A Publication of the Coalition on Homelessness
In 1999 I started college, about 12 years late. In 1985 my family was in economic turmoil. My mother was raising two kids on her own, and when my grandfather, who had helped as much as he could, died when I was 14, our financial situation deteriorated rapidly. By 15, I was out of high school, and spent my teenage years alone in a motel room while my mom worked. Whenever I tried to find work,
My team and I cook approximately 1,500 meals a day to help homeless people in the Tenderloin. I’ve done this long enough to put all the sights to words. The food containers we serve can be found for blocks, and even miles away from the kitchen, with just the veggies left untouched. The work is mostly thankless, and unfortunately doesn’t seem to improve the actual living conditions here. What the meal does offer is calories needed to simply make it to the next.
In the United States, we know that law enforcement agencies that were put in place to “protect and serve” have done nothing of the sort. After the murder of George Floyd in 2020, community activists, organizers and allies came together across the country to protest and to hold law enforcement agencies accountable to the violence that they cause marginalized communites. Two years after one of the biggest movements began to halt police violence, few true solutions,
The thought of it all was so amazing that it sent chills down my spine. America: land of plenty, a second chance, heaven on Earth. A place only seen on TV. Just the thought of visiting makes one do the unbelievable just to get there. Some use marvelous pictures of America as screensavers on their phones, and laptops, and as wallpaper and art to decorate their homes. This makes most want to live in a fast-lane-life and fantasy world and try to do anything to get to America.
