vox--2019-12-30--Fandom went mainstream in the 2010s — for better and worse

At the start of this decade, “fandom” wasn’t a word most people knew, much less fully understood. Though the word has been in use since the early 1900s, for most of the last 100 years or so, it’s been known mainly to people who considered themselves to be in fandom — a relatively niche number of people who self-identified as being part of a community of fans.  That all started to change with the rise of the Marvel Cinematic Universe near the end of the Aughts, which kicked the gradual mainstreaming of geek culture into high gear. And alongside that mainstreaming, fandom itself changed and evolved in dramatic, significant ways.  Before the Marvel Cinematic Universe, participatory fandom was something fans could only do publicly every once in a while; performative geek culture was reserved for special events like Comic-Con or the newest sci-fi or fantasy film. But because of Marvel’s steady rollout of films over the decade, fandom was suddenly, perpetually expected to be engaged in participating in the Marvel apparatus. Geek culture became a new and intense form of consumerism, and superheroes, instead of being a nerdy fringe interest, became a standard model through which a plethora of fans could relate to pop culture.  In alignment with the Marvel machine, fans became increasingly vocal about their fandom identities, partly thanks to emerging, vibrant, and visible fandom communities on social platforms like Tumblr and Twitter. For better or worse, Fifty Shades of Grey introduced much of the world to the vastness of online fanfiction, while media outlets like BuzzFeed mainstreamed fandom-based ideas like shipping and “problematic faves.” The user-built fanfiction archive AO3 gained widespread recognition and then closed out the decade by winning a Hugo award. Massive fandoms for groups like One Direction and K-pop band BTS helped evolve the cultural perception of the shrill teenage fangirl toward a more positive image of fans as active, engaged participants in the narratives they consume.  That engagement was also increasingly ideological. Throughout the 2010s, fandom found its way into politics, and politics found their way into fandom, from call-out culture to Gamergate. Fans took to social media to protest narrative developments they found offensive, like Captain America being revealed as a Nazi-esque figure in a 2016 comic, or The 100 killing off half of its popular queer couple.  And while fan backlash is nothing new, in the 2010s that backlash gained the tenor of political fervor to an unprecedented degree. Everything from fictional relationships to empowered female characters became polarized critical battlegrounds — not even criticism was immune. And “fans” themselves became divided into several more aggressive tiers, from “superfans” (really intense fans) to “stans” (really intense, possibly toxic, fans) to “antis,” fans whose identities revolved around hating other fans or even parts of their own fandom.  So where, at the end of the decade, has all this left us? Has anyone benefited from the increased politicization of fandom? Do we think of fandom differently now than we did a decade ago? And can any of these disruptive changes of the past decade help us predict what might be around the cultural corner?  To gain some insight into these questions, I asked two friendly neighborhood fans, Vox critic-at-large Emily VanDerWerff and Constance Grady, to join me, Aja Romano, in discussing fandom in the 2010s — the good, the bad, and the problematic, faves and otherwise.  From Marvel to K-pop: Fandom underwent a sea change over the decade  Aja Romano: I think when we look back at the 2010s, there are some obvious immediate tentpoles that jump out to people as fandom milestones — but first, I really want to know what the most significant fandom moments of the last decade were for both of you personally. For me, it was the part where Fifty Shades of Grey single-handedly jump-started my career. What were the moments that shaped you directly?  Constance Grady: The biggest fandom moment for me would have to be the moment that led indirectly to me writing in this roundtable today: when Gossip Girl fandom went completely fucking wild.  I started lurking in Gossip Girl fandom around 2010 out of sheer boredom. I was just out of college and trying to make it in book publishing, and I was slowly losing my mind trying to figure out Microsoft Word’s mail merge feature on starvation wages. So at night, I would go home to my crappy sublet and soothe myself with some good old-fashioned trashy teen soap opera. Then I would poke around online to see what everyone else was saying about the show — maybe check out some memes here and a fic there.  Mostly, the fanwork was low key and often gently mocking. Gossip Girl fandom was refreshingly aware that the show it was committed to was pure garbage, but everyone was having fun picking it to pieces and making something new with the detritus nonetheless.  If you know your Gossip Girl history, you know 2010 is the year the show went off the rails. That was the year season three aired, in which Chuck — by then the show’s romantic lead — sells his girlfriend Blair to his rapist uncle in exchange for a hotel.  For the fandom, this plot development was traumatic. Chuck and Blair were the biggest ship on the show. They were so big that the Tumblr tag #chair was filled exclusively with gifs of them making out, and fans used to go into the tag to yell at people for posting pictures of actual chairs. But for a lot of fans, season three was the end. They weren’t willing to keep on rooting for true love to triumph between a girl and the boy who sold her for real estate. Chair shippers started to jump ship.  Those who stayed committed to the ship started to panic. They needed to keep their numbers up. A fandom can’t survive without fans there to fan the fires of enthusiasm!  Luckily, the Chair shippers had a secret weapon. They had a source on the set who was willing to leak them spoilers.  What followed was way more enthralling than absolutely anything that ever happened on Gossip Girl itself. Chair shippers developed secret chatrooms in which they strategized their spin on any spoilers that looked bad for Chuck (the conversation after news leaked that Chuck would shatter a glass window over Blair’s head was a rough one). They rigged online polls, plotted Twitter campaigns, and doled out spoilers as a carrot for those who remained faithful to the ship.  Chair haters, meanwhile, fled to an anonymous community — referred to by those in the know as an anon meme — on LiveJournal, where secret sources inside those secret Chair-only chatrooms fed them screencaps of all those strategic conversations to be dissected and mocked. And eventually even the show’s writers’ room got in on the drama, too, forming secret alliances with fans to flush out the spoiler leakers and shame them.  By 2015, I was over Gossip Girl itself. Gossip Girl fandom had become my favorite nighttime soap instead. I was also over book publishing, and I was starting to think that maybe I wanted to try my hand at writing about pop culture.  And then one day on Twitter, one of my favorite critics tweeted out a link to apply to a fellowship that would teach you how to write about pop culture at Vox. “Come work with me!” wrote Emily VanDerWerff.  “What is the single biggest cultural story that nobody is covering enough right now?” asked the application.  I wrote a 500-word essay explaining the shit that was going down in secret Gossip Girl fan chatrooms these days.  That essay didn’t get me a fellowship, but it did get me an interview. And a year later, Emily emailed me and told me that Vox was hiring more fellows and I should apply again. So thanks, Gossip Girl, for being such a mess of a show that your basically chill fandom turned into a toxic wasteland of dysfunction — and in the process getting me a new job and a new career.  Emily VanDerWerff: I have had the surreal experience of mostly seeing fandom through the eyes of someone who covers the things fans adore. Particularly when I was recapping TV shows like Glee and Community, I was a person whose views fans would either engage with or outright reject. I would occasionally find myself bearing the brunt of some fandom tizzy about a shipping war I had no idea even existed. (The weirdest of these might have been when the Big Bang Theory fans who shipped Sheldon and Penny came for me.)  But this reflects to me another side of fan engagement: people who were less interested in transforming a work than in engaging with it critically. For me, that sort of engagement was most prominent in places like comment sections, an opinion that may be colored from having spent years working at the AV Club, which had a thriving comment section during my time there.  The fans of a TV show would pick it apart and reduce it down to its bones, then suck the marrow out of those bones. It was really something to see, and it often left me — me — wondering if they got any enjoyment out of the work itself or primarily found enjoyment in finding things about it that didn’t work for them.  Perhaps the strongest example of this was the TV show Girls, which began in 2012 and immediately became a show that had legions of fans and legions of anti-fans who couldn’t stop watching every single episode. The arguments and conversations around that show (a show I really, really liked, to be clear) underlined just how different our experiences of it could be — and how often fandom found itself divided in the 2010s by complicated political and social issues that the works we loved talking about weren’t always designed to bear. (Other examples: Hamilton, Game of Thrones.)  But I’d be remiss if I didn’t point out that fandom had a darker side in the 2010s, too. I’m sure you two are going to push back against my definition of the Star Wars fans who harassed Kelly Marie Tran off the internet or the gamers who kicked up Gamergate as “fans,” but they were. In the TV space, these sorts of fans were often dubbed “bad fans,” because they wanted, say, Walter White to win the day at the end of Breaking Bad (thus missing the show’s entire point). But it wasn’t as though these people weren’t as engaged as the more thoughtful and critical fans were. Because they were.  Aja: Believe me, I’ve been in so many toxic fandom environments that I’d never try to claim that the Gamergaters and Ghostbusters trolls and their ilk weren’t “real fans.” The truth is that fandom has always bred incredibly toxic sub-communities, both because fans often have very intense feelings and because all the cultural shame and mockery we face can make it hard to know how to be a fan and what “a good fan” looks like. I’m sure the AV Club commenters felt that their level of knowledge and personal investment also conferred upon them a level of ownership over their canon, and being hypercritical was one way of performing that ownership.  But those kinds of performances changed radically over the decade. On one level, this had a lot to do with platform cultures. In 2010, fans started migrating away from the closed, niche culture of LiveJournal and moving toward the more mainstream Tumblr, which came to dominate fandom culture for the rest of the decade. Largely as a result of this migration, fandom culture became vastly more accessible to huge swaths of the population — including the creators of the properties around which these fandoms cohered. As fan culture became more accessible to the creators themselves, they started to expect fans to be visibly, enthusiastically participatory in specific ways.  The 2013 Veronica Mars Kickstarter fundamentally changed the way many creators and fans saw their relationship, evolving it almost instantly from a top-down, worshipful artistic hierarchy to something like an equal partner investment. Before the Veronica Mars fandom kickstarted an entire movie sequel to the cult show, Kickstarter itself was mostly the domain of niche geek culture and indie creators. But this campaign showed Hollywood that fandom culture at large could be channeled to act as an early investor for projects the industry might deem too risky — and as a result of its record-breaking success, industry attitudes toward fandom rapidly changed.  That shift, in turn, meant that fans started to see themselves as investors in the works they consumed, and creators were eager to exploit collective fan engagement. I’m thinking of a broad range here, from cult faves like webcomic Homestuck and YouTube series Lizzie Bennet that profited from deep fan investment, to prestige dramas like True Detective and Westworld that benefited from self-aware fandoms who saw their interactivity as part of the “game” of the show. You can argue that the entire modern entertainment complex now builds participatory fandom into its business model. But when fans ask for things in return, they’re seen as demanding. How do we reconcile all these things? What makes performative fan engagement empowering rather than toxic — and why does all of this tend to get framed by the media and by creators as fan entitlement?  Constance: Ooh, this is tricky, and actually, Veronica Mars is a good case study here.  Veronica Mars went on as long as it did entirely because of its fandom. In the ’00s, fan mail-in campaigns got it renewed for a second and third season despite low ratings. In 2013, the fan Kickstarter campaign raised over $5 million to pay for the movie’s production budget. This year, the show’s history of intense fan engagement is an enormous part of what led to the Veronica Mars Hulu revival — and in that revival, Veronica’s love interest Logan dies, destroying the ship that large swaths of the fandom were hugely invested in and, with it, their fannish investment in the show.  