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Homeless Olympics ~ Vancouver Canada
Things To Do In Vancouver When You're Dead
"To win the 2010 Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada, promised to reduce homelessness and protect low-income residents from eviction in favor of higher-paying guests. As noted in a Washington Post article* this past summer and elsewhere, critics say the city isn't living up to its promises. Am Johal explored the issue of Vancouver's pre-Olympics housing crisis with one of those critics."
Right-click to open video in new window:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgWm17Kv
Carrying the Torch
With the 2010 Olympics coming soon, special interest groups are gearing up to capture an affluent world audience around topics of homelessness and poverty.
Right-click to open video in new window:
Homeless Olympics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPLPRRHK
Homeless Olympics ~ Shopping Cart Races. . .
Right-click to open page in new window:
Landmark Arts Co-Operative for Downtown Eastside Women Expands to New Home
http://www.wd.gc.ca/77_2987_ENG_ASP.a
Carnegie Centre: The Downtown Eastside’s Livingroom
http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/commsvc
NEWS AND OPINIONS FROM VANCOUVER'S DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE
http://downtowneastsideenquirer.blogspo
2010 Olympics and Homelessness
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv
Vancouver homeless population may triple by 2010
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/s
2010 Olympic development driving up homelessness in Vancouver
http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/2
Critics say the city of Vancouver isn't living up to its promises
http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/3
Protesters disrupt Vancouver Olympics celebration
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/0
2010 Olympics and the war on the homeless
http://jnarvey.com/2007/03/2010-olympic
Olympic Send Off
http://homelessnation.org/en/node/6687
Homelessness 'chronic' in Canada: study ~ You're Not The Only One. . .
Up to 5% of Canada's 40 million citizens struggle with the cost of affordable housing as a basic necessity. See, that just the wrong way to look at it, as if the glass is half empty. We should be looking for "unaffordable housing", then we wouldn't be struggling. . .
"Canada's homeless population is somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 people, while another 1.7 million residents struggle with "housing affordability issues," says an analysis of the latest research on shelter."
Right-click to open page in new window:
Homelessness 'chronic' in Canada: study
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/0
Housing Matters ~ You Can't Call $10,000 a Family. . .
Right-click to open page in new window:
http://onlymagazine.ca/News/housing-mat
EVICTIONS AT THE DOMINION ~ For the past five years, Brian Robinson has called the Dominion Hotel home. Although he pays $650 a month for a small room in the Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotel in the Downtown Eastside, the 60-year-old construction worker says it’s important for him to have a steady place to live. But now Robinson is in the middle of being evicted as the Dominion’s new owners prepare to renovate the building and turn it into a boutique hotel.
Right-click to open page in new window:
http://onlymagazine.ca/News/evictions-a
FIGHTING FOR SCRAPS ~ Outside of The Door is Open, the catholic charity on East Cordova, Mike Blenkhorn stands in the sun munching on some soup and a bun. Blenkhorn has been coming to The Door is Open for the past decade for prepared meals and canned food, but the recent decision by the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society to close down its food bank at the charity has made things more difficult for the Downtown Eastside resident to get fed.
Right-click to open page in new window:
http://onlymagazine.ca/News/fighting-fo
The Other Side of the Coin People Who Live in Low Class Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones
Public Opinion ~ How VANOC and the 2010 Olympics is Working to Help Poverty in Vancouver Overshadowed by the Displacement of Low Cost Housing Refugees Over Corporate Re-Development (Again, Corporations Are Raping the Profits!) Whenever we try as citizens to build for a future, there is always some money-grubbing re-developer ready and willing to take it away. Who will replace our infrastructure once that infrastructure becomes displaced? Regardless of how meager it may be to the well-to-do. . .
And then there are always the restless who are simply looking to create anarchy. No healing here. . .
