Posted by AzBlueMeanie:
Shantytowns formed in cities across the United States in the 1930s, built by people made homeless by the Great Depression. The areas, like this one in Seattle, were nicknamed Hoovervilles because their inhabitants blamed President Herbert Hoover for their plight.
On Monday, our millionaire newscasters suddenly discovered the plight of the "newly poor" in this country, reporting on tent city shanty towns, or Bushvilles, popping up all over the country.
This has been going on for well over a year now as homeless shelters and community foodbanks have been overwhelmed by the growing demand from the newly poor if anyone had been paying attention to their plight besides Bill Moyers at PBS. The millionaire newscasters consider this a story now only because it fits their developing narrative that the country is in a depression.
Here is an idea for our millionaire newscasters. Sweeps month is coming up, why don't you join these homeless Americans in their Bushvilles and live like they do for a month, reporting on their personal stories? After your cheerleading for the white collar criminals on Wall Street and their "lifestyles of the rich and famous" for so many years it is the least that you can do. Take Rick Santelli with you. Maybe he will discover empathy and simple human compassion for these "losers" as he called them.
Communists, socialist, fascist. Each will kill to eliminate competition in order to keep power.
http://www.google.com/search?q=black+book+of+communism
sheapenny sounds like Dwight with a twist, if you know what I mean…
Progressive Brown Shirts?! Are you sure you do not have some kind of cognitive disability? Go see a doctor.
The only “brown shirts” in the 1930’s were members of the German-American Bund and the American Nazi Party. While Germany’s Nazi party used the socialist label, there is no historical dispute that they were in fact fascists of a slightly different mold than Mousilini’s Italian fascists. Norman Thomas, who was a socialist, strongly opposed the American Nazi Party. Playing the “Hitler card” while calling Democrats “socialists” at the same time is just ignorant.
The closest thing we have to fascism in America today is movement conservatism in the Republican Party.
I imagine sheapenny protesting against “Comrade Roosevelt” in 1941.
I guess he must also burn his social(ist) security check each month, refuse any medicare benefits (socialized medicine), & only keeps his money in non-FDIC insured banks (nationalization).
Yes Shea, Obama has been President for a little over a month. Surely he is to blame. I had no idea it was that simple. Economists make it sound so much more complicated.
And nevermind the eight years of deregulation under president Bush and his congress of cronies. I’m sure that had nothing to do with it. Or, for that matter, the forty years of republican rule here in AZ.
One thing that I recall during the 1940’s was a Presidential Candidate named Norman Thomas:
http://www.burtonblog.com/view.cfm?post=3031
http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/us
The Socialist stated in a 1944 speech he does not have to campaign any longer for Socialism in The United States because the 1944 Democratic Party platform adopted his views!
I don’t think Bush is President; Obama is President and the House and Senate have been run by Nancy and Harry for over two years and I think they are Democrats or should I say Progressive Brown Shirsts that I recall were pushing the same agenda in my childhood in the 1930’s in rallies in New York City , and were called the Hitler Youth!
The AZ House Dems should set up and live in a tent city on the House lawn to show solidarity with fellow Arizonans hurt badly by the AZ House Repubs’ slash and burn cuts. Have info booths. Invite non profits to set up shop. It’ll be a media sensation. This is an idea that’s being circulated around under the radar, but it sounds really good to me. Now, who wants to be the first brave AZ Dem Legislator to get it started?
Please read my story at http://whitetankscemetery.blogspot.com
I think that we need to bring awareness to this in Arizona. It is unjust! Please help me spread the word!
My Mother Does Not Belong in White Tanks Cemetery
When I found out that my mother was buried at White Tanks Cemetery in Maricopa County, I looked it up on the internet to find out more details. The things that I read were devastating for me. More than one article that I found talked about how depressing and dismal it was. It was described as a simple piece of desert land that is called a cemetery, but looks more like a parking lot. The grave markers can be mistaken for survey markers. In one terrible article is says that the corpses laid to rest there consist of mostly “tramps” and “junkies”. I didn’t want to believe it. I didn’t want to believe that my mother was placed to rest in such a depressing place with such a terrible reputation.
So I asked my friend Jeff Knapp from Tempe, Arizona, to take a trip down to my mother’s burial site and photograph the trip for me. I needed to see for myself exactly what it looked like. He agreed and filling in for me, went to visit my mother’s site, with roses to lie on her burial plot.
When he got there, he called me and said, “Miranda, I am standing next your mother’s plot, is there anything you would like to say to her?” I choked up and replied, “I love you Mom. I miss you like crazy. I have not given up on you and I promise that I will bring you home whatever it takes!”
These are the photos of the trip to my mother’s resting place that I received today. I want to share them with you!
Welcome to White Tanks Cemetery.
A piece of dirt way out in the middle of nowhere.
This is where they stick people in the ground and call it a cemetery. It is for the “unknown” and the “unclaimed.”
I really feel that burying my mother in my backyard would have given her life of hardships more honor than this!
If the Public Fiduciary’s Office in Phoenix, Arizona, had just put a little more effort in to finding next of kin, my mother would not be in this dreaded awful place.
I would have done anything to come up with the money to give my mother the proper burial that she deserved.
When I spoke to the Public Fiduciary, I asked him if nothing else, if I could just buy a simple flat granite marker for my mother’s grave with her name and the word MOTHER scripted on it. His reply was, “No, you cannot. You can’t change the NATURE of the cemetery.”
This photo proves that this statement is correct. Read the blue sign in the middle, it reads “NO PRIVATE MARKERS.”
I don’t understand it. They want this place to be depressing and dishonorable? They want to keep it so that it is undesirable to visit? It is supposed to look life a piece of land with survey markers? Unbelievable!
How many other people, like my mother, are buried in this cemetery for the “unclaimed” with “no next of kin” that actually have family who have been looking for them? I spent 12 years searching for her, trying to get public officials to help me in getting her the mental help that she needed. Only to find out that she died and was buried exactly as everyone had treated her, as a throw away!
If I want to pay $500 round trip ticket to fly from Ohio to Arizona, to visit my mother’s burial place, this cozy $45 bench is where I can sit and stare at the post in the ground that represents my mother (her marker is in the bottom left corner with roses lying next to it).
Jeff said a prayer for me and my mother, laid the roses next to my mother’s marker and that was it!
Jeff is the only visitor that she has had and as far as I am concerned, the only one that she will ever have at that place! This is not acceptable to me and I am not going to pay to fly down and visit this terrible dreadful place where my mother does not belong.
I will fight in my mother’s honor to bring her home, no matter what it takes! This brass marker with her name and date of death does not say that she was a 51 year old mother of two daughters. It does not say that she is the sister of six siblings. It does not say that she was loved by anyone. It is just a piece of brass that says there was a body that was labeled with this name, placed in this spot in the ground on this date!
I can’t help but wonder how many other people have been buried in this cemetery, that like my mom, had family somewhere that were searching for them.
Someone has to stand up for these people… They are not disposable throw-aways! They were human beings that had stories to share, just as anyone else. The stand will start today, with me, in my mother’s honor! I will make it my personal goal to bring some sort of justice to these deceased and their final resting arrangements! Please help me bring my mother home…
If you would like to assist me in this matter, please e-mail me at misswriter415@aol.com
If you are trying to advocate for the homeless, those with substance abuse issues or the mentally ill, I would love to hear your feedback!