Homeless Meters

Do They Really Help?

"The people who initiated that have never been homeless," says Pauley Broadhead as he gazes at the contribution meter and relaxes outside Smoothie King. A tattered backpack at his side holds all his possessions. "I'm homeless right now. I'm hungry right now."

Broadhead is only one in the community of panhandlers that the Athens Downtown Development Authority is urging passing pedestrians to turn down. The organization recently installed the contribution meters with signs reading "Please do not give cash to panhandlers" in the heart of downtown Athens.

city-homelessmeter.jpg

The question of whether the meters are giving aid to those in need or alienating the homeless in the community, however, has yet to be answered.

"Many people feel intimidated by panhandlers, and this is a way for them to say that they have already contributed to the cause," says James Doster, director of parking and security for Athens Downtown Parking. "We hope they will stop giving people money that will often go to drugs and alcohol."

"It's important to note," says Mary O'Toole, director of advocacy group Northeast Georgia Homeless Coalition, "that not all panhandlers are homeless and not all homeless are panhandlers." O'Toole also stresses that, while the organization believes that the majority of downtown panhandlers are not technically homeless (living in conditions unfit for human habitation or without shelter, according to the Housing and Urban Development definition), the homeless issue is a complicated and shifting one.

O'Toole also says that the NGHC will receive the funds collected by the meters - funds which will go towards building a drop-in day center "for those who need to shower, or wash their clothes... we're looking into national and state funding as well." Information about that shelter (once built) and current shelters will be distributed to the homeless population. The day center idea is, as far as Katheryn Preston is concerned, "the best solution for Northeast Georgia." The executive director for the Georgia Coalition to End Homelessness, an advocacy group based in Atlanta, feels that "in the long run, [day centers] will pay off for anyone who's on the street... the outcome's a long way away, and people need to look at the long-term goals."

The idea for the meters was suggested by a local police officer who saw the meters system in Nashville. There, the meters generate about $200 per month for the Homeless Coalition. The ADDA wants to find out if meters in Athens could produce results similar to the larger city.

"At this point, the four meters on College are a trial run for the system," Doster says. "If they work, we may put up more."

Even the ADDA, however, recognizes that the implementation of the meters is a two-sided issue that will result in opposition from certain factions in the community. The ADDA office has already received phone calls from opponents of the meters and signs.

"We are trying to slow down the number of people giving money to panhandlers," says Art Jackson, executive director of the ADDA. "It's an attempt to educate the new [University] freshmen that giving money to panhandlers is a bad thing... The danger of doing this is appearing insensitive."

While the meters are intended to prevent Athenians and visitors from giving in to aggressive panhandlers, some of the local homeless and pedestrians alike feel that the signs on the meters are more alienating than helpful. Those opposed to the Authority's public, blatant discouragement of giving cash to the homeless find the additions to the square offensive and destructive.

"It's not helping the despondent; it's separating them from the middle-class homeless," Broadhead says.

Dissenters to the system concede that the meters will undoubtedly help the homeless, but believe the system falls short of satisfying the immediacy of their needs.

"Most of the homeless people I know aren't going to see any of that money," says Athens resident Luke Powell.

Powell has seen the problems of the homeless and experienced, for a short period, the same difficulty of finding a home. He questions why the government thinks that discouraging panhandlers will help to solve any of these problems.

"Who can say that I can't give my money to who I want?" Powell asks.

The ADDA may simply be refusing to accept panhandling, however disturbing and disheartening as it may be, and homelessness as permanent institutions downtown. There may be more constructive ways for the development authority to address the issue.

"They need to allow the people on the street and the movers and shakers to coexist," says a local panhandler who did not wish to be identified. "We've had this same situation for years now, but this is my home and we need to live together."

While looking to protect shoppers and those unfamiliar with the College Square scene, the ADDA has displayed no definition for what it considers to be panhandling. The signs don't differentiate between aggressive panhandlers and those trying to earn money on the street through other means, such as street musicians and magicians.

"I come down on the street and play sometimes to get change. Is that panhandling?" Powell says.

About the success of his future and past pleas, Broadhead remarked, "Being vocal and people having the image of me homeless is real. It's real, man."

Andy Grable

Andy Grable is a local freelance writer.

Don't Flush

Volunteers Clean Lake Oconee

Putnam, Greene and Morgan County area residents will wade into Lake Oconee on October 4 as part of the continuing statewide campaign to clean and preserve over 70,000 miles of Georgia's rivers and streams. The effort will be part of Rivers Alive, a joint program of the Dept. of Natural Resources' Environmental Protection Division and Keep Georgia Beautiful. The Twelfth Annual Georgia River Cleanup is expected to once again be the largest single volunteer effort to beautify Georgia's water resources.

Volunteers for Lake Oconee will begin with registration at 8:30 a.m. on October 4 at either the Harmony Community Association building on Highway 44 or the Lawrence Shoals Park pavilion near Wallace Dam off of Highway 16. To help with planning and to be sure that there are sufficient supplies available, if possible please call 485-4090 to pre-register, provide contact information, and specify T-shirt size. All ages are welcome, but those under 18 must have written parental consent; supervision is the responsibility of parents or their designees. Volunteers will be provided with supplies for the cleanup (trash bags, bottled water, insect repellent, sun screen, etc.), a Rivers Alive T-shirt, a goody bag with educational materials and rewards from sponsors, and more. Lunch will be provided by Georgia Power Company at the Lawrence Shoals pavilion following the cleanup, and there will be live entertainment. Drawings will be held for prizes. CWD Containers will provide a container for the trash collected, and pictures will be taken to record the results of the participants' hard work.

