Integity vs. Politics

The line of hungry people outside Sisters of The Roads stretched about a block Tuesday afternoon. I didn't recognize many of the faces. Talking with people I heard stories of police beating up homeless in Seattle, San Francisco harassing people on the street and then offering them bus tickets out of town and homeless people being killed in Los Angeles.

I spent three years living on the streets of Portland, standing in lines at the missions, waiting at night for the emergency shelter to open and waiting to get a shower in the morning. I came to recognize the faces, knew the stories, and even remembered a few names. Though the game remains the same the faces have changed.

Portland has housed 600 chronically homeless in the last two years. You might think that would make a difference but what I see are longer lines and more competition for cheap housing, jobs, shelter space and longer meals lines.

Portland cannot end homelessness by itself. Laws, prejudice, and violence against homeless people are sending them shuffling around the country hoping for a start somewhere else. Not all the new homeless in Portland are from out of town. Most are locals who can no longer make ends meet. It looks like the start of another depression.

The flip side of this is the stock market is rising and the wealthy are getting a larger and larger share of the pie. The top 1% of received 57.7% of total income after taxes in 2005. The disparity in wages between employees and CEO's was 30-1 in 1970 today the disparity is 300-1.

Then you have out of state national groups coming into our state financing initiatives like T.A.B.O.R.. They are trying to cut taxes for the wealthy even more. The cuts come in needed services. They sell there ideas in sound bites to people too busy to find out the truth. In a democracy the media has a responcibility to educate the public. Instead they are bought and paid for by corporate interests.

This irritates me to the point of writing these columns, doing volunteer work and talking to people who grate on my last nerve because they are so programmed into beleiving the propoganda perpetuated by main stream media.

Have Democratic governments always been like this? Is this the fault of journalist who slept through ethics classes? Why are most of the federal level politicians so willing to let the corruption continue?