They are angry at being marginalized. We help Tiffany Elsa Peretti Teardrop bracelet channel that anger into action."While Food Not Bombs and Homes Not Jails were hitting the streets, the city's largest homeless advocacy group, the Coalition on Homelessness, was primarily fighting Matrix in much the same way similar anti-homeless legislation has been fought nationwide: in the courts. With plenty of free legal help -- the Bay Area is home Tiffany Elsa Peretti Teardrop Earrings a sizeable contingent of progressive attorneys -- it seemed like the logical, and easy, strategy to follow. The coalition soon devoted much of its meager resources to a civil rights program, which set out to challenge Matrix's constitutionality in the courts. The strategy failed. "To fight Matrix, Tiffany Elsa Peretti Teardrop necklace needed to get homeless people involved," says Greg Winter, the coalition's civil rights director. "But litigation is very lengthy and requires a tremendous amount of time. That is incompatible with homeless people. The needs of homeless people are generally so urgent that they do not parallel the structure of a legal strategy, Tiffany Cushion for the most part is focused on long-term change. If you need to make money pan-handling, you can't spend every other day going to court." The coalition collected hundreds of pages of written testimony from homeless victims of Matrix, but the testimony was later declared inadmissible because attorneys for the city demanded to interview everyone who had submitted testimony. Eventually, a federal judge ruled Matrix constitutional.
"It has traditionally been very difficult to organize very poor people Tiffany Elsa Peretti Teardrop bracelet are living on the streets and spending all their time just meeting their needs," says homeless activist Ted Gullickson, one of the group's founders. "What we are able to do is meet those needs while politicizing people. After you help someone get a place to live, they see you are really doing something. Tiffany Atlas most homeless services there is a very clear distinction between well-paid staff people and their clients, who they see as needing their paternalistic help to get off the street. What we are saying is that we all have a right to a home, and people respect that." Homes Not Jails has also been able to present an alternative Tiffany Elsa Peretti the standard media depiction of the homeless as helpless. "With us, you see people saying we don't want to live on the street," says Gullickson. "At one of our last actions, one of our squatters told me that seeing us on television was the first time he ever saw homeless people fighting back." Like Food Not Bombs, Homes Not Jails has a relatively simple message. Tiffany Elsa Peretti Teardrop drop earrings street outreach work with the homeless, Homes Not Jails has heightened awareness of the fact that according to the last U.S. census there are more than 6,500 vacant buildings in San Francisco alone. The bulk are left vacant by real estate speculators. "Homeless people understand this message," says Gullickson. "They can understand the connection between private real estate and poverty.
Armed with a statute against serving food in public, the city has actually embarked Tiffany Cushion a policy of arresting any Food Not Bombs activist serving food in front of City Hall. More than 400 Food Not Bombs activists were arrested as they defied the law in daily acts of civil disobedience for over a year. While Food Not Bombs food servers have recently retreated farther away from City Hall to U.N. Plaza, Tiffany Elsa Peretti Starfish earrings still won admiration from many of the city's homeless and have been at the center of some of the most effective demonstrations against the Matrix program. "Part of our success is that we not only provide food, we provide a political climate where people can learn about the economic conditions Tiffany Elsa Peretti Starfish necklace create poverty," says Keith McHenry, one of the group's founding members. The group meets weekly, and all decisions are reached by consensus. "People really feel that they own the group. No one is paid. We don't have a hierarchy." Another San Francisco group that has opted Tiffany Elsa Peretti Starfish pendant the highly confrontational approach to fighting homelessness is Homes Not Jails. Like Food Not Bombs, Homes Not Jails is run mostly by homeless or formerly homeless people. The group organizes homeless "squats" where the homeless and their supporters literally move into buildings that are sitting abandoned. In addition to a few cases where the group openly occupied buildings as acts of civil disobedience, the group operates between 6 to 10 "covert squats" at any one time.
