AUSTIN ADVOCATE |
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So You Think You Know the Homeless
By Tony Degges
We think we know what a homeless person is. We think we know because everyday they are out there asking for our money, panhandling, begging for food. However, we know better. It is drink or drugs they really want our money for. We think we know them because of how they went berserk at the Capitol the day the governor was sworn in for a new term in office.
But do we really? Can we really be that well informed based on what we see, hear and read in the newspaper? How often do we question these sources, how often do we listen to politicians and say to ourselves “yea right, he or she is telling the truth". And what is the truth anyway? Do we really know?
Juan Gonzales knew the truth when he jumped into a raging creek, he knew there was a woman in desperate need of help; his help because there was no one else o save her but him. So he jumped into the storm driven waters flowing full of freezing deadly liquid, loose tree limbs and trash. Juan knew what awaited him but he never considered the consequences. He made no judgments based on what he was seeing, the danger, the possibility of death, the fact that he didn't know this woman. He acted with no thought to his own safety; he did what had to be done. Juan isn't a trained professional; he's a homeless man living at the ARCH. He's one of those homeless people we see everyday, you know the ones, holding up the signs at intersections that read "will work for food, anything helps". We know the type. Right?
The truth, the real truth is we don't know them but we have. They are the brothers, sisters, mothers and fathers of someone. Maybe of someone we once knew who lived down the street where we grew up. Or maybe a teacher or a coach or a cop who let our father off with a warning as he drove home from his senior prom in 1969 having had a little too much to drink or had just smoked a joint and was a little disoriented. More than likely though they are a vet who fought in Vietnam or the First Gulf War forever damaged from what they saw or were forced to do.
Juan was born in San Antonio, Texas in 1966. He turned forty no November 7th. The son of Mary Molina and Juan T. Gonzalez of Corpus Christi. He attended high school at Stephen F. Austin in Houston and North Side High School in Ft. Worth. His first love Cheryl died in a car accident while he was at work doing his best to build a life for the two of them. He's spent his life working in the construction business; he lost his livelihood due to alcohol and has been homeless for the last year and a half here in Austin.
However, today Juan is attending college studying the construction trade. He dreams of rebuilding and reinforcing his family ties. He plans on starting his own construction company building affordable housing for people like himself, you know the ones or thought you did before you read this story. But what he really wants is to give something back to his community, give back to those who gave him a hand up.
I know Juan because I live at the ARCH. He sleeps a couple of bunks down from me. I knew him before he jumped into Waller Creek to Save Marla Wooten. He was my friend and still is. But did I really know Juan? Did I know that he hat the courage to do what he did, no more than any of us know those homeless people on the street. You know the ones refuse to meet as they approach you on the street. It just might be the time to start looking into those eyes and who knows you just might meet a hero like Juan Gonzalez and wouldn't that just make your day a lot more satisfying.
P.S. Marla Wooten was found drowned on Friday, January 19, 2007.
Stand-Up: The 2007 Austin/Travis County Homeless Count
1,926.
That is the number of unsheltered homeless people counted in the Austin/ Travis County area on a single night.
The Stand Up was a one-day count of the homeless population in the Austin area on the night of January 25, 2007. Approximately 90 volunteers combed the Austin area in search of the homeless. No personal information was sought, just the number of persons in a particular area.
The count is a federally mandated requirement for city and county programs to qualify for federal funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The Homeless Task Force (http://www.austinhtf.org/) coordinates this biannual event utilizing area homeless service providers and volunteers from the community.
The 1,926 persons counted who were not staying in shelters will be added to the estimated 1,000+ persons who were staying in shelters.
Historic Gathering
By Richard Troxell
For hours they came. They were cold wet and hungry. It was Christmas Day. Hundreds and hundreds of people experiencing homelessness came to Austin's Resource Center for the Homeless, ARCH, for the 7th Annual, House the Homeless, Thermal Underwear Party.
