Mumia Abu-Jamal Stargiving Geocities elfpolitics Birdrescue SF Bay Area Bay Area Homeless Alliance San Jose Twins 4 toys Muybueno Preservation Action Committee My friend Steve Cohen Santa Clara County United Neighborhoods Communityhelp San Francisco Glide Memorial Church Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence
Should all citizens be required to volunteer for public service benefitting their country and their careers?We do public service already regardless of career or income level. Even homeless people volunteer. Homeless people and people on government assistance circulate the economy paying for basic needs. Even drug dealers, serving paying customers however illegally, circulate the economy buying expensive clothes, cars and jewelry, and employee salaries. Dealers' earnings and assets are abated, it's true, returning to circulation when sold at auction for mere pennies on the dollar to clear out police inventories. Many people use their skills or learn new ones volunteering already. Officially requiring public service would generate more useless, treewasting paperwork and waste time better spent elsewhere, such as actual service. We all have our favorite causes. Even activism and political campaign work are sometimes included by definition as public service.
Some agencies draw more complaints than support, even among nonpoor. I won't mention names here, there's too many. They enforcedly boss us around and treat us like children. Volunteers are dismissed and patrons turned away for not sharing a conservative ethic, upholding strict rules and tattling on alleged transgressors. Agencies and patrons more concerned with rules than with service don't deserve support. Donations are to be given away without tracking or other strings attached. Police, a valuable community resource, should stop answering calls over an extra piece of bread that would only get thrown out after the meal, or an additional garment somebody takes for a friend, or refusal to show or even carry I D for staff to know who to call them on.
After two hours of late-hour Rescue Mission earbanging, those still awake play the game of accepting Christ in their lives so they can enter the dining room and get served first, only to find cold, stale noodles with or without even grayish-brown (or brownish gray?) chopped boiled mushrooms staff pass off as meat like we don't know the difference. I used to go to the mission twice a year for a boxful of replacement clothes. I'd go in late and finish quickly without climbing over all those other people. Those days are gone. The old director retired and the new one is adamant about registration and going through the program - chapel attendance - to get your clothes. Not even a much-needed coat or pair of shoes is possible otherwise if at all. Now he's gone further - discontinuing all nonclothing items, using the floor space for classrooms and requiring course attendance regardless of other commitments and regardless of church activity elsewhere. Please dear God, save us from this kind of director and program! Even staff is upset with these new requirements. If anything I'd praise God for our Constitution and its First Amendment which prohibits public funding if religious worship or instruction are required in order to receive services. Some agencies even require you to invite missionaries into your home to pray with you!
Once I arrived a few minutes before the Clothing Outreach staff returned from lunch. On the other side of the building were kitchen and dining areas. Lunch was being served. The stupid bitch running the program said I couldn't have lunch because I missed chapel. If she couldn't enforce it I'd refuse to obey. I told her to her face what an uncouth, tacky, stupid whore she is. So-called "rescue" missions should lose support and most likely will. People vote with their feet and their wallets. Shelters have too many strings attached including time limits, programs, fees, religion, curfews and sex.
Homeless people proudly wear America's flag on their coats or backpacks. We all love our country but my answer to the question of required community service is loudly NO! There's plenty of support despite news stories to the contrary, given according to friendliness of service. We don't need more tracking and strings attached. Staff is nastier and nastier, more and more rules oriented rather than service. Agencies allowing walk-ins work because people take only what they or a friend need and can use. Unlike smaller-sized people, larger-sized people must return more often because useable clothes in their sizes are scarce.