Having a platform of the abolition of capitalism and abolition of wages is by its nature political. Very political. Let’s not kid ourselves here.
There definitely needs to be more legal advocacy for the homeless to bring these issues to light - I think a legal advocacy group could do more that direct action in the long run, especially with bringing the issues into the media to make people aware.
Education of the police is very important, for example, strides have been made in public opinion on issues of youth prostitution - I have an old friend, and former neighbour who has done quite a bit of work on this front, and she says - it is changing.
Where once they would look at teen prostitutes in the same light as adult prostitutes, now there is more focus on helping them get away from the life. Sexual exploitation of youth still is a major issue, but people are focusing on changing laws so that pimps and johns of under-age prostitutes will be more harshly treated. There are still very few services to get these girls and boys off the streets. One of the biggest changes is in public opinion - these young girls are now seen as victims instead of “sluts” “whores” and “criminals”. Similar things need to be done regarding street youth and adult homeless - there needs to be a change in opinion about who these people are, they are not lazy scum, or human garbage, they are people with problems and issues that are not being addressed through the system now.
Until the problems can be addressed - there will be homeless people, and StS’s work will be needed too. There will need to be people on the street protecting the rights of those on the streets like him, because there isn’t enough positive opinion to attract the legal eagles into taking up the cause.
Smash:
This thread has inspired me to talk to the homeless people who live on my block and ask about their situation and if there is anything I can do to help. There’s a very small parking lot in front of my building that some people sleep in, and I have long thought that it would be a nice place to set up a card table with some food. (I have a kitchen and they don’t, see?) I called a guy I know who works with an organization that does housing for recently homeless types, and asked him about the available services and what is most needed and so forth. He suggested asking the homeless folk. Why didn’t I think of that?
Thanks for this thread.
Muffin: Please quit filibustering this thread. It makes it hard to read. Rule of thumb: if you were the last to post, and you didn’t start an “Ask the” thread, then it is probably someone else’s turn.
All the people who are making fun of the OPU’s use of the word “union”: Quit being silly. Unions are organizations designed to give the powerless a voice, so that they will have less of a chance of being treated unfairly. This seems to be what Smash is describing.
It’s a political comment in a political based thread. It’s perfectly OK to critique the political goals of a political group here, even outside the PIT(we do in in GD all the time). And, how are you not going to “tolerate” it?
Jamaika - I actually do a lot of work for the homeless with the City of San Jose. Got a nice plaque even.
The homeless usually do fairly good for food, and clothing. Oddly, they do need socks, since used socks are not usually donated. They also like sealed snack food, something easy to eat with bad teeth. Twinkies are an example, but of course they are not all that healthy.
There are three main subtypes of “the homeless”:
People who were one paycheck away from living in their car, and they lost that paycheck. For these people, they need help getting back into a home, and help getting a job. “Interview clothes” can be a BIG help here. Do you have any nice clothes, maybe a tad outdated or don’t fit? These people often do live in their car.
Dudes who prefer the life on the streets- they like the freedom. They often have an income from disability or Vet benefits or something. Yes, they also can be drug users or drinkers, but not always.
Those who are mentally ill or heavily addicted.
(and of course some others)
A program set up to “help the homeless” will rarely reach or help all three subgroups.
You forgot one group, street kids - aged 10 to 19. This is a very hard to reach group, with its own unique needs.
If you are responding to my comment about the word “union,” I was talking to the people who said “It’s not a union, since you all don’t work” and “What happens when you go on strike? Are there scabs? Haw Haw.” I mean, whether or not it is effective, the OPU certaintly is a union in the sense that Smash is using the word. And since he’s explained what he means by the word “union,” I think quibbling about the semantics of it is silly.
I’m the one who asked about how they could strike and whether other panhandlers would be considered scabs, and there was no “Haw Haw” even implied. I’ve lived on the street and I know that there already unofficial organizations controlling panhandlers in some cities who get down and dirty with unaffiliated streeters. Also, I don’t think a simple hand wave dismisses the fact that OPU is officially affiliated with the IWW, so any questions involving the background and makeup of this union seem legitimate to me.
