COLORADO SPRINGS- It’s official! Colorado Springs City Council last night renounced our city’s long-reputed (and disputed) Christian Values. In yesterday’s session, an ordinance was approved to prohibit the homeless from seeking refuge on public land. Some might see this is a step forward for the pious headquarters of America’s military religious empire, a self-suicide bomb to its pseudo-spiritual center.
The council on Tuesday listened to hours of public input, predominantly against adopting the ordinance for a panoply of reasons. The speakers thanked the councilors for their patience. More than a couple reminded them of Jesus’ words, what you do for the least of my brethren, etc. The nefarious Doug Bruce weighed in against the ordinance, not out of sympathy for the “bums” but because he thought the legalese too vague. Many speakers for the homeless agencies asked the city for more time, to delay a decision for further study. They sensed perhaps that passage of the ordinance was eminent, but ultimately gave the council its cue.
Between doing nothing and doing something, eight out of the nine councilors expressed that they had to do something, which meant the ban. Police Chief Meyers had presented no other options for consideration. In his presentation the day before, the alternatives listed were “none.”
And whether they intended it or not, a number of local advocacy groups put their name to the chief’s report. He made clear that not all of the organizations favored the camping prohibition, but more cleverly, he summarized their input as having concluded their were no other options. Included as hapless “signatories” were the PPJPC and the local ACLU. I’m not sure how several meetings about the homeless issue, led by the PPJPC, could have yielded no other options but a ban, but that was how the police chief summarized it.
The only refutations offered were testimonials to the potential efficacy of third party faith-based agencies to help the homeless, and pleas for more time. There was little discussion about what else the city might do.
Of course there is an important alternative the city can consider. More services. If the homeless present a health, sanitation, security and humanitarian problem, resolve it with better services.
I was making the point earlier about private and public property. Public land is the public’s private property. The city has just as much responsibility to provide services to the public lands and it does to the private. More so, actually. What the city has done in this case is withhold sufficient services and blamed the problem on the homeless. Is there a mess? Clean it. Is there lawlessness, police it? A fire risk? Monitor it. People living in need? Give.
The city council members assumed to help the poor with this ban, intent to lift them from their squalor. How patronizing.
Imagine if the city was to withhold services from private property. Imagine if private homes lo longer received sewer and water, garbage pickup and police oversight. Our residential areas would quickly be swallowed by tremendous squalor. Imagine telling private property owners to pick themselves up from their mess.
The City Council is not a good representative of the people. I think a majority of the population here would like to make a personal effigy of the Mayor and his ignorant and inhumane pride-stroked goons on the board.
Think about it – we’re paying cops to write tickets to people who have no money. What’s the sense in that?
To be accurate, the ordinance does not discriminate against homeless, it applies to all citizens to end the unsustainable, irresponsible use: accumulating trash and human waste, open fires in ever-deepening fire rings, trees clear-cut for firewood and girdled by ropes attached to tarps and tents, foot paths across native grasses increasing erosion – how can anyone justify this devastation?
And Eric, in the spirit of full disclosure, I would label myself as “Christian”, which means I was taught (not always successfully) to hate the sin (destruction of the creeks) and love the sinner (campers), because we’ve all sinned (even me). So, if we can get past the rhetoric, I look forward to productive discussions, and hope we may be able to agree on the real issue – many of our brothers and sisters are in need of a “hand up” – fishing lessons, anyone?
They haven’t passed a similar ordinance about the ongoing and now, with the defeat of the Stormwater fee, no-money-to-fix-it, pollution of everyplace downstream from us, most notabely Pueblo, from our outmoded and broken and overwhelmed water system. You know the one, TABOR has blocked any investment in repairing it, most of it hasn’t been modified in decades (according to one who’s been here that long, it’s been neglected even before Bruce’s Reign of Error, like 1960)… and there’s twice as many people in Colorado than were here in 1990. Most of the growth in population, but not in essential services, in Colorado Springs.
The real estate developer Thief Cartel which runs this village are proud that they’ve crammed in more people without increasing services.
So now, Pueblo is suing us. The Army and Air Force and even the Navy could potentially Sue Us. They could sue the living Dogshit out of us.
That’s another pollution issue, every other yard has a large canine predator in it. That would be great if the yards were far far apart. As it is, we’ve got roughly a hundred times the level of Predators, by body mass, than the ecosystem is designed to support, either by evolution, God or both.
That’s irresponsible. The bacteria in Canine Crap, aka Dogshit, is designed to digest meat. Like, the stuff we and every other animal are made of. That bacteria is therefore toxic to us.
Back when there WAS a balance of nature, that wasn’t a problem. A few hundred wolves in what’s now El Paso County, some mountain lions, foxes, ferrets etc. and plenty of grassland and tall weeds to filter it, and slow down the flow of the riparian (creeks and rivers) system. Now there’s an ordinance that the native plants, aka “weeds” and grasses have to be cropped very close to the ground. No filtering, very little impedance to the floodwaters.
That, too, is Irresponsible.
The response of the “Christian” Developers? Loosen environmental protection regulations so they can build more irresponsible subdivisions, McMansions, and bring in even more people, at the uncompensated expense of everybody downstream.
Since Pikes Peak is the tallest mountain in the Contiguous States, that means everybody in America is downstream from us.
The pollution has been increasing steadily and drastically for decades, long before the Tent City.
So for the Pigs who run our village to blame it all on the Tent City is a Damnable LIE.
The Rich Bitches who had the measure passed did so to punish the poor even further, because they consider themselves to be so much better than the rest of us.
They’re liars, thieves, murderers and don’t deserve the name Christian, and when they commit the crimes in the name of MY Jesus they blaspheme. And they do it routinely, regularly and often.
They even commit their crimes on Saturday to make it a perfect score on God’s Top Ten No-no list.
Fishing Lessons? The corporate PIGS who hide behind your pseudo-intellectual pseudo-Christian platitudes (by the way, teach a man to fish is a saying mostly attributed either to the Bhudda or to Kung Fu Tze, aka Confucius, not to Moses or Jesus) have All the Metaphoric fish locked into their greedy hands.
You’re going to Ass U and Me that every or even most poor people are poor because of their own actions. YOU LIE.
