(00:00:00) 15 years ago the community for Creative non-violence of which I'm a member of came into existence. We're essentially a religious community. Although religion isn't a prerequisite for for membership. We're non-hierarchical and I decisions are made consensually, which means I am a member of the community for Creative (00:00:21) non-violence, nothing more and nothing less. (00:00:26) No one in the community. And as I think about 50 of us now is paid a salary we all work as volunteers and we all live within the community. We also have hundreds of people in The Wider community that participate in the life and work of our community in a variety of ways. We initially came together out of a shared commitment to community and to non-violence and out of our opposition to the war in Vietnam. During the first months and was back in 1970. We focused attention on the war. We used to conduct things like this. We used to have speaker series and debates and we would also organized actions and demonstrations all of which was intended to promote dialogue and debate and to help build a movement of resistance to that (00:01:18) war. (00:01:22) We quickly came to understand that there was a domestic counterpart to the violence of (00:01:27) Vietnam (00:01:28) in 71 or 72. It dawned on us that the people who were within blocks of the White House. I mean the very epicenter of the Western World many of them are going to bed hungry. There was some people that didn't even have beds to go to and that was that's a real contradiction given that where the wealthiest Nation on the face of the (00:01:49) Earth. (00:01:51) So about a dozen years ago. We opened a soup kitchen. (00:01:55) We called it the (00:01:55) kiss Zacchaeus Was the person in the Old Testament who set up in a tree and watched Christ come into Jerusalem and he sat on the tree because he wasn't a very nice person and figured about the closest he would be able to come would be this tree and he sat there and he because he was a tax collector and he was back in being a tax collector was a nice day and means you're screwed everybody around you and you did pretty well in the process in Rome patted me on the head and so he set up in the tree and lo and behold Christ walk up to him and said, hey, I want to spend the night in your house. There's a Kia said that you've got a mean somebody else because I'm just accuse (00:02:27) Christ said that your house that I want to (00:02:29) stand and so he did and Zacchaeus Was So moved by that that he gave back triple what he took from people and he became a Justin on his person and so our community functions out of the supposition that we are thieves particularly those of us in this Society who are white and that the excess in our lives is unjust gain, and we got to start giving it back out of a sense of justice and not out of a sense of charity. In 1972 when we open the kitchen, we were serving about two or three hundred people a day when we started rolling now, we serve somewhere around 2,000 people a day with food Medical Care clothing and shelter in a variety of (00:03:10) locations scattered around, Washington. (00:03:14) In December 1976. (00:03:16) We (00:03:18) we articulated a commitment and that commitment was to eliminate homelessness first in Washington and then in America and to do it very very quickly because it's a great evil. Great evils need to be eliminated quickly. We made a commitment to create adequate shelter for everyone in need of it. At least there's our first step to be offered in an atmosphere of dignity to be accessible and to to be sufficient. in the ways that it has to be and so out of that commitment. We began working. The first question obviously that we came across and you have to remember we're operating soup kitchens at the time. So we weren't exactly ignorant of all of this but for us part of it was defining who the homeless work because serving soup in the kitchen or running a kitchen is not quite the same as really getting to know who people are and where they're coming from. So in answer to that question at least for us who are the homeless what we've come up with our that first of all very clearly there are nations Untouchables anyone who thinks that that phenomenon exists only in places like India is wrong. You only have to sit on the street corner looking like a homeless person for a couple of days and very quickly you understand what it's like to be cast out of the human community. Some of them are sent I'll some our elderly. Summer alcoholic is a large and growing percentage were mentally disabled people who can't even tie their own shoes without assistance increasing number of people are homeless as a result of physical disability. There have been a number who've been displaced by the administration and its gutting of low-income housing programs. And in the cumulative effect of the cutting of the rest of the programs on which many people rely for their continued existence gentrification obviously has had a great deal to do with it. A lot of people are unemployed. Most of those are disproportionately young and black or brown or red and he on what part of the country you're from. So budget cuts unemployment and the near disappearance of affordable housing deinstitutionalization and the breakdown of traditional social structures relationships and responsibilities all of contributed to driving millions of people to the streets when I'm talking about breakdown of traditional structures what I mean is that I'm not that old but when I was a kid, I remember that you didn't let Mommy eat out of a garbage pail. It just wasn't nice and if you did that nobody would talk to you anymore because that was barbaric now, you know, we all have our lives to lead and Mama and Papa are sisters or brothers or cousins, you know, they have hard times but that's their problem that wasn't the way it was all that long ago. So now even family relationships are no longer sufficient to provide people with that safety net below which they should not be allowed (00:06:14) to fall. (00:06:17) We didn't find a whole lot of sympathy or support back in 1976 for the proposition that homeless people have a right to shelter and that we have an absolute responsibility to provide it what we found instead in fact was ignorance and fear. products of the awesome distance between those who have a home and those who do not We found the homeless to be essentially missing persons absent