Blog, I

Tonight I did an outreach with a national agency on Jacksonville’s streets.  Due to the rain this afternoon we missed the opportunity to catch up with them.

Chances are if we found them, we would have been breakin’ the law.  Giving food to a street person is illegal in Jacksonville.  If we’d given any.  If we’d found any children experiencing homelessness on their own in front of City Hall of all places, rest assured we’d do the right thing.

Do you think the right thing when having safe unperishable food in a sealed container while standing in front of a kid who’s living on the streets is to hold it within his or her site, and not offer it?  Who would be wrong if a police officer was around at the time?

The person not handing a safe sealed container of food to a street kid, or the cop for arresting or citing the person handing the food?

She was in her 50’s or 60’s, sitting with three bags around her feet and one on her left on the wooden bench. Noting her conversing alone, I smiled as I passed her and moved to a leaning position against a lightpole to her right.

It was later in the day than usual for me being downtown to transfer busses. With many city residents opting to vacate their work early to avoid traffic, the amount of congestion put the majority of transit lines behind schedule at least thirty minutes.

I noticed the woman beginning to eat a small snackcake from a wrapper she’d taken from one bag…a white frosted cake, it’s outer layer smeared and melted the majority of the wrapper.

I let her enjoy the moment. Moments of enjoyment can sometimes seperate the other many moments not so enjoyable to the point of a person forgetting their environment even.

Tilting my head, I called to her while leaning forward without stepping to approach her…wanting to maintain eye contact, to understand through facial recognition I was welcome within her space to be nearer when speaking.

She acknowledged me politely, composed and personality shifted, putting her other self away while facing someone calling her “ma’am” in who knows how long. I asked her if she liked cheese ‘Krystals’; a small burger known in the Southeast from the restaraunt of the same name. She lowered her chin to her chest and make a feigning face of disbelief of my question to her.

“I LOVE cheese Krystals!”, and she began smiling after a moment, breaking the mask she wore.

I told her it was cheaper to buy a set, and offered half of what I had gotten ealier at my prior stop’s location. She thanked me and opened her new parcel to begin making sure she hadn’t been had.

Much of what I learned over the next half hour is too long to go into detail here. The most depressing and sorrowful thing to me wasn’t of this woman being homeless…it was her lack of knoweldge of what was available to her to honestly survive.

While she used floor space at different locations, she related eating only during breakfast periods when it was time to leave the places she sought refuge in the night. She didn’t understand why she could only at times have one pancake, but understood the need for children to go ahead of her.

I told her where she could go and eat at night. She was honestly surprised it seemed. From her speech and ability to converse, she was able to stay on task if directed but could have been very well unable to read.

In this instance, who is responsible for someone not receiving what’s available to them? The person who is thankful for what they are able to receive…or parts of the system to fail in delivery of service to their client base?

Yes ladies and gentleman…this is business…or rather, business the way it should be run…not ‘business as usual’.

In closing, many people are aware that the head of the Jacksonville Emergency Services Homeless Coalition (ESHC) resigned last year. This year Jacksonille’s largest shelter will also see it’s CEO retire in October. I don’t envy either of their positions these people are going to be walking in to.

Their being watched by me.

---

You are encouraged and invited to participate in Homeless In Jax. Anyone registering is able to immediately post their perspective and experience in helping make homelessness seen as an opportunity for improvement and celebration in Jacksonville, regardless if you have a home, if not, are a service provider, or simply see things that need to be done.

We want to know what you think and feel. Please, visit and feel free to contribute. If you don’t, don’t expect Homeless In Jax to ever change!

If you could ask a homeless minor living on the streets of America one question, what would it be? I’ll be trying to do just that this Friday.

Whether couching with friends, hoveling in abandoned buildings, or camping out in safe areas away from predators these kids have it the toughest of all Jacksonville’s, and their’s is the least likely of all stories to come to the surface in this city’s media.