No, I was trying to give you some sound advice how to really help the homeless.
Ah yes, I didn’t realize the rest was directed at me signs up for Reading Comprehension 101
Thanks for the advice. I talked to my social worker friend for a while, and I appreciate your input, too. He knows a lot about what programs are available in our city and knows a good number of homeless people here personally, due to his job. I do think my best first step will be to talk to the homeless people themselves.
Maybe where you live, it is less densely populated, but here I don’t think there is much of an issue of “finding” homeless people^. There are multiple outdoor sleeping/socializing spots on my block. I suppose my plan is: get to know my neighbors, and if I then find I can do something to help, well so much the better. I think I want to have dinner outside (and invite others to share), because it may be the best way to meet people.
As for interview clothes: my church has a very regular Rummage Sale which is a big supplier of really cheap clothes to the less financially-able folk in our neighborhood. If asked for clothes, it would be very easy for me to get people whole outfits from there. (I have very little in the way of extra clothes myself) I knew the thing about socks, oddly enough. Maybe I saw it on SDMB 
^ETA: But maybe your point is to be thorough and find everyone? I think I’ll start on my block and see what happens.
The OPU had existed for a while as an informal organization prior to the 2004 Homeless Action Strike. Jane Scharf, who happened to be a Wobbly as well as a street organizer, went to the local Wobblies’ GMB and asked them to assist in helping street people she knew personally deal with police aggression by volunteering their phone numbers as contacts, which they agreed to do.
After the Homeless Action Strike, you may recall that we got, as part of our demands, a task force at city hall to deal with the whole police problem. It was during this period that city hall shut down our newspaper program. I was sitting across the table from one of the city councillors and, in a fit of annoyance, told her: “You know you won’t stop us. You pass these laws, and we’ll just break them. City hall doesn’t control what happens on the street.”
She literally looked down her nose at me and said, “You think we care? Go ahead, see if we care.”
At that exact moment I knew I had to do something to make her care, and I began organizing the OPU in earnest, turning it into a formal organization with full membership in the IWW.
As this thread is showing, there’s a huge divide between direct action organizations and advocacy-minded NGOs. The NGOs are concerned first and foremost about their funding, which means they constantly fret about whether what they’re doing might antagonize the powers-that-be. For the same reason they don’t like to be seen collaborating with direct action organizations, for fear that some of the militancy will rub off by association. The result of all of this is that while there is some back-channel cooperation, the “official” agencies which receive public funding are very separate – and often openly hostile – to organizations which use direct action and grassroots organizing.
Here in Ottawa, the OPU cooperates with organizations such as Under Pressure (an anarchist collective), Exile Infoshop (a radical bookstore), and the Ticket Defence Program (as I’ve previously described). The homeless shelters in particular have an odd relationship with us where they fluctuate between open hostility (the copwatch program is banned from the property of one of the shelters, for example, because they like having lots of police around who feel free to maintain order with a strong pimp hand) and quiet support (the street art collective meets at one of the local shelters, and the OPU meetings are held at a local drop-in). In the same fashion we keep an arm’s-length relationship with the mainstream NGOs because we know for a fact that, for example, the police department calls up the management at one of the outreach programs and pumps them for information about our numbers and activities.
I’ve tried often to bridge the gap, but it’s hard. I sat on the board of directors of a local NGO, for example, and was actually thrown off the board when the city called the executive director and suggested – unofficially, of course – that their funding might be in jeopardy if they allowed someone on the board who was part of an organization which had a million-dollar lawsuit pending against the city.