Volunteers will be joining an estimated 24,000 other volunteers statewide participating in the Annual River Cleanup. During the month of October over 150 other cleanups will collect trash and other debris in streams, rivers, lakes and wetlands from the Coosa River in north Georgia to the Okefenokee Swamp in the south. That is why this year's event is called, "Clean Water From the Mountains to the Sea."

To volunteer for the Lake Oconee cleanup, contact Janet Pearson at (706) 485-4090 or jcp@mindspring.com . For more information about efforts in other areas of the statewide campaign, call (404) 675-1636 or go to www.riversalive.org.

Janet Pearson

Janet Pearson lives on Lake Oconee and doesn't take it for granted.

Animal Control

Last Week's Scorecard

Athens-Clarke County animal Control responded to 67 calls:

2 complaints of animal cruelty

1 bite case

8 complaints of barking dogs

5 dogs running loose

42 animals impounded:

36 dogs

4 cats

1 raccoon

1 opossum

26 dogs placed:

16 adopted

7 reclaimed

3 turned over to other agencies

Athens-Clarke County Animal Control press release for the week of Thursday, Sept. 18 to Wednesday, Sept. 24

Why We Hate Bush

It's the Stolen Election, Stupid

"Have the Democrats totally flipped their lids?" asks David Brooks in The Weekly Standard, quasi-official organ of the Bush Administration. "Because every day some Democrat seems to make a manic or totally over-the-top statement about George Bush, the Republican party, and the state of the nation today."

True, Democrats loathe Dubya with greater intensity than any Republican standard-bearer in modern political history. Even the diabolical Richard Nixon - who, after all, created the EPA, went to China and imposed price controls to stop corporate gouging - rates higher in liberal eyes. "It's mystifying," writes Brooks.

Let me explain.

First but not foremost, Bush's detractors despise him viscerally, as a man. Where working-class populists see him as a smug, effeminate frat boy who wouldn't recognize a hard day's work if it kicked him in his self-satisfied ass, intellectuals see a simian-faced idiot unqualified to mow his own lawn, much less lead the free world. Another group, which includes me, is more patronizing than spiteful. I feel sorry for the dude; he looks so pathetic, so out of his depth, out there under the klieg lights, squinting, searching for nouns and verbs, looking like he's been snatched from his bed and beamed in, and is still half asleep, not sure where he is.

And he's willfully ignorant. On Fox News, Bush admits that he doesn't even read the newspaper: "I glance at the headlines just to kind of [sic] a flavor for what's moving. I rarely read the stories, and get briefed by people who are probably read [sic] the news themselves." All these takes on Bush boil down to the same thing: The guy who holds the launch codes isn't smart enough to know that's he's stupid. And that's scary.

Fear breeds hatred, and Bush's policies create a lot of both. U.S. citizens like Jose Padilla and Yasser Hamdi disappear into the night, never to be heard from again. A concentration camp rises at Guantánamo. Spies tap our phones and read our mail; thanks to the ironically-named Patriot Act, these thugs don't even need a warrant. As individual rights are trampled, corporate profits are sacrosanct. An aggressive, expansionist military invades other nations "preemptively" to eliminate the threat of non-existent weapons, and American troops die to enrich a company that buys off the Vice President.

Time to dust off the F word. "Whenever people start locking up enemies because of national security without much legal care, you are coming close [to fascism]," warns Robert Paxton, emeritus professor of history at Columbia University and author of the upcoming book Fascism in Action. We're supposed to hate fascists - or has that changed because of 9/11?

Bush bashers hate Bush for his personal hypocrisy - the draft-dodger who went AWOL during Vietnam yet sent other young men to die in Afghanistan and Iraq, the philandering cocaine addict who dares to call gays immoral - as well as for his attacks on peace and prosperity.

But even that doesn't explain why we hate him so much. Bush is guilty of a single irredeemable act so heinous and anti-American that Nixon's corruption and Reagan's intellectual inferiority pale by comparison. No matter what he does, Democrats and Republicans who love their country more than their party will never forgive him for it.

Bush stole the presidency.

The United States enjoyed two centuries of uninterrupted democracy before George W. Bush came along. The Brits burned the White House, civil war slaughtered millions and depressions brought economic chaos, yet presidential elections always took place on schedule and the winners always took office. Bush ended all that, suing to stop a ballot count that subsequent newspaper recounts proved he had lost. He had his GOP-run Supreme Court, a federal institution, rule extrajurisdictionally on the disputed election, a matter that under our system of laws falls to the states. Bush's recount guru, James Baker, went on national TV to threaten to use force to install him as president if Gore didn't step aside: "If we keep being put in the position of having to respond to recount after recount after recount of the same ballots, then we just can't sit on our hands, and we will be forced to do what might be in our best personal interest - but not - it would not be in the best interest of our wonderful country."

Bush isn't president, but he plays one on TV. His presence in the White House is an affront to everything that this country stands for. His fake presidency is treasonous; our passive tolerance for it sad testimony to post-9/11 cowardice. As I wrote in December 2000, "George W. Bush is not the President of the United States of America." And millions of Americans agree.

Two months after 9/11, when Bush's job approval rating was soaring at 89 percent, 47 percent of Americans told a Gallup poll that he had not won the presidency legitimately. "The election controversy... could make a comeback if Bush's approval ratings were to fall significantly," predicted Byron York in The National Review. Two years later, three million jobs are gone, Bush's wars have gone sour and just 50 percent of voters approve of his performance. If York is correct, most Americans now consider Bush to be no more legitimate than Saddam Hussein, who also came to power in a coup d'état.

And that's why we hate him.

Ted Rall

Columnist and cartoonist Ted Rall is the author of the graphic travelogue To Afghanistan and Back.