suited to its nature, whether bright sunlight, partial shade, or deep shade.

Concluding Remarks
This paper doesn't take formal editorial positions. By refusing to do so, we leave the writers free to express their own ideas, thoughts, and feelings.

Still, trying to free homeless persons from complete dependence upon social services programs is at the very core of our reason for existence. and our value to the homeless. I don't think any of the vendors make enough money to afford housing plus bills, but can't we recognize partial success as just that rather than dismiss it as complete failure?

The Advocate isn't any alternative way to panhandle, it's an alternative to panhandling. The paper tries to publish a variety of material so that everybody who purchases a paper will find something in it that's worth a dollar. We know that many people purchase more than one paper per issue, and the vendors appreciate the help. (Thanks for reading the paper too -- we try to make it worth your time.)

top

On the Homeless Front
Israel Bayer

Twenty-six years after his turbulent experience in the jungles of Cambodia and Vietnam, Timothy Buchanan became homeless. It’s been nearly 32 years of hardship and anguish for a man who left the United States and traveled 10,000 miles to fight for his country in one of the longest conflicts our nation has ever known.

Buchanan was exposed to the chemical Agent Orange on more than one occasion and has post traumatic stress disorder. He talks softly when he says, “I got peppered with that stuff (Agent Orange) over and over again.

“I’ve been pretty unstable, due to stress and the streets, for a long time. I’ve dealt with flashbacks and nightmares since I left that place. I just started to talk about my experiences in the mid-’90s, but now that I’m ready to let it all out, rarely do people want to listen.”

Looking out with eyes that have seen more trauma than any one person should have to see in a lifetime, Buchanan begins to tell a story hundreds of thousands of men and women, around the world, unfortunately, can relate to.

The Department of Veterans Affairs, or VA, estimates that nearly 300,000 veterans are homeless on any given night in the United States. In addition, more than a half-million veterans experience homelessness in a given year More than a dozen veterans are homeless or have experienced homelessness at street roots.

According to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans, there is a complex set of factors contributing to homelessness for U.S. veterans. A large number of displaced and at-risk veterans live with the lingering effects of post- traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse, compounded by a lack of family and social support networks.

With an estimated half-million who experience homelessness in a given year, the VA estimates that it reaches only 20 percent of those in need, leaving more than 400,000 veterans without services.

According to the 2002 US Conference of Mayors, 1,368, 11 percent of the people living on the streets in Portland, were veterans. In another report, put out by Portland’s Bureau of Housing and Community Development, 182 were said to be emergency housed in the shelter system, bring the number to more than 1,500. And the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans reports that the first veteran from the current conflict in Iraq has hit the streets in Boston.

The average time between soldiers coming home from Vietnam and then becoming homeless was about 12 years, according to Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

But “my gut instinct tells me that, because of the economy and the lack of affordable housing, there will be a significant difference in the time veterans start becoming homeless, compared to Vietnam War veterans,” said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.

“The other factor that wasn’t there for Vietnam veterans that is there today is that more guardsmen and reserves are being called up that have families,” Boone said.

“Veterans are coming home much more abruptly than they did in Vietnam, it may be a lot harder to support your family with the economy the way it is,” she said. “We think there’s opportunities to prevent homelessness with veterans.” Prevention starts at the Department of Defense, according to Boone, but she said it’s just not happening.

Many homeless veterans and advocates in the field say veterans coming out of the military should be given the proper counseling and services needed to enter back into society.

“If they would have admitted the damage Agent Orange would have done to me, and given me the proper therapy for being ‘on vacation’, if you know what I mean, than maybe I could have done better in this life.

“I went as crazy as a bed bug after seeing what I saw. I was awful sick when I got back to the states, but I was no longer under any impression that we were saving the world from communism. I thought by going to war I could prove myself to be a man. I was raised on that John Wayne bullshit, and that’s exactly what it is — bullshit.

“I think being homeless has a lot to do with my experience in Vietnam,” Buchanan said. “When I got back, the VA didn’t care about me. For years, I would go in to receive help and they would just call me a dope addict. I self-medicated because of the constant pain I was in.”

“I was hit four times by an AK in the first burst, and was hit once with friendly fire by the 2nd platoon as they came in from the rear. I got gangrene and then they cut my leg off a week later.

“We were chasing an NVA [North Vietnamese Army] regular into the bush in Cambodia. He popped up and fired and then took off running like the dickens,“ Buchanan said. “He led us right into an ambush and they nearly overran us. We had several skirmishes in the area. We overtook an NVA base camp and killed a hell of a lot of men.”

