Free baby-- 1 1/2 yr old little girl-- any takers? and other tales from Arise

We've started monitoring DHCD at the Liberty St.welfare office in Springfield (and as the word is spreading, we're also hearing from families in Holyoke) and let me tell you-- if I had to put up with what many of these families are dealing with, I'd either be homicidal or suicidal.

We've been trying to help a single dad with eleven year old twins.  They've been living in a pop-up camper in a friend's back yard-- no running water, no electricity.  The first time the father went to DHCD, he was not given an application for shelter; he was told he was keeping his children in unsafe conditions and they were going to call the Dept. of Children and Families  and report him.  Of course he left, furious and terrified.  We told him to go back to DHCD the next day and insist on filling out an application.  I also called DCF in Boston to ask if they thought it was appropriate to be used as a threat against homeless families.  The father now has an appointment for Friday, but DHCD still had to include another threat, telling him he was just a heartbeat away from having a 51A (abuse and neglect) filed on him.

We finally got a mom and her three grandkids into shelter today, on the very day the sheriff was to physically remove them from their apartment. (I wrote about her in "The only thing we can do for you is walk you to the door." She and her grandkids, aged 2, 4 and 12, had gone back and forth between DHCD and the School Department four times, with DHCD insisting on a particular form they said the School Department had, and the School Dept. insisting they had no such form.  Finally, a call to the homeless liaison at the school dept. generated a screenshot of the child's enrollment which DHCD was willing to accept-- temporarily, until the grandmother proves she has legal custody. (Her daughter is incarcerated, and the notarized letter she'd given her mother had been good enough for the family to receive TAFDC benefits.)  When I asked my DHCD contact why the runaround, she said that without such strictness, anybody could walk into the welfare office and claim children as theirs when they really weren't.

"Yeah," I said, "but how often does that actually happen? Sounds like the kind of reasons used for tightening voter eligibility-- voter fraud-- when it scarcely exists."  She didn't disagree and gave me no examples that this kind of welfare fraud really happens..

Yesterday and today we've been hearing about-- and acting on behalf of-- a 26 year old mother and her four year old daughter who were found wandering in the middle of the night by the Holyoke Police.  The police were kind enough to let them stay at the station until morning, when they could drop her off at the Holyoke welfare office, where she was told by a worker,  "There are no shelters anymore."  She found her way to an ally (who shall remain nameless) and from there to the Mass Justice Dept.  They told her to go back to the office and ask for an application for shelter; she did, but DHCD refused to give her one.  So she was going to be sent back to the office once again, but now it was too late in the day and none of the advocates knew how to help her in time for tonight, so they suggested she spend the night in the Holyoke Hospital emergency room, and come back in the morning.  It was at that point that I put out a plea on our Facebook page, asking for mattresses and bedding.

I must say that everyone of these advocacies  has involved intense collaboration with the Mass Law Reform Institute, Mass Coalition for the Homeless and the Mass Justice Project.

Now to the free baby: yesterday was a long day but I was full of energy again after a meeting of our newest, two-month old committee, VOCAL-- Voicing Our Community Awareness Level.  We're dealing with criminal justice issues and the core group is fervent and strong.  However, I was definitely ready to go home when a friend of Arise, we'll call her Dorothy, stopped into the office.

Dorothy is not quite a member of Arise, because she is too busy completing her education in Early Childhood Education to take on the work, but we see her frequently during the school year, when she stops in to visit until it's time for her bus.

Dorothy is one of the sweetest, kindest people I know.  Two months ago, she and her high school aged daughter  opened their home to an elderly man who became homeless after his apartment building was condemned.  It was going to be a temporary arrangement, but he fits in well, and contributes to the rent (which the landlord raised because there was an extra adult living in the apartment), so there's now a tinge of permanency in Dorothy's voice when she talks about him.

"I've got some new people at my house," she said.

"Really?  Who are they?"

"This 26 year old girl and her year and a half old baby-- a girl."

"Where did you find them?"

"I was in the bathroom at the bus station and the girl was in there-- she was crying hard-- and the baby was balanced on the edge of the sink, and I was worried about her, because her mother was crying so hard, and not paying attention, so we got talking, and she had nowhere to go, so I took them home."

"Wow, Dorothy, can I help?-- try to get her into shelter?"

