Another Disaster Downtown: The Gateway

The streetcar disrupting Atlanta isn’t the only disaster downtown.  A prominent person in the conspiracy being sued in two different courts said months ago that their side had created a train wreck.  The cross hairs in the latest train wreck focus in on a downtown shelter named The Gateway.  The despicable decision to turn away Homeless women and their children is unconscionable.  In early June The Gateway began turning away single women.  By mid-July this shelter had stopped taking women and their children.  You see, The Gateway is TEAM GOLIATH’s star.  A. J. Robinson and Richard Orr in their depositions said that the Peachtree Pine facility is unacceptable, but that The Gateway is their idea of a model shelter.  These two experts on homelessness said homeless people would be cared for best at The Gateway.  Mind you, it’s our model service provider for the thousands of homeless people in Atlanta.

 

The Gateway personnel do not speak with the Task Force personnel.  The Gateway staff is told not to communicate with the staff at the Community at Peachtree Pine.  Furthermore the brass at The Gateway dictates to other shelters who serve woman and children NOT to take referrals from the staff at Peachtree Pine.  I wrote in my latest blog posted on Thursday, August 22, 2013, that 27 women and their 37 children slept in chairs and on mats at the Peachtree-Pine Community.  This has been the case for months.  The Gateway directed those women and children to Peachtree-Pine; however, The Gateway refuses to refer those very women and children that they had sent to Peachtree-Pine.  Yesterday, August 27, 2013, a van dumped women and children unannounced at the Peachtree-Pine door on Pine Street.

 

The Peachtree-Pine Community is located at the corner of Peachtree and Pine Streets in what the developers call Midtown Atlanta.  The 94,000 square foot building stands two stories tall from the City’s sidewalk at 477 Peachtree Street and four stories from the City’s sidewalk on Courtland Avenue.  The sidewalks surrounding three sides of the Peachtree-Pine are cluttered all day and all night with drug dealers, drug users and prostitutes.  THIS IS BY DESIGN.  The same thinking that refuses to help homeless women and children hoping to give the Task Force a “black eye” wants 24-7 drug dealing as close to The Pine as possible.  Can you imagine no police protection at Central Atlanta Progress’s Hurt Building or Troutman Sanders Law Firm or The Commerce Club?  What about Rector Hoare’s Varsity Grill Episcopal, Inc.? 

 

Thousands of Atlantans pass by Peachtree-Pine every day to view this total lack of City protection.  They see drug dealers.  THIS IS BY DESIGN.  What the conspirators did not design was the two different law suits leveled at them, calling out their unlawful endeavors.  Central Atlanta Progress, Atlanta Downtown Improvement Distrtict and slippery developer Emanuel “God with us!” Fialkow are set to go to trial as DEFENDANTS in the State Court of Fulton County on November 4, 2013.  They are charged with tortious interference, i.e., illegally thwarting private and public funding and racketeering designed to steal the Peachtree-Pine property.  Manny Fialkow is the hatchet man, the one designated “to kick them out.”  Note, please, that these giants, whom we lovingly call TEAM GOLIATH are the DEFENDANTS.  The Plaintiff is Team David, small, weak and unarmed except for five smooth stones.

 

The other lawsuit involves DEFENDANTS Emory University Health Care Services, Inc. and Emory University.  That suit is in the State Court of DeKalb County.  The charges are basically the same but will be tried  in two different courts.  The DEFENDANTS in both law suits form one tightly knit cabal of conspirators.

 

It should be noted that Atlanta Police Precinct #5 is located directly across the street from The Pine, and Emory Health Care Services, Inc. is only a stone’s throw away (a smooth stone) just across hallowed Peachtree Street.  Police protection and health care services are only a breath away, but each might as well be located in downtown Tokyo.  Imagine drug using and drug dealing and prostitution just outside City Hall?  Would there be any police protection?

  Do you think the Mayor’s CRACK Homeless Initiative Team would have to endure drug dealing all night long?  In my last blog I asked where is Pothole Posse Shirley Franklin when we need her to fill the caverns we call Atlanta Streets.  I ask now, where are those homeless experts that Bloomberg pays millions to SERVE homeless people, especially women and children.  Do these high-priced experts know that homeless women and their children languish at their doorsteps?  Do they care?  In touch?

 

The Gateway is a streetcar named DISASTER.  Vince Smith has been quoted as saying the Board of Directors made the decisions to no longer take women.  I understand, also, that room has to be made for the 500 men at The Pine when Manny and the authorities “kick them out.”  The turning away of homeless women and children is disastrous, but that spec called The Gateway is only the tip of the corruption I call TEAM GOLIATH.  The microcosm mirrors the macrocosm.

 

James Wilson Beaty

Jeremiah 22:16

August 28, 2013            

THE STREETCAR NAMED DISASTER

Look!  I am perfectly happy for Atlanta’s leadership to satisfy the intellectual needs of the Downtown elite by building stadiums, THE STREETCAR NAMED DISASTER, a Billy Payne $25 dollar a ride Ferris wheel and a merry-go-round or two.  But do it after and ONLY after you have repaired your despicable streets.  Where is Pothole Posse Shirley Franklin when we need her?

