This was posted on September 20, 2009.
It’s about time again…open and active weekly PEOPLE PROJECT meetings!
PEOPLE PROJECT met consistently for about 3 yrs in Arcata, but will start back up at this time in Eureka. It would be great to hear from you about what times and days you like for such gatherings/meetings.
For now, meetings will be Tuesdays at 1:30 pm at Peoples’ Action for Rights and Community [PARC].
PEOPLE PROJECT focuses on houseless and poor peoples’ rights & building dignified community. Direct Action, sharing, and open dialogue are central to this grass-roots ‘project’.
PEOPLE PROJECT gatherings are SAFE SPACES to discuss issues facing ‘houseless’ people in our community. One long-term goal of PEOPLE PROJECT is to have a people-run, eco-sustainable campground in an effort to create a dignified, safe, community space for houseless and traveling people, a human rights sanctuary! In addition, PEOPLE PROJECT works to safeguard against police and other harassment, always fighting for human rights. PEOPLE PROJECT is a grassroots effort, concept and group emphasizing the POWER OF THE PEOPLE, Power From The Streets! Food is shared and welcomed at PEOPLE PROJECT spaces.
For the past year and a half, PEOPLE PROJECT has kept a community breakfast going in Eureka- every Tuesday and Friday- “Good Morning Neighbors!” Breakfast!!
PEOPLE PROJECT will be working with People for a Human Rights Sanctuary to get a campground (human rights sanctuary) going in Eureka. Also, we will likely become an affiliate or member organization with the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign who has been, for years, organizing across color lines for economic rights- using encampments, housing takeovers, cultural and political education, marches, etc.
New energy is encouraged and welcomed at PEOPLE PROJECT spaces. We
emphasize the importance of listening, encountering each other in a
dignified way, and organizing from a place of power!
This was posted on September 11, 2009.
It’s about time that we that we meet again, in an open and active way, for
regular PEOPLE PROJECT meetings! PEOPLE PROJECT consistently met
for about 3 years in Arcata, but will start back up at this time in Eureka.
It would be great to hear from you about what times and days you like for
such gatherings/meetings.
PEOPLE PROJECT focuses on houseless and poor peoples’ rights and building
dignified community. Direct Action, sharing, and open dialogue are central
to this grass-roots ‘project’.
PEOPLE PROJECT gatherings are SAFE SPACES to discuss issues facing
‘houseless’ people in our community. One long-term goal of PEOPLE PROJECT
is to have a people-run, eco-sustainable campground in an effort to create
a dignified, safe, community space for houseless and traveling people- a
human rights sanctuary! In addition, PEOPLE PROJECT works to safeguard
against police and other harassment, always fighting for human rights. PEOPLE
PROJECT is a grassroots effort, concept and group emphasizing the POWER OF
THE PEOPLE, Power From The Streets!
Food is shared and welcomed at PEOPLE PROJECT spaces. For the past year
and a half, PEOPLE PROJECT has been keeping a community breakfast going in
Eureka- every Tuesday and Friday- “Good Morning Neighbors!” Breakfast!!
PEOPLE PROJECT will be working with People for a Human Rights Sanctuary to
get a campground (human rights sanctuary) going in Eureka. Also, we will
likely become an affiliate or member organization with the Poor People’s
Economic Human Rights Campaign who has been, for years, organizing across
color lines for economic rights- using encampments, housing takeovers,
cultural and political education, marches, etc.
New energy is encouraged and welcomed at PEOPLE PROJECT spaces. We
emphasize the importance of listening, encountering each other in a
dignified way, and organizing from a place of power!
Again, please email back and ask more folks, when would be good times and
days for regular meeting/gathering times.
peopleproject@riseup.net
Thanks!
This was posted on March 24, 2008:
PEOPLE PROJECT needs help securing an indoor space for weekly meetings. This is the first time in 3 years that we are not meeting in Arcata on Tuesdays. PLEASE contact us if you have ideas for meeting space OR if you and others want to meet on Tuesday nights outdoors. Also, if you have a big tent to donate, we could set that up for meeting…
Because we were meeting outdoors for many months, without a bathroom, while it was getting dark, many people who need to find a place to rest every night were not so enthused about meeting. If you are enthused, we should get the meetings (with dinner) going again. PEOPLE PROJECT could possibly meet on another day or night…
POWER FROM THE STREETS!
