The homeless: "Beyond Civilization"-type shit

Visions of the Rewilding Renaissance Grief & Praise
#1

So I’ve been thinking a lot about the homeless lately, for two reasons:

  1. There’s this homeless guy that’s been panhandling on my street, and I see him at least twice a day now and he makes me feel really guilty for not giving him money everyday. (He doesn’t actively make me feel guilty, he just asks, “Spare change, ma’am?” and I say no and then I walk away feeling guity because I do have spare change, but… oh hell, no “but.” There’s no excuse. I’m just a bitch.)

  2. There’s still a change that Rudy Giuliani might be our next president. (Oh, sweet merciful God…) I’m not just dreading this possibility because our names are spelled the same confusing way (Giuliani, Giulianna) and I would therefore spend the next 4-to-8 years of my life referencing HIM to explain to people how to properly spell my name. It’s also that he’s a fascist lunatic who probably thinks the Patriot Act preserves too many freedoms, who would blanket the entire continental United States in DDT to kill off all the mosquitos, and would very likely fill Guantanamo Bay with the homeless.

Anyone thinking of trying to teach the homeless some basic primitive skills (and general skills for living in city parks or on the fringes of cities)? Debris shelters would come in handy, since they’re certainly warmer than a cardboard box and look like random piles of leaves. Steve Brill teaches tons of people what plants are edible and medicinal in Central Park; why not have a similar, free class for people who really need the nutrition? I was also thinking: we need water more than we need food. A person can go several days without food, but needs water every single day. So how about mapping out the water fountains around a given city park, so the homeless would know exactly where to get free water? (Granted, they may know this already, but not if they just lost their homes.)

This would make it so much easier and also give them more energy and confidence, since I imagine having to live grudging-hand-to-mouth everyday probably makes a person feel like total crap. I remember reading a little snippet of something about Mythmedia doing a primitive skills summer camp for homeless teens, but I couldn’t find any other information on it. Did it ever happen? Has it been repeated? Because it’s an amazingly awesome idea.

#2

do you mind if i get a little cranky? i hope not. here goes.

See, everybody loves the idea of teaching homeless people survival skills, until you try to make it work, and then it doesn’t go anywhere. first of all, you can’t make any money off of it (your clientele have no money). second, no one wants to grant you money to do it, because that would just encourage them, eh? third, the homeless community (in Portland) has its own social world and structure going on. see Dignity Village. so i don’t know. i’ve never figured out how to break in to the scene, partially because i couldn’t see an easy way to do it. :slight_smile:

perhaps we need some kind of money-disavowing street youth messiah out there, preaching the primitivist way. hell. “perhaps”? if we looked we’d probably already find them. :slight_smile:

however, i still want to do it. portland seems to draw (especially in the summer) a huge street punk/youth migration. someday we’ll figure out how to do it. street kids do tend to burn out young.

babble babble.

#3

I thought about it a lot when I lived in NYC. There were a few regular places in Morningside Park by my first apartment where homeless folks would sleep. I thought about trying to explain to them about the burdock growing right next to them, but then I thought about all the complications involved in that: you need the first year plant’s roots, not the second year; it will upset your stomach raw; but if you cook it, you should slice it diagonally to make the fibers easier to chew through. I think I stopped thinking about it after the “but if you cook it part” actually and I realized that it’s probably pretty easy to forage civ food in NYC with all the edible stuff that gets thrown away. I did show some kids where to find mulberries once, but they weren’t homeless.

I think in NYC, you would also run into trouble with the Man for trying to forage. I know Steve Brill gets away with it, but I think he has a unique relationship with the parks department–having been arrested by them and then having worked for them after the arrest. I have been threatened by a parks official before for eating cattails, and I didn’t look the least bit homeless (meaning, I only had one strike against me, not two). I have also had other experience with the law in NYC where I was doing something I knew full well to be legal (floating my kayak down the Bronx river) but that didn’t stop the police from harassing me about it.

