http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/news/4709">full story

Some of our people would benefit from such a program.

of course you'd actually have to go there to see.

In Venezuela, Chavez is making an effort to do something about it.

As opposed to the U.S. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x470472">where homelessness is increasingly criminalized

a hand because they were getting their funds cut and everything keeps going up. In other words, we're on our own.

Look at all the guys that came out to my show, including two of our supes -- one of whom had a wife in labor at the time and the other one, Tom Ammiano, who is now a state legislator. Doug, Will, Brian and Mickey are headliners as were the musicians. Two of my friends that own cafes threw down food for the performers, Kinko's gave us the programs and some posters. The Hall gave us a bit of a deal with a full crew.

http://www.musichallsf.com/artist_pages/homeless_coalition_100504.html

These were some good people but it's pretty hard to do it this way.

http://socialistworld.net/eng/2006/01/23venezuela.html

Housing is a huge issue in Caracas. Millions live in homes that have been precariously built on the hillside looking down on the city centre. They have, in some cases, been literally thrown together with whatever material happened to be at hand. Many lack even basic amenities, such as water sewage and electricity.

In recent weeks, several homeless families, whose homes have become uninhabitable due to heavy rain and the threat of mudslides, have organised to "invade" and occupy up to 32 empty buildings in the capital. They are demanding that the authorities provide them with decent, permanent accommodation.

The "invasions" highlight the contradictory nature of the revolutionary process in Venezuela. On the one hand, working class and poor people are organising and attempting to take control over their lives. But, on the other hand, they are blocked by sections within the government and the state apparatus.

One of the "invaders" explained: "This is the first time I’ve done anything like this – but we have no choice. We’ve been to the authorities, we’ve tried to speak to them but nothing has happened."

We spoke to Elvis Rivas, who is on the Committee of Sin Techo – a grassroots organisation that helps the homeless. "The revolution took me out of the rancho (slum)", Elvis told us: "I was in to drugs and crime – I had no opportunities. But the missions (welfare organisations set up by the Chavez government) gave me hope and now there is something to fight for. I want a better world, a socialist world where everyone has a job, a home and access to health and education."

Just then Norma walked in. "I’m involved in a cooperative which delivers gas to the homes of the poor", she explained. "We help those who are most in need." We were then invited to attend a meeting of representatives of the cooperatives involved in "Mission Gasifera".

It is very positive that people like Elvis and Norma are becoming organised and helping their communities. But, at the same time, there are those who, through bureaucracy and inefficiency or conscious sabotage are holding back the movement. "We are not going to accept invasions of any kind", declared Raul Yepez, Director of Police Coordination for the ministry