Category Archives: Books and Films

Homeless GoPro: Building Empathy Through Firsthand Perspective

About being poor, Books and Films, How we should treat each other

In recent browsing on the internet I came across a new sociological project starting up in San Francisco, “Homeless GoPro”. The purpose of the project is to help bring empathy and compassion back into human nature in society, including but not limited to situations dealing with the homeless. The Homeless GoPro project is led mainly by Kevin Fadler, an entrepreneur and sociologist, and Adam, a man who has been homeless on and off for the last 30 years. Through their documentary, the two hope to allow people to experience Homelessness and interactions on the street through the completely opposite perspective of what they’re used to. In the first video, “Birthday”, Adam is wearing the GoPro on his chest and attempting to sell “Street Sheet” newspapers. The videio opens with Adam explaining when he spent Christmas on the streets for the first time and how much it hurt. He doesn’t want to have to spend his birthday, which is the next day, on the streets. He tells people passing by that it is his birthday and he’s attempting to sell enough papers to buy himself a hotel room for tomorrow night. As people walk by, the majority either don’t look at Adam at all or, even worse, many people make a rather obvious attempt to look in the other direction and act as if they don’t hear him.

I had my birthday six days ago and cannot imagine having this experience. I was so happy to wake up and have breakfast in bed. Adam isn’t able to have either of these. I felt so much love and compassion from people who walked by and wished me a happy birthday. Adam was telling people about his birthday and they didn’t even respond. As I read the comments on the Yahoo article that feature this project, which I highly recommend you read for yourself, I constantly wanted to yell “F#@k Off” or “You don’t even F@$king know” to the people writing hateful and ill-informed comments. I even had to leave the room where my family was celebrating Easter just to get a breath of fresh air and calm down. How can people be so ignorant and give into so many stereotypes? This class has taught me so much, yet it has also led to so many moments of frustration with humanity.

This project offers a unique viewpoint on Homelessness and also opens the door to a whole new form of studying the world views and experiences of those on the street. While our class is ending, I definitely recommend keeping an eye on this project, as I believe it has great potential.

 

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/trending-now/homeless-gopro-offers-a-firsthand-perspective-of-those-living-on-the-streets-180947286.html;_ylt=AwrTWVU2U1RTc2gAOELQtDMD

 

http://www.homelessgopro.com/

Finding My Way

Books and Films, How we should treat each other, Local organizations

It was refreshing to read Toni Flynn’s “Finding My Way: A Journey Along the Rim of the Catholic Worker Movement.” It has been so long since I have read a book like this. At first my eyes had difficulty adjusting. I could not read a whole sentence in its entirety because I have become so used to skimming for key points, dates, and themes. Once my eyes began to slow down I began to savor each word and the truth in Flynn’s writing. Flynn invited me to take a look into myself.

I found the book to be beautifully crafted and organized. The different books provided a foundation as did the opening words at the start of each book. Flynn wrote with such intimacy and truth. The book served as a reflection of Flynn while provoking reflection in the reader. Flynn writes in a way that seeks to question our motives for our actions. While working with others Flynn finds a shared humanity and discovers the darkness within herself. Flynn constantly looks inward. At one moment when she is at the chapel hospital Flynn writes, “I look inward at my own stubborn refusal to let go of the memory of past wounds inflicted on me as a child” (47).

I feel in a way that this course, Hunger and Homelessness has been an exercise in finding my way personally and as a student. This course has caused me to look inward, as I take what we learn to heart. Balancing, accepting, and letting go are tasks I am learning.

Hauntingly Beautiful Portraits of the Homeless

About being poor, Books and Films, Homelessness, Portraits of Homeless, Uncategorized

This week, I decided to search for an article pertaining to homelessness that utilized visual elements that could bring awareness to this issue. While traditional style articles can be great ways to spread the word of societal problems, I think that photographs and art forms of expression can have just as significant of an impact. The article that I found incorporated both written and visual elements and focused on photographer Lee Jeffries and his finds during his most recent trip to Miami, Florida. Jeffries describes meeting a homeless woman there who had spent most of her life in the adult film industry and after she no longer was able to do that, she spiraled into homelessness, depression, and addiction. As he states in the article “She understands what she’s doing, she understands the choices she makes. She just doesn’t see a way out. But she’s still a human being who looks out for other people, and the younger girls she stays with, often to the detriment of herself.”

The saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” really holds true to the photographs that Jeffries has posted of the homeless population, both in this article and his book ‘Lost Angels’. According to the article, it is his goal as an artist to give a face and a voice to overlooked populations. He has photographed poverty stricken individuals across Europe and the US on his personal mission to raise awareness to the oftentimes ignored homeless population.

These pictures say it all, it is almost as though you can see into the soul of the people in Jeffries pictures. Although the article itself was short and to the point, the inclusion of these photographs need no words, as they tell the stories and hardships of these people without needing much description. I think that this type of photography is a great way to raise awareness of homelessness, especially for those who are uncomfortable with it and choose to ignore it in their daily lives. I think it would be impossible to not feel affected by these striking visualizations of what it truly means to be without a home and to be treated without dignity.  As the article states “His style of commercial photography, he understands, “is a small ripple” in the scope of possibility for change, “but it’s significant in terms of what one person can do.”

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/04/07/margo-stevens_n_5079048.html

 

 

Derelict Paradise

Books and Films, Homelessness

These last couple of weeks I read a book that had a very interesting view about how there is more to homelessness than just these people having a hard time living and surviving in absolute poverty. The book I read was Derelict Paradise and it explained how there are people in higher up positions in society who are benefitting off the people who are struggling. The author Daniel Kerr has conducted interviews with close to 200 homeless individuals and researched through the city’s local archives to find research on charities, politicians, newspapers, etc. to find out about how the city of Cleveland works and has changed. His informational study looks back from the last 130 years of the 1870s to present day.

Back in the day the city of Cleveland there was a “time [where] downtown Cleveland was a haven, almost a utopia, for lower income people” (Karr pg. 5). Back then housing was more affordable and available for the low-income population. But throughout the years the city was growing and wanting to look good to tourists and for its citizens, so this housing was destroyed and resulting in slums popping up. The slums were also eventually taken down and the homeless now were displaced.

There were a variety of people who benefited off the homeless with examples of the law enforcement, landlords, and the social shelters. They did not care for the homeless and were getting paid to “help” them live in these horrible conditions. When the migrant workers that came in to work for low labor threatened employer’s jobs, they banded together to remove the public services that helped out these workers.

There was a lot of work done to make sure that the homeless problem never improved so that profits were still able to be made off the homeless. There were a number of riots that occurred because of this, but nothing ever change. This seemed to occur every twenty to thirty years up until the present.

Homelessness and Respect

Books and Films, Homelessness, Reflections on our Reading

In Jason Adam Wasserman and Jeffrey Michael Clair’s book At Home on the Street: People, Poverty, and a Hidden Culture of Homelessness, they provide a thorough recount of their ethnographic methodology and findings. In their second chapter, Accessing a Hidden Population,  it is discussed how important it was for Wasserman and Clair to be accepted into the homelessness community’s “private property” of Birmingham, Alabama’s, Catchout Corner. Although Catchout Corner is the city’s public property, this was the first time I had ever heard of a homeless community referred to as having private property. How can they have private property of they cannot afford it? Yet, the researchers had this understanding that this space did, in fact, belong to their homeless participants and they had to be accepted into their homes.

This was almost threatened by the drug dealers that provided and employed some of the homeless participants. Not only did the dealers believe that the researchers would harm their business, but the homeless participants also advised for them to leave the Corner. Luckily, Wasserman and Clair were not intimidated and decided to return to the homeless community. That is how they gained the participants’ respect. I felt that this bit of information about their approach and experience represents the way they went about their entire project. It was interesting to see the homeless participants in a position of respect, instead of pity or other negative emotions that are usually seen. It made me wonder if people viewed the homeless as worthy of respect, how much of a difference that would make in decisions that are made for them.

