I said “Kiss me you’re beautiful
these are truly the last days.”
You grabbed my hand and we fell into it,
like a daydream or a fever…
—GS!YBE
The day is long when you’re up before dawn, scanning climate maps of the US and reading Dr. Roy. Hank don’t care. DGAF about anything ‘cept laying long in the heated rooms and staying out from under foot of the journalist, blowing out Cory Branan and godspeed!youblackemperor in the predawn dark and anyway pushing ink into the abyssal maw of news media. I write letters, I do radio and otherwise get on with it before most of you are awake. I’m wont to pick up the phone, reach out and touch someone and have had a couple-two-tree discussions with some of you, talking that ‘ish and newage as I gulp another cuppa and pull the curtains wide. The news is bad but there’s plenty of work for a reporter. I can’t complain but I will.
At Camp Esperanza there are almost 100 “homeless” living their best life, that is getting by, in boxx modular units built and serviced by The Other Ones Foundation. Each of these folks has a case worker, can bum a smoke in the community center and work for a decent wage through their Workforce First program; or have their freight paid when traveling to a forever home under the guidance of the astonishing Sarita McKinney, Program Director of Going Home.
Beyond the fence line, a shirtless man hacks at a fallen tree with a machete. The fence is non-scalable but my man on the outside in every way. He’s violent, or he stole from his neighbor. He’s addicted and won’t get past security anyway. He’s outdoors, and another casualty in capitalism’s war on the working poor. A storm rolled into Camp last week but I had no office and nowhere to land. So I posted up in my car and ate a tuna sandwich from the free shop. Read Evicted in the growing dim. Rains came and I pulled out of Esperanza determined to not only fulfill my role as Staff Writer for the org, but tell the story of my man Machete and any and everyone on the wrong side of whatever side there is.
It’s a new dawn in a wretched age but I’m not alone. Alan Graham, humanist and Mobile Loaves & Fishes (MLF) founder is with me, preaching the eight essential characteristics of what it means to be home and that good Christianity. He and MLF have housed 343 of our brothers and sisters in a sustainable village off Hogeye Road that’s starting to look a lot like the new American city. Nora Redfern, Reflections On Community Outreach (ROCO) head is with me, Julian Isaac Root of Casa Marinella, Brother Harvey, Poet Dan Denton, Mindy Freed at Writing On The Air, Joe “The Truth” Brundidge and, wait for it, you.
You’re making this new media happen, Subscriber. Winter in America will be brutal and hopeless, you wanna know the truth, but we won’t need hope. We got each other. Good Morning.
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