“The thing that has always bothered me about all of this is that I couldn’t help feeling like the Red Coats, ya know,” Buchanan said. “We weren’t protecting anybody from anything. We were the invaders and we didn’t have a cause. The only cause was survival for soldiers and that’s a dangerous circumstance to be in.

Buchanan went on to note that Ho Chi Minh was promised a free election after World War II from his allies in the China-Burma-Pacific campaigns, but when it came to time for a free election, the French and the United States “spit in his face.”

“We had no chance of winning that war from the get-go,” Buchanan said. “What happened was meant to happen. That’s what made it all seem so insane at the time. It’s been a long trip, that’s for sure.”

According to the Indiana School of Medicine, during the Vietnam War, psychological breakdowns on the battlefield were as low as 12 per 1,000. But in 1973, when direct American troop involvement in Vietnam ended, the number of veterans with psychiatric disorders began to increase tremendously. They began to show symptoms such as intense anxiety, battle dreams, depression, and problems with interpersonal relationships long after their combatant role in the Vietnam War had ceased.

“Veterans on the streets range in ages from in their 20s up to people in their 60s,” said Don McDowell, a veterans case manager at Portland's Transition Projects. “Some get out of the service and have difficulty finding a job despite their military services.”

“In Portland there are adequate resources available to veterans; it's just a matter of connecting the veterans to the services,” said McDowell. “The issue is there needs to be more stock in affordable housing. Oftentimes, veterans have pulled everything together, they’ve gotten a job, a decent wage, but then there isn’t housing available for people.

“Vets need guidance. They need a case manager to champion them and act as a resource for them,” said McDowell. “As long as they don’t start using [drugs] and keep their job, they’ll make it. If they start using again, they go back to square one, and quickly they’ll go back to the streets.”

Some advocates believe that a more progressive system could be put into place to deal with substance abusers, especially for vets who may have come home with an addiction, like many did from Vietnam.

“You shouldn’t have a system that punishes vets on the streets for using,” said one advocate who declined to be named.

“It’s a system that punishes people who have seen horrific things or who may be in extreme pain for using a drug to self-medicate. It’s crooked and wrong. Who are we to say, ‘We’re very proud you went and risked your life for your country, but because you’re a user the punishments will be prison and homelessness.”

“We are seeing more Gulf War veterans on the streets in Portland,” says Don Hanson, a Vietnam vet and the career services coordinator with Central City Concern. “In some cases, Gulf War Syndrome is playing a part. Some were probably exposed to chemicals, and the VA is recognizing that more and more. There are a lot of diseases attached to Vietnam and the Gulf War.”

Of the 697,000 U.S. troops who served during Operation Desert Shield and Desert Storm, more than 100,000 have registered with the Department of Veterans Affairs or the Department of Defense, saying they have health concerns.

While most of these veterans have been diagnosed with a variety of conditions, more than 154,000, or about 20 percent of those examined, have undiagnosed symptoms, which commonly include fatigue, muscle and joint pains, headaches, memory loss, skin rash, diarrhea and sleep disturbances.

There’s no record of how many people are on the streets from the Persian Gulf War or any other conflict the United States has been involved in.

“There’s more and more people who are on the streets since the Vietnam era, and that’s probably since some of us are dying out,” says Hanson.

Carl Roberts is a veteran of the Air Force of the Vietnam War era and was a member of the Oregon National Guard for 10 years, who served in Honduras during the Iran Contra affair. Roberts, like many other veterans street roots interviewed, said alcohol and drugs were major factors in becoming homeless. What is overwhelmingly apparent while doing these interviews is that almost every veteran street roots spoke to developed an addiction for alcohol and drugs while in the military.

“I volunteered for the military when I was 17 years old,” says Roberts. “My mother was raising five kids and we didn’t have a lot of money.”

“It took me many years to understand… the violence I had witnessed in the military. It took me 20 years just to come to the realization I was lovable, because of things I had experienced. I was just a puppet. The non-violent philosophy at Sisters of the Road [Café] has helped me learn how to respect myself.”

“They program you in the military,” Roberts went on to say. “They need services to de-program you when you leave, because you can’t just turn it off. It’s a healing process that should be supported by the VA. When a police officer shoots someone or sees something violent, they put him on administrative leave for evaluations. When a person is involved in a violent interaction in the military, there’s no support network. When you’re back in society, it’s very hard to adapt.”

Reprinted from street roots, Portland, Oregon, November 2003.