I was at the 2010 Countdown Clock unveiling yesterday and witnessed the absolute disgusting behavior of the anti-poverty protesters. Aside from their total ignorance regarding what VANOC is actually DOING about homelessness in Vancouver, and the fact they were endangering the public by bringing weapons, they were simply just disrespectful and did absolutely NOTHING to advance their cause. All that said, while I listened and watched these idiots chant and shove it occurred to me that if they spent as much energy as they do protesting and throwing rocks at innocent people as they could learning how to, hmmm I don’t know, use a hammer, they could probably get a job with said Olympics. I then did a little digging and found out that VANOC has a program in place working with organizations to help downtown eastside residents get jobs with all the construction work slated in the next 3 years. They also have several programs in place to provide low-cost housing after the games are completed - housing that would have never been there if the Olympics didn’t happen (so no, you wouldn’t have gotten the taxpayer money that went to 2010 anyway morons!).
These aren’t people with a structured opinion on the state of the world. They don’t give a rat’s ass about reason or logic - they are professional anarchists who will pick-up any cause as long as it gives them an excuse to disrupt the public. It’s no different than gang warfare, and they are either part of or in league with the Anti-Poverty Committee. Tell me how this advances your cause? Seriously. Use whatever shred of reason you have left in your ignorant brains and explain to me how anarchy gets your message across.
The city has already set aside land to be used for low-cost housing but is currently negotiating with the Province and Feds to provide the actual housing. With that, the Olympics are bringing in these temporary and portable facilities to house media and the like in Squamish during the games. When the games are done they are donating all that housing to be used on said land. Again - would not have happened without the Olympics! And there are plenty of other “legacy” programs they’ve initiated to work with first nations and battered women etc, and they have the highest standards in terms of their sustainability policies both internally and externally. Clearly the folks down at the Anti-Poverty Committee either aren’t informed or simply choose to ignore facts.
Right-click to open page in new window:
Message to the Anti-Poverty Committee
http://www.rantvancouver.com/2007/0
Housing the Olympics ~ VANOC Ad hoc in Hock? And Welfare For All!
$1B Olympic housing challenge ~ 3,000 low-income units, 250 for Games workers, 50% welfare rate hike among panel suggestions will need as much as $1 billion worth of housing and support in time for the 2010 Olympics in order to meet the promises the province and city made to prevent homelessness and protect inner-city residents...
It also recommends a provincewide, 50-per-cent increase in welfare rates, which the province's recent budget only went partway towards meeting.
And, the report says, work has to start immediately or finding a solution will become difficult, if not impossible.
"Unless this issue is tackled quickly through a focused program as set out in the report, the problem will become larger, more visible and increasingly difficult to solve. The national media and, to some extent, the international media already know of the social and homelessness issues that prevail in Vancouver's inner city. When Vancouver welcomes the Games in 2010, what will the world's media see?
...Vancouver is the first Olympics to have included a promise to promote "inner-city inclusivity" and specifically to protect inner-city housing." ~ Frances Bula, Vancouver Sun Published: 3/7/2007
Right-click to open page in new window:
$1B Olympic housing challenge
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/n
Do Artists Make Good Sports? ~ After Having $40 Million Art Funding Stripped, Will Artists Be Able To Participate in the Homeless Olympics?
More than $40-million in savings the federal government will reap from controversial cuts to arts and culture funding will be redirected to the Vancouver Olympic torch relay and two other programs, exacerbating fears that replacement initiatives are not in the cards. According to the budget, Heritage planned $61.9-million in cuts between February, 2008, and the end of the 2010-2011 fiscal year as part of its ongoing strategic review. Those funds, which include the trimmed arts and culture spending, will instead be used to pay for the $24.5-million torch relays and to provide $48-million to the Road to Excellence over three years. A supposed lack of funding for athletes surfaced as a hot topic when Canadians failed to win any medals in the first week of the Beijing Olympics.
Ottawa to shift arts funds to Olympic programs
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv
Art Is Not A Luxury ~ Stephen Harper Cuts Cultural Funding By $50 Million
http://putyourendtowar.livejournal.c
Homeless and the country lost a true advocate and social justice champion with the death of Mrs. Stoner....
