Where we are

8/16

KT is looking for a place for her summer camp for kids to have as an alternative to the Park. It’s pretty ad hoc and we wonder about insurance but I’d like to make it work.

A representative from Project Reachout comes in. We need to write a recommendation letter for George, a Latino who has been sleeping on our steps. He has these tear drop tattoos under his eyes. Was pretty out of it,but thanks to Teddy’s intervention,  has gotten it to where  Reachout is finding him a place to live, his own apartment. We celebrate yet another victory. It continues to be true that 89% of those who visit our steps wind up housed thanks to Project Reachout. And I am happy that Teddy is becoming an effective advocate for the homeless who knows how to work the system.

P_____’s box springs were removed last night. She continues to be sick and sleeping in her now empty apartment awaiting the sheriff. 

Steve stops in but today is not going to be a good day to work on the proposal for West-Park and social media that he has developed.  

Dan and Teddy are contributing to paint and developing  a plan to hang doors for Martin and Noche. 

I’m hanging around waiting for Jason and his Open Space organizing meeting. It’s almost a half hour after starting time I’m ready to leave. Jason arrives just back from eco-socialist gathering in eastern seaboard ectopia Vermont. His tent and backpack are soaked from the rain.  We go down to the backyard and hang his stuff out to dry And talk about where we are. 

The problem is big. Myriad atomic groups working on their own issues,all important. So much ego driven activism. We are  the true anti-stop and frisk movement. We are the true living wage group. We are the true housing justice organization.... Jason has had it with self-serving organizations. Some out of Occupy have begun to play the game of putting themselves in line for progressive grants, liberal support, etc. How do we get people to set petty egoism aside and begin the work of creating  true mass movement with the  big picture in mind? 

A woman has biked up from midtown. Agnes, an activist from the Bronx, has arrived with her own objections to how Bloomberg,confronted by growing homelessness due to a vicious end to housing subsidies and a mass eviction agenda is pushing  multiple bed homeless shelters into neighborhoods overnight unannounced. In her own neighborhood,registered sex offenders are being slipped in to an sro between two elementary  schools, Jason is trying to get her to see the big picture. I ask her about community organizations  and she responds how churches  and others  have given in to offers of jobs while selling  out the community’s  broader interests. I’ve been here too long. Time to leave.