from our deliberations our decision-making processes our Consciousness and our lives daily in vitreous misery, they suffered and (00:06:55) died and obviously continue to do so. (00:06:59) To reduce that distance we had to speak and act prophetically and symbolically, we broke down doors and we occupied government buildings. We erected 10 cities called them Reagan Ville. We serve Thanksgiving dinner in Lafayette Park the hundreds of homeless people across from the White House will be doing that again this Thanksgiving. We poured blood we conducted public funerals. You may remember last year when a man froze to death in front of the White House a man named Jesse Carpenter lo and behold it was discovered. He was a war hero in there was a funeral in Arlington and all of that was part of an effort on the part of us and others to return substance to people who have been made invisible. We've been arrested and we've been removed from local churches during snowstorms dragged out while suggesting that the religious community has a responsibility to open its doors to the destitute. We've spent time on the streets in jail, and we fasted. I think you probably know particularly those of you that are involved in dealing with the issue of homelessness that there's a tendency to equate the message and the messenger and so we weren't real (00:08:10) popular back in 76 or 77. (00:08:13) As a matter of fact, we made a lot of people very uncomfortable some got angry others got defensive for instance in a Washington Post editorial written six years ago something that I had done was referred to as an act of supreme arrogance and self-indulgence later in the same editorial. I was called an extortionist and an egotist. Whether they're true or not is immaterial. It was said in a syndicated column written it about the same time Michael Novak who we lovingly refer to as Atilla the Hun describes ccnv as a community that quote likes to describe its emotions and language of love peace creativity and non-violence and that those they attack do not perceive the emotions directed against them as falling under such names at all on the contrary ccnv members on the public record seem to be consumed by an inner rage by raw hostility and by the most intense forms of a self-hatred both self punitive and vindictive they speak of peace. They do not engender it they speak of Love they do not bring love certainly not to their enemies but not to others either they wear the clothing of sheep, but actually the public record shows they act as (00:09:26) wolves. (00:09:33) But haltingly and very grudgingly Americans finally began to see (00:09:38) the homeless. (00:09:39) Some saw for the first time. And they found themselves no longer able to rely on familiar and comforting but old and outworn stereotypes and images to protect them from reality. They began to comprehend the enormity of the problem in the diversity of the people. But I think while it's true that we have as a nation grown much more aware and much more concerned. I think it's also true that there are many more homeless people on the streets and there were six or seven years ago. As a matter of fact every year there's an increase in the number of homeless Americans, even the government agrees with that. That means that every year there is also more pain and loneliness more frostbite and gangrene more pneumonia more assaults and attacks more exposure related injuries and illnesses of every kind and of course, there are more needless (00:10:30) deaths (00:10:33) To a homeless person waiting at the mercy of the elements exposed and vulnerable virtually cast out of the human community. It seems that we are moving toward a solution to the problem of homelessness and an affirmation of the right to shelter with all the speed of a giant South American tree sloth. I did I'm going to be in New York on Tuesday city of my birth and I have a brief reading. I'd like to share. It's about, New York. It was his custom almost every night at one o'clock or later to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge and night after night with a horrible Fascination. He used to go to the public latrine for Comfort station, which is directly in front of the New York City Hall one descended to this place down a steep flight of stairs from the street and on bitter nights. He would find the place crowded with homeless man who had sought Refuge there here in New York in this obscene meeting place. These derelicts came drawn into a common stew of rest and warmth and a little surcease from the desperation. George had never before witnessed anything to equal the indignity in the sheer animal horror of the scene. There was even a kind of Devil's comedy in the sight of all these filthy men squatting upon those opened or loose stools the site was revolting disgusting enough to render a person forever speechless with pity. The Woolworth Building was not 50 yards away and a little further down with a silvery spires and needles of Wall Street Great fortresses of stone and steel that housed enormous Banks the Blind and Justice of this contrasting the most brutal part of the whole experience for their all around him and the cold Moonlight only a few blocks away from this abyss of human wretchedness and misery Blaze the Pinnacles of power where a large portion of the entire world's wealth was locked in Mighty volts. So row Thomas Wolfe during the height of the Great Depression more than 50 years ago. Yet when I moved to the streets of Washington for four months in the fall of 1980. I found that little had changed. Occasionally very late at night. I used to leave The Heat great on which I slept and walked to a public restroom went up by the Washington Monument. I found there in 1980 with Thomas Wolfe had found in New York fifty years earlier true the Pinnacles of wealth had been replaced by the trappings of political power and the power of Empire but the profound contrast in the contradiction Remains the Same in this the richest nation on Earth millions of human beings who single common bond is that they are temporarily or permanently disabled are eating out of garbage pails and sleeping in dumpsters. Obviously something is wrong. And while we have I think expended considerable time and energy discussing and Discerning the root causes of poverty and Injustice what we usually refer to as roots are in fact only the branches. The truth is that we are addicted to some very dangerous