My impulse when Logan died was to think, “Well, that sucks, but certainly showrunner Rob Thomas is entitled to do whatever he wants with his characters. He doesn’t owe me or his fans anything.” But a number of fans disagreed: Rob Thomas, they said, had taken advantage of their desire to see Veronica and Logan together, using their investment as shippers to leverage not just their time and attention, but the literal dollars out of their pockets. In that case, didn’t he owe them something? Wasn’t killing Logan a betrayal of the contract Thomas had made with the fandom?  To be honest, I can see the argument. When a show’s survival depends this heavily on its fans, the power dynamic between creator and fandom does change dramatically. The Veronica Mars fandom went above and beyond to keep that show coming back again and again, and the showrunner responded by destroying the piece of the show that a huge part of the fandom cared about most. Emotionally, that does feel like a betrayal.  The 100 offers a more politically-charged example. The CW teen sci-fi show built up a huge amount of fandom support for its queer central pairing of Clarke and Lexa (a.k.a. Clexa). The showrunners tweeted supportively to fans about how everyone deserved love, and they published pictures on Twitter of the two actresses eating rainbow candy together. In a world in which TV’s queer characters and especially lesbians are killed off so frequently that the trope has a name (“Bury your gays”), Clexa seemed like a safe haven. Fans, understandably, felt that they had finally found a safe queer romance to root for, and they turned out in droves for the show.  Then The 100 killed Lexa off. On a certain level, that’s just the kind of thing The 100 does, because it’s a show that built its reputation on shocking and brutal onscreen deaths. But this time, fans went wild. The showrunners responded with bewilderment: Didn’t fans know that The 100, where a dwindling number of teens try to survive on a post-apocalyptic Earth, was a show on which no one was safe? And the fans replied in outrage: Didn’t the showrunners know that there were too few queer romances on TV for them to be treated so cavalierly, and that killing the lesbian had become a gross and harmful cliché? What had the writers’ room been thinking, drafting off fan enthusiasm for Clexa while knowing that Lexa, like so many of TV’s lesbians, was doomed? That argument also feels more than fair to me.  That said, I don’t want us to enter into an era in which fans end up dictating canon, and I think a lot of fans feel similarly. And again, Veronica Mars is a good example here: That crowdfunded 2014 movie was explicitly built to be fanservice, designed to give fans exactly what they wanted, and it was not very good. I, a fan, did not enjoy being serviced in that way.  I guess my question is, how do we find a balance here? What would it look like for creative teams to be aware of what they owe to their fans, without feeling pressured to make mediocre and unchallenging work in an attempt to satisfy everyone?  Emily: I was going to say something along the lines of, “I have always felt like creative teams don’t owe fans anything, even as fans don’t owe those creative teams their allegiance,” but that feels too harsh at this point in time. It’s pretty clear that in the late 2010s and heading into the 2020s, an engaged fandom can be the difference between life and death for a lot of cultural properties. But it’s also clear that engaged fandoms don’t always want to be pushed out of their comfort zones. And yet the best storytelling often does take place outside of those comfort zones.  I think a lot about a quote from Joss Whedon that I heard when I was a teenager and decided was accurate without a ton of reflection: “Don’t give people what they want; give them what they need.” Of the many bits of storytelling wisdom Whedon has dispensed in interviews over the years, this is the one that has most taken on a life beyond his fandom, because it speaks to something that I think we’re all a little wary of in 2019: anesthetizing art against the horrors of the world so much that it becomes a sort of safe space.  Here’s a for-instance: The season four finale of The Magicians made a huge, bold storytelling choice, killing off the show’s protagonist. In the first season — when he was just another whiny white guy heading up a TV show — fans might have rejoiced. But by the end of season four, when we had lived through four years of his struggles with mental illness and learned he was bisexual (one of the few bisexual men on TV, period), he had come to stand in for a whole host of other ideas. The audience revolted. To this day, the showrunners can’t so much as tweet without a bunch of angry responses. And season five is just around the corner.  The Magicians is exactly the sort of show that requires its engaged fanbase to stay alive. And in interviews around the finale, it was clear that the show’s writers had thought about how much the character meant to fans on a variety of levels, both pertaining to the narrative and pertaining to TV representation of bisexuality and of those struggling with mental illness. But it was also clear they felt the story turn was too interesting not to do.  Truth be told, I agree with them. I found the final stretch of Magicians episodes in season four shattering for the way they told a story about trauma and friendship and self-sacrifice. But I also love grim, epic tragedy as a general rule. I’m not averse to the idea that maybe people from underrepresented groups on TV deserve any little bit of anything they can get — after all, it wasn’t so long ago that the only people like me on TV were presented as jokes or murdered sex workers — but I also don’t want to ever suggest that whole classes of human beings aren’t allowed the emotional outpouring of great tragedy simply because the world is a dark place for too many of us.  What I am saying, I think, is that I don’t think it’s that far of a walk from the folks who hated Last Jedi because it violated some element of Star Wars canon they were deeply passionate about (who were mostly mocked) and the folks who were mad at the death of Logan on Veronica Mars (who were mostly easy to sympathize with). I get why the latter is more sympathetic. The folks behind Veronica Mars came off as blinkered and callous with their show’s big death, and they had far less of a justification for that big death than the Magicians producers did. But at the same time, there has to be room for storytellers to expand and experiment, lest we end up in a world where everything is protected by bulletproof canon.  And yet that callousness rankles me all the same. There has to be some sort of demilitarized zone where fans allow artists the grace of trying new things, while artists make sure they’re not doing things just to do them (or, worse, just to piss off the audience). I still largely agree with the Joss Whedon quote from above — but I also think his predilection for killing characters off got kind of old about 10 years ago. Sometimes what you think the audience needs is what you think you need, and the better choice is to try to find another path to the story you want to tell.  Aja: The hard part about this “better path” is that I think a lot of times, creators think they’re already on that better path. But the fans simply don’t trust that they are, especially if they’re marginalized people who have a real-life stake in the outcomes of stories. It’s one thing for the writers to ask their audiences for trust and patience and a willingness to follow them into some difficult places. It’s another thing when those difficult places intersect with real marginalization — when they have the potential to reinforce regressive and harmful social norms.  Take, for example, queerbaiting, one of the most frustrating fandom-related phenomenons of the decade. It’s present in everything from Sherlock, Supernatural, and Teen Wolf to Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Frozen, and still going strong as we head into the next decade. Queerbaiting tends to happen because writers and/or actors with initially good intentions — to seed the idea of characters maybe being more than straight — realize that now they’ve gone too far, and what was once light subtextual teasing has become a whole thing. So what do they inevitably do? They rapidly backtrack, overemphasizing how straight the queerbaited couple or character is.  That sounds inherently homophobic, but often it’s not — often it’s queer creators doing the queerbaiting. In fact, queerbaiting is often just down to a kind of major, reactionary obstinance from creators toward fan engagement, of a kind we’ve seen more and more often. Remember when Sherlock resolved its giant season 2 cliffhanger by presenting a montage of fan theories about what could have happened and then never actually telling us what happened? Remember when Westworld creators panicked and rewrote the show after fans guessed the big twist? That’s not giving the audience what it needs, nor is it giving creators what they need as artists. That’s just reacting to fannish obsession. It’s creators failing to fully understand the pact they’ve made with their fanbase and then blaming their fanbases for it. And homophobic or otherwise regressive plot points can become side effects of that reactionary feeling because the creators privilege their desire to shape or control the narrative over all these other factors.  Of course, the flip side of this is when, for example, the Star Wars creators’ reactionary response to misogynistic Star Wars fans is to double down on making Rey the most awesome badass in the galaxy. Turns out I’m totally fine with that kind of reactionary obstinance. Then again, the backlash to the transformative elements of The Last Jedi arguably paved the way for the rote, disappointing trilogy conclusion that Rise of Skywalker turned out to be, because J.J. Abrams and company apparently felt the ideas Rian Johnson worked with in the middle film were too radical. It was a compromise to the worst parts of the Star Wars fandom that ended up pleasing very few people.  Which brings me to my last question: What are some of our favorite examples of fans and creators getting things right and doing fandom well in the last decade? And can they tell us anything about what’s next?  Constance: I’m an old-fashioned kind of fan who generally likes my fourth wall to remain intact, I guess, because when I try to think of fan/creator interactions I like, I can’t think of that many. Most of the major interactions I’ve seen have seemed to lead to a sense of betrayal and promises broken on one or both sides.  Probably the closest thing I can think of to a creative “doing fandom well” would be Bryan Fuller, the showrunner behind Hannibal and Pushing Daisies and the first season of American Gods. Fuller always seems to react to his fandoms with delight: He tweets out fanart and uses hashtags with abandon; when offered a flower crown at a panel, he will absolutely wear that flower crown; and when asked if Hannibal Lector and Will Graham were in love, he responded philosophically, “What is love?”  But at the same time, Fuller rarely seems to be deeply involved in his fandoms. I never see him weighing in on fandom controversies or fights, and he never seems to be lecturing fans about giving them what they need rather than what they want. He just promises that he will make good television, goes on to make really good television, and then gets out of the way.  Now, maybe that’s just because Fuller tends to either leave his shows after one really good season or see his shows get canceled after a few really good seasons, so he hasn’t had the opportunity to get all that messy with a fandom. But even if it’s just sheer luck that’s protecting him so far, that’s the kind of fandom involvement I like to see from a creative: benign and supportive lack of interest.  Aja: I greatly appreciate this approach. Another group that I’d say has a relatively healthy approach to their subject matter and their creators is the recently revived Good Omens fandom, which is basically just beautiful fanart of its OTP and lots of Michael Sheen love.  I’d give a shout-out to the creative team of Supernatural for the massive sea change it underwent in its approach to its predominantly female fandom this decade, from overt mockery and misogyny to loving respect and celebration. (And a shout-out to SuperwWhoLock, just because!) I’d also toss in the mighty Disney fandom generally, because for all that Disney itself has endless issues, fans have done a lot of work in the Tumblr era especially to make the canon more progressive, while showcasing the kind of excellent fan engagement that’s slowly dragging Disney into a slightly less restrictive mode when it comes to cracking down on transformative fanwork. And the K-pop fandom as a whole deserves massive amounts of credit for mainstreaming an entire genre over the decade, based heavily on the strength of their love.  While Gamergate has overshadowed just about all other aspects of gaming culture throughout the decade, gaming fandom has had a huge and outsized influence on the culture in other positive, collaborative ways over the decade, in everything from Twitch playing Pokémon to Drake playing Fortnite, and much more. We also found moments of fandom unity in unexpected ways throughout the decade, like when we all fell back in love with Keanu Reeves.  Still, most of these fandoms remain regressively white and patriarchal, and my best hope for the future is that fandom continues to diversify and gain new cultural ground — while losing some of the more toxic elements that still too often keep marginalized fans at bay.