 

Have you driven in downtown Atlanta in the last six months?  Have you made three detours during a two mile drive while tracks are being laid for THE STREETCAR NAMED DISASTER?  What mind dreamed up this abortion?  How much does it cost?  Who is paying?  Have you driven to Decatur via DeKalb Avenue dodging potholes and cavities and cracks that jar your teeth and destroy your alignment?  There’s a personhole cover in the 600 block of Dekalb Avenue in the westbound lane that is at least three inches deep and three years old.  (I use “personhole cover” rather than “manhole cover” because I strive to be politically correct.)   My car is thirteen years old, and every time I fail to dodge that canyon, off I go to my alignment man who tells me that the City of Atlanta sends him business every day.

 

Do these downtown geniuses drive in Atlanta?  Surely they don’t stay in downtown after dark! Does Captain Herb helicopter them in and out?  Does the Mayor’s limo not feel the bumps that the rest of us have to endure?  Do our crack City Council members drive to work?  Are they so bottom dead that they don’t feel the jolts that their slaves feel?   Do they feel anything?  Do they know and not care, or is it the same old, status quo, couldn’t care less.

 

How dare they build THE STREETCAR NAMED DISASTER before they repair their deteriorated streets?  I can remember, just barely, when city governments operated solely for the comfort of the people that they serve.  When did that change to operating solely for their own ease and comfort?

 

Last night the Peachtree-Pine Community in midtown Atlanta accommodated 27 women and 34 children, ages ranging from 14 to 1.  They slept there after eating a feastl DONATED by the saints at Manuels Tavern.  These homeless people were there for several reasons.  The multimillion dollar city shelter called Gateway in mid-June stopped sheltering single woman.  In July it stopped taking women with children.  We don’t know exactly what THE GATEWAY is a gateway to.  Perhaps its terminal is the same as THE STREETCAR NAMED DISASTER  These human beings had no place to be.  Word on the street is The Gateway is gearing up to receive the 500 or so men at The Pine whenever The Conspirators successfully steal the Peachtree-Pine building.

Fifty-one people last night were sacrificed politically by TEAM GOLIATH in order to complete the demise of The Pine and  little Team David.  TEAM GOLIATH consists of the City of Atlanta, The Chamber, Central Atlanta Progress, (ADID) Atlanta Downtown Improvement District, Manny Fialkow’s hazy conglomerate, Atlanta United Way, Emory University, Emory Health Care Services, Inc. and men of God along the “sanitized corridor” like Rector Hoare, CEO of Varsity Grill Episcopal Church.  And all these conspirators are self- proclaimed experts on homelessness.  Horace Sibley and Debi Starnes announced years ago that they would end homelessness in Atlanta in 5 years.  Sorry, 10 years.  Oops, as the late Jim Lee Scott writes, are we now saying 15 years?

TEAM GOLIATH’s attitude toward those woman and babies that slept in chairs last night brings to mind a story Tom Are told me last week.  Both of us admire William Sloan Coffin, former student pastor at Yale.  Coffin is an expert on many issues including world hunger.  Some time ago he was invited to speak on that subject at a downtown, fancy-ass Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia.  Pastor Coffin stepped to the pulpit and said the following: I paraphrase Tom Are.  Coffin said that one half of the world’s population went to bed hungry last night, and you in this congregation don’t give a SHIT.  Presbyterian gasps resounded aplenty.  And you are far more concerned that I would use the word SHIT than you are that one half of the world’s population went to bed hungry.  Coffin took his seat.

 

TEAM GOLIATH knows that women and children every night in DOWNTOWN Atlanta have nothing and have nowhere to go.  I shout it. I’d shout it if I could from the roof tops.  I’d shout it from atop corrupt City Hall.  I’d shout it from the roof top of the Hurt Building.  I’d shout it from the roof of Atlanta United Way,  I’d shout it from All Saints’ Episcopal Church’s rooftop, “TEAM GOLIATH is starving homeless women and their children in Atlanta, and it doesn’t give a SHIT.” A difference between TEAM GOLIATH and the Philadelphia Presbyterians is TEAM GOLIATH doesn’t give a SHIT that I use the word SHIT or any word that I might utter.  In a word TEAM GOLIATH doesn’t give a SHIT.

 

James Wilson Beaty

Jeremiah 22:16

August 22, 2013

 

 

Jim Lee Scott (1945-2013) Speaks From The Grave

        Poet, activist, refreshingly recalcitrant, dear friend, Jim Lee Scott, went home Tuesday morning, August 6, 2013.  Without him my family’s life would not be as pleasant as it is.  Without his skill as a master carpenter, we would not have a deck on the back of our house here in the hood.  Without that same skill we would not have a fence bordering our back lot.  The previous fence was run over by thieves whose pickup truck knocked the fence flat before they hauled away a snapper lawnmower.

 

 The 125-foot fence bordering the west side of our house would not be there had not Jim Lee responded to our emergency.  The emergency was created by a shyster developer who built a 28-foot two story dwelling on a 36-foot wide lot, leaving a set-back of 3 feet from the property line.  A seven-foot setback is the norm but, the corrupt, sovereignly immune City of Atlanta leadership allows anything for a few tax dollars.

 

 A lovely concrete patio below a curved driveway is there only through the craftsmanship of Jim Lee Scott.  At the edge of the patio stands a regulation basketball goal with a glistening net.   When he built the patio and drive, he told me that these were gifts from an anonymous donor.  I begged him to tell me the name of such a kind person.  He wouldn’t.  He said only, “You wouldn’t believe me.”

            A month before Jim Lee Scott died he told me that all the costs and all the labor were paid for by none other than the nonesuch, Steve Carr.  That worthy and I have had screaming contests over my front fence.  Bless you, Steve Carr, what an enigma you are.