Wave after wave of volunteers came starting at 10:30 just to set up for the event. This followed a month of planning and fund raising that started with the close of the House the Homeless, 14th Annual Homeless Memorial where we read the names of 93 more people lost to the streets of Austin in 2006. The Thermal Underwear Drive is a responsive effort to that event where we outfit people against the cold in hopes of lessening the number of cold weather related deaths.
This year we provided warm knit and Polarfleece hats of various shapes and colors. Two styles of Thinsulate gloves were offered in addition to toasty full length socks and of course cold weather deflecting thermal tops and bottoms in sizes ranging from small to extra large. And because all weather predictors indicated that this would be a wet winter, we provided durable, reusable rain ponchos that came in blue, yellow, and orange.
Guests were greeted at the door and each given a name tag with their first name to help with conviviality. As the noon hour drew near, hundreds of people filled the ARCH and created a line that would stretch to the Salvation Army for hours.
This author addressed the assemblage with holiday greetings and wished the group a Merry Christmas. I explained that House the Homeless was made up of homeless and formerly homeless people and those wishing to end homelessness in our lifetime and that as such, they were all automatically members. I then held up several pictures that I had enlarged to 20” by 30”. I explained that the first picture was Babyrye Jaworia, the adopted daughter of House the Homeless. I explained that she had become homeless when her father died of AIDS and her mother was killed in the civil war in her African village in Uganda. I reminded them that eight years before, we had "passed the hat" among ourselves and raised enough money so that she had been able to purchase vegetable seeds. Those seeds had become a bumper crop. With the proceeds she bought a cow and the cow had eventually given birth to a calf, and she had become the most propertied woman in her village. Then I showed a second picture of her, now as a grown woman of 20 and a graduated social worker reaching back and helping others in her village. I then showed one last picture. This was of another little girl, age six, of the same village, also living in poverty. Her name is Rebecca Kayaga. She became House the Homeless's newly adopted daughter about a month ago. Then just as we, the homeless citizens of Austin had "passed the hat" for the Tsunami victims in Indonesia two years before, we gave our pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. (No one was supposed to give more than a dollar.)
At the party, we raised $40.87, which the parent organization of House the Homeless will match and send on to the United Christian's Children's Fund and then onto Rebecca for her schooling. She now counts to 100 in English, and we can say Merry Christmas in Ugandanese.
Sylvia Troxell led the food servers who with the incredible organizing help of Jo Ann Koepke and the generosity of Upper Crust Bakery, Whole Foods, Texas French Bread, Texas Honey Ham, Trianon, and many others provided a full blown feast. There were brownies, lemon squares cookies, carrot cake, and eighty pies of all kinds including: cherry, apple, and even cran-apple. There were honey glazed hams and twenty-nine pound turkeys. We washed it all down with pots and pots of coffee and hot chocolate.
Colleen Troxell, now age sixteen, competently and enthusiastically, reported our event to Channel 7 TV and Cathy Requejo, from Project Help, led 10-12 carolers in a kind of snaking conga line as they sang, jingled their bells, and made their way through the shoulder to shoulder crowd.
House the Homeless outfitted over 750 people in full winter gear but Monty a front desk worker at the ARCH is sure that by 3:00pm over 1,500 people had passed through the front door and taken part in our fiesta
The W2W Program
By Rebecca Jinks
On Monday mornings at 10 AM many homeless women are eagerly waiting for the door to open at St. David's Trinity Center. The special event is the Woman to Woman Program. It has been in operation since the summer of 2005. The W2W program has been very successful.
A team of volunteers led by Bette Allen and Mary Eubanks are there to assist the women with shopping. Besides shopping, a breakfast is served. This program gives the neighbors a chance to vent their problems to the volunteers, who are great listeners. They give encouragement and help build self-esteem and confidence.
I interviewed some of these volunteers and these are some of their wonderful responses.
The Rev. Cathy Boyd said, "The women who visit W2W on Mondays are such a blessing to me and to all the Trinity center volunteers. I am personally grateful that they are willing to share their day with me".
Charlynn said, "Monday mornings are special for the volunteers of the Trinity Center for the Woman To Woman program as we have an opportunity to visit with and serve our neighbors time for coffee devotionals and sharing.
