What about THESE children?

I'm sorry John Travolta's son has died.....but what about these children? Hours and hours of coverage of Travolta's son...but what about these children?

Photos by

Tarneem S. Alagha

Homeless man murdered in Springfield

50-year-old Stephen Donogue was murdered last night by another homeless man-- stabbed to death on the corner of Main ans Bliss Streets by Michael Forte.

My sister Liz, who worked at the Warming Place shelter before it was closed, knew both of them-- had just seen Michael last week. Stephen had been a regular at the Warming Place and had even worked there, but in today's news article he was described as living outside. I can't say he never stayed at Friends of the Homeless' Worthington St. shelter-- but he may have been yet another former Warming Place resident who couldn't make the transition If this is so, he would not be the first to pay with his life.

Two other men were stabbed in Springfield yesterday and one died, killed by a 22 year old man. Three other people were shot. bad day, bad day.

Remember Kitty Genovese? Some Hartford citizens should.

I was 17 years old in 1964 when Queens, New York resident Kitty Genovese was stabbed to death. Her killer stabbed her twice and then came back half an hour later to finish the job. She was nearly home when it happened, and portions of the attack were witnessed by at least a dozen people, who did not intervene. One man called out, "Leave her alone!" Another man called the police. The rest did nothing.

The public's reaction to the neighbors' apathy that night of the murder was both horrified and introspective. There was much discussion of the Bystander Effect, a psychological phenomen in which a person is less likely to interfere in an emergency if there are other people standing by who could also help but don't. Yet the same person, if alone, might help.

Is that what happened in Hartford, CT last Friday, when a 78 year old man was the victim of a hit and run and no one came to his rescue? The whole sorry incident was caught on video and if you want to know how long 50 seconds is-- that's how long it took for someone even to step into the street although that person still did not approach Mr. Torres, or take any particular role in trying to stop the cars headed straight toward Mr. Torres.

This hit and run came on top of another sad story earlier this week on Monday when former Deputy Mayor Nicholas Carbone was robbed and beaten so severely that he remains hospitalized in fair condition. Mr. Torres is in critical condition.

The Hartford Courant is covering the soul-searching the city is experiencing right now about the level of violence in Hartford, which is not unlike what Springfield MA has been going through since the death of Mario Hornsby Jr. Digging to the roots of violence is hard work andI can only wish all of us well

Shades of Jean Valjean? I doubt it.

I ought to be in bed but my eye was just caught by a MassLive headline: "Loaf of bread sparks fatal stabbing." This just slays me. Didn't these idiots have enough brains to stop for five seconds and ask themselves, "Hmmm...lost loaf of bread or life in prison? Which will I choose?"

Bet you fifty cents this one will make CNN news.

Please: no more murdered women and children in Springfield in 2008!

Patrick Johnson at the Springfield Republican has a story today tallying up the domestic violence murders in Springfield this year. Three women and five children died at the hands of those they should have been able to trust the most.

It's worth posting both the local domestic violence hotline and the national number. Locally, call ARCH, 413-733-7100. Anywhere in Massachusetts, call SafeLink, 1-877-853-2020.

So often the male perpetrators of these crimes kill themselves after they kill their wives and their children. Why don't they just kill themselves first?

Here's an understatement: domestic violence is a complicated issue. Women are not the only victims; children and men suffer, also. It's not rare for violence to be mutual-- although when it comes to the death of a partner, women are almost always the victims.

Interestingly enough, Johnson's article says that the police were never called to the victims' residences, no restraining orders were ever filed, and no neighbors ever complained about excessive noise.

Perhaps this is because the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction to protect women that women often see the "cure" as potentially as damaging as the violence.

An all too common scenario goes like this: you and your husband are having a fight, and voices get loud. (There may or may not be physical violence accompanying this argument.) You have children in the home. A neighbor calls the police. What happens next depends on whether or not the police suspect violence has taken place. But one thing that will surely happen is that the police will file a 51A-- a Care and Protection order-- with the Department of Social Services. DSS will require that you get a restraining order against your husband and remove him from your home and your life. If you fail to do so, your children may be taken away from you. This is a heavy chain of consequences to bear. Many families that need help are destroyed, and, I think, many women who really do need help won't take the risk of asking for it.

I'm not one who thinks that state intervention and incarceration should be the first step and is automatically the best step to solve every social ill. I believe that women who need to be safe should have a place to go. Once upon a time, battered women's shelters were run by dedicated community volunteers. Now they are funded by the Department of Social Services. And everybody and his brother-- every police officer, teacher, doctor, nurse, case manager and social worker-- is a mandated reporter.