Madeleine Stoner, 70; USC professor, expert on homelessness, By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer July 17, 2008
USC ~ Madeleine Stoner, a professor of social work, spent a recent sabbatical from USC as director of social services for SRO Housing Corp., a nonprofit group that develops housing on Los Angeles’ skid row. She also chaired the USC Urban Initiative. Madeleine Stoner, a USC professor of social work who was an expert on homelessness and advised policymakers on how to prevent it, died Sunday at her Westwood home. She was 70. The cause of death was cancer, said her husband, USC professor Ralph Fertig. Stoner, the Richard M. and Ann L. Thor professor in urban social development, divided her time between academic work and applying her research in the community. She spent a recent sabbatical as director of social services for SRO Housing Corp., a nonprofit group that develops housing on Los Angeles' skid row. She was the author of "Inventing a Non-Homeless Future" (1989), which laid out an agenda for policymakers, and "The Civil Rights of Homeless People" (1995), which analyzed litigation and advised advocates on homeless people's rights to housing, minimum standards of health and welfare, education, family preservation, education and voting. She also chaired the USC Urban Initiative, which brings together experts from a variety of disciplines, including architecture, history, business and healthcare, to offer solutions to the complex problems of life in metropolitan Los Angeles. Stoner was born in New York City on Sept. 13, 1937, and grew up in Pittsburgh. She earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Sarah Lawrence College in New York in 1960, followed by a master's in planning in 1970 and a doctorate in policy and planning in 1979, both from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. During the '70s she held positions in Philadelphia with the Urban League and the Sidney Hillman Medical Center before moving to London to work as deputy director of the Local Organizations Divisions of the National Council for Voluntary Organizations. She also served as research assistant on healthcare issues in the British House of Commons. In 1980 she joined the USC faculty as an assistant dean and in 1986 began teaching full time. Her community involvements included serving on the board of directors of the Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services Agency and the Mayor's Task Force on Homelessness for the city of Santa Monica. Stoner was married three times. Her survivors include Fertig, her husband of five years who is a clinical professor of social work; two children, Alan Cushman and Katie Cushman Jacobs; two stepchildren, Tad and Jon Stoner; a brother, Stanley Ruskin; and seven grandchildren. The funeral will be at 11 a.m. today at Hillside Memorial Park, 6001 Centinela Ave., Culver City. Memorial donations may be sent to the Madeleine Stoner Scholarship Fund at the USC School of Social Work.
USC professor studied homelessness and worked to address it
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/ju
America, The Homeless ~ The Underground of Co-existence
The day that Charlie Pigeon died...
Superdream underground...
http://superdream.blogter.hu/?post_id=1
Charlie Pigeons' Song
http://www.derbyphotos.co.uk/features/k
The Problem With American As Seen By The United States Marine Corp ~ USMC 2007-08-22 05:36:48
"America is the oldest and most successful democracy the world has ever known. We gave you pathetic europeans freedom AND funding to create your own version of it. So shut up, be grateful and see if you can last 200 years. Meanwhile we'll enjoy our freedom and wealth and continue to spread democracy and help the less fortunate while you complain and blame things on Bush, MTV or some other made up excuse. Anything except your own guilt......" ~ (Taken out of context for posterity) Apparently, this charming fellow has forgotten where his forebearers came from? Would he even be here to claim this were it not for those pathetic europeans who made their way to these shores in search of a new life? Need I remind anyone of this famous flame?
. . .
The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
http://www.legallanguage.com/poems/stat
Dignity Village International Tent City Celebration ~ Portland Oregon
Homelessness is increasing worldwide. Housing costs are skyrocketing. Governments are more inclined to support tax cuts for the wealthy than help for low income people. Drastic cuts of essential entitlement or safety net programs are looming on the horizon--courtesy of the Bush Administration and U.S. Congress. To truly end homelessness and poverty worldwide, we need to do more than just develop 10 year plans to end homelessness or bureaucracies to study the problem. This is why the National Coalition for the Homeless, the nation's oldest and largest national homelessness advocacy organization, supports such proactive legislative initiatives as the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund and the Bringing America Home Act. If enacted by Congress, both pieces of legislation would end homelessness in this country. We join you in this international day of solidarity pushing for an end to homelessness and poverty today, not ten years from now.
Dignity Village International Tent City Celebration
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/0
.