Jane: "This is from my heart! All my life I have been blessed, but I have also known that all God's children are equal. I volunteer here because the Great Commandment is to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We are supposed to see Jesus in every human being. I try.
I, along with all the females who have come on Mondays, would like to give the following volunteers a special thanks and round of applause:
Bette
Patricia B.
The rev. Cathy Boyd
Courtney
Margaret
Anne
Rachel
Peggy
Shelly
Charlynn
Mary E.
Patricia F.
Jane
Mary M.
Carolyn
Linda
Nancy
Charleen
Joanie
Merrill Anne
Marilyn
June
Dorothy
We really appreciate your hard work, kindness and compassion. God Bless all of you!
Rebecca Jinks
A special thanks to Mary R. for all her hard work as the Director.
Book review: The Diposable American: Layoffs and their consequences
Jay Thiemeyer (Street Roots)
The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences,
by Louis Uchitelle Knopf, 2006
Something for the business types who volunteer at Project Homeless Connect: Their mid-level white-collar management jobs are the ones showing greatest increase in outsourcing these days. Consider, when you deign to “look the homeless in the eye,” when for a day you “interact” with the slime of society, across the table, that gentleman may well be yourself down the road. You could easily be tomorrow's discard, showing up at Homeless Connect for the scraps remaining of the Safety Net and at the end of the day damned grateful for the vague I&R tips you were handed. “Housing” — how to get on a waiting list at TPI men's shelter. “Dental care” — in your dreams and your children’s.
In “The Disposable American: Layoffs and Their Consequences,” author Louis Uchitelle gives witness that there is nothing sacred about America's prosperity. The American Century was way yesterday. After the long struggle to establish “job security” from the end of the first Gilded Age in the 1890s to the beginning of the 1970s, job security had become a central feature of business management. Loyalty to the company was integral to its success. Layoffs were anathema — immoral and destructive of business success, it was assumed. Then, foreign competition emerged and temporary layoffs were grudgingly implemented. Then, the guilt wore off, and some acquisition types saw it as a real opportunity. Damage to society at large is damned.
When Peter Drucker first came on the scene, shortly after World War II, he dismissed layoffs as immoral. Bad practice. Not sound, what would be called today “evidence-based,” practice. In his final book he embraced layoffs as not only necessary but “good practice.” Would weed out the least productive employees and keep the company fit. A new emergence of Social Darwinism.
Of course, Reagan, back 25 years ago, had embraced layoffs as business management at its best, a practice for the government to encourage. It was emblemized by the dismissal of the striking air traffic controllers at the beginning of his reign. They were denied the prospect of any future federal employment of any kind. They were, you see, the villains in the piece, the ones obstructing progress, according to the Reaganites.
Jobs With Justice (and less so, Industrial Areas Foundation, initiated by Saul Alinsky and his disciples and a model for the local Metro Alliance for Common Ground, once full of promise, now not so much so) now represents what progressives promise the labor movement once represented as a whole. But the point is in our society there is little wholeness. Community is so secondary to financial gain as to barely scan. And with ascendance of private equity firms and the new wave of mergers and corporate acquisitions, white collar workers, like all other workers, are vulnerable. Even doctors, even specialists. Even those middle management types doing intake at Homeless Connect, who in my experience, spend their energy on expediting the process, getting your name, etc., moving you along, to a photo op with a politico, with no more human connection than isn't avoidable. They're so mentally locked into fealty to a “business model,” they can't see themselves in those homeless skegs — can't afford to see these people as workers for real, not some job center fodder. The homeless once were workers working for a sustainable wage. They were the backbone of community. Now, like the suits slumming for a day, they are simply discards of a system which will use them, then slough them like an old pair of socks.
One very important point Uchitelle stresses is the mental health impact of the layoffs themselves, not merely on the individual worker but on the viability of the entire community of which the workers are part. In the receding past, workers were the backbone.
The financial primacy of investor groups serves this country poorly. While a handful of barons make a killing, the safety net is replaced by well-advertised occasional voluntaristic festivals, their rarity spun as how well they're received by “welfare clients,” themselves doled to these events by their herders, the providers.