All that to say that, in NYC, at least, any kind of campaign to help the homeless via foraging knowledge would meet with some stupid civ mentalities. People don’t like the homeless and don’t want to do anything to encourage them to keep being homeless/jobless/shiftless. People also don’t get foraging, they see it as destruction instead of interaction–even though they would all fully sanction the tax-funded destruction of lawn-mowing and leaf mold removal (central park has a lot of erosion problems because of leaf mold removal.)

But I thought about the kind of ideas you’re bringing up, Giuli, enough to start writing a comic book script about a guy who lives in Morningside park and helps out the homeless folks he befriends while fighting the civ.

#4

No, please, crank away. I don’t want to jump into something stupid feet-first (or, to use a fox-walking metaphor, heel-first) because no one told me it was a dumb idea.

I know for sure it would never make any money, and I know for sure that it would be difficult, and I’m reasonably certain that it would result in one or more arrests. But that doesn’t make it not worth doing. :slight_smile:

perhaps we need some kind of money-disavowing street youth messiah out there, preaching the primitivist way. hell. "perhaps"? if we looked we'd probably already find them. :)
That sounds like an awesome idea for a movie. The Dignity Village thing is unbelievably cool, btw.
I think I stopped thinking about it after the "but if you cook it part" actually and I realized that it's probably pretty easy to forage civ food in NYC with all the edible stuff that gets thrown away.
That, and many edible plants don't need to be cooked like burdock does.
#5

[quote=“The Prissiest Primitivist, post:4, topic:280”][quote]
perhaps we need some kind of money-disavowing street youth messiah out there, preaching the primitivist way. hell. “perhaps”? if we looked we’d probably already find them. :slight_smile:
[/quote]
That sounds like an awesome idea for a movie. The Dignity Village thing is unbelievably cool, btw.[/quote]

Haha. Scout would probably jump in at this point and say, “yes, i know, i’ve already got the feature-length script ready! I just need the financial backing!”

#6

you should read evasion. crimethinc published it in book form a few years back. there is also a zine format in circulation.

i often offer up information about resources (dumpsters, plants, etc.) to people on the streets and people who ask me for change. i have probably had more people who were really not interested than people who were down. even just straight up offering people food that i have dumpstered…

#7

All this talk made me want to get off my ass (or rather on my ass) and write my story ideas out. You can read the introduction on my blog here and check out the first installment of The Morningsider here.

#8

I’ve been a homeless person. Maybe ya’ll should consider the idea that they have some things to teach you.

#9

Ha. Hell yeah.

#10

i lived off and on the streets for years. it’s shocking what the homeless DON’T know, and how many of them thought I was a maniac for eating dandelion greens, they would have rather dug through a dumpster for fast food trash. There were a small number of us who had a sense of the wild, but for the most part, many of the street people were very caught up in their own drama and victimization. That’s harsh I guess, but it where I come from.

I think it’s partly where I was, in the middle of the damn bible belt, where victimization is everything.

I dunno if homeless people would want classes though, especially by an outsider. A movement towards rewilding by an insider is a far better idea.

I have a friend who does free herbal clinics in the ghetto, that works very well, and you get to teach a bit about using local weeds, but again, the people have to know and trust you.

#11

I was thinking more about the"invisible skills" that people talk baout here. You get to some of the big urban parks or big squats and you will see people looking after each other. People who have practically nothing them selves, talking about the other people as being their family.

On the dumpster note. I’ve been part of small groups (three or four people) who fed 50 or more people each night with dumpster food. Not the fast food stuff. Lots of salads and veggies, big pots of stew. We looked for the produce and went to the produce warehouses to get their stuff. We were basically homeless ourselves just a little higher up the scale. I lived in a 55 buick and an old Rainbow named Philipe had a bus converted to a kitchen. We gave it all away for free.
We even got out of date milk and made yogurt out of it.