"To win the 2010 Winter Games, Vancouver, Canada, promised to reduce homelessness and protect low-income residents from eviction in favor of higher-paying guests. As noted in a Washington Post article* this past summer and elsewhere, critics say the city isn't living up to its promises. Am Johal explored the issue of Vancouver's pre-Olympics housing crisis with one of those critics."
Right-click to open video in new window:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgWm17Kv
Carrying the Torch
With the 2010 Olympics coming soon, special interest groups are gearing up to capture an affluent world audience around topics of homelessness and poverty.
Right-click to open video in new window:
Homeless Olympics
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPLPRRHK
Homeless Olympics ~ Shopping Cart Races. . .
Right-click to open page in new window:
Landmark Arts Co-Operative for Downtown Eastside Women Expands to New Home
http://www.wd.gc.ca/77_2987_ENG_ASP.a
Carnegie Centre: The Downtown Eastside’s Livingroom
http://www.city.vancouver.bc.ca/commsvc
NEWS AND OPINIONS FROM VANCOUVER'S DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE
http://downtowneastsideenquirer.blogspo
2010 Olympics and Homelessness
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv
Vancouver homeless population may triple by 2010
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/s
2010 Olympic development driving up homelessness in Vancouver
http://www.gamesmonitor.org.uk/node/2
Critics say the city of Vancouver isn't living up to its promises
http://www.worldpress.org/Americas/3
Protesters disrupt Vancouver Olympics celebration
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/0
2010 Olympics and the war on the homeless
http://jnarvey.com/2007/03/2010-olympic
Olympic Send Off
http://homelessnation.org/en/node/6687
Homelessness 'chronic' in Canada: study ~ You're Not The Only One. . .
Up to 5% of Canada's 40 million citizens struggle with the cost of affordable housing as a basic necessity. See, that just the wrong way to look at it, as if the glass is half empty. We should be looking for "unaffordable housing", then we wouldn't be struggling. . .
"Canada's homeless population is somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 people, while another 1.7 million residents struggle with "housing affordability issues," says an analysis of the latest research on shelter."
Right-click to open page in new window:
Homelessness 'chronic' in Canada: study
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2007/0
Housing Matters ~ You Can't Call $10,000 a Family. . .
Right-click to open page in new window:
http://onlymagazine.ca/News/housing-mat
EVICTIONS AT THE DOMINION ~ For the past five years, Brian Robinson has called the Dominion Hotel home. Although he pays $650 a month for a small room in the Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotel in the Downtown Eastside, the 60-year-old construction worker says it’s important for him to have a steady place to live. But now Robinson is in the middle of being evicted as the Dominion’s new owners prepare to renovate the building and turn it into a boutique hotel.
Right-click to open page in new window:
http://onlymagazine.ca/News/evictions-a
FIGHTING FOR SCRAPS ~ Outside of The Door is Open, the catholic charity on East Cordova, Mike Blenkhorn stands in the sun munching on some soup and a bun. Blenkhorn has been coming to The Door is Open for the past decade for prepared meals and canned food, but the recent decision by the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society to close down its food bank at the charity has made things more difficult for the Downtown Eastside resident to get fed.
Right-click to open page in new window:
http://onlymagazine.ca/News/fighting-fo
The Other Side of the Coin People Who Live in Low Class Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones
Public Opinion ~ How VANOC and the 2010 Olympics is Working to Help Poverty in Vancouver Overshadowed by the Displacement of Low Cost Housing Refugees Over Corporate Re-Development (Again, Corporations Are Raping the Profits!) Whenever we try as citizens to build for a future, there is always some money-grubbing re-developer ready and willing to take it away. Who will replace our infrastructure once that infrastructure becomes displaced? Regardless of how meager it may be to the well-to-do. . .
And then there are always the restless who are simply looking to create anarchy. No healing here. . .
