Emergency: Donations Needed - After Arrest, NYPD Steals My Business, Belongings and Portable Home

Scene of no crime

As per my previous story on being arrested on the morning of April 27th, that day, while I was in police custody, officer Lombardo and crew raided the OWS (legal) encampment on 15th Street and confiscated not only our OWS donations box, but my personal belongings in the form of a rolling suitcase containing all my artwork, supplies, paints, brushes, clothing and a Lumix camera I had been given as a gift. When confronted by OWS supporters objecting to the removal of the luggage, the officer responded, "That guy was arrested this morning - so his stuff is 'unattended'. Haul it." So in the space of one day, the NYPD not only arrested me illegally, but confiscated both my business and my home in one rolling cart. Somehow, I'm sure America is safer for this:)

To restart my sign-painting business, replace my camera and regain my rolling home, I am again soliciting donations (many of you helped me with a phone earlier this year). Yes, I find it deplorable that our law enforcement officials are being actively aggressive towards the homeless and in my case, even taking the small supplies that I use to make my income. Denying a man a home is one thing. Denying him the right to work is quite another - that denies him the right to better his life.

Please help fight this injustice and contribute liberally to this cause. A recent comment to my post, "Arresting Developments" stated, "You make us all proud, David. We can't all be there, but you're a terrific surrogate." With that sentiment, please understand two things:

1) I have been homeless since September 11, 2011.

2) I am on the front line fighting against economic injustice every day with Occupy Wall Street in New York since September 18th, 2011.

Please use the PayPal donation button in the left sidebar and help me survive to fight again another day.

iPhone Phund Now Up $350. Thanks John

And as another $50 comes in for the phund, another $400 in projected real income goes out the door. As I toggled to send John's $50 from PayPal to my bank, a job I had actually signed a contract for, just went up in smoke, billed as a dual f-up between a bank and a previously dependable employer - and so that $400, which would have put the phone phund over the top, now will not materialize in the anytime foreseeable future. Which means I don't get a phone, yet. And that makes job search impossible. Is anyone tired of me just treading water and getting nowhere? I know I am. And so I sit, a fully functional, non-substance abused, not (yet) clinically depressed, university educated, extremely previously successful business person - benched for the spring season, the most probable season for me to have found employ. And the contract was not just $400, it was $800 over two months. Not a lot of money at all, but a whole lot more than zero. A whole lot more. And so back to the drawing board.

Last month I was asked to do a guest lecture at a class for Columbia University, the same class that has used this blog as a reference on contemporary homelessness. But when the subject of pay came up, there was a distinct stall. There was no pay, or to a point, the university did not pay. "So let me get this straight", I said, "the university is in the business of charging money to teach classes on public health and homelessness as a predominant social ill, but they do not pay homeless people who contribute to the content of the course?" My question was responded to immediately with the logic, if indeed this could be called logic, that "other speakers were not paid for these guest lecturing jobs either". And other speakers meant lawyers, other academics, public health officials and practitioners and essentially, people who already had a job that a CV credit from Columbia would certainly benefit - not homeless people. And indeed, I doubt there's a line of homeless people stretching around the block on campus just begging to go in and talk for free so they can burnish their CVs with that oh so valuable name. And so I turned the request down, despite the professor being a genuinely concerned and accomplished activist in the field, because his employer was doing nothing more than exacerbating the problem in my case. Shit, is this so difficult? I need paying work, not frigging public service work.

And so I refine this pitch. If anyone out there needs work done, writing work, research on homelessness work, advertising or international marketing work, please let me know. I'm a whole lot more keen to work than I am to beg. But if you can still help on the phone phund, I won't turn that down. A man simply does what he needs to do.

Some People Just Don't Get It - But Then Again, How Could They Possibly Ever?

Illus: Sassoon Kosian

"Get a fucking job!" As a protester at Occupy Wall Street, you'll hear that all the time. It's normal. But to have old friends tell you that, or to have relatively new friends just deny the fact that you're homeless AND out of work is quite the other thing. Yet that's what I'm hearing and dealing with every day. And before anyone says to me again, "Why doesn't your family help you?" let me tell you another feature of going homeless or going poor: Your family denies it. Your family won't talk to you. Truly. I have sister in Iowa who felt ballsy enough to fire back at me through a comment on a YouTube video of me, but won't write me a personal letter. And yes, she has my mail. People hate being inconvenienced by friends and relatives who are not doing as well as they are. It makes them look bad. It shames them. "Is that your brother I saw in the Wall Street Journal protesting with this OWS thing?" - they don't want to hear at the mall. It let's them know just how close they might be to the same. They hate your situation even more than when you are doing better than they - and yes, I've experienced that as well - doing so well that it engenders jealousy and malcontent from those who you mistakenly believe are your closest supporters. People. They're just hard to figure sometimes.

Just this week I received a mail from an old friend in another city who was acting under the premise of "tough love". She pretty much chewed me a new one, said she wouldn't help me at all with a phone and advised that I get a factory job to make money, fully not remembering or realising that I would be going in as unskilled labour (a fifty-five year old, 140lb man trying to compete with 18 year olds to unload trucks or sweep the floor, or do whatever other unskilled jobs they might have) or having a full grasp of the economic meltdown that America is currently going through. I know she means well, but meaning well and doing well or being constructive are not always mutually arrived at.

A few weeks ago another friend of mine asked me to make a photo for her of her art at an exhibit. And this to me, whether there was any money in it or not, was considered a job - something that I could do that was of value and put me in a position of being professional and needed and not homeless or jobless or what those two things equal to the world at large: worthless. But at the last minute she had a shuffling of organisation and got someone else to do it - without telling me of course, until I showed up at our agreed time. So when I arrived there was no job. No nothing. Just me being given the bum's rush. And of course, I was not happy. But she had no idea that what I had lost was just some moment of self respect - some satisfaction of being valued. To her it really was just work. But to me it was more.

And nothing makes you any more unhappy than people thinking that you don't care about work, or have lost your mind, or don't know how to solve your problem, or worse, are somehow the cause of your problem. I heard this recently described as "blaming the victim" in relation to homelessness, but the concept is more historically related to racism or crimes of sexual abuse. "He didn't obey the rules", or "She made him do it". That the concept itself has now grown legs is scary enough - that people can justify abhorrent behaviour because you yourself are just such a complete fuck-up. 

I'm currently reading a book on the contemporary history and proliferation of homelessness in America written by a medical anthropologist. And I am not reading it quickly - not because the academic concepts or jargon are beyond my grasp, but because the situations described in it are just way to close to home for me. 'Close to home', that's certainly a pun unintended. Nobody wants to be in this situation and nobody, for sure, thinks they ever will be. My point being that even from a medical anthropologist's standpoint, or especially from that standpoint - the true feelings I experience are masked by statistics, or more jargon, or more simply, denial. Standing so far away you can't see the trees for the forest. So if people, my friends, or even academic professionals, can't understand how I feel or what to do about it, I need to understand that. How could they? No matter how much one views or opines or studies a subject, that does not make them an expert or an authority on it. Only being there can do that. It's one of those "you had to be there" things.