ON THE LINE
ON The Line Homeless Protest Tax-funded Condos Chicago Looking out the window of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, you can see an abandoned warehouse being rehabbed into...
...Salvadorans in the United States are the mainstay of El Salvador's economy...
...So right around Christmas, the coalition organized a march to and brief occupation of the warehouse site...
...Everyone at that time was just sick about the way things were, just like now, only it's worse now...
...Designed for journalists, the gopher site is also an invaluable tool for activists...
...Several other photography-poetry exhibitions—including When the Bough Breaks: Pregnancy and the Legacy of Addiction, Struggle to be Born (about lack of access to prenatal care), and Home Street Home (about homeless-ness)—have appeared in galleries, universities, and state Capitols throughout the country, as well as the U.S...
...POEMS © FRANCES PAYNE ADLER...
...Health care is a right, not a privilege...
...A Matriot's Dream: Health Care for All Poet Frances Payne Adler and photographer Kira Corser built the exhibit A Matriot's Dream: Health Care for All around the lives of some of the thirty-seven million people in the United States who have no health insurance...
...415)284-1420...
...Imagine this, in a country that spends so much on the war machine...
...The group, which has one full-time staff member and about twenty volunteers, has quickly built a network of activists, researchers, and people in poverty...
...Still, the threat of eventual deportation hangs in the air...
...Since 1990, Salvadorans have benefited from a temporary amnesty allowing them to live and work in the United States...
...E-mail: an@igc.apc.org...
...No one ever says we don't have enough money to go to war...
...For more information about the Culture Wars Project, contact the Institute for Alternative Journalism at 77 Federal Street, San Francisco, CA 94107...
...At least 1,000 people attended a rally on the steps of the Capitol in Washington, D.C, on Christmas Day, to protest the danger to poor people posed by the Congressional Republicans' Contract with America...
...The information available ranges from bibliographies and research reports to newsletters from advocacy groups to a library of articles on the Right...
...The BBC came out and filmed us," says Pat Gowens of the Welfare Warriors in Milwaukee...
...Many of the agreements have been broken and the military continues to abuse human rights," says Mario Davila, a Salvadoran organizer in the American Friends Service Committee's New England office...
...We're talking to CBS in January...
...KEEP RIGHT Those seeking political direction on the infor-k mation highway may be interested to know . that the Congressional Democrats are noshows in cyberspace...
...The abuses continue in the United States with exploitation and discrimination...
...They're all coming in because Wisconsin is the guinea-pig state and they want to talk to the guinea pigs...
...I'd save the forests, especially the redwoods...
...All you hear is, 'I'm not getting any support—no more supplementing, no more part-time, no more working around the kids' schedules.' It's a tough time to organize...
...I'd spend the money on health instead...
...The city has a plan to replace the lost housing, but homeless advocates say the terms are so broad that the plan may not meet the needs of people displaced by the current project...
...The Welfare Warriors provides help and information to people on welfare, and advocates national family support and a guaranteed income...
...There is also an expert Rolodex under construction providing a wide range of sources not traditionally sought out by the media...
...Donahue hopes the attention and support that it received will turn up the heat...
...James and another single-room-occupancy hotel down the street, The Roosevelt, will likely be demolished to put up strip malls...
...I'd take away every nuclear device man to man...
...I'd take away all that polluting shit they put on vegetables...
...Public pressure has already compelled the Clinton Administration to amend its initial hardline position...
...Donald Ford, who lives in a shelter while attending a culinary school, told a reporter from The Washington Post at the rally that he fears the Republican legislation will shut down educational assistance programs like his, which "help poor people get back on their feet...
...What would/do...
...I'd see that children are born healthy and make sure they stayed that way...
...They will not be silent...
...Select Progressive Gophers from the menu, then select AlterNet...
...I'd promote the use of sun, sea, and wind for natural energy...
...For more information on the exhibit call (408)659-4774...
...Among the winners in the unbelievable category was the doctor in Rochester, New York, who demanded his nurse return to the office to conduct a routine test on a patient immediately after she found her children's babysitter dead on the couch...
...Now we're talking health...
...Blue-ribbon good bosses include a small-business owner in Dobbs Ferry, New York, who has created a family-friendly work environment, allows workers to make their own schedules, and pays for work-related college courses...
...It makes people so hateful, and it terrifies the moms...