"I don't know," she said.  "The girl may not stay-- she has a boyfriend in Alabama and she texts him all day.  But she might leave the baby behind with me...but I don't know how to take him and still finish school..." Her voice trails off.

"How did that come about?"

"The girl just said to me, 'Please take my baby.  Please.  I just can't take care of her anymore.'  We went down to court last week for me to get temporary custody and we have a court date in September....My school has daycare but she's too young."

"Maybe you can be his foster mother, get some financial help, pay for daycare; they do exist for chilrden that young."

"I took her-- the baby-- to church last week, just to see how she'd be, and she was good, quiet, and she waved at the other people and she waved at me....she's a sweet baby....my daughter says she'd like to have a sister..."

"You've fallen in love with the baby," I said.

"Yes.  I've fallen in love."

She told me more about the girl-- the mother-- which I won't write here, except to say that the girl has a dream that she will marry her boyfriend, and they will get a little house, and everything will be all right, and then she can come back for her baby.  (Want to count the broken hearts in this dream?) What I heard of her story answers at least part of this question: What could possibly make a woman so desperate that she would plead, to a person she scarcely knows, "Please take my baby.  I can't take care of her anymore?"

I haven't been able to get them out of my mind all day.  I left a message on Dorothy's phone tonight.

"Listen, I really want to talk to you about the girl and her baby.  Let me help.  Maybe we can all meet together.  Maybe there's something we can figure out.  Call me."

=================================================================

We had a training today for people willing to put in some time to monitor the DHCD offices.  We have another one scheduled for this Thursday at 5 pm. at our office, and will be scheduling more for next week.  We need more help if we and our communities are not to allow men, women and children to wander the streets.  Please call Arise at 413-734-4948 if you can give even an hour a week.  Thanks.

 Photo of Gari Melchers' Mother and Child from Who Wants to Know's photostream at Flickr.

Cut the military budget FIRST!

 If you don't know about the website Just Foreign Policy, you need to--  if you're sick of the 30 second sound bites that don't really tell you anything about U.S. foreign and military budget, then this is a site that reports objectively on issues progressives care about.  I subscribe to a daily newsletter that starts with a summary and follows with more in-depth reporting if you have time. 


 Here's two tidbits from today's summary.  So it would be better to cut Social Security and Medicaid than the military budget?

 1) Defense Secretary Panetta effectively told Congress to raise taxes and cut Social Security and Medicare before taking another swipe at the Pentagon budget beyond defense cuts already called for in the [first round of] the debt-ceiling deal, the New York Times reports. Panetta took the position that the joint committee created by the debt ceiling legislation should make no further defense cuts. The White House, however, has not ruled out further defense reductions. The committee, to be composed of six Democrats and six Republicans, would also be unlikely to take them off the table, the New York Times notes.

2) Also reporting on Panetta's statement that Congress should cut Social Security and Medicare and raise taxes rather than further cut the military budget, the Washington Post notes that defense spending represents about half of the federal government's discretionary spending, and the military's budget has increased by more than 70 percent since 2001. Although the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost the Pentagon upward of $1 trillion, nearly half of the growth in defense spending in the past decade has been unrelated to the wars.

Photo from Brave New Worlds photostream at Flickr.

Damn civilians! They're undermining the war effort!

No, I'm not talking about the civilians from WikiLeaks, responsible for the 90,000 Afghan War documents the New York Times  published this morning, I'm talking about the 52 women, children and men who dared to get themselves killed on Friday when a NATO rocket smashed into the house where they were cowering, trying to get away from fighting between NATO Forces and Taliban fighters.  Didn't those civilians know they'd make us look bad, might make even more people question what the hell we're accomplishing in Afghanistan?

In mid-year a report issued this month by the Afghanistan Rights Monitor, every day for the last six months, six civilians are killed and eight are wounded, for a total of 1,074 civilians  killed and over 1,500 injured in armed violence from January 1st to June 30th.   We all have six family members and eight friends.   Is it easier to get our minds around the smaller figures?  Since this war began (and these are conservative figures) there have been between : 13,372 - 32,969 direct and indirect deaths (indirect meaning you're not an "impact death," you die later) and 18,000 - 44,000 people injured.  The population of Afghanistan is about 29,000,000, so that's a little more than one person in a thousand killed.  In my city of Springfield, that would be about 150 people killed and 180 injured.  What a crime wave!