Not only that, but the fish in fountain creek, haven’t been there ever since I’ve been up here. Part of the problem is toxic waste sites like the one upstream from the Tent City, the one the Real Estate Developers are building an apartment complex thereon.
The hill of mine waste that’s so toxic the grass grew about three inches last summer then DIED.
The one that’s supposed to prove that Mountaintop Removal mining and the Shale Oil scam aren’t actually going to make OUR water undrinkable.
I know, the corporation names aren’t the same as the Real Estate developers, but you know what? The corporate boardrooms are filled with the Exact Same Piggy Faces.
There are no frogs in Fountain Creek, especially downstream from the Toxic Waste Hill. No crawdads, insect larvae, no pond-scum. None of the base of the riparian bio-system.
Your metaphor fell apart on many levels.
Dear Brother Jonah;
Let’s see…
“Bruce’s Reign of Error, Thief Cartel, large canine predator, Predators, irresponsible subdivisions, McMansions, Pigs, Rich Bitches, liars, thieves, murderers, corporate PIGS, greedy hands, YOU LIE, Shale Oil scam, Exact Same Piggy Faces, Toxic Waste Hill”
The results are in – congratulations – you have won today’s prize for most credibility lost due to name-calling.
Do you believe in treating others as you’d like to be treated? If so, does that include your enemies?
patchsl, I think all blanket policies are intended to hurt the underdog and benefit the monoliths. If you look at it in the larger picture, I’m sure you would agree.
For example, a recent policy in lead testing forced hundreds of mom-and-pop shops around the nation to shut down while the companies who were putting lead-laced toys in the market (namely Walmart) are so big that paying thousands of dollars in fines or throwing out entire inventories is a minor setback.
http://www.santamariasun.com/cover/1357/all-worry-and-no-play/
In this case, I’m all for a clean city, but the larger businesses need to be held to at least the same standards and to higher penalties than smaller companies and individuals, particularly those who have little to no money, for the city board’s claim (that this is a non-discriminate law) to really hold water.
The over-construction of this city was employed through a series of unscrupulous tactics by our Mayor without regard of the consequence. He then forced people to bail him out of these unwise decisions by enforcing a tax called “Stormwater Enterprise” when he should have been considering the drainage system the entire time and had the builders fit that bill.
People are wising up and are viewing the Mayor, vice-mayor and a few other choice city board members with distrust and even disdain for the way they’ve handled our city.
Calling thieves what they are isn’t quite name calling.
Calling people “sinners” for doing what it takes to survive even in extreme poverty is taking God’s name in vain, only doing it sideways.
The lies told that ALL homeless are either Crazy, Lazy or Hazy from Drugs, that’s Name-calling designed to dehumanize the Homeless PEOPLE. I know the creek situation because I, too, lived in a tent the first year I was up here. In the National Forest. I wouldn’t live down here in a tent, not for the “shame” factor, but because the Anti-Homeless PEOPLE propagandists get their most hot-headed members of their Hate Committees to assault, rob and even Kill people who are unable to defend themselves.
I suppose it’s also name-calling to mention that Bruce never defended anybody’s right to free speech other than his own, when he was a prosecutor he sided with his fellow Pigs every time. If a Pig beat somebody up for “name calling” (which isn’t a crime by the way, nor is it legally a reason for assault) and then arrested the victim of that assault, Bruce always stood by the Cops. He stood by the Cops when they beat up 7 people in a peaceful Parade entry.
The land developers are thieves, the product they sell was given to them after being taken by the original occupants. Taken, and granted to them, by the Government, at taxpayer expense and at the expense in blood of everybody who didn’t simply allow the army to take the land.
The dog droppings in the creeks, yes, that IS valid. So is the thousands of tons of raw sewage that the half-million population City of Colorado Springs put into the water because the stormwater coming off large roods and parking lots, in the subsidized industries like Intel, WalMart, Hewlett Packard, Motor City, etc… broke the antique water drainage system.
Pueblo had initiated their lawsuit against the Springs for this irresponsible dumping of poison into not just YOUR water but THEIRS as well, more than 6 years ago. I know that because I came here 6 years ago.
The absence of fish, crustaceans, insect larvae and mono-cellular plants, and algae, in the Fountain Creek I noticed directly the first time I followed the watercourse (it parallels the road, or rather, the road parallels it.) You notice a distinct difference in the way the water smells when you get to the confluence between Fountain Creek and Monument Creek, because Monument Creek has algae in it.
Monument Creek also isn’t downhill from mines or refinery operations.
Calling a thief a thief doesn’t lessen my credibility, trying an ad-hominem attack rather than addressing facts, as you did, to dismiss those facts as being the rantings of a “name caller” definitely lessens YOUR credibility.
So, incidentally, does your characterization of all Homeless PEOPLE as “sinners”.
You don’t know every situation, and, I’m certain from your diatribe, you don’t even know a majority of them.
The PEOPLE of Tent City are doing actually a better job of sanitation than the first English “settlers” did.
The first “settlers” clear cut forests, ripped open the mountains looking for precious metals, thereby changing the water flow with the first action and putting unfiltered poison into the creeks with the second. They shot as much of the local wildlife as possible, and, just by a bizarre coincidence, shot as many of the local PEOPLE as they possibly could.
The camps as they exist today only openly display the same practices of dumping wastes into the landfills, and thus into the streams, that the larger City of Colorado Springs has been practicing for its entire history. The landfill practices are more refined and hide the damage better, not doing less damage.
The sheer amount of garbage and sewage generated by the Springs’ half million population far outweighs that generated by a really tiny handful of Tent City residents. There’s not even 20%, you know, of the population of Another Tent City that the Colorado Militia cleared out, to make room for their “superior” cultural practices.
Like at Sand Creek. But, hey, keep demonizing the PEOPLE who live in Tent City, then when they’re violently assaulted by the Police or worse yet, the Minutemen and other cowardly “militia” groups, maybe you’ll have at least the grace to admit your share in the guilt.
Probably not, though.
And don’t forget to hit the PEOPLE over the head with the KJV 1611 while your accomplices are hitting them with tazers, clubs and bullets.
Jesus will reward you according to your deeds. You’ll get what you earned.