Street News Service: www.streetnewsservice.org

top

More on Homeless Veterans
Israel Bayer

Statistics on homeless veterans:

— 23 percent of the homeless population are veterans

— 33 percent of the male homeless population are veterans

— 47 percent are from the Vietnam era

— 17 percent are from post-Vietnam era

— 15 percent are pre-Vietnam era

— 67 percent served three or more years

[Source: National Coalition for Homeless Veterans]

The Evolution of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder:

Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome is a very new term. It was only in World War I that psychiatric syndromes first came to be associated with military combat. Until then, it was assumed that such causalities were due to cowardice or lack of discipline. World War I found that the explosion of shells caused not just physiological damage but also symptoms called ‘shell shock,’ and that there was a connection between psychological stress and combat.

During World War II, psychiatric causalities increased by 300 percent over World War I. At one point in the war, the number of men being evacuated for psychiatric reasons exceeded the total number of new recruits.

During the Korean War, a new method of dealing with psychiatric breakdown was devised. Instead of evacuating affected individuals, they were given immediate onsite treatment so that they could return to duty as soon as possible. Evacuations due to psychiatric reasons dropped from 23 percent in World War II, to 6 percent in the Korean War.

During the Vietnam War, battlefield breakdown was as low as 12 per thousand. But in 1973, when direct American troop involvement in Vietnam ended, the number of veterans with psychiatric disorders began to increase tremendously. They began to show symptoms such as intense anxiety, battle dreams, depression, and problems with interpersonal relationships long after their combatant role in the Vietnam War had ceased.

These symptoms were linked to those shown by people affected by disasters such as earthquakes and airplane crashes, and are now referred to as post-traumatic stress syndrome.
[Source: Indiana School of Medicine]

Agent Orange

Thirty years after its use, the United States finally acknowledged the application and potentially devastating affects of the defoliant known as Agent Orange. This recognition may open the door to services for many veterans suffering the effects of toxic exposure.

Viewed as disability, the chronic and debilitating affects of toxic exposure to Agent Orange can be an obstacle to veterans trying to return to civilian life. It is also another disablity that aggravates a stable life and can lead to homelessness.

In September 2000, VA recognized that Agent Orange was used in Korea in the late 1960’s and approved Agent Orange examinations for U.S. veterans who served in Korea in 1968 or 1969. In March 2001, it was ordered that those examinations be made available to all other veterans who may have been exposed to dioxin or other toxic substances in a herbicide or defoliant during the conduct of or as the result of testing, transporting, or spraying of herbicides for military purposes.

Agent Orange was a herbicide used in Vietnam to kill unwanted plants and to remove leaves from trees that otherwise provided cover for the enemy. The name, "Agent Orange," came from the orange stripe on the 55-gallon drums in which it was stored. Other herbicides, including Agent White and Agent Blue, were also used in Vietnam to a much lesser extent.

Between 1961 and 1971, the U.S. military in South Vietnam used more than 19 million gallons of herbicides for defoliation and crop destruction. Several types and combinations of chemicals were used but Agent Orange was the most commonly applied, specifically between January 1965 and April 1970. Herbicides other than Agent Orange were used in Vietnam prior to 1965, but to a very limited extent.
Some of the herbicides used in the early years contained greater concentrations of dioxin, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs. Spraying occurred in all four military zones of Vietnam. Heavily sprayed areas included inland forests near the demarcation zone; inland forests at the junction of the borders of Cambodia, Laos, and South Vietnam; inland forests north and northwest of Saigon; mangrove forests on the southernmost peninsula of Vietnam; and mangrove forests along major shipping channels southeast of Saigon.

Some Vietnam veterans get disability compensation for Agent Orange-related illnesses. VA pays disability compensation to Vietnam veterans with injuries or illnesses incurred in or aggravated by their military service. Veterans do not have to prove that Agent Orange caused their medical problems to be eligible for compensation. Rather, VA must determine that the disability is "service-connected." A Veterans Services Representative, at a VA medical center or regional office, can explain the compensation program in greater detail and assist veterans who need help in applying.

[ Source: The Department of Veterans Affairs]

If the trial of Agent Orange is any measure, it could be decades before the United States and the VA acknowledge what veterans and their families say is a very real disability: “Gulf War Syndrome.”

Gulf War Syndrome

The VA calls Gulf War Syndrome a non-scientific label used to describe the unexplained illnesses characterized by fatigue, joint pain, skin rash, memory loss and/or diarrhea. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, panels of experts have agreed that the group of veterans suffering from the purported syndrome is probably not suffering from a single, common ailment, but rather from a variety of illnesses with overlapping symptoms.