activistpost--2019-04-09--Good Samaritans Attacked Arrested for Helping Homeless People Not Freeze to Death

Good Samaritans Attacked, Arrested for Helping Homeless People Not Freeze to Death

Lansing, MI — In January, temperatures in Lansing, Michigan plummeted far below freezing making it extremely dangerous for those who are homeless. Knowing people would likely freeze to death if they stayed outside, one couple decided to help out those less fortunate than them. However, instead of being praised for their good deed, the couple was arrested.  Julia Miller and Martin Mashon were handing out bus tokens in January so that homeless people could go to the bus station instead of staying outside and freezing to death. They are advocates for the less fortunate and during weather emergencies like this one, they often hand out coats and help people make it to warming centers. But on this particular day, the police would show up to put a halt to their kindness.  On January 26, during a polar vortex and weather emergency, temperatures had fallen well below zero so Mashon and Miller went to the CATA station to hand out tokens and try to save lives. But body camera footage shows that police showed up and acted like the couple was robbing the place.  “This isn’t a warming station, it’s a bus station so there’s no loitering,” the officer says after he ran up to the couple like there was some sort of emergency.  “But it’s a great place for people to stay warm,” said Mashon.  “I know it’s cold out,” said the officer in the video, “But that doesn’t give you a right to loiter somewhere, where loitering’s not permitted.”  According to many folks who have commented on the video, the director of the CATA bus station has an open door policy during cold weather and allows the less fortunate to “loiter” in the station to stay warm. However, it appears that the police wanted nothing of it.  Despite the director’s reported policy, the officer asked the couple of they were waiting for a bus.  “Then you’re gonna have to leave,” said the officer.  Mashon said, “Actually this is a warm place that I help pay for.”  After several minutes, the conversation got heated.  “No I’m trying to explain something to you and you won’t stop talking,” said the officer.  Mashon said, “Are you my master, am I your slave now.”  “Take your hand out of your pocket,” said the officer.  “Take your hand out of your pocket,” the officer repeats as he moves in to arrest Mashon.  “What do you have in your pocket,” said the officer. “Easy, easy, easy.”  Mashon said, “Let go of me. Why are you touching me?”  The officer then throws Mashon up against the window and puts him in handcuffs. Moments later he arrests Miller as well. Miller was charged with trespassing and Mashon was charged with trespassing and hindering an officer. Miller explained that they plan on fighting the charges and are asking for the police to apologize as well as implement a policy for helping the homeless during weather emergencies. “Don’t they understand that if they A. Drop all charges against both Martin and myself. B. Offer a public apology in regards to the excessive force and verbiage the officer used and C. Implement a plan of action that involves several local homeless advocacy groups in regards to what needs to be done during weather emergencies that the chances of us deciding to pursue a civil suit will lessen AND it will save them some face,” Miller wrote on Facebook. She says that is not likely to happen, however. Below is a video showing what helping the homeless looks like in a police state. Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project, where this article first appeared. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Minds.


eveningstandard--2019-01-02--How to help the homeless in London this winter

Homelessness in London has reached crisis point, with the capital accounting for 25 per cent of the UK's homeless population this winter.  Research found that over 6,000 people were either on the streets or sleeping in tents and public transport in London. With temperatures plummeting below zero and snow falling across the country, this can mean life or death for many.  Witnessing a rough sleeper in the biting cold triggers empathy in the average passer-by, yet few of us know how to actually help. The impulse to offer cash or food may provide temporary relief, but is it really a long term solution?  In a city that prides itself as inclusive, forward-thinking and cosmopolitan, it’s astounding that so many are left out in the cold. So how can we, as Londoners, help put an end to this epidemic?  We caught up with Sam Forsdike, Welfare Manager at homeless project C4WS, to find out.  Sadly, the preconception of homelessness as a “choice” still exists. But in reality, someone ends up on the streets due to external factors that are most often out of their control.  These are the most common causes, according to Sam:  Homelessness can also come about as a result of physical or mental health challenges, trauma, grief, addictions and abuse.  Most charities advise against giving money directly to rough sleepers. As Sam points out, “it's hard to know where your money might go on the street."  “By giving it to a charity that works on the frontline with individuals who are homeless, you know your support is going to make a difference.  “For example, £10 covers the cost of a warm, welcoming shelter, three course healthy dinner, breakfast and access to showers.”  If you want to give something directly to a person on the street then food, a hot drink or warm clothing will always go down a treat.  At C4WS, “the most in-demand items are underwear, backpacks, hardy shoes, bus passes, Oystercards and phone credit,” says Sam.  But that’s not the only way you can help. Many people sleeping rough feel ignored and isolated so engaging and having a conversation can offer a huge amount of support.  During the winter months, the government works with local charities and churches to provide emergency cold weather shelters for the homeless when the temperature drops below freezing.  You can report a rough sleeper with the StreetLink app or via their local council homelessness services; this makes sure they can be connected to the most appropriate local support service.  Reduce waste by recycling your cast-offs with Drop Point, which ensures your clothing makes its way to someone in need.  C4WS are always on the lookout for specific items that can help their guests, which you can take a look at here.  You can also contact your local Salvation Army to find out what and where they are collecting, or speak directly to someone sleeping rough and ask them what they might need.  Giving your time is one of the most valuable things you can do to help build a sustainable solution to the homelessness epidemic.  From helping out in a winter night shelter, to volunteering in a foodbank or an emergency drop-in centre, volunteer support is needed throughout the year.  Sam highlights how "crucial volunteers are to the process of helping these people find jobs and permanent housing. This long term intervention enables them to exit homelessness permanently and is proven way of providing real change.”  If you're employed, volunteering for Jobs Club to share skills with job-seeking guests in the shelter is a great way to help them build confidence and access employment.  If you don’t have time to spare, offering your spare room temporarily through C4WS provides shelter for someone in need whilst welfare teams find them a permanent home.  “We need more housing,” says Sam. “The delays in benefits are causing more people to become homeless.”  “We also need to allow asylum seekers to work and support themselves whilst waiting for a decision on whether they can remain in the UK.”  Paul Noblet, Head of Public Affairs at youth homeless charity Centrepoint, highlights the power of conversation around homelessness.  “Try and keep the issue on the top of the political agenda. If your local MP is having a coffee morning, go a long and spark up a conversation about it.”  “Talk about it with your friends and family, and encourage more people to become involved with volunteering and donating.”  C4WS is London's homeless project that aims to get people off the streets permanently, find out about volunteering here.  Centrepoint is the UK's leading youth homeless charity, you can get involved here.  The Salvation Army works with disadvantaged people in the community, here's how to help out this winter.


eveningstandard--2019-02-02--Unhoused The online shop that helps homeless people battle the cold in London

