Tuesday, 17 October 2017

Well, my thoughts are heavy right now... about homelessness issues after watching a local town hall about the topic.  It is how government works... public meetings.  I don't see that much gets done.  It is why I always hoped to do something on my own... which is what WT is all about.

I also am thinking about my sons and prison reforms...

I made two comments to the program.  One when it was live, one when I was viewing parts of it to check some information.  It is hard to know if any effort has any meaning when you are dealing with the government, and maybe the media.  The social media question they presented was about a program someone wanted to get done here... a place for homeless people to stay all day that was far from the downtown core, transportation, services they need to access, and other common problems in the war between city tourism and real community problems that don't look nice.

Now that I have my old computer going again, maybe I can find the letter/s I sent to city hall about these issues... and suggestions for ways to help more people.  The question of whether homelessness was a solvable problem came up... rhetoric won the day.  It isn't a solvable problem, there will always be poor people to deal with... they just change.  We need to create permanent options that really help people, stabilize them, show them ways to solve their own problems, or simply take care of people who cannot care for themselves in a protective environment.

The tax issues came up again... payers versus people in need... federal money needed for state and county programs (it is all the same taxes, paid by citizens)... and how will that money be spent.  Government, non-homeless people don't see the problems in the same way as the homeless do.  Their solutions are generally about hiding the problem as best they can, regulating the activities of those who mar the image they want to portray to the world, and often believing that homeless people really don't have solutions or they wouldn't be homeless... right?

I don't really have the opportunity to get involved in town halls... so this was interesting for me to watch live online.  Only one hour, at the local downtown college.  I saw people I hadn't heard of before, one a dean at one of the schools at the university.  The media panel was new to me, but nice to see a few faces. The official panel had four, the media panel three, the audience limited to 400, I think.  It was moderated by a local media group, by one of their top news anchors.  I don't know that I would travel that far for one hour of public conversation.  It was good to be able to access it online, and I am glad my tablets allowed me to connect to it without problems.

The other thing I noticed was that the audience speakers were mostly from local activist groups.  I see that it would be important to attend and speak, for them.  Tomorrow I will look up some of the organizations mentioned, especially the panel people.  I have discovered that bias is hard to see when you don't know who is talking. 

Well, we will have to see what happens...

Since coming back to Portland, I noted that one news report sounded like it was an unnecessary death due to homelessness... it was of a Jamaican man who was a recent resident, trying to settle here, probably looking for work, and housing... he parked his car by the river somewhere, for the night, to sleep.  Where he parked killed him.  It flooded somehow and he didn't survive.  I thought, he just didn't know where to park safely.  It is so hard to be homeless in a big city, any big city, and new places are even worse... it is scary to try to sleep when you have to be on the streets, never knowing who might try to hurt you.

These are the things that bother me... 

In Christ,
Deborah Martin

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May GOD help us to find better ways to care for each other.  Amen.