Akron is spreading Medieval Diseases

I’m not sure which is worse: cruelty by decision or cruelty by ignorance.

This story falls into the category of cruelty by ignorance.

The City of Akron is currently on a rampage against their homeless citizens. They are hunting homeless people.

Since the beginning of the year I have personally seen them shut down at least a half dozen homeless camps.

They don’t tell them where to go. No homeless service providers show up to offer help.

And if the city can find them they will immediately throw them out of any place these people try to hide.

The madness of this is infuriating and frustrating. But it’s not actually the urgent story I want to tell you about today.

Today I want to tell you about the complete incompetence the city is exhibiting in the way they go about closing these camps.

Last night I was watching a video about a man trying to build tiny homes for the homeless people of Los Angeles. In the video they talk about how the city cleans camps. You can watch that here if you’d like:

But what is important is the systematic way they go about it.

They educate the workers on what they are going to experience. Things such as powerful opiates, needles, feces, urine, rats and other bio hazards.

On top of that they give them safety equipment like bio hazard suites:

They duct tape the arms of the suites and wear thick rubber gloves:

And when they are done they then thoroughly power wash the sidewalk:

These are professionals doing their job professionally. (Notice his boots. Those are quite likely protective quality as well.)

This is the scene at an Akron camp cleanup:

These are people required to do community service work. They aren’t paid. They aren’t volunteers. These are people REQUIRED to do this work.

They are in their own street clothes. They were given fabric garden gloves to do the work. They were given no training or even warning about what they had gotten themselves into.

It is no exaggeration to say that this community service work could have been a death sentence for these people.

As of today Summit County now has 81 reported cases of Hepatitis A.

On May 30 I wrote that The Ohio Department of Health reported that Summit County (Akron) had 64 reported cases of Hep A… Compared to Cuyahoga County (Cleveland) which had 54 cases.

Two weeks later the numbers are:

Summit county: 81 Cases

Cuyahoga County: 62 Cases

We have increased Hepatitis A in Summit County by 27% in 2 weeks! Cuyahoga County increased by 12%.

The population of Cleveland is 385,525. The population of Akron is 197,846.

So not only do we have more Hepatitis than Cleveland. We are outpacing them every day.

This all becomes more critical in the face of what Dr. Drew recently said about LA:

Dr. Drew Pinsky warns Los Angeles could be at risk of a deadly epidemic this summer | Fox News

He said: “I want to give you a prediction here. There will be a major infectious disease epidemic this summer in Los Angeles.”

“Pinsky described to Kilmeade what he believes to be the almost medieval conditions in the City of Angels and compared local politicians to Nero, the infamous Roman Emperor who allegedly fiddled while his nation burned.”

Our mayor is fiddling while Akron burns.

On top of that he is putting unsuspecting community service workers in harms way.

We are living in a town of insanity.

I don’t know how to yell louder than what I’m currently doing. But this is serious. We are on the edge of a very serious infectious disease outbreak in Akron Ohio.

Someone PLEASE listen to me.

What is happening in LA is going to happen here.

They don’t clean these camps properly. They don’t try to help the homeless stay clean. They just scatter them to the wind. They are making everything worse.

We are looking at rodent-borne, flea-borne illnesses, plague, typhus.

It’s all very possible because the administration isn’t taking their homeless problem seriously.

These people need to be living in a place with running water, toilets and trash service.

Whether you care about the homeless is irrelevant. This is an infectious disease emergency.

SOMEONE DO SOMETHING!

 

 

CANCELLED DUE TO “THE RECENT CONTROVERSIES.”

Many of the difficulties of this work just roll off my back. They don’t make me angry.

I don’t think I even had a minute where I was angry towards the woman who burned down our porta potty and caused $5000 worth of damage.

A tenant called the cops on me yesterday for going into his office to show it to another tenant even though I gave him 3 days notice. He owes me about $1500 in back rent. The cop just walked out. I wasn’t mad at that.

I’ve had a table thrown at me. I’ve been punched in the face. I wasn’t mad at either of those people.

So many things have been stolen from our facility I can’t even begin to make a list of them. I’m not mad.

But this. 

This gets under my skin.

The Portage and Summit County Rotary clubs have been organizing a cookout for the homeless for several months. It was scheduled for next week.

Last night we got notice that they are canceling the event due to the “recent controversies.”

Was it the controversy of us running an illegal campground for the homeless for 2 years?

Was it suing the city for the right to shelter the homeless?

Was it the house we bought from the Land Bank and then as soon as the paperwork was done we got notice from the city that it was condemned?

Was it the op-ed the mayor did telling everyone that I’m an idiot?

Or perhaps it is that I supported two homeless men for holding a protest camp in a park because the city repeatedly threw them out of the remote camps they quietly tried to exist in?

Which “recent” controversy pushed them over the edge?

At what point was it that they decided we had gone too far and now they must punish the homeless further by taking away the cookout they had been planning for the last couple months.

People running away from me is nothing new. And they love to do it by telling me that if I don’t change my position they will have no choice but stop supporting us financially.

They love to threaten me with the risk of losing their precious money.