This was posted on March 3, 2008:
PEOPLE PROJECT is now meeting at Redwood Park in Arcata. We gather at 6:30pm near the so-called ‘community building’ there near the parking lot and playground at the end of the 11th Street entrance to the park. If you are in a car and take the 14th Street entrance, and park in the lot, you only need to walk across the lawn to the meeting spot.
All of the below info is still relevant!!
We have not secured an indoor space for Tuesday night PEOPLE PROJECT meetings in Arcata. We’ve been sharing food, meeting, and playing music (at times) on Tuesday nights.
Meeting on the cement OUTSIDE of a so-called public building which is warm, dry, empty, and locked… (and has a bathroom).
Every Tuesday we eat delicious mostly vegan, mostly organic dinner, and most of the time, have hot coffee and herbal tea.
Meetings are from 6:30-9:30pm. Lately, we’ve been meeting only until about 8:30pm…
Not only do we need to work on an indoor space (and bathroom) for Tuesday night meetings, we need to work toward a space for all who otherwise get caught in the rains, day and night.
All are welcome for dinner, even if you do not wish to participate in a meeting.
As Verbena and Haiku and others may know, I’m having to leave my current section 8 apartment by the first of the year.(I’ve been on social security disability and SSI since early in ‘85, but only after fifteen years of waiting and applying was I able to find a place and qualify for federal housing assistance, in 2001…and now the whole government assitance program, like pensions for instance also, is under heaviest attack which I think has long been a target both overtly and covertly, by the right-wing)
I’ve long wished I had a place where I could invite and extend hospitality to activists including organisational capacities and relaxation. With my previous and current land lords and perhaps the neighborhood this has not been much of an option, but I’d sure welcome any insight as to the possibilities of a more amicable situation. My place now is 450 square feet of living space, with an attached 8′ x 20′ garage. I’ve got a futon I sleep on myself and recently aquired a small hidabed couch for sleep over of guests.(also lots of other furniture including a small desk and a small table, chairs, a variety of ingenious shelves I’ve built, an electric piano, various lamps, cooking-ware oriented to vegan macrobiotics, etc.)
I’m not into having a free for all crash pad such as I’d visited during Earth First! activities I was a part of in I think ‘96 or so, which was down just off of Wabash not too far on the away from the bay side of Broadway in Eureka, but more a mostly daytime resource of on-line computer, related and/or casual interesting reading materials, a toilet and shower, decent cooking facilities, and occasional over-night space for a few compatible individuals.
I don’t know if anyone is aware of my politics, but thus as they are I’d call myself a theoretical if not too idiological communist pragmatic about other philosophys with similar goals. I joined the Communist Party USA in Berkeley while homeless there living out of my car in ‘94, after being driven south with mild frost bite January of ‘93 from Spokane.
I’ve wanted to become “a card carrying member” since I was fifteen, so a nice fulfillment of a long held ambition, which is a rare enough experience for me, who mainly crab-like meanders very sideways through most everything.
When I joined I was soon put into a relationship with then in his ’90s Jim Moore, who passed away a couple or so years ago just past 100, and who’d run for governer of Indiana in ‘32 as a communist, while in jail for two years for his activism returning evicted tenant’s furniture and possessions to their rentals, from the sidewalk or street where the owners had dumped them.
Jim seemed much less an idiologue than many others of the CPUSA I’ve encountered, who encouraged me to avoid reading great amounts of the available literature of Marxism and communism, but instead to endeavor to help people. I remember the impact on me of reading a book of his HOW I GOT OUT OF JAIL AND RAN FOR GOVERNER published by Regent Press of Oakland in his nineties, an “as told to” account of his life which really focused me on who and what Jim really was and was about.