Unhoused: The online shop that helps homeless people battle the cold in London

An online shop selling winter supplies for Londoners during the freezing cold snap is donating matching items to homeless people in the capital with every purchase.  "StreetWear", launched by social impact startup Unhoused in November, invites people to buy and donate items to the homeless, including warm jumpers, socks, gloves and beanie hats, and allows customers to see who has received their donation.  The website, founded by London couple Varun Bhanot and Anisha Seth, operates on a "buy one, give one" model, meaning for every warm item a Londoner purchases for themselves an equivalent one will be donated to a rough sleeper in the capital.  The organisers then send a photo, video or message to the customer to show them how their money has been spent.  Snug items such as blankets are all available to buy through the shop in addition to donation-only items including sanitary kits, haircuts and mobile phone top-ups.  The idea for the website came after Mr Bhanot, who works for tech firm Hubble in Shoreditch, realised that people were hesitant to give money to the homeless directly on the street near his office.  StreetWear aims to bring transparency and feedback to the donation process, while allowing people to donate online, the organisation said.  "If you see someone on the street you might give them £2 but you don't know where that's going," Mr Bhanot, 28, told the Standard. "On here people can see where that money is going."  Since its launch in early November around 1500 orders have been placed via the website - meaning 1500 donations have been made around London.  "Whenever someone buys something from the shop we show them where that money goes," Mr Bhanot said. "We've found that's been really popular with people on the site."  And the average value of shopper's baskets has been around £20, Mr Bhanot said, suggesting "people are giving more without even realising it".  Unhoused is partnered with three charities who work with the organisation to distribute items at their walk-in centres. These include the Spitalfields Crypt Trust, Salvation Army UK and Sewa UK.  Mr Bhanot added: "We have basic clothes on offer because we want things that are easy to donate, so some five packs of socks right up to jackets, gloves and undergarments.  "There are a few things that are donate-only such as coffees, haircuts and phone top-ups, which is something homeless people need but don't often realise."  The organisation is focused on how tech and innovation can tackle the current homelessness crisis. For this project, Mr Bhanot said he and his recent fiancee were inspired to "apply the ASOS model" to charitable donations.  He said: "We thought let's set up ASOS for the homeless in time for winter, so everyone can buy their winter clothes and donate."  Looking forward, Mr Bhanot said he and Ms Seth have a "broader vision" for the startup with possible future innovations including a bank for the homeless.  He said: "With Unhoused we don't just see it as a shop. Being in tech, I'm always seeing innovations. One idea is a digital bank but for the homeless.  "One of the biggest problems is that they are financially excluded from banks because they don't have proof of address."  In a statement, Ms Seth, 28, said: “Clothing and supplies that are donated to charity are often used and second-hand, which is absolutely fine. However, this allows an opportunity for brand new, quality clothing or items to be distributed, giving the homeless greater dignity and quality of life. It may even increase their employability.”  Bali Bhalla, of Sewa Week UK, said: "We always hear of cool technology businesses in the news, but the problem is that charities tend to be the last to benefit from these innovations. Maybe as we are non-for-profit organisations.  "Every time there's a new digital innovation, it's not usually for social good causes so this is a very welcome idea."


eveningstandard--2019-12-19--NHS initiative helping homeless people see a local GP expands across London

An NHS initiative helping homeless people to access a GP is expanding across London.  In the coming months, NHS London will give out 20,000 “My Right to Healthcare” cards, produced with charity Groundswell, which detail how homeless people are entitled to healthcare even without ID, proof of address or confirmed immigration status.  Cards can also be handed to an NHS staff member if a person struggles to communicate.  The successful scheme, trialled in London since 2017, is to be rolled out nationally later in 2020.  Around a third of all deaths of homeless people caused by easily treatable health conditions, according to the NHS. Seeing a GP early enough can prevent some illnesses from deteriorating and allows healthcare professionals to refer patients to other NHS services.  Nearly 150 people are known to have died sleeping rough on the streets of London last year. Many lay dead for hours before they were found.  Sir David Sloman, Regional Director for London’s NHS, said: “We know that 7 out of 10 homeless people experience a physical health problem and 80 per cent experience mental health problems. The cold weather can also cause serious complications for those who are already unwell.  “No one’s health should suffer because of who they are or where they live and everyone should have equal access to healthcare. Initiatives like this will help us on the path to making London the healthiest city in the world.”


latimes--2019-12-06--Desperate to build more homeless housing, L.A. County seeks help from the private sector

In a move meant to speed up the development of homeless housing with help from the private sector, the L.A. County Board of Supervisors has approved a motion that directs county departments to identify sites for both short-term and long-term housing, along with cost estimates and timelines for completion.  Introduced by Supervisor Kathryn Barger, the motion is an effort to involve the county more directly in housing construction after more than two years in which funds from the Measure H countywide sales tax have gone largely to homeless services, shelter operations and rental subsidies.  During a meeting in October, Barger acknowledged that programs funded by Measure H probably stopped this year’s 12% countywide increase in homelessness from being even bigger. But she also said she was frustrated with the results — both Measure H and the city’s $1.2-billion Proposition HHH homeless housing bond.  “It’s not working the way we are doing it,” Barger told The Times. “I’m going to finally say what I think needs to be done to move forward.”  The motion, which was approved unanimously, directs county staff to seek funding for the development of homeless housing and to identify a private-sector housing expert to oversee the planning.  Barger said the role of the housing expert has yet to be worked out, but she did not see the position as being independent from county administration.  “Our partners in the private sector know how to get the job done and have the capacity to explore innovative housing models that are faster and more affordable to produce,” she said.  A staff report is due Feb. 4, and progress reports are due every two months after that to hold county officials accountable.  “We can no longer afford to spend years siting and building a single interim housing facility,” Barger said. “We cannot continue to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to create a single unit of permanent supportive housing.”  “I know our homeless-services folks out there are doing their best, but I feel like we are losing ground and we need to look at this as a humanitarian crisis on the scale of a natural disaster,” Hahn said. “We need a Marshall Plan to address homelessness and build shelters and housing on every possible piece of land that we can think of.”  The motion requires the county’s chief executive officer to work with departments, including public works, the development authority, regional planning and public health, as well as the fire chief and director of homeless initiatives to work together on the plan.  It directs county officials to look for ways to speed up the permitting, zoning and approval processes, and to improve communication and outreach to communities that will be affected.  “In a time where community opposition to interim and permanent housing projects has the capacity to stall development altogether, it is critical that we explore models that provide adequate resources for homeless services and housing, but do not alienate the community at large,” Barger said.


thedenverpost--2019-04-19--Denver to provide 157 million for shelter housing upgrades to help combat homelessness

Denver to provide $15.7 million for shelter, housing upgrades to help combat homelessness

Mayor Michael Hancock on Friday announced an effort to provide new housing options and expand shelter services for people experiencing homelessness.  Over the next few years, the city will put about $5 million to provide 400 “bridge housing vouchers” — funding for housing that people can use while they wait for a permanent home.  The effort also will put $10.7 million toward expanding Denver’s “day shelter” options. The city will work with nonprofits and charities to “bring people indoors during the daytime,” according to a news release.  Traditionally, shelters have focused on providing overnight places to stay. The push for daytime services is meant to connect people with services.  Denver is providing about $11 million of the total $15.7 million plan. The Anschutz Foundation has committed another $1 million, and the city is looking for donors for the remaining $4.5 million.  RELATED: Editorial: Vote “no” on Initiative 300 to keep Denver homeless camps safe and temporary  Roughly half of Denver’s money will come from its affordable housing fund, and the rest will come from its capital improvement and general funds. The city’s overall operating budget is $2.4 billion per year.  The administration also plans to create a new Department of Housing and Homelessness, uniting previously separate teams, and to draft a new strategic plan for homelessness. Hancock said in a statement that housing is “a core city service,” similar to emergency services and public works.  The announcements come just after an auditor’s report that found Denver’s homelessness efforts are “fragmented and understaffed.”  The administration claims the changes were set in motion in 2017, when the city created a new housing office. The city also hired a chief housing officer last May.


theindependent--2019-02-01--Food for the homeless How startup projects are helping feed vulnerable people

