los anjalis

Yesterday as I was purchasing my afternoon coffee, I saw a copy of the New York times at the local coffeehouse, featuring an article on its FRONT PAGE entitled, “With Advocates’ Help, Squatters Call Foreclosures Home.” Check out the short article. Thanks to folks like Take Back the Land’s Max Rameu, the Miami Workers Center, Women in Transition, sheriffs in Ohio who refuse to evict people from their houses, the Poor Peoples’ Economic Human Rights Campaign, and others working together in their communities to preserve a little human dignity in this recession. It reminds me of the question that Travis Koplow brought up about a Los Angeles neighborhood council meeting and foreclosed houses:

Is it so important that we protect capital itself? Is the protection of property is more important than the safety and protection of people?

My friend Saba shared a comment on that previous post, with the website for Take Back the Land. Here’s the latest video, an interview on CNN.

Thoughts?

This week on LA Metblogs, Travis Koplow wrote a post about his participation in/observation of the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council. On the agenda for the meeting he attended was the issue of squatters in foreclosed homes. He said this:

But last night I went to my neighborhood council meeting for the first time and the discussion there raised an issue that I do think is worth us thinking and talking about more. Among the other topics on the plate was the growing number of squatters in foreclosure homes. There was a policeman present at the meeting, as I guess is usual, and he was talking about crime in Sherman Oaks, and one council member was asking him about people living illegally in empty homes. The policeman (I cannot bring myself to say “peace officer,” sorry folks) said that it was something to be on the lookout for, that if we suspected such a thing we should let the police know. There are several boarded up houses within a few blocks of my apartment and I get not wanting them to become crash pads for crack addicts or meth dealers. I get that. But then the councilman elaborates, saying that it’s important to be on the lookout, that sometimes it is hard to tell. Some of the squatters have kids and SUVs and dogs. Let me interrupt myself here to say, this post is in no way meant to disparage the SONC. It was my first time there, but I was made to feel welcome and the neighborhood council is clearly functional and positive and inclusive. But what I wonder is this: why is it so important to call the police on those families that look just like “normal” families? Is it so important that we protect capital itself? Is the protection of property is more important than the safety and protection of people?

Interesting. I know that squatting vs crime and other issues is a complex issue (for example, more break-ins into cars near an area where someone’s squatting at a foreclosed home can increase pressure on a community to better address these crimes and the causes of them) and I have great respect for the Sherman Oaks Neighborhood Council, but I always find it refreshing when the question of priorities re: property protection vs protection of people is brought to the forefront of the discussion. Thoughts?

(Below is cross-posted a post I wrote over at LAist.com)

Photo by tao_zhyn on Flickr

Today marks the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UHDR), adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations. The 30 articles of this declaration were written after the Second World War and represent the first global expression of human rights worldwide. The UHDR is the most translated document in the world and has inspired many international treaties and laws.

Now is as good a time as ever to remind ourselves of the human rights issues prevailing abroad, in the US, and here in Los Angeles. Violence and human rights abuses exist around the world, currently in Zimbabwe, Mumbai, Gaza, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other regions. Millions go without clean water or enough food. And a global financial crisis is ever present.

It is easy to focus on human rights abroad, but here in Los Angeles we have our own slew of human rights violations, including a housing crisis, homelessness, ICE raids, police brutality, displacement of communities in the name of development, health care access problems, unprocessed rape kits, and an increasing disparity between the wealthy and the poor. At the same time, there is much reason for hope.

One shining local example of this is in South Los Angeles, the area formerly known as South Central LA, where a unique coalition of health care providers, promotoras, and dedicated community organizations recently teamed up to address “The Perfect Storm” – the combination of homelessness, the housing/credit crisis, public health, and law enforcement issues. The coalition, known as the Homelessness Prevention and Intervention Collaborative, conducted an exhaustive survey of homelessness in South Los Angeles. And in October, they announced the findings of a report — Taming the Perfect Storm — written by Dr Rishi Manchanda, Director of Social Medicine at St. Johns Well Child and Family Center and the coordinator of the collective. In addition to describing the problem, the report presents recommendations for human-rights based solutions to the crisis in South LA. The report is well worth reading and concludes with:

In the nation as a whole, persistent widespread homelessness and the health care crisis offer compelling evidence of a collective disregard for human rights. Few places exhibit the ill effects of this disregard like South Los Angeles. Conversely, no other community stands to benefit as much from a community-based human rights approach to health. With a firm understanding of the links between critical determinants of health like housing, public and community health resources, and law enforcement policy, we commit to build the political will and skills needed to tame this perfect storm of homelessness and poor health. In short, we commit to reclaim and redefine our community guided by the practical application of fundamental human rights principles. As an important stage of community dialogue on the right to health, housing, and security begins, we welcome all constructive comments and critiques of this report.

