Click here to see more photos of donated paintings.
Send your bid to: wch@vcn.com or come by 907 Logan Avenue.
For questions, or to donate call 307-634-8499 or come by 907 Logan Avenue. Click here for more information.
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Homeless Memorial Day 2005
The 16th annual Homeless Memorial Day will be held on December 21, 2005, at 12:00
Noon, in front of the State Capital building. Speakers will include Richard McCullough,
Outreach/Case Worker with CrossRoads Homeless Health Care Clinic, Steve Rodriguez, Director,
Cheyenne InterFaith Hospitality Network, Rev. Bill Jividan, Beacon Hill Baptist Church,
Herman Thunder Hawk, music will be provided by the Rev. and Mrs. Jim Ryals.
For more information contact
Virginia at 634-8499.
Pictures from the 2004 Homeless Memorial Day
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Russian Teachers Visit WCH
Ten teachers from Russian, touring the area through the Open World Program, visited WCH on Friday October 21, 2005. They toured the building at 907 Logan Avenue, visited with clients, and asked questions about homelessness in the U.S. They visited a variety of agencies, including Stride Learning Center, Peak Wellness Center, Alta Vista School, United Medical Center, Laramie County Health Department, CASA and Youth Alternatives. The group was hosted by Friendship Force of Cheyenne.
See pictures of the group below.
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Homeless and Hunger Awareness Event in Longmont, CO, November 17th
According to the 2005 Homeless Point-In-Time Sturdy, there are nearly 700 people who are homeless in the city of Longmont, three times what it was just five years ago. And, the school district has identified more than 700 students who are without a home. How can the community and churches address this growing problem?
The Longmont Housing Opportunities Team, wanting to bring the ever increasing problem of homelessness to the attention of the community, invited Mike Yankoski to speak. Mike is from Parker, Colorado. In 2004, when he was a college student, Mike and his friend Sam Purvis became homeless by choice, living on the streets of some of the toughest cities of the United States, sleeping under bridges, eating from trash cans, and begging to survive. They chose to do this not only to better understand the plight of the American homeless, but more specifically, to observe how communities of faith were interacting with this marginalized corner of American society. Mike wrote about his experiences in the book “Under the Overpass.”
The event will take place on Thursday, November 17, from 6:30-8:30 p.m. at Life Bridge Church, 10345 Ute Highway. Mike will to talk about how the experience challenged his views concerning homelessness. What he has to say may change others views as well.
This event is sponsored by the Longmont Housing Opportunities Team, a group consisting of various individuals from different organizations, formed to address the issue of homelessness in the Longmont area. This is a free event, but participants are encouraged to bring a can of food, socks, or winter gloves, for distribution to homeless individuals.
Please phone Edwina Salazar Waldrip for more information at 303-772-5529.
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Changing New Orleans
by Jordan Flaherty
November 4, 2005
Its bittersweet being back in New Orleans. Although the architecture is the same, and its a relief to walk the streets and reunite with old friends, already this is a very different city from the one I love. Its a city where some areas are quickly rebuilding and other parts are being left far behind. A city where people who have lived here for generations are now unwelcome in a hundred different ways.
White New Orleans is steadily coming back, and Black New Orleans is moving out. A grassroots organizer with New Orleans Network tells me she has been speaking to people in every moving truck she sees. She reports that in every case, “they’re Black, they are renters, they’re moving out of New Orleans, and they say they would stay, if they had a choice.”
Inequality continues through the cleanup of New Orleans. Some areas have electricity, gas, and clean streets, and some areas are untouched. Medical volunteer Catherine Jones reports that driving the streets of New Orleans at night, “ I felt like I was in the middle of a checkerboard. The Quarter lit up like Disneyworld; poor black neighborhoods a few blocks over so dark I couldn't even see the street in front of me.”
The Washington Post reports that although both the overwhelmingly White Lakeview neighborhood and Black Ninth Ward neighborhood were devastated by flooding, “It now appears that long-standing neighborhood differences in income and opportunity...are shaping the stalled repopulation of this mostly empty city.”
