Myths Over Miami
by Giulianna LamannaAccording to the Dade Homeless Trust, approximately 1800 homeless children currently find themselves bounced between the county’s various shelters and the streets. For these children, lasting bonds of friendship are impossible; nothing is permanent. A common rule among homeless parents is that everything a child owns must fit into a small plastic bag for fast packing. But during their brief stays in the shelters, children can meet and tell each other stories that get them through the harshest nights.
Folktales are usually an inheritance from family or homeland. But what if you are a child enduring a continual, grueling, dangerous journey? No adult can steel such a child against the outcast’s fate: the endless slurs and snubs, the threats, the fear. What these determined children do is snatch dark and bright fragments of Halloween fables, TV news, and candy-colored Bible-story leaflets from street-corner preachers, and like birds building a nest from scraps, weave their own myths. The “secret stories” are carefully guarded knowledge, never shared with older siblings or parents for fear of being ridiculed — or spanked for blasphemy. But their accounts of an exiled God who cannot or will not respond to human pleas as his angels wage war with Hell is, to shelter children, a plausible explanation for having no safe home, and one that engages them in an epic clash.
I just discovered this article, despite its being almost a decade old. It’s both fascinating and heartbreaking; I really can’t say more about it than that. You’ll just have to read it for yourself.
Just today I recalled reading a portion of that article a long while back, and decided to google it. Funny ‘coincidence’ somebody brings it up today.
Comment by chiggles — 13 February 2007 @ 8:22 PM
This gets rediscovered online every year or two. Mercedes Lackey even wrote a bad fantasy novel based on this piece. As far as I know there are no further reports…
Comment by Al — 14 February 2007 @ 12:56 AM
Henry George echoing over the centuries.
There is no equitable arrangement of economics, particularly when land “ownership” becomes the weapon. The band-aid suggestion of “one tax” will be accepted as a remedy just as much as declaring land as something that can’t be owned. It didn’t go over well and won’t go over well.
Instead, we should all be pooling our money to put as much land in trust as possible. Not stopping here, the land needs to be restored for human habitation and be made attractive to support some of these homeless families. Even better, organizing these “properties” into a rhizome network and interacting with inner cities creates a sense of human value for these formerly homeless. Their new way of living may be viable for the burger flippers and sales clerks.
In the Henry George model of viewing economics, sucking away the bottom of the labor pool causes “wages” to rise (simple supply vs. demand) in relation to the “land owners”. Since this strategy “improves” land, “interest” also rises in sympathy to “wages”. As the model continues, “rent” must decline, as “rent” is inversely proportional to “wages” and “interest”.
Since the land trust inhabitants (formerly homeless and low income) have become self reliant, “the system” has a drain at it’s base. Since a Ponzi scheme requires new capital to perpetuate, the collapse then becomes accelerated.
Since most of us are imprisoned by our wages now, our best hope (short of sympathetic people like Donald Trump) would be to cooperate amongst ourselves to create these “labor drains” around the major cities.
Since this is anti-poverty for the public good, it’s also charitable, if we take the time to send in the 1023 form.
Comment by -Sean. — 15 February 2007 @ 10:23 AM
Heh. You sound like Jesus. Going to the destitute, telling them to walk away and start self-reliant, egalitarian communities… bringing about the state’s destruction simply by ignoring it altogether.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 15 February 2007 @ 10:31 AM
Although I’m strongly annoyed by the jesus lectures from said group (picture being cornered by politeness amidst great anger and suffering), such a connection awaits our pulling the lever. With that said, the homeless still need their promised land and new culture to be ready for them. Contrary to popular myth, the poor have very little time or memes to understand these issues. So it comes to us, the mostly white middle class with the time to debate such things to come up with a plan of action. … and do it.