On a national level, our President-Elect Barack Obama has stated a commitment to shutting down Guantanamo, ending the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, strengthening the United Nations, improving diplomatic relations with other countries, and paying attention to the global crises of poverty and HIV/AIDS worldwide. And on this 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human rights, the official website of the United Nations notes:

“Following this historic act the Assembly called upon all Member countries to publicize the text of the Declaration and ‘to cause it to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories.’”

On that note, I encourage you to read the 30 articles of the declaration. Aloud. To friends, family, anybody who will listen. In declaratory fashion. Try it. It’s quite compelling and a quick read. (idea inspired by my friend Linda who suggested this to me and 4 other friends as we were building and dreaming, during a break at a conference in El Salvador last year).

[This post is cross-posted at Cure This.org].

From a Washington Post editorial by Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition against Hunger:

Our country has been told that a gargantuan government rescue of the private sector is necessary because the collapse of major financial institutions would lead to unthinkable outcomes for society. Almost as if by magic, our nation’s leaders conjure up vast sums to respond to this crisis.

Yet when advocates point out that our nation is facing an altogether different kind of crisis, one of soaring hunger and homelessness, and that a large-scale bailout is needed to prevent social service providers nationwide from buckling under the increasing load, we are told that the money these agencies need just doesn’t exist.

In 2006, fully 35.5 million Americans, 4 million more than in 1999, lived in households that couldn’t afford enough food, according to the Agriculture Department. Those households included more than 4 million children.

Last December, the U.S. Conference of Mayors reported that out of 23 major American cities, 80 percent had an increase in people using emergency soup kitchens and food pantries and 43 percent had an increase in the number of homeless children. All that happened between November 2006 and November 2007.

How did the federal government respond? It didn’t.

The only federal program that provides cash to both emergency feeding programs and homelessness prevention services, the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program, wasn’t expanded by a penny…

…When we ask members of Congress and lobbyists to help obtain serious funding increases to meet the soaring needs, we are patronizingly praised for our good work but told that times are just too tough to increase budgets. Maybe there will be more money when the economy improves, they tell us, oblivious to the reality that funding for our programs is most needed when the economy is weakest.

(posted this on LAist earlier today)

Today will be historic. Throngs of voters will get out and vote NO on Proposition 98, a not thinly veiled attempt to destroy rent control and tenants rights. Of note, Los Angeles has the highest average rents (over $1500) of any city in the Western United States — even higher than San Francisco. In what direction will allowing the passage of Proposition 98 lead us?

Yesterday, Ross Lincoln wrote a fine post on LAist about the devil in the details regarding Prop 98 (and why we should vote NO). Today, we bring you a wonderful video that SAJE (Strategic Actions for Just Economies) developed to discuss the basis for and impact of Proposition 98. This animated story takes some of the confusion out of the proposition:

The video has been produced en espanol, tambien! Pass it on, and remind your friends and co-workers and family and passers-by — to vote NO on Proposition 98 TODAY.

And then, let’s celebrate in OUR streets.

Above — an amazing video. What a fine community showing. Powerful beautiful words. Kudos to the residents for fighting back so strongly.

Today, December 10th is International Human Rights Day.

And this month, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is tearing down 4,600 units of affordable public housing in four areas of New Orleans, Louisiana and putting up private mixed-income developments, of which only 744 units will be public housing. This is after rents in the city have doubled since the hurricane, thousands of people evicted from their apartments are homeless and being denied the right to return, and most of the public housing units have only endured mild damage from the hurricane.

What is at stake with the demolition of public housing in New Orleans is more than just the loss of housing units: it destroys any possibility for affordable housing in New Orleans for the foreseeable future. Without access to affordable housing, thousands of working class New Orleanians will be denied their human right to return.

