Monday, August 28, 2017

What to do about the homeless

August 28, 2017

Riddle

The Promise of America is prosperity for everyone who is willing to work for it, that with a strong work ethic and responsible citizenship, a person can live a secure, fun, comfortable life. An implied promise is that a prosperous economy can afford to take care of its less fortunate. Thus the incantation, “So let us all pitch in, work hard, participate, and prosper together!” If you are sick, a divorce divides your property, you are a veteran with PTSD, you suffered persistent childhood trauma, you suffer from schizophrenia, someone hit you with a bat and left you with permanent brain damage, the prosperous economy can afford to keep you in that minimum of safety, dignity and comfort which might command your loyalty and love of the community in which you live. It is to this that the Pledge of Allegiance bonds us.

So here we are. We have that prosperity. Burlington’s economy is hot. Everywhere we shop there is a need for cashiers, wait staff, and salespersons, and we hear of companies which have hired someone who cannot find a place to live because the rents are so high. And the unemployment rate is below 2.5%.
But something is wrong. Whose life feels secure? Who feels happy that their business is safe from the broken and destitute members of the community? Who can afford another dollar of taxes and who can really afford to raise the family they have or dream of? Who among us celebrates that there are members of the community whose lives have fallen to such disrepair that they live on the streets and salve their pain with alcohol and narcotics? Who among us wishes for a life so at risk, that they feel a need to carry and use weapons? What happened to the promise that a prosperous economy would work for people throughout the economic spectrum? 

Here is my riddle: How is it Burlington is so prosperous, yet people feel so uncertain? Who in fact benefits from this prosperity? At what point and in what manner is this prosperity harvested to meet the needs of those who are not at its apex?

Mckinney-Vento

In 1987 McKinney-Vento was passed with a mandate to house the homeless. The fact that homelessness was seen as a problem is a great step forward toward a just economy and society. Today, the goal is to end homelessness. Imagine this vision in its totality: All people would be housed. Through whatever means are required, everyone will be inducted into possession of a secure dwelling. Has America ever seen a day when there were not unlucky, sick, broken, men, women and children treading the streets and back-woods in search of a secure place to dwell? What an audacious vision! The end of homelessness! Imagine! An America that is one community, in which everyone is welcome. Astounding and historic in its potential.

But let us remember what that means: The broken and sick, the formerly criminal, the unlucky and those who are victims of domestic violence, need help. They must be assisted, and some of these members of the community must be supported for the remainder of their lives, because damage to their psyches or bodies is so severe. It is the promise of assistance and support, the promise of the dignity of membership in the community, indeed, the promise of love, which gives us, the mentally ill, the sick, the unlucky, the alienated, the once incarcerated, reason to love our community, and seek its tranquility. It is the promise of assistance, safety and dignity, in ways that are sustainable for everyone, that generates healing, that calms the social soul, that induces the communal tranquility which our constitution promises, and is our shared aspiration.

In a narrow conception, the end of homelessness is seen cynically as a simple bribe: “We (the responsible citizens) will give you (the destitute and dangerous) housing, and in exchange, you will stop committing crime, you will stop threatening us and our comfortable lives.” But in fact, being welcomed into housing, housing which is safe, secure, sustainable and imparts membership in the community, undermines this cynical interpretation.  When we make the effort to initiate our destitute into community, we remove the causes of alienation, anger, and hate. So it is not merely a bribe. Housing is a treatment for divided community.

Mandate of the CJC

In fact, the city of Burlington already embraces the principles of One Community. In its contract with Vermont’s Department of Corrections, the City agreed, through its Community Justice Center

To develop community capacities for addressing crime, conflict and dispute resolution [and] strive to enhance community safety, improve quality of life and increase citizen participation in the criminal justice process. 


Based on principles of restorative justice. In fact, the homeless many times occupy the position of victim, and we can reasonably include the homeless, and the impoverished, as citizens whose participation is to be lauded. Thus since

      The Grantee will champion and incorporate the following restorative justice principles:
      •    Place those who are harmed affected at the center of the resolution process
      •    Seek to understand the harm done
      •    Work to repair the damage
      •    Re-build relationships, to the degree possible, with all people involved
      •    Recognize the solution as a community responsibility
      •    Give choice and opportunity to speak and be heard, especially for victims
      •    Recognize that stakeholder participation is voluntary
      •    Use collaborative methodologies to resolve conflict and crime
 

The city has already agreed to principles whose purpose is to build community, invite healing, and emphasizes the responsibility of the community to implement these principles. And again, most homeless members of the community can be placed on the victim side of this equation, not automatically as victims of a crime, but as victims of the human condition. In a list of methodologies, the contract includes:
 

citizen panels, group conferencing, family group decision making, circle processes, mediated dialogues, Circles of Support and Accountability (COSA), mentoring, etc.
 

