Han Fei Tzu, on the eve of the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street

"In particular it (the Legalist Philosophy) emphasized the encouragement of agriculture to provide a steady food supply and of warfare to expand the borders of the state and insure a tough, alert and well disciplined population. It called for the suppression of all ideas and ways of life that impeded the realization of these aims. Vagabonds and draft dodgers, merchants and artisians who deal in nonessential goods, scholars who spread doctrines at variance with Legalist teaching, cavaliers who take the law into their own hands - all were to be unmercifully quashed and the people to be kept in a state of ignorance and awe."

On the eve of the first anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, 09.17.12, I find this passage from Chinese philosopher Han Fei Tzu written over 200 years before the birth of Christ. (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.

Emergency Assistance: Thank You Freya - Happy Birthday@me:)

Fuzzy logic

My week begins with $100 from Freya to help replace art supplies lost in my earlier arrest and police raid of my belongings and a reminder to all that I am still $250 away from being able to replace the Lumix camera, tripod and artists easel confiscated and miscataloged by the NYPD. During most days I spend the mornings networking the job scene, the afternoons supporting Occupy at Union Square and the rest of my time fighting the cops - yes, Mayor Bloomberg's self stated "personal army" who have taken up full-time residence against Occupy, the first amendment and anything that smells like it might threaten their boss' job.(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.

Emergency Assistance: Thank You Mary

Liquid Tide laundry detergent splatters into the puddle as the rain splashes down around the prancing homeless man, Jack, - his soggy shoes and clothing full of suds in scrubbing his hair and singing to the Occupiers under the awning of the Union Square subway. This is normal. But he is happy, if not a little warped in spirit. Sunday's New York Times had led with a story and photo of the blind Chinese dissident, Chen Guangcheng, arriving in Greenwich Village whilst coverage of the thousands of American dissidents who had descended on Chicago to protest the NATO summit went unnoticed by the mainstream media in a New York weekend that revealed sunshine, a 30 million dollar NYPD overtime expenditure for Occupy Wall Street, and the introduction of Robert Lederman, the artist/activist who was arrested over 40 times in NYC for display and sale of his art - (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.

Emergency Assistance: Thank You Alex

Arrest me before I 
can speak freely. 

On 27 April I was arrested for being a participant in Occupy Wall Street. You can read that story here. As I was in police custody and working to secure my release, the NYPD raided the Occupy camp at Union Square and confiscated my personal rolling luggage as 'unattended' amongst other group property. That story is here. Inside that luggage was all the paint, brushes and supplies I use to make protest signs for the movement, and to collect donations that support my and the work of the movement. In one day, in a completely illegal arrest of an individual and theft of his personal belongings, a person was not only accused of crimes not committed, but denied the ability to support himself in his attempts to exercise his (and your) first amendment rights. And what's left of middle class America tucks in the kids and settles down to a hot cup of Nestle's cocoa, secure in the fact that the American dream is alive and well and the grass will still need cutting on Saturday. Or maybe not. (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.

Emergency Assistance: Thank You Melissa

On Wednesday, just hours after my post for emergency assistance, I received a PayPal notice of deposit for $50 from a woman I had not heard from in years. It was the first help I've seen since my illegal arrest and the confiscation of my property by the NYPD last Friday. The next day, I received the following note: 

"I've been keeping up with your journeys via your blog and various updates that you do such a great job of putting out across the social media spectrum. Bravo! Your journalism is both candid and captivating. I'm terribly sorry to hear of the arrest and loss of your of supplies. I hope that I was able to help in some way. What you're doing takes some real balls and I absolutely admire that."

Demand #4623

And Melissa and I have never met. A few years ago, while I was living in Vietnam, Melissa had been referred to me by a colleague for some assistance in helping her secure an internship at my alma mater, Leo Burnett - so my job was to be a virtual mentor of sorts. Melissa never got that job and I never became the President of America but we've both gone on to Occupations that suit our talents and places in life. Melissa occupies a 9-5 insurance job in Las Vegas and I occupy New York City in hopes of bringing positive social change to a world that greatly needs it. Yet our missions are the same. Contrary to many people's beliefs, the Occupy movement is not anti-capitalism,  but it is anti-irresponsible capitalism. And contrary as well to conventional wisdom, occupiers may not have conventional jobs, but they definitely have a collective Occupation. With well over 12 hours a day invested in Occupy over the last 8 months, my being arrested by the NYPD has signaled that I am so constant an Occupier and so resilient an artist that I have now become a threat. And generally, this is a good thing. That means that I am doing very, very well at my job. Rarely a day goes by at Union Square that I am not approached by the 9-5 class and given thanks for doing a job that they are not able to do. And that job is to raise awareness about the issues that affect humankind the most - Economic justice - The right to a job and home - and non-profit healthcare for all.