From a very early age(due to the poverty of his single parent father who had to place all four of his children with others for their care for a significant amount of time, amongst other reason) Jim had aquired an almost subconscious knack for the ability to recognise and also significantly help others suffering from oppression in various situations. Someone I remember as often wearing a FOOD NOT BOMBS button on his shirt or jacket, and who the last time I was in his Berkeley apartment when he was 99, had a large Rachael Cory poster on one of the walls.
One of the significant things he told me about myself I’d never thought of before then, was that I was “a failure.” I’d been inured to a sense of hopelessness about everything I attempted, since the time I spent a year in a very acclaimed music school the ‘70-’71 school year where I was undoubtably the worst of 2000 music majors.
But, I’d never expected out of life anything but the levels of achievement I was used to, so to be told summarily I was a failure was surprising yet not in any earth-shaking way…since all my pursuits though in some way tainted in a way I’d never exactly defined though which I also recognised as my unique if not always very enjoyable lot, also drew my interest and carried me along as if threads of a most thread bare yet only garmet.
This of course was alienating in many ways, but also has given me somewhat of an unusual perspective on human nature and particular individuals and social situations generally.
If anyone is interested in a substantial aspect of how my character has been formed and functions.(analysis reveals a few significant factors, of a family mostly blue-collar or vaguely cynical medical professionals, though politically conservative in a democrat sort of way, who have been anything but supportive of my habitual radicalism, but who also tend to not go through life entirely wearing blinders either except for a pernicious religious orientation of the most niave which seperates us greatly; and that was what my mother only got into just before she would have a nervous break down.
She is certainly another significant part of my on-going orientations who only about ten years ago I discovered was of Roma, or so-called “Gypsy” ancestry.(and a subtle seeming thread through many areas of my life, I’d of never noticed otherwise…sort of a “need to know” phenomena due to the prejudices involved in the identity)
Also very influential have been “congenital/idiopathic” and juvenile spinal diseases, which I’d not been aware of at all until I was twenty-five, and which I was only wholey informed about also ten years ago-due to mis-diagnosis as well as manipulations by the medical establishment.(my father was a pharmacist and exceptional athlete who even at the age of 42 could high jump 5′ 6″) I’ve always been in situations where I had to deny and/or repress pain,(“growing pains” my father had told me when I’d complained) and for many years unconscious I was in any way different from others or that my pain was unusual; though at age of seventeen at 5′ 7″ I weighed 230# and had a 44″ waist and could not do a single sit-up, push-up or sit-up and ran the 11 yard dash in 21.4 seconds. Instead of any understanding, I was badgered as the sole cause of my deficiencies.
Many years later, knowing my mother had never been allowed to nurse any of her children, due to doctors having told her that her milk would poison us; I was to find this not only is a totally fallacious medical practice one macrobiotic source I’ve seen labeled “partial euthanasia” but also a very common factor in creating muculo-skelatal problems and those of the upper respiratory system, both of which I’ve often suffered.
On the other hand I’ve found I’ve got a strong physical constitution, and a high I. Q.,* and on one occassion was able to temporarily overcome the problems with my back, which yoga writer Selvarajan Yesudian cured himself of calls, “the most difficult problem yoga is able to cure” due to muscular atrophy; which I’d done by living a month in the wilderness October of ‘86, clambering up and down over the rounded rocks and boulders of a mountain stream bed on my hands and knees, just west of the Sespe Condor sanctuary, the still fragile results of which were ruined under unusual circumstances,(I’d hoped to be there a second month that the prevailing draught then would’ve facilitated) in an unexpected three day hike with a forty pound back pack where the third day I’d planned to rest, I’d instead gone seventeen miles due to a companion I picked up along the way who’d been interesting seeming and personable.(feasibly manipulations done via some of my more reactionary associates of the time, etc.)
*and with a not inconsiderable education, including North Texas University and Evergreen College, as well as a communal yoga study group of educated indigents called ANTAHKARANA CIRCLE OF HEALERS I became associated with the winter of ‘77-’78 after leaving Evergreen a year before where I’d gotten my B. A.