Which all emphasize the compassionate response to injuries to persons and the one community, and again, can be applied to healing the lives of the homeless.  Given that most homeless people are not criminals or former criminals, these principles may seem not, at first, to apply to the homeless. But the homeless are stigmatized, and the recent crimes in the downtown contribute to the impression in the larger community that the homeless community is a group of dangerous people, the proper response to whom is more control. In fact, this is an uneducated conclusion. Homeless people are largely people who would like to participate in the life of the community by having a safe home and a secure job. These principles of compassion and restoration can be extended to everyone who is homeless, understanding the homeless person as the victim who is in need of restoration to secure, dignified housing. Whether a homeless person has committed a crime or not, the goal is and remains restoration to full, dignified membership in the community.


Vermont, Freedom and Unity

From its founding as a republic in 1788, the people of Vermont have held to a unique and paradoxical vision: we would respect each other’s freedom, while responding to each other in need. As a result, the people of Vermont demand from their government uniquely compassionate policies. As an advocate working inside the system, I have seen this compassion in operation, and observing the policy making in Montpelier from a distance, I feel proud that the legislature decided to fund services for the homeless. We, the people of and the State of Vermont, have largely chosen the path of taking care of each other and of building one community. This is in marked contrast to most of the rest of America, where the poor are not helped, homelessness is criminalized, and an aspiration to living in one community is absent. I ask you to stay focused on the principles which have made us a compassionate people who strive for justice.


The Proper Response of a Compassionate People

There is no good response to the recent crimes and violence. We live in America where we do not put enough  resources into the social safety net, and inevitably there are people who are angry, alienated, and have not learned how to live with the tensions of conflict and betrayal without recourse to violence. But violent assault is already a crime. The perpetrators of these crimes get arrested and will be subject to our justice system. Our best response, as a community,  is not to apply more police power, in an attempt to disperse the perpetrators, an effort which cannot succeed, but to double up our commitment to social healing.
As a response, social healing is slow answer. But it is the only response that holds the promise of maintaining freedom next to unity in the structure of our community. Is the only response which holds the promise of healing, and building one community, in which everyone can live with dignity, with as much freedom as the community can afford, for everyone.







Wednesday, August 16, 2017

One Community, One Home.


August 16, 2017

Property and its holding has been the source of human conflict and misery from the first moment anyone was jealous of another for the food they were eating. Yes, the desire to possess land is intrinsic in the order of nature, and in our instincts

But to say that our drive to take land, and the taking of land, is fate, is necessary, implies we have no choices, no power to alter our values, and no power to alter our behavior. To say we must follow the pattern laid out for us by nature is to say we have no free will. To say that the holder of wealth has a right to use it to control the resources that another people needs - the definition of fascism - is mere self aggrandizement. Convenient for you if the ability to grab land from others is within your reach. To say that competition for land is the only way to allocate that essential resource is to say that humanity is a simple species with no imagination, with no alternative social instincts, and no desire for a better outcome

So you may be accustomed to driving at seventy miles per hour on the interstate, with a powerful engine at your command, and enjoy all the benefits of getting quickly, in comfort, to where ever you are going, but if you are heading for a cliff, you may prefer to change your behavior. And if you find there are no more roads and there is no more fuel, you will need to abandon the luxury of this form of transportation.

So the drive to accumulate property and wealth is not unnatural. It is not automatically wrong. But as we experience the world as full, as we contemplate the ecological destruction of the Earth, as we ponder the fates of our families, communities, humanity, and our planet, we have to ask whether there is a better way. In human history, despite the ravages and misery wrought by our wars, the Earth and its ecosystems have persisted. Ozone has protected us, Oxygen has been generated, fish have filled the oceans and forests have regrown when we allowed them to. The Earth's ecosystems are not identical to what they were before humanity, but never before have human depredations threatened to extinguish civilization and most of the life we know. In an existential crisis, existential values come into question. And the root existential question is whether we will compete or share

I am a student of history, of ecology, of anthropology, among other subjects. The time scale for these subjects is hundreds and thousands of generations in depth. We see patterns at these scales that we do not see in our ordinary lives. One of the most profound, to me, is that humanity evolves, innovating new strategies for survival to accommodate changing conditions. Already, we have invented agriculture, the concept of evil, plumbing, and writing and reading. We have invented health care, and made large families unnecessary. Already, people who raid, rape and pillage are marginalized in the international system, being accused of “war crimes”. Already we have established an international system of sovereignty which upholds the principle that nations are not allowed to invade each other and take each other's land. No, it doesn't work well enough, and the raiders now use money and corruption to do their dirty work, but humanity, and civilization, have come a long way. And we can do this. We can change the root values of the global human experiment.