Without the 9-5 Melissas and others out there, Occupy could never survive - but together we can continue to reshape and control the destiny that is our lives and the lives and futures of our children, grandchildren and beyond. Long live this Occupation. And thank you again Melissa.

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.

Arresting Developments

Street Graffiti 

On Friday, April 27th, I was arrested by the NYPD for essentially, being an Occupier. When asked why I was being arrested, officer Kevin Wahlig said, "I don't know, a couple of things. We'll discuss it on the way to the station." Not until much later in the day before my arraignment in court was I aware of the actual charges and I was never read my rights. Stated as (1) Disorderly Conduct and (2) Resisting Arrest, I found the charges interesting in that my conduct was one of sleeping on the sidewalk and my resistance to arrest was premeditated in the officer's mind, well before I was actually arrested. It seemed immediately that preparations for disrupting Occupy's May Day plans were underway.

According to a 2000 court order from the New York State Supreme Court, sleeping is protected as a form of "public expression", so I couldn't possibly being arrested for that, could I? Well, not legally, but if my sleeping was disorderly I suppose I could be cited (funny just thinking about that - "You hogged all the  covers so now you're under arrest!").

My Occupation

The police had come at 6:30am to wake up a host of Occupiers sleeping across the street from HSBC and helping Max in his vigil to highlight the plight of the homeless. I had awaken but fallen back to sleep due to a succession of rainy days and need of sleep. Waking me a second time no less than four officers were in charge of me with Wahlig taking the lead. As I prepared to collect my things and began putting on my shoes I was asked for my ID which I produced and continued packing up. Asking for my ID back was when I was told I was being arrested, so I immediately reached for a cigarette (knowing I wouldn't have one all day) and began to light it - but that set the four officers off in a flurry of trying to grab my hands to handcuff. Arms pulled behind me, entirely too much force was used to detain a 143lb man and the cuffs wrenched so tightly my left wrist was bruised and cut - my body pushed around and manhandled as if they needed to create a scuffle to make it look like something was happening. But nothing was happening except another routine illegal arrest of a member of Occupy Wall Street.

Sign of the times

Since the beginning of Occupy on September 17th, 2011 over 17 million dollars have been spent in NYPD overtime, policing a non-violent movement and over 2200 arrests have been made according to the National Lawyers Guild. I wonder how much it costs to arrest a homeless man for sleeping? Whatever the cost, it's too much taxpayer money that could be going to creating jobs and alleviating the homeless problem in the US, but in NYC it seems no amount is too much when it comes to funding the police department. Earlier in the week I overheard an officer say, "I hate Occupy but I love the overtime". Great. That's your tax dollars at work, harassing citizens, suppressing free speech and taking us yet one step closer to a police state - with officers just making up the laws as they go. At Occupy though, we see the NYPD overreaction as a measure of our success. Only if we are truly a threat to the status quo would they react with the brute force and numbers that they have.

My day proceeded with being handcuffed and thrown into a van, not able to take my rolling cart with all my artwork and clothing in it. So I left it with my fellow Occupiers, sure that they would keep an eye on things and I could pick it up later - but that would not be the case either. Once at the station I was relieved of my personal belongings, finger-printed, retnal-scanned and pitched into an empty cell. With no other customers that morning I was doing all I could to keep Precinct 13 alive and buzzing with the smell of a fresh kill. This crime fighting stuff is indeed a serious business.

An hour at the precinct and I was transferred downtown in a van to what is referred to as Central Booking. It's basically a city jail and as opposed to the rules at the precinct where I was required to remove my belt so I didn't hang myself from the shame of my charges, I kept my belt, wallet and ID and was put in a large cell with 10 or so other prisoners - and if one had to judge the state of criminal activity by this lot, it might be assumed that we were all living on Sesame Street. One guy was in for "moving cardboard" in an attempt to arrange a warm sleeping spot for himself. Another for DWI, of which he seemed totally capable, and yet another for short paying a cabbie claiming the guy ripped him off by driving a longer route. No axe murderers, armed robbers or drug dealers. Unless prisoners are arranged by the severity of their crimes it seemed this early morning crew of primarily black and hispanic customers were doing nothing but giving the cops a way to keep their operations budget and make the monthly arrest quota with just days to spare.