 

Everyone who knew Jim Lee Scott will miss him.  His delightful sister, Jo Anne, lives in Lynchburg, Virginia.  Several months ago Jim Lee brought her to our dining room table for a Saturday morning visit.  Whenever she looked at her brother, two emotions showed, adoration and inquisitiveness.  Our mutual friend, Bob Darby, called me on that sad Tuesday morning to tell me that Jim Lee had died.  I recalled W.  H. Auden’s words remembering William Butler Yeats’ home going, “All the instruments we have agree, it was a cold dark day he died.”

 

The Tuesday morning that Jim Lee Scott died in Atlanta was hot and muggy; however, the dying of our friend made the day dark and cold.  Every visit I received from or paid to Jim Lee Scott he was either on the way or coming from a place where he was helping somebody.  Because he was an expert jailhouse lawyer and knew his way around the shady workings of courtrooms, he tortured unsavory lawyers and their counterparts, shadowy judges.

Jim Lee Scott’s sister came to Atlanta the moment she received the news of his death.  She attended to those necessary details in this not so pleasant situation.  She called me and we talked about Jim Lee.  I told her that I would be posting a blog honoring her brother and that I was going to say he was “refreshingly recalcitrant.”  She laughed and said you’ll appreciate what I want to tell you.  Jimmy she said was cremated and his ashes are riding with me now on the back seat of my car.  She explained that this was the very first time in her life while driving “Jimmy” that he was not telling her where to go and what to do.

 

I know of no kinder person than Jim Lee Scott.  He gave every time all the time.  We didn’t say goodbye the last time he visited.  We didn’t need to do that.  What we knew was settled long ago. 

We will meet the next time just inside the Eastern Gate.  Save me a seat, my buddy.  I pray sitting in that saved seat will not happen for a long, long time.  See ya!

 

One of the last few visits I enjoyed with my friend he dropped off an essay and three new poems.  One of the poems is entitled , “A Parable For Jack Hardin.”  The following is a piece Jim Lee Scott wrote answering one of Alan Harris’s diatribes.  The remainder of this blog consists of the words, quoted verbatim honoring the life and memory of Jim Lee Scott.

 

“My Reply Comment To Alan Harris – – Welcome Or Not – – Recognizing Also The Reply Of Professor Chuck Steffen, On Solution, Solution Who’s Got The Solution To Homelessness?

 

I briefly met Alan Harris and his better half Nancy once at a small meeting on homelessness at First Presbyterian Church maybe six or seven years ago.  I have met Chuck Steffen as a comrade perhaps a half-dozen times or more at demos or marches or rallies or court hearings in support of the Task Force for the Homeless.  I was with Bob Darby at that small meeting at the church; and Bob has been an activist advocating especially for homeless mentally ill persons for decades, also being active in the Food Not Bombs movement especially in Boston and then Atlanta.

 

William Wardlaw III, “Mr. B” as I know him (see his great, great, great memoir, COCA-COLA ANARCHIST, at www.cocacolaanarchist.com) is mentioned twice in Alan’s recent diatribe, first near the beginning of his first version, entitled “An Open Letter To The Citizens Of Atlanta,” and second, near the end of his rewrite or second version, entitled, “An Appeal To United Way and Mayor Reed,” where he again tries to enlist Mr. B as someone agreeing with himself more or less.  Mr. B and I were acquaintances I guess you’d say on the progressive scene around Atlanta until that same half-dozen or so years ago when, at the Beaty’s house, I chanced upon a copy of the MS for his great memoir; and that precipitated our fast close friendship.

 

As for the Beatys, Jim and Anita, I have known them since the early 1990’s, and served as their home handyman or small remodeler until about three years ago when my health started to fail with a heart flutter which was basically fixed then, I think, although I was weakened by that, and then less than a year ago when cancer of the esophagus got me and I was only able to withstand half of my scheduled chemo and radiation treatments before nearly dying from the heavy side effects (I spent 11 days recovering in a Grady hospital bed, and now nearly 12 weeks later still recover at home).  But my friendship with the Beaty’s only increases even though I can no longer fix up their house with one project after another.

 

Unlike all these several prominent persons just named, I have never been a leader in the progressive movements of our society; I am a born rank-and-file cadre member of the proletariat, and proud, perhaps too proud, to have stayed such, refusing to rise above such a station come what may.  Such has been my life, my experience, my contacts with some of Atlanta’s main providers/advocates for the neediest, destitute, or homeless citizens in our midst.  So this is who I am, and my perspective on this question or topic.  Jim Beaty asked whether I might be willing to toss my two cents’ worth back at Alan Harris here; of course I leapt at the chance.

 

Before beginning the reply proper however I must mention my brief contact of acquaintance with just two more leaders on the scene: Horace Sibley and Steve Hall.  Horace is a lawyer/proponent on the side of Central Atlanta Progress and the City politicians, demagogues and staff.  Steve Hall is a lawyer/proponent on the side of the Task Force, the Beatys, Mr. B, Myrtle Davis, Joe Beasley, Carl Hartrampf, Vanessa Vadim and all the other board members and staff and clients there at the Peachtree Pine Community.

 

I have observed Mr. Hall and his able second chairs plead the Task Force’s case twice at Superior Court hearings, once at a U. S. District hearing; once during a Georgia Court of Appeals oral argument; and I have found his strategies and presentations to be brilliant.  (Of course, it helps a great deal to have so many of the facts and laws firmly on one’s side.)