myths and until we free ourselves from them and develop a healthy resistance to the cultural defense mechanisms that so effectively repeal and misdirect us. We will remain powerless to affect any real change. We can improve the situation by running away. Nor can we hope to do anything by wishing? We cannot build a world in which every human being is guaranteed the basic necessities of life unless and until we dramatically reduce the distance between our hopes and our actions just as we have to reduce the distance between ourselves and our neighbors. We have no valid reason to believe that we can change reality and positive and predictable ways. We don't understand reality and have never (00:14:41) seen it. (00:14:45) I think the underlying truth with which we're going to have to come to grips is that neither the existence of millions of homeless Americans nor the other manifestations of violence and Injustice within our society a temporary aberrations. They are in fact The Logical predictable and inexorable consequence of our efforts to build a liberals livable Society on a foundation of unbridled competition and rampant individualism. It's in a rational in human and dangerous assumption upon which we have pre created predictably and irrational and human and dangerous world. I don't think we have a whole lot of choice, but to face the truth and the truth is that we cannot fine-tune our institutions or our relationships or our values and make them sufficiently better. For regardless of how much formaldehyde you pump into a dead body. It's (00:15:46) going to remain dead and is going to continue to stink. (00:15:51) first of all, we're going to have to reduce the distance between ourselves and the source in reality of needless suffering reaching out in compassion and concern to those who so desperately need and are legitimately entitled to what we have and do Who We Are We're also going to have to Break Down The Walls and the multitudinous layers of bureaucracy that isolate insulate and segregate (00:16:16) us from the truth as well as from one another (00:16:20) we're going to have to begin to act as though it's our sister or brother our mother or father or son or a daughter. We ourselves who huddle silently in the doorway shivering in the rain and the cold we're going to have to act in ways that are responsible and we have to act with a proportionate sense of urgency. Let me let me give you an example of what I mean by that if right now somebody would have noticed (00:16:45) smoke coming in under the doors and then started getting hot. We saw Flames (00:16:53) probably wouldn't be considered a reasonable (00:16:55) response to hold a meeting to discuss what to do. (00:17:01) My guess is people would start screaming and yelling. Those were at least controlled and others would try and calm him down. But everybody would try and get out of here. Everybody would act as though there was an emergency. We'd probably run out of here as though our very lives were at stake because our very lives were at stake yet. Take a good look at how we respond not only to the presence of millions of people at our feet but to the threat of nuclear war the death by starvation of 43 people per minute most of them children under 5 and the growing threat to our ecology the very land air and water on which we rely for our continued (00:17:37) existence. (00:17:39) Our response is totally disproportionate much like sitting around and discussing what to do is the burning wood building would have burned down around us. We're not only in responding that way acting disproportionately, but we're also acting irrationally. Since the appropriateness of a response (00:17:59) to the system UI is quite often how one can determine rationality reasonableness if our response is not either of those then the question becomes why (00:18:10) I think one answer and it's a tough one to come to grips with is that are great wealth and abundance which we even celebrate once a year times like Thanksgiving and we treat as a great blessing on fact driving us mad. Let me explain what I mean by that number of years back. I saw a documentary on one of the Network's it was about great apes great family structure of the great a family is you have a dominant male females younger (00:18:34) Apes of both male and female (00:18:37) the male is the forager goes out and gets the food brings it back eats he share which is larger than male the females eat their share, which is larger than (00:18:45) the share that the young get it all makes a lot of sense. (00:18:48) What a bunch of anthropologist discovered was that and they did it more than once and it wasn't just one time phenomenon when I would put the grade 8 and nail to sleep and allow them to wake up on top of a couple of thousand pounds of bananas. What he did was he became vicious and he time the females or the young tried to approach the pile. He would get (00:19:07) aggressive on him. Try and hurt them. (00:19:11) And at no time did he eat any of the bananas just sat on top of them protecting them not even enjoying them and then they put him back to sleep and wake up with a bunch of bananas and all of a sudden he take his share in the females and get this year what the Anthropologist determined was the great apes cannot deal with excess. It drives the (00:19:29) med. Now at (00:19:31) some point today go take a walk to a supermarket. And go amongst the shelves. And start thinking about (00:19:40) bananas. (00:19:45) So we have excess in distance pretty potent combination with crazy to begin with. So we're patient with evils like homelessness because they have not yet affected us at least not where it counts not in the depths of our relationships and certainly not in our own flesh. We delude ourselves in one another clinging ferociously and defensively to ideas and Customs that are not really over own making while the crying is independent and controllable those that (00:20:09) are (00:20:12) Irrespective of what we say, by the way, we live we daily deny that all of us are equal parts of one family and that the Human family is but a part of One (00:20:22) Creation. Therefore I think (00:20:27) there are certain things that all of us regardless of the individual and unique nature of our gifts must do if we in the world as we know it or to have any real chance of survival. We must first of all begin to come to grips with reality honestly and accurately we must quickly bring