Helpless

I don't know if anyone out there in internet space even reads my posts and I often wonder why I just don't get out my journal and write instead but I find some solace in this blog.

It's 8:00 am, no alarm sounded this morning and it was a great opportunity to sleep in however I just woke up, laid there, and stared at the ceiling. So I made coffee, read the paper, looked out the window, and lit a smoke. This week work has been hell, no not the type of hell you get placed in for some random sin you committed over your lifetime by a loveless and thankless god, but the real kind of hell you find yourself staring at when you feel the absence of hope.

Here is the breakdown of my week at work:
-51/50'd a man who has been making such great progress however he relapsed and came up with a plan that he was going to start random fights with strangers until he found one that would kick his ass to the point of death. When I asked if he was suicidal he said "yes, I'm a freak, wouldn't you want to be dead if you were me?' So he was held in the hospital for one day and I went to pick up when he was released, he appeared fine. The same night he relapsed again and tore apart his room at his board and care. He has sense been MIA however will call me on my cell from pay phones to tell me it's only a matter of time now till he dies and to take care of myself. Helpless.
-Talked another man into going to the hospital because I believe he has gangrene in his foot. His ankle is the size of a grapefruit and it is entirely black, he can no longer walk on it. His reason for not going to the hospital, 'I dont care, let it fall off, my life is shitty anyway, maybe people will be nicer to me if I only have one leg.' I just stared at him. His plan after we left a hospital that essentially just gave him a cane and told him if he didn't go to County hospital he would loose his leg soon, he lacks Medi-Cal, is to wait until his leg starts to smell (decompose) then he'll find someone to cut it off. Helpless.
-Worked with another women who has two black eyes and only comes in to see me after her boyfriend has kicked the shit out of her, she tells me its over when she visits, she understands why she has to leave, and how next time she may die. As I am leaving work on friday I see them walking across an intersection together holding hands. Helpless.
-Placed a man in rehab after he assured me he was ready to quit and he was actually making great progress. He called me from the rehab on thursday to let me know there were more drugs in the program than skid row. He said 'Its great this place is like a hotel and because there are so many visitors to the people in the program they bring drugs, and its cheaper then buying drugs on the streets, but dont worry, I am still trying to quit and I just want to be honest with you.' Helpless.
-Visited a women who is in her sixties at her hotel room that has no bathroom, only shared bathroom down the hall, and she informed me cheerfully she had made a makeshift toilet in her room because there was a man who was threatening her for money so she didn't even feel safe enough to use the bathroom in the hotel. She literally will sit in a chair and take a shit into a plastic bag then when she feels safe will throw it out, sometimes the bags pile up in her room and she puts them under her bed. Helpless.

I feel so helpless, I stand aside my peeps as they take one step forward and eight steps backward. I closed three cases of peeps who went to jail so they were dis-enrolled, after we made progress, only to inherit three more people that put me back at step one: outreach, engage, and try to help.

I feel like I am putting a bandaid on a on a car crash victim and telling them it will be ok, when in the back of my head I know the person is going to die. From where I stand it seems so logical, yet from where these people stand there is no logic. I think about them when I lay down to go to bed at night, the first thing when I wake up, and throughout my day.

I have to find something to do today, my day off, to actually make it a day off.

Flamenco Vs. Flamingo

Sometimes the earth stops... and when it starts again you don't even know your name. Especially after 4 pitchers of Sangria.



On Saturday the proud and classy alumni of Cal State LA got together at EL Cid to have dinner and watch Flamenco dancers twirl and stomp. Que beautiful it was. It was a fine mesh of people their for dinner and lots of protestors that came in off the the streets looking for a cool refreshment after yelling themselves horse at the passing of Prop 8. Once the show was over we packed up the crew and headed to Smog Cutters for a bit of drunken karaoke. Good times. I made many wonderful friends at school, the closest of them were there that evening and it was nice to be among them again. It was also a sobering realization that we are all professionals now as the bill arrived at $677.77 and we were all able to pay for it. I don't ever spend that kind of money on anything, however this experience was one to remember.

Happy Birthday Ms. Lisa.

Victory & Defeat

Can I get an Amen!
However, with the election victory came the passage of Prop. 8, denying gays the right to marry. My sister's best friend, Greg, wrote this as he sat in wait to gain access to an act so many 'straight' people take advantage of. What he wrote was honest and tearful yet so touching that I wanted as many people to read it as possible.

"Last night, the chickens won. In my home state of California, voters elected to give certain rights to farm animals, while at the same time they chose to eliminate my right to marry the person I love. Having been disappointed by my fellow Americans in the past over similar issues and knowing that the passage of Proposition 8 would dampen whatever elation I felt over the victory of Barack Obama, I chose to decline all invitations to election "parties" and instead headed to a local coffeehouse to do some work. Of course, the election was unavoidable there too as crowds gathered around the big screen television, cheering and booing as individual state results began to pour in. But again, I was able to be alone, by myself in my little corner, pretending to do "work" while secretly fretting over the California results that were still hours away.
And so it is a change in the wind with a new hope for a better direction for our country.