Hours passed and we were served dry bread with a piece of cheese on it for lunch at noon. Hours more passed and we were served another two pieces of dry bread with cheese on it for dinner at six - and by this time, very few people had been processed through to arraignment. So we were basically sitting around with our thumbs up our butts comparing charges - all misdemeanors. Finally, a number of us were moved to another cell to be able to speak with our respective attorneys. We were transferred by chain gang, all handcuffed together and began, one by one, to have short meetings with our public defenders. Outside we could hear both the police statements of events and the accused accounts. During the DWI guy's meeting we could hear the attorney speaking on the phone with the guy's wife who was downstairs posting bail for her husband. "She wants to know if there's a bar in the building", the attorney said, "While she waits for you to get out". Funny, this 'he and she' separated by phone and crossbars, seemed the perfect couple for the times.

My attorney had been arranged by the National Lawyer's Guild and came prepared to hear the trumped up charges. Representing the Legal Aid Society who had been retained by NLG to handle an overflow of cases (Of the over 2200 arrests made of Occupiers, nearly 700 from the Brooklyn bridge march back in October are now finally going to trial) currently going through the system, he recommends that we fight the charges instead of taking a plea bargain that would drop them after six months if I remained out of trouble. Now knowing the police can just make up charges whenever they want, I didn't feel confident that I could keep out of jail until then, and with any other arrests, even bullshit ones, I would be looking possibly guilty on the standing charge - and so I agree with my council and decide to fight. It's a no-brainer since we're now seven months into  the battle anyway. Methinks it's time to start winning.

Up In The Air

Arraigned and out before 9pm, I make my way back to Union Square only to find that the police had harassed and raided the Occupy tables there and confiscated my rolling cart with the rest of my clothing and all of my street art business (Signs illustrated in photos here). Eye witness reports of Officer Lombardo from the 7th precinct rolling away my cart are plentiful and I have photography and video of the heist. Now I was not only homeless, but jobless by nature of harassment and theft by the NYPD. It seems once one is down, the procedure is to keep them there and I can assure you, the police are doing their best to oppress the less well-armed. Today I was asked if I ever thought I would get the bag back. "I don't know", I responded. But I can guarantee you, once I get back in the business of making those clever protest signs, I have a whole new target to aim fun at. It's generally a bad idea to piss off those who can write and draw:)

It's time the NYPD is outed and rightfully disrespected for the childish and boorish organization they have become - arresting the developments of a society that has had quite enough of the rich getting richer while the poor become continually poorer. I have not yet begun to fight.

iPhone Phund Now Phulfilled. Thanks Rich!

And boy, am I glad that's over - and I'm sure you are too. Throughout it all (muggings, etc.) I had people with iPhones complaining that I didn't need one for work - but somehow they did. Funny how some people think their jobs are more important than mine. And people who didn't have iPhones, but should have, complaining too - some even in the advertising and design business who didn't know what QR codes were or how to read them with a smartphone. In any case, too many people complaining that I was asking for a seemingly high-end product. But in the end, the greater number of friends and supporters who sent positive messages, financial help and general good vibes won out. Thank you Freya, Pete, Sylvia, Kim, John, Mary and Rich for all your care and spirit. Mission accomplished.

Occupy Wall Street Returns to Union Square

Photo: Julia Reinhart

Welcome drummers and clowns and street performers of all varieties - and yes, real activists and protesters too. And with the six month anniversary for OWS on March 17th at Zuccotti park, Occupy was back in business - until the cops kicked them out again on that Saturday night. The Raw Story covers things here with police violence marking the otherwise peaceful protests and bringing back to mind the government oppression of the last days at Zuccotti Park. And so after a full day on the 17th I left at midnight, only to see the protesters physically removed later on TimCast's livestream and an OWS move to Union Square. 

Capt. Ray Lewis

Monday I arrived at Union Square to a more than festive atmosphere. It was like the police had given OWS a gift - a new park to haunt. Befuddled park rangers and police tried their best to deal with a morning crowd, much more spirited than they might have been used to, but somehow in their eyes, you could see they were just waiting for word from above to drop the hammer yet one more time on the Occupy movement. Captain Ray Lewis, a retired Philadelphia police officer was there, just as he had been at Zuccotti, and a whole new generation of New Yorkers seemed to delight in the idea that the fun had finally reached their neighborhood. Occupy was back. At least in spirit.

Throughout the week, police presence had increased and on Tuesday night, the ritual of barricading the place, a Zuccotti staple of American freedom, had returned. But this time, it was the police barricading themselves into a small portion of the park and forcing the protesters onto the sidewalk, a legal sleeping area in NYC, to look back on the cops and taunt them from the outside. A video of protesters "Cop fishing" with a donut shows the Occupy movement has still not lost its sense of humour. Later in the week, I designed the logo above, based on the idea that people were trying to Trademark the Occupy Wall Street concept but didn't have a logo. I thought this solved the problem nicely - to sort of occupy the legal concept of owning intellectual property. It seems things will just get more interesting as this American spring gets under way.

