Compare and Contrast

From The F Word, Contemporary UK Feminism

Coincidence? I think NOT!

What are the chances of reading the words "perfect storm" on the screen at the exact moment the words are spoken on television? Just happened to me. How does one calculate the odds on this?

My favorite and most mind-blowing coincidence, though, came about twenty years ago when my friend Patti and I were making collages in her living room. The television was on in the background.

I had hundreds-- maybe thousands-- of pictures I'd cut out from a variety of sources over many years, including a stack of old Life magazines I'd found in a farmhouse in Maine.

One of the pictures I remembered had come from Life was of actress Joanne Dru in a checkered dress pointing a revolver at someone. I held it up for Patti to see. At that moment, I glanced at the TV and there was Joanne Dru, in the same dress holding the same gun in the same pose as in my photo! The movie was She Wore A Yellow Ribbon, with John Wayne.

That particular scene must have become a stock photo, because when I typed "Joanne Dru" into Google images just now, up popped the very same image.

So here she is, for your perusal.

Lost jobs at Ludlow jail: sorry for the individuals, but...

Sheriff Michael Ashe is not a happy camper right now. Budget cuts to correctional centers across the state have hit home at the Hampden County Correctional Center in Ludlow and the women's jail in Chicopee. Twenty-three newly-hired correctional officers and three counselors will be losing their jobs, and I'm sorry for anyone in that position.

Here's what Sheriff Ashe isn't talking about as he bewails job losses: more than half of the 1,900 inmates in the jails are there pre-trial-- not convicted of anything but unable to pay the excessive bail that a few area judges have been imposing. Every incarcerated inmate COSTS MONEY.

Now, we're not talking about your accused rapists, murderers and armed robbers, here, or even your Bernie Madoffs. We're talking about offenders whose maximum sentence is likely to be two years and under. Many of them will serve their entire "sentence" without ever being sentenced, because they can't afford bail.

Keep in mind that an unknown number of people awaiting trial and serving sentences are actually not guilty of any crime. Earlier this week the New York Times reported on new efforts to exonerate imprisoned people where there is no DNA evidence to go on.

“All these hundreds of DNA exonerations across the country have demonstrated to anyone who’s paying attention that there are far more innocent people in prison than anybody could imagine,” said James McCloskey, the founder of Centurion Ministries, an innocence project based in New Jersey.

Unfortunately, no one is likely to take extraordinary effort to prove the innocence of someone who will "only" lose two years of his or her life.

Both the men's and the women's correctional facilities are very overcrowded. Many educational and recreational programs can't take place because there's simply no room. The sheriff doesn't like this, either. He has a national reputation as an innovator to maintain and recent jail conditions have put a crimp in his plans.

One of my early posts on this blog was about the day the new women's jail opened. My organization, Arise for Social Justice, was operating by the principle, "If you build it, they will come"-- and how true that's proved to be! Especially now, when money is so tight, there has to be a better way to deal with people accused of low-level offenses.

Happy Penguin

Link: YouTube

Unattended children

Take action for homeless families

If you live in Massachusetts, you have a chance to stick up for homeless families. Call your legislator and tell him or her to oppose these proposed regulations (below) that would make it harder for homeless families to get into shelter.

You can get a list of your legislators by town here. You can find your legislators' phone numbers here.

For more information, contact Mass. Coalition for the Homeless, 781-595-7570.