Food for the homeless: How startup projects are helping feed vulnerable people

For Dom Warren, it all began one day in 2015 on the school run. “I noticed in the playground that some of the children obviously had a fairly tough life. So I came up with the idea of taking surplus foods from people’s cupboards, to help feed people in my own town.”  He birthed his award-winning charity, Dom’s Food Mission, on top of a demanding 40+ hour week working as an electrical fitter. But with the support of his wife Alexandria, a director at work and 50 people in a Facebook group, it took off quickly. “The first week, we filled our car and delivered food to a food bank and the Salvation Army.  “My house started to look like a warehouse: our kids, then 3 and 6, were packing up the boxes, we had 1,000 people on Facebook and members of the public were ringing the doorbell every hour.”  A major turning point came after five months. “A woman phoned from M&S, offering their surplus food – everything from fresh chickens to frozen food.  "I explained that I didn’t have a team, no vans, just me and my wife, but the deal was signed. She urged us to become a registered charity, which we did, and M&S were soon followed by Morrisons. The people at these superstores are phenomenal. They all say, ‘Thank God you did this. We hated having to throw food away.’ They had nowhere to take it.”  Donations from Dom’s company, help from local sponsors and fundraising campaigns have enabled the charity to grow its fleet to seven vehicles. “We collect a whole Transit van of food 365 days a year, wind, rain or snow, from superstores in Bexhill, Hastings and St Leonards, Costa, Sainsbury’s, KFC. But we couldn’t do it without our amazing volunteer team.”  It’s not all been plain sailing. “I get a lot of emails that keep me awake at night, things like, ‘We can put the heating on but we can’t eat’. At first we had people saying they needed food, but they didn’t, so we now only supply our 4600 mouths a month via registered community and children’s centres, homeless shelters, hostels, women and children safe houses…ordinary people struggling to put food on the table for their families.  Tuesdays and Sundays are particularly special. Hot meals cooked from donated food by local pubs and restaurants feed up to 75 homeless people – and their dogs – underneath a car park.  Some of the donated surplus food is even cooked by children in local schools as part of the charity’s project, A Helping Hand, which encourages young people to help others. “My wife Alexandria helps them make meals for less fortunate people, which is key to what we do. There’s something very special about an eight-year-old cooking surplus food into something that will feed the homeless.”  Dom’s dream – and he certainly has the charisma, energy and expertise to make it reality – is to roll his charity out across the country with government backing. “I’d love to see vans going up and down the motorways feeding people in Manchester and Liverpool. I constantly get calls from Inverness, Burnley, Newcastle, asking for advice. Imagine what we could do with serious funding.” And, with that, he’s off, giving up yet another Friday night to collect food from Tesco.  Other homeless schemes around the UK  As with Dom, it took just one small incident in 1989 for Icolyn "Ma" Smith to decide to set up a soup kitchen in Oxford, using her pension to buy ingredients. Now an 87-year-old great grandmother, she says, “I was appalled to see a teenage boy rummaging through bins for food. So that day I went home, got my pots and pans and started cooking. I knew I had to do something for him and others like him.”  The Icolyn Smith Foundation is now a charity, feeding a three-course meal to around 50 homeless people twice a week. “My parents were farmers in Jamaica and it was hard work, but it was a small community and everyone looked after each other. I brought that with me when I came to Oxford in 1965.” Last year, her dedication saw her pick up a Pride of Britain award.  In London, Refettorio Felix was set up by Massimo Bottura as part of his not-for-profit Food for Soul initiative. Volunteers cook and serve a daily hot lunch to homeless and vulnerable people – 1,100 a month – using surplus fresh ingredients sourced by The Felix Project.  A typical menu, bringing waste produce back to life, may include spinach and courgette soup, slow-cooked chicken with capers and olive oil, with smashed roots and apple tart. Top London chefs even drop in to cook, such as Brett Graham of The Ledbury and Francesco Mazzei of Radici. Chef Carlo Scotto of Xier says: “Spending the day at Refettorio Felix with my team was an incredible experience. It’s important that we give back to people less fortunate and Refettorio is the perfect way to attach food to the soul.”  Having volunteered at Refettorio Felix, I’d wholeheartedly agree. Serving a nutritious, restaurant-standard meal to someone who lives on the streets gives them respect and a chance to enjoy something many of us take for granted – the pleasure of good food (even if a few of them do grumble when they find kale on their plate).  Like London, Manchester is another of Britain’s homeless hotspots, so it’s no surprise that the city has seen several initiatives take off. Not Just Soup sees some of the best local restaurants provide fresh food for the homeless.  Co-founded by Sam Jones, Not Just Soup partners with a group called Coffee4Craig which provides coffee, clothes and other services to the homeless and vulnerable. He says, “We decided to add food. Not Just Soup costs nothing to run, yet we have provided 32,000 meals in two years. The support we’ve had from the restaurant community – more than 50 so far – has been incredible. It’s imperative in helping feed people who need it and there are many who do.” One homeless recipient of the scheme’s meals bears this out, saying, “If we didn’t have this, we wouldn’t eat.” That’s the stark reality.  Other great schemes allow you to add £1 or more to your bill to help the homeless. These include StreetSmart with 578 participating restaurants (in 2017, they raised an impressive £662,000) and Share the Meal, an app set up by the United Nations World Food Programme: so far, they have shared over 31 million meals worldwide.


activistpost--2019-08-21--WATCH Instead of Arresting Homeless Man Police Bought Him Shoes and Food

WATCH: Instead of Arresting Homeless Man, Police Bought Him Shoes and Food

Chattanooga, TN — In case after horrifying case, TFTP has reported on countless instances of police officers showing up to a situation involving a homeless person only to kill them moments later. When it plays out differently, however, and police help that homeless person out, we feel that it deserves recognition as it can set an example for other departments to follow.  Body camera footage was released on Tuesday showing officers responding to a 911 call about a homeless man refusing to leave the front of a store. In most instances we’ve reported on, this is where things turn violent. However, in this case, the opposite happened.  Emma Baldwin is the district manager of Elliott’s Boots, where the incident took place. She told News Channel 9 that she was the one who called police after the homeless man had been sitting in front of her store for hours.  When police showed up to Elliott’s Boots last Wednesday, instead of seeing a vile criminal, they saw a man in need. In a post on their Facebook page, the Chattanooga police department explained how the rest of the stop unfolded.  A man down on his luck wearing shoes that were not fit for walking recently got some much needed assistance from a couple CPD Officers and employees at Elliott’s Boots in Hixson. On August 9, 2019, Sgt. Wood responded to a call regarding a Suspicious Person. Once the man was located, Sgt. Wood determined he just needed a helping hand. Seeing the man’s shredded shoes, Sgt. Wood went in to nearby Elliott’s Boots to purchase a new pair for him. The staff would not accept payment and gave the man a new pair of shoes and bottled water…it was 91 degrees at the time. CPD Inv. Collins who was also on scene bought the man some pizza. Sometimes it takes collaboration across a community to let people know they’re not alone.  As the video shows, the scene was quite inspirational.  “Oh just a little tired,” said the man, whose name is Pete.  Pete explained that he’d been trying to make it to a place that is five miles away but had to stop after becoming too tired.  Immediately, Wood knew at least one of the reasons this man was having a hard time finishing the walk.  “His shoes are falling off his feet. I mean they’re barely holding together,” said Wood over his body cam video.  “We went out and realized his shoes were probably the reason he was sitting here and not able to move on, so Sergeant Wood said we’d like to buy him a pair,” said Baldwin.  Elliott’s employees and police then joined forces to help this man out.  “I’d like to measure his feet,” the employee said.  “That’s alright brother, I’ve seen a lot of filth in my day. Put all your weight on that right there.”  The Elliott’s employee then measured his feet and went inside to find him a pair of shoes.  “This is the shoe we chose. It’s not slick on the bottom and got a real cushy insole, laces up good and again, it comes in extra wide and he needed an extra wide so this was a perfect choice for him,” said Baldwin.  When officer Wood attempted to pay for the shoes, the store refused and instead gave them to him.


birminghammail--2019-02-19--Instead of having a present for his 18th birthday this teenager donated money to buy food for homel

Instead of having a present for his 18th birthday, this teenager donated money to buy food for homeless people

Your 18th birthday is a big one.  But when Brummie Armani Kidd turned 18, he didn't ask his parents for an expensive present or a lavish party.  Instead, he donated the money they would have spent to provide food for Birmingham's homeless people.  The big-hearted teenager told his story to city MP Liam Byrne (Lab Hodge Hill), who bumped into him at a Digbeth soup kitchen.  Armani, from Erdington, said: "I feel like there's quite a bit of negativity in the world at the moment.  "Also there's quite a few things going around like with young stabbings and stuff like that.  "So I just wanted to show a positive way to give back to the community ... so it's just a bit more positive karma really to put in the world."  Mr Byrne said it was lucky Armani chose to be so generous.  He said: "Instead of having a birthday present for his 18th birthday, what he wanted to do is donate the money to pay for food for the homeless people.  "And it was lucky that he did because we had a record queue tonight and cleared out everything in about 15/20 minutes."  Mr Byrne has launched a campaign called Winter of Compassion, urging people to donate to foodbanks. More details are available at https://foodbank.winterofcompassion.co.uk/ .  There were 4,677 people sleeping rough in England in autumn 2018, according to official estimates. Birmingham went from 57 rough sleepers in 2017 to 91.


thedailycaller--2019-04-23--Kid Cudi Spends 10000 On Food For Homeless Shelter

Kid Cudi Spends $10,000 On Food For Homeless Shelter

Kid Cudi recently spent a ton of money to help feed the homeless.  According to TMZ late Monday afternoon, the superstar rapper spent $10,000 on Postmates to get Popeyes for the Coachella Valley Rescue Mission last Friday. (RELATED: Superstar Musician Opens Up About His Battle With Depression. Here’s What He Said)  You can watch a video of the food being delivered below.  This is such a cool thing for Cudi to do. He’s widely known as one of the most legit guys in all of music, and dropping $10,000 to help feed the homeless is a perfect example of how cool of a guy he is.  I can think of countless examples of people in Hollywood being idiots and only caring about themselves. You could even argue it’s the norm.  Clearly, Cudi is cut from a different kind of cloth. He’s a man who looks out for other people.  It’s also worth noting that Cudi has had some struggles of his own in life, and went to rehab for depression. Maybe it’s the fact he hasn’t had an easy road that makes him so willing to help others.  Either way, the rapper is a star on stage and is a good dude. We need more guys like that out there. The world would certainly be a better place if that were the case.


