Homeless in Sacramento: Refugees of Corruption

By Sally and David Shapiro

Homelessness is growing in America and is a symptom of the economic and political devastation of ordinary life. Sacramento, California epitomizes both the forces producing homelessness and the organizing by homeless people of homeless people to create a new community to survive. It is an anecdotal account of homeless advocacy and self help organizing to struggle against financial power and government collusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781329225190

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ALY

Homeless in Sacramento: Refugees of Corruption

by Sally and David Shapiro

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Homeless in Sacramento:

Refugees of Corruption

By Sally and David Shapiro

Dedicated to Dimples 1991-2021, Yuri, Daniel, Jeff, Dori, Roland, Alley and Enrique

Special Acknowledgement to Don and Blu Browne, Saara Borba, Lydia, Annie, Maria and Klaus

2022 The Georgetown Press

219 - 20th Street

Sacramento, CA 95811

HOMELESS IN SACRAMENTO: REFUGEES OF CORRUPTION

Introduction

I am a sculptor who got a late start. My dream of making sculpture began when I was fifteen. Life choices got in the way of that, but as my dream unfolded for real, I knew that it couldn’t have happened sooner. I needed raw material, experiences to put into it. I needed to know if what I experienced in pristine natural settings was the basis of life - the truth of existence.

In 1978 I was living in San Francisco with a world traveler type. We both felt alienated by city life and also our families. We decided to hitchhike to Brazil and homestead in the Amazon Rainforest. We were going forever, but we were back in a year. But, it was during that year on the road, sleeping in fields with animals, or in cane fields, or wherever we could find an overhang when it rained, that I learned where we all come from.

It was humbling to not know the way out of town, where we might find water to bathe or wash clothes, to see whole regions of people working the land and using their hands to make everything. To see people who weren’t wanting to be better than, but grateful to be alive. It was all there in their eyes. The story of our humanness and our total equality.

Coming back to the U.S. I was a changed person. I could no longer accept any hierarchy of profession, education, wealth or fame. Anything less than total equality sickens me. But, it is a blessing to feel the way I do.

FYI, we did get to the Amazon after Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama, Columbia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil (Amazonas Belo Horizonte, Brazilia, Salvadoa, Rio de Janeiro, Ilya, Ita Curacao).

YURI

The night I met Yuri was December 11, 2018. I was full of excited nervousness because I was going to sing one of my songs at the Sacramento City Council Meeting. I had to go in at 5:30 to sing so I went early with my huge pot of homemade white bean soup, so I could take the pot back to the car and get my guitar. I had sang one time six months before. The song about, "Genecide Lives in the USA, herding the homeless as

you play."

The outer foyer of City Hall was half filled with tents or people living there on the concrete. Two guys called me over for soup. Yuri was asleep next to them midway between the massive glass doors and the end of the building at 10th street and I. He had no shelter around him, just a couple of blankets and he was asleep. He heard the word soup and sat up, soon downing six bowls to finish off the pot. I went into the meeting early with my guitar. The man next to me strangely enough was a friend and tennis partner of the Mayor Darrell Steinberg. The Mayor had also been a traveling companion of my husband many years before. I told the guy I hoped I wouldn’t be arrested because my song was called, Cooking the Books. He disappeared after that I presume to warn the mayor. My song was not appreciated by the City Council or Mayor, but loved by the other homeless advocates and especially David Andre who cheered me on vociferously.

The next day I remembered Yuri. I knew deep within me that I could not ignore that kind of need. I could not knowingly let a man starve. After telling my husband David of my mission I went shyly in the afternoon with a sandwich. He was there, ate it, and said, Thank you so much, the only words in English he seemed to know. He spoke Russian. His eyes were hard and intense under a large bulbous forehead, and craggy folds of skin. His hands were large also, but otherwise he was skin and bones, You could see his collar bone sticking out.

I began coming earlier, riding my bicycle with the soup in my basket. David was at the gym, and Yuri (I didn’t know his name yet) was very hungry by 11:00 A.M. It was still warm in mid-December and

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at that time of day the sun bathed the foyer. He offered me the end of his blanket and I sat while he ate. He let me know that soup was preferred to any other food. We didn’t talk but he began to trust me, that I would be there the next day and the day after that. He once took my hand and pressed it to his forehead in gratitude, while mumbling in Russian.

One day while I was there a young man from a church brought Yuri a bible and we all prayed. He spoke Russian and told me Yuri’s name and age. I had thought