As to a solution, Uchitelle says we need a return to government intervention, as in regulation of industries such as the airline industry, which was probably the sole beneficiary, after Dubya, of 9-11. He details the lack of coordination in Indianapolis, for example, where a huge center was built for airline repair, complete with lavish tax abatement for the airlines. It stands largely empty today. If the government had interceded to help with the development of a rational regionalized system, this waste — of dollars and people — would have been avoided. Government and organized labor need once again to take an active role instead of labor's acquiescing in its own demise by cooperating with corporations' layoffs.
Government intervention — which reached its heyday under FDR, with the influence of British economist John Keynes, with the arrival of government intrusion to save capitalism's ass from the outrage of the people subject to the predations of the Depression — has been completely marginalized as “voluntarism” has replaced it. The inadequacy of voluntarism was a lesson too thoroughly learned during the 30s Depression, yet Reagan and his progeny successfully imposed it. (As well as Ford. Do you remember WIN buttons? And Nixon would have if he could have, in other words, had a Republican Congress.)
There is also the question of tax cuts. Reagan considered his tax cut of '81 as the single moment of his administration to which he didn't hesitate to point with pride. And his, of course, was only the opening shot.
When reading daily of the manipulations of K Street — the new Kingfishes, the lobbyists, and the new moneyed Barons, the private equity groups such as Texas Pacific Group that tried to swallow PGE — balance it with the good sense of longtime business writer for The New York Times, Louis Uchitelle. When he considers collateral damage, he means what being laid off feels like. To a single person, their family and their community. The human cost. His interviews are of real persons, not corporate headlinks.
By Jay Thiemeyer
Reprinted from Street Roots
© Street News Service: www.street-papers.org
In Memory of Harvey H. Phillips
Harvey H. Phillips II, 57 passed over at his home in Austin, Texas on November 29th, 2006. He was the son of Harvey H. and Dorothy (Reavis) Phillips Born on Dec. 31, 1948; He graduated from Marshalltown High school in 1967.
Harvey is survived by his two daughters, Rebecca (Greg) Flanagan, of
Richfield, MN and Jessica (Doug) Harden of Cottage Grove, MN; his
Grandchildren, Brittany, Francesca, Samantha, Chelsea and Alex; brother,
John of Red Oak, LA. He was preceded in death by his parents, grandparents and brother, Robert.
Harv was cremated.
A celebration of life in his honor is being planned for next summer
in Minnesota. Details to follow.
Cards may be sent to Jessica Harden, 8531 Hale Av S., Cottage Grove,
MN, 55016; Rebecca Flanagan, 7333 Grand Av So, Richfield, MN,
55423.
I met Harvey H Phillips II October, 2002 waiting in line for the Jackson Browne ACL taping. We’ve been friends ever since and ‘music’ buddies. We heard Willie Nelson, David Grey, Jimmy LaFave, Jack Ingram, Jerry Jeff Walker, Abi Tapia, Arlo Guthrie, Shawn Colvin, James Hunter, Toni Price, Steve Winwood, Los Lonely Boys, Nathan Hamilton, South Paw Jones, Slaid Cleaves, James McMurtry, Eliza Gilkinson, Ian McLagan, Ian Moore, Monte Montgomery, Todd Snider, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Terri Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Ruthie Foster, Carolyn Wonderland, Artz bluegrass jams, Bob Schneider, John Dee Graham, Reckless Kelly, Darden Smith, Marcia Ball, Gary Clark Jr., Bruce Cockburn, Malford Milligan -- (many at Shady Grove, Waterloo Records & Blues on the Green), and others. He volunteered at many town races, events, and the ACL festival.
Harvey was born in Marshalltown, Iowa in 1948 and lived in Minnesota & Florida before moving to Austin for the warm weather and music. He has two delightful daughters in Minnesota, Rebecca & Jessica, and five grandchildren. Harvey’s oldest granddaughters are one year apart, and his youngest grandchildren are 1 day apart! When I met Harvey, he was starting a new job at Randall's on Lake Austin Blvd. and then moved to Seton hospital. He was found deceased in his apartment at Garden Terrace December 12th 2006 from heart failure. Attached is a poem/song I wrote – inspired by Harvey. He was a special friend and I will miss him.
