Written by This is the most foolish thing I have seen all year! Granted, it’s only been 5 days. But come on! The last thing you want to do is promote “shooting up safely”. The message conveyed here to young people is that people shoot up and it’s OK. Come on New York! Use your heads! You have like a bajillion of them in your city!!!
Posts tagged New York
Maybe I Should Ship Homeless Sex Offenders to Atlanta….
This is a HUGE problem here in Arkansas. Just last week I searched the city of Little Rock over for a place to take a homeless man who became a convicted sex offender in 1989. There are no shelters to take them to. I even got a call today asking if I could help another man, and had to tell them that I knew of NO options for someone.
Apparently Little Rock is not alone. Though we have our share of homeless camps, I’m not aware of any sex offender camps in our area. That’s not the case in Marietta, GA, where the state even refers folks to this camp if needed.
Maybe if I get as smart as Mayor Bloomberg in NYC, I can start shipping the sex offenders out of Little Rock, to Atlanta…..
That’s a joke, folks. In all seriousness, something has to give here. What are these people expected to do when they have restrictions on where they can live, work, go and everything else that LIFE entails?
How to Kill Your Organization, With Inactivity
I know too many awesome people, who are doing awesome things, that may not be around in short period of time. One cannot simply do things the way it’s always been done, and expect to survive.
Your efforts and your organization could easily die out if you are not on-board with the way that the rest of the world is operating.
This generation (my generation) operates and does things in a totally different way than those before us. You can’t ignore it, and you can’t ignore us. If you do, you will fizzle out in a few short years.
Don’t believe me? Take a look at newspapers. Are any of them growing? How about traditional churches? Any of them growing? And when I speak of growing, I’m not referring to the addition of recycled Christians.
Whether you are running an office supply company, an icecream truck, or a church, if you don’t catch up you will get left behind. Look at your business or organization in light of this video, and try to see where your future is going. Are you moving along with the world, or are you still somewhere back in the 90′s wondering why everyone else is making headway but you?
Recovery Rally in NYC
For those of you wondering what’s going to be going down in September regarding Recovery Month, here’s you a shindig to hit up…..
A&E’s Recovery Project is doing this deal. You may know their show Intervention pretty well.
Here’s what they say about it, and why I LOVE what they’re doing:
“In 2008, A&E launched The Recovery Project to generate awareness that addiction is a treatable disease and recovery is possible.”
The Recovery Rally is Sept. 12 in NYC and you can find out more HERE.
Recovery Month….get in on it!
You or someone you know has been affected by drugs/alcohol whether you like it or not. Now is the time to get involved in eliminating that burden in someone else’s life. Now it the time to step up and give back. If you destroyed lives through addiction, now is the time to help rebuild lives. Get in the game and support Recovery Month.
To find out how you can get involved on a local level, or to find help with addictions, please click on the “contact” page at the top of the screen. Thanks!
Failed Defense For Deporting the Homeless
So the NY Times comes out yesterday and reports that New York City is “deporting” the homeless. You know, sending them “home”. Only problem is that THEY DON’T HAVE A HOME!!!!
The program they are running sends homeless to live with family members that have to agree to take them in. So let me break this down:
1. Clients are homeless.
2. A family member in somewhere other than NYC has to take them into their home.
3. Upon arrival, the client is still without permanent housing, job, transportation, money, food, etc. etc.
4. Naive family member takes on the burden of all these needs, or the client is forced to get in line in SOMEONE ELSE’S system until somehow they finally find the magic cure in that new location.
Sounds freakin’ brilliant to me!!! Yeah right. This is asinine.
What’s more? Mayor Bloomberg, under serious attack by the public everywhere, has now tried to defend the shipping of homeless people by explaining the amount of of money that NYC will be saving.
INSANITY!!! Way to really help people Bloomberg! I’m sorry but this just fires me up!!
Read HERE, the story from yesterday explaining the program. And, read HERE where the mayor tried to defend this pathetic “effort”.
Mankind is no Island
I can’t watch this enough. Winner of Tropfest NY 2008. What a masterpiece by Jason van Genderen. Beautiful, inspiring, moving. This piece makes me cry tears of anger, and tears of passion. See for yourself.
Homelessness May Have the Wrong Poster-children
HUD reports that of the 664,414 homeless in January 2008, only about 124,135 are experiencing “chronic homelessness”. In other words, not even a quarter (19%) of the total number of homeless people counted, would have fit into our “idea” of what a homeless person looks like.
The 2008 Annual Homeless Assessment says on page 34 that from 10/1/07 until 9/30/08, approximately 1 in every 190 people in the U.S. used a homeless residential facility at some point.
The report says that 159,142 families with children were sheltered in 2008.
These numbers may be surprising to you. The sad thing is that you see the “chronic homeless” person on the streets and you can identify him/her. You most likely would never be able to pick out sheltered homeless people. Yet they are out there. The moms, the dads, the siblings and children, and even the grandparents make up the entire homeless population.
This the the point that I so often try to convey to people: Most homeless people are not out begging for your money. They are out trying to make their own!
1,594,000 people used an emergency shelter in that same 12 month period mentioned above!
There was a 9% increase from 2007 to 2008 in the number of homeless persons in families.
Wow, I could take number after number and try to convince you that homelessness is not a waste of our time and money. I could spend all day doing this, but hey, that’s what HUD has already done. Check the report out for yourself and at least look at the highlights. They’ve made it very easy to skim through and still have your whole world rocked! View the report in it’s entirety HERE.
On the Streets, but Still Online
The Wall Street Journal writes about homeless who are able to stay “connected” even though they are living in shelters and even under bridges!
With the dependence on the Internet still increasing even today, in some ways it’s critical for homeless to keep some type of access to the online world. Communicating with friends and family and job searches are just some of the online needs of those who are on the streets.
Twitter, Flickr, Facebook and the like are ways that the homeless are able to feel, if just for a moment, like everyone else.
I’m sure some will argue that their priorities are not right for the fight to get off the streets, but tell that to the homeless man who is writing computer programming that he will eventually be able to sell.
See the article HERE.
Your thoughts??
“War Eagle, Arkansas” Coming to Theatres
If you made it to a Film Festival in almost any given city lately, then you have surely noticed the film War Eagle, Arkansas.
I personally didn’t get to see it when it opened at the Little Rock Film Festival, but I will be sure to check it out soon when it comes to theatres. It will open June the 12th around Arkansas and will soon be rolling into major cities such as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and the likes.
Please watch this trailer, and then read more about the film here.