back under control a process that is almost beyond control. We must acknowledge, by the way, we live that we understand that the opposite of love is not hate but indifference just as we must affirm Again, by the way, we lived at the moral equivalent of war in the preparation for war is not (00:21:04) peace, but resistance to war. (00:21:08) And I think of course we're going to have to understand the nature of change if we're to have any real. Hope of affecting it. A year ago, we were getting a (00:21:19) lot of press because we just opened up this big shelter and people like Jim bacos and white house chief of staff showed up and Margaret Heckler and a lot of other folks and (00:21:27) so people were calling from across the country and one day. I got a call from a man from Denver who said I'm the head of a very big foundation out here and I'd like to come and look at (00:21:36) your shelter. Okay, come on down. why not we're here (00:21:42) and so he came down and I was waiting on the front steps for him. We operate this seven (00:21:48) 800,000 bed shelter back in Washington (00:21:50) and I asked him why he was there he started talking about money for us. I said well maybe I should inform you that we're not tax (00:22:00) exempt and he looked at me looked at me. Like I just said something really terrible and he said you're not tactics him. He said no. Why didn't you tell me that I said you didn't ask me that? (00:22:14) You just said you wanted to come to Washington. I figured you had a purpose in coming otherwise, like all right, your phone your call you you said you wanted to come he said well, but I wanted to come to give you money. And I said well that's very nice of you. Thank you. And he said no. No, you see I have this family member coming. I forgot the name of the big big foundation big family big Denver (00:22:33) family. And one of them was in Washington. (00:22:35) She had discretionary funds (00:22:36) and wanted to give him to us. They said (00:22:37) well, we can funnel the money through (00:22:40) a 501 c (00:22:41) 3. We said no we wanted to be 501 c 3. We now to use a pencil we could do it. (00:22:45) We don't want to be we're not and we're not going to be and he said you have to be (00:22:50) I mean we have to be so you have to do it. I said no, wait a minute. (00:22:55) We don't have to do anything. (00:22:57) I didn't come here. I didn't ask you to come you came here saying you want to give us money. That's (00:23:00) nice. If you want to give us money will take it but (00:23:03) we're not 501 c 3 we have our own reasons for not being 501c3. We're not going to be 501c3 the I understand for the next six months was bad-mouthing us all across the country about what idiots we were because what he said to me was I said why why do we have to be tax exempt and he looked at me and he said he said I was like you said during the 60s. I was an anti-war activist and then I (00:23:23) realized you have to compromise. (00:23:28) Least if you want to get anything (00:23:29) done. We have to be realistic. (00:23:36) We have to compromise our values and ideals if we want to accomplish anything (00:23:41) the question then becomes what have we accomplished if we sacrifice our values and (00:23:45) ideals. So that's a lie. The idea that we have to compromise on its face is an absolute lie because we only start to get things done when we refuse to compromise our values and ideals will begin to make a real difference and to create real changes for the better when our actions flow out of our proximity to the victims of Injustice. We can only hope to begin to bring closer a day when all of God's children can live in peace and Harmony, but only when we Act without regard for the consequences out of concern for the people and not the effects when we act with love and compassion for adversaries as well as our friends when our criteria for Action is the rightness and the necessity for those actions. We act with the understanding that each of us may be the only one who can or will cause the Breakthrough for the process of Change Is as (00:24:41) mysterious as it is predictable. (00:24:45) One more one more reading. I'd like to share with you. This is from a little book called the hundredth (00:24:50) monkey. See monkey, it's good. It's good. (00:24:56) It's by a fella named Ken Keys when you let me just share this with you. The Japanese monkey macaca few scada has been observed in the wild for a period of over 30 years in 1952 on the island of Koh. Shima scientists were providing monkeys with sweet potatoes dropped in the sand the monkeys like the taste of the raw sweet potatoes, but they found the dirt unpleasant an 18 month old female named emo found she could solve the problem by washing the potatoes in a nearby stream. She taught this trick to her mother her Playmates also learned this new way and they taught their mothers to between 1952 and 1958 all the young monkeys learn to wash the Sandy sweet potatoes to make them more palatable. Only the adults who imitated their children learn this social Improvement (00:25:45) those of you who have children remember them. (00:25:49) other adults kept eating the dirty sweet (00:25:51) potatoes (00:25:54) then something startling took place in the Autumn of 1958 a certain number of kosher monkeys was washing sweet potatoes. The exact number is not known let us suppose that when the sun rose one morning there were 99 monkeys on cosima island would learn (00:26:08) to wash this week potatoes. (00:26:10) Let's further suppose that later that morning the hundredth monkey learn to wash potatoes (00:26:16) then it happened (00:26:18) by that evening almost everyone in the tribe was washing sweet potatoes before eating them the added energy of this hundredth monkey somehow created created an ideological breakthrough, but notice the most surprising thing observed by these scientists. Was that the habit of washing sweet potatoes then spontaneously jumped over the sea. colonies of monkeys on other islands in the mainland troop of monkeys attack us akiyama began washing their sweet (00:26:45) potatoes now think about that for a (00:26:48) minute and then also think about The snowflakes The Gather on a tree limb (00:26:55) during the winter when you see the snow beginning to pile up on a on the limb taking millions and millions sometimes billions of snowflakes to gather together to make that lemon drop. (00:27:09) But it takes one (00:27:09) last flake one flake. Sometimes it's all it takes is a flake same in the human Community. Anybody anything can be the one. (00:27:22) To bring us to the point of (00:27:23) saying what have you been doing this people all over the streets, but dying just like one day we (00:27:28) got retarded people in closets (00:27:30) and addicts something wrong with that. So we never know whether we in fact that person who if we see and understand something. (00:27:42) We'll make the difference and so just like that hundredth monkey and just like that last snowflake (00:27:48) all were called on to do is our shift (00:27:52) because every snowflake that hit that Branch before that last one and every monkey that learned to wash its potatoes had an equal (00:28:00) contribution to the process of breakthrough (00:28:04) because someone was last year first ultimately is immaterial only to the one that's first of the one that's first wants to see the results, but that's why we have to give (00:28:13) up the fruits of our labors and acknowledge that there's something greater than any one of us. Because that's the only way that can work. (00:28:23) so now that we've reduced it to this and I think we have what does it mean for each of (00:28:29) us to do our share that is the question we left with Unfortunately, that's a question. I can't answer. Almost not for myself and certainly not for anybody else. (00:28:42) But I think what I can offer you is not the answer (00:28:46) a simple reflection. (00:28:52) On many occasions I stood in stand on the front steps of the shelter in Washington (00:28:57) and I watch as hundreds of homeless people pour in some of them are on crutches others and wheelchairs as if you would know legs and there are few who were blind. There's a lot and who old and infirm. some Arsenal a lot of them are mentally disabled these kind of stare. They can lead into space as they walk into the building (00:29:21) the spirits and bodies of most of them have been horribly (00:29:25) mangled their broken people (00:29:28) disfigured. It's a really really gut-wrenching scene. I mean no one who stands there on the steps and watch this (00:29:35) much is this vast and broken Army walk-in ever walks away quite the same to quote. Whoa fat renders most people speechless (00:29:45) often. I used to look out over this sea of human. Misery just going to be losing into the shelter and although I might have been speechless inside. I found myself screaming it got to do something to make it better. (00:29:58) I would instill (00:29:59) Bill beg God to look at all of these poor innocent people and to do what has to be done to make it right. I said, come on God do it do something. This is crazy and then not all that long (00:30:11) ago. I understood finally (00:30:16) what I had come to understand was that it was in the existence of all of these (00:30:20) homeless people that filed (00:30:22) past me. Hundreds of others (00:30:26) that I see every day (00:30:28) and a hundreds of millions of others throughout the world just like demo worse off that God is in fact crying out to me. To do something about (00:30:38) it. (00:30:40) God is in and through the existence of these people demanding of me and you what I was demanding of God and that is that we stop what we are (00:30:51) doing no matter what it is and do what must be done to make it better (00:30:56) because if we were sitting out on those streets and if winter were coming on we would be in a very large hurry and the reason we're not in such a (00:31:06) hurry. Most if not all of us use because we've got a roof over our heads food in our belly clothing on our back (00:31:16) and so we've become very patient with misery because it ain't ours. And the only solution that anyone will ever come up with it makes any sense has to be a solution or solutions that are built on the understanding that unless and until we get closer to those folks and begin to see in them us which we do now, but only in a way that scares us to death and makes us look the other way when we can see us in a way that brings us to lift them up as we would ourselves as we would those we love then everything will instantly get better and that will not happen unless and until As We Gather and as we talk and as we work and as we eat and as we sleep and as we meet we do it with them closer we get to them the closer we get to the answers the closer we get to a world in which it makes sense to wake up in the morning and you feel reasonably good about (00:32:07) spending your life that day doing what you're doing. Thank (00:32:13) you. No one no one wants to be homeless. There are people who make Intelligent Decisions that is to remain where they are out on the street rather than go into. What is quite often you discover when you look closely to what is is so bad that probably wouldn't want it either or in fact, it's really non-existent. I've never met any human being that likes to be cold the likes to get frostbite or pneumonia never never found anyone to like sitting out in the rain ever, but I have found people that given the range of options will intelligently, even if they're Maniacs, you know in the psychiatric sense of the word like people in our shelters and I may be crazy but I ain't stupid and it's true. We are sheltered part of that. Our shelter is run by the people who use it and some of the folks on the staff are in fact legally adjudged to be mentally deficient then a mentally deficient. They're just different, you know, like they say, they're not stupid. They can fix the boilers. They may talk to themselves while they're doing it. But who cares the boiler doesn't You know, he gets fixed. We have one guy who is who's autistic legally adjudged autistic. He's on the staff. He cleans up. He cleans a very small portion of the building very slowly sweep, like one (00:33:20) area about the size for two hours. (00:33:22) But who cares it's the cleanest spot in the building, you know, and if everybody would do a little square like that it would be just fine. So the problem is that we offer people that which we think they want or need and we don't listen to that which they in fact want and need and I've never met a human being that if you offered them the keys to the best hotel room in the city, no strings attached would say go way I like it out here. But we offer always has the wrong kind of strings attached to almost always always limited or it's you know, it's