 

In fact, when a section of the bar or some such august group awarded Horace Sibley as lawyer of the year, or something to that effect, I had actually nominated Steve Hall instead to win that prize.  I attended the swell event down yonder at the Commerce Club; and after it was over I confronted Horace, respectfully, and told him I had nominated Steve to win.  I may not be around here to see it, but my faith is that not too many years hence – – and I do hereby prophecy – – Steve will indeed win that award in a year to come (hard as that may be for many to believe now) for his valiant work in the instant Task Force cases.  It’s the old story of David and Goliath; and the little fellow with the shepherd’s accoutrements is still the victor.  In the long run you can’t beat the truth and God Almighty.  Remember how Dr. King used to refer to the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice.

Now, in a very real way, Professor Steffen and Alan Harris, (in his rewrite using that smaller type or just the front and back of one piece of paper) have each anticipated some of my criticisms.  But what I mainly would say to you, Alan, is that your little piece struck me as being hopelessly mistitled, or misleading in its introductory comments.  At first you led us to believe that we would read here a diatribe squarely laid against the Task Force and their Peachtree-Pine shelter.  But then you proceeded to enumerate one by one a long list of the several failures over recent years of lawyer Sibley and cohorts and operatives such as Debi Starnes, and our string of mayors (dating all the way back to Maynard Jackson if the truth is to be told) who have all harangued against the Task Force’s loud proclamation of the inconvenient truth that Atlanta indeed hosts more homeless folks than you can shake a stick at, and get away with it, as long as the Task Force remains on duty.

So you were ostensibly joining in that chorus, Alan, the chorus of the proud city fathers, so to speak, who kept on advertising their alternative, fairy-tale portrait of their fair city as having not many homeless people, especially after the police swept so many into jails just before big events like the Olympics.  And, even if there were a few still left on the streets, why, that was the fault of somebody or something akin to outside agitators; yes sir, we can smell ‘em a mile away.  (Just as the same bunch kept on chorusing for as long as they could that “we” have a great system here, and our kids’ test scores PROVE it, by god.!  Damn the whistleblowers!  Full speed ahead!  Appearance is all!  Substance don’t matter!  But willful ignorance of moral standards is no excuse.  And miscasting blame for social ills also is inexcusable.)

 

So you chirped up, Alan, with your little songbird paean harping on the same harangue, as Professor Steffen so aptly pointed out.  But then hardly had you gotten started on said course when you switched keys or mood or tempos or specifically admitted the truth that the much-touted and lavishly uber-funded Gateway Center (after by stealing away by conspiratorial RICO Act means much government funding from the Task Force) “had no impact on” (reducing the overflow crowd at) “Peachtree Pine.”  And the so-called self-styled “Regional Commission” (under United Way auspices, with Horace Sibley, Debi Starnes, various mayors, et al.) “never once acknowledged its failure . . . to provide transitional or permanent supportive housing for more than a small fraction” of those who need it as well as “refusing to open emergency shelters” as an alternative to (or at least a help for) Peachtree-Pine.

 

From out Task Force perspective, the other side in this controversy (now also a legal controversy involving suits at law) has been good at nothing but slandering/libeling the Task Force and using some highly devious low and immoral and illegal means to de facto re-direct/misdirect government and private funding from the Task Force eventually to the Gateway Center, and with NO improvement thereby accruing for the vast numbers of destitute folks who need a lot of help to escape from homelessness.  The other side, it seems to us, subscribes to that ancient dictum prescribed by Mephistopheles Beelzebub, who famously once said, “It is better to curse the darkness than to light one little candle.”

 

We live in a society which is lately more and more showing itself to be of two tiers: the very comfortable at the top and the very desperate to survive on the bottom.  Judging from the legislation passing (or not passing) in our national and state first branches of government, we are indeed, as Jim Wallis in SOJOURNERS, proved now to be more a plutocracy than a democracy, by the time we add up the overwhelming effects of all those lobbyists and the millions or billions they spend on those pliant legislators.

 

Among the very desperate to survive can be counted many of the incarcerated, and then all the homeless wanderers on our city’s streets who comprise the population of a very strange type of prison or institution indeed, one without bars where the imperative has been dramatically transformed from “stay put” to “move on,” and the pounding of the pavement in the concrete jungle becomes the most unhealthy hiking one could ever undertake.  It often ends in incarceration or re-incarceration and sometimes ends in being killed by the cold or the heat or by the cold-blooded or hot-headed actions of some other person – – either someone in authority, or someone from a place of prestige, or perhaps someone who suffered right alongside these unhealthiest of hikers.

 

Alan, I was provided first only the first three pages of your first version, the last line of which reads: “ . . . Peachtree=Pine shelter had not improved, and 500 to 700 men were still warehoused there . . . “.  But now in your newer edited, second version, I see where you extricated that loaded word “warehoused,” and then you went on in that paragraph to say that “ . . . the homeless survey data suggests substance abuse, mental illness, and the co-occurrence of these two conditions are the major underlying causes of homelessness . . . “

 

I disagree with that as you have stated it, or as the survey it and you repeated it.  The statement may be only partially true in some cases, wherein the addiction or illness showed up in the individual at least to some degree before the homelessness.  But in many cases, I think probably over half of the cases, said addiction or illness, at least in aggravated form, were some symptoms of said homelessness, rather than the cause of the same.  I would say to you that if you, or practically anyone, were to spend a few months, perhaps only a few weeks, or even just days as a wandering homeless person in this city, and if that didn’t to a marked degree drive you crazy or else drive you to drink or something worse, then you would be the exception and not fall in with the general rule.  You dig?