Dear Brother Jonah;
Cutting to the chase, are you saying that because bad guys polluted in the past it’s OK to pollute the creeks more today?
As for hitting anyone with scripture, I did not mean to offend, but agree all of us, sinners all, will be held accountable for our actions here.
BTW, thanks for your service to our nation.
It’s the Hate Speech demonization of Homeless PEOPLE as druggies or layabouts or nut-jobs that gets PEOPLE killed. The baseball-bat murder last year, a prime example.
That homeless PEOPLE don’t trust the system at all, is a reflection that they are actually SANE. Because they’d have to be plain Idiots to believe that the Establishment will ever protect their property, their rights or even their persons.
The so-called “news” propagandists have been spreading the poison further. They make vague allegations that “Homeless committed 3 crimes in the past day” but that there were no arrests, no charges. No information that demonstrates, far less proves, the allegation that it was actually Homeless people in general, or the residents of Tent City particularly, who committed the crimes in question.
Speculation disguised as Journalism. To fan the flames of Hate.
In the next round, if the Pharisees and Moneychangers get their way, the Cops will have full license to assault the homeless PEOPLE in any way at any time they so choose. Knowing the prior history of the CSPD and their dedication to the laws and especially those protecting the rights of individual citizens (the Homeless PEOPLE fall directly into the category of Citizens) or, to put it more bluntly because some who read might not have the wit to figure it out, their extreme lack of concern for the rights of anybody who doesn’t have a fat wad of money in the bank, I feel safe in assuming that they will take the opportunity to go on a Massive Epic Power Trip.
Knowing the “Back the Badge” kneejerk Rightwingers who think they own society in Colorado Springs, the Police will only have to say the persons they arrested were guilty, and that will be enough to satisfy.
My reason for being homeless the first year I was here is that I’m disabled. Pretty badly. My foot and knee were deteriorating badly, still are, and I was and still am in constant pain. I was unemployable, there isn’t any work I could have done. I relied solely on A.N.D. payments, and the soup kitchen, to stay alive.
The “resources available” to help people, don’t actually exist, those who say they’re sufficient or even exist, to keep somebody under any roof that isn’t run like a Jail, is simply Lying.
I knew better than to go to sleep unaccompanied in town, where the same Hate Freak mentality which enables the Baseball Bat murder, the camp raiders… the people who curse you and throw objects out of their car windows if you even APPEAR to be homeless, in towns where Poverty is considered to be a punishable offense, and the defenders of that Hate Mentality accuse the poor of being “sinners” and then claim to actually Love them in the same sentence,..
So I camped in the National Forest. Even there, I would sometimes come back and find my camp trashed, my tent torn up, my coleman stove smashed, every piece of my camping equipment or other belongings smashed.
No, it wasn’t bears or other wild animals. Bears don’t wear shoes, don’t smoke cigarettes or drink Pabst Blue Ribbon beer or take a shit on the mortal remains of your sleeping bag and wipe their asses with your Social Security application papers. They also don’t drive up to your camp in a pair of SUVs. They don’t use firearms to shoot your water containers.
Would you accuse fellow Homeless PEOPLE of being that well equipped and motivated to go up into the woods looking for somebody’s camp?
Oh, wait, I forgot, Homeless PEOPLE are guilty until they stop being Homeless, and even then never to be trusted. Because we’re Sinners.
In other words, the people in the camps, banded together for protection. It’s their legitimate Right. If you claim that they would be provided with housing, you’d be lying. in the Shelter they’re not given second class citizenship. Their citizenship isn’t even acknowledged, their humanity not acknowledged. They’re not allowed to have any personal property in the shelters, if you have personal property you have to carry it around with you all day, while performing the job searches. Temporary contract jobs, like shovelling snow, forbidden. You’re required to seek employment with people who don’t hire homeless PEOPLE.
And punished if you can’t find a job. There was a quote in the Indy, specific to parolees, but it works for shelter residents too. They tie your hands and feet and then command you to dance.
So the PEOPLE camp. To camp alone is suicide, especially in the Right Wing generated polarization of America, where the poor are demonized. The Real Estate crunch is a prime example, people who control less than a percentage point of the wealth supposedly crashed the economy. The Rich who actually DID the crime skate away laughing.
And the poorest, the ones who can’t afford rent, are set up to be victims of a Pogrom.
If you don’t know the word, google it. They do it all the time in Europe, where the preferred targets are now the Romany, “Gypsies” and for the same reasons Homeless PEOPLE are targeted here.
The harder times get, the more pressure, especially from the Pulpit, will be generated all the more, to blame the poorest.
It was done to the Okie migrants in the Depression. Here in the Springs, too.
The PEOPLE in the camps would be well within their rights to arm themselves and organize for resistance.
What other defense is being offered? “hate the sin and love the sinner”? Sure we can count on YOU to defend our Human rights or even our basic Humanity.
So, tell me, please do, Fellow Christian… Who will YOU be in the new Depression, where will YOU stand on the subject of making a crime out of Poverty and a virtue out of Nazi-style work camps?
Will you be Billy Sunday, or will you be Sister Amy?
If you don’t know who they are, google it.
Billy Sunday had a pretty big following here in the Springs.
Cutting to the chase, I’m saying that the “bad people who used to pollute” are still doing it, with far less regulation and that, thanks to the so called Libertarian deregulation. They’re still polluting the streams that a handful of people are now being accused of polluting, By The Same People Who Actually ARE polluting the streams, without fear of being turned out of THEIR McMansions by the Colorado Springs Gestapo.
The Eco-Criminals are still at it, massively,
and have now gottenARE the so-called “Christian” leadership of our Village.to place theand ARE placing the blame on the poorest of the poor, who are struggling to Survive with a modicum of Human Dignity. And taking advantage of Hate Criminals who think of poverty as a Sin and the poor as Sinners, and say so loudly.They’re banding together out of a really deeply held feeling, Confirmed as Fact by the Hate Freaks, that they won’t get any protection from the so-called Law Enforcement against the Hate Freaks. In fact the Hate Freaks are going to set the CS Gestapo on them as violently as George Bush set the Army on Iraq, and with equally shoddy LIES to inflame the passions of the so-called “good people” to allow it to happen without any question.