Although this situation is unique and urgent in the city of New Orleans, it does not occur in isolation. The plans for redevelopment here are part of a national assault on public housing, in which tens of thousands of homes have been demolished in the past decade.

- Kali Akuno, director of the Stop the Demolition Coalition

People are being illegally denied their right to return. Racism is rampant. Classism is rearing its ugly head. At the most vulnerable time for thousands of displaced renters.

There’s a call to action this week to save NOLA’s public housing units, please check out Peoples’ Hurricane Relief Fund and Oversight Coalition and Justice for New Orleans. There’s much to be done, and the people of New Orleans, heck people around the world whose right to the city is being threatened on a daily basis, need as much solidarity as possible.

Housing is a civil right, and health and dignity have everything to do with housing.

The video is beautiful. Just beautiful. Check it out. THIS man will get my vote in the democratic primaries, and for the reasons above. His words on predatory lending issues and labor issues moved me greatly.

John Edwards:
“I listen to George Bush – about as little as I can get away with, but here is what I hear… Stay home, watch television, go shopping. Me and Dick Cheney, we’ll take care of ya’. I don’t want that crowd taking care of me! I don’t trust em’, that is not America! We are not a country that cowers in the corner waiting for someone to watch over us. We are strong, we are courageous, we are out there pushing the envelope. And by the way, when I’m the president of the United States of America, DISSENT WILL ONCE AGAIN BE PATRIOTIC!”

First, check out an amazing Democracy Now! interview with the founders of the Common Ground Collective.

Now, I share with you, a reflection by G Bitch, who’s been living in and blogging about New Orleans for a long time (thanks to BFP for introducing me to GB’s blog):

I was fine yesterday, really I was. Today, I’m pissed, shaking, ready to spit fire and nails full blast, all day, at anything. What is it? Oh, yeah, the minority of voices like the Usual Fuckateer Commenters on national sites (I avoid reading comments for many good reasons and managed to forget them yesterday long enough to read a handful and on The Day of The Floods) and the sometimes willful, usually well-intentioned shifting of the conversation and the focus to the individual, to volunteers and church groups and bright young college-educated 20- and 30-somethings and earnest nonprofits. I love all that and all those people and we need the insight they take away with them to the rest of the country but no amount of volunteer action can fix levees badly designed or maintain them if they are ever fixed, assess taxes and evaluate tax rates, or create an actual workable, understandable, desegregated and at least somewhat fair school system (without quotation marks). Volunteers and individuals can only do so much. And in thanking and congratulating and singing the praise songs of them we cannot, should not forget the larger picture, the larger problems–urban somewhat-malign neglect, testing instead of educating, writing off the poor and brown, blaming victims, sidestepping malice-laced ignorance behind public policy and grants, the twisting of a region’s arm with their children held at gunpoint, a bureaucracy built to fail and thwart instead of serve, the delusion that folks who aren’t home yet aren’t needed, the bullshit idea that we are the blank slate/experiment/testing ground for whoever flies in and says s/he’s got ideas, people’s lives toyed with like shit-stained old domino pieces in the street somewhere.

It’s nice y’all are coming but we need our people back, the people who worked full-time and paid their taxes and shopped at whatever grocery store it was that week while it was still the fuck there, teachers (they weren’t all incompetent or evil), nurses, social workers, x-ray technicians, psychiatric aides, maids, cooks, lawnmower repairmen, college graduates, high school dropouts, the people who were here before and at least made it look like this broken fucking city worked half the time. We held it together. Now we’re unimportant?

In Albuquerque this past weekend, I was awe-struck while observing community-building through celebrating and partying (at a super-fun fundraiser for my friend’s innovative clinic). My friend Catherine Jones, who’s from New Orleans and was in ABQ for the month, shared that that’s how folks in New Orleans do MOST of their community building and fundraising — through parties. So the email I received from the group Drinking Liberally LA reminded me of this conversation, and made me very very happy. Drinking Liberally is an informal gathering of local progressive-minded folks — once a month — with NO set agenda. You’re supposed to show up, drink if you want to, and have some good down-home community building conversations with others around issues that matter to you. It’s a brilliant concept (check out the Drinking Liberally website for a gathering near you!). I received the following email about an event happening tomorrow night in LA. Do come join if you can:

Dear friends,

This is an invitation to the Los Angeles premiere of “When the Saints Go Marching In” this Tuesday at 7pm — the two year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

Robert Greenwald and Brave New Foundation will present an advocacy video for the victims of Hurricane Katrina and Rita, who — two years later — are still fighting for their homes.

