Protest Gentrification, Stop the Anti-Panhandling Ordinance 285-53

The following is a post from the Northampton, MA-based group Poverty is Not a Crime.

Host:	Poverty Is Not a Crime
Type:	Causes - Protest
Network:	Global

Time and Place

Date:	Tuesday, January 6, 2009
Time:	4:15pm - 6:00pm
Location:	exact congregation location TBD

The Anti-Panhandling Ordinance Is Just the Beginning!
Stop the Business Improvement District!
End Rascist and Classist Gentrification!
Community Resources, Now!
True Economic Development: For People, Not Profit!

Ordinance 285-53 would restrict “aggressive solicitation” and ban solicitation in much of downtown Northampton through severe restrictions on zone. Originally directed only against panhandling, the word "panhandling" was replaced with "solicitation" in a plastic response to one of our demonstrations to make it seem less classist. Anyone who violates this ordinance will face a fine ranging from $50-$300. Since most panhandlers are obviously unable to pay these fines, they will face incarceration, which entails jail time and future exclusion from shelter opportunities and social programs.

This ordinance is part of a larger program by city officials and select business owners (most are on our side) to gentrify Northampton. Gentrification is the process of whitening and making the area "more upscale" by violently displacing the poor into slums, ghettos, and jails. The reason they want to do this is to make the area look "cleaner" and bring in more tourists. This involves of forcibly removing panhandlers (we know the police isn't after the Salvation Army) from public spaces through the use of force--such as the threat of incarceration or forced treatment this ordinance suggests. Another agent of this gentrification is the proposed Business Improvement District (BID) that outlines this ordinance in its program of twisted 'economic development." The BID also seeks to increase police patrols and hire "city ambassadors"--which exist many other cities across the US as a team of off-duty cops who help tourists get directions while "cleansing" the street of anyone whose race or class isn't quite right. It should also be noted that two of the members of the Downtown Steering Committee that came up with and pushes the BID--Suzanne Beck and Dan Yocuzzo--are the two biggest proponents of the ordinance. It should also be noted that 3 out of the 4 people who spoke in favor the ordinance at the last City Council meeting are also members of the Downtown Steering Committee.

the Business Improvement District Plan:
http://northamptondowntown.com/pdf/NohoBID_OperationsPlan.pdf

Rascism: "the potential customers of the BID are...mostly white" - page 22, under the section "Target Customers"
Classism & business control of gov't: "the City of Northampton will participate in the BID as a member...includ[ing] participation in panhandling intervention efforts and ordinances" - page 9

Another agent of gentrification is the "All Roads Lead Home" plan to "end homelessness" that Mayor Higgins, as well as other area mayors, signed onto. This program approaches ending homelessness entirely from the perspective of profit, and featured only one homeless person on its forming committee.

"All Roads Lead Home":
http://www.northamptonma.gov/gsuniverse/httpRoot/mayor/uploads/listWidget/5979/All%20Roads%20Lead%20Home.pdf

On page 26, this plan talks about "host towns" for low income housing to raise property values...meaning that the housing these city governments are building are not based on where the homeless actually are and what helps them, but instead based on moving them out of town. Seeing as the motivation and direction of this proposal is making money, this housing will most likely be slums and ghettos.

City Council does not have the authority to pass this ordinance or the BID! It is not their choice. The people must unite, and declare our demands: stop the anti-panhandling ordinance, stop the BID, and community resources (adequate food, shelter for human beings not profit, and social services) NOW!

Homeless Memorial Service Monday

Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day

Remember our neighbors and friends who have died without homes

December 22, 2008,1:00 p.m.

Christ Church Cathedral

35 Chestnut St., Springfield, MA

Reception to follow

My nephew's at Guantanamo-- what I wish I could tell him

My nephew and I have lived in the same house for probably half his life. As a teen he was into heavy metal, sci fi, paintball, martial arts and hanging with his buddies. He also had a wicked tender heart-- still does, I imagine-- particularly for his cousins and stray neighborhood kids and animals.

Two and a half years ago he joined the Navy. Like many young men, he saw the service as an opportunity to have a future and as he'd like to be in some kind of law enforcement when he leaves the service, he became part of the Naval Security Force. Five months ago, he was transfered to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base.

I had a hope, which I didn't dare examine too closely, that because he was in the Navy, in a bay, that he'd be spending much of his time on board a ship, away from the detention camps.

Well, it turns out that the Navy runs security for the camps now-- it used to be the Marines, but not any longer.

My nephew called home the other day and talked to his mom. Of course, for security reasons, there is much he can't say. What he did tell her, however, was about the excrement thrown at him and his fellow security force members by the detention camp prisoners as they walked between the rows of cells.

Here's what I wish I had a way to tell my nephew-- not only tell him, but have him hear.