 

Further, as Professor Steffen clearly points out there are many other more real or likely proximate causes of homelessness: unemployment, underemployment, lack of good low-cost housing, adverse impacts of institutional as well as personal classism, racism and sexism.  And here are a few others we could specifically add: “conservative” parents kicking out their gay kids from their own homes, the debilitating effects of fetal alcohol syndrome or mental retardation or autism or Asperger’s syndrome, and perhaps several other such syndromes, the simple inability to fit in easily with the competitive scheme of dog-eat-dog capitalism or “entrepreneurship,” as the successful one sometimes call it, etc.

 

When you confuse or conflate causes with symptoms, Alan, I believe you may reduce your effectiveness in helping to solve the major problem(s) which you are seeking to alleviate.  An old career hand like you with the Social Security Administration, I would have thought, would be well aware of that.  Perhaps our bureau learn some bad things as well as good as they go along.

 

I do not want to be too hard on you, though.  Even if you have in some sense or degree indeed been a bureaucrat, I remind myself that you possibly could have chosen to do that in some other field than one which is at least ostensibly devoted to helping others who can no longer help themselves, or who need the help the most.  I have to believe that you and your Nancy have long given at least substantial parts of your lives to be of help to others, even though you have disagreed with several of my closest friends.  Both the Beatys and Bob Darby have particularly told me of profound disagreements they have had with you, and not without some good cause on their part I must conclude.  Yet I see a lot of good in you too, just as I do in them.

 

I fancy myself at least to be an ecumenical leftist or progressive.  I used to say I like everybody on the left from Ted Kennedy to Che Guevarra.  I reckon I should still say that.  But I do hate it when I see progressives attacking each other.  I figure that the right wingers are  enemy enough for all of us who genuinely care for others and are not so deep into the self-interest thing, you know, that we lose what really makes us human or humane or TRULY Christiam.

 

So I think you should have more honest, Alan, that your real beef is against those corporate bigwigs downtown and their public secter counterparts, the demagogic local politicians who have wanted to attack people like the Beatys, saying that no one should be both a provider of services and an advocate too.  (I suppose they thought themselves – – bankers and CEO’s and CFO’s and demagogues and such, made better providers!)  No wonder the Gateway movers and shakers have failed to end “chronic homelessness” here in 5 years or 10 years.  And do we begin to hear 15 now?

 

And I think you should have been a little more honest, Alan, or else more astute perhaps, shall we say, to catch that discrepancy or confusion about causes and symptoms when we speak of addiction and mental illness in relation to homelessness.  Those two symptoms may be approximately just as prevalent among some affluent or well-to-do-folks who can shut their doors for most of their lives, whereas the wandering homeless, just like prisoners, more usually have to live their lives as an open book, where both the authorities and fellow low folks on the totem pole all can see the suffering clearly going on right out there in the open 24/7.  You don’t have a door of privacy to shut behind you as you are trudging up Peachtree Street to the Peachtree=Pine shelter after the Gateway Center has thrown you out, sometimes in the middle of the night.  I wish you could have interviewed some of them, Alan, especially the women and children, as you were compiling your anecdotal interviews.  Some of them, I hazard, might have appeared quite mad.  I’m quite sure, moreover, that such a development would have upset me terribly.

 

And I repeat, I think you should have been more honest about providers and advocates for the homeless being very well suited to work together, even operating in the same individual sometimes, just as Jim and Anita and Mr. B all do.  After all, I think you yourself have been that, or certainly have tried to be that.  And so you have spoken up and rejected outright Debi Starnes’ sick and twisted analysis of the same to be an unhealthy combining of the two functions.  There are few people more harmful to our society as a whole than our political extremist schools of psychologists who shuffle the data around to support their preconceived ideology.  I merely note this anecdotally in passing.

 

In sum and in short, Mr. Harris, I might be so bold as to dare to suggest that you give your little paper yet another write, or rewrite, and try to dray yet a little closer to the truth to even more consistently from beginning to end show that you really have no dog in the hunt against the Beatys or that so largely unacknowledged saint, Mr. B.  Rather, if you are going to let loose your dogs of war in the conflagration, you’ll be actually and more properly setting them upon those same scalawags in suits on the other of the lawsuits from the Beatys, all of which Mr. Hall and team are going to bring to fruition quick and soon now, quick and soon – – compared to all the time they on the other side have already delayed the resolution thereof so far.  Good ol’ boy dissembling stretches out only so far, and then, like an old rubber band, rather suddenly, it seems, it collapses.  The arc of the moral universe.

 

Alan Harris, I wish you well.  Thank you for your significant contribution to the conversation over a cause for which we both demonstrate much care.  Sincerely, 5/19/13 Jim Lee Scott

 

P. S.     And I do want you to know that I really do appreciate your contributions.  You truly have a passion to help the destitute.  My take on all this is merely to point out very similar genuine passions in my friend Jim and Anita and Mr. B, for examples, and how your ire is very much misdirected against them, or so it seems.  As Jesus said in Mark 9:40, “For he that is not against us is on our part.”  Those twelve disciples were coming to have a too exclusivist attitude about who was really a follower of Jesus; He had to straighten him out about who had a right to cast out demons in his name, Jesus was and is an inclusivist, and so should we be, Alan.  Anyone with the true passion and humble spirit may join the righteous movement, and we all work together, multiplying the effort.