Kim Hill, formerlly of the BlackEyed Peas, will emcee as local politicians, activists, Katrina evacuees and concerned citizens convene at Fais Do Do to watch the short film. You’ll hear testimony from Katrina survivors. experience surprise musical guests with a genuine New Orleans DJ spinning traditional jazz,consume libations, and sign a petition urging the Senate to pass the Gulf Coast Recovery Bill (S. 1668).

The event is FREE and open to the public (with great New Orleans
appetizers!)

WHAT: “When the Saints Go Marching In” Los Angeles Premiere
WHEN: Tuesday, August 28th 7PM
WHERE: Fais Do Do
5257 W. Adams Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90016
(valet available)

Come mix it up New Orleans style with producer/director Robert Greenwald and other Brave New Foundation staff while supporting the Gulf Coast residents right to return. May that “laissez les bon temps roule” feeling return!

Warmest regards,
Jamiah Adams
Outreach Director, Brave New Foundation

The following is applicable to almost any urban neighborhood in the US. But it’s about Newark, New Jersey, after the recent shootings there. [I lived in Newark, NJ for 5 years before moving out to Los Angeles, and blog about Newark often on this site]. There’s been a lot written about the city especially after the shootings, but this piece by Bob Braun is a rare commentary that I believe really addresses the issues.

Newark. It’s a city neglected by the state for as long as I’ve worked there, and that comes close to 50 years.

Since I’ve started working, we’ve built highways around Newark to avoid seeing it and its people. We allow its property taxes to become confiscatory and then complain about the city’s shabbiness.

We allow its schools to become useless warehouses of children until the state takes over–and then the state fails to find a solution, so now talks of giving up. School failure is not simply a “report card” with eye-blurring, meaningless statistics–it’s hopelessness and self-destructive behavior among young.

What grotesque, grim poetry that the latest murders happened in a schoolyard to kids who believed in education.

We smugly congratulate ourselves on small anecdotal measures of success–more black faces on television, Barack Obama–but don’t think much of the folks left behind in even deeper pits of poverty and despair.

Think you got it bad? Try growing up in Newark poor and black, male and young. Tokenism is still the opiate of the white masses, and it’s a dangerous drug.

We tolerate racial isolation that is worse now than when it was politically fashionable to talk about integrating society–and that is no longer fashionable. Face it folks, New Jersey is a state of black and brown cities and white suburbs.

We think an arts center and a stadium and a Starbucks or two represent a Renaissance, when what is really needed are jobs, health care, and housing.

That’s right. I’ve argued extensively with friends in New Jersey that building another stadium (like they do in SO many cities — oh hai, there’s one being built in downtown LA too, as part of urban renewal) or building market-rate (aka expensive) new condos near the newark metro station is NOT the “renaissance” we need.

And oh, how nice would it be to start a medical clinic there, with a legal clinic, microfinancing center, and temporary housing, and classes, and promotora health outreach! (maybe part of the 10 year plan, we’ll see). Ok enough dreaming, back to the last two lines of the piece:

Huffing and puffing and lots of talk now about how this particular set of murders–so cold-blooded, happening to good kids–will change things.

Want to bet?

Bob Braun takes us to task. Check out the full article (ok i posted most of it because it was THAT good) and add your reaction to it on the same link (to counter the racist comments that currently exist there). Thank you, thank you so much, Mr. Braun, for the clarity.

Also, Ameer Washington wrote a nice post on The Daily Newarker about the same, here’s a piece:

The New Jersey Devils, a hot latte, and a dance troupe will not ease the suffering of Newark’s poor minority population. Those Saturday night events and sports are simply entertainment to sidetrack the fact that no one really cares. As long as it looks like someone is doing something to make progress, then that’s all that counts. Baltimore has the Orioles and the Ravens; Detroit has the Tigers, Red Wings, Lions, and Pistons, yet these two cities like Newark are still among the most dangerous in the country. Renaissance is French for “rebirth” and is defined as the revival of learning and culture. What has Newark learned over the past forty years since the 67 riots? Where is the rich culture that was once Newark? Where is the Newark that Council President Mildred Crump spoke about on My 9 News’ show “Real Talk”?

