As more and more studies reveal that homelessness is a result of material factors unrelated to cultural issues like family values, it’s become increasingly evident […]
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James Costello and Modesto’s Homeless Action Group
As this winter’s often heavy rains repeatedly drenched numerous streets and alleyways here in the city of Modesto, I ran across the inevitable evidence — when I ventured out, usually in the aftermath of a downpour — of the toll those storms were taking on the most vulnerable among us, i.e., our unhoused neighbors who are at the mercy of the high winds, the cold rain, and the clinging chill […]
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How Homelessness has Enabled Cruelty
Trinitas Bankruptcy: We should have Listened
Trinitas Partners Farming Declares Bankruptcy
State Rejects Groundwater Plan for Modesto Subbasin
What the Armchair Experts get Wrong about Homelessness
On Politics — The Valley Citizen’s Endorsements
Homeless: Cave Dwellers in Modesto
Frank Ploof: Practicing Humanity among the Homeless
Congressman Tom McClintock: Worst Representative Ever?
SHARE: Making a Difference for People in Need
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How Homelessness has Enabled Cruelty
We’re no longer stunned or dismayed. We’ve become so habituated to California’s vast sprawl of homelessness that encampments along the freeways, bodies on the sidewalks. and human debris everywhere arouse no more concern than a speed bump or fire hydrant. The objectification of human beings in distress has become a norm for almost all of us. Homeless people have become inanimate parts of the daily landscape. Ronald Reagan began what […]
Trinitas Bankruptcy: We should have Listened
Trinitas Partners recent declaration of bankruptcy is likely just the beginning of widespread economic devastation throughout the San Joaquin Valley. No one saw it coming more clearly than the pseudonymous author of On the Public Record (OtPR), who wrote nine years ago, “This economic model, in which powerful outsiders come in, displace the natives and destroy local natural resources (the aquifers) to provide cheap unprocessed goods to a foreign country is pure colonial […]
Trinitas Partners Farming Declares Bankruptcy
Trinitas Partners, the Bay Area investment firm that bought cattle land in Stanislaus County’s eastern foothills over a decade ago and then converted it to almond orchards, has declared bankruptcy. Trinitas made headlines when it was annexed into Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) and jumped ahead of local farmers who protested that its out-of-town owners were not serious farmers, but speculators who had their eyes on OID’s abundance of surface water. […]
State Rejects Groundwater Plan for Modesto Subbasin
The late Vance Kennedy was appalled when he learned tens of thousands of groundwater-dependent acres had been planted with almond orchards in the foothills on Stanislaus County’s east side. “That groundwater is our savings bank,” said Kennedy, then a resident of the City of Modesto. “That’s our reserve in case of an extended drought.” Kennedy, an award-winning hydrologist and geologist during his career at the U.S. Geological Survey, thought the […]