...Since home is where the heart is and you have a heart of gold,
you're not homeless - you're houseless.
Your mother may not be near by,
but you always have mother earth and are close to her.
Some of us sit in our heated chairs and watch t.v. much of the day and night;
you watch the river flow under the sun and stars...
You treat yourself to a stay at the hostel; I treat myself to a weekend at the spa.
I’d rather you not see me like this - in my stockings, suit, and pumps.
Turn around time is MUCH more relaxed in your world; reminds me to slow down.
I’ve learned many valuable things from you, like the cycles of the moon (the silent witness in the sky),
mass transit & public libraries familiarity, and especially the rewards from volunteering to help others.
You walk many miles a day; and I strive to exercise on my bike, swim with my pass, and pay for weekly yoga classes.
We’re not so different, you and me. Our mutual respect, love of music, and appreciation for life will sustain our friendship.
* Written by Tracey Tisdale inspired by Harvey H. Phillips II – 2003.
Malcolm Keith Davis
March 23, 1953 To December 28, 2006
he didn't want to be on the streets, but he coped with it. he had good times. like i said, it usually involved music. he liked people, too. he'd be so glad to see me he'd yell across guadalupe at me. he had a lot of good times at my house for sure, with my friends and i. we'd sit on the porch, bullshitting, joking, trying to understand the world. when we can't understand it, we'd drink a little more. =)
he was kind, too, and had a big heart. he shared his dumpster treasures with us, too. he'd sometimes leave random gifts on our porch for us to find later, like a purse, or a candle, or whatever he thought we might like or use. it was always strange and mysterious, though, and we had to conclude it must be malcolm. =)
i always knew this day would come for him. it was sad and mortal for me to think that at first. i tried to help him, but found that given the circumstances, he was in the most comfortable situation that way. and it wasn't so bad when i account for how many good times he had despite the streets. i knew that would be the way he would die, and it isn't so bad as long as he has fun along the way. i'm glad we were part of that fun, too.
--William Wise
In the Gulf of Other People's Needs
By Tony Degges
are large hands having
grime under finger nails
caused by gouging
holes in the brown sky
in the gulf of other people's needs
are the masks of oil
drawn on charcoal water
a mud language
whispering extinction
in the gulf of other people's needs
are overladen vessels
leaking hard times
cloaked in bureaucracy
hawking prosperity
in the gulf of other people's needs
are the people who never need
but want everything
Midnight
he tells the nightman two eggs and toast
no coffee two eggs and toast
a fedora shades wintered eyes
the handsome tragedy jug-wine features hide
he will not explain
iindifferent to the aproned girl's stare
her hair piled shining ready to fall
he tells the night grillman
two eggs and toast
his once charcoal fedora
hides gray eyes
and jug-wine features
from the pointed stares
of the late-night cafe
he tells the grill cook
two eggs and toast
head and hat down he speaks
from hat shaded eyes
two eggs and toast he repeats
the worn fedora hides
his defeat written in lines
of winter rain and sleet
a gray fedora is all
the waitress could recall of him
Tony Degges
NOT THE PAINT
In memory of
Russell Glen Degges
1952-1974
it is not the paint crayon blue
or the color of hands out to green
but a reason to find the ink then you
who will watch the letter flip
then fall across the vein of eyes
and the tear flicked as daggers do
it is not the paint that covets too long
the boat's mast between the bend of arms
which held the day that smiled at rain
and the train of cloud’s heavy sigh
it will never be a sky as small as that
it is not the paint of voices molded mute
nor cry of palms that crave the dawn
or all the sobbing fists that fly outright
but was the night framed against his will
that took the brush in hand and made it still
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So You Think You Stand-Up: Historic Gathering The W2W Program Book Review: In Memory of In Memory of Poetry |