SXSWi: Homeless Hotspots - All The Rage Until the Geeks Go Home

Well, the media have weighed in on the Homeless Hotspots program at SXSWi, so now it's my turn - and I have two problems with this program, after having read a great deal of the both negative and positive press on the initiative and also having substantial experience in the advertising business. I know the work of agency Bartle Bogle Heggarty (BBH) well and they are amongst the most creatively respected agencies in the world, but this effort generated far more negative press than it needed to for two reasons:

#1) Objectifying the Homeless 

Why call it 'Homeless Hotspots' unless you're trying to 'guilt' people into participating? Why not 'Human Hotspots' or 'Helpful Hotspots' or anything that doesn't make a homeless person wear a t-shirt that calls attention to their disadvantage? Would we have paraplegics wear shirts with the website address if the alliteration works? Simply branding it differently would have taken the negative aspect away and then made it an actual pleasant surprise when you found out it was really staffed by out of home participants who were making a buck in a way that they might not have otherwise. 


#2) Lack of Homeless Creative/Management

On LinkedIn we have a nice LMSW with Social Service provider Front Steps defending the program who certainly doesn't look homeless. She's actually paid, a lot in homeless terms, to work with the homeless. She goes to an office everyday and has a computer and a phone and gets a paycheck every two weeks - even though she works for a 'non-profit' funded by grants and public monies . And then there's BBH. If you've watched Mad Men or know anything about the advertising business you know their business environs can be funky but far from homeless. But what you don't see is any homeless person in the management or creation of the program. As described, it was cooked up by the agency, presented to Front Steps and then administered by Ms. Fowler there. But it's like the days before we had any black quarterbacks. I don't see any homeless people on the front lines, the directing lines, the throwing lines. Why not? We'll they're homeless, right?

What is missed in virtually all the programs to 'help the homeless' is that the problem in America is, that it is impossible to afford housing if you work a minimum wage job and in Texas, a 'Right to Work' (intentional misnomer) state, the minimum wage is just $7.25 . Poor Mr. Clarence, a Homeless Hotspots participant, lost his home to hurricane Katrina but it doesn't seem the government has been able to help him regain his home after a natural disaster aided by ill-maintained national infrastructure took it away. And FEMA? Who knows how they didn't help him. Instead, he's moved to Austin to do this, for a week.

Instead of programs to 'rehabilitate' or otherwise 'cure' or 'help' the homeless it might be more helpful to involve people affected by the syndrome and ask them what they want and how they think they might get there. I doubt that wearing propeller beanies and selling rides at the fair will be on their list. They might think that having an actual job and being able to afford a home are the most important things to them.

iPhone Phund Now Up $450. Thanks Mary

And so we're almost there. Thank you Mary for $100. Mary and I made our first television commercial together in 1984, or rather, we both worked for an advertising agency that made commercials for clients. We were not in the actual spot. Thank God. But we had this wild gay client who wanted us to spend a lot of agency money, arguably his money, on making him happy in LA. And so we did. We also did a complete survey of local convenience stores and hot tubs and spent some time riding a conveyor belt, upstairs and down  in one, searching for the toilet. Are these the kind of stories you want to hear homeless people telling - about their exploits in LA not being homeless? Of course not. But fuck you. What you would know about being homeless or fucking about in LA could fill a thimble. And that's not the point here anyway. The point here is that the face of homeless has changed. Changed drastically. And although you may believe that TV commercial making/conveyor belt riding people should, simply by their virtue of being complete twats, be homeless, then so be it. We have lives too you know. We are you. You just don't know it yet.

How much does it cost to be homeless?

"You have $400 USD coming so you can adjust your thermometer and perhaps get to work...book references that prove the thesis. I dont agree that you need an I phone to get a job and I really dont want to debate this...I really dont care what you do with the 400...none of my business..."

And so began last week, the promise of some small work, a contract to write a book, and a promised retainer that never showed up. By Wednesday, I had not heard that the money had been sent and so, sent a follow-up note. In response, I was told that the job had been cancelled and would never happen - a book the supposed author had already registered a website for and sent me an outline, contract and several detailed notes about.  "So what happened?" you ask? Well, quite simply, he reneged. Or more, quite possibly, didn't have his head screwed on properly in the first place. (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.

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.