 

I have a young woman friend whom I met in prison while visiting several other women there; and she has lived here with me off and on for over 15 years now.  She has a weakness for alcohol and other drugs and then a habit of reckless burglary, as though she intentionally gets arrested, which continually lands her back into trouble since teenage years.  She started out in life with alcoholic parents and an abusive father, and with two syndromes which were not understood at all then: fetal alcohol effects syndrome and autism’s Asperger’s syndrome.  She has never yet been treated formally for either condition.  She has instead only been arrested and jailed and sometimes imprisoned.  With all her problems, and her record, and her advanced age (now almost 53) she is practically unemployable.

 

She needs a safety net such as provided by SSI if she is to survive and last out here in “free” capitalist America.  I hope to write to you about her again soon, or before many moons, and then bring her to see you and Nancy.  Please keep open the opportunity to hear us out on this, and maybe help us to apply for a woman whom our systems (justice, medical, social) have truly failed for all her life, since her infancy.  I am practically her last “family” who will claim her now; but I have seen her good points, and I refuse to allow her to just be thrown away as damaged goods.  At her best she is a wonderful person.”

 

Note:  I post this blog in loving memory of Jim Lee Scott who, like William Stringfellow, was there fighting to ease the pain of a fellow human being.  Rest in peace, my man.

 

James Wilson Beaty

Jeremiah 22:16

August 21, 2013        

 

                

 

 

 

 

 

     

For Jim Lee Scott (1945-2013) From A Devoted Friend

 for jim lee

 

jim lee he wuz a travelin man

travelin light

had no truck with a-pos-tro-fees

nor dashes neither nor caps

nor any kinda punctuation

and around 08 or 09 had no time

to clean type righter keys

so we has to figger

twixt an a & o as in hope or hate

but what the heck

we need

each of god s chillun to take us

some figgerin time

jim lee

our brother jim lee

he gave his all

his e & i & u just as dang freely

as his a & o

and OH so much we miss u

brother jim and may u rest

in love & peace amen.

 

                                    copyleft

                                    8/18/13

                                    blz bubba

Artist Mario Robinson

When you click on the website introducing my book, SACRED GRAMMAR, (www.sacredgrammar.com) and then go to my video posted on youtube, you will see over my left shoulder a self portrait by Mario Robinson.  He is one of the most sought after and up and coming artists in the world. 

 

He is a friend of the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. and spent a week in our studio teaching our resident artists, all members of the Peachtree-Pine Community.  My apologies for including his portrait in the video; it was accidental.

 

James Wilson Beaty

August 18, 2013

Jeremiah 22:16

People Are Hurting

 

The Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. this a.m. delivered a check to a motel south of Atlanta that purchased five nights of “housing” for a family of seven: a husband and wife and their five children,  ages 18 through 4. The Task Force also provided spending money and a full tank of gas.  All four school-age children are in school.  The father begins a job next week as a sales representative.  The father has been unemployed for six months and housing was lost five months ago.  The father in this family will come into Peachtree Pine to speak with one of our staff who daily addresses similar cases.

 The only way that the Task Force could provide financial help to this family is through the kind and generous donations of a few caring people.  ALL funding to the Task Force has been stopped through a decade old conspiracy whose mission is to disappear the Peachtree Pine Community from Peachtree Street.  The conspirators whom I call TEAM GOLIATH have failed to remove Little David from hallowed Peachtree.  Central Atlanta Progress, Atlanta Downtown Improvement District, Philanthropist Manny Fialkow, Emory Health Care, Inc. and Emory University have maneuvered themselves into prickly lawsuits that have some goliaths squirming in their towers.  The City of Atlanta, that moving violation from its pate down to its shoes, slithered out of being sued with its buddy system called a federal judge. The City of Atlanta having to face Little David in a lawsuit like this one could never happen.  Sovereign immunity is a given.  Henry VIII could not be tried for murdering two of his wives; he’s the king.  Walter Brueggemann says, “That’s what kings do.”  Atlanta United Way is another lily white conspirator that has slipped under the radar.  I’m not sure why as this team for righteousness, like the bogus Tri-J Continuum of Care, Inc., sits squarely in the middle of the conspiracy mix.

The Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. receives from the City of Atlanta, ZERO dollars.  The Task for the Homeless, Inc. receives from Atlanta United Way, ZERO dollars.  The Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. receives from Fulton County, ZERO dollars.  The Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. receives from the Peachtree Corridor houses of worship, ZERO dollars.  The Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. receives from the “unbiased” Tri-J, ZERO dollars. The Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, Inc. receives from the Nun-Run Mercy Housing, Inc., ZERO dollars. This was not always the case.  Many of these entities previously funded the Task Force. But after Richard Orr of CAP and Homeless Czar Debi Starnes and Homeless Commissioner Chair Horace Sibley did their nefarious work, all funding stopped.

So far, as of this date, August 9, 2013, Anita Beaty, Executive Director of the Task Force has been deposed three days and a total of eleven hours by attorneys representing the defendants.  Remember the defendants are on trial.  They are accused of racketeering and tortious interference.  The Task Force is not on trial.  The conspirators’ attorneys’ questions attempt always to show that the Task Force is poorly organized, poorly run, doesn’t pay its debts and warehouses its victims.  Their questions follow the line taken by Episcopal CEO, Rector Hoare who said from his Varsity Grill pulpit that Peachtree Pine is a squalor.