It’s just not politically correct. That’s why you’ve got me to read.

Feel free to email me or comment here anything that comes to mind before 11:00pm Thursday night.

The image shown in this entry is the proprietary content of the respective site it’s linked to. It’s placed here as an attempt to offer readers a chance to visit other sites involved with advocacy of people experiencing homelessness.

Decided to try using Joomla instead of Mambo for my site. Set up a virtual domain to test it.

Working on some things to make Homeless In Jax look more presentable.

Please click on the link, and let me know what you think. I’m not sure how it looks to people that aren’t colorblind. If there’s anything you can recommend, feel free to. I’m revamping the layout, graphics, as well as some other things.

Over the last two years, I’ve been blogging here sporadically while trying to develop the Homelessinjax.com site I started in 2004.

Due to being a recipient of services at the time, there were a number of things that I wasn’t able to do, out of fear of retaliation or refusal of services to my family. Some of you who followed faithfully; and there were a number I’d like to thank on that; know what I’m talking about. Others won’t have a clue. Reason to pay attention is all I can say for the future.

Since those days where there were problems I addressed…pretty directly and in raw emotion, much has changed. Those changes didn’t happen overnight, but in taking them to an internet site it was made clear to many parties that change would happen eventually, if for no other reason by reference; or could that be construed as threats; of revealing violations of rights of clients through hidden video or audio files. Maybe at times I flaunted a camera or a tape recorder, but when it comes to being played dirty sometimes you’ve got to be dirtier.

Over the last two years, not one homeless person’s picture or name was revealed or divulged on the site. This goes the same for confidential information provided by staff, managers, and executives of service providers to the homeless whose confidence I gained…or honestly let slip information unknowingly; or maybe sometimes knowingly; when debates and emotions ran high. Many individuals who were known to cause harm, control, demean, and abuse homeless people in their care as employees of service providers are no longer in those same positions.

Unfortunately, with politics in any company being as they are, a number of really caring people got pink slips over technicalities. Some were so exasperated by peers that they chose to seek opportunity elsewhere.

One agency even lost their grant for providing a service to homeless people, that was the specific reason for me having been able to finally come out of the homeless lifestyle. In time, I hope they’re able to secure funding through private contributions to continue their work. I’m proof of what they’re able to do.

That all being said…

On the right is a wish list of mine. Not for me, but for the site. That’s all I can say for now. Anyone wishing to help will be acknowledged, or may remain anonymous. Any business being able to provide like product rather than purchase these items will be given reasonable advert space on all site pages for one year per item.

Over the next two months, I and a minimum of two other formerly homeless people will create a group to determine where Homelessinjax.com goes. In all fairness, my views and issues revolve around parents and their children experiencing homelessness, rather than singles. Over the last year, I, my blog, and the site have been picked up and reported by newspaper, television, and weekly magazine.

If three or more people out of homelessness can work together in their spare time, all from different walks of homelessness, then that’s three times the amount of viewpoints and perspectives from specific lifestyles.

Will it work? No idea. Months ago I was organizing meeting schedules on the Westside of Jacksonville with unsheltered homeless men. Unfortunately, for reasons I can’t go into here, that venue had to be left to someone else to take off and run with. At the time of this writing, it hasn’t happened and I suspect it won’t any time soon.

But, with working with others that have broken the cycle there’s more of a chance of coming to a table with like minded people, all who have an interest in change for others that they weren’t afforded.

Course, talk is cheap. As things go by, I’ll let things slip here how they’re developing…like maybe after Friday night when I have two people over to my house to talk about this very subject.

Remember…if you keep seeing it in your mind…then there’s a chance of it being made real, as opposed to seeing nothing at all, letting chance take it’s course from nothing seen.

Whoa. Philosophical. Time for bed.

Later.

technorati:homeless

Put the sites on lockdown, due to the amount of traffic that was showing up after mention of trying to find out who I am was posted on a site.