General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Greenwald discusses frenzied attempts to smear & discredit him since NSA stories began [View all]99th_Monkey
(19,326 posts)I'm actually a happily retired community organizer, who
mostly worked with NGOs domestically to level the economic
playing field, get poor people into their own homes, my last major
gig was being hired to get 70 homeless people incorporated as
their own 501c3, that is democratically operated, with annual
elections of officers, etc.
These 70 became "members" of a membership based not-for-
profit, that the city (under quite a bit of duress and intense
public pressure) has leased land to, where they are building
a sustainable urban village of the poor, by the poor, for the
poor. It's called Dignity Village.
They/we started out as 8-10 pissed-off homeless people who
popped up some tents on city or ODOT land, determined to use
a chunk of public land on which to create a safe, sanitary place
to sleep at night. We played months of cat-and-mouse games
with the city, with them "evicting" them from one site, only to
have us call the press to announce a "shopping cart parade" to
the next (as yet undisclosed) publicly own site where they pop
up tents anew.
Now they are in their 13th year, and have built a village they
are proud of, because they are doing it for themselves, taking
care of one another; rather than having housed "poverty pimps"
dictate to them what is possible, what is real, etc.
You can check out the Village here, if you like ... there are many
great pics showing how it has developed over time. I'm very very
proud of the work I did with the Village and other poor people, to
help balance-out the gross injustices that our capitalistic greed-based
system visits upon those without wealth.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dignity_Village