so terrible or so inaccessible or so something that it makes sense to (00:33:54) stay away our (00:33:55) but it more comfortable for us and more comforting to believe that folks are out there because they wish to because if they're not out there because they wish to be that means that we got a responsibility to help get him out of there and that's a difficult (00:34:06) thought. Aha, the mecca Theory (00:34:12) right we called the multiple Mecca Theory. Okay. There's the Coalition the National Coalition for the homeless in New York did a actually didn't have to do much work but they did a study and discovered that there were I forgot how many 30 2015 Mayors Governors and County Executives who all said that because of their beneficent policies their City County state was the mecca for the nation's homeless and then we discovered that every 50 miles is another Mecca. Everybody's a Mecca and everybody thinks they're the only Mecha those are among the illusions that died very hard that people will migrate from one end of the country to the other you may recall not that long ago when the Rajah niche in Oregon was sending for folks. Well having one of the largest shelters in the nation and them coming to Washington. They used to pull up outside the door all the time. And they used to say that people come with us. Here's what we'll offer you. You can have an (00:35:07) apartment. You don't have to work. (00:35:11) Lovely food three meals a day get a couple of bucks a day cigarettes beer and all the sex you want. One or two people at a time we get on the bus and I stand there one and the hell's the matter with you. You're in this rathole in Washington. You're going to freeze to death and these folks are offering you what everybody would consider Heaven almost no one got on the bus and most of those that got on the bus came back but almost no one got on the bus and if if you're offering people all of that and then I'm going to get on the bus the idea that as we call it in the trade a hot and a cot is going to get someone to migrate across the country or across town even is the most ridiculous idea that anyone has ever heard but it's no more or less ridiculous than the other stereotypes and images that we cling to like the fact that people are out there because they want to be out there and you know, it doesn't matter what we do they're there because they wish to be (00:36:01) free free to watch freeze to death. (00:36:07) People don't need any help. I mean the homeless because they trapped there locked. You can't it's almost impossible to get outside be in quicksand up to your eyeballs. You can't leap out once mean in order to get off the streets or out of shelters. It takes a massive leap requiring resources and energy that almost no one on the streets has I mean if you instantly became homeless and had to fight out of that position with all the resources you got going for you now and you probably be mad in a year like most other folks should probably be driven insane within a year but assume that you who you are right now and you found yourself out in the streets in a shelter. You probably would not could not get out of there. Probably you would fall apart before you'd be able to (00:36:45) find a way out. That's that's how that's how difficult it is. So (00:36:52) first of all, we have a responsibility to Black help provide each other with the necessities of life. That's an absolute responsibility. Any civilized society is going to have to do that. We're not a civilized society. We don't do that. We let people starve to death while folks in the white house. He doffed $2,000 plates and people in Georgetown in Washington. (00:37:09) Nice (00:37:10) neighborhood are living in three five six hundred thousand dollar houses while people are sleeping on the lower level of parking garages. I mean, that's that's just irrational and insane. So the first thing we have to do is make sure people don't freeze to death or starve to death or bleed to death and then we have to do that in a way that allows them to begin to pull themselves together that allows them to begin to come together and Community among themselves and with those who really care to share that struggle with them and and then we have to build into those empty spaces or those basic necessities the kind of resources and services that enable people to make whatever transition they (00:37:48) can make or want to make or need to make (00:37:51) in order to live more traditional and more independent lives, but we don't perpetuate homelessness by providing people what they need to live we perpetuate life and that's of course what we have to do we can do things in a way that maintain the disability of people And the folks on the streets know that that's why they refer to most people who work with poor people as poverty pimps. Because at some level deep down inside, we all know that if the status quo changes and those folks stand up be they homeless or black or Chicano or Native American and demand their fair share. We got to give something up. And particularly those whose livelihood is dependent on the continued existence of poor people. We don't sit around and get up in the morning and say well I think I'll go to work today and help keep people poor it because I want my job. It doesn't work like that for work like that. We see it and we stopped at just like that. Now we live in the most subtle sophisticated and devious Society the Earth has ever seen. Life means death peace Means War Sisterhood and Brotherhood means exactly the opposite mean even our language is twisted and if I (00:39:05) languages Twisted, that means everything is Twisted. (00:39:08) So that's that's the Dilemma that we find ourselves in. We're Believers in participatory democracy, you know particularly in this part of the country where you all used to build each other's Barnes when they burned down we figure that's a real good idea beats All State all the hell, you know that if we can rely on our neighbors in time of need and they can rely on us since we never run out a neighbors will be okay. There's always neighbors. That's the (00:39:33) way it works. (00:39:35) So we think that the first responsibility is the person the individuals the citizens, each of us has an absolute responsibility just as American citizens to be part of the solutions if we stay out of the Mental Hospitals, they're going to be snake pits if we stay out of the prisons they're