nationalreview--2019-04-09--Solving Social Problems Will Never Be Easy

Imagine that you are the czar of all building in San Francisco, and that you have been asked for your thoughts on the design of a new apartment building that is under consideration. What is your top concern?  If you are a halfway competent and benevolent dictator — and, goodness knows, history has shown us few enough of those! — then you’d probably put “affordability” at the top of your list. The people of San Francisco and the surrounding areas are very much in need of new affordable housing: In the city itself, the median price of a house is now just over $1.6 million, more than 16 times the median household income. Affordable housing is a big issue not only for regular middle-class people but for the high-tech titans of Silicon Valley, who worry that some highly productive potential employees are looking elsewhere for their futures, not to mention that the housing market forces them to pay more for all their workers. There are other places that have faced such problems, notably resort communities such as Aspen, Colo., but it is unusual for a major city to become so comprehensively unaffordable. Even famously expensive New York City has its more affordable enclaves, without which many industries — from food-service to publishing — would have enormous human-capital problems.  But if the czar of building in San Francisco were presented with a design for the most affordable apartment building that possibly could be built (for the purpose of our thought experiment, there is no building code), he almost certainly would reject it, because it would lack certain health and safety features that most of us regard as essential. It probably would not be very attractive or very energy-efficient. It probably would not be very comfortable to live in, either.  A different building czar might believe instead that energy efficiency is the most important concern. But if he were presented with a design for the most energy-efficient building that possibly could be built, he almost certainly would reject it, because it would lack things that most of us regard as essential, like windows.  What if we put safety and health first? We might say we want the maximum affordability consistent with safety and health. But even seemingly obvious concerns such as safety eventually put us in a bind: At some point, we will encounter a marginal improvement to safety that forces us to accept compromises in affordability, energy efficiency, or some other criterion that seems to us excessive or unreasonable.  In fact, the building czar making up a list of things that are legitimately important in the design of such a project might, off the top of his head, jot down: affordability, health and safety (which might very well include concerns ranging from fire and earthquakes to crime and terrorism), energy efficiency, accessibility for disabled people, comfort, aesthetics, externalities such as traffic and parking, any likely effects on neighboring residents and businesses, utility loads (a big concern for New York, lately), and a few other things. Some of these concerns are complementary: A building that is more energy efficient will demand less of its utility providers; a building that is well integrated into the mass-transit network will need less parking and contribute less to traffic, etc. But other concerns will clash: Many beautiful buildings sacrifice energy efficiency to aesthetics; some safety and accessibility features consume both energy and money; the cost difference between making a building very durable in an earthquake and making it very, very durable in an earthquake may be very high.  All of those tradeoffs will impose costs, some of which might not be obvious until you are faced with an unusual or extreme circumstance. There wasn’t anything defective about the design of the World Trade Center towers, which very likely would have stood up just fine in the event of an ordinary fire or many kinds of possible terrorist attack. But they were not designed to stand up to having jetliners flown into them, even though the question had, oddly enough, come up when the project was being conceived in the 1960s.  So, you want your apartment building to be affordable, but you also want it to be safe — from what? Ordinary building fires? Terrorist attacks? Meteors? Earthquakes? Okay: How big an earthquake? You want it to be green, but you also want it to be attractive and comfortable. You want it to have few enough entrances to be secure but enough exits for people to get out quickly during a fire.  That’s one building, and one building gets pretty complicated all by itself. When you move into the larger realm of the entire housing stock of a city such as San Francisco, the problem gets exponentially more complex. As the locals sometimes like to remind us, the Bay Area is home to an enormous concentration of intelligence, engineering expertise, human capital, and ordinary capital, too. But for all those resources, it has made zero progress toward its goal of making housing more affordable. And there isn’t anything nefarious behind that: It is a complex problem and would be even if everybody had exactly the same preferences and priorities — which, as it turns out, they don’t.  Which is to say: The things that make people want to put czars in charge of complicated and intractable problems are also the things that make it a terrible idea to put czars in charge of complicated and intractable problems.  If designing an apartment building is complex, then how much more complex is designing, say, a national system of regulating and subsidizing health-insurance companies, medical providers, employers, state governments, and — oh! — just about every one of the 327.2 million residents of this country from sea to shining sea, in a way that optimizes at least a few hundred major criteria that are in many cases either rivalrous or incompatible? How much more complicated than that is reorganizing more or less the entirety of human economic activity in simultaneous pursuit of environmental and social-justice goals involving competing factors so complex that the relationships among them are literally incomprehensible?  The same bureaucracies and politician-dominated processes we expect to ensure substantial justice for the entirety of the human race while optimizing the sum of human material life in accord with certain slippery and vaguely defined environmental goals cannot figure out how to raise an apartment building in San Francisco — which in reality entails not figuring out how to develop the needed housing but how to let other people who want to use their own money and energy to develop that housing do so — or how to run a high school in Milwaukee, or how to ensure that all of the people on Death Row actually belong there. The federal government cannot even say with any confidence how many programs it currently administers. Don’t ask its auditors where the money went.  All of the Instagram-ready chin-up posturing and declarations of moral urgency in the world will not change the facts of problems before us or render inoperative Immanuel Kant’s maxim that “ought implies can.” The adjectives “ambitious,” “inspiring,” “audacious,” and “sweeping” should be met with dread by those who value boring things like reason, responsibility — and reality.


activistpost--2019-04-10--April is National Alcohol Awareness Month Time for Education and Action about Alcohol Abuse and Al

April is National Alcohol Awareness Month — Time for Education and Action about Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism

April is National Alcohol Awareness Month, and the first weekend in April is Alcohol Free Weekend. This is a campaign to inform and change social norms about drinking.  Every day hundreds of Americans die because of alcohol abuse and alcoholism, and thousands more are admitted into hospitals, psychiatric facilities, or jails and prison. Alcohol places thousands more at risk for divorce, unemployment, bankruptcy, and physical and emotional problems such as depression. Because it affects so many people, alcoholism is considered the number one public health problem in America – even surpassing cancer and heart disease, and is the third leading cause of preventable death in the U.S.  Alcohol Awareness Month (AAM) is a national grassroots effort that was started by the National Council on Alcoholism and Drug Dependence in 1987, and it quickly spread throughout the country. AAM highlights the need to support education, prevention and treatment for alcoholism and alcohol-related problems. It is an opportunity for families and communities, together, to educate themselves about the critical issues of alcohol abuse and alcoholism, and reach out and educate their children on the reasons to stay alcohol free.  Alcoholism is a disease that affects children, families and communities across the nation. In fact, most people know someone who has been affected by this disease as over half of all adults have a family history of alcoholism or alcohol problems. In this regard, alcoholism does not just affect the alcoholic but others around, and therefore it is also called a family disease.  Alcohol is a toxic and addictive drug. Each year there are well over 88,000 deaths because of alcohol, and according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), there may be as many as 15.1 million individuals with an alcohol problem or alcoholism in the United States. Alcoholism was, is, and remains one of the most pervasive and tragic diseases affecting society.  Alcohol Free Weekend is a special opportunity for parents to teach about alcohol in their homes. For at least one weekend each year people are saying that America does not need to rely on alcohol for pleasure or pastime. This also gives parents opportunity to further reflect upon the dangers and consequences of drinking with their children.  Although it is among the nation’s most deadly diseases, alcoholism is preventable. Each year AAM offers an opportunity to work in a unified effort to raise awareness about the negative consequences of drinking and to do something about it. It also asks families to look at the level of emotional pain that alcohol has caused in their lives and encourages adults to talk about alcoholism with spouses, children, and friends.  The best prevention is to help send the message to youth that one does not need to drink in order to enjoy leisure activities and have a fulfilling and healthy life. In fact, at least 34 percent of Americans do not drink at all.  AAM also encourages individuals with an alcohol problem to seek treatment. Help is only a telephone call away. If a person believes that he or she or a family member may have an alcohol problem or if one is hurting or in emotional pain because of alcohol, it is best to contact a local treatment agency or call the national referral helpline operated by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) at 1-800-662-HELP.


theindependent--2019-08-19--Treat alcoholism with MDMA study suggests

Treat alcoholism with MDMA, study suggests

Alcoholism could be successfully treated by giving patients MDMA, new research suggests.  The first study to analyse the use of the drug in tackling booze addiction has shown it is both safe and highly effective, it has been reported.  In test cases where alcoholics have been given MDMA alongside psychotherapy, there has been only one relapse and no physical or psychological side effects, scientists say.  That compares to an overall figure where 80 per cent of patients undergoing traditional treatments are known to be drinking again within three years.  Dr Ben Sessa, the addiction psychiatrist leading the safety and tolerability at Imperial College London, said 11 people had so far completed the experimental treatment.  “We have five people who are completely dry and we have four or five who have had one or two drinks but wouldn’t reach the diagnosis of alcohol use disorder,” he told The Guardian.  Just one has completely relapsed, he confirmed.  Because most addiction is based on underlying trauma, often from childhood, “MDMA selectively impairs the fear response,” Dr Sessa added. “It allows recall of painful memories without being overwhelmed.”  He said: “MDMA psychotherapy gives you the opportunity to tackle rigidly held personal narratives that are based on early trauma. It’s the perfect drug for trauma-focused psychotherapy.”  The treatment itself sees patients given an eight-week course of therapy with powerful doses of MDMA administered in week three and six.  Discussing possible dangers associated with the drug, including the well-reported death of some recreational users, Dr Sessa said: “Scientists know it’s not dangerous. The Sun newspaper thinks it’s dangerous because the tiny number of fatalities that occur every year all get on their front page.”  He added: “If there was a craze of people going around abusing cancer chemotherapy drugs, you wouldn’t then think, ‘Oh well, it’s not safe to take cancer chemotherapy when doctors give it to you’.”  Further research, which compares the study’s results with a random control group who receive a placebo instead of MDMA, will now need to be carried out.


windowoneurasiablog--2019-12-16--Alcoholism Remains Widespread in Russian North but Authorities Doing Little to Help