Now NATO forces are only responsible for 40% of those casualties-- but I think we can say the war is responsible for all of them, as well as responsible for the nearly 2,000 Coalition deaths and 1,207 U.S. military deaths in Afghanistan since the war began.

I suppose Obama will feel he's got to muddle through at least until his planned withdrawal begins in July, 2011, or he'll sound like a quitter-- although, does this sound like withdrawal to you?

"We didn't say we'd be switching off the lights and closing the door behind us," he said at the White House, a day after naming Gen David Petraeus as his new Afghan commander.
"We said we'd begin a transition phase that would allow the Afghan government to take more and more responsibility."

You can hear the words out of his own mouth at the BBC.

The Anti-War Movement is Dead

Chris hedges at Truthdig has an important article-- not just about the anti-war movement-- but also the privatization of the federal government.  It's not good news, but it's news we've got to know.


As an anti-poverty activist, the following paragraph jumped out at me:

The roots of mass apathy are found in the profound divide between liberals, who are mostly white and well educated, and our disenfranchised working class, whose sons and daughters, because they cannot get decent jobs with benefits, have few options besides the military. Liberals, whose children are more often to be found in elite colleges than the Marine Corps, did not fight the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994 and the dismantling of our manufacturing base. They did nothing when the Democrats gutted welfare two years later and stood by as our banks were turned over to Wall Street speculators. They signed on, by supporting the Clinton and Obama Democrats, for the corporate rape carried out in the name of globalization and endless war, and they ignored the plight of the poor. And for this reason the poor have little interest in the moral protestations of liberals. We have lost all credibility. We are justly hated for our tacit complicity in the corporate assault on workers and their families.

(Congratulations, by the way, to Truthdig for winning the Webby award for best political blog.)

Denial, then acknowledgement: civilian deaths in Afghanistan

Check out this sad but telling article from Common Dreams about the NATO pattern of first denying, then acknowledging, civilian deaths in Afghanistan.

Photo: 1962: National celebration; children get ready to perform.  From United Nations Photo's photostream at Flickr.

Veterans Day: may they all come home (and always HAVE a home)

I saw some of Springfield's Veterans Day parade today as marchers kicked off from State and Federal Streets.

Only a few blocks away, at Worthington St. shelter, I knew that more than a quarter of the homeless men and women "living there" are veterans.

Most are Vietnam Era vets, but the Veterans Administration says there are more than 2,000 vets of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are homeless right now in this country.

War-- especially the kind of wars we're fighting right now-- seem to take the ground out from under the feet of those who serve.  Many never find their footing again.



Maybe next year, with some special outreach to those homeless vets, they can be included in the day's events.

This lovely video is of a returning soldier being greeted by his dog.  The next video is of returning soldiers surprising their kids.  Yes, it's a bit manipulative, but  it helps us civilians remember that it's real people with real families who are sacrificing-- and being sacrificed-- in these unnecessary and unending wars,

Enough! End this stupid war!

This is not quite the post I was going to write for Bloggers Unite's BlogBlast For Peace ~ Dona Nobis Pacem, which is today.  I was going to start by writing about the "Withdrawal from Iraq" widget at the top right corner of my blog and how just about every day I think about removing it because somehow it seems to imply that I am patiently waiting another seven hundred and eighty-seven days for our troops (at least in Iraq) to come home.  I don't feel patient at all.

I returned home tonight to news that an Army major and psychiatrist at Fort Hood had shot and killed 11 soldiers and had wounded 31 others before being shot dead himself. There will be much discussion over the next week about the stress our soldiers are under, how frequently they are deployed and what a difficult time they are having re-adjusting to civilian life.  And then will everything settle down again, a new story for the media and our momentarily heightened consciousness of the insanity of these wars sinking back into our everyday reality?  God, I hope not.

 The great majority of  us in this country want these wars to end-- that's at least part of the reason so many voted for Barack Obama.   So why the hell isn't it happening?  Instead, Obama contemplates sending more men and women-- our children, our parents, our brothers and sisters-- to Afghanistan.

Eight years of war.  More than 5,000 troops killed.  Hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.  And nothing to show for it.  Weren't we supposed to be after the terrorists who attacked us on September 11?  Why wasn't this treated as a criminal matter instead of dragging the nation into war?