going to be what they are. If we don't go down to the soup kitchens and shelters in the streets and where the rubber hits the road is he say, (00:39:57) it's (00:39:58) we never going to know what's going on and we're never going to be able to make government or anything else accountable because we're not accountable. So for us the foundation the bottom line is that each of us has an absolute responsibility to love and serve our neighbors because you can't build a decent World otherwise and that An absolute responsibility to demand that resources that have been entrusted by people in this nation to various levels of government to serve the common good do so. We are fighting to make the federal (00:40:27) government (00:40:29) take some responsibility for the elimination of homelessness in America because we figure they've got that some responsibility. We've made it easy. We said, here's all we suggest you do and most people disagree with us. They think it's not enough you federal government you provide buildings renovate those buildings in areas where there's State local governments private sector people who want to provide services in those buildings and willing to do what needs to be done. Give people cod's beds blankets your warehouses full of stuff do that don't operate them don't get involved in that because you don't know what you're doing don't even fund them because if you do that, you'll ruin them let the state and local governments do their share let the private sector do a cheer from our perspective this the participation that the private sector has to make is in the actual operation of the shelter's to a very high degree because we entrust them to Professionals, they will be terrible places. They will either lose the resources that were generated to make them come into existence in the first place or as in the case of the state. Well, how much was there a couple of years ago for homeless people $500,000 down to 250,000 down to a hundred and seventy (00:41:31) thousand is that right? Why (00:41:34) does nobody cares enough to make it go back up to 500 because people didn't care enough to keep it from dropping to 250 because there aren't enough people directly involved personally touched. So you have to bring in the community to make it happen because a you're dealing with folks that are incredibly broken isolated. They've been segregated they they're very fragile there. They need to be embraced not to be further institutionalized or abuse and the government can only create (00:42:02) institutions. That's all it knows how to do (00:42:04) and you can't expect it to do anything else because that would be unnatural. So the private sector we think has to be primarily involved in the operation of the shelters with as many people as possible. His broad-based away as possible being involved because if it comes to a struggle to hang onto a building or to get money for funds or to make something happen. If you've got five hundred or a thousand people some of whom are homeless some of whom are not who are out there demanding that something be done. Something will be done. If you're out there by yourself or with five other friends, you might as well it's better than nothing. You should be there was going to say you might as well stay home. You should never say oh (00:42:38) but (00:42:39) it's not going to go very far. So churches religious community should help to create the atmosphere. The federal government should help to create the physical big physical contributions state and local government should work at providing Services some funding other kinds of resources The Wider business private sector can provide food laundry services all kinds of (00:43:02) other things. Cynicism (00:43:08) I am the most optimistic person you will ever meet in your life pessimists and cynics. Don't do what we do people who are unalterable e convinced that the world is the way it is but doesn't have to be and could be a very beautiful place to be if only we were about the business of making it be that you can't sustain our kind of activity unless you're wildly optimistic for more than about 15 (00:43:32) minutes and (00:43:35) it's very easy to hang on to what keeps us going because what keeps us going is the pain of our friends. The people in the shelters and on the streets have names and faces and identities and personalities and we love them and we don't like going to the morgue to claim their bodies. We have 10 plastic containers in one of our houses that contain the remains of ten human beings who froze to death whose bodies were not claimed all the others bodies were claimed. We can't stop because if we stopped and they'll be 20 and 30 and 50 and 60 plastic irons and since those folks aren't abstractions, but human beings that we care deeply about there's never a question of what keeps us going because we can't stop and we've come to understand that it's as easy to make the world a better place to live is it is a bad place to live. It takes as much effort. If not, if not more to make it a crummy place and it's more painful more difficult more everything. So it's not hard once you've passed a certain point once you've begun to understand like being down in a valley and what do you see when you down in a value see what you can see as you climb up this hill side you notice that across the way there's a house Never saw the house for 50 years. You've been down in the valley and didn't know the house was there then you go up a little higher and you see around the side. There's another Mountain then you get on the top and you see all kinds of stuff where you stand determines what you see and what you see determines what you can control and deal with and so for us the question would be is there any way conceivable that we could stop doing what we're doing and the answer is no so it's not hard to explain how we keep doing (00:45:07) what we're doing. (00:45:12) For one thing the federal government discovered in the study that they did on homelessness, which was an absolute fraud and the only thing that came out of it was that there's approximately a hundred thousand shelter beds in America by nobody standard. Is there enough there for the discussion of where we go from shelters? (00:45:28) Not an appropriate one. (00:45:30) Yes, obviously as quickly as possible, we have to provide people with what they need to get out of shelters, but since we're not willing to provide shelters, Of