While Lower Ninth Ward residents are still being kept from returning to their homes, “Lakeview, where 66 percent of children go to private school and 49 percent of residents have a college degree, was pumped dry within three weeks of the storm. Memphis Street (in Lakeview) smells now of bleach, which kills mold, and resounds to the thwack of crowbars and the whine of chain saws. Insurance adjusters have begun making rounds.”
A similar story is unfolding in South Florida, where the Miami Workers Center reports, “Close to 24 hours after Wilma struck, power returned to Miami's affluent and tourist districts such as South Beach, Downtown and the Brickell Financial District. In the past week, power has returned to most suburban communities. But power has been slowest returning to black, latino, and immigrant poor urban neighborhoods. Many of the 400,000 still in the dark have been told not to expect power until as late as November 22nd.”
Miami Workers center volunteer Terry Marshall reports, “this experience is showing...that it’s not a question of where the hurricane hits. It’s a question of where the resources are missed.”
New Orleans was, as more than one former resident has said, the African city in North America. It is a city steeped in a culture that is specifically African American - from Jazz to blues to bounce. It is the number one African American tourist destination in the US. The Bayou Classic and Essence Festival, two vital Black community events, bring tens of thousands of Black tourists to the city every year. Walking around town, its hard to imagine these tourists coming back to the new New Orleans - a city was once 70% Black and now feels unwelcome and hostile - or at least uncaring - to its own past.
Last Wednesday alone, 335 evictions were filed in New Orleans courts - the amount normally filed in a month. There have been countless reports of landlords throwing tenant’s property out on the street without any notice. New Orleans human rights lawyer Bill Quigley reports that “Fully armed National Guard troops refuse to allow over ten thousand people to even physically visit their property in the Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood. Despite the fact that people cannot come back, tens of thousands of people face eviction from their homes. A local judge told me that their court expects to process a thousand evictions a day for weeks. Renters still in shelters or temporary homes across the country will never see the court notice taped to the door of their home. Because they will not show up for the eviction hearing that they do not know about, their possessions will be tossed out in the street. In the street their possessions will sit alongside an estimated 3 million truck loads of downed trees, piles of mud, fiberglass insulation, crushed sheetrock, abandoned cars, spoiled mattresses, wet rugs, and horrifyingly smelly refrigerators full of food from August.”
A recent poll from Gallup reports that, even adjusting for differences in income, White and Black New Orleanians have had deeply different experiences of this disaster. Blacks were more likely to fear for their lives (63% vs. 39%), to have been separated from family members for at least a day (55% vs. 45%), gone without food for at least a day (53% vs. 24%) and spent at least one night in an emergency shelter (34% vs. 13%).
The New York Times and other papers have reprinted former FEMA director Michael Brown’s emails from the time when our city was being flooded - stunning evidence of how little the agency cared about what was happening in New Orleans. “If you'll look at my lovely FEMA attire you'll really vomit. I am a fashion god,” reads a typical email from the day after the hurricane hit. Other emails showed Brown and his staffers to be more concerned with his dinner reservations in Baton Rouge and a dog sitter for his house than with anything happening in New Orleans.
The demographics of New Orleans have changed in gender as well as race. The thousands of contractors and laborers that have arrived from across the country - in addition to National Guard, police agencies, security guards, and other workers - are overwhelmingly male. Because most schools are closed, there are few kids below 17 or their families. Women I know who have returned report feeling uncomfortable and unsafe.
A large Latino immigrant population has come to work in the city’s reconstruction. These workers have been demonized by everyone from Mayor Nagin to local talk radio. Grassroots medical volunteers report that some of the workers are forbidden by their employers from talking to anyone or even leaving their rooms at night. They are working in hazardous conditions, for low pay and little safety protection - already many have become ill, and they have no access to medical care, and face a hostile city.
