A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
For three decades, I have relied on Social Security benefits to put a roof over my head, to put food in my belly, and to provide much needed medical care. I have valid, documented reasons that I am entitled to these benefits. However, for over a year, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Social Security Administration sent me harassing communications, threatening to cut me off should I fail to comply with their demands.
I Had a Dream
To make it come true,
When I wake up,
To feel good
It was a matter of time
When I made her be mine
To live and give all her love to me,
To make me happy for the day
To stop and say
That I wanted to lover her in my dream
But now I’m here
To have you near
So you could hear me
To say to you
That I really love you,
Imagine not knowing that you’ve been freed from slavery because nobody told you. That’s how the Juneteenth holiday got started.
Juneteenth is celebrated in the African American community on June 19 every year. It began as a commemoration of the emancipation of slaves in Texas. It was first recognized in Galveston, Texas, two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Even after Texan slaveholders knew of the proclamation,
Juneteenth—also known as Jubilee Day, Freedom Day, Black Independence Day, Emancipation Day and Juneteenth National Independence Day—is the annual commemoration on June 19 of the emancipation of enslaved African Americans in the United States. President Biden first officially recognized the federal holiday in 2021, but Juneteenth has been celebrated since 1865. So why did it take so long to acknowledge the freedom of all African Americans in this country nationally? Let’s look at its 150-year history and illuminate its importance today.
It’s poetic…
In Texas, we’re trapped in pits with small widdows.
Inside these cells, we’re funding our own imprisonment;
the chains are encrypted inside the chips and soup sales.
We’re inside of an identity crisis believing our souls out of favors,
So we accept the chains;
believing a greater change will come save us…
Can you dig that?!?!
I guess that Willie Lynch Syndrome dies hard in some places.
Coalition on Homelessness Statement on Officer-involved Double Fatality on May 19, 2022
Rising rents and a lack of stable, affordable housing have pushed many people into homelessness in San Francisco, like they have in cities up and down the West Coast. Living without stable housing is difficult and traumatizing, and it has long-term health consequences for those forced to endure it. With no door to lock and no safe place to rest, unhoused people live without the fundamental stability and safety a home provides.
On a lazy Sunday on Solano Avenue in Berkeley as I am strolling into my favorite coffee shop, I meet a woman who goes by the nickname Star. Star is a woman in her fifties of Latin-American descent who tells me she moved to the Bay Area from New York City over 20 years ago. In the beginning she is reluctant to talk to me and tells me I can write an article about her,
(In memory of Luis Temaj Tomas)
I
On Tuesday, October 12, 2021
TV news announced
That a homeless man
Had died from his burns
He had been sleeping
In his sleeping bag
The previous Friday
When someone set his
Sleeping bag on fire
At 25th street and South Van Ness
In the Mission neighborhood
In San Francisco’s Latinx neighborhood
He was Latinx.
A federal district court has issued a ruling that blocks the City of Fresno from enforcing an ordinance that puts unconstitutional restrictions on reporters, advocates, and other members of the public documenting how city workers treat unhoused people during encampment sweeps.
“The court recognized that this law was unconstitutional from the start because it is vague, over broad, and threatens to sweep in significant free expression protected by the Constitution,” said Hannah Kieschnick,
Supervisor Rafael Mandelman’s shelter legislation is going to the full Board of Supervisors after the Public Safety and Neighborhood Services Committee approved it on a 3-0 vote on May 26.
After several amendments through two committee meetings in May, one thing is for sure: Mandelman’s “Place for All Ordinance” is now a different animal from the legislation he introduced two months before with its primary focus on shelter softened as it moves to the full board on June 7.