At 8pm, it became official. Barack Obama was our nation's first African-American President-Elect. The coffeehouse erupted in applause. Cars honked on the street, whistles pierced the air and I found myself inexplicably on my feet with chills running down my spine. I suddenly was hugging a stranger. And then another. Each of us patting the other on the back and congratulating ourselves for participating in this momentous event. I glanced to my left, and sitting alone, at a table just like mine, was an African-American woman in her late 40's, with tears streaming down her face. I wondered how many times she had chose to face an election alone in order to suffer her own disappointment in private, just as I was attempting to do tonight. How many times had she been let down by her co-workers, neighbors, and family members in her fight to be recognized as equal in the eyes of all? And in that moment, I realized a lesson in patience.

Our struggle as gay and lesbian Americans is a baby in comparison to other civil rights' efforts and we are certainly suffering from another setback today. But if last night's election proved anything it is that in the United States of America progress is inevitable, sometimes is just takes time. Almost a decade ago, anti-gay Californians passed similar discriminatory legislation with the Knight campaign that defined marriage as between a man and a woman. But their victory that night was much more decisive. Today we see that Proposition 8 will only pass by the narrowest of margins. And as Barack Obama took the stage last night, for the first time ever, I was mentioned in a presidential acceptance speech. As he talked of inclusion, he spoke of uniting not just Blacks, Whites, Asians, Latinos, Native Americans, the rich and the poor, but of gays and lesbians too. Two times in one night, history was being made and I was part of the conversation. Change is on the way and history will recognize our struggles. The chickens may have been victorious last night, but this caged bird knows he'll get to sing very, very soon."
-Greg

I have hope that all people, created equally, will one day actually have access to those equal rights I keep hearing about.

Didn't your parents teach you how to share?

-'John McCain believes in providing opportunity while Barack Obama believes in mandating sharing the wealth.
Obama believes in mandating shared wealth, why? Americans have a history of sharing their hard earned money with the underprivileged and there is equal opportunity for everyone in America.' --thelizardannex

Bleeding heart liberal is a phrase defined as a person who is considered excessively sympathetic toward those who are underprivileged or exploited, fuck yeah I am a bleeding heart liberal. But much like Peter being asked if he knew Jesus, it's something many people are afraid to admit after that phrase was connected with weakness and ignorance. Well ladies and gentlemen I offer you the new bleeding heart liberal phrase, socialist. I am not certain if it was the second or third of the presidential debates that Senator McCain used the term 'class warfare', but I heard it, sat up, and took notice. Having never really thought of Obama as a Marxist, I started to sift through peoples blogs with the three words Obama McCain and Socialist to understand how I could've missed it! Now I am sitting at the kitchen table enjoying my cup of coffee with the fine writings of my fellow Americans, like that quote above.

Remember when you were in grade school and someone would forget their lunch? Instinctively, as a human, you would offer that person half your sandwich and some of your chips. Why? Because your parents/parent taught you how to share and its just WHAT YOU DO AS A HUMAN BEING. You never looked at the kid and thought, fuckin lazy kid forgot to bring his lunch, fuck him that's his fault. You simply shared. So how old were we when we stopped sharing?

This person wrote 'There is a difference between charity/sharing and taxation. Sharing is an act one chooses to do, taxation is something that is forced. If I don’t share, I’m just an ass. If I don’t pay taxes I’m heading to jail.' My feelings are if people did share, we wouldn't be in the situation we are in now. And why not share, isn't that what Jesus did? However, where in the definition of capitalism does it say share? I was thinking about all the companies I support as a consumer and though some are more ethical than others none can honestly say they don't exploit their workers. By exploit I mean pay a honest wage, a wage that will allow someone to buy a home regardless of the geography in which they live. If the company is making a profit, someone is getting paid more than someone else. The majority of time when that happens in capitalism it's the stockholders/investors who make a profit, not the people actually working. You cannot argue that it takes money in a capitalistic society to make money. Much like Monopoly, the more money you start out with the greater the opportunity to make money. The fact is if everyone was offered equal opportunity to education, livable wages, and stable/safe/ affordable housing, on a level playing field at birth most people's odds would increase. This is not to say everyone is equal, I understand some people work harder than others and some people have a higher education than others, but when you start out at the bottom where is the drive to work harder.

This country was built on the notion that if you just work harder anything is possible, I don't know who would buy that phrase in 2008. I work my ass off, make more than a livable wage, have my graduate degree, yet I will never be able to afford a home Los Angeles and without a home I am at a disadvantage to others. I lack the retirement, investment, and security homeowners have. But I know I live in a very populated city, however understand there are many people who own multiple homes because they need them to make money, after all 56% of homes owned in Los Angeles are used as rentals and purchased as investments, not for the purchaser to live in. But wait there's more, the medium household income in Los Angeles is $44, 894 and to own a home in Los Angeles you need an income of at least $88,900 a year, 1/3 of your income is a safe mortgage payment. So people need to be told share, that's so unreasonable.