Archive for the 'Golden Gate Park' Category

AWOL and PTSD

Published on April 29, 2008 in America, Bay Area, Golden Gate Park, homeless, Iraq, Iraq war, politics, Social Issues, violence and war. 2 Comments

Yesterday was my day to work with homeless youth in San Francisco. Over the past year since I’ve been working for them, I’ve been struck each time a former soldier comes through. I’m talking about young men who are 19 or 20 or 21 and have returned from Iraq with Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder, and now they are homeless. I notice them because they always have service dogs to help them with their panic attacks and other aspects of PTSD. I notice them, of course, because I’m a pacifist and, well, it doesn’t surprise me one little bit that war has damaged them. Many people, not just pacifists, argue that war damages everybody it touches, to lesser and greater extents, no matter if you believe or know you’re fighting on the “right” side. And these young men don’t seem to carry that assurance, even if they one time did.

Yesterday, I met a young man who has gone AWOL. I didn’t catch his entire story, though I wanted to hear more about it. It sounded like he had been to either Iraq or Afghanistan but that was the part I missed. I did hear that his brother was killed and two friends were killed in Iraq, and he was unwilling to be shipped back. So he deserted and he was on his way to Canada. It saddens me to no end to see a young man’s life end this way: hunted by the military now, but scared so shitless that being hunted by the army and living illegally in Canada is better than going back to Iraq. I saw one of those young men in Vancouver last Christmas–an Iraq war veteran, begging for money on the street. I know people have knee-jerk reactions to this subject and I’m not actually trying to force a particular opinion about the war here when I say it’s sad. A young person’s destroyed life–destoyed hopes, destroyed dreams–a young person who lives with this kind of fear every day: this is something that should be sad to anybody, no matter their position on the war.  

I’ve been unable to post as regularly as I’d like to lately. While I’m taking classes at Stanford this quarter, it’s kept me busier than I like, and it’s not possible to post regularly. But the end is in sight–only five weeks away. In the meantime, I’ve also posted another couple of blogs at Catalyst’s blog.

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Two-Week Sweeps

Published on August 24, 2007 in Bay Area, Golden Gate Park, homeless and Social Issues. 1 Comment

I’ve been gone selling books for a month so I start my volunteer work with homeless young people in San Francisco again next week. I don’t yet know how the new two-week-sweep policy in Golden Gate Park is affecting the homeless young people I work with, but I would imagine the consequences are considerable. They struggle as it is with cold, hunger, lack of clothing, and lack of shelter–and the solutions offered by the governmental social system fail more often than they work.  The article, which seems pro-Newsom (San Francisco’s mayor) and pro-sweep, indicates that the people who have been cleared out of the park have been given real help (housing, bus tickets home wherever home is) but I’m extremely skeptical. According to Paul Boden, director of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, a coalition of homeless advocacy groups, every mayoral administration has done sweeps just like this–in election years–and has provided similar statistics for how many homeless people they’ve helped. According to the article, “[Boden] said it’s great for a particular person to get shelter or mental health services, but that shouldn’t be proof of success. ’The issue isn’t about these individual people,’ Boden said. ‘The issue is why do people in general continue to find themselves living in Golden Gate Park? The causes stay exactly the same. It’s not rocket science.’”

Unfortunately, the only anti-sweep letter the Chronicle published was from a young woman, Erika Bernabei, who gave no reasons why sweeping was a bad idea and provided no alternative solutions for dealing with the problem.

Sigh. When I’m Saviour of the World and know How to Solve Every Problem Under the Sun, I’ll let you know.

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