Right on. Interestingly, many of the comments on Ameer’s post and on bob Braun’s post are outwardly racist. To the tune of, that’s ok, the residents will be pushed out of the city as others from Hoboken and NYC move in, it’s really prime real estate. Or, the same old same old — personal responsibility argument. THIS is why the right to the city movement and national alliance is so pressing in our country.

-anjali

The above road has a Palestinian side and an Israeli side, separated by a wall. The man is walking on one of the two roads. Photo by Rina Castelnuovo. The following is from A Segregated Road in an Already Divided Land (nytimes):

The road will allow Israeli settlers living in the north, near Ramallah, to move quickly into Jerusalem, protected from the Palestinians who surround them. It also helps ensure that the large settlement of Maale Adumim — a suburb of 32,000 people east of Jerusalem, where most of its residents work — will remain under Israeli control, along with the currently empty area of 4.6 square miles known as E1, between Maale Adumim and Jerusalem, which Israel also intends to keep.

For the Palestinians, the road will connect the northern and southern parts of the West Bank. In a future that may have fewer checkpoints, they could travel directly from Ramallah north of Jerusalem to Bethlehem south of it — but without being allowed to enter either Jerusalem or the Maale Adumim settlement bloc.

“To me, this road is a move to create borders, to change final status,” Mr. Seidemann said, referring to unresolved issues regarding borders, refugees and the fate of Jerusalem. “It’s to allow Maale Adumim and E1 into Jerusalem but be able to say, ‘See, we’re treating the Palestinians well — there’s geographical contiguity.’ ”

Measure it yourself, he said. “The Palestinian road is 16 meters wide,” or 52 feet, he added. “The Israeli theory of a contiguous Palestinian state is 16 meters wide.”

Khalil Tufakji, a prominent Palestinian geographer, says the road “is part of Sharon’s plan: two states in one state, so the Israelis and the Palestinians each have their own roads.” The Palestinians, Mr. Tufakji said, “will have no connection with the Israelis, but travel through tunnels and over bridges, while the Israelis will travel through Palestinian land without seeing an Arab.”

In the end, he said, “there is no Palestinian state, even though the Israelis speak of one.” Instead, he said, “there will be a settler state and a Palestinian built-up area, divided into three sectors, cut by fingers of Israeli settlement and connected only by narrow roads.”

On my way home from work, I heard an NPR report on the bedouin struggle for keeping their land in the Negev desert, while the state of israel bulldozes it. [Amazing report, listen to it here] I was almost moved to tears, before finding myself enraged. Enraged.

Check out the NPR story (just a few minutes long), then think — does this remind you of anything? A people with no “formal” claim to their land, though they’ve lived there for centuries. A people with no significant amounts of money to their name. A state bulldozing these peoples’ lands in the name of the state, for their other projects they’re pursuing (scientific research in the desert, expansion of housing, etc). A state wanting to displace people from the land they live off of, and thinking it’s no big deal to move these people to government sponsored housing projects where these people will be concentrated in an area with few jobs, poor education, and very poor housing… ghetto love. A state spokesperson saying hey look, we’ve gotta do this, we don’t have enough resources for water, sanitation, etc to share with them in the desert so we have to raze their communities. A state spokesperson saying hey, look, we had to do this, we’ve tried negotiating and we’ve tried to make them compromise. Since they’re not compromising we had to bulldoze their land for the betterment of the state. Bedouins on record saying “i’m a farmer, my family is uneducated, my son is uneducated, *I* am uneducated” I grew up farming as did my parents and beyond. What am i going to do in an urban bedouin ghetto?

Ah, what rights do the bedouins have? They are nonviolently resisting.

Colonialism. Racism. Classism. This pattern is repeating. I’m reading a book about urban injustice and the things that were done to Black Americans in the name of all of the above. Arundhati Roy so articulately and passionately lays out the India/Narmada Dam vs the people situation in her essay The Greater Common Good. And there are numerous other stories, happening every day, on this issue. And I’ll say this again — It shocks me how much harm the Israeli state can inflict on others after the Holocaust that they went through. Displaced people displacing others, it breaks my heart.
The struggle for land/home/neighborhood/peace. Ongoing…

