stillhomelessinboston
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Episodes
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Recorded 12/15/11 @ 5:51 a.m.
Foodie’s Urban Market, 1421 Washington Street
The book in the window didn’t have anything in particular on it except the word “New.”
These places were places I happened to go past while I was on Washington Street this morning, walking from Intake.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 15, 2011 @ 3:24 p.m.
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Recorded 11/15/11 @ 5:46 a.m.
“Building Boston’s Future: Recovery Starts Here”
Cathedral-Family Public Housing
Code, code, code…(that's on the sign--I'm not putting code here or in the recording. You can hear what is probably code on the sign that I'm reading from it, to document that it's there.)
Leed For Homes
recovery.gov
cityofboston.gov/recovery
conglomerate symbols
Mayor Thomas M. Menino
President Barack Obama
Vice President Joe Biden
HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan
U.S. Representative Michael Capuano
U.S. Senator John Kerry
U.S. Representative Stephen Lynch
Governor Deval Patrick
Tina Brooks, Undersecretary for Housing and Community Development
William M. McGonagle, Administrator of the Boston Housing Authority
Blue and Silver Crane: United Rentals S-45, “876193”
Emcor Truck
I don’t want to be stalked on behalf of these people!
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"The conglomerate has worn out many construction vehicles, stalking me!"
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, December 15, 2011 @ 3:16 p.m./addition @ 5:24 p.m.
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Recorded 12/15/11 @ 5:38 a.m.
The Salvation Army at 1500 Washington Street, Boston, MA
Caution poles along the entire front of the building
No pretense of construction; it’s an unapologetic statement of support for the conglomerate’s agenda.
“After School Summer Enrichment Programs, Ages 5 -13 years”—old sign/sad changes
I just wrote about how the Salvation Army’s website and its promotion of the issues, including a big promotion of child molestation.
I also just wrote about an unexpectedly bad experience I had at the Salvation Army shelter in Boston.
“For Every Dream Precedes The Goal” phrase on the back wall—old painting?/sad changes
“Christmas Castle Holiday Intake Has Ended as of December 7, 2011. We are not accepting any further clients at this time.”
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Here’s a search result about “Christmas Castle Holiday” that I found today on the Internet. I don’t remember the exact search term that I used for it. I looked at a couple of them, and then chose the excerpt that’s after it to put here:
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1. Volunteers needed for this year's holiday programs ...
COSHOCTON -- The Coshocton Salvation Army needs residents to reach into their hearts as well as their wallets this holiday season.
www.coshoctontribune.com/article/20111127/NEWS01... - Cached
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December 15, 2011
Here’s an excerpt from the article:
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For the Christmas Castle, the target is to raise $75 per child with this year's goal at $34,050 for 454 children. Volunteers go shopping in Walmart with children to buy new winter clothes. If extra money is available, siblings of the children being helped who fall outside of the program age range, five to 15, also will receive clothes. A total of 798 children could be aided if enough funding comes in. This is up from 2010, when 714 children total were signed up for the program.
December 15, 2011
How many more times am I going to have to say that I DON’T SUPPORT ANYTHING ON THE CONGLOMERATE’S AGENDA, and that I really don’t want anyone insinuating that I do?
Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman/
This is another time when I’ll say “There’s no code in any of what I wrote myself here. For me to mention things that other people may have meant, probably meant or undoubtedly meant as code isn’t the same thing as my using code myself. I will always say so if I’m going to use code in something, and that would be to protect people’s privacy or for some other legitimate reason.”
@ 2:54 p.m.
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Recorded 12/14/11 @ 7:50 p.m.
More harassment at:
Intake shelter
The “Caution fence” is a few feet wide and a few feet tall; it’s more like an orange and white striped sign.
Followed by an employee of Intake, with a broom and dustpan.
Harassed by homeless guy.
Harassed by another employee of Intake.
Harassed by another homeless guy.
All of this happened within 2 hours.
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I slept in the cafeteria of Intake last night, on the floor, along with some other homeless women. The beds in the dorm were full by the time I got there.
I was expecting a lot more harassment that night, but there wasn’t that much, once I got upstairs. I made this recording on the first floor, while I was waiting with the other women who were waiting to go up to the cafeteria.
