posted on December 25, 2002 06:55:03 AM new
Several weeks ago, a NYC police officer was suspended for 30 days without pay for refusing orders to arrest a homeless man found sleeping in a parking garage. In gratitude, several homeless organizations gave a Christmas gift of $3,000 to the 37-year old officer and his family of a wife and five children.
posted on December 25, 2002 03:54:35 PM new
I can't imagine anyone arresting a homeless man for sleeping in a parking garage but last month in New York City, 250 homeless were arrested.
Two people arrested by the police said yesterday that officers had apologized before taking them into custody. "The officers said the mayor is making their supervisors arrest the homeless because they are a nuisance," said Robert Washington, 40, who said he was arrested at Pennsylvania Station two weeks ago for sleeping under a train platform.
About one-third of homeless males in the United States, and 23 percent of the total homeless population, have served in the military. The U.S. Department of Veterans’ Affairs (VA) estimates that 275,000 veterans are homeless on any given night, and over 500,000 veterans are homeless during a year
Approximately 56 percent of homeless veterans are African American or Hispanic.
It's snowing and below freezing in Washington today. There will be homeless all over the city - many within walking distance to the white house. The lucky ones have access to a heating grate and a cardboard box.
At night they are locked out of the subway and most chruches but during the day, they can visit the art museum to warm up a little until they are evicted. Every winter, they die of hypothermia.
posted on December 25, 2002 07:52:25 PM new
It's so sad, and it could happen to anyone. A few years ago, they had a segment on 20/20 or one of those shows, where some homeless people had taken over an old delapitated, abandoned building (I think it was NY) and fixed it all up. They had a little community there and they were all as happy as clams. The city found out and kicked them all out because the building was considered unsafe. They all fought it but the city won. The building's still there but boarded up. (??????)
posted on December 25, 2002 08:41:50 PM new
Portland used to have a lot of homeless. That was because the grinches here shut down the state mental hospital and the familes that couldn't afford private mental health care ended up doing "outpatient" care. The zombies and totally mindless ones died off the first winter. Few peole took notice or cared that it happened. Within a few more winters, they werre all dead or moved away. That lowered our homeless numbers as well as the number of mentally ill (out of sight, out of mind).
posted on December 26, 2002 11:40:28 PM new
My parents-in-law are really decent people. Upper-middle class types who worked his butt off to get himself and his large family up to where they are today. They retired to a posh twelve-story retirement community spread out over a square mile above the Willamette River and they are all Republicans to a Man.
Or, at least they were.
Yes, they voted for Bush. They believed in the GOP. Bush was better than Gore to them.
When my wife and I went over there to see them Christmas Day, one of the first things that my father-in-law said to me was, "I keep hearing about how high the polls are with support for Bush, but I've asked around here extensively and not a single one of us supports him anymore. Where are all of these people that the polls are telling us?"
Now, mind you, politics is about the last thing that he ever talks about. But he is so angry, as are they all over there, at the Patriot Act, Homeland Security, and the unbelievable nonsense that Bush has been up to that he had to talk to someone who's been angry enough to speak out about it, namely me.
This is what I've been saying. Real Conservatives, real Old Time Republicans have distanced themselves from Bush and no longer support him or the Republican party. They haven't been since just after the last Presidential election.
I answered him the best that I knew how. I told him that there are a new breed of Republicans - American Nazis and Rich criminals. They own the party anymore and are usually in 25 to 40 age range. They support Bush and everything that he does blindly, apparently. I guess Goose-stepping to Bush's tune is something that they love.
But honestly, a lot of republicans are very concerned - and they aren't stupid either. They know when American was attacked and that wasn't on 9-11, it was 12-2000; that we are at War, but not against foreigners or foreign powers; that it is the current government who is robbing us blind and destroying this country and everything that our Founding Fathers built and strived for. And died for. And for the blood of the Patriots and the Common man who believed in this country rather than steal from it and stab it in the back. Bush is a Traitor to this country and his Treason is being spoken on the lips of many Americans, not just me, but also on REAL Republicans and Conservatives!
I am not sure what will transpire. It won't be long and "subversive talk" won't be allowed - it'll be a crime whereby critics of this government vanish into the middle of the night or they die in a car bomb - sanctioned by the government and implemented by the CIA who now has the authority to kill Americans anywhere they deem that they are "treasonous."