Catherine Jones is a friend and an inspirational medical student in New Orleans who took a year off after Hurricane Katrina to assist with the healing efforts there. I recently found out she’s been blogging for a while, and I absolutely must share her site with ya’ll. It’s called Floodlines, and it’s one of the most beautifully written blogs I’ve read, and so grounded in the energy and people of New Orleans. She’s currently the chair of the Community and Public Health commttee of the American Medical Student Association — very fitting. We’ll be working together on some health disparities and anti-racism work in the near future, and I’ll be seeing her soon at the United States Social Forum too :> Here’s an excerpt from one of her posts, check out the rest of her blog too, each post is a treasure:

Yesterday was my first day taking care of adult patients after three long and heartbreaking and sometimes ridiculously joyous months of pediatrics. The whole time I was on Peds, people would ask me why I was going to spend even part of my career taking care of adults and I’d always say, “ ‘Cause you know who my favorite patient is? The 80-year-old lady who comes into the clinic with all her medications in a crumpled up brown paper bag, and dumps them all out on the desk, and says, ‘Whoo, baby, lemme tell you about my pressure!’ “

I could talk to ladies like that all day.

These days, we don’t only talk about blood pressure, and diabetes, and cholesterol and walking and smoking and eating less fried chicken (“I’ll stop smoking tomorrow if you want,” one of my patients told me yesterday, “but if you tell me I can’t have beer and seafood on a Friday after a long crazy week of work, I’m telling you right now, I’m never coming back here!”).

Yesterday, in addition to all those things, my patients and I talked a lot about driving. People are still so separated, especially in the African-American community. Covering hundreds of miles to keep up relationships with loved ones has become part of the fabric of so many people’s everyday lives. I’m amazed how rooted New Orleanians are, how one man who didn’t cross Canal Street for fourteen years (a true story) is now driving three hundred miles almost every week just for a night of holding his daughter.

And our rootedness is complicated: it’s not only about this place, and it’s not only about each other. There’s something else, something that’s maybe even about the whole nature of how we’ve learned to love here. I think about how it’s only that deeper-than-the-deepest-part-of-your-belly kind of love that can justify such repeated, epic, most likely irrational hundred-mile journeys; and then I think about the almost amputated feeling people describe who’ve had to move away for jobs or schools ‘cause there’s so much less of those here these days. What does it mean to have to choose between doing the best for the people you love, and living in the only place in the world where you feel whole? What does it mean that so many among us are (still! almost two years later!) forced to make that choice? Can we legitimately say, under these conditions, that we’re succeeding in rebuilding our home?

Update:  My other buddies Tanyaporn Wansom and Elizabeth Eaman also both have blogs!  Tanya’s a 4th year med student who spent last year doing HIV/AIDS research in Thailand, and runs the Global Health Action Committee at AMSA, and Liz was a past leader of the AMSA Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered, People in Medicine committee in AMSA and just road-tripped out to her new home in Tacoma, Washington, where she started work at a wonderful family medicine residency program. Tanya and Liz are both from U.Michigan’s medical school, and i’ve known both of them for a while now.  Ah, I love to surround myself with inspiring women :>

Below is an excerpt from a beautiful reflection piece by my friend Taz. Check out the full post – God — the Policy Solution at her blog “Say What?”

The Muslim homeless couple. I know they were Muslim because the woman was wearing her head covered. They looked Arab, and in their 60s. Wrinkled and elder. This was the third time they had been at this corner. A couple of days ago they were across the street, but they had been at this corner for the past 24 hours. The first time I saw them, I almost tripped over the woman as I got out of the bus. It had been dark and I glanced down after the almost trip to see that she had a mini-grill as her source of heat. This morning I had a little more time to check out their interim home. The man was sitting on a sleeping bag, and they were flanked by two laundry carts full of their worldly goods. They had just finished their breakfast—the remnants of empty Coffee Bean cups and a canister with the Quaker Oats man was in front of them. The woman got up and started to reorganize her stuff. Out of her bundles, she pulled out a short broom and started sweeping the sidewalk in front of their belongs completely surrounded by graduate students waiting for the bus. As she swept, she had a pleasant look on her face. I wondered what could she be thinking and how she could manage to live on the streets and still maintain a pleasant look on her face. I wondered how strong of a woman she must be that under adversity, she is still able to maintain routine and create for herself a home. She glanced up. Our eyes met. She looked upon me kindly and I tentatively smiled at her. She went back to sweeping.