SAVE ACCESS TO EMERGENCY SHELTER FOR HOMELESS FAMILIES
The Patrick Administration has proposed to restrict access to emergency shelter for children and
families experiencing homelessness, beginning on April 1. Please take all steps possible to ensure
that these restrictions do not take effect, including calling the Governor and asking him to withdraw
the proposed restrictions and supporting supplemental funding for family shelter (item 4403-2120).
The proposals to restrict shelter access for homeless children are based on a projected budget deficit
of less than $3.4 million in the family shelter account for the current fiscal year. This deficit is directly
related to the skyrocketing number of families facing homelessness due to the poor national economy.
These families are in desperate need for help, and restricting access to shelter in these precarious
times is not the answer. And these punitive proposals wouldn’t even resolve the deficit, since they
would “save” the state less than $520,000 this fiscal year.
The restrictions on access to shelter are unnecessary to close the projected deficit. The state is
expected to receive from the Federal Economic Recovery bill more than $17 million this fiscal year
and another $23 million next year in emergency TANF funds that are specifically intended to help the
state meet the costs of serving more low-income families in need. These funds can be used to
cover the shelter deficit and avoid harm to homeless children. In addition, the Federal Economic
Recovery package is expected to include additional Emergency Shelter Grant funding that can be
used to prevent homelessness in the longer run. Also, the regional coordinating entities established
through the work of the Commission to End Homelessness -- whose mission is to pilot and study
creative ways to prevent homelessness -- are not yet operating but are scheduled to begin operations
in the next few weeks. We should allow the regional entities to do their work, as their efforts should
render these new restrictions unnecessary.
The eight proposed restrictions on shelter access (see over) include denying eligibility for shelter
and services to children and families who have been evicted or voluntarily left subsidized or
public housing in the past three years. This proposal is particularly unfair and unwise because:
• Emergency shelter was created to protect children who have no control over their parents’
conduct. Denying them shelter will punish kids unfairly. Moreover, many families are evicted
from subsidized housing due to issues beyond their control, such as those related to disability,
domestic violence, limited English proficiency, or conduct by someone who is no longer a part
of the household seeking shelter. In some cases, families are evicted from housing because
they never even got the court papers telling them when their eviction hearing was.
• There are inadequate systems in place to prevent evictions. Few public housing authorities
have eviction mediation systems and most tenants in eviction proceedings do not have legal
counsel to represent them (in 2005, only 6% of tenants but 66% of landlords were
represented). Denying emergency shelter to families evicted from subsidized housing will
reduce the incentive the state has to create better eviction prevention systems, and therefore
will not further the Commission's goal of preventing homelessness.
• Without shelter and housing search services, these families will have no safe places to go and
their children may have to enter state custody, causing greater trauma to the children and
greater expenses for the state over time.
ACT NOW TO PROTECT FAMILIES EXPERIENCING HOMELESSNESS!
For more information, please contact Mass. Law Reform Institute 617-357-0700 (Ruth Bourquin x333,
rbourquin@mlri.org or Deborah Silva x340 dsilva@mlri.org), Mass. Coalition for the Homeless 781-595-7570 (Leslie
Lawrence x16, leslie@mahomeless.org or Kelly Turley x17, kelly@mahomeless.org), Greater Boston Legal Services
(Steve Valero 617-603-1654 svalero@gbls.org), South Coastal County Legal Services (Rick McIntosh 508-775-7020
x114 rmcintosh@sccls.org), Legal Assistance Corporation of Central Mass. (Faye Rachlin 508-752-3718
frachlin@laccm.org), Western Mass. Legal Services (Marion Hohn 413-686-9015 mhohn@wmls.org), Neighborhood
Legal Services (Emily Herzig 781-244-1405 eherzig@nlsma.org), Cambridge and Somerville Legal Services (Ellen
Shachter 617-603-2731 eshachter@gbls.org).
General Description of Proposed Restrictions on Family Shelter Access
(Note: As of February 3, 2009, the Administration has not yet made available to the Legislature
or the public a copy of the actual language of the proposed regulations.)
The Patrick Administration is proposing to:
1. Deny access to shelter to any family who has been evicted or who has voluntarily departed
public or subsidized housing in the past 3 years without good cause. See discussion on page 1.
• No details currently available about what will constitute good cause.
• Existing rules already bar families whose current homelessness is caused by eviction for
criminal activity, destruction of property or nonpayment of rent.
2. Impose a 30-hour per week work requirement on families in shelter and kick them out of
shelter if they cannot comply.
• While details are currently lacking, the requirement reportedly will be imposed even though
there are few jobs and training opportunities in the current economy, without regard to the
age of the youngest child, with no exemptions for families with disability-related barriers
(although DTA has indicated that individualized reasonable modifications will be available).
• In 2004, the Legislature said families in shelter should not be subject to other work
requirements because they need to prioritize housing search obligations.
3. Reduce the period that families who go over the income limit can stay in shelter and try to
find housing from the 6 months set by the Legislature to only 3 months.
• Given the economy and lack of housing subsidies, 3 months is not much time for families
to secure safe, permanent housing; families who run out of time could be forced into
unsustainable housing arrangements.
• The Administration says it believes it can find these families housing within 3 months. If
that is the case, there is no need for the change in the rule.
4. Deny continued access to shelter to families who are absent from a shelter placement for 2
or more consecutive nights or for 1 night on repeated occasions without advance approval.
• No details currently available as to how onerous the requirements for getting approval will
be or whether this will prevent families from temporarily staying with relatives or attending
to crises, even if they have given DTA or their shelter provider advance notice.
5. Deny continued access to shelter for families who reject just one offer of housing.
• No details currently available as to any exceptions that might be allowed or whether the
housing offer must be in a place close to jobs, schools, medical providers, etc.
6. Deny access to shelter to families in which the only child is between the ages of 19 and 21
unless the child is disabled or in high school and expected to graduate by age 19.
• Under this plan, most families with dependents aged 19-21 would be sent to already overburdened
individual shelters, where access is not guaranteed and family members may be
separated from one another.
7. Deny access to shelter to children whose parents have outstanding default or arrest warrants.
• Children would be kept out of shelter even though state statute authorizes denial of
benefits only to the person with the outstanding warrant.
8. Require all families in shelters (but not including motels) to “save” 30% of their income as a
condition of continued eligibility for shelter.