I was at the 2010 Countdown Clock unveiling yesterday and witnessed the absolute disgusting behavior of the anti-poverty protesters. Aside from their total ignorance regarding what VANOC is actually DOING about homelessness in Vancouver, and the fact they were endangering the public by bringing weapons, they were simply just disrespectful and did absolutely NOTHING to advance their cause. All that said, while I listened and watched these idiots chant and shove it occurred to me that if they spent as much energy as they do protesting and throwing rocks at innocent people as they could learning how to, hmmm I don’t know, use a hammer, they could probably get a job with said Olympics. I then did a little digging and found out that VANOC has a program in place working with organizations to help downtown eastside residents get jobs with all the construction work slated in the next 3 years. They also have several programs in place to provide low-cost housing after the games are completed - housing that would have never been there if the Olympics didn’t happen (so no, you wouldn’t have gotten the taxpayer money that went to 2010 anyway morons!).
These aren’t people with a structured opinion on the state of the world. They don’t give a rat’s ass about reason or logic - they are professional anarchists who will pick-up any cause as long as it gives them an excuse to disrupt the public. It’s no different than gang warfare, and they are either part of or in league with the Anti-Poverty Committee. Tell me how this advances your cause? Seriously. Use whatever shred of reason you have left in your ignorant brains and explain to me how anarchy gets your message across.
The city has already set aside land to be used for low-cost housing but is currently negotiating with the Province and Feds to provide the actual housing. With that, the Olympics are bringing in these temporary and portable facilities to house media and the like in Squamish during the games. When the games are done they are donating all that housing to be used on said land. Again - would not have happened without the Olympics! And there are plenty of other “legacy” programs they’ve initiated to work with first nations and battered women etc, and they have the highest standards in terms of their sustainability policies both internally and externally. Clearly the folks down at the Anti-Poverty Committee either aren’t informed or simply choose to ignore facts.
Right-click to open page in new window:
Message to the Anti-Poverty Committee
http://www.rantvancouver.com/2007/0
Housing the Olympics ~ VANOC Ad hoc in Hock? And Welfare For All!
$1B Olympic housing challenge ~ 3,000 low-income units, 250 for Games workers, 50% welfare rate hike among panel suggestions will need as much as $1 billion worth of housing and support in time for the 2010 Olympics in order to meet the promises the province and city made to prevent homelessness and protect inner-city residents...
It also recommends a provincewide, 50-per-cent increase in welfare rates, which the province's recent budget only went partway towards meeting.
And, the report says, work has to start immediately or finding a solution will become difficult, if not impossible.
"Unless this issue is tackled quickly through a focused program as set out in the report, the problem will become larger, more visible and increasingly difficult to solve. The national media and, to some extent, the international media already know of the social and homelessness issues that prevail in Vancouver's inner city. When Vancouver welcomes the Games in 2010, what will the world's media see?
...Vancouver is the first Olympics to have included a promise to promote "inner-city inclusivity" and specifically to protect inner-city housing." ~ Frances Bula, Vancouver Sun Published: 3/7/2007
Right-click to open page in new window:
$1B Olympic housing challenge
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/n
Do Artists Make Good Sports? ~ After Having $40 Million Art Funding Stripped, Will Artists Be Able To Participate in the Homeless Olympics?
More than $40-million in savings the federal government will reap from controversial cuts to arts and culture funding will be redirected to the Vancouver Olympic torch relay and two other programs, exacerbating fears that replacement initiatives are not in the cards. According to the budget, Heritage planned $61.9-million in cuts between February, 2008, and the end of the 2010-2011 fiscal year as part of its ongoing strategic review. Those funds, which include the trimmed arts and culture spending, will instead be used to pay for the $24.5-million torch relays and to provide $48-million to the Road to Excellence over three years. A supposed lack of funding for athletes surfaced as a hot topic when Canadians failed to win any medals in the first week of the Beijing Olympics.
Ottawa to shift arts funds to Olympic programs
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/serv
Art Is Not A Luxury ~ Stephen Harper Cuts Cultural Funding By $50 Million
http://putyourendtowar.livejournal.c
Homeless and the country lost a true advocate and social justice champion with the death of Mrs. Stoner....