It’s catch as catch can for us. We are always scrambling for funds. We operate on a miniscule budget, but even that’s difficult for us to keep up at times. Much of the OPU’s expenses come from the pockets of private donors, or from Wobbly activities. For example, most winters the local Wobbly GMB volunteers to shovel snow at a local rink and donates the $500 they raise from this to the OPU. When we have specific expenses to meet (such as legal costs) and we don’t have anything in the kitty, I’ll go door to door or buttonhole people on the street and beg. We still owe a sizeable amount of legal fees from the lock-cutting incident, and the IWW General Defence Committee is issuing assessment stamps so that other Wobblies can help us pay it off.
While we may spend money dealing with individual cases (we spent money on camera film for Bill’s lawsuit, for example), as a general rule we don’t try to provide services to the homeless. There are already agencies which do this, and we’re not that kind of organization. That said, if one of our members calls our number and says sie needs a sleeping bag or a tent or some warm socks, we’ll try and get whatever sie is looking for from one of the other agencies.
Oh yes. I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been threatened with arrest for “obstructing” police by standing and watching them with a camera or voice recorder in my hands. My usual response is to hold out my arms and invite them to arrest me. Not even the stupidest roid-rage meathead has been stupid enough to take me up on the offer, since they know damned well what I’m doing is not illegal, and that kind of bullying looks bad for them in the media. But yeah, I have to watch my back. Every cop in the city knows me by my first name, and a few times I’ve had to make a quick call to some comrades when police have followed me quietly down a dark street. I recall one time in particular, while I was doing copwatch, one cop was getting physically aggressive with me and I warned him that he was being recorded. His response was to flip me the bird and and say, “Give THAT to your lawyer.” He did back off, though, and my lawyer was much amused when I dutifully passed on the message. It does help that I’m 6’5" and roughly the size and shape of a refrigerator.
We’ve only had one arrest so far of a copwatcher, and that was because she was a panhandler herself. We strongly recommend that those who volunteer to do copwatch be clean-cut, white, middle-class folks with no criminal record, since their class and racial privilege acts as a barrier between police and their usual victims. However, if a person really wants to do copwatch, we won’t turn anyone down. In this case, she interceded when she saw police harassing a panhandler who was just quietly sitting and begging, entirely within his legal rights. The police officer recognized the copwatcher as a panhandler and a member of the OPU, and threatened her with arrest if she didn’t leave. She responded by showing solidarity with the panhandler by beginning to panhandle beside him. The police officer grabbed her, threw her to the ground, and arrested her. Her partner (we always do copwatch in pairs) wasn’t arrested, but had her head banged off the top of the police car a few times. Ultimately the charges against our member were dropped.
My experience has been that police are very simple, emotionally infantile creatures who react quite differently when they realize that their prey is not intimidated and is well aware of hir rights under law. I recall on one occasion I was being driven to a meeting by a comrade and saw three police officers surrounding a panhandler, harassing him. One officer snatched the sign out of his hands, tore it up, and threw it in the trash. I leaped out of the car and charged the cops, identifying myself and telling them that they were breaking the law. I took the torn sign out of the trash and asked them what they believed gave them the legal write to destroy this man’s property. The cops became totally silent and I could see that the hands were shaking of the officer who was writing the ticket. When they finished, they literally trotted down the sidewalk with me jogging behind, yelling, “Doesn’t it bother you that you broke the law?”
One of the officers – close to tears, I do not exaggerate – yelled over his shoulder, “Leave us alone! We’re just beat cops!”
Once you get past their muscle armouring (to use Wilhelm Reich’s phrase) and their dick-swinging bully-boy machismo, cops really are children.
All members who join have their initiation fees paid for by the OPU itself. Any further dues, if they choose to pay them, come from the individual members. All members remain in good standing with the OPU regardless of their standing with the larger parent union, until such time as they choose to retire from the union, declare a leave of absence from the union, or are removed from the union following the procedures outlined in the IWW’s constitution. Thus far we have had few resignations, a couple of leaves of absence (one so that our member could run for mayor), and no formal proceedings against any member.