I know it's hard to keep the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the forefront of our minds when so many of us are struggling just to make ends meet.  Not long ago General David Grange said that the military is at war but the nation is not.  I beg to differ.  The cost of both wars is approaching $1 trillion and I can only begin to imagine the number of small businesses that could have stayed open and the jobs that could have been saved with that money.

Are we really committed to a war on terror?  If so, there are better ways to do it.  New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff made some interesting calculations last month:  for the cost of a single soldier in Afghanistan for a year, we could build twenty schools.  Educated people are essential for a free society, and if we'd started building schools in Afghanistan eight years ago, we could pretty much guarantee the creation of an extremism-free generation.

So what are we to do?  MoveOn, once a key leader in the anti-war movement, seems to have moved on to health care.  United for Peace and Justice is urging us to take action both before and after Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan, as if such action is inevitable. Only A.N.S.W.E.R. is calling for national days of action and mobilization, on March 19 and 20th.

I'm a community organizer, but right now I just don't know how we can get enough power to enforce our common will on the government of this country.  I do know that on November 13th, at 3 p.m, a march against the war will start at Arise for Social Justice, 467 State St., Springfield ,Masasachusetts, before heading down to the steps of City Hall.  And tomorrow at noon I'm going to stand on the corner of State and Federal Streets and say, Enough of this stupid war.  If you're in town, come join me.  It may not be much, but it's better than remaining silent.

Afghanistan quarantines its only pig

Pity the lonely pig of Kabul. Reuters.

Richard Holbrook talks nonsense to Wolf Blitzer

I listened to Richard Holbrook being interviewed on CNN Thursday and I was so struck by the meaninglessness of his statement that I replayed the segment and transcribed it. Most of his words lack any clear referent to reality; they sound good but are empty of substance. Anyway, you can judge for yourself (if you ignore my few editorial comments).

Wolf Blitzer: President Obama is ordering an additional 17,000 more forces to Afghanistan, a controversial move with no guaranteed results. So is the Obama Administration making the right move?

We’re interviewing Richard Holbrook – former ambassador to Iraq and current special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan.

WB: You’re just back from a critically important mission to Afghanistan and elsewhere in the region. A lot of folks are fearful that this whole troop buildup in Afghanistan right now could turn out to be a waste, given the inherent problems in that country. Can you look in the camera and tell the American people right now that it’s not a waste, that this is going to work?

Richard Holbrook: There’s no question that these troops are necessary. (WHY?) This is a request by Gen McKiernan, the commander in Afghanistan, and General Petraeus that was put to President. Bush last summer. It did not get acted upon and it landed on President. Obama’s desk on Day One. There was no question, and I can tell you this having just been in Afghanistan, that these troops are needed to stop the deteriorating situation. (WHAT SITUATION IS THAT?)

WB: but will it work?

RH: It will turn the tide but I cannot tell you for sure what will happen after that because there are many other variables. (HUH?) This is a war that includes political components, military components, (WHAT ARE THOSE COMPONENTS?) and the president has asked us to give him a full scale strategic review, which we’re doing right now, and we are going to try to revamp strategy in a way that upgrades the civilian and economic and reconstruction components and above all, Wolf, we’ve got to deal with Pakistan. We’ve got to stem the deterioration in the tribal areas.

WB: I want to get to Pakistan in a minute but Russ Feingold, the Democratic senator from Wisconsin, a member of the Intelligence Committee, says that you guys may have it reversed.. “We need to have a strategy in place for Afghanistan that will actually work before we commit thousands more American troops. A military escalation without a strategy to address the complex problems facing Afghanistan and the region could alienate the Afghani people and make it much more difficult to achieve our top national security goal of defeating Al Qaeda.”

WB: So you saying you’re going to come up with a strategy, but the decision to send troops, additional troops, double the current U.S troop presence has already been made.

RH: It’s not a doubling, Wolf, it’s about a 40 or 45 percent increase, the doubling is some kind of misunderstanding. But let me go to my friend Russ Feingold’s point because in an ideal world, Senator Feingold would be correct. You do everything in the core order he suggested, but in the real world, the military, having waited for six or seven months for action on their request, made the case to the pres. That if these troops were not sent immediately, the effect on the situation, our ability to support the government of Afghanistan in their elections, and to help with reconstruction would be severely compromised. (SO IN THE REAL WORLD, STRATEGY COMES SECOND? AND WE HAVE TO SEND THE TROOPS BECAUSE WE HAVE TO SEND THE TROOPS?)