A Charity Case: Random Thoughts on the Elephant in the Room

On The General Malaise

Nobody wants to be a charity case. I certainly didn't. As opposed to having lost my job in America, I was returning from a prolonged economic crisis overseas to see if I could restart a career stalled by America's bumbling with the Axis of Evil, an ill-conceived foreign policy concept that essentially created three new reasons for three new wars but did nothing except kill business for American companies overseas after 9-11, mine included. I had a company in South Korea, not an Axis country, but all the same, saw business grind to a halt with simply the name Korea being tainted for the then foreseeable future. And so I worked tirelessly to rebound from that over the next ten years. But it didn't work. So I came home. And that hasn't worked either. Yet.

USA: #1 in poverty

But I could never have seen the disaster that would be America on my return. The omnipresence of a repressive police state, the Occupy Wall Street protests in New York spreading country, and indeed worldwide, within weeks of my return. The general depression of the place - Obama all but sold out to the banksters and poverty rapidly rising all across the country with nary a word about it in the national debate - THAT elephant in the room. That 99%. In the graph here, America is #1. #1 in relative poverty worldwide (and Japan or Korea don't even make the list - or anywhere is Asia for that matter) pointing to income disparity being our problem and the difference between collectivist, socialist, and individualistic, capitalist, societies.)

And this week's political distraction being Rush Limbaugh calling a college student a 'slut' as the G8 conference  is quietly moved from Chicago to Camp David under the threat that Chicago could gain it's 1968 notoriety back again with mass protests against both the G8 and NATO summits being held in the city at the same time. Too bad. I hope people hit the streets anyway. It's needed. More needed than ever.

On Being an Educational Tool

I continue to have mixed feelings over this blog being used as a reference for homeless studies (see sidebar above) as I come to see what has become described by some as The Homeless Industrial Complex: "those organizations (who) rely on the continuation of the homeless problem for their own survival; if the homeless problem goes away, so do the donations and grants. The homeless problem will remain intractable until the homeless-industrial complex which sustains it is broken." 

As this blog is used by one arm of Columbia University for research, another, the Columbia Center for the Prevention of Homelessness Studies (CHPS) sites no less than fifty (yes, 50) Ph.D.s proffering to address the homeless issue as well. Now one has to ask themselves, didn't the boss ever come in one morning and give the entire staff a gigantic ass chewing over the dismal state of the numbers? "Look goddamit, we're spending ooddles of grant monies and our work has proved to be completely and totally ineffective! You're all fired!" No. Of course not - because if the boss did that, they might be out on the street as well. And so the system keeps feeding itself. 

For the record, I've contacted CHPS and offered my services as a researcher but have yet to receive any response. Why is it that I imagine a room full of academics pecking away at computers and looking up and saying (in unison), "A real homeless guy, working here? Nah, that wouldn't work".

On The Phone Thing

There is some light at the end of the tunnel here. With a few more expected donations by the end of the week, I should have a phone by the following week. If you can help, please do. I still need to pay the service fee each month of at least $50.

On Work

By the end of this month I will have made nearly $550 honest, writing website copy, beginning a soon to be announced book with a friend and participating in a homeless research study for NYU. But that's a far cry away from being called a living wage, let alone paying rent. Hopefully the phone will take away yet one more invisible wall and get me back on the track to some real work. But to do that means extracting some miniscule percentage from that well entrenched 1%. Better wish me some luck on that. I hear they're holed up at Camp David these days...

iPhone Phund Now Up $300. Thank You Kim

And it looks like we're more than 50% there, and we would have been, without the mugging. Yes, muggings cost money. In this case, $100. And it's my fault. My fault only. Even victims blame the victim when it's justified. I shouldn't have been where I was, when I was, with that much money in my pocket.

But I need to register this very important contribution, keep transparent and get on with things. And yes. It sucks. As you can see from the thermometer on this post, the hundred bucks looked damn good on a $500 goal, but as you can see on the thermometer in the left sidebar, I added the lost hundred to the total goal, so well, it's like treading water some days. Point is not to drown. I've had some offers of work as of late, and hopefully, even some small jobs will come through - writing and web design and such. Thanks to all of who who have stuck with me, supported this effort and kept me pretty damn bright throughout even bruisers and bus stations. It does all work in the end. That's the experiment, right?