The IWW has no control over the OPU. The OPU could choose to disassociate itself from the OPU at any time. The OPU has no “leadership,” IWW-provided or otherwise. We take turns chairing meetings, and all duties are divvied up according to our individual desires and talents. I am generally appointed spokesperson because I have the most experience with media, but there have been many occasions on which others than myself have been spokesperson. No one is “in charge.” I have no more power or pull than anyone else, and indeed, it’s always my pleasure when the OPU votes against something I’ve proposed since it reassures me that I’m not overbearing people by force of personality either.
The IWW doesn’t “sponsor” the OPU any more than they “sponsor” any other job shop. As far as the IWW in concerned, we’re just another Wobbly shop like the Carleton University projectionists or the Starbucks Worker Union.
Neither we nor the IWW care what the State’s laws say. The original unions were all illegal, and had no standing with the State. Even the dictionary definition of “union” agrees that we are a union:
A combination so formed, especially an alliance or confederation of people, parties, or political entities for mutual interest or benefit.
Neither we nor the IWW are a trade union. We are an industrial union. I really have to question why you’re so adamant on insisting that we are not a “real” union when we call ourselves a union, we pay union dues, we have union cards, we are regarded by the IWW as a union, and even the police acknowledge us as a union by using their labour negotiator to liaise with us (since there are specific laws dealing with what is and is not legal during a labour dispute).
Who have you dynamited, and what were the circumstances?
Or do you mean the IWW ‘used to be an organization of debaters and dynamiters’?
Regards,
Shodan
I do not. It’s a personal choice, which I do only when I am speaking for myself. I reserve the right to have my own beliefs, and I will not go out of my way to distance myself from my own views. I commonly wear a hat with a circle-A on it, for example, and I do not remove it when I am giving interviews on behalf of the OPU for the same reason a christian does not remove hir crucifix when giving an interview. It doesn’t make the OPU an anarchist organization because its spokesperson happens to be one. If our members objected to me wearing my circle-A cap, or if they objected to me spelling Amerika with a ‘K’ on my own time, they are free to choose a different spokesperson. Up to this point it has not been an issue.
The OPU has an official policy discouraging aggressive panhandling. We have agreed that if any of our members were reliably reported to have been panhandling in an aggressive manner, we would investigate and attempt to resolve the issue. If a member flat-out refused to stop panhandling in an aggressive manner, we would take steps to remove such a person from our union. Intimidation is not in anyone’s interest, most particular not those of the other panhandlers; a person intimidated into giving a donation will certainly never do so again of hir own free will.
This is a bit beyond the scope of this thread, but it’s traditional. “Amerika” is the German spelling of America, and emphasizes the link between fascist Germany and fascist Amerika. As for Italy and Germany… you’ll just have to imagine I’m adding a silent ‘k’ to each.
As I’ve previously stated, no one in the OPU wrote the Wikipedia article, and it does not reflect our views or our day to day activities. Generally speaking, the only thing which you’ll find in the Wikipedia article are those things we’ve done which have attracted media attention, since everything else gets removed as “uncited.”
Today, just to give you an example, I have two items on my OPU plate. First, one of our members had his guitar stolen by the police and left a message on our voice mail. I have to try and track down the guitar and see if I can shake it loose (if the police even admit to having it), then I have to try and make contact with our member, who is homeless and tends to be highly transient. Secondly, I have to talking to our lawyer about the upcoming negotiations with the city to see whether it would be possible to have a sociology student present who is doing his thesis on the OPU, and more specifically our non-violent strategies for dealing with the State.
Just an idea, I know many people in the punk scene are former street people, have you talked with anyone about the possibility of doing a benefit gig to help with the legal costs? Perhaps through Exile Infoshop & Under Pressure, they could help you find bands & a venue that would be willing to help. When involved with grassroots, the punk scene can be very supportive. I know Steve Goof in Toronto although he is in his 50’s is still involved in quite a few things, perhaps there is an older punk in Ottawa who would like to help?
For the fourth time, should we have the right to keep street people off our property?
Have you or any members of the OPU ever brought forward any private prosecutions against the police, and do you or the OPU intend to do so?
Are you *an *organizer or *the *organizer?