"Poverty is Not a Crime" stops panhandling ordinance

Congratulations! You wouldn't know it by reading the Northampton Gazette article, but skilled and persistent organizing by the new group Poverty is Not a Crime has forced the Northampton, MA City Council to table indefinitely a proposed ordinance which would have restricted panhandling to such a degree as to make it virtually forbidden, and which would have instituted impossible-to-pay fines that could have led to warrants and incarceration.

Thanks also to Bill Newman of the ACLU, who also recently stood up against a Springfield City Council proposal which would have recriminalized possession of less than an ounce of marijuana.

Mayor Claire Higgins said that the community had become so polarized over the ordinance that it was impossible to move ahead. Efforts by the Business Improvement District to improve business conditions had also become inextricably linked to the anti-panhandling ordinance. You can read Fred Contrada's Springfield republican article here.

The new blog The Invisible People has collected some examples of panhandling ordinances, both passed and proposed. Check it out.

Photo from DTE People's photostream at Flickr.

Thank You, M'am

She was a large woman with a large purse that had everything in it but hammer and nails. It had a long strap, and she carried it slung across her shoulder. It was about eleven o'clock at night, and she was walking alone, when a boy ran up behind her and tried to snatch her purse. The strap broke with the single tug the boy gave it from behind. But the boy's weight and the weight of the purse combined caused him to lose his balance so, instead of taking off full blast as he had hoped, the boy fell on his back on the sidewalk, and his legs flew up. the large woman simply turned around and kicked him right square in his blue-jeaned sitter. Then she reached down, picked the boy up by his shirt front, and shook him until his teeth rattled.

After that the woman said, "Pick up my pocketbook, boy, and give it here." She still held him. But she bent down enough to permit him to stoop and pick up her purse. Then she said, "Now ain't you ashamed of yourself?"

Read the rest of this very short Langston Hughes story at American Literature.

The dreaded Nos calls out the cops

Poor Josh..... Seems like being a Puerto Rican young man and walking the streets of Springfield, MA at 2 a.m. is automatically a suspicious act. I wrote about how he and my nephew went on a wild ride with the Springfield police last October. Well, last night he was walking to meet up with my nephew, who was just getting out of work from Taco Bell, when he was stopped by a cruiser. The officer had him lean against the cruiser while he patted Josh down.

"What's in your backpack?" the officer asked.

"Four cans of Nos," Josh answered.

Well, the officer didn't know what that was and called for backup! Three cruisers turned up. They checked his backpack and of course what they found was for cans of the energy drink Nos.

"Sorry," the officer said, "you can go."

So Josh went home.

Must be one of those "quality of life" issues.

Minke whale and dolphins rescued in Wellfleet, Cape Cod

Tuesday: rescue four dolphins.
Wednesday: lead a minke whale back to sea.
Just another day in Wellfleet?

This summer I'm going to have to shake the hand of Wellfleet Harbormaster Michael Flanagan, who gently guided back to sea a minke whale who'd come too close to shore and was in danger of being stranded by the approaching low tide. According to the Boston Globe's Green Blog, Flanagan has quite a bit of experience with strandings, which are all too common in the Cape Cod winter.

On Tuesday, the International Fund for Animal Welfare rounded up thirty volunteers and help capture and rescue four dolphins who were stranded in Duck Creek and Chipman's Cove in Wellfleet Harbor. The animals' body temperature had fallen so low that the rescuers had to warm them up in a trailer before driving them to Herring Cove in Provincetown. All seemed to be well as they swam away.



Photo by Eric Williams, Cape Cod Times. video taken by Cape Cod Times.

Bureaucratic barriers hide the real numbers of poor people

Sunday's New York Times reported on a curious phenomenon: poverty and unemployment are increasing, but somehow the welfare rolls are not going up-- the rate of enrollees from last year to this year is a statistically insignificant 0.3%. A few states had increases, a few had decreases, but it all balanced out.

The number of people receiving food stamps, however, went up in every single state, sometimes dramatically-- Florida's rate went up 16%.

