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 […]
Search Results for: homeless
Congressman Tom McClintock: Worst Representative Ever?
One only needs to read House Representative Tom McClintock’s newsletters to realize how useless he is to the nation, his district, and his constituents. Now that he is up for re-election this year, he has started sending out newsletters extolling his accomplishments after months of silence. Reading and analyzing the newsletter, one may readily discern that what he is doing is either meaningless or counter to what is in the […]
SHARE: Making a Difference for People in Need
Bleak, dark, and piercing cold, it was a night for the well-housed and fed to draw round the bright fire, and thank God they were at home; and for the homeless starving wretch to lay him down and die. Many hunger-worn outcasts close their eyes in our bare streets at such times, who, let their crimes have been what they may, can hardly open them in a more bitter world. […]
Jim Stokes: Champion for Social Justice
The island nation of Madagascar lies in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa, nearly 11,000 miles away from Modesto. But that’s exactly where Jim Stokes — Director of the Salvation Army’s Berberian Shelter and the Low-Barrier Shelter — dedicated a Peace Corps term to assisting the people of that island Republic. It was just one of many missions he has undertaken while trying to make a positive […]
No Relief for Low-Income, Unhoused Valley Residents
A couple of Saturdays ago, a man and a woman lay on the grass beside each other in the deep shade of the First United Methodist Church in downtown Modesto. A shopping cart filled with their belongings was parked on the sidewalk nearby. I saw them as I was walking to the library that afternoon, under dusty sunlight slanting across I Street. They both seemed to be asleep, even with […]
Modesto Irrigation District Sales Proposal Roils the Waters
For years, Oakdale Irrigation District (OID) water sales seldom caused more than a flicker of public interest. Let nearby Modesto Irrigation District (MID) even think about a sale, however, and the hue and cry are heard for miles around. That was the case in 2011, when MID proposed selling water to the City of San Francisco. Angry protests followed and the public uproar ended with a resounding defeat for those […]
Gruesome Death of Unhoused Woman may have Saved a Life
Even though she was at a public meeting, Lynelle Solomon couldn’t hold back tears. Solomon was listening to public comments at a meeting of the Modesto City Council on July 11 when she heard a homeless advocate describe a grisly death by mowing machine at a park near Modesto’s Airport District, where Solomon has done homeless outreach for almost four years. The deceased woman’s name was Christy Chavez. “All I […]
Family Members Demand Answers in Gruesome Death of Unhoused Woman
“There was no yellow tape, there was no yellow tape,” said a family member of a homeless woman who was reported to have died Saturday, July 8 at Beard Brook Park in Modesto. The speaker was the brother-in-law of Christy Chavez. He was with family members visiting the site of Christy’s death on Wednesday, July 12, four days after she had last been seen near a hillside where a man […]
Modesto City Councilmember Favors Safe Sleeping Sites
In a Thursday morning meeting with members of MOCAG, a local citizens’ activist group, Modesto City Councilmember Jeremiah Williams said he favored safe sleeping sites for homeless people as long as supervision of the site was contracted out to service providers. The meeting was held on May 18 in a city council conference room in downtown Modesto. “We (the City of Modesto) don’t have the people to staff and supervise […]
No Drugs, Good Job — Still no Housing
California’s housing crisis shows no signs of ending soon as more and more people find themselves unable to rent or buy housing of any kind, even when they have work and good incomes. Dennis Lewis is only one of thousands of people who turned their lives around, went to work, then suffered a sudden reversal of fortune that led to months of homelessness. Drug free and awaiting a return to […]