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.

iPhone Phund Now Up $200. Thanks Sylvia

Want to know who your friends are? Get mugged. Or go homeless. Or ask for help. That'll sort the men from the boys for sure - or the women from the girls in this case. "You are on my prayer list and I worry about you, especially when I hear things like 'mugging'. I think you need to get out of that city", Sylvia writes. And I appreciate the thought, but I'm not going anywhere any time soon. I was born here, and even when another friend writes of all the avarice and greed and shit that flies around here, that doesn't deter me at all. For all the people who think making it here is tough, or feel some hardened cynicism about the place, I would like to invite them to take all their money, their life savings, retirement and all, and start a business in Seoul, Korea - like I did.  Because, I can tell you from experience, it was a whole lot scarier than anything I've seen here so far. People thinking that making it in New York is such a big deal, don't know anything about doing business in the largest market in the world. Asia. And I pulled that off - against all odds. And funny, what killed that business was America's stumbling foreign policy, and a president who embodied what rhymes with stumbling but begins with a 'B' (see right sidebar top intro). Thank you Sylvia. Thanks for having confidence and trust in me. And thank you for being you.

iPhone Phund Now Up $150. Thank You Pete

Pete had written me last week with some very nice words and promised to send me a meal or two by an antique transportation vehicle called The US Postal Service. Yes, they've all but shut the big office down here in New York with plans to turn it into a train station, and that's good for train lovers, but leaves us wondering whatever will become of snail mail - yet it worked wonderfully this week and I received another quaint vestige of the American system - a check. Yes, a piece of paper one can write almost any number they choose on, sign it, and it will be treated just like ordinary cash when deposited in a commercial bank. This one was for $100, and signed by Pete. Another signature on the back by me and it's worth exactly $100. Until you get mugged.

Yes, mugged. One more quaint Americanism, not yet of days gone by. In my case, it's what happens when a guy punches you in the face and thrusts his hand into your pocket to steal your wallet. Designed originally to take money from the rich and redistribute it to the poor, this new post-bank-bailout-still-crisis-economy style of mugging is simply taking money from the more well dressed poor and distributing it to the less well dressed poor - and what happens when you live and shop too near to the Port Authority Bus Terminal too late at night. Luckily, checks can be replaced.

And so that brings me to the iPhone. And you might ask, "Why in the fuck does a homeless guy need an iPhone?" And my answer might be, "because he doesn't want to be a fucking homeless guy any more", but that doesn't answer the question so totally as it needs to be answered. In today's world, things are a whole lot more complicated than that - a whole lot more complicated - like why we live in a country that spends 49% of the world's entire military budget blowing up stuff in third world countries whilst 58.5% of our fellow Americans will spend at least one year below the poverty line at some point between ages 25 and 75.^[6] and 15.1% (46.2 million) will just flat stay there.

But facts like that don't mean anything to anybody. They don't even mean anything to people who actually study things like that. Those are just big round numbers and they don't have any faces attached to them. So I've come to use the Apple index in relation to one's relative poverty compared to what the average college student needs to attend class these days. A few weeks ago I was sitting with a professor friend of mine who was explaining a job to me that would pay $100 for an evening's work when I exclaimed, "Jesus, I don't need $100, I need $500, a thousand, three thousand", I cried. "Look at that girl over there", as I motioned to a student, one of many with similar electronics in this Upper West Side cafe, "That's my competition and she's working with $3000 more equipment than I am, coming out of the gate", I said, scanning her Macbook Pro, iPhone and iPad. And it's not like you can walk in with a Dell and a Nokia and beat that. You can't. You just can't.

If I walk into an interview and pull out a shitty phone, it's game over. If any potential employer finds out I write this blog, it's game over. And if I can't answer an email on the fly or operate a simple calendar app in setting up another appointment in someone's office, it's game over. Game over. That's what the world is telling me right now - and I don't like it one damn bit. So I'm going to fight the hell out of it until someone tells me I'm not allowed to fight any more - or until I'm just too damn old to give a shit.

Last week I participated in a panel for a university on Occupy Wall Street, and for all anyone knew I was just like the other panelists - taking time off from my day job to do a little teaching at night. But I wasn't just like the other panelists at all. They all had jobs to go to the next morning and I didn't. They all had rent to pay at the beginning of the month and I didn't. The only other thing that they had that I didn't have was debt, and I could have some small solace in that. At the end of the class we were all invited out to dinner with the professor and a few chosen students. It was the only pay expected by all for their time expended at a university that didn't seem to have ever had any trouble with money at all.

But in the walk from the school to a restaurant just down the street, things got crossed. I stayed a few minutes behind to talk to one of the other participants and the main crowd, once arriving at the specified restaurant, found the wait line to have been forty five minutes, and so the venue was changed. But I had no phone, with which for anyone to call me to tell me of the venue change. Yes, it would have just been easiest to have planted a student at the old place to tell me about the new place, but that didn't happen. Instead, I looked for them and they looked for me but never did we find each other. Besides, a student couldn't possibly have understood that a man didn't have a phone.