Gulf War Syndrome has been attributed to a number of sources, including exposure to radiation from depleted uranium used in artillery, side-effects of anti-biological immunizations, and biological weapons.

The VA says that a number of potential causes have been investigated, but no single theory appears likely to explain all of the undiagnosed conditions.

In tens of thousands of protocol medical examinations of Persian Gulf veterans to date, the VA and the Department of Defense medical authorities say they have found no evidence of infectious diseases beyond the range of illnesses common in the population at large. Research studies now in progress will provide more scientific answers to this question, but no rigorous, reproducible research to date has established that Gulf War veterans' illnesses are caused by an infectious agent.

[Source: Department of Veterans Affairs]

top

A Class Action Suit: Have-nots vs. Haves

The have-nots believe they need what the haves have. Reality is "Society Induced" humility, whether the have-nots realize it or not, allows them to be closer to God.

In this Earthlife, weak-minded blinded by the glitter of material baubles. For centuries the haves have known, "all that glitters is gold" rules. They even created a human salivating kingdom in the sky, lined with gold streets, to entice the masses into accepting pain on Earth. Of course the opportunity is there for anyone to become the most whatever. The haves welcome any enterprising entrepreneur, with blind devotion to their tried and true methods.
What the haves do not tell you is to be totally materialistic, one must be atheist. Cut to the picture of heaven and everyone rallies behind the "In God We Trust" mantra, and they got us.

Babe is born, lives or whatever, dies. The past one million years have been human infancy. Now, it is time to open our adolescence collective and find what works best for improving the quality of all life. Improving the quality of life for workers in drudgery jobs will improve the chances their children will become better adjusted citizens. Hooliganism will now be energy spent on the sports field or a variety of adventures subsidized by our tax dollars.

In order to win this class action suit, the have-nots must not demand for ourselves but for the future. This Earth has been a very, very able incubator, but our "Society Induced" religion is destroying our Sustenance.

We must demand our energies as taxpayers go to insure the continuation of our sustenance. At least until we learn how to use this rock like a spaceship.

Tumen Soliz

top

He Will Be Missed
By Brenda Curran

John Wilton was a quiet, gentle man. He spent a lot of time selling the Austin Advocate Newspaper. Every time he came in he bought 40 papers and sold them out quickly. He and his partner Lobo would take turns coming in for a new supply of newspapers.

We were saddened to learn that John had passed away on January 11. He had been sick ever since last fall when he had his gall bladder removed. His condition grew worse during the month of December and January. He was readmitted to Brackenridge Hospital in January.

According to Richard Troxell, Wilton's name will be added to the list of homeless people who have died while living on the streets. This list is read during the Homeless Memorial Service in the fall of the year.

We don't know much about him except that he was a barber before he sold the Advocate.

He was 60 years old. Services were held at Cook-Walden Funeral Home in Austin.

top

How to write good

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They're old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren't necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know."
12. Comparisons are as bad as cliches.
13. Don't be redundant; don't use more words than necessary; it's highly superfluous.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always best.
16. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
17. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
18. The passive voice is to be avoided.
19. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
20. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
21. Who needs rhetorical questions?
22. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement

top

Valentines Message

As rudy red hearts beat on into those nights now silence
Two crystal goblets placed upon a silver platter
Filled with honey-laced wine of which I toast to you
Just as silence of this moment I have totally surrendered
Love between that journeys end and us becoming new friends
Spirits of what brought two strangers together, now forming-
That alliance of total compatibility of complete bonding
Moments like this unspoken now opening those passageways
Then so many times by those enjoyable visits to Brussels and Venice, a Romance-
For like ageless that wine forever pure, couples courting and romancing
Searching out so little that fantasy and intimacy they played in time
Unexceptional those roles of characters played out, as the script becomes ours-
As it could only be from within Cupid's Arrow, new lovers tied in bondage
As so much those open to a new eat upon broken hearts
Heart's like that of Valentine's pulsating throughout the night

Jeremiah Hurta, Jr.

top

Old Thoughts Have To Go

Spirit comes to tell the whales
Escape the man created pain
poor they suffer like the Earth
While money laughs without concern

From intelligence without a Conscience
To religious Satifaction
Play the game of being God
Claiming love, Destroying all

Now you say what's fair is fair
Don't get it now, it won't be there
No mater that there's no Compassion
Rags to riches is your answer

Improve upon your parents thought
Try to build on what we're taught
We must outgrow material gain
To not repeat mistakes again

Breeding Wealth for profits sake
To educate is just like rape
Religion based on unknown fear
Must be replaced by love of Earth

Tumen Soliz

top