They got YOU to believe that the Homeless PEOPLE are the entire problem, Right?
A problem that’s been going on for decades before the Tent City went up.
Hidden, now, behind the Propaanda LIES that the Homeless PEOPLE are the ones and the ONLY ones to blame for the pollution problem, and the Violence problems.
If you wish to believe the LIES or, worse yet, propagate those LIES while knowing full well that they’re not true, then I’ll point out Fact after Fact to counter those Hate-filled LIES.
“love the Sinners” sure… Sure you do.
Dear Brother Jonah;
Thanks for the lecture…
Something else I was wondering about… noticed your website store selling some really nice looking green t-shirts with peace symbols… how much profit do you make on each one… just curious because I was thinking about getting in to that Capitalist thing myself… but I would never want to be perceived as someone getting rich on the backs of slave laborers in China…
And, as you mentioned Chinese philosophers, Sun Tzu wrote that the smartest generals win wars without firing a shot…
Yeah, and the winningest generals get to write the history, and pretend they didn’t fire (or carry a big stick).
The t-shirts are Canadian, printed locally, etc. That “Capitalist” smear is so silly. Even activists have to pay the bills.
Unfortunately, the first shots have been fired. Repeatedly and for centuries now.
The “Founding Fathers” whose Original Intent is held as sacred by the Right Wing, half of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence were slave-owners, and none of them were poor.
They signalled their intentions toward the poor in a left-handed way, “All men are created Equal and endowed by their Creator with certain Inalienable rights, among these being Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness” unless of course the Equal Men happened to be Native American, Slaves, Bondservants, had no property, were women, etc etc.
An extreme (extremist?) case of Elitism disguised as Egalitarian Idealism. The Rich White Men who signed the Declaration and later tried to co-opt the Constitution were objecting to paying taxes to support a British war which opened up vast trade revenues for British Subjects, including the Rich White Men who wrote and signed the Declaration. Kind of like the Republicans balking at paying their way for the Iraq War which benefits the wealthiest, and exactly nobody else.
That impacts the Homeless “problem” immediately, first because the Springs Establishment is chock full of “Strict Constructionalists”, which means that they don’t believe that Tenants, Bondservants, Slaves, Women, anybody who isn’t a Rich White Man, should have any vote at all. “No Taxation without Representation… except for those who aren’t Rich White Men”.
The only reason the working class were even allowed the vote was they held the Elitists at gunpoint and forced the issue. Even the soldiers they recruited into the Revolution weren’t automatically granted representation through Suffrage.
The Springs Establishment tries mightily to keep the Homeless PEOPLE and anybody else who might potentially vote against them from Voting. That’s the whole notion behind the Mail-in Ballots the County Elitist Clerk Bob Balink keeps proposing.
The war against the Poor has been going on for a Long Time.
When “our” government joins in with populist chants about liberty and God and equality, They Lie. And they recruit the truly ignorant among the Working Class to join in with screams and whines about Bolsheviks.
Use the ol’ Red Scare bullshit to peddle the rest of their Elitist Garbage. “If you don’t surrender your rights to us, to be returned to you when the threat is over of course, the Bad Ol’ Bolshevik Boogieman will eat you up!”
Nice to see it hasn’t passed from vogue.
By the way, when the ex-slave Bolsheviks executed the Tsar and his family, they were simply repaying in kind what the Tsar and his soldiers did to THEIR families.
That’s something you won’t see in the Disney “Anastasia” Hysterical Revisionism.
As I said in another post, the Richest caused the extreme poverty that’s overcoming the world, they’ve swelled the ranks of the poor and diminished their own ranks to a point where the poor might just be loathe to defend the “rights” of the Very Rich to rule over everybody else.
Now isn’t the time for the Rich to be picking a fight with the poor.
Every time there’s been “class war” in America the guns have been pointed toward the “lower” Working class and away from the Leisure Class.
So far.
Dear Eric;
So the t-shirts were made by Canadians… at the expense of American workers’ jobs… man, I gotta’ be honest, that doesn’t look good…
And “that Capitalist smear is so silly”… does that mean it’s silly and true, or silly and false… see, that’s the trouble when you resort to name-calling… the question just lingers…
Dear Brother Jonah;
Thanks for another ear-thumping… I am fascinated to hear a different perspective…
I hope your knee and foot are less painful today.
In a way, they are. I had no insurance, got hurt on the job, the boss had no legal obligation to carry Workmans Compensation and sold the company to his brother in law then split the state. (Texas) while I was still in emergency surgery.There’s a Slave Market temporary hire place involved too, owned by Halliburton, and some really ridiculous rules as to Social Security Disability.
So for 14 years, until I got SSI and therefore Medicaid, they left the metal temporary fix inside my right foot and left knee, that were supposed to come out after two years…neglected them.
By that time one of the bones in the foot had died and is still breaking down, so I’ve got a titanium shank in that ankle, halfway up the shin, holding it in place so the bone doesn’t just shatter. The metal brace in my left knee was held by 6 screws, the one at the top, had so much calcification around it that it broke while the surgeon was extracting it. Half of it is still in the top of my tibia, can’t possibly be removed without destroying the bone.
The nerve damage had started my left, unbroken foot, to decay the same way as the right, but Dr Fitzgerald caught the early symptoms just before he was murdered. Now I have, courtesy of Colorado Medicaid, a T.E.N.S. unit that eases the pain somewhat, and also increases the blood flow, muscle movements and even some nerve rechanneling so that the necrosis of the left foot is reversing, or at least halted. That cost the state considerably less than a thousand bucks.
The damage to the knee and right foot, mostly from the neglect, has cost the state over a half million so far. And the foot might still have to be amputated eventually. Hopefully with that 500 some odd dollars TENS unit I can stave that off for a few years.
The Health Care system in Texas is just about all privatized. Tort Reform keeps me from suing Halliburton, who sent me on the job, and of course the Pendejo (mexican for somebody who’s dangerously stupid) who had us walking up a conveyor belt like a ramp to get on and off the roof, because he’d taken the ladder to a second job site. There’s no Union to speak of in Texas. And I was making Minimum wage plus a dollar because I was roofing. The Halliburton subsidiary was charging 20 an hour, they made 3 times as much off my labor as I did.