Staunton, December 13 – Moscow officials have trumpeted figures showing declining rates of alcohol consumption among Russians and have promised to open new-style sobering-up stations to help alcoholics. But alcoholism remains widespread in the impoverished cities of the Russian North, and only NGOs rather than the government doing much to help.  In a 2800-word article, the portal’s journalists paint a dreary picture in which poverty and the absence of alternative forms of entertainment combined with long winters and the incompetence of officials drive people to drink excessively at the price of their health and the well-being of themselves and those around them.  According to anti-alcohol activists in the North, the problem is far worse than official statistics acknowledge. Irina Frolova, head of the No to Alcoholism and Narcotics in Veliky Novgorod, for every alcoholic officials count, there are nine more than aren’t included in the government’s statistics. She says widespread poverty is the biggest explanation.  Private groups like her own and like Alcoholics Anonymous have made a small dent in the problem, but they are overwhelmed by its size and by the failure of the authorities to take effective action. Most regional officials have limited their moves against alcoholism to limits on the hours alcohol can be sold. But that seldom works: people find ways around it for profit.  Sultan Khamzayev, the leader of the Sober Russia movement, agrees. In fact, he suggests, limiting hours of the sale of alcohol has led to the rise of an entire network of illegal distribution which means that alcoholics can get what they want if anything even easier than they did before the restrictions were put in place.  A month ago, the Duma passed on first reading a bill that would restore the Soviet-era system of sobering up stations. They were closed down to save money in 2011, but the result has been that when the police pick up someone drunk on the streets, they take him to already overburdened hospitals.  In Pskov Oblast, SeverReal says, some 8,000 to 9,000 drunks are taken to hospitals each year. Most don’t need any treatment other than time to sober up, but they fill the hospital corridors and drive many who do need medical attention away. And doctors seldom check them for tuberculosis or other diseases.  The lack of sobering up stations remains a subject of debate. Vologda anti-alcohol doctor Aleksey Starodubtsev says closing them was a mistake and that they should be reopened. But Valery Koltakov, a deputy in the Pskov district assembly, says he doesn’t want to see the old system come back because of how it would be abused.  “This after all is Russia, not Europe,” he suggests, and a normal and helpful sobering up system won’t be put in place. People do need to be taken off the streets, “but in out state, it will be anti-people” and “be used as an instrument of repression.” Someone the authorities don’t approve of will be accused of alcoholism after taking a single drink of beer.  “It is not a secret for anyone that people who take an active political position are being watched,” Koltakov says. Labelling them drunks and then imposing huge fines are the consequences of bringing back sobering up stations, at least as long as the Putin regime is in place.  Khamzayev agrees that sobering up stations now should not be like those of the Soveit period, but people found drunk on the streets need places to sober up, get cleaned up, and “if necessary provided medical assistance and sent for further rehabilitation.” Unfortunately, few regions are doing that.  He stresses that there is no single magic bullet to solve the problem of alcoholism. Propaganda or sobering up stations aren’t going to be enough. Limiting sales won’t work by itself. And unless the problem of surrogates is addressed in a far more serious way, more Russians are going to die from poisoning especially during the upcoming holidays.  Other Northern countries like Finland and Canada, Khamzayev says, have come up with effective means of combatting excessive drinking and alcoholism. Russia should be copying them rather than drying to continue along its own “special path.” That isn’t leading anywhere except to disaster.


fortune--2019-03-14--How Should Employers Handle Drug Addiction at Work

How Should Employers Handle Drug Addiction at Work?

You’ve probably heard the mind-blowing statistics: Every 13 minutes, someone in the U.S. dies of an opioid overdose. The total reached a record 72,000 deaths in 2017, the CDC reports, making prescription pain medications like Oxycontin, Vicodin, and the synthetic opioid fentanyl even bigger killers than diseases like diabetes. Addiction to pain pills is so widespread, across every U.S. age, race, and income group, that it’s nearly impossible to say how many Americans are quietly struggling with it. But the available research suggests that about two-thirds of opioid addicts have jobs. At least a few of them probably work for you.  The cost of this crisis—in lost productivity, mistakes at work, absenteeism, and plain human misery—has become so high that many employers are now intent on fighting it. (Want an estimate of addiction’s price tag at your business? Check out the National Safety Council’s online cost calculator.) The U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams last year started urging employers to join the battle, and the Chamber of Commerce Foundation has launched a campaign against opioid abuse, with information and case studies employers can use in their own efforts to tackle the problem.  Yet most companies clearly have a long way to go. A nationwide survey last November of more than 2,000 HR managers and employees, by insurer The Hartford, showed that only 24% of human-resources pros and 18% of employees felt “very confident” they could spot the signs of opioid addiction, let alone do anything about it. In companies with no formal policies and procedures about this, individual managers have to wing it, and the results are often not great.  Consider: In a poll of 737 bosses by rehab-center operator American Addiction Centers, 70% of managers reported feeling “guilty” about how they have handled their direct reports’ addiction issues—more than half of them because they wish they had addressed the problem sooner, instead of just hoping it would go away.  Experts in addiction and recovery say there are at least two ways that any employer could make a huge difference. First, although 90% of managers in the AAC survey said they’d approve time off for drug rehab (or have already done so for at least one employee), such a stigma attaches to addiction that most employees won’t admit they need help, and they certainly won’t request time off to go and get it. “Employees are worried about losing their jobs so, even in companies with really good EAPs [employee assistance programs], they won’t come forward,” notes Michael Cartwright, AAC’s cofounder, CEO, and chairman, who adds that only about 5% of people seeking treatment at his company’s centers were sent by their employers. “You need to create a culture of honest communication, where people aren’t afraid to speak up.”  It helps to start by making information about opioid addiction, and how to prevent it, readily available to everyone. Most people don’t realize, for example, that it’s possible to get hooked on painkillers after taking them—for an injury, say, or after surgery— for just four days, especially at high doses. “People need to be educated about this, in the same way we as a society have done with smoking,” says Cartwright. “Employers are in an ideal position to help by simply spreading the facts about opioids, and making sure employees know the risks.”  A second way employers can help: Keeping close tabs on prescriptions through their medical-benefits plans, and letting employees and health care providers know that more than a three-day supply of opioid painkillers won’t be approved without special scrutiny. The Surgeon General’s office reports that about 30% of large U.S. companies have already started doing this, but most employers are still “unwitting enablers” of opioid addiction, says Dave Chase, CEO of a Health Rosetta, a nonprofit aimed at making the U.S. health care system more cost-effective—and, not incidentally, less awash in addictive drugs.  Chase wrote an illuminating book called The Opioid Crisis Wake-Up Call that is packed with case studies of companies, including GM and IBM, that have successfully overhauled their medical plans. Benefits managers, take note: He suggests three litmus tests for whether your company is inadvertently adding fuel to the opioid addiction fire. The first warning sign, Chase says, is if “payment for primary care in your system is based on volume,” which encourages health care providers to write quick-fix prescriptions. Second, take a close look at “whether it’s easier [for employees] to get an opioid prescription than access to physical therapy,” which is usually a far more effective, and less hazardous, treatment for injuries. And third, Chase says, “you should be getting regular reports on opioid prescriptions. Typically fewer than 10% of doctors are prescribing most of the opioids out there. You don’t want them in your system. Weed them out.”  Anne Fisher is a career expert and advice columnist who writes “Work It Out,” Fortune’s guide to working and living in the 21st century. Each week, she’ll answer your most challenging career questions. Have one? Ask her on Twitter or email her at workitout@fortune.com.


prepareforchange--2019-07-06--What is Drug Addiction

What is Drug Addiction?

Addiction is classified as a chronic, relapsing, brain disorder, that affects one in ten Americans. By continually using a substance, whether it be a prescription drug or a street drug such as heroin, the body begins to become physically and psychologically dependent on that drug. Most drugs will provide the brain with a surge of dopamine, which creates a pleasurable, high sensation. As use continues, tolerance develops, and the brain becomes unable to develop its state of happiness without a hit from the drug. The changes drugs make to your body is what makes it difficult to stop using, creating uncomfortable, and dangerous withdrawal symptoms when you attempt to reduce drug use.  Millions of Americans suffer from drug addiction, and many users of prescription drugs turn to illegal drugs as a cheaper option to maintain their habit. If you or someone you love is using a substance regularly and is unable or unwilling to stop, they are likely experiencing dependence or addiction.  A treatment gap exists in the United States where over 22 million Americans suffer from a substance use disorder, yet only 10% of those people get the treatment they require. This is due to the stigma surrounding addiction, and the denial of many individuals that they are suffering from drug addiction.  The opioid epidemic that is plaguing America is being fueled by both prescription opioids, as well as illicit opioids like heroin. As of 2018 over 115 Americans are dying every day due to opioid addiction, and overdose. In 2016 opioids killed more people than peak gun violence, peak AIDS crisis, and peak car crash years.  Illicit drugs vary significantly in the effects that they cause, and the symptoms they produce in their users. What they share is their risk factor, as each one of these drugs has been deemed dangerous, and addictive to be allowed legally in the United States:  Abusing illicit drugs causes unique symptoms depending on the drug and dosage. However, overdose remains a potential side effect for most of these drugs. If someone is exhibiting the following symptoms, call emergency services immediately:  Remember when calling emergency services to disclose as much information as possible about the drugs that were taken, and the dosages. Even if they are illegal substances, most overdose calls are responded to by EMTs who are more interested in saving a life, than calling up criminal charges.  You may also notice behavioral changes due to drug use, which could indicate an addiction:  With long-term substance abuse, a person’s lifestyle stands to see considerable, ongoing decline as drugs take on greater importance in his or her daily life.  Although drug side effects may vary, the same five stages of addiction are experienced by users, regardless of which substances they are abusing:  When a user first tries a drug. Over half of all people will try a drug before they reach 18 years old. Certain drugs carry a risk of addiction from their first use, such as meth.  The substance is used socially, with friends, and without cravings. The substance can be used casually, at parties, or now and again.  When use starts to become a habit, instead of a casual experiment. Users may start to have the drug every weekend, or after work each day. They will also begin to use on their own; it will be less of a social event.  Tolerance sets in, and requires the user to have more of a substance to achieve the same effects as before. The user is now physically dependent on the drug and will need to continue using to avoid withdrawal symptoms. Negative health consequences may start to set in, along with behavioral changes.  The user is unable to stop using and is not deterred by negative consequences of their drug use. They prioritize getting high above all other obligations. Drug addicts may start to isolate themselves, may lose interest in regular activities, and may start to miss school or work. They may partake in drug-seeking behavior and will take on riskier activities to score their drug of choice. At this stage, most users will be in denial about their addiction, attempting to hide their use from friends and family. Users are now physically and psychologically dependent on this drug and will need treatment to stop their addiction.  If you are unable to stop using or are experiencing withdrawal symptoms when you try to reduce the dosage, you should get help with your addiction. Withdrawal episodes result from growing brain chemical imbalances that ultimately disrupt the brain’s ability to maintain the body’s systems as normal.  While withdrawal effects can vary between alcohol and drug use, as well as from drug-to-drug, some of the most common types of effects experienced include:  The longer a person keeps abusing drugs and alcohol the more severe withdrawal effects become and the more often they occur. Also, if you have had any significant health problems arise from use, you should seek out help immediately.  Detox treatment provides you with the supports needed to stop abusing drugs or alcohol. These supports typically take the form of:  While not everyone who enters recovery will require an in-house detox program, those with long histories of substance abuse or chronic users will most definitely require some form of professional detox treatment help.  Long-term drug and alcohol addictions often leave addicts in poor physical health, with many also struggling with severe psychological disorders. Both inpatient and residential treatment programs operate as live-in treatment environments, so a person lives at the treatment facility for the duration of the program.  Inpatient care is highly recommended for most people, as it allowed therapists to work intensively on personal issues, knowing the patient isn’t going to return to their homes and relapse (as they might for outpatient care).  Inpatient programs provide ongoing medical, psychological and addiction treatment. Inpatient programs can run anywhere from two weeks to three months long depending on the severity of the addiction problem.  Inpatient programs offer medication-assisted treatment, to help ween slowly you off of your drug, and reduce withdrawal symptoms. This is ideal for long-term drug users.  If you’re at the early stages of drug and alcohol addiction and still have work and family obligations to meet, an outpatient treatment program offers the type of flexibility you’ll need. In effect, residential and outpatient programs offer the same types of services only you don’t have to live at the facility with outpatient treatment. However, they take longer to complete, as therapists work at a slower pace, only seeing patients a few times per week.  These types of interventions help you replace the destructive thinking and behaviors that drive substance abuse with a mindset that can support a drug-free lifestyle.  For people coming off the severe drug and alcohol addiction, going from a treatment program to regular, everyday life can be risky regarding the pressures and temptations that daily life brings. Sober living programs act as a bridge between the treatment program environment and going back home. It is essential to set up aftercare treatment, to help promote successful long-term recovery. Therapy programs can assist in treating underlying mental health issues, as well as identifying strategies for avoiding relapse.  Disclaimer: We at Prepare for Change (PFC) bring you information that is not offered by the mainstream news, and therefore may seem controversial. The opinions, views, statements, and/or information we present are not necessarily promoted, endorsed, espoused, or agreed to by Prepare for Change, its leadership Council, members, those who work with PFC, or those who read its content. However, they are hopefully provocative. Please use discernment! Use logical thinking, your own intuition and your own connection with Source, Spirit and Natural Laws to help you determine what is true and what is not. By sharing information and seeding dialogue, it is our goal to raise consciousness and awareness of higher truths to free us from enslavement of the matrix in this material realm.