That’s always amusing to me considering it shouldn’t take a particularly astute observer to recognize I am not in it for the money.

Every time someone chastises me for “going too far” because I dared stand up to a machine that oppresses and criminalizes the poorest and weakest among us I immediately think about all the people that must have scorned actual brave heroes from our history.

The White Rose (German: die Weiße Rose) was a non-violent, intellectual resistance group in the Third Reich led by a group of students and a professor at the University of Munich. The group conducted an anonymous leaflet and graffiti campaign that called for active opposition to the Nazi party regime. Most were in their early twenties. Three were executed by guillotine.

Hermine “Miep” Gies was one of the Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank and her family.

Oskar Schindler was a German industrialist and a member of the Nazi Party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust.

John Brown was an American abolitionist who advocated the use of armed insurrection to overthrow the institution of slavery in the United States. (We have the John Brown house right here in Akron.)

Dorothy Day was a political radical who established the Catholic Worker Movement, a pacifist movement that combines direct aid for the poor and homeless with nonviolent direct action on their behalf. She practiced civil disobedience, which led to additional arrests in 1955, 1957, and in 1973 at the age of seventy-five.

Would the Rotary have stood up for those people? Or would it have been too controversial?

I have had several people in high positions tell me that they support me privately but they can’t support me publicly. Then what is the point of supporting me at all? What is the support worth if it is in theory only?

At what point does human rights abuse become so severe that finally someone stands up and says I can bare it no longer. I will stand with the people who have been abused.

My observation is that there is no line. There is no amount of torture and abuse of fellow human beings that will make people finally straighten their moral backbone.

About the residents that lived next door to Dachau Nazi Concentration Camp:

Although the population as a whole realized the utter bestiality of the SS and the nauseating occurrences beyond the barred gates of the Camp, they were afraid even to say anything – much less do anything – because the shadow of the Camp hung over them as well.

And that gets to the heart of the matter. These people are afraid. 

They aren’t afraid for their lives, mind you. They are afraid for their money. What if the Akron Democrat Machine turns on them? What if they are no longer in favor of the power mongers of Akron? If there is even a remote possibility that they could lose some money, the cause will always take a back seat to the money.

People very close to me tell me that I am acting against the interests of my family by helping the homeless. “How could you even think about helping someone that isn’t your family?”

WHO THE FUCK ELSE IS GOING TO DO IT?

People cower and hide like mice in the floorboards of a rotten shed.

They keep their heads down while great atrocities go on right outside their doorways.

What have we become as a species? Who are we? What do we stand for?

Is our own personal gain the entirety of it all? “I got mine and mine is all that matters.”

THIS is what makes me angry.

 

 

 

Akron is drowning in poverty

A person would think that if they spent a few years working with the homeless that they’d be fairly well versed in the level of poverty in their town.

But I’m here to tell you: every day I uncover a new layer of extreme, severe poverty that continues to shock me.

Yesterday a woman told me she left her tent for a week. When she came back someone had moved in and setup a Barbie child’s tent inside and was RENTING out that portion of the tent. This person found that they could sublet a fucking tent.

Also yesterday a person told me they were going to be out on the street soon because they couldn’t afford the $150 A WEEK rent they were paying for the room they were in.

It is not uncommon for me to learn that a person has snuck into one of our two houses and is now living there. Shoeing people out of our houses is a regular occurrence.

A woman recently told me that the house she is staying at is constantly filled with people that aren’t paying rent.

HUD organized the homeless in 4 categories:

Category 1 is a person that is literally homeless. They are living in a shelter or in a place not fit for human habitation… like a tent.

Category 2 is where homelessness is imminent. They will lose their residence in 14 days or less.

Category 3 is a person considered homeless under other federal statutes. They haven’t had a lease for the last 60 days. They’ve moved at least twice in the last 60 days. And this trend is expected to continue for the foreseeable future.

Category 4 is a person fleeing domestic violence and has nowhere to go.

We all think of Category 1 when we think of “the homeless”.

But, I’m here to tell you, that’s just the tiny tip of the iceberg. Category 2-4 is a massive storm raging under the surface.

These are people that are mostly invisible. They are nearly impossible to track. But they have become like this endless nightmare in my life. I see them everywhere. They are like ghosts that “proper” society can’t or won’t see. They are living in an uncertain limbo. Not in a tent. But also certainly not on stable footing.

We know that the poverty rate in Akron is 24.1%. One out of every 4.2 residents of Akron lives in poverty.

That is 47,681 people.

A ward in Akron is roughly 20,000 people. You would have to JAM PACK 2 full wards with the people living below the poverty level.

The numbers, while shocking, become antiseptic and theoretical.

A new study, American Neighborhood Change in the 21st Century: Gentrification and Decline — just released by the University of Minnesota Law School, examines poverty and causes in the country’s top 50 metro areas. They write:

The Cleveland region features two central cities, Cleveland and Akron. The region’s neighborhoods are experiencing powerful economic decline and virtually no gentrification or growth.

The report goes on to say:

But neighborhood decline is much more severe in the cities of Akron and Cleveland, where about 75 percent of population lives in a strongly declining area.