We now enter that phase of human history in which we choose between a world in a perpetual state of war and destruction, and a world at peace, in healing. If you want to change the world, if you want to live your life on a healthy planet, if you want to have children who grow up in healthy communities, and have children of their own, consider this your charge: Value all children, not just your own, value every life, not just those you consort with, value the ecosystems of the Earth that sustain us, not just the neighborhood you live in, value solutions which benefit the global community, even when it costs you more. Value sharing. Value cooperation. Value doing things together. Ultimately, we must make property available to all for personal well-being, and available to none as an investment.

Don't be a martyr. There are cheats and selfish people who will take advantage. But keep your eyes open for opportunities to change how we think, and explain ourselves to each other, and look for ways to make all lives better. Look for opportunities for healing.

Sunday, August 13, 2017

Central Formulation

August 13, 2017


Humanity faces crises brought on by a full Earth and by its failure to view humanity and the Earth as one community. Too many people believe that the solutions to their problems require hoarding of resources and too many others lack any, and feel ignored and unvalued. Hoarding is ultimately going to fail as a personal strategy (thus it is a waste of effort!), and by definition is not a community strategy, and so will help to destroy the Earth.
The most visible incarnation of this hoarding is the continuing process of the wealthy getting more wealthy while the poor get poorer and the middle class gets hollowed out. The law is written to support the preservation of wealth, for those who have it, even when it means driving the unlucky poor further into debt. The economy is organized to foster the upward migration of wealth, to those who are already wealthy, while limiting the obligation of the most wealthy to share their wealth with those who have none. It is a self-ratcheting process of wealth begetting wealth, through the power the wealthy have to demand laws which protect them, while the poor have little such power, and the community barely arouses itself to protect them from the effects of their systemic vulnerability. The benefits of this system go to only 20% of the population. As the wealthy get wealthier, there is less and less revenue to the government to support the inadequate patchwork of social safety systems, because the middle class pays taxes, and middle class is over stretched, balking at more taxes, and simply shrinking.
The failure to act in the common good and put our community wealth to work to build healthy communities and a healthy planet, results in the entropic default, ecosystem collapse. Another obvious incarnation of the permission we give to hoarding wealth is our continued devotion to the principle that individuals have a right to get ever more wealthy without limit. As if the communities in which they live, the nations which claim their allegiance, and the planet which is their only home, can sustain their demands for resources, without limit. As if the planet were limitless. As if every one of seven billion people could prosper while some “statistically insignificant” number of individuals holds more wealth than, essentially, the other seven billion people. Unlike the past, when chiefs, kings and emperors engaged in diplomacy, politics, war and betrayal, to gather wealth and power, and the Earth could absorb the blood of human beings killed in service to their ambitions; Unlike the past when wealth builders could exploit workers and their families without risk to themselves; Unlike the past when the Earth could scoff at the ecosystem and habitat destruction of the wealth seekers because these depredations were always local and it, the Earth, was so large; Unlike the past when the dangers of natural human ambitions for status, wealth, power and fertility, for all of the miseries they caused, would not threaten the life of our planet – today they do. Today we couch the violence of the past in the invisible systemic violence of a body of law that protects private property hoarding, over the value of the people and the community. Preservation of life on Earth, in any form familiar to us, or that includes us, is at risk, while we continue to devote ourselves to the principle that the needs and wants of the individual take higher priority than the health and well being of the communities they belong to and Earth on which they live. Only those most wealthy individuals actually have a vested interest in protecting this system.
While individual rights are held in higher esteem than the obligations of individuals to the community of humanity, while ecosystem degradation proceeds unchecked, while the injustice of the wealth of each community being siphoned off by a few, persists, we are on the path toward global economic and climate chaos that makes the ravaging of the Earth inevitable. Yes, I am connecting wealth hoarding with global ecosystem collapse. The resources exist for us to address the needs of humanity and the planet, but we give permission to some few to hoard those resources, while we fail to hold them accountable, and we fail to change our expectations. Chaos follows from hoarding, and in Community, the eternal strategy of sharing makes it possible for us to act on behalf of the life on Earth. Human communities have always thrived by learning to share. This is our ultimate test.
Indeed, wealth is really only an act of faith, the faith that there is a system that will honor that claim to wealth. If the system collapses, all that will remain will be natural, wild human communities. And then power will be back in the hands of the war-lords and armies. And our dystopic fantasies allowed to flourish.