From today’s Citizen’s Voice (Key West Citizen):
“If the homeless community could police themselves in respect to the environment by cleaning up after themselves, and respecting other people’s rights, it would go a long way toward their being accepted inn this society.” Yep, it would. Same applies to everyone else.
For example, take a walk down Duval Street at 6 a.m. any morning, and look at all the litter dropped by locals and tourists who are not homeless people.
For example, stroll around and keep an eye out for mainstream people smoking cigarettes. Watch what they do with the butts. Watch them throw them on the ground and into planters and other people’s shrubbery.
For example, Truman Annex Property Owners Association (TAMPOA), which has the gall to try to put a guard gate and steel fence across a public road that has been the only public access to Tuman Annex, the Outer Mole, Ft. Zachary Taylor State Park and, I think, part of the Navy housing for a very long time. Longer than TAMPOA has been around.
For example, the other day in Sippin’ Internet Café featured three 25-or-so very loud, obnoxious, male tourists, who acted as if they were the only three people in the place. I put up with it until one of them shot a bird at an old fellow who is a regular at Sippin’ and is one of Key West’s living treasures. I told the punk that he had just shot a bird for no reason at a Key West icon, and where did he get his attitude? His friends started making ready to leave, with him in tow. A parting shot he could not resist, with an invitation to settle it outside on the sidewalk. I said I did not settle things that way. I was about to dial 911. After they were gone, I told the young woman keeping the store that I hoped she did not mind. She said she was glad they were gone.
For example, come to a Higgs Beach Committee meeting and listen to one fellow who keeps slamming homeless people, including talking about passing a law that bans them from Monroe County. A fellow who keeps trying to work an angle of making money off being on the Committee. Making money for himself. A fellow who wants to set up a Higgs Beach website, with a “Citizen’s Voice” type blog for people to write in and blast homeless people. A fellow I was told at the end of the last Committee meeting has gotten into all sorts of business deals that went busted. A fellow who seems to irritate the living shit out of everyone else at the Committee meetings. I wonder if this fellow is the same person who wrote into Citizen’s Voice today.
When I ran for mayor in 2007, I proposed that the City of Key West offer homeless people, who want to work, jobs as litter cops dressed like pirates. Station them on and off Duval Street. At the beaches and marinas. I said it would clean up Key West, improve its image, and be good for tourism. I was interviewed by several out-of-state radio stations, one nationally syndicated based in New York City. But the local newspapers and radio stations didn’t touch it. Nor did the voters. I received 64 votes.
County Commissioner Heather Carruthers, City Commissioner Teri Johnston, Florida Keys Outreach Coalition Director Father Stephen Braddock and I, and perhaps others, are going to a Meet & Greet with homeless people at noon day after tomorrow (Monday), at the picnic huts where most of them who use Higgs Beach hang out. We will listen and talk about our concerns. We will tell them about a sheirff deputy being put on station there, to help smooth things out for them and the rest of the public.
The fellow described above said we shouldn’t go to the Meet & Greet without donning surgical gloves and carrying large garbage bags. I would not touch him without wearing surgical gloves, and he would be the first item I would put in his large garbage bag, which I then would deliver to the next garbage truck headed for a mainland landfill.
One Human Family when it’s convenient just doesn’t get it folks. Either it’s One Human Family, or it isn’t.
Sloan Bashinsky, mayor candidate, 28 February 2009, Key West