You are a good person and you don't deserve to have excrement thrown at you. However, it will be nearly impossible for any prisoner at Guantanamo to see you as anything other than a representative of a government that has incarcerated him for seven years without access to the due process of law. No matter what else you may be, you are their jailer.

The United States has just come through nearly eight years of incredible lawlessness. You were barely into your teens when Bush was elected, but I wish you had had a chance to get to know this country before the war. Perfect it definitely was not. Yet even I, cynic that I am, couldn't have guessed how much damage could be done to civil rights.

The Senate Armed Services Committee released a bipartisan report this week about how torture, abuse and death became commonplace in the prisons where "enemy combatants" were held.

Do you know that many of those held prisoner in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere were incarcerated on the word of informants who were rewarded with cash? For many there was little evidence to begin with, and torture produced no worthwhile information. At Guantanamo, of the peak population of 775 at Guantanamo Bay, only 250 prisoners were still there as of November 20; more than two-thirds have been released.

When torture began in those prisons, high government officials including former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and former White House counsel Alberto Gonzales used two main strategies to justify it.

First, they changed the definition of torture so that even techniques that could lead to the death of the person being interrogated were not out of bounds.

Second, they announced that the Geneva Convention did not apply to those who were captured in the "war on terror." You probably learned in basic training that the Geneva Convention protocols would protect you if you were ever captured in war. Many of us with family members in the armed forces feared that other countries would change their definition, too.

You will be happy to know-- if you don't already-- that every branch of the armed forces protested that the torture of prisoners violated the law. According to a New York Times editorial commenting on the Senate Armed Services Committee report, Rumsfeld rescinded some of the worst practices at Guantanamo "only after the Navy’s chief lawyer threatened to formally protest the illegal treatment of prisoners." But "by then, at least one prisoner, Mohammed al-Qahtani, had been threatened with military dogs, deprived of sleep for weeks, stripped naked and made to wear a leash and perform dog tricks. This year, a military tribunal at Guantánamo dismissed the charges against Mr. Qahtani."

The bottom line, of course, is that the armed forces must obey the Commander-in-Chief, and you must obey your commanding officers. But how I wish you weren't there, at Guantanamo, in an environment drenched in the moral corruption of torture. Affairs may have improved, but the past cannot be undone. When the a prisoner at Guantanamo looks at you, he sees all seven years of his incarceration, every humiliation he and his fellow prisoners have suffered, every pain, every snarling military dog, every sleepless night. He does not see the nephew with a tender heart that I know and love so well.

Please just keep remembering who you are, and come home soon.

From The Zero, the website of Andrew Vachss

New acupuncture service in Worcester

When my daughter Emily Konstan went back to school for three years to learn acupuncture and Chinese medicinal herbs, I knew she'd be an excellent practitioner but worried that many people who would benefit from acupuncture wouldn't be able to afford it.

Well, she's opened shop in Worcester, MA with a practice based around community acupuncture! Community acupuncture is done in a relaxed group setting and fees are sliding scale, $20 to $40.

The name of her practice is River Valley Acupuncture. Be sure to check out the News and Events section, which discusses the most recent news about acupuncture and Chinese medicine treatments.

Holiday party rescheduled

Well, my sister and I have phone calls to make and emails to send, but I will announce here also: our solstice get together, which was scheduled for tomorrow, Sunday, has been postponed to the Sunday after, December 28. If you live in or near Springfield, MA, and consider yourself a friend, we hope to see you!

The lovely graphic in this post is from Moonrabbit, where there are many nice prints for sale. Check them out!

Baby Dragon

From Nisska's photostream at Flickr.

No smiling

What being homeless means

This is from the Love Wins Always blog. You can read the rest here:

Being Homeless

Being homeless means wearing clothes you did not pick out.

Being homeless means eating what they give you.

Being homeless means having to hear a sermon before you can eat.

Being homeless means being asked for your ID by the police for being in the park.

Being homeless means hiding everything you own so no one will throw them away.

Being homeless means spending most of your day with addicts and the mentally ill, even if you yourself are not.

Being homeless means people are surprised you have an opinion on the presidential election.

Being homeless means walking several miles to eat.

Being homeless means you hope the crazy street preachers show up because it is Saturday and the soup kitchens are closed.

Community of veterans

Just saw the public service announcement that hasn't failed yet to choke me up-- from a new organization, Community of Veterans, an association for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans. Check out their site at Community of Veterans and if you know a veteran, let them know about it.

Army Staff Sgt. receiving the Bronze Star. Photo by Victor Maccharoli, Palo Alto Daily News.

Angry? Homeless? Must be a "behavioral health" issue!