...Esther Chavez, coordinator of the United States-El Salvador Sister Cities Network, says many people could be out of a job because "employers don't want to keep people who may lose their legal status...
...Then there was the boss in Cleveland who asked his secretary to take his stool sample to his doctor's office and gave her the wrong address, and the Philadelphia boss who gave his secretary a beeper and sent her to local bars to look for attractive women and beep him if she found any...
...Another winning boss in Cresskiil, New Jersey, kept his office manager on full salary for three months while she accompanied her daughter to Omaha, Nebraska, for a bone-marrow transplant, and contributed $1,000 toward the girl's medical bills...
...For more information, contact REAP, P.O...
...Many poor people attended the Christmas rally at the Capitol, collecting free blankets and food, and speaking out...
...All the groups needed was some city funding...
...In the Poor People's Congress, we are also going to do something that neither party seems interested in—listen to the ideas of poor people themselves...
...They will come from the other side, up through the cellar doors, basement stairs, and squalling hospital elevator shafts...
...Our goal is to break down stereotypes of poor people, to educate people with facts, and to put a face on the issues," says Leonard Adler, REAP's founder...
...Says John Donahue, director of the homeless coalition, "We have a chance to show in a positive way what a mixed-income community can be and to create a model for other cities...
...It's important to make Democrats take some leadership," he says of the pressure on Daley, "or this country is going to keep getting meaner and meaner...
...For entry forms, send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: Boss Contest, 238 W. Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 700, Milwaukee, Wl 53203...
...No one ever says we don't have enough money for national defense...
...Anyone surfing the Internet can visit gopher.house.gov and download the Republican Contract with America—and all of its legislative components—but you won't find a single spark of vision from the other party in the House...
...Under the "tax-increment financing" scheme, city hall gives private developers incentives to undertake projects...
...All children no matter what age...
...That's a pretty radical message—that you can be hopeful in times like these," says Adler, who founded REAP six months ago, after graduating from the law school at Georgetown University...
...Since publicly funded development of the type seen in Chicago exists in most cities, Donahue thinks this is an important fight to win now, before Republican enthusiasm for such schemes makes abuses commonplace...
...414)444-0220...
...Visit the Culture Wars Project at gopher.igc.apc.org...
...We're hoping to grow and build as broad a coalition as possible," says Adler...
...Say no to the war on the poor, and say yes to opportunity," is REAP's slogan...
...Some groups are discussing strategies for resistance when deportations begin...
...As a free-lance photographer, Corser could not afford treatment and had to rely on friends to help pay her medical bills and save her life...
...The action kicked off a 100-day campaign sponsored by Research, Education, and Action on Poverty (REAP), a young nonprofit group that aims to refocus the current policy debate on welfare, crime, and other social issues...
...Yet the city saw fit to give a $2 million subsidy to the developer of the condos—money that does not have to be paid back...
...We're interested in seeing more activists and progressives go online because we think it's a medium that has yet to be co-opted," says program director Christine Triano, who encourages people to explore the resource and think about how they can share their work...
...I've lived through two depressions, two of them...
...A Matriot's Dream opened in the California capitol in Sacramento and has shown in galleries throughout the state...
...Erik Ness Salvadorans Confront Deportation Washington, D.C...
...I'd clean the air, the water...
...The Turned-Away Ones They'll come back through the pipes the Turned-Away Ones...
...The army gets away with murder...
...Cassandra Floyd, who attends an education program for teenaged mothers, took the microphone to tell other young women, "You are somebody...
...I was appalled when I first came to this country," she says...
...The INS has granted Salvadorans a limited reprieve, extending their work permits for nine months and promising there will not be immediate deportations...
...The trouble is, the units will be posh condominiums, most of which will sell for more than $100,000...
...This is national defense...
...Davila warns that "some lawyers are exploiting the fears of Salvadorans...
...What makes it even worse is that on the very next block sits the old and crumbling St...
...The voices of families and individuals the artists got to know are captured in the images and poems, which also explore the meaning of the terms "patriot" and "matriot" and the idea of national defense...
...Ironically, the immigration issue has forged a rare unity between Salvadoran government officials and former rebels in that country...
...The theory is that the city will recoup the money later through higher property taxes...
...The two artists came up with the concept for the exhibit in part because of Corser's experience coping with ovarian cancer while uninsured...
...people need to contact a community or social-service group to learn about their options...