 After hours of questioning at the Baker Donalson Law Firm, everyone took a break.  In that break time Anita Beaty received a call from a family of five, homeless, carless. penniless.  After her five hours of being deposed by lawyers representing the TEAM GOLIATH conspiracy, the Task Force executive director delivered a Task Force check enabling that family to stay five days in a motel.  How noble it would have been for lawyers representing conspirator CAP, conspirator ADID and conspirator Philanthropist Manny Fialkow to throw in 30 pieces of silver for a homeless family.

 

I’m studying the life of William Stringfellow who stood ready as a brilliant attorney to help destitute people in Harlem.  He did that every day.  In my search to find why would he do such a thing, giving his life for the poor.   I have found the answer.  HEART!!!  Bill Stringfellow was heart, all heart1  He couldn’t say, “No.”  The Task Force has no funds to help families such as the two I have mentioned.  The principalities and powers responsible for helping them won’t help them and are damned and determined that the likes of Anita Beaty will not help them.  Should your HEART move you to send financial support we’ll continue to help whomever we can.  Should you send enough for a tank of gas, it could enable someone to search for a job.  Thank you

 

James Wilson Beaty

Jeremiah 22:16

August 9, 2013.

Judge Sends Released Defendant To Peachtree Pine

In the State Court of Clayton County, State of Georgia, Chief Judge John C. Carbo, III signed the following Order on July 30, 2013.  I quote the Order withholding the name of the person involved.

 

State of Georgia v. John Doe, LOITERING OR PROWLING, MOTION AND ORDER TO NOLLE PROSEQUI.

Upon the motion of the Solicitor General of the Clayton County State Court, for good cause shown, a Nolle Prosequi is hereby entered on the above-styled case.

 

REASON:     In consideration of the time spent in custody, and defendant’s willingness to seek housing;  Immediately upon Defendant’s release, the Clayton County Sheriff’s Department shall transport Defendant to the Metro Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, located at 477 Peachtree Street Atlanta, Georgia 30308’

 

                                                                Chaundra D. Lewis

                                                                Assistant Solicitor

 

                                                                ORDER

 

Upon consideration of the foregoing motion, the same is hereby granted, and is hereby ordered that the above- styled be nolle prossed.

 

SO ORDERED this 30^th day of July, 2013

                                                               

 

                                                                Chief Judge John C. Carbo, III

                                                                State Court of Clayton County

 

Note:     For years Atlanta United Way, Grady Hospital, The Gateway Shelter, City of Atlanta Police have sent individuals to the Peachtree Pine facility.  To my knowledge never before this instance has a Judge sent an individual to Peachtree Pine.  I wonder if the Tri-J Continuum of Care knows that a Judge has sent a former defendant to the Pine.  The Tri-J group controls funding.  With the coaching of Central Atlanta Progress and Debi Starnes and Horace Sibley, this champion of the poor cut all funding years ago.  I wonder if United Way knows a Judge has sent a person seeking housing to The Pine.  I wonder if the Mayor’s blue plate, Nexus Lexus Homeless Initiative group knows a Judge has ordered such a thing.  Would Team Goliath powerhouse A. J. Robinson of Central Atlanta Progress approve such a move by a Judge?  What would Emory Health Care, Inc. do if a former defendant,and homeless person had been brought so close to their food court?  Perhaps Richard “We’re in!” Orr  could orchestrate a trip to Clayton County?  He’s done it before.  Philanthropist Manny Fialkow perhaps could help with a few bucks to help this homeless person?  In my pondering, I wonder most,  why did Judge Carbo not send his released person to Mayor Reed’s Homeless Initiative?  The AJC reported that this group has housed 300 homeless people.

 

 

James Wilson Beaty

Jeremiah 22:16

August 7, 2013

 

 

 

Truth-telling Woody Guthrie Joins Other Prophets Micah and Amos

 

If you gather round me children, a story I will tell

Pretty Boy Floyd, an outlaw; Oklahoma knew him well.

 

It was in the town of Shawnee; it was Saturday afternoon,

His wife beside him in his wagon; it was in to town they rode,

There a deputy sheriff approached him in a manner rather rude

Using vulgar words of language; and his wife she overheard.

Pretty Boy grabbed a log chain; and the deputy grabbed his gun.

In the fight that followed he laid that deputy down.

 

There’s a many a starving farmer; the same old story told

How this outlaw paid their mortgage, and saved their little home.

 

Others tell you of a stranger that come to beg a meal

And underneath his napkin left a thousand dollar bill.

It was in Oklahoma City; it was on a Christmas Day

There come a car load of groceries ; there’s a letter that did say

Well, you say that I’m an outlaw; you say that I’m a thief

Here’s a Christmas dinner for the families on relief.

 

Now it’s through this world I ramble; I see lots of funny men

Some will rob you with a six gun, some with a fountain pen.

But if through your life you travel, and if through your life you roam

You’ll never see an outlaw drive a family from their home.

Micah 2:1-3 “Woe to those who plan iniquity, to those who plot evil on their beds! At morning’s light they carry it out because it is in their power to do it. They covet fields and seize them, and houses, and take them. They defraud a man of his home, a fellow man of his inheritance. Therefore, the Lord says, I am planning disaster against this people, for which you cannot save yourselves. You will no longer walk proudly, for it will be a time of calamity.

Amos 2:7 “They trample on the heads of the poor as upon the dust of the ground and deny justice to the oppressed.