Through a newly created Family Rights and Dignity Program, African Tiffany Elsa Peretti Sevillana ring single mothers are being taught to organize themselves in an environment that also meets their special needs; by working to support Ayuda, a Latino homeless advocacy group, the coalition is tapping into the large but silent Latino homeless population.Perhaps the most draconian of San Francisco's poor laws is a statute Tiffany Elsa Peretti bars the serving of food in public without a permit. The law has been used to mercilessly prosecute one of the city's most confrontational -- and most visible -- homeless advocacy groups, Food Not Bombs. Food Not Bombs was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts, during the anti-nuclear protests of the early '80s. Tiffany Elsa Peretti Star of David pendant its inception, Food Not Bombs has sought to politicize the issue of homelessness by, as its name would suggest, linking the issues of hunger to the military-industrial complex. It is a message that rings true with the hungry, especially when they learn that the U.S. throws away 46 billion pounds of food every year. The group Tiffany Elsa Peretti Starfish bracelet has chapters in 66 cities in the U.S. and Canada. Since 1988, Food Not Bombs' San Francisco chapter has tried to politicize the issue of homelessness by serving food to the hungry in public locations -- most notably in Civic Center Plaza in front of City Hall. The group's confrontational style and countercultural outlook have offended many a politician, and the city seems to have made a conscious decision to stop the group's operations by any means necessary.
Often officially referred to by police as the "Quality of Life Enforcement Program," the Tiffany Elsa Peretti Sevillana lariat program literally aims to do just that: criminalize those whose "quality of life" doesn't meet city standards. Offenses range from obstructing the sidewalk, sleeping in public and littering, a charge often used to dispose of a homeless person's meager belongings if they are left lying on the ground. The $71 fine that "quality of life" Tiffany Elsa Peretti Sevillana Mesh bracelet are forced to pay is well beyond the means of most homeless people. Instead, most simply don't show up for their court dates, which then leads to a warrant being issued for their arrest. Advocates have fought back against the Matrix onslaught, and their successes -- and failures -- Tiffany Elsa Peretti Sevillana pendant an interesting glimpse into some of the inherent problems in organizing the homeless. Groups like Food Not Bombs and Homes Not Jails, which emphasize direct action and organization building, have been the most effective in generating direct action. Meanwhile, the city's largest homeless advocacy group, the Coalition on Homelessness, Tiffany Atlas a different strategy to fight Matrix: It tried to fight the implementation of the policy in the courts. The strategy didn't work, but now the coalition is trying to refocus its efforts of building an organizational base among the homeless. Part of this strategy is making homeless people a more integral part of its decision-making process. The coalition is also branching out to communities often left behind in traditional homeless organizing.
Because the course deals with such volatile and emotional issues, male Tiffany Elsa Peretti Open Heart charm female instructors are selected and trained with great care. The process of becoming an instructor "involves hundreds of hours of training and hands-on work," says Mary Tesoro, a co-founder of Model Mugging and director of the San Luis Obispo, California chapter. "Instructors are usually involved in Tiffany Elsa Peretti Open Heart drop earrings training for several years." They also undergo police background checks and psychological testing. All instructors must have experience in crisis intervention; male instructors must be over age 25. After their initial training, new instructors teach as apprentices until they are judged experienced enough to be full instructors. Tiffany Atlas emphasize that the course is not a substitute for therapy, but they are aware of its therapeutic effects -- and of their own responsibility for dealing with students who have histories of assault, rape and abuse. A majority of Model Mugging students report having been sexually assaulted in the past. "Tiffany Elsa Peretti Open Heart earrings have extensive training in dealing with flashbacks and other results of abuse, and in what the healing process is like," says Mattingly, herself an incest survivor. "We're very careful," says instructor Donna Curry. "We discuss each class beforehand and afterward. We go over each individual woman, what she is doing well, what she may need." Model Mugging's radical approach has been a major factor in its growth and success; but it has also stirred controversy.