HOMELESS CHILDREN & THEIR MOTHERS ~ THE VOICE IN THE TREES

An 11-year-old homeless girl: "I died three years ago." 

• 97% of these families are headed by single women with an average of two to four children.  
• Many of these women are struggling with histories that include being victims of domestic abuse, injuries and/or illnesses resulting in loss of employment and housing*. 

• One third of all homeless people are children, under the age of 18. 

Today I was walking the dog behind Trader Joe’s and I passed a shady alcove bordering the alley, in the center of which was a large tree. I peeked into the bushes, and saw a grocery bag. This seemed like a private place for a person to rest, but just as I was thinking this, I glimpsed a pair of shoes attached to legs in camouflage pants, standing behind the tree, hiding inside the tree — as if they were hoping not to be seen, trying to blend in with the shrubs. I could hear the owner of this pair of legs trying desperately not to breathe. Was it a homeless person, or just someone who was trying to go to the bathroom in the bushes?

As I passed by, I said to the bush: “Bless you.” I kept walking. Then I realized that I was holding in my hand two sticks of Mozarella string cheese, so I circled back to the bush and offered it to the person hiding in the trees. “Would you like a piece of cheese? It’s wrapped in plastic, it has its own wrapper," I said. A woman’s voice, shaking, rang out, “No, no thank you.” Then, the voice said: “You're very sweet.” I could see a pair of glasses and dark hair through the leaves.

I walked away and said, “You are sweet too.”

Then I started crying; I couldn't stop. The same way I cried on Sunday when they talked to us about how desperately sad they are. It is tragic it is to be a homeless child. Can you imagine what it’s like to have no place to rest, no privacy in going to the bathroom... no clean, safe, or soft place to lay one’s head. No place without insects or vermin… no place to get dressed, to bathe, or to bring friends home for ice cream. No place to do homework. No place to have dinner or play Monopoly or take piano lessons. No dinner. God bless these poor lost little souls.

My favorite charities are Feed the Children, Imagine L.A., Union Rescue Mission and Candy Christmas" "Under the Bridge Mission" which you can read about in recent threads.

_______________________________

An 11-year-old homeless girl: "I died three years ago." 

• 97% of these families are headed by single women with an average of two to four children.  
• Many of these women are struggling with histories that include being victims of domestic abuse, injuries and/or illnesses resulting in loss of employment and housing*. 

* Please note that these matters do, indeed, precipitate homeless episodes; however, the  underlying cause of extended family homelessness is simply the lack of affordable housing.  Struggling parents in low paying jobs and the decreasing access to available Section 8 or other low-income housing is ultimately a losing situation.  Imagine LA's current programming does not include the development of low-income housing, but we applaud and encourage those efforts. 

Los Angeles, which boasts the world's fifth largest economy, since 2005, has become the Homeless Capital of our country.  Currently, at least approximately 8,000 family units, representing more than 18,000 children and youth occupy our city. 

• 97% of these families are headed by single women with an average of two to four children.  
• Many of these women are struggling with histories that include being victims of domestic abuse, injuries and/or illnesses resulting in loss of employment and housing*. 

The journey begins with the inability to pay rent and then leads to eviction, forcing the family into motels, SRO hotels, homeless shelters, friends and relatives, or, ultimately, the  streets. The typical homeless Mom is trying to survive without adequate housing, childcare, and access to support services.  Her children are often uneducated; shuffled from one school to another due to the transient nature of no permanent housing.  Homeless children, more often than not, drop out of school, fail, or join gangs.

The most innocent victims of family homelessness are the children.  They are the ones who suffer the most, not knowing where their next meal, bed, or school is.  The following transcription of an eleven year old homeless girl, speaks for itself.

WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW

SATURDAY MORNING TUNE IN LIVE FROM LAS VEGAS and LOS ANGELES to our show BASHAM AND CORNELL PROGRESSIVE TALK
from 9 - 10 a.m. We broadcast live -- or go to our website and click on the link to hear the entire show in the archives.

Our special guest Saturday morning, April 21, is the leader of a movement to restore the constitutionally mandated separation of church and state in the United States Military. He is the founder and president of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation. He is also an attorney and businessman, who served on active duty in the US Air Force as a Judge Advocate General – or JAG – for 10 years. He spent 3 years as an attorney in the Reagan White House, and he is the former general counsel for H. Ross Perot. His name is Michael Weinsteen, his new book is titled “With God On Our Side: One Man's War Against an Evangelical Coup in America's Military.”Be sure to tune in to: BASHAM AND CORNELL PROGRESSIVE TALK

We need to keep separate Church and State. "Shouldn't each individual have the freedom to decide what God they are fighting for and praying to? It's that right to worship as we please that has been one of the abiding rasons we send our sons and daughters off to die. We need to preserve that right at all costs."

"It's simply wrong to paint every Christian with the same brush. For example, I'm firmly convinced that it's possible to have a strong, even fervent belief and still respect the constitutional rights of your fellow American citizens. From the first time I ever heard it, I was impressed by the Alcoholics Anonymous idea of drawing its members through attraction, not promotion... I think, for fundamentalists, at least in the workplace: lead by example, not by marketing and publicity and high-pressure sales tactics."

****************************

No matter what we think of the gunman — or of enemies, serial killers and psychopaths in general — what this world needs more of is love. There is no difficulty that enough love and compassion will not heal. In the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, I reminded my kids about the Golden Rule, how to treat other kids at school.