 

 

Note:  In Georgia thousands of homes are “under water.”  Of those thousands hundreds have been foreclosed upon by mortgage holders.  Not one of those homes was taken by an outlaw holding a six gun; rather, they were taken by robbers holding fountain pens.

 

James Wilson Beaty

Jeremiah 22:16

August 6, 2013

Mike Casey March 1974-July 2013

 

 

                The following remembrance was distributed at Mike’s funeral at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church on August 5, 2013.  I quote it here in loving honor of this beyond remarkable young man.

 

Michael Edwin Vosburg-Casey was born on March 13, 1974 in Palo Alto, California to Tom and Betty Beetley Casey.  He grew up in Redwood City, California with his brother Dan and his sister Beth.  From the age of three, Mike was often found on various rooftops exploring and stargazing.  He attended Bellarmine Jesuit High School in San Jose and then crossed the country to go to Colby College in Waterville, Maine where he majored in music.

 

Through high school and college, Michael worked for the San Mateo Park System where he nurtured his love of nature and lived out his philosophy of “When you walk in the woods, don’t follow the trail and don’t leave a trail.”

 

When Mike graduated from college he moved to Austin, TX where he learned to roast a pig in the ground, and, as he did throughout his life, developed and maintained strong networks of lifelong friends.

 

                A friend wrote recently, “Mike, please be aware that you have created the interaction of the most widely diverse group of intense humans I have ever seen.  You have won!”

 

In 1999 Mike moved to Atlanta for a two-year term with the Jesuit Volunteer Corps.  He worked at the Central Presbyterian Outreach Center and the Georgia Justice Project.  During these years Mike became involved with the Open Door Community and met Amy Vosburg, the love of his life.  Amy is an attorney who represents Georgia prisoners on death row with the Georgia Appellate Resource Center.

 

In August 2001, Mike moved to the Open Door where he lived and worked full time until 2003.  His gift for pounding out everybody’s favorites on the piano continued long after he had moved out, and he regularly returned to play for the guests in the soup kitchen.  In October 2004 Mike and Amy were married and established a home that has welcomed many friends, co-workers and wandering souls. 

 

In 2006, after many years of discernment and actions against war and violence, Michael crossed the line at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia, during the annual protest.  The SOA (now called the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Operation) has trained thousands of soldiers from South and Central America who have been responsible for death squads, torture and assassinations across the region.  After taking part in many of the demonstrations over the years, Mike stepped up to join those who were sentenced to federal prison time for their resistance.  Over the 100 days of his imprisonment, Mike and Amy maintained their partnership and continued their joint work to bring justice and peace inside the walls of prison and jails and radiating to the streets of our towns and cities.

 

In June 2010, Elena Lucille Vosburd-Casey was born to Amy and Mike and Mike became a full-time father.  Along with her daddy, Elena visited the sick, went to soup kitchens, and vigiled for peace every Friday.  He taught her to sing at the top of her lungs, play the piano in a unique style, dance in the rain, and to never meet a stranger.  He read to her every day and helped her to develop an astounding level of curiosity, concentration and verbal skills.

 

Mike made a unique contribution in the movement to abolish the death penalty.  Every time an execution was scheduled in Georgia, Mike planned a vigil in front of the office of Dr. Carl Musso, the physician hired by the Department of Corrections to administer the lethal drugs.  Mike organized protesters to join him to hold signs calling on the doctor to stop his deadly work.  Michael’s vigil was an important factor in leading the Georgia legislature to pass a secrecy law that classifies the prison personnel who participate in executions and the source of the prison’s lethal drugs as “state secrets.”  This law (which is unconstitutional and out of accord with the state’s “sunshine laws”) is currently being challenged in the courts, and we give thanks for Mike’s work to shine a light on this part of the death machine.

 

In December 2011 Mike was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.  He struggled through treatments and maintained his ongoing work for peace and justice.  Toward the very end of his life, Mike insisted on attending in his wheel chair the Friday peace vigil.  It was his last outing.  Through it all he maintained his remarkably quirky sense of humor.  Early in the morning of July 31, Mike died in the loving home that he and Amy have created with the help of hospice and surrounded by devoted family and friends.

 

A funeral mass will be celebrated at Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic Church on Monday, August 5.  A memorial service will be held on October 5 at the Open Door Community followed by a picnic served by the community.

 

Mike Vosburg-Casey’s life remains as an inspiration to action for all who love justice, peace, and the radical vision of the Beloved Community.  Deo gratias.

 

Note:  I met Mike Casey the first time when he interviewed me on WRFG, Radio Free Georgia.  I marveled at his humility, his astuteness and his compassion.  His humility came through as an interviewer.  He was more interested in the words of his subject than his own, a quality rare in most interviewers.  His astuteness came through as he showed a clear understanding of the atrocities committed by City of Atlanta government against homeless people, the total anomie of local leadership, public and corporate.  And his compassion revealed the spirit of a young man who cherishes his fellow human beings, all human beings.  May Mike Casey’s tribe increase.

At the luncheon following Mike’s funeral, Anita and I sat across from Mike’s uncle, another Casey from California.  He said that Mike once said that Irish music is learned best in Irish pubs.  That brought to mind W. H. Auden’s tribute to another great Irish man, William Butler Yeats.  Upon hearing that Yeats had gone home, Auden wrote,

What instruments we have agree

The day of his death was a dark cold day.

 

James Wilson Beaty

Jeremiah 22:16

August 5, 2013