I have spent a lot of time "on the road" over the past several years. I have been exploring the inner and outer coast range of Oregon and northern California, with the idea of settling in an area where my adult kids and I can have as a community place.
Mostly I've been car camping, renting rooms when the weather got cold. I've notice how the status of people who travel with a mini-van or tent seems to have degraded...instead of "not all who wander are lost", the attitude has become, that transients are to be viewed with suspicion. This is coupled with the heartbreaking scene of lots and lots of (mostly young) people holding signs to request money or sitting on sidewalks or living in tents or just sleeping by freeways etc. in all the major and many minor cities.
Here and there are encouraging efforts to make a new society, which was the vision during the sixties. It appears to me, though, that most of the people with economic/political power do not want to share it, but rather find ways to undermine most of what the counter culture tries to do in the way of setting up healthy alternatives. Not to discourage people from doing this---we need to keep at it. However, we also need to look more deeply at the roots of the problems and address those.
By healthy alternatives I refer to the Occupy camps of 2011 and recently, the Occupy Ice camp in Portland, which developed an amazing small village to take care of its perhaps 100 people. Another example would be Eugene's Occupy Medical bus clinic, which is still ongoing. During the Katrina disaster, I had friends who went down and helped set up clinics and soup kitchens etc. independently of FEMA, which they called Common Ground I believe, and they claimed results which equaled or surpassed FEMA's.
I advocate that the mayors of all the countries large and medium sized cities come together and set aside city property (most cities have unused property) to be used for free camping, with citizen patrols and restrooms. Of course we should also have shelters, but those are expensive, and the quickest way to help the most people would be to provide them a legal place to sleep, near where there is work and services, with free movement in and out; not a prison camp of any sort.
Mostly I've been car camping, renting rooms when the weather got cold. I've notice how the status of people who travel with a mini-van or tent seems to have degraded...instead of "not all who wander are lost", the attitude has become, that transients are to be viewed with suspicion. This is coupled with the heartbreaking scene of lots and lots of (mostly young) people holding signs to request money or sitting on sidewalks or living in tents or just sleeping by freeways etc. in all the major and many minor cities.
Here and there are encouraging efforts to make a new society, which was the vision during the sixties. It appears to me, though, that most of the people with economic/political power do not want to share it, but rather find ways to undermine most of what the counter culture tries to do in the way of setting up healthy alternatives. Not to discourage people from doing this---we need to keep at it. However, we also need to look more deeply at the roots of the problems and address those.
By healthy alternatives I refer to the Occupy camps of 2011 and recently, the Occupy Ice camp in Portland, which developed an amazing small village to take care of its perhaps 100 people. Another example would be Eugene's Occupy Medical bus clinic, which is still ongoing. During the Katrina disaster, I had friends who went down and helped set up clinics and soup kitchens etc. independently of FEMA, which they called Common Ground I believe, and they claimed results which equaled or surpassed FEMA's.
I advocate that the mayors of all the countries large and medium sized cities come together and set aside city property (most cities have unused property) to be used for free camping, with citizen patrols and restrooms. Of course we should also have shelters, but those are expensive, and the quickest way to help the most people would be to provide them a legal place to sleep, near where there is work and services, with free movement in and out; not a prison camp of any sort.