adequate size Services equality in any city in America regardless of its size then to begin to say we have to now focus on the longer-term solutions the longer-range solutions the kind of services that people need while it's true is a dangerous discussion because it's out of time. It's out of sync when we first proposed initiative 17, which is the DC right to overnight shelter Act of 1984. There was passed by 72 percent of the voters of Washington in a record turnout because we had a huge (00:46:10) turnout that last year. (00:46:16) They passed that initiative in spite of the fact that the city government said it was going to cost sixty three million dollars because you know, they use the magnet Theory and while three months before their position was that there were fewer than 500 people on the streets. As soon as we proposed initiative 17, they started using the figure 15,000 and so many people who are opposed to initiative 17 would say all it's going to do is Warehouse people. All it's going to do is provide a roof over their head and that's not enough and besides it's going to cost sixty three million dollars the government says and they said we have to have more comprehensive services. Maybe if it were a different initiative and contained a for wider range of services would be feeling differently. We see that's an irrational position. Even the Washington Post assume that position. I was surprised at them because what you're doing is standing on both sides of the field and arguing with yourself. You know, what you're saying is that on one hand is not enough to just put a roof over somebody's head on the other hand. You're not willing to pay for that and if you're not willing to pay for that then it becomes simply a way to spin wheels and get away from doing what really needs to be done. And what's really possible if we focus too much on where we go from here because we in anywhere yet. There is no city in America where there's adequate flophouse space. There's very few where there's even a reasonable number of shelters or there's anything reasonably underway while yes, we have to begin to think about doing away with shelters the moment. We begin to create them making them obsolete by taking it the next step. The reality is we are still so far down in this struggle that it's like dealing with folks who are still locked in the Attic. We got to help folks understand. It ain't right to lock people in attics and it's not necessary. So I think that we've got to maintain the kind of urgency that is a proportionate response to an emergency situation, which means we cannot now stop the discussion of just putting rules over people's heads because in this city, if you put up another roof, this winter will keep people from getting hurt or possibly dying or getting sick. So we have to do that while at the same time understanding better what it is that people need in providing it and you see the two go together and we started out by putting Rubes over people's heads. And now we're trying to make the most comprehensive facility the world has ever seen the shelter if it's renovated, which it probably will be before we're done with the feds will contain a medical clinic a dental clinic mental health component nonprofit Employment Agency drug and alcohol abuse counseling benefits counseling a legal clinic and about Adult education literacy training about four or five other things at no cost to the government because we've got commitments from directors of hospitals and it's in their interest. I mean most of the hospitals in Washington are seeing large numbers of destitute people and it cost them a small fortune to deal with them in an emergency way you offer them the opportunity to participate in something that will not only reduce their cause but make them feel good in the process and give them a role in a steak and making things happen and they'll do it. So we're doing that but we're still running around fighting for abandoned buildings to have the doors taken off in the heat turned on because that struggle isn't over yet. So I think what we have to do is feel comfortable functioning on both levels with the sense of urgency that makes us fight to open up space while at the same time over here fighting to make everything more comprehensive and we have a really hard time with those kinds of apparent dualities. The Western mind is very very very ill equipped to deal with subtlety and to deal with Dualities, but that's what we have to do it. Yeah, as I said before about 10 years ago, we decided that we were going to eliminate homelessness in Washington and homelessness throughout the country and while and he will realistic about what's happened. There's still lots of folks on the streets of Washington, but ten years ago, there were ten beds for women in a hundred and sixty four beds for men. And now this winter unless they succeed in shutting us down which I doubt they'll be between 1800 and mm so it's an improvement but we're not there but at the same time we realized we couldn't wait until Washington was quote done before moving on out. So we've decided that we're prepared to work towards 1988 to force National right to shelter the articulation of a national right to shelter. So what we're going to do is we're going to spend starting very soon about two years working across the country with various groups of people to organize a walk. We're going to most of us from ccnv going to find ways to replace ourselves in the services. We provide and starting about eight or nine months before the presidential election. Election in 88 we're going to start walking to Washington and while other people have walked to Washington before folks have not done it quite the way (00:51:01) we will I can assure you (00:51:02) that they will probably be 50,000 or more of us when we hit Washington and will be within a month before the election and we will sit down and wait for both candidates to articulate a right to shelter and we ain't going anywhere and now we have to deal with things like the logistics of feeding an average of 10,000 people per day beyond (00:51:20) Chicago because that's what we figure we'll be up to and probably an average of a hundred to a thousand people for the first leg of the journey, but (00:51:27) we're going to do that to try and book Focus attention and inject into the national election the issue of homelessness, and we're going (00:51:32) to inject it very thoroughly.