"Afghanistan needs troops--but it needs troops of doctors, troops of teachers, troops of Peace Corps volunteers, and troops of farmers to go and replant the fruit orchards."

--Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of Global Fund for Women
Photo from Reuters/Omar Subhani

Withdrawal from Iraq

Having the widget "Withdrawal from Iraq" on my blog is having an interesting effect on me-- probably exactly the effect it's supposed to have! Every morning I find myself wondering what progress Barack Obama is making to withdraw us. (Afghanistan is another story.) Wouldn't it be nice is there was a place on WhiteHouse.gov that specifically addressed Iraq? I've been thru every posting on the WhiteHouse blog but Iraq isn't mentioned; Iraq is listed as on the President's Agenda but it's a simple statement of intent straight from the campaign trail; I suppose I can go thru every press briefing in the Briefing Room although CNN does a pretty decent job of hitting the highlights.

Found another widget...for a March on the Pentagon on the 6th Anniversary of the war, March 21 sponsored by ANSWER. Went to the United for Peace and Justice website, and they are calling for LOCAL actions on March 19-- anything to avoid working with ANSWER. MoveOn.org barely makes a mention of Iraq on its front page, although on another page withdrawal from Iraq is listed as Number 4 of four priorities as voted on by its members. (And if members had voted on the exploration of Mars, would MoveOn be promoting it?) The International Action Center is calling for an April March on Wall St. called Bail Out the People, Not the Banks.

Unity between factions in the anti-war movement has been achieved only sporadically in the last six years.

Don't forget Iraq and Afghanistan

As word comes this morning that seven U.S. soldiers have been killed in a helicopter crash in Iraq, time to check in on the loss of life so far in our war on enduring freedom.

4,106 U.S. military personnel have been killed in Iraq; 597 have been killed in Afghanistan. Bush and McCain call this "winning," a term that makes sense only out of context: don't forget that all of our reasons for starting a war in Iraq have been totally discredited: no link to 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction, and no hotbed of Al Qaeda activity (at least until after we invaded.)

Even if some of us think that the war in Afghanistan was justified (funny how Pakistan has gotten off so easily), how much more successful would our policy there be if we had spent more on building hospitals, schools, roads and communications than we have on armed action.

While some but not all of our economic crisis can be blamed on these wars, at the least they've diverted attention from taking care of business at home. When will it be over?

Yet another plan the U.S. won't sign- this one to reduce hunger

Fifty years of industrialized farming has not prevented 850 million people from going to bed hungry each night.

The International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development has been working for the last five years to find a better approach to world food production, One would think that a plan developed by 400 scientists, 60 nations, private industry and consumer and activists groups would catch the attention of the U.S. Government, and so it did. The U.S., Canada and Australia rejected the report, among other reasons, because it cautions against expecting genetically modified crops to be a part of the solution, questioning production and safety issues. All three countries are big promoters of GM food, whereas the crops are are banned in Europe.

Other recommendations include:

• Land management practices to limit the effect of global warming
• Limiting the presence of pesticide resideues, heavy metals, hormones, additives antibiotics in the food system
• Sustainable use of resources like water, soil, biodiversity and fossil fuels
• More food production on the local level
• Low impact practices such as organic agriculture
• Shifting biofuels to non-food crops

A very good summary of recommendations can be found at GreenFacts.

I was tipped to this story by the London paper the Daily Mail. Interestingly, I could not find a single reference to the study in any U.S. publication except for Grist. an online environmental magazine.

Although this particular report has gone unheard in this country, aother news about the world hunger crisis is finally making its way into the media and people's consciousness. However, with more bad news everyday, the only thing that may prevent the same kind of public numbness Iraq is receiving is the pale shadow of our own deprivation-- food is still plentiful, just more expensive.

The U.N.'s World Food Program is warning that North Korea's chronic food shortages have been excacerbated by flooding and a disaster may be in the works. The Philippines has put a moratorium on the conversion of farmland to any use but food in an attempt to increase rice production. Wheat prices have gone up 60% in Afghanistan in the last year. And six years of drought in Australia, possibly the result of global warming, have reduced the country's rice crop by 98%.