There are still thousands of New Orleans residents who have not been convicted of any crime trapped in maximum security prisons and “no one in a position of power finds this pressing,” says Ursula Price, a staff researcher with A Fighting Chance, an indigent defense group. She estimates at least 2000 prisoners from Orleans Parish Prison remain in Angola, the notorious former slave plantation in rural Louisiana. These are people who were picked up for “misdemeanor offenses such as public drunkenness, traffic violations, soliciting a prostitute,” Price says. If convicted, at most they would have served less time than they have been in for. But, in Orleans Parish and Jefferson Parish, courts have been closed for most of this time, and public defenders have been laid off. “The system is not working with us,” Price tells me. “I don't understand why prosecutors are in there arguing against release of someone on a misdemeanor charge. We have women who have had miscarriages, mental heath problems, physical health problems, and no one in power seems to care.” The total population of Orleans Parish Prison at the time of hurricane Katrina was at least 7,000 people. In a city of just 500,000, that's a significant population.
The people of New Orleans are not just physically displaced, but also disenfranchised from their city in other ways. According to the Wall Street Journal, when FEMA officials were asked by Louisiana state officials for access to the FEMA database so that they could inform New Orleans evacuees about their right to vote in upcoming municipal elections, the response was a terse email - “(FEMA) will not let you have a copy of the FEMA applicant list. Sorry!!!” What better way to let people know that the city is not theirs than to have an election to which they are not invited?
Many in New Orleans are struggling with an even more basic and vital concern - the recovery of their loved ones. Less than a quarter of the bodies so far reported discovered in New Orleans have been turned over to families. The rest are at the New Orleans coroners, currently relocated to St. Gabriel’s Parish. “Officials in coroner's offices in several parishes reported that they sought to keep their victims from going to St. Gabriel,” reports today's Times-Picayune, which describes one families long ordeal in recovering their mother’s body. Just one more area where people of New Orleans are left behind.
While this tragedy multiplies, while evictions mount and exploitation increases, the former residents of New Orleans have their choice of a dizzying array of forums, hearings, panels, tribunals, town halls, committees, subcommittees, commissions, meetings, marches and demonstrations, most of which are seeking the input of the people of New Orleans.
In the space of two days last week, I went to a public meeting with a representative from the UN High Commission on extreme poverty. I went to a meeting of the housing subcommittee of the urban planning committee of the mayors blue ribbon commission on rebuilding New Orleans. I joined a rally at the State Capitol featuring Jesse Jackson, Reverend Al Sharpton, and various Government officials. At each event I saw hundreds of poor folks from New Orleans. I also met representatives of a community group for East New Orleans residents displaced to Baton Rouge - they report that 500 people come to their weekly meetings.
This Monday (November 7), I will march across the bridge from New Orleans to Gretna, to join in protests called by a wide array of national organizations against a crime Cynthia McKinney has said "might become the worst American civil rights episode of the 21st Century," the blockade by Gretna police of the only exit out of New Orleans for thousands of evacuees. I also plan to join the People's Assembly initiated by the People's Hurricane Fund on December 8-10.
There are many outlets for action, as well as plenty of anger and energy, but also a deep skepticism. The people of New Orleans have a justified distrust of the people and institutions who have arrived with promises and resources. Hundreds of well-meaning volunteers have come in to town, and many have done vital work, but in some cases this has increased tensions. “Some people have come here with this attitude, ‘we’re bringing organizing to New Orleans.’ They don’t seem interested in what was here before,” reports one community organizer.
These divisions are not only concentrated on the grassroots - disagreements within the mayor’s commission on rebuilding New Orleans have become increasingly public, with some representatives complaining to the New York Times of not being invited to private breakfasts between the mayor and other commission members.
"The truth is," said one longtime activist, "people have a lot of anger and grief, and they don't where to direct it." We are all tired, frustrated and sad, but the struggle for justice continues.
Jordan Flaherty is a union organizer and an editor of Left Turn Magazine. This is his tenth article from New Orleans. You can contact Jordan at NewOrleans@leftturn.org.
Click Here for Jordan’s previous articles from New Orleans
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Advocates Get Creative With Housing Goals
By KRISTI CECCAROSSI
Reformer Staff
Brattleboro Reformer
Brattleboro, Vermont
BRATTLEBORO -- It's nothing new. Talk among human service agencies and
housing advocates about the need for affordable housing and the need,
moreover, for funding to build it.