“Lets Make a Deal”

Books and Films

In James Wright, Beth Rubin, and Joel Devine’s work, “Beside the Golden Door,” the author goes over the common thought that people chose to be homeless.  This idea is usually a conservative theory of homelessness and the conservative party tends to use it as a reason why not to send more support to the homeless community.  The author compares becoming homeless to the game Lets Make a Deal where people choose a certain door and get whatever is behind that door.  This is relating to all life, that people don’t know what the consequences are going to be of their actions until after they make their decisions.  This is important when thinking about how these people got into their situations because most of the time they make a simple decision and it leads to a road they did not see coming.  When people are asked if they are happy with their lives and they say yes, it doesn’t mean they chose for their life to be that way.  It just means that their life has ended up this way and they have learned to accept it.

http://www.amazon.com/Beside-Golden-Door-Politics-Institutions/dp/0202306143

“Behind the Orange Curtain”

Books and Films

I strongly encourage all to watch the film, “Behind the Orange Curtain” about the prescription drug epidemic. One topic that we frequently discuss in Hunger and Homelessness is alcohol and drug abuse among the homeless population. Beside the Golden Door Policy, Politics, and the Homeless shares data about substance abuse among the homeless population. Alcohol abuse among the nation’s homeless is the most single disorder diagnosed. Nationally 40% of homeless women and 50% of homeless men abuse alcohol. I often hear comments made by the housed population such as, “I don’t want to give the homeless money because they will spend it on drugs and alcohol.” You have the permission to get drunk in the privacy of your home, apartment, dorm room, but not in the public space of the street.

“Behind the Orange Curtain” shares the story of the increased use of prescription drugs primarily among the high school population of children of affluent families from Orange County. Drug and alcohol use is a problem that exists regardless of socioeconomic status.

http://behindtheorangecurtain.net/

Thursday has no meaning

About being poor, Books and Films

Beside the Golden Door: Policy, Politics, and the Homeless by James Wright explores multiple theories of homelessness, problems that homeless face, and characteristics of the homeless population. In the chapter “Health and Health Status” the failure for homeless people to go to their medical appointments is discussed. Most homeless people do not keep a calendar, so “please come back next Thursday” has no meaning because Thursday has no meaning. In addition, transportation is another issue due to time and money. Homeless people are required to stand in line for most goods and services. Wright gives an example of a homeless client who has an 11:00 A.M. appointment; this homeless person might have to decide between eating at a soup kitchen or going to the appointment. In addition, giving a diabetic homeless person clean syringes for daily insulin injections can invite criminal victimization.

When I worked with CareerWise, a nonprofit that teaches job skills to homeless clients in Orange County, I experienced the failure for clients to meet appointments. Often times the client would not come or would be late. Transportation provided an additional obstacle due to the lack of funds. If the client was in a transitional program they were often able to get money for the bus from their case manager, but their low self-esteem sometimes prevented them from doing so.

I found these questions to be a truthful portrait of the health complications that homeless people face:

What is gained by sterile dressings on the wounds or leg ulcers of a man who sleeps in the gutter? What is the point of prescribing medication when many homeless people have trouble finding a drink of water with which to take their pills, or when the pills themselves are frequently ground down to dust after only a few days simply from  being carried around in one’s pocket? What is the point of recommending a low-salt diet to a homeless hypertensive when beans, hot dogs, and potato chips are the soup kitchen’s daily fare? What, even, is the point of telling a homeless emphysemic women to quit smoking when cigarettes are the woman’s only remaining pleasure in life (Wright 171).

The questions posed by Wright illustrate the multiple problems that homeless people face. Wright encourages the reader to reflect on the questions above.

* Beside the Golden Door: Policy, Politics, and the Homeless by James Wright can be purchased on Amazon.

