Shelter Beat Pt2

pstrongPt 2. You Have No Choice!/strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/450/photo_2_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Michael Lea Morgan, PNN shelter beat reporter./p pThe Personal Assisted Employment Services (Single Adult welfare) claims to provide access to the tools of society to homeless and/or low-income people. But my Employment Specialist screamed at me the other day and said, “You have no choice. You have no choice,” when I told her I was going to seek a second opinion in regards to an action she proposed that I take. So, we always improve upon a system. /p pThe homeless have to have a group that controls its own improvements as much as possible . We must simply create it out of an idea. Get a meeting place. Meet. See what happens. I propose we meet at the Main Library (since many of us live there anyway). Or, we could meet at several places, like Martin de Porris or POOR Magazine. I’ve already brainstormed with many divergent groups of homeless people . In Palo Alto, in Berkeley, and in Redwood City. And, of course, good old activist capital of the world, SF of A!!!! /p pMany great activists all over the world have brain-stormed, done projects, written papers, changed their environment and we can draw on all of these. Then, we take our vast array of information and experiences and figure out some reasonable approaches to gaining access to funding, buildings, and equipment to start some of our own projects. My goal is to start shelters, homeless support agencies, businesses, farms, and collectives, down the road, when history is ready (“history” may have been “ready” for a long time through)./p pFor now, we can meet and brainstorm, learn to relate to one another, study design and implementation, and go out and design and implement as a specific group or collective of related groups. The existing structure is there and much of it is just fine; this is an addition, a new kid on t block, not really a completely new approach because collectives have been around forever, but something new at this time, in this place when I find myself. This, however, is not an SF issue; it is a global issue. So, think globally/act locally. Organize./p pOur idea, according to Kleppner's Advertising Procedure, is in the “pioneering” stage. The pioneering stage of an idea or product is when “ . . . the need for such product is not recognized and must be established or in which the need has been established but the success of a commodity in filling those requirements has to be established. /p pFeedback: Ideas don't flow in one direction. A person comes up with a new idea and spits it out into the world. Ideas come up and change our perception of the world, so we see more, resulting in our ideas changing, resulting in our creating a different world, seeing more, learning from the new world, changing our ideas, and so on. /p pBut, it requires a person's willingness to break through to new perceptions, to act on them, and to continue the eternal process of birth, growth, decay, and rejuvenation. When a person or group refuses to see new perceptions, that stage of the process becomes interesting. It is at this stage that someone or some group has to become the voice of the new, the one who decides to break with the rules, regulations and laws established by the old guard. Who has the right of passage? Who decides what is right? Who decides upon whom rights are showered?/p pThe Constitution of the Unites States and the Bill of Rights are documents very few Americans have studied let alone read. Yet they are supposed to be the basis for America's entire point-of-view—the rules by which Americans are supposed to live and manage their country. Yet who is reading them, studying them, teaching them? /p pIn high school I was not asked to read them; we read Great Expectations, perhaps a few quotes from The Dec and The Bill, a few quotes from Lincoln, a sparse history of the lives of our founding fathers, etc.... And, certainly, no information about the meanings of the array of symbols found on our money./p pIf the very ideas upon which our country are based are not even remotely understood or studied by U.S. citizens, that there is no democracy. It means that the ideas upon which this country were founded are not the ideas upon which our everyday citizen acts everyday. The implications of this are staggering./p pBack to Ideas and Words: Understanding a process—specifically the process whereby an idea is described in words which become more tangible (not more real, more tangible). This is like the mutation of life: ideas become biological, chemical, spiritual and physical. What people witness forms their picture of what the world is like. If a picture comes back which doesn’t seem right, we question whether our world is as it should be./p pIdeas are not physical but they are actual. “In the beginning was the word” says one best seller and from just that word came animals, planets, and everything else. So it is with ideas. Words and ideas go hand-in-hand. We observe and report because from the Word all things come: can you hear an idea in a Hendrix riff? Can you see the social form of an idea in Woodstock, Apple Corporation, the spreading of the Internet, in homeless coalitions, and personal growth movements? When all these areas are synthesized, utilized, and democratized will have greater access to equity./p pAll responses, pro and con, are welcome; please contact me at: a href="mailto:ravencrow@eudoramail.com"ravencrow@eudoramail.com/a,br / or (415)430-2168, x9335.br / /p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p