On Tuesday, I told my sons to go to school and pick out a lonely child, a kid who eats alone or seems depressed, or who is constantly bullied. I asked each of my sons to make an effort to befriend this child, at least smile at him, and even be so brave as to risk embarrassment and sit with that person at lunch.

It didn't work because my youngest son came home with an overweight kid. They both came into my office and my son proceeded to call him "Fattie" out loud, right in front of him! The kid chuckled nervously. I told my son, "That is not nice; your friend is very good looking; he's perfect and you are being rude." My child said, "It's just a joke. Everyone calls him that, he likes it, right Frankie?" The child laughed nervously again.

Later my older son came home and whispered to me, "What's that chubby kid doing here?" I was appalled.

I thought I had taught them the Golden Rule years ago, but I guess bad habits die hard. So we are now committed to applying it more conscientiously. We're on a mission to stop this peer pressure to insult other kids!

Because the Golden Rule, meaning "treat others with kindness, the way you would want to be treated," is the most important thing Christ taught. In fact, it is the only part of Christ's actual words and teachings that are necessary in a mixed society. "Love one another; love your neighbor as yourself; love your enemies, bless those who persecute you." That's all anyone ever needs to know about the Great Peacemaker's teachings in order to live together peacefully in a society of warring religions. Enough of the intolerant, divisive fundamentalist preachings.

So I asked my kids to pick out a lonely, alienated child and to pray for this child every night for two weeks. We'll see how it goes. If nothing else, I am asking them to be mindful of other's feelings.

I would rather my sons be kind to others than to get good grades or win a sports competition. Nothing is more important than how we treat our fellow man.

On that note, here is an excerpt from one of my favorite books "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl, the famed Austrian psychotherapist who transcended concentration camp torture through the power of his mind. I was introduced to this book in 7th grad and it changed my life:

Even in the degradation and abject misery of a concentration camp, Frankl was able to exercise the most important freedom of all - the freedom to determine one's own attitude and spiritual well-being. No sadistic Nazi SS guard was able to take that away from him or control the inner-life of Frankl's soul. One of the ways he found the strength to fight to stay alive and not lose hope was to think of his wife. Frankl clearly saw that it was those who had nothing to live for who died quickest in the concentration camp.

"He who has a why for life can put up with any how."
Frederick Nietzsche

Frankl wrote the following while being marched to forced labor in a Nazi concentration camp:
"We stumbled on in the darkness, over big stones and through large puddles, along the one road running through the camp. The accompanying guards kept shouting at us and driving us with the butts of their rifles. Anyone with very sore feet supported himself on his neighbor's arm. Hardly a word was spoken; the icy wind did not encourage talk. Hiding his hand behind his upturned collar, the man marching next to me whispered suddenly: "If our wives could see us now! I do hope they are better off in their camps and don't know what is happening to us."

That brought thoughts of my own wife to mind. And as we stumbled on for miles, slipping on icy spots, supporting each other time and again, dragging one another on and upward, nothing was said, but we both knew: each of us was thinking of his wife. Occasionally I looked at the sky, where the stars were fading and the pink light of the morning was beginning to spread behind a dark bank of clouds. But my mind clung to my wife's image, imagining it with an uncanny acuteness. I heard her answering me, saw her smile, her frank and encouraging look. Real or not, her look then was more luminous than the sun which was beginning to rise.

A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth--that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way--an honorable way--in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."

All of this is spiritual. The Christ came to tell us the very same thing. How we have twisted this message to the self-serving message of "dying for our sins" is hard to understand. Consider this: What if, when Jesus said, “I am the way, the path, the light… the only way to the Father is by me…” HE MEANT LOVE IS THE WAY!! What if he didn’t mean for people to worship him – or make an idol of him. He said, “the things I do, you can do also.” The salvation of man is in LOVE for his fellow man... and in understanding that man is not material, he is spiritual. We place too much emphasis on matter.

I also don’t think Jesus meant to put so much emphasis on his Second Coming, and in this man-made "rapture" business which I explained last week. No matter what the book of Revelation says, I think the Second Coming has to happen in our hearts – each of us individually must have this rebirth of love for our fellow man. We each must become Christ-like: innocent as a child, giving, loving, turning the other cheek, not fighting our enemies, not controlling other people, not being selfish, not fearing rejection, not turning hatred to love, not retaliating, not making more weapons, not fearing anything (for love casts out fear and to have fear means we lack faith.) When each of us becomes as loving as the Christ — this is the "Second Coming." Christ will be reborn within the soul of mankind. It has to come from within. Maybe what the bible means is that we will see Christ (love) reflected in each other.

THIS JUST IN...

Ann Coulter, Advocate for Death, to Speak Tonight with Sam Brownback at Pro-Life Banquet
Queen of Elmination Rhetoric, Hate Speech, Joins 'Conservative' Presidential Candidate on the Dais...
by Daniel Borchers of Citizens for Principled Conservatism

Controversialist Ann Coulter, legendary for her hate speech and elimination rhetoric (see just a few of her most notorious greatest "hits" in the chart linked below), is a featured speaker at tonights New Jersey Right to Life (NJRTL) Banquet. That’s right, an advocate for death is a spokesman for life.

Presidential candidate Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Congressman Chris Smith (R-NJ), and others, will be sharing the dais with Coulter....

FULL STORY/CONTACT INFO:
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=4437

For the FUNNIEST, best, political cartoons, go to Stephen Pitt Political Cartoons copyright 2007 Stephen Pitt