Minimum wage at the time was 3.35, fat chance I could afford my own insurance on that. So, yeah, it shapes my political perspective.
I get called a liar often enough by the Tea-Party about the facts of this case. That too shapes my perspective. If I automatically assume Right Wing propaganda when the conversation takes a right turn, it’s a conditioned reflex.
It’s not exactly an apology, just an explanation. Mine is just one story, I personally know one other, from the Springs, a lady who was on the street because her husbands medical expenses had bankrupted them, when he was dying of Agent Orange. She had been kicked out of her life. No home, cancer, taking chemotherapy and sleeping in doorways. She would have been prosecuted under the Camping Ordinance.
Before her husbands War-Corporation created illness, they had a couple million in the bank, a house and had put all their kids through college. That’s one of the “sinners”.
You want to hear the real stories of the people, volunteer to work in the Emergency Room sometime. The people on the street almost all have chronic health problems. One of them I had met briefly, I went to his Memorial service at Marian House, Fraces X Bator, had been injured in a fall from a roof, had health insurance that eventually ran out… broke his back too and his foot. Had to take heavy duty pain medications and took to drinking because the pills are just too freaky for words. Some people like painkillers, for others, the mental trips they put you on are just sickening.
One of the “sinners”.
Things aren’t always easy to describe. Harder still to believe, but that’s what they are, that’s how it is.
A lot of people in town here, a lot of people in Ft Worth, everywhere, really, if they’ve never experienced the lowest points they’ll refuse to believe how low those points are. They’re comfortable because they think it can’t happen to them. When it does, a lot of their peers will refuse to believe the reasons and will call them Bums. Hoboes. Crazy, Lazy, Hazy. If they object and try to explain, it will be taken as evidence that they’re Crazy. Especially if they’re angry.
Some people consider anger to be a sin too.
Ol’ Momma Karma is a mean bitch at times. One of the things in my life that I look on as a gift of God is that I always treat people as friends. No strangers, just friends I haven’t yet met. It gets me a perspective that I couldn’t attain otherwise. I listened to the stories, when I was in the Emergency Room many times, getting my “Adequate Primary Care”, you know, poor people, we have our own network.
Me, I know how to use computers. Have the largest English vocabulary of anybody I’ve ever met. And with the marriage of the two, I’ve got a powerful medium to speak for the people who have trusted me with their stories. And I can measure the truth of what they say because it’s been done to me as well.
When you see somebody in the soup kitchen line, in the camps, sleeping on a park bench during the day, because he had to stay awake all night for protection against the HomeFull people who turn their wrath on the HomeLess… You might not see anybody but a bum or a sinner.
I don’t know what your eyes see, only what your fingers report that you see or perceive. I don’t know what the person laying there on the park bench slowly dying, what his eyes have seen. But I know what that person tells me, and measure it against what my eyes have seen.
I know what the pompous ones who have never had to find shelter quickly, or die, tell me and anybody else about me, and anybody else, who HAS had to find shelter quickly or die. I know it, I resent it, and I have a capacity to express why exactly somebody would resent that kind of attitude.
That was the attitude expressed by the City Council, by a bunch of Corporate Lawyers with so much contempt in their hearts that it shows in their angry words and angrier deeds. Their contempt for all people not as wealthy as they are, shown in all its naked glory.
That’s what I see and what I’m going to express to the best of my abilities. Maybe the anger generated by such harsh words will wake one or two up, maybe they’ll wake up enough to see and to report what they see, spread the word further and further.
Dear Brother Jonah;
As I read your concern for the least of us, we may have more in common than you will ever know.
Honest question: do you ever feel that by enabling our brothers and sisters to live on the creeks and use drugs and alcohol that we’re signing their death warrants?
Brother Jonah –
I see that you don’t like to answer the hard questions here either.
Mine was – What are you doing personally to end homelessness?
Have not see you in any community, non-profit or city council meetings regarding the issue.
Peace & Love
Janis
Janice,
Why would anyone have to answer to you –you who think helping the homeless is to deny them human rights?
I’m not inclined to take advice from someone who complains to City Council that she’s “envious” of the disproportionate resources the homeless require, so much so, she’s even “JEALOUS!” Jealous of the poor, what a stitch.
By the way, no one on this website makes any pretense to have anything but disdain for the PPJPC, or any of the other groups which lent their name to endorse the Police Chief’s camping ordinance.
What are we doing to help the homeless? You can only hope to smoke it out of us.
Best of luck with your two-faced patronizing “helpfulness.”
Eric – Your research is incorrect on my name it is
J A N I S
Equally if you would of done your homework prior to trying to slander me – you would of found out quickly exactly who I am and what I am personally doing to end homelessness.
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Colorado-Springs-Independent/102223626599
Come out into the Public Eye – Ed Billings has done a good job of putting both me, you (Eric Verlo, Rita Ague) etc.
Great bridge to all of your websites.
Peace & Love
Janis
Shame on you (Coloradans for Peace) dragging the College Student into the Rally. Did they all have a working knowledge of who you are and your background before you threw a preprinted sign in their hands.
Sure hope you didn’t destroy their future careers!
Justin Cool – Full of passion and energy but not educated on all sides of the issue.
How do you sleep at night advertising for sign holders. Don’t you have enough followers who believe what you say?
Ouch!
Peace & Love
Janis
Justin Cook – Typo
Another Typo – Multiple College Students
A few homeless people whose names I won’t type out of respect.
Yikes – You are part of the Problem – Own up to it.
Peace & Love
Janis
Janis, you realize, don’t you, that you’ve drawn many more visitors to the website, some opposed to you, some in favor, all looking for ideas and most, I hope, taking away a goodly and Godly dose of Enlightenment and raised consciousness.
Also you’ve in the meantime had quite a lot of that bad ol’ Librul Repression of Free Speech that your friend and Meat-puppet whined about so much.
Yep, real censorship in action. (inaction?)
Try getting in several hours or even several seconds worth of Dissenting Opinion at the Fox and Limbaugh websites. Or call in shows. See how quickly you get the “connection refused by server” message or have your microphone cut off.