#12

I don’t doubt if for a second, I just figure the homeless people in your area are more enlightened than the ones I was around.

It’s true that we took care of each other some, but there also lots of the survival of the fittest and lots of smokes and booze as a higher priority than good food, health or anything else. mabe it’s cuz most of us were just kids, teenagers squatting in old houses and city parks, not much understanding of any kind of family there.

That said, it was great fun to take my little tribe of wandering wild women whores (now there’s a parade you don’t see very often) down to the creek and eat mulberries and watercress. We were good to each other, but we were few.

and I survived those years only because of being able to sleep in trees, I don’t understand why more people don’t do that. The cops almost never think to shine their silly little lights up there, and it’s far safer than most squats.

I’d love to teach street kids about wild foods and medicines. Wish someone had taught me something like that back in the day, instead of figuring it out by trial and error.

#13

that is just like the white mans burden shit. know what? I am homeless. but waht does that mean? socio-econimic class? teach them primitive skills, that just pisses me off, i am teaching myself them and i’d love to share that but not as “charity” and you call yourself radical? how? as far as i can tell there are more people who are rewilding who you might call “homeless”. homeless streetkids are some of the only people i know who share and have community and dont judge you because of how much money you have. ARGHH

#14
dont judge you because of how much money you have
know what? I am homeless

hmmm… my response is already in your post! how convenient.

DON’T judge yourself based of how much money you have, and you’ll notice something. You stop judging others for how much money THEY have. When you don’t care, you really don’t care. You don’t just care about what’s fair and unfair, you simply leave caring behind you in the middle of the road. No gripping anger, no seething resentment, only possibilities to work with other people of common interest without such ‘concerns’(liabilities).

Yes I said it, your lower-class chip-on-the-shoulder is a liability for you to be able to work with people. You can’t hold people’s birth against them. Ass.

#15

There are 2 types of homeless… those that attempt to remain in civ and those that abandon it… Currently the largest group abandoning civ happens to be Veterans due to their military training allowing them to survive.

#16

[quote=“Willem, post:2, topic:280”]do you mind if i get a little cranky? i hope not. here goes.

See, everybody loves the idea of teaching homeless people survival skills, until you try to make it work, and then it doesn’t go anywhere. first of all, you can’t make any money off of it (your clientele have no money). second, no one wants to grant you money to do it, because that would just encourage them, eh? third, the homeless community (in Portland) has its own social world and structure going on. see Dignity Village. so i don’t know. i’ve never figured out how to break in to the scene, partially because i couldn’t see an easy way to do it. :slight_smile:

perhaps we need some kind of money-disavowing street youth messiah out there, preaching the primitivist way. hell. “perhaps”? if we looked we’d probably already find them. :slight_smile:

however, i still want to do it. portland seems to draw (especially in the summer) a huge street punk/youth migration. someday we’ll figure out how to do it. street kids do tend to burn out young.

babble babble.[/quote]

tell me ure experience… willem
no money thats fraud, a homeless give u some money. u learn how he gets it.

every place is differenet, portland maybe not so freindly fucking behave towards homeless.

#17

[quote=“BearMedicineWoman, post:10, topic:280”]i lived off and on the streets for years. it’s shocking what the homeless DON’T know, and how many of them thought I was a maniac for eating dandelion greens, they would have rather dug through a dumpster for fast food trash. There were a small number of us who had a sense of the wild, but for the most part, many of the street people were very caught up in their own drama and victimization. That’s harsh I guess, but it where I come from.

I think it’s partly where I was, in the middle of the damn bible belt, where victimization is everything.

I dunno if homeless people would want classes though, especially by an outsider. A movement towards rewilding by an insider is a far better idea.

I have a friend who does free herbal clinics in the ghetto, that works very well, and you get to teach a bit about using local weeds, but again, the people have to know and trust you.[/quote]

herbal clinic in the ghetto. what is he doing is he himeless