thedailyrecord--2019-03-13--Drug addiction isnt a moral failing it is societys failing

Drug addiction isn't a moral failing, it is society's failing

Annual drug deaths in Scotland are set to break through the 1000 mark for the first time – but barely a collective eyebrow has been raised.  Too often in Scotland, the response to the addicted is judgment and scorn, where compassion and empathy are needed.  Addicts are too easily dehumanised as we step around them like human litter, glued to our phone screens.  Just as drug addicts have become numbed to society, society has become numbed to them – and that is our shame, not theirs.  A reason lies behind every addiction, some perhaps more obvious than others.  In this country, the carnage inflicted on society through deindustrialisation and the erosion of community by city planners has created vacuums in the souls of thousands. Their lives have been impoverished and not simply financially.  Poverty of hope, poverty of ambition, poverty of expectation, poverty of emotion and empathy have laid waste to many lives, carving emptiness into souls pushers know only too well how to fill.  Not one addict in Scotland wants to be locked in addiction. It wasn’t a choice on careers day at high school.  Scotland has the largest number of overdose deaths per capita in western Europe and more than double the number of England and Wales. Our country’s drug problem is a public health emergency, a critical illness we are treating with the urgency of a minor ailment.  In the coming weeks this newspaper is running a series of articles posing the question: What should we do about Scotland’s drug deaths? If there is a solution, it lies in a national conversation we have yet to have.  It’s a polarising topic but one which must be debated, with anger, with passion, with a dogged determination to thrash out a solution.  Around 146 people died on Scotland’s roads in the last year and rightly we do everything in our power to stop that number climbing. But 1000 drug deaths is a statistic which raises a fraction of the alarm.  I come from a small working class town where so many are devastated by drugs. Thatcherism took a wrecking ball to communities across Scotland and austerity is finishing the job.  Disempowered people become disinvested in life and drugs fill the void. The middle classes and the rich are not excluded from addiction but drug abuse disproportionately affects the poor.  Over the years, I have interviewed so many people whose lives have been destroyed by addiction.  One father admitted moments of wishing his daughter dead rather than watch drugs rob a little more of her each day.  But does an addict have to be family before we care?  Treating knife crime as a health issue led to a dramatic drop in stabbings in 2005.  Glasgow was branded the murder capital of Europe but 10 years later, admissions to hospital through stabbings had fallen by 65 per cent. The pioneering approach, including through the work of the Violence Reduction Unit, will now be used in England as a blueprint.  In supporting the move, Theresa May ignored the inconvenient truth of a correlation between poverty and violence.  It wasn’t just the work of the VRU which helped tackle Scotland’s knife crime but a co-ordinated effort in schools, communities, hospitals, prisons and workplaces.  Drugs are as murderous as knives but the deaths are less dramatic – though the loss is just as devastating.  The Scottish Government needs to start with a national public health inquiry if it is serious about reversing the trend.  The rest of us need to look beyond the symptoms of addiction, and consider the causes. No one ever got clean through judgment.  A sheriff's officer turned up at my house this week.  Sweaty little chap, round glasses, looked like an owl but an owl who wants to seize your telly.  The fine I got for parking in my street with an expired permit had climbed from £30 to £170. He stood at the top of my stairs, three floors up, hell mend him, and looked at me like I had burned a down an orphanage.  The whole thing was my fault but, in mitigation, I am an idiot.  However, it all felt disproportionately punitive, relative to the fines given in our courts for real crimes. Last week, a man was fined £350 for attacking singer Michelle McManus in the street in January 2017.  Michelle, pictured, was left injured and an “absolute wreck” after Derek McArthur hit her with a guitar case.  I am not suggesting jail but even a community payback order would have been more in keeping with the gravity of his actions.  When a man assaults a woman in the street he shouldn’t be able to just pay his way out of it like it was an unpaid parking ticket.  Asylum seekers in Glasgow could be allowed to work six months after their claim to stay in the UK has been submitted.  The move is one of a series of changes which Glasgow City Council hopes to introduce in a UK pilot scheme.  I have always felt proud our city has opened its door to more asylum seekers than any other UK local authority area.  But ridiculous restrictions from the Home Office – led by Home Secretary Sajid Javid – mean asylum seekers are not allowed to work in the UK unless their claim has been outstanding for at least 12 months.  Many of these asylum seekers have valuable skills Glasgow and Scotland could benefit from.  And it makes sense to have people in the city who can afford to use our shops and facilities and boost the local economy.  Giving asylum seekers the right to work restores dignity to them when they have already lost too much.


thedailyrecord--2019-08-29--Dumbarton drugs support group help families affected by addiction

A Dumbarton drugs support worker has this week underlined the importance of helping family members suffering through addiction.  Bobby Walker, who runs a family support group at Alternatives in the High Street, admitted he was sad but not surprised by recent statistics which showed that drug deaths increased by 25 percent in West Dunbartonshire over the past year.  Drug addiction rates remain sky high in the area and workers at Alternatives are doing vital work to get people clean and save lives.  However, Bobby this week insisted that the wellbeing of loved ones of addicts should not be forgotten.  Bobby said: “I feel family support is something that is overlooked when it comes to addiction.  “I believe that when the family member is in recovery then so is the family, and both parties have to take that path and hopefully meet at the other end.”  Since launching at the beginning of this year, a group of families have been gathering every Monday night to have a chat and cup of tea in a relaxing environment with others going through the same problems.  A few of the members also enjoyed a therapeutic day trip to Glencoe earlier this month, and have future trips planned.  Bobby said: “The purpose of the trip was a therapeutic approach to tackle mental health within families of people in addiction.  “Some of the comments made by the group were that it was relaxing, enjoyable, and just what they needed.  “We have developed into a group of around eight families who have taken some ownership to help and support each other when needed.  “The numbers I feel shows that this is a service that is needed, and anyone else in the same position is welcome to attend our meetings.”  The Monday meetings start off with a chat about how each member’s week has been going, and group members offer a listening ear and support.  This usually lasts around a hour, while the second hour is usually a topic-based chat.  Bobby said: “Overall the night is about support and gaining knowledge on our family members’ addiction, and how we can not only help our family member heal but heal ourselves.”  The comments in the group’s log book speak volumes of how valued the weekly meetings are.  Police use science in bid to snare killer of Alexandria's Caroline Glachan  One reads: “This is my second week, and I have been really looking forward to coming along as last week I realised I was not alone. Sharing and openness of the group is fantastic to help each other through the tough times.”  Another reads: “As a parent I felt lost in a world I did not know much about, but already I feel more informed. So glad I came along.”  Anyone interested in attending the support group is invited to the Alternatives base in High Street, Dumbarton, on Mondays from 6.30pm-8.30pm.  For more local news, click here