So why the difference?

Since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act passed in 1996, public assistance, although partially funded by the federal government, is administered by each state with a great deal of latitude. The Food Stamp program, however, or SNAP as it is now called, is a straightforward federal program with a simple application form, and it doesn't cost the states a penny.

Therefore states have no reason to hide how many people are on the SNAP program, while much of public assistance, with its poor cousin homelessness, come directly from cash-poor state coffers.

Here in Massachusetts, public assistance administrators have a long history of keeping the family homeless rolls down by by creating regulations that disqualify families from shelter. If a family is not in a homeless shelter, that family can't be counted in the statistics.

This year, the line item that provides shelter for homeless families is facing a $3.36 million deficit. The Executive Office of Health and Human Services has figured out a way to reduce that deficit by $517,375 by instituting eight new regulations.

The advocacy organization Mass. Coalition for the Homeless has analyzed the impact of one of these regulations:

1. Denying eligibility to families who have been evicted or voluntarily left public or subsidized housing without good cause in the past three years. This represents a significant expansion of grounds for denial. Under current regulations, a family can be denied access to shelter if they have been evicted from public or subsidized housing for non-payment of rent, criminal activity, or destruction of property and that eviction is directly connected to the family’s current need for shelter.

Currently, this bar from shelter usually is in effect for no more than 12 months. It is unclear how broadly DTA will define good cause. In one estimate from DTA, this change would affect 20 families per month, although the actual number of children and families left without shelter may be much higher. In describing this change, DTA has said, “Families in this situation have already been granted and lost one of the most generous public benefits due to their own actions…Besides saving scarce EA resources for those who have not had this opportunity, this policy shift will be an incentive to those with subsidies to keep them.”

The Coalition does not believe that households purposely make themselves homeless knowing that they can obtain shelter or that housing authorities will change their behavior and work more closely with tenants to address problems before eviction because the family will be ineligible for this assistance. No child should be condemned to homelessness, and denied a basic safety net, for even a day, let alone three years.

Once again, poor people are in a "damned if we do, damned if we don't" situation.

During the Bush years, when the leaks in our economy had not yet become visible, there was no room for poor people to make a decent living. Now, when even the middle class is suffering, poor people are just supposed to suck it up-- times are tough for everyone, right?

I will be curious to see if the new stimulus plans will reach deeply enough to to offer hope for those at the economic bottom. But based on past history, I'm not holding my breath.

Pavlov's Dogs

From Say No to Crack

Springfield judge on side of common sense; marijuana law goes back to committee

Seems like I'm having an exceptionally busy week but I want to find time to remark on two events in Springfield, MA this Monday.

First, Councilor James Ferrara's attempt to circumvent new state law by making marijuana an arrestable offense-- as well as increasing the fine by $300-- was sent back to committee Monday night after possibly more opposition than expected.

Ferrara said he's heard that Chicopee, a neighboring city, was planning to increase fines for possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, and he didn't want Springfield to become a haven for pot smokers. Yup, that's right, all the area pot smokers, whether they reside in Springfield, Chicopee or not, are going to say, Hmmm...$300 fine in Chicopee, $100 fine in Springfield.....Let's all head to Springfield to smoke a joint. Yes, indeed, Springfield is a haven for pot smokers.....

The ACLU's Bill Newman said increasing the fine would likely clog the court system, as a $100 fine is payable but a $400 fine might go unpaid. Newman was representing a group I'd never heard of, the Liberty Preservation Association of Massachusetts, Inc., which seems to be Libertarian, and about a dozen of whose members also came to the City Council hearing.

A considerably more controversial event came about after Judge Cornelius J. Moriarty II threw out evidence against a suspected drug trafficker, saying that he did not believe the testimony of two of the arresting officers. That's the third time in recent months that a Hampden Superior Court judge has refused to believe evidence presented by officers, and the second time for Moriarty. Unfortunately, in the first case, the man who was set free then went on to kill another man at Springfield's Mardi Gras strip club this past January. I'm sure that case was on Moriarty's mind when he made his ruling on Monday; he knew he'd be wide open to criticism, but still he did what he thought was the right thing. the Springfield Republican reported on police reaction and anger here.

Debate on the local forums has been pretty one-sided, with most people saying the judge was clearly on the side of the criminals, and only a few pointing out that no, the judge was on the side of the law. Moral of the story: if you want to arrest someone and have the charges stick, you've got to do it the right way.

You know that moment in life where something you've always believed is overturned by personal experience? My own very minor experience of an arrest for possession of marijuana became one of those "Aha!" moments.