There was some coughing, at the beginning of the night, and then some more in the morning, more noticeably by a male staffmember than by a guest, but it was much better. I don’t know how it would have been in the dorm.
One thing I saw this morning was a female staffmember yelling at another guest a few feet away from me. The guest in question was someone who had spent all of the night that I’d seen passed out while hunched over, and wasn’t exactly up to full speed.
If there have been a lot of guests who could sleep comfortably through the harassment on other nights when it was terrible, much of that probably has to do with the fact that they are drunk and/or on illegal and/or prescription drugs. There are some shelters where you’re not supposed to be drunk or on illegal drugs, but first of all, that rule obviously doesn’t get followed by all of the guests, and second of all, they are allowed to have prescription drugs. They’re not supposed to be abusing prescription drugs, but a lot of them are on sleep medication, or medication that has been cross-prescribed for sleep. Seroquel is one of those medications; I hear that get mentioned a lot. It’s an antipsychotic; there’s no reason that it should be getting prescribed just for sleep, especially because it can have serious side effects and is very uncomfortable to stop taking, if you’re getting it out of your system after you’ve been on it for a while.
There are times when there are fewer guests in the shelters; that’s often after they’ve gotten their checks from the government and have gone to stay in hotels until their money starts to run out.
None of that is any reason for that woman to have been getting yelled at the way she was. The people who sleep in the cafeteria have to get up earlier than the people in the dorm, and she looked like she was helpless in the grip of whatever she’s going through. I was several blocks away from Intake by the time I made my first recording THIS morning, December 15, 2011, and that was at 5:38 a.m., as I’ll write in the next podcast.
There is a lot of abuse in the homeless system; abuse of guests, from the physical conditions of the facilities themselves to the way that staff are allowed to treat them, and abuse of the welfare system by a lot of the guests. There’s a lot of money that’s not going where it should, like toward better facilities and higher standards for training and education of people who work with the homeless, which would necessitate paying those employees more.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 15, 2011 @ 2:22 p.m. (I'll put another "no code" here. I shouldn't have to do that by now, and maybe I don't have to do that by now, but I'm doing it anyway. It's not something I plan to make a habit of, because I've already talked about the "time code zone" issue a lot, but I'll do it this time @ 2:23 p.m. NO CODE!!)
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December 15, 2011
Despite the fact that there was less harassment last night, I didn’t get very much sleep. They leave the light on in the cafeteria all night, which perhaps also has always reduced some of the harassment because people can’t hide who they are when they’re doing it but is nevertheless not the easiest thing to sleep under. There were no blankets so I slept in my coat and there were no pillows. I also was very wound up, waiting with each second to hear if the harassment would start as soon as I relaxed at all. I maybe got a few hours of sleep.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 15, 2011 @ 3:29 p.m./Fine, I'll put another "no code" here, at no code 3:30 p.m.. I don't want to do this all day at 3:31 p.m. No Code...
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the sound of real screaming, the screaming of being driven crazy by the conglomerate....I don't know how to indicate that sound, so I'll let people imagine how they would feel if it were happening to them, @ no code 3:32 p.m.
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Recorded 12/14/11 @ 6:31 p.m.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 15, 2011 @ 1:44 p.m.
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Recorded 12/14/11 @ 6:21 p.m.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 15, 2011 @ 1:39 p.m.
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Thursday Dec 15, 2011
Recording made 12/14/11 @ 5:55 p.m.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 15, 2011 @ 1:33 p.m. /edited @ 1:35 p.m.
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
December 14, 2011
Recorder says: 12/14/11 @ 7:34 a.m.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 14, 2011 @ 5:21 p.m.
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
December 14, 2011
Recorder says: 12/14/11 @ 7:32 a.m.
I took this recording about a second after the last one.
There was other vehicular harassment today, but I didn’t have any room on my recorder and also, I’m really tired and was almost relieved to have that excuse not to take out my recorder and talk more of it than I did.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 14, 2011 @ 5:16 p.m.
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
Wednesday Dec 14, 2011
December 14, 2011
Recorder says: 12/14/11 @ 7:32 a.m.
I was outside of On The Rise, waiting for it to open.
Copyright L. Kochman, December 14, 2011 @ 5:11 p.m.