But you know, I personally hope you’ll come up with something in the way of a better idea than “The Policeman is Always Right” and “Conformity Compliance and Submission, Or Else!”
Real Peace and Real Love.
Have been working on the “enlightenment and raised consciousness” on the Homeless issue here in Colorado Springs for over 10 weeks everyday.
Thank you for another platform to get the word out.
Peace & Love
Janis
Always real Peace & Love
Have been working on the Homeless issue here in Colorado Springs for over 10 weeks everyday.
Thank you for another platform to get the word out.
Peace & Love
Janis
Always real Peace & Love
Brother Jonah – You talk so much nicer when you know more people are visiting the site.
This personality suits you better.
Peace & Love
Janis
So, when would it be appropriate to start saying “Nanny nanny, boo, boo. Stick your head in Doo-doo”?
Or are we merely supposed to Conform, comply and submit.
Because that’s seriously the core of your argument. Anything above it is built on that core.
That’s not a very nice core. In point of actual fact, it’s a very spectacularly BAD core.
There are other delicacies available on our menu. The War, Education (or lack thereof) support in our nation at large and Colorado Springs especially. Pointless speculation on if you’re one of those who are pushing the Road to Nowhere that stretches between two bus stops.
Would we find your name in the public comments of the minutes of the meetings where we were supposedly allowed our say, but Mayor Lyin’ merely told us to go to Hell, he was cutting our bus service? Would those minutes show you opposed or in favor?
That’s a closely related subject, so is the Road to Nowhere quarter Billion dollar boondoggle.
The Right Wing Fanatics having their Hissie Fits over the homeless People remind me very much of the City of Arlington, in fact, 38 of the 42 communities in Tarrant County, Texas, refusing to have Public Transportation because it would “attract poor people”. So they spend billions upon billions of dollars on Expanded Highways so that more Rich and Upper Middle Class peeps can drive their Replacement Penis HumVees and “That thing got a Hemi?” Loser-mobiles, and our kids can breathe more smog.
So do the Rich folks’ kids, apparently they don’t give any more of a damn about their own progeny than they do anybody elses.
And you know what the kick-in-the-teeth about that little ol’ mess is? They use the same Pseudo-Christian platitudes to justify that kind of Killing in the name of Jesus that the Right Wing here use to justify the Child-killer Murder Spree in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the starvation of Children across the globe caused by the overuse of resources by the Rich people of America,
And the Pogrom Program you’re endorsing.
“We” – Are you homeless Brother Jonah?
Because if you are not – you can’t speak for them.
You also violate the Homeless folks when they are recruited to hold pre-printed signs while waiting in line to eat at the Marian House.
You also violate College Students who don’t have a full understanding of all sides of the issues before holding pre-printed signs.
Coloradans for Peace advertised on their website (Eric Verlo) for sign holders.
Peace & Love
Janis
Can’t say that you violated Rita Ague – She charges (as you can see in the photo) all by herself. Not sure of her effectiveness.
In the city council meeting on Feb. 9, she kept waving photos of the St. Patrick’s Day parade in 2007.
She went on and on about “The big folks in Washington” were watching.
Alzheimer could be setting in – We’re in 2010!
Yes – you violated a Senior Citizen – I think she thought she was still protesting the St. Patricks Day Parade thing for her and Eric Verlo.
Peace & Love
Janis
Rita Wagpole Ague
Besides, I only have the one personality.
I have met a couple of “multiples” before. A very rare disorder by the way.
Being poor and having chronic medical problems in the midst of the Relentless Jihad against the Poor that American politics has become, I get to meet a lot of people with unaddressed medical needs.
and see the poverty and homelessness that are caused or worsened by that.
I mention them more than me because there’s a helluva lot more of them than there is of me. That and when I mention my own situation, one retort that is supposed to prove me wrong is “so what? There’s MILLIONS of other people who are in just as bad shape”
Like, YEAH! Duh!
Every now and then some newspaper reporter will go underground as a homeless person, for a story, with only the editor as an emergency contact.
They usually sell the story idea based on the idea that they’ll stick it out a month.
They usually last about 2 or maybe three weeks.
There’s a shelter in Ft Worth Texas, Tarrant Co Hospital District told me once that if I went there, and stayed a week, they’d be able to register me as being unemployed and homeless. I wasn’t homeless and my family weren’t about to allow me into that place anyway. (The Hospital District had a deal that if you could prove that you were unemployed you could get some more subsidized care than just the E.R…. it’s like proving that Iraq didn’t have the nerve gas, which by a coincidence they didn’t, “proof of a negative”)
Name of the place is Presbyterian Night Shelter. Where the people are allowed in after 5 in the evening, and not allowed any personal possessions. Means they have to leave their survival gear, like blankets, spare clothes, sleeping bag, Sterno stove… out in the bushes where anybody can come along and snag it up. They also have to be inside by 6. Miss that 6, no shelter, and you have to rely on that sleeping bag or sterno stove that somebody already ripped off.
This is the reality of why the guys camp on the creek bottom, by the way. Every shelter in the world has a similar policy.
At PNS, they give you a mattress and thin blanket (usually don’t need better in Texas) but the mattress is one they bought used from the county jail or the thriving Prison Slave Labor industry. Too worn out or torn up for the Worst Jails in America to use anymore.
You’ll sleep on the floor less than a foot away from the next person, what if he has that drug-resistant Tuberculosis super bug?
Would YOU sleep a foot away from an active case of TB?
In order to shelter all the unemployed and destitute people in El Paso County you’d need to have conditions like that and worse. A lot of the newest poor and a lot of the longer term poor people have kids. Are the people in the camps supposed to take space away from kids?
These are serious considerations. It’s never a light decision.
Right now it’s gotten so bad that people are buying low-cost tents, usually with their very limited A.N.D. disability money, (I did) and now, banding together for fear of people destroying what little possessions they have left.
That’s the reality of it. It’s not quite as cut-and-dried, Everybody Homeless is Crazy, Lazy or Hazy from drugs propaganda that Chief Meyers puts out.
See, I DO know that. I lived that. You want to make snotty comments about “students” or other citizens who aren’t homeless standing up for those who are?