Madeleine Stoner, 70; USC professor, expert on homelessness, By Elaine Woo, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer July 17, 2008
USC ~ Madeleine Stoner, a professor of social work, spent a recent sabbatical from USC as director of social services for SRO Housing Corp., a nonprofit group that develops housing on Los Angeles’ skid row. She also chaired the USC Urban Initiative. Madeleine Stoner, a USC professor of social work who was an expert on homelessness and advised policymakers on how to prevent it, died Sunday at her Westwood home. She was 70. The cause of death was cancer, said her husband, USC professor Ralph Fertig. Stoner, the Richard M. and Ann L. Thor professor in urban social development, divided her time between academic work and applying her research in the community. She spent a recent sabbatical as director of social services for SRO Housing Corp., a nonprofit group that develops housing on Los Angeles' skid row. She was the author of "Inventing a Non-Homeless Future" (1989), which laid out an agenda for policymakers, and "The Civil Rights of Homeless People" (1995), which analyzed litigation and advised advocates on homeless people's rights to housing, minimum standards of health and welfare, education, family preservation, education and voting. She also chaired the USC Urban Initiative, which brings together experts from a variety of disciplines, including architecture, history, business and healthcare, to offer solutions to the complex problems of life in metropolitan Los Angeles. Stoner was born in New York City on Sept. 13, 1937, and grew up in Pittsburgh. She earned a bachelor's degree in political science from Sarah Lawrence College in New York in 1960, followed by a master's in planning in 1970 and a doctorate in policy and planning in 1979, both from Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania. During the '70s she held positions in Philadelphia with the Urban League and the Sidney Hillman Medical Center before moving to London to work as deputy director of the Local Organizations Divisions of the National Council for Voluntary Organizations. She also served as research assistant on healthcare issues in the British House of Commons. In 1980 she joined the USC faculty as an assistant dean and in 1986 began teaching full time. Her community involvements included serving on the board of directors of the Gay and Lesbian Adolescent Social Services Agency and the Mayor's Task Force on Homelessness for the city of Santa Monica. Stoner was married three times. Her survivors include Fertig, her husband of five years who is a clinical professor of social work; two children, Alan Cushman and Katie Cushman Jacobs; two stepchildren, Tad and Jon Stoner; a brother, Stanley Ruskin; and seven grandchildren. The funeral will be at 11 a.m. today at Hillside Memorial Park, 6001 Centinela Ave., Culver City. Memorial donations may be sent to the Madeleine Stoner Scholarship Fund at the USC School of Social Work.
USC professor studied homelessness and worked to address it
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/ju
America, The Homeless ~ The Underground of Co-existence
The day that Charlie Pigeon died...
Superdream underground...
http://superdream.blogter.hu/?post_id=1
Charlie Pigeons' Song
http://www.derbyphotos.co.uk/features/k
The Problem With American As Seen By The United States Marine Corp ~ USMC 2007-08-22 05:36:48
"America is the oldest and most successful democracy the world has ever known. We gave you pathetic europeans freedom AND funding to create your own version of it. So shut up, be grateful and see if you can last 200 years. Meanwhile we'll enjoy our freedom and wealth and continue to spread democracy and help the less fortunate while you complain and blame things on Bush, MTV or some other made up excuse. Anything except your own guilt......" ~ (Taken out of context for posterity) Apparently, this charming fellow has forgotten where his forebearers came from? Would he even be here to claim this were it not for those pathetic europeans who made their way to these shores in search of a new life? Need I remind anyone of this famous flame?
. . .
The New Colossus by Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
with silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
http://www.legallanguage.com/poems/stat
Dignity Village International Tent City Celebration ~ Portland Oregon
Homelessness is increasing worldwide. Housing costs are skyrocketing. Governments are more inclined to support tax cuts for the wealthy than help for low income people. Drastic cuts of essential entitlement or safety net programs are looming on the horizon--courtesy of the Bush Administration and U.S. Congress. To truly end homelessness and poverty worldwide, we need to do more than just develop 10 year plans to end homelessness or bureaucracies to study the problem. This is why the National Coalition for the Homeless, the nation's oldest and largest national homelessness advocacy organization, supports such proactive legislative initiatives as the National Affordable Housing Trust Fund and the Bringing America Home Act. If enacted by Congress, both pieces of legislation would end homelessness in this country. We join you in this international day of solidarity pushing for an end to homelessness and poverty today, not ten years from now.
Dignity Village International Tent City Celebration
http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/0
.