For a deeper and contextualized look at violence against women, check out Incite! Women of Color Against Violence. For a look at a violence against men site that is NOT an anti-woman site (even if i don't agree with every perspective), see Battered Men. There's a hopeful page on the Family Violence Prevention Fund about raising boys into men. Check out their home page for more general information.

Not easy being homeless in Springfield

I was going to put up some links from MassLive and LocalBuzz to illustrate some of the publicity homeless efforts are getting in Springfield, but for some reason, all I could find was a LocalBuzz interview with a staffperson at the Worthington St. Shelter. The other stories seem to have disappeared.

Meanwhile, over at MassLive, Springfield's "forum," homeless people continue to take a beating from those who hide behind their made-up names. Folks have really been on a roll recently, comparing homeless people to zombies, calling the folks who eat at the soup kitchen a bunch of slobs, calling them crazy, dangerous, etc...I try to remember that not every poster feels that way; the more reasonable people probably just don't bother to respond to the worst comments. Most people think that homeless people choose to be homeless, because they won't take the steps necessary to move ahead. Well, of course it's much easier to fall into a hole than it is to climb out.

Some horrendous crimes have been happening in Springfield. The one this week that just leaves me shaking my head in sorrow is the murder of a 20 year old kid delivering pizzas by a 28 year old man.What the hell. There was a picture of the man being arraigned in today's paper: a slight figure, all hunched over, looking as if he was filled with shame. Maybe that's just my wish-- that he not be some genuine psychopath unable to feel remorse but someone who will have to live with what he has done-- taken the life of another young man who was only doing his job, trying to get ahead.

I'm no sociologist and I admit I have an unabashed allegiance to the poor and working class. But I'm no romantic, either, and not one who thinks there's no role for personal responsibility in our fates.

Many years ago, before I ever knew there'd be an Arise for Social Justice in Springfield, I used to be part of a program called Decisional Training that went into the county jails and taught decision-making skills to the prisoners both in a group and one to one. We could bring in books. One of them was Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. It's been years since I read it, but Frankl used his experience in a Nazi concentration camp to question why, barring the random and systematic murders over which prisoners had no control, some people lived and some people did not survive their experience. Frankl came to the conclusion that after all other freedoms were taken away, those who refused to give up their final freedom, the freedom to decide how they were going to react, were those who survived. I am oversimplifying both Frankl and the complexities of survival in those hellholes, but the gist of holds true.

Anyway, it was a very popular book in the jail, and was passed to person after person. After that we'd bring in a copy every few months. These guys recognized something about the power in choosing.

Sometimes when I'm talking with somebody about poor or homeless people, and we go back and forth, we often wind up at the same place, with that person saying that: people choose to stay poor, or homeless, or drug-addicted. And sometimes that looks to be about as true as it can be.

But then the question I want us to ask, that we have to ask, is, how does it come to be that people are willing to settle for so little? How and when and why is the damage done?

Well, I doubt this will be one of my more-read postings, but I would certainly wish for thoughtful response.

Wasn't this a Law & Order episode? & other homeless news

LAW & ORDER: Insurance agent Richard James and a co-defendant are on trial for felony murder in NYC for taking out life insurance policies on at least three homeless people and then killing them.

CAN'T SEE THIS HAPPENING HERE: Mayors in Nevada rallied for $20 million in funding for transitional housing for the homeless. Apparently they were inspired to action after lawmakers and homeless advocates spent a snowy night in tents back in February on the lawn of the Nevada Legislature.

ON THE OTHER HAND, THIS SEEMS LIKELY: The Democratic National Convention is coming to Denver next summer, so the city plans to keep its winter-only shelters open through the summer and for 24 hours instead of just overnight. Black Star News

NO DUMPING HERE..JUST BACK AND FORTH FROM HOSPITAL TO SHELTER: LOS ANGELES -

LOS ANGELES - A paraplegic man with a broken colostomy bag was found crawling in the gutter. An elderly woman, wearing only a hospital gown and slippers, was dumped on the street by a taxi called by the hospital.
For years, few people took seriously reports that Los Angeles hospitals were taking sick, confused and homeless patients by ambulance to the city's notorious "Skid Row" and leaving them there.
Today, Los Angeles city officials and a major hospital group announced a deal they hoped marks the beginning of the end to the dumping of vulnerable people in an area thought to have the highest concentration of homeless in the country.
Kaiser Foundation Hospitals, the nation's largest non-profit health-care provider, agreed to find shelter places for all homeless patients it discharges in Los Angeles.

It will also contribute US$500,000 to homeless services on Skid Row including a free legal clinic, a shelter bed database and extra beds for recovering patients. More at New Zealand Herald.