...If not, the next target could be Mayor Daley's home, an upscale dwelling in the same neighborhood...
...The anti-immigrant backlash sparked by California's Proposition 187 struck Salvadoran refugees in December, when the Clinton Administration ended an amnesty program sheltering some 200,000 Salvadorans from the violence that continues to rack their homeland...
...Clinton and the Republicans are all talking about middle-class rights and how to cut middle-class taxes and are not addressing the problems of poor Americans...
...Adler teaches creative writing and art for social change at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse...
...Fortunately, there are political alternatives in cyberspace, and one of them is the Culture Wars Project, just launched by the Institute for Alternative Journalism in San Francisco...
...Senate...
...Adler and Corser have collaborated for ten years...
...James Hotel, single-room-occupancy residences where the poorest people in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood live...
...They were in Wisconsin talking about welfare reform...
...Mike Zielinski (Mike Zielinski is a long-time activist with CISPES in Washington, D.C...
...202)898-1706...
...Both groups fear that mass deportations from the United States will further destabilize a country where less than half the population has full-time work...
...No more wars, ever...
...I see everything falling apart— People, starving on the streets...
...Plans for a national tour are under way...
...Adler's experience as a former emergency-room nurse from Canada also informs the exhibit...
...The Project is an electronic library—known as a gopher site—covering the right-wing assault on freedom of expression...
...officials maintain that refugee-protection programs are no longer needed because El Salvador's human-rights situation has "improved significantly...
...One of the first things we said at the rally is that we're here to talk about hope...
...Corser is an independent photographer working out of her studio in Carmel, California...
...Violations of human rights don't just happen in El Salvador," says Mario Davila...
...The Salvadoran National Network is expanding its efforts to organize an anxious community...
...Refugee-support groups are sponsoring community forums to notify Salvadorans of their rights and to aid them in applying for political asylum and other forms of protection...
...We had compassion then, and we've lost it...
...Box 50832, Washington, D.C...
...Organizers from the Salvadoran National Network, a coalition of more than forty community groups, are working to counter the threat...
...report documenting forty-nine "arbitrary executions" and seventy death threats in the first half of 1994...
...Davila's charges are backed by a recent U.N...
...The media are killing us," says Gowens...
...Everyone has to put their hand to the wheel and get out and get off their butt like in the sixties...
...The St...
...How are we going to pay for all this...
...For more information, contact Welfare Warriors, 4504 N. 47 Street, Milwaukee, WI 53218...
...Matriot There's not much that's important at my age except making the world a better place...
...For an estimated 60,000 people who are homeless this winter in Chicago, the irony is brutal...
...It breaks my heart...
...Children, beaten in their homes...
...Entries are officially due on or before April I. For information on coping with trouble at work you can call the job problem hotline at (800)522-0925...
...20001...
...But the developer has refused the coalition's demand that 20 percent of the warehouse units be reserved for poor people, and the city will not make it a requirement of such projects...
...ON The Line Homeless Protest Tax-funded Condos Chicago Looking out the window of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, you can see an abandoned warehouse being rehabbed into government-subsidized housing...
...Don't let them tell you you're not...
...Each week during the first 100 days of the new Congress, REAP is holding "People's Hearings" on the Capitol steps, covering such topics as economic inequality, how much tax money is spent on programs that aid the poor, and how best to address human needs and create opportunity...
...I say we damn well better get out on the streets again...
...But Mayor Richard Daley's administration rejected the plan...
...James and retain its niche as a home for very low-income people...
...Neighborhood organizations, developers, and banks had a plan to restore the St...
...I'd ban firearms...
...What we're trying to do is force a debate...
...Fight-Back Songs Members of the Welfare Warriors went Christmas caroling in the streets and public buildings of Milwaukee, San Diego, Detroit, Baltimore, and Albany throughout December, to urge Americans to fight for poor families instead of against them...
...Mike Ervin O N_The_Line Poor People's Congress Washington, D.C...
...Sick people without health care...
...INCREDIBLE BOSS CONTEST Every April during Secretaries Week, 9to5, the National Association of Working Women, sponsors its national boss contest, taking entries for "the good, the bad, and the downright unbelievable...
...Refugees working at low-wage, service-sector jobs sent more than $800 million home last year, surpassing El Salvador's income from coffee, the nation's largest export...
Vol. 59 • February 1995 • No. 2