As I walked home in a cold rain I did think that others were enjoying a nice dinner and conversation and all the things that I remember normal people doing - normal people in at least those who had gone to good schools, gotten decent grades and lived in houses reasonably above the poverty line. But I wasn't one of those people anymore. I, instead, was in some sort of societal limbo that chided me for using public funds but refused to equip me properly for finding a job paying anything above minimum wage. I was simply extra.

"You (I hasten to tell you) are a curiousity, a monkey of sorts that they can study or for their entertainment. They go back to their nice homes and restaurants...think about this." I was told this tonight by another professor friend who teaches business. Unfortunately, I've thought about that before - this business of studying things - and I like to study as well, but only with the idea that I can use it to effect real change when the study is over. And for that, I'll need that phone. 

iPhone Phund Now Up $50. Thank you Freya

And yes, that's a long way from $500 (the cost of a used 4g) but then again, it's 10%, so no complaints.

But I need to be a bit more strong on my efforts to make this phone effort happen and so that's the gist of this post. Remember, the longer I don't have a phone, the longer I can't look for work and hence, the longer I stay jobless and ergo, homeless. And yes, the longer I bother you and don't write about solving real problems.

We are now $450 away from a real goal (see thermometer on left). And that's a goal we can reach in a week - with help. Please do.

Recently Meghan Barr, a writer with the Associated Press, called me for an interview last month based on the writing I had done regarding Occupy people living in churches - but when the story finally published, she felt more compelled to call me an "unemployed former advertising executive" than a writer and Occupier. This is the sort of thing homeless and not-employed-at-a-company people have to deal with every day. Help me do better. I need a phone to beat this. And the last thing I need is the Associated Press keeping me down.

To Donate or Not to Donate? A question.

You see these buttons all the time, almost as much as you see a homeless person sitting on the street with a sign asking for money. And mostly people roll right over the buttons or pass right by the people. It's just plain easier than any sort of confrontation - even a benign one sometimes. And what's the difference? What's the difference between an underemployed person or a stay-at-home mom seeking donations for work on a blog or a craft website and a homeless person? Is either one more a bum than the other? And does giving any money at all simply prolong the condition? Hell, if nobody ever got any money from anything they did, they'd just die and go away and that would be better wouldn't it? Getting all those people of no value out of our hair. That does seem to be what mayor Bloomberg wants these days.

But I can assure you that homeless people do have a job. They have a job being homeless and that's a job in itself. Whether living in a shelter or living on the street it's a job to simply maintain that bare standard to feed the government bureaucracy with all the mindless drivel they require or to shuffle off to one of what may be many 'spanging' spots throughout the day to pick up enough change for a meal. It's a job all the same, and not much different than sitting in an office and going through the inbox. The soup kitchen simply becomes your water cooler.

Just yesterday I received a note from a reader, and it turns out, totally by chance, that we both graduated from the same university. He's a retired journalist and had found this blog by way of its writing and subject matter. "You're not just homeless",  he writes, "you're persevering, surviving, informing, helping others, getting the word out." And that sounds like a job to me.

Thank you

If you've found the writing here of value, please donate. If you've read something you thought or felt but never put it to pen, please donate. If you'd like to contribute to something as valuable as a Kickstarter project in the form of a book I'm working on, please donate. I'm currently collecting funds for the purchase of a smartphone and name cards for the job search. Please donate. I thank you all for reading  and would appreciate your support.

The OWS People's Library/West Park Branch is Now Open/Closed

OWS People's 
Library/West Park

One week ago I awoke to my weekly chore of helping to do the house laundry. We hauled the bags of others along with our own down to the local laundromat and did the OWS wash. Since moving to the new West Park Presbyterian church just a few days before, it had seemed that a new paradigm was taking over. New people were contributing and a marked sense of enthusiasm on fresh spaces and wider horizons was emerging. Could this be the new encampment we had been hoping for? Could this old creaky building with it's leaky pipes and leakier windows be the place of new beginnings? Work had been underway for weeks on installing a new boiler in the place but it still had no showers and the chances for even hot water were unsure at move-in time. Add to that the absolute shambles with which said housing working group principles had handled our exit from SPSA (St. Paul & St. Anthony's) a week before, complete with a mock sexual predator trial including the accused and the announcement that no one would be able to take their bedding to the new space but must leave it for the housing group (stated as the owner) to pick it up and haul it away, things were unsure at best. Uncomfortable at most.