The talk has certainly been circulating around Brattleboro for years,
and the only thing that's changed about the argument for more
affordable housing is the urgency that people have attached to it.
But now housing advocates are trying a new approach, and maybe picking
up some new allies along the way.
Their mantra: it's not just a social justice issue anymore.
Housing -- that is, the cost, the shortage and future developments --
ought to be studied as an economic issue, too.
To that end, a group of 80 or so elected officials, housing and human
service advocates and some local business leaders gathered Monday for
a lunch meeting at the Brattleboro Retreat.
Their goal was to start addressing countywide housing concerns, not
just as they affect low-income residents, but as they affect local
businesses and employers.
"Getting the business community motivated to do something about it is
different," Ann Duncan Cooley, director of the Upper Valley Housing
Coalition, told the group on Monday.
The Upper Valley Housing Coalition, started in 2001, is already doing
much of the work Monday's group is hoping to tackle.
Cooley spoke at the meeting, organized by the Alliance for Building
Community, the Drop In Center, the Windham Regional Commission and the
Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation (to name a few sponsors),
to offer a model for what would be a local coalition.
Depending on who is talking, "affordable housing" can mean a lot of
different things. For the purposes of Monday's meeting, the definition
is: housing that doesn't cost tenants more than 30 percent of their
income.
If prices in Windham County's housing stock are rising to the point
that many people are paying more, Cooley said that demonstrates a
need.
And if, say, a qualified candidate for a job at Brattleboro Savings &
Loan can't afford to take the position and comfortably pay rent or a
mortgage, what might that mean for the bank's ability to retain good
employees? What would that mean for any business trying to attract and
keep its workers?
"We don't hear from employers enough about the benefits and needs of
housing," she said.
The key, she said, is emphasizing "workforce housing."
That's what advocates have done in the Upper Valley, and with that
focus they've been able to get support -- financial and otherwise --
from the region's major employers, like Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical
Center and Dartmouth College. She recommended Windham County
organizers try to forge the same partnerships.
The Upper Valley coalition model is the first of its kind in Vermont.
A handful have already formed in New Hampshire.
Monday's (November 7, 2005) meeting was the second in a series of meetings put on by a coalition of local groups emulating their approach. They heard from
Cooley, and they heard from Susan Bloom Newcomer, of the Greater Keene
Chamber of Commerce. A coalition in the Monadnock region is following
the Upper Valley model now, too, but their efforts stop at the
Connecticut River. Newcomer came Monday to tell organizers they'd like
that to change.
"We all ought to be tackling this," Newcomer said. "This is a
pervasive problem that needs a whole lot of energy and a whole lot of
brains."
One of the goals in Keene is to "address the NIMBYism that prevents
development in certain areas," she said. Another goal is to push for
mixed-income housing, with more density, to would accommodate a range
of residents -- and not a bunch of two-acre lots where $300,000 or
$400,000 homes would be built.
Participants spent the second half of Monday's meeting in small
groups, brainstorming more specific goals, from how to educate the
public on housing concerns to ways to finance a coalition and housing
proposals.
Diana Wahle, a member of the Alliance for Building Community, who
helped put the forum together, said the small groups made plans to
meet before Jan. 20, the next scheduled forum.
For more information, or to get involved, contact her at (802)
254-9469 or at abcwahle-@sover.net
**In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is
distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and
educational purposes only.**
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Wyoming Winds is published by the Wyoming Coalition for the Homeless
907 Logan Avenue
Cheyenne, WY 82001-5247
phone: 307-634-8499
fax: 307-634-9089
email: wch@vcn.com
Views expressed in this newsletter are not necessarily those of the Wyoming Coalition for the Homeless, its staff or board.
Editor for this issue: Virginia Sellner.
Copyrights revert back to the author upon publication.
WCH is a 501(c)(3) all volunteer non-profit agency depending upon the community for funding.
© 2005.
Articles from other papers are published with permission of the paper listed with the article.
**In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. section 107, this material is distributed without charge or profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving this type of information for non-profit research and educational purposes only.**
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