Today Lamont, one of Arise's members, was going to a city-sponsored meeting about what to do about homeless people who are banned from the Worthington St. Shelter; I'll hear what happened tomorrow, I imagine. This is becoming a very serious issue because if men are kicked out, they might be able to fit into the Taylor St. Shelter, if it isn't full and if it isn't a weekend, when Taylor St. is closed. However if women are kicked out, they have absolutely nowhere to go.

The city had framed this meeting as a discussion of homeless people with "behavioral health" problems!!

Perhaps that euphemism is meant to be kind but of course it just obscures the reality of how homeless people act toward the non-homeless and how they are judged by them, with all social context removed. Some people are banned for violence or drug and alcohol use; I suppose one might call this a behavioral health issue. Some are banned for theft, some for back-talking a staffperson, some because they are unfairly accused by another person, some because they are standing up for their rights, some because they are cursing their misfortune.

While I understand that shelters need to be safe for everyone, banning a person from shelter is a potentially life-threatening act. There has to be a better way.

I'm watching A Christmas Carol as I write this, and Marley's ghost has just appeared to Scrooge.

"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!"

The Visa Commercial I'd like to see

By Jim Moss at the Seminal

Amount spent each year in Europe and the United States on pet food: $17 billion

Cost per year to achieve basic health and nutrition for the entire world: $13 billion

Amount spent on perfumes each year: $12 billion

Clean water for all the world: $9 billion

Amount spent on cosmetics in the US: $8 billion

Basic education for the world’s children: $6 billion

Total amount the US spends on Christmas each year: $450 billion (or 16 years worth of food, water, and education for the world)

Initial cost of the US Government bailout of failing financial institutions: $700 billion (or 25 years worth of food, water, and education for the world)

Coming to grips with the alarming disconnects of our consumerist society: Priceless

Where I've been

If there's one thing most bloggers know, it's that when you stop posting-- and I've posted less than half of the days this last month-- people stop reading. So when you start posting again, getting readers back takes time. That may be just as well for the moment.

Patterns do seem to replicate themselves, whether with friends, family, pets, passions, work or writing. When I'm not doing well taking care of myself, I can only cover the basics for everything else. The last few months I've been all over the place and only now feeling like I'm coming back to my center, though much of the landscape has changed.

I'm sure I'm seeming deliberately obscure. This blog is not my journal. My journal is a relationship to myself; my blog is a relationship to others. So I hope to renew that relationship through our mutual presence on this page.

Almost the solstice-- my birthday-- the darkest night and then the day lengthens.

U.S. maintains lead in incarcerating its people

756 of every 100,000 U.S. residents are behind bars, the highest rate of incarceration in the world, according to the latest report by Human Rights Watch, leading to a whole host of questions we need to be asking ourselves:

• Are more people "bad" in this, the "greatest country in the world?" Why?
• Are we criminalizing too much of our behavior?
• Why haven't we developed alternatives to incarceration?

President-elect Obama should lead a national conversation on crime-control policy. It’s time to turn away from the failed policies that have made the United States the world’s leading jailer.

David Fathi, US Program director, Human Rights Watch

Read the rest of the report at Human Rights Watch.

Thanksgiving

Israli youth resist oppression

I don't usually reprint entire emails, but I think it's important for people to know that just like in the U.S., there are many in Israel also protesting the oppression of Palestinians. There's an easy action for you to take, also.

It's hard to believe that people all around the world are learning about my 19-year-old son Yuval. I know that I'm proud of him. I just never expected the world to be proud of him. I can't thank you strongly enough

Send a letter to the Israeli Minister of Defense.

I am Yuval Ophir-Auron. I am one of the Shministim. I need your help.

for your words of support for Yuval and his fellow activists and friends.

As I write this, Yuval's in jail, serving his second term. We don't know how or when this will end.

When Yuval was 9 years old he met Palestinians for the first time while we were visiting them after being liberated from jail as administrative detainees. I think this was probably the first time something in his naïve conception about good and bad was broken and he began to ask questions.

It's hard to be a mother of a kid like this. I want him to be enjoying his teenage years. I want him to benefit from the fruits of my and Yuval's father's labor, and I want him to live in a world where he doesn't have to serve in a military that occupies another people. I am sad that I haven't been able to create that world for him. But I am proud that he's trying to create it for himself.

Here's why it matters that the rest of the world is paying attention to Yuval, Raz, and the other Shministim.

The Israeli government would like nothing better than to believe that everyone in the world supports Israel unconditionally. Hell, even people in Israel don't unconditionally support it.

The sad fact is that the occupation is destroying us all- Israelis and Palestinians alike. Supporting the Shministim is a way to do your part to end the occupation and bring comfort and well-being to our peoples.

I am sending a letter:

Will you do the same? Please sign a letter now. Ask those you know to sign their names. Your support means so much to my son and his friends, to me, to all of us who want and deserve a real future in this part of the world.

Thank you,

Ayelet Ophir-Auron
Neve Shalom-Wahat al Salam, Israel