Forty years ago, when it really did seem like a revolution was around the corner two friends and I were sitting in a parked car in Cambridge, MA and we had just finished smoking a joint. We had about another quarter ounce in the glove box, but otherwise, no marijuana was visible.

Suddenly a police officer knocked on the window of the car, and as we rolled down the window, I imagine he was hit with a strong whiff of an illegal substance. He told us that he was going to arrest all three of us then and there, but that it would go easier on us in court if we just turned over anything we had rather than making him search, and like idiots, we did.

Flash forward to our day in court, where we had a public defender and a little better sense of our rights but were still basically naive-- 3 eighteen year old white kids.

The officer was called to testify, and the ADA asked him the circumstances of our arrests.

"I was walking by the car and could smell marijuana. I looked in the window of the car," he said, "and I could see a bag of marijuana right there on the seat."

Well, we were so astounded at his lie that we let out three very audible gasps. The judge let the case finish up and then found us not guilty, clearly not believing the testimony of the arresting officer. What a relief.

That was the end of my belief that all police officers always tell the truth. I have not replaced it with a belief that all police officers always lie, but through the years I've personally been aware of at least thirty similar situations, not counting those I've learned about through the media.

I have a flare and a fondness for the law which probably started when I was a kid reading about Clarence Darrow's great labor and criminal cases. I do believe unjust laws are made to be broken and I know that sentiment is not limited to my generation. But I respect the intent of the law, which, at its best, is simply a set of rules defined collectively about how we live in a fair and safe society.

My message to the criminal justice system is simple: If you want to enforce the law, do it by following the law.

Kicked to the curb, ignored, homeless man dies while others step around him

OK, so everybody knows about this by now, but I have to comment because by tomorrow, the story will be gone.

A homeless man is struck by two others, hits his head, falls unconscious, and dies shortly afterwards. He lays in the middle of the sidewalk in Columbia Heights, Washington, D.C., for twenty minutes before someone calls an ambulance.

That's what happened to 31-year-old Jose Sanchez last Tuesday. People in the neighborhood said they're used to seeing people passed out drunk in the neighborhood, and put Mr. Sanchez in that category.

Sorry, though-- Mr. Sanchez was in the middle of the sidewalk, NOT where people choose to pass out. People stepped around this guy, for God's sake.

But actually, who cares where he was laying.

I have never passed by someone on the street who was not conscious without at least stopping and making a judgment about his or her well-being. Sometimes I speak to the person. Sometimes I tell a cop, or call an ambulance, and sometimes I pass on-- but never without thought.

I think many people are like me, and I think there are many more who would take some kind of action if they had any idea how to do it. But they don't know the protocol, don't know what's polite or impolite, don't know what to do.

So I ask everyone to take a moment, right now, and think about what you would do if you saw a person unconscious on the sidewalk. A little mental practice will make it easier to act.

Slumdog Millionaire from an Indian perspective

The online grassroots journal HimVani takes a close look at Slumdog Millionaire and finds much that is good, especially that the film brings poverty out in the open in spite of the opposition of the Indian elite. (Sound familiar?) The journal finds one essential flaw, however. Hint; it's the same flaw that U.S. anti-poverty activists found with The Pursuit of Happyness.

HimVani is an online grassroots journalism initiative with a mandate to give voice to concerned citizenry within the state and its diaspora on social and developmental issues concerning Himachal Pradesh. HimVani is a not-for-profit effort having its roots in the passion and love we feel for the state; not a mere thanksgiving but also a gesture to give back something to the state. It was initiated as a Voice of Himachal (VOH) initiative to generate public awareness and responsiveness towards development in the state of Himachal Pradesh, India.

Two dead dogs: the complete story of a SWAT raid gone wrong

Probably most people have heard about the SWAT raid last July of a mayor's home in Berwyn Heights, Maryland that led to the death of two dogs-- but no arrests, and no evidence other than the box of marijuana the SWAT Team brought with them.

April Witt of the Washington Post has a minute by minute account of the botched raid and its devastating impact on the mayor, his wife and his wife's mother. Read it at your peril if you want to keep your blood pressure under control.

The victims in this raid were white and one was an elected official, so their case received considerably more attention-- not than it deserved-- but than those of people of color or those lower on the socio-economic ladder.

SWAT Teams used to be used only in very special circumstances where violence could be expected, but have become more and more commonplace.

Last week, a SWAT Team raided a fraternity at Washington State University because of reports of underage drinking. Yes, you read that right. J.D. Tuccille of the Boston Examiner covers this raid and some other SWAT raids that never should have happened.

Photo from the Washington Post.