I see how those numbers manifest every single day.

A house becomes a life raft for a ship that has sunk long ago.

If you bought a $5000 house and just let anyone move into it I can pretty much guarantee within a week you’d have about 15 people living in it.

A man yesterday was thinking of offering one of his rental properties to 6 homeless youth he knows. He’s not in the homeless service sector. He’s just a landlord that knows 6 HOMELESS KIDS.

I have also started to observe where rage begins in your body. I feel pretty confident it begins in our intestines, moves into your stomach and then fills your heart. I know this because I feel rage on a very regular basis.

Society just accepts these things.

Mayor Horrigan, in a perfect caricature of elitism and being out of touch said “living in tents is simply beneath human dignity and should not continue.”

Oh. Do you think, Dan? No wonder you became mayor with that astute observation. I wish I had thought of that.

So, while you let us all know that people shouldn’t be living in tents they are now living unsheltered under bridges, in doorways and in dumpsters because you are sweeping away every god damn homeless camp you can find in your city. You are making things worse. Not better.

You are overseeing a city swirling down the drain while you tell us we are experiencing a Renaissance.

The only place in northeast Ohio that is experiencing anything even close to a “Renaissance” is the little neighborhood on the near west side of Cleveland called Tremont.

North Korea lets its people live in abject poverty so it can play war games with the rest of the world.

Tell me there aren’t similarities with how Akron is being managed right now. Ignoring real problems, while telling everyone else how amazing Akron is.

You don’t have to be some soft-hearted person to understand the real consequences of letting this infected wound linger and fester.

This deep, inset poverty poisons the entire system. Does anyone think a city can’t go bankrupt? Does anyone think a city can’t disappear?

If Akron’s systemic poverty numbers were the cause of a hurricane we would declare a state of emergency and take immediate, drastic action. But because Akron is a pot that slowly turned up the heat to boiling we have accepted the devastation in which we live.

We blame the victim. We tell them to stop being so lazy, stop doing drugs and get a job.

Extreme numbers of addiction is the product of total hopelessness. That turns into depression. And the end result is systemic failure. Akron is failing. Akron is in retrograde. I’m not over stating this. I’m telling you as a person on the ground, in the trenches experiencing the hurricane of Akron poverty, we are in deep shit. It’s not going to just fix itself.

We have to take immediate, drastic actions. The only way we are going to turn Akron around is by doing things no other city in America is doing because no other city is experiencing the severe, chronic, massive levels of poverty concentration we are experiencing.

We need real, innovative, drastic leadership. TODAY!

 

 

Narcan Classes and Needle Exchange Every Tuesday at 15 Broad Street in Akron Ohio

Opiates kill people in many different ways.

From not knowing what kind of drug you are taking, to using dirty methods of delivery.

Kids are dying because marijuana and party drugs are being secretly laced with carfentanil… a tranquilizer used on elephants.

We live in an insane world.

But fortunately there are groups like the Summit County Health Department that are focused on saving lives and keeping people healthy.

I’m incredibly honored that we have been chosen as a the newest Summit County Harm Reduction Clinic Location.

Every Tuesday from 9:30am – 11:30am they will be offering free Narcan classes and free Needle exchanges.

If you know of ANYONE that is using any kind of recreational drugs we now live in a world where it could be a death sentence. Marijuana is being laced with super powerful opiates.

PLEASE come take our Narcan class if you know of anyone that is using any kind of recreational street drug.

You can come any time between 9:30am – 11:30am on Tuesdays.

There is a 20 minute video you watch and then you get a free Narcan kit. The information is actually really interesting.

It only takes one time to lose a loved one. Come get the Narcan kit.

 

A Safe Space to Just Be

Click here to learn more and register for the event.

The Homeless Charity community is coming together June 13th to collectively create an outdoor space just to serve the homeless. We always talk about where the homeless will safely sleep. But have you ever wondered… what do the homeless do all day? Shelters close, churches serve meals and then close. This leaves the homeless to gather in doorways, loiter near closed shelters, seek refuge at the library, panhandle on sidewalks and freeway ramps and gravitate sheepishly towards parks in and around Akron.

The Homeless Charity Day Center is one of the only sanctioned and welcoming places for homeless to gather. But the homeless don’t want to be indoors on a gorgeous day any more than we do! So they stand outside our day center leaning against the building or waiting for a seat amongst one of our 4 chairs or 4 benches.

That’s when it dawned on me. These people deserve an outdoor space to call their own that matches the indoor space they call their own. And the homeless are survivors. They will use a safe outdoor space all year long just as they use our safe indoor space.

No. They won’t be allowed to pitch a tent, it’s true. But no one will shoo them away from a comfortable bench in a beautiful setting. No one will deny them the right to eat under our pavilion or sit near out outdoor heaters. Everyone deserves nature. Everyone deserves a safe place to just exist.

Come talk with me about our new park. I’ll be at Hi Ho Brewery in Cuyahoga Falls from 5 to 8 PM. Enjoy food, grab a diet coke with me, and let’s make the old site of tent city a sacred haven for the homeless.

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