Holding the signs up in front of City Hall in the face of hostility like yours?
I say, Thank God Almighty for those students. You see bleeding heart Liberal wannabees, I see heroes.
I’m very sure that some would prefer that ONLY the homeless citizens would stand up for Homeless Citizens. That would make it so much easier.
I see you put down the homeless People who were also holding up the signs. Who Would Jesus Arrest?
Finally I am getting to the “real you”. This post was a informative “read”.
The emergency shelter here (Hope Shelter) is absolutely disgusting. The Humane Society for animals smells better and cleaner.
The Springs Rescue Mission is absolutely a totally different situation. Men start out in bunk style living 8 to a room then graduate to 6, then 4 then 2 then all by themselves.
Private Showers, laundry facilities, cars when they graduate.
Am working on a list of all the Housing availble and Housing Assitance for People in Need.
Peace & Love
Janis
Springs Rescue Mission also has in-house computer classes, they help folks get their GEDs, they also sponsor college classes.
It is a great facility with great programs.
Peace & Love
Janis
Brother Jonah – We could really use your help!
Peace & Love
Janis
I never once objected to any of these services you speak of Janis, My objection as I have said is against the criminalization of the homeless.
Regardless of what the police have told the city what they will and will not do I believe that there will be that individaul who will go nuts at a homeless camp one day of one night, then there will be a homelss man who dies at the hands of an overzealous policeman.
How will you respond if that happens Janis?
How will homelessness be “Ended”?
I can see where the facilities will be overwhelmed and soon.
Tent City will have to move to higher ground when the spring thaws come.
The Tent City isn’t going to go away, homelessness isn’t going away, merely because it’s now a criminal offense. There needs to be some REALISTIC plans and especially among the community, for making the existing Tent City viable. So far the economy is on a downward spiral, the need is going to be here for a long long while.
But by “the community” I mean the guys in Tent City. With a Self Governance committee the Tent City residents can take the steps needed first to satisfy their own safety. Because that creek bottom is nowhere to be in spring, especially if there’s enough snowpack (there is) and some unusually heavy rains in the mountains. A scene that has happened at least once in the past 6 years.
For the winter months it’s nearly ideal. Sheltered from north and westerly winds, the worst winds… The water is poison, though, and from way up on Fountain Creek. Monument Creek at least has algae growing in it.
There isn’t a realistic chance that the need for self-shelter is going away. From my point of view I can see where, like I said, Tent City will have to move uphill, therefore upstream, and further away from the creek bottoms by the time of spring floods.
THAT is extremely important. And, it will have to be a decision made within Tent City.
That reality won’t go away either. Criminalizing survival will just make things a lot worse and a lot more quickly.
And it’s about to become crash priority, job training is nice but then, so is job creation. That’s something beyond the reach of both the Official city and the unofficial.
You could train the people to be 5-star chefs but if there’s not a concurrent creation of a bunch of 5-star restaurants that would be useless.
Some of the guys are fresh back from Iraq, not as many from Afghanistan.Yet. People who have stronger technical training than anything Colorado Springs can afford.
Guys who really need to be left alone.
Even with jobs in the computer sector, which HP was the biggest one in town… WAS, the amount of available talent outstripped the available jobs.
The jobs available in springtime, usually, probably aren’t going to be here this spring. That would involve a lot of heavy duty job creation on the Federal and State levels.
It would also demand a working transportation system. Cutting the bus system was about the stupidest cut that could possibly have been made. No telling how many potential jobs aren’t going to be created and businesses failing because of that.
There also needed to be, but never happened, a sea-change in the attitudes of some employers in town. Show up for a job interview and your home address is 709 S. Sierra Madre and you’d likely not even be given an application. Show up at a job interview getting off the bus and walking to the place, again, no job for you, buddy.
That’s only getting worse with the massive bus service cuts.
The only hiring sector that increased (just not, you know, THIS year) was in service jobs. Hospitality, restaurants, retail. Jobs that would have you working outside the 9-5 M-F framework.
Any chance on that getting better would involve an immediate restoration of the Transportation. There’s no way in Hell that an increase in private transportation would help at all. For all that Downtown has “For sale or lease, will build to suit, Office Space available” signs all over the place, and the unemployment rate looking to go up like the space shuttle, there sure is a massive clogging of the arteries on City Streets.
Most of that being people riding one person in a car made for 6 or 8. It’s beyond our ability to afford and beyond our ability to sustain. We need the bus back. And expanded service relative to what we did have. If there’s jobs in the back range, Divide, for instance, working on forest restoration. Maybe cleaning up Fountain Creek up where the problems first become apparent? or Jobs in Denver or Jobs in Pueblo, Jobs out east working on the wind-farms that are projected to be built… then not building a Bus based transportation infrastructure is economic suicide.
We just ain’t got the bread to put in more Roads To Nowhere.
And they’re a huge money syphon.
If Rivera and Friends can’t manage something like that how are they going to manage the needs of the people in the current and future Tent Cities?
Our water infrastructure is shot to Hell and beyond. There ARE federal programs being held up by some truly knee-jerk reactionaries, held hostage because of the hate toward a Black man being president of these dis-united States. Some of them are block grants to improve the water systems.
I don’t suppose it’s really slipped the minds of anybody in Denver or Washington how really important the water systems here in the Springs especially are to the rest of the nation. The watersheds of the western two thirds of the land mass and as far south as Mexico are affected by water that flows through the Springs.
Any ecological recovery, which would underpin an economic one, would have to address that. We have the workers, we HAD a good start on an infrastructure to support those necessary workers for a necessary change.
Instead we’re going to be blowing what’s left of the cash in the Springs on repressing people who are just trying to survive.
That’s not wisely spent resources.
It’s not on the level of the basic humanitarian and human rights issues facing the Homeless Removal Act. Maybe if the Civic Leaders would face economic reality head on, for a pleasant change, there would be a real change in the situations facing the people who are the first, and worst, affected by the economic meltdown.
For a solution on where the Camps can go, hopefully before the early thaw that’s scheduled to start late next month, there’s the Bear Creek land south and west of where the camps now are. It’s nearly as close as the current location to Downtown, which with the economic blight that IS downtown right now, that might not be its strongest selling point.