I’m no jesus, just an atheist/animist with a healthy fear of poverty (no pieces of paper here to justify what I make, today, and know I can support the family tomorrow). Don’t follow, lead (as you no doubt see yourselves doing) the way for yourself and others to an easier, more simple, life. Let us begin pooling our money together, so at least somebody, if not ourselves, can be free in a meaningful way. If it takes a jesus, then bring on the Antichrist. The more Antichrists the better. Keeping the poverty demons off our backs has become difficult for even us, old whitey in an SUV.
work work work work
toil toil toil fear
trapped by paper
sold as beer
Er… Have you considered forming a charity … or church, before?
Comment by -Sean. — 15 February 2007 @ 11:45 AM
No see, the Jesus thing was a compliment. I’ve been reading a lot of John Dominic Crossan lately… If you place the fundie idea of who Jesus was as the “real” Jesus, then Jesus himself was basically the Antichrist. Though if you look at what he said/did, “pooling our money together” was the last thing he wanted to do. Hell, he wanted everybody to give all their money away and become itinerant healers, wandering the land with no shoes, no cloak, no staff, no bag, no money, and no food, relying entirely on the kindness of the people they healed. Which I’m thinking was to encourage tribal co-reliance (give support, get support, as Quinn put it) instead of relying on the state and its economy for support. It’s still scary as all fuck, though.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 15 February 2007 @ 12:09 PM
Yea, we are not connecting in a successful communication. I actually know close to nothing about anything related to religion. And you seem to want that part of the discussion.
I’m wanting to discuss the mechanics of how we have all been unwittingly entrapped. Where this article addresses poverty issues, that was my in for Henry George.
I’m fairly busy working, too. So I’ll have to take the easy out by sending you to “Progress and Poverty” and ask that you bear up under his erroneous attempts to refute Malthus and failed remedy for poverty. On the other hand, there isn’t much chance for communication without agreement on basic premises for a dialog or even a common thread for disagreement.
http://www.henrygeorge.org/bearings.htm
Please don’t read this as denying the importance of tribalism. In fact, I’m addressing the same stress factors that make tribalism such a challenge as pressure the individuals without it. Tribalism certainly has a leg up on the individual under these circumstances, but must still bear up in a system based upon basic necessities resource control.
Think of my intended dialog in a way that “a hacker” would approach “the system” (hackers don’t view their overall concept as related to computers, but rather as a systems discipline in general; same as Permies don’t like being pigeon holed as gardeners and farmers).
Comment by -Sean. — 15 February 2007 @ 12:57 PM
Er… I think you might be taking this all a bit too seriously. I just posted a link to an article I found interesting, you provided your point of view, and I said, “Hey, that reminds me of something I’ve been reading lately…” I’m not exactly trying to solve the entire problem of poverty in a blog conversation. Just casually exchanging ideas.
Comment by Giulianna Lamanna — 15 February 2007 @ 1:17 PM
Er…. I’m glad we agree.
I must not be putting enough 
winkies into my sentences. :?)
All seriousness aside, I think there is material to be found in Henry George. He was once considered the third most known person of the 19th Century after Thomas Edison and Mark Twain. Since his very interesting ideas have been ignored and he has been nearly forgotten since, I feel people should be told about his work when discussing poverty issues.
Comment by -Sean. — 15 February 2007 @ 2:38 PM
I think her point is Jesus was not a relgious figure originally. He was a revolutionary.
Comment by Anonymous — 15 February 2007 @ 2:45 PM
Thanks so much for posting this, I’m surprised I’ve never seen it before. What a great story! I mean, totally fucked up yet also so beautiful.
Comment by Urban Scout — 26 February 2007 @ 3:31 AM
A friend of mine was recently telling me how he thinks (and/or had heard/read) that numinous creatures often make themselves known to us according to what we’re willing to believe in. So someone who believes in angels and demons will see the kind and fierce numinous creatures as such respectively. Likewise, if you believe in elves, you’ll see them as elves. If you believe in aliens, you’ll see them as aliens. Carlos Castaneda believed in the empirical, so he just saw them as a bunch of dudes who accosted him on the side of the road.
I’m so awed by this story. Talk about the power of myth.
Comment by Rix — 28 February 2007 @ 6:20 PM