*To volunteer with CareerWise email: careerwise.ks@gmail.com

Two Social Injustices

Books and Films, Related topics

In my course Inequality in Education we are reading Savage Inequalities by Jonathan Kozol. I have connected multiple findings that relate to our discussions, readings, and exercises in Hunger and Homelessness. Kozol’s strategy for obtaining his research was to listen to the children’s voices. He noted that the children’s voices were largely absent from the discussion. In Voices from the Street, Jessica Morrell takes the same approach when investigating homelessness. Morrell gathered her research through interviews with homeless people in Portland, Oregon. The perspective of listening to the people who experience these circumstances is necessary because an outsider can never truly understand the lived realities.  Kozol captures the voices of many children by visiting thirty neighborhoods in Washington D.C., New York, and San Antonio.

Kozol starts by describing a school in East St. Louis, Illinois. The city is ninety-eight percent black, seventy-five percent of the population collects welfare, and there is exposure to raw sewage and lead poisoning. There is a defined difference because the two nicest buildings in the city are the Federal Court House and City Hall. I observed a similar situation in the Tenderloin District of San Francisco, where many homeless reside. I found it ironic that City Hall was in the middle of the Tenderloin. On the lawn of City Hall homeless people would rest, talk, sleep, and sell drugs. The homeless people were prohibited from using the bathrooms in City Hall. Kozol questions, “Why Americans permit this is so hard for somebody like me, who grew up in the real Third World, to understand…” (17). The heightened separation draws attention to these injustices.

Negative stigmas exist about marginalized people that are often untested and untrue. Kozol spoke with the superintendent who shared, “gifted children are everywhere in East St. Louis, but their gifts are lost to poverty  and turmoil and the damage done by knowing they are written off by their society” (34). This theme of being “written off” is persistent to the way that homeless people are treated. Often, judgments can be made about their current state that is untrue. Like the gifted children in St. Louis, homeless people may have the ability but lack resources and opportunities to succeed.

Kozol also notes the multiple obstacles that the children and their parents face. Many of these obstacles are shared by the homeless community. These obstacles include: crime, poverty, lack of education, insufficient health care, and unemployment. The family can significantly influence your type of life; one might be born into a family who lives in poverty which impacts every aspect of one’s life.

Yet, despite these obstacles, in a conversation Kozol had with a reverend in North Lawndale, Chicago the reverend shared, “there’s something here being purified by the pain. All the veneers, all the facades, are burnt away and you see something genuine and beautiful that isn’t often found among the affluent” (43). When people lack resources perhaps they have something that people with resources, like me, do not. Maybe they have a heightened awareness for what they do have. Maybe they treasure their relationships more.

In reading Kozol’s book I was able to link two social injustices together, homelessness and inequality in education. I found common obstacles and themes due to structural inequalities.

 

*Both books Voices from the Street and Savage Inequalities can be purchased on Amazon.

We All Endure, We All Live, We are All Human

Books and Films, Homelessness

The past week of book presentations had an impressive effect on not only how homeless people are perceived, but how people are perceived in general. Theses presentations have shown the different perspectives that are associated with certain groups of homeless people from Caucasian mothers to African-American males. Yet within these different categories of homelessness, all stories are connected no matter the race, age, or gender. There are similar stories of destructive childhoods, rape, substance abuse, and the economy to blame for their current predicaments. Don’t all these problems seem universal? That people other than the homeless can and have endured all these situations?

There seems to be this reoccurring thought that questions why homeless people are seen as less than the rest of society, less than a human being. They have done nothing to warrant this type of stigma against them. The other day I witnessed a professionally dressed man belittle and scold a mother living in her car with her young daughter, and I couldn’t help but think about how that reaction will affect this young child’s life. The stories that were from each book all focused on one’s upbringing and how events can lead to homelessness. In this case, I saw how society is visibly rejecting the homeless just by one professionally dressed man treating another human inhumanely. Will the child see herself as less of a person and think that she deserves negative treatment that comes her way because she lacks a house? Will she resent her mother for putting her in this situation? Or perhaps the she will understand and that there will be a more positive outcome for her? These books have taught me that the events in childhood can truly affect a person’s perception of society and themselves. Nowadays I ask myself what everyone around me has endured, what has made them the person they are today. Because all of us go through similar situations and, therefore, that is what ultimately will connect all of us together in the end. Our life experiences are what make us who we are – human.