Notes on the Coming of Another Year and the Not-So-Great-Depression of the Nouveau Poor

"Dreadfully tough week at work... I will be breath easy when the holidays are over.  Everyone struggles so much this time of year." - Psychiatrist at a public clinic

The Ansonia

All I can say about this is that I'm glad I'm not the only one. For all my positive thinking, there just come days when it doesn't work. Days where the math doesn't work. How is it that the most successful country in the world can have the highest number of unemployed people in its history and a housing crisis that creates a homeless crisis? How is it that we have yet to put a banker in jail over what was arguably the biggest bank robbery in history? And how is it that we are woefully inept at even treating the symptoms of what has become a gross inequality (1% vs 99%). And how again is it that I find myself at the crux of these issues when a great deal of people are doing just fine? That is where my life with OWS, as opposed to government programs, takes shape. That is where I feel that illuminating my personal story can have some positive effect. That is where I feel sometimes that just writing things down can be a way to begin solving them.

 A Story With No Ending? 

Nothing will depress you more than being compared to or described as or referred to another person who is in your same predicament.(Continued...)

This blog. aHBiNYC is now available as an eBook. It covers the writer's homeless experiences in New York City from September 11, 2011 through January 2013 in 245 pages and 50 chapters. To order simply use the PayPal button in the sidebar, send $10, and include your email address in the PayPal memo form. Thank you.

Out Of the Frying Pan and Into the Fire: The Nomadic Life of an #OWS Occupier Sans Occupation

Native America

My exit from the New York City 30th St. Men's shelter (Bellevue) on November 3rd was uneventful. Resolved maybe. It wasn't so hard to choose not to have one's psyche attacked by the government and the myriad of insane laws against the homeless in search of more US budget cutting as cities spend millions to rid their centers of anti-corporate/government 'Occupations'. It made a lot more sense to become an occupier of public spaces, instead of remaining a prisoner in them. Why not build a teepee on Wall Street and really piss em' off? When one has nothing to loose they don't feel so much revolutionary but rather evolutionary - the old rules having outgrown any usefulness and a set of new ones just waiting to be written. When the government criminalizes the state of not being able to make enough money to survive in even a modicum of decency (click prior for Huffington Post story), one doesn't feel so much like an outlaw as they might feel like a pioneer - breaking ground that will not be common for quite some time, but common to be - just getting there first.

The Beginning of the Beginning

The police raid of the Occupy Wall St. camp in the early hours of November 15th came at just the right time, a time when the movement was running out of steam and festering in its own philosophical excrement. "Time to put that rubber to the road boys", said the government. (Continued...)

This blog. aHBiNYC is now available as an eBook. It covers the writer's homeless experiences in New York City from September 11, 2011 through January 2013 in 245 pages and 50 chapters. To order simply use the PayPal button in the sidebar, send $10, and include your email address in the PayPal memo form. Thank you.