It’s got good drainage, relatively stable ecosystem. And El Paso County is losing money on it, trying to sell it.
It wouldn’t be a good place to build heavy structures, like for instance houses and apartment buildings, stores or warehouses. The trails and other structures need constant patrols, because some Socially Retarded Animated Sphincters will drive up into them, and dump. These aren’t the Homeless Citizens doing it either.
A good watchdog group, ready made and actually poised to be in position to provide round-the-clock security for it, maybe?
People who have a strong vested interest and the one immediate resource, manpower, to do the job.
Barring a national restructure of the economy (a positive one instead of what we’ve had the past 30 years) that would be the most elegant, and simple, solution to the immediate problem.(s)
These guys have done a really far superior job, ecologically speaking, to the one done by the first English settlers. They’re better organized and a lot less destructive.
That’s something that should be nurtured and not condemned.
I’ve seen the campgrounds maintained by the National Park service and the Forestry Service off Rampart Range. With far fewer residents they got pretty well trashed, and that with everybody from Boy Scouts to the Army cleaning them up.
And people with guns, dogs and attitudes patrolling intermittently AND expensively.
Funny thing, they didn’t actually allow homeless PEOPLE to camp there. You have to have a permanent residence elsewhere in order to camp in the National Forest.
To hear the rhetoric about the Homeless Citizens though, you wouldn’t think it possible that the “responsible non-homeless citizens” would do a far worse job at maintaining on-site sanitation. Unless you’ve been there and seen that.
Brother Jonah = Fortworthrick = Rich Wehner
Tell me it’s not so.
Peace & Love
Janis
Rick Wehner says:
November 25, 2009 at 1:21 pm
I would think that a fenced in, enclosed area where it is legal for homeless persons to camp out would drastically reduce the cost to police these areas. The key is that camping out on city or public land would have to be made illegal. The obvious drawback is the increased cost of incarceration. What other options exist that do not require 17 studies and task groups all coming to no conclusion, of which we already have?
Rick Wehner says:
December 7, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I think the downtown churches and those involved with ESM along with the millions of dollars of aid provided by Catholic Charities is a good indication of the strong outreach to the homeless. What is missing is an equal amount of effort from the nutcase evangelical organizations such as FoF and New Life.
And more to the point, how serious is the problem of homelessness in this region? There are any number of organizations providing food not to leave out the Marian House (7 days a week including X and T) plus all the other services they provide. There is Peak Vista Homeless Outreach. There is a homeless shelter and you will notice there are no shortage of decent tents and warm blankets-sleeping bags provided to the creekside dwellers.
How many crimes are on the books due to the homeless population?
I would suspect very few. And what problems do they really cause?
I think the main problem is that the sight of homeless people so close to the Broadmoor and Skyway area is just too disturbing to the whiney old blue-hairs in that area who would not do anything to help if a homeless person were dying in their front yard.
For your information:
Heuberger-Hilts, Janis PC, Fine Stipulated Agreement
http://www.dora.state.co.us/real-estate/newsletters/stips/CRECSTIPS_Summer2008/CRECstips2/HEUBERGER_HILTS_JANICE.pdf
Like a parking ticket. LOL!
Dear Brother Jonah, Eric & Ed:
I stand with your view that the dumbest thing our Council could do was cut bus service – I think it’s called the “Washington Monument Syndrome” – make us pay for voting down taxes by cutting services we really need.
Did you know Manitou Springs has an ordinance prohibiting camping on public and private land? And, guess what? The number of tasings and indiscriminate beatings of homeless has been low – zero, actually.
But the good news is that you can probably still recruit “useful idiots” -isn’t that what Lenin called hapless dupes behind their backs – to hold your pre-printed signs, and again, if you’re lucky, provoke a confrontation suitable for youtube… maybe even get someone hurt…. but ultimately, perpetuate your victim status.
Or you could start working with those of us who are tired of our elected representatives refusing to consider the largest budget item – salaries – in the current budget crunch and restore services – like bus services – that provide sustainable transportation. Your choice.
Yeah, I know, patchsi, that Manitou forbids camping on Public Land.
Within city limits. I camped out about 1/4 mile past the city limits sign in the Pike National Forest. The cops tried to hassle me once, Twice though, my camp was attacked by HomeFull Thugs who destroyed my tent, smashed everything I had that they couldn’t pawn for their Drug Habits (like the Pabst Blue Ribbon cans they left on top of the mess they had made of my camp)
You see, patchsi, those Asshole Cowards were the criminals, not me.
And they get encouragement from Assholes like you and Ms Heuberger who want to characterize every homeless person as a Criminal.
I bet you teach your own Demon-Spawn piglets to go and do crimes like that, maybe they’ll graduate to baseball-bat murder of the “bums”.
You teach them that with your hateful sneers against anybody who isn’t as Wealthy as you.
Bitch.
Ah, you’re right about one thing, patchsi.
Calling unstable and assaultive individuals names, well, I guess what will happen is you’ll kick your pets or your kids or have your husband go out and assault somebody.
As for Lenin, he didn’t start the Revolution, the Tsar and his ministers did.
When the Tsar and his piglets were dragged from their home and shot, it was just exactly what the Tsar had ordered done to countless numbers of “his” subjects whenever they objected to being Slaves.
Not quite the same as the Capitalist Fantasy you probably believe in so sincerely, where the Poor, Oppressed and Noble Tsar and Anastasia (and the rest of his Demon-Spawn offspring, and the Rich Whore who spawned them) were somehow innocent victims.
Lie to your kids. Lying to me doesn’t get you anywhere.
Allah be praised, His peace be with you in joining jihad against infidels
Rise against the infidels
Rise against the Pigs
Come, take your rightful place in the Martyrs Brigade, together we can right wrongs, Allah be praised
you guys are all a bunch of nerdy little fucks that should get ran up on by a gang of a 28 niggas. Muthafuckas you guys are almost as bad as those gayass magazines like the national enquirer or the onion. you make up bullshit and hope super extremist whiny spoiled ass bitches listen to you. Ill get my niggas DMX and bonecrusher to break your fuckin faces so then you can have something serious to cry about. I swear.