But once moved, things seemed to settle in nicely. People found their sleeping spots and the reverend had no issues with people setting up warmer confines in the balcony. My spot even made a news story. And so I set about floating the idea of building a library area where we could take all the books the library people had been carrying around in bags. To those who heard, it seemed a good idea - in fact, a lovely idea.

Welcome home

And so returning from the laundry detail, I looked forward to a full day in a big old building, doing something I have always loved to do - making something out of nothing for absolutely no money - rummaging through a trash heap of history and repurposing old items into new lives. Lamps came from a men's toilet and an under-stage junk pile and chairs from all around the largely abandoned premises. The church, despite its charm had been the victim of water damage for years and accumulated a collection of rooms with broken-down stuff that no one seemed sure what to do with - exactly what we were looking for. 2 matching naugahyde dining room chairs, a big round sectional table, another leather chair saved by 1/2 a roll of duct tape, a busted unused bookcase (we found two of those actually) and an assortment of vases, planters and even a live bamboo plant that had forgotten to die.

And then there was the wiring. As my father had been an electrical engineer I had, by default, learned at least how to wire a house and so in this incarnation was skillful enough to work with an electrical system that was at least as old as my dad - maybe older. Hit the switch kids.

Still life

It fell together beautifully, if not at all quickly, as the work commenced throughout the day with the easiest part being the putting up of books, including a huge bag of books Ernie and I had found discarded by a second-hand bookstore which more than doubled the collection. Wires were run to make allowance for extra plug-ins for the charging of cellphones and even around one balcony-mate who held a particular aversion to wiring in general, unless of course, it was for plugging in her own computer.  Around 8:30 that evening the occupants began to come home. To announce the opening I had made paper signs by hand that directed residents from the front door to the balcony above the sanctuary. Oddly, one of the first reactions was someone screaming about putting paper signs up in the hallway. There are all sorts of paper signs up in the hallway. If fact, the place is made a whole lot more attractive by the signs. They help cover up holes left by all the plaster which has fallen down over years of neglect. But someone else's sign had fallen down and they thought we had taken it down instead. Of course we hadn't. But little could we see the complaints to follow.

As people came upstairs the "Oohs and aahs" just grew and grew ("Where did you get this?", "How did you do it?, "Why didn't we do this sooner?"), until all the chairs were full of people reading, and conversing and becoming, yet again, a community. A community drawn together by warmth and art and anarchy and self expression and an extreme dislike for authority - mainly the authority that had taken away basic human rights from many of us: the educated, the homeless, the two together, the bi-polars, the recovering addicts, the practicing addicts, the aspiring managers, the underachievers, the brilliant and the lost. Find a way to bring that variety together and you might not guess that a library could do it. But the People's Library of OWS had been a primary visual and intellectual force in indeed the beginnings of the movement - that is, until the assholes tore it down - until the spread of knowledge and art became the enemy of process and conformity. Until the world's 8th largest army tore it down at Zuccotti park? No. Until OWS itself lost it's way and found a library, built with initiative and hope, creativity, ingenuity and forbearance, to be a threat. A threat to the status quo.

Preoccupied

"Why do you think they tore it down?", I asked one of my co-occupiers. "Because it was good and they didn't make it", answered my friend.  And so, almost as quickly as it had been assembled, it started to be dismantled, first conceptually, and then finally physically.

"Did you ask the pastor if you could do it?", I was asked by a minion. "Of course not", I answered. "We're Occupiers! We occupied a whole city park illegally for two months and nobody thought that calling Bloomberg and asking his permission was particularly necessary", I answered. So why in the "F" would I ask permission to basically rearrange a bunch of furniture in a building that otherwise had been a dumping ground for stuff nobody wanted? Did I need to ask permission to do something that was essentially good for the community? Did I need to ask permission for something that cost absolutely no money? Of course not. OWS is, at its heart an anarchist organization. Do we get permits to protest and march on the streets? Of course not. So who would need permission to repurpose a bunch of old junk into a library? People don't need permission to steal stuff and break real rules at OWS, and that happens all the time.

And that's what happened last weekend. While way too much attention was diverted to the building of a small corner of solace and knowledge, someone stole a church relic. A 100 year old cover to a baptismal fountain. And word had it that some wild party happened in another room on the weekend - far, far away from the library. So while the ersatz managers and minions were busying themselves with the building of a reading area, real movement threatening crimes were happening - things that would shake what little left of a community there was, apart.

OWS was not built in a day, and it was not built by permission. How to allow initiative and creativity to co-exist peacefully with consensus decision making and proper process will be a challenge to the movement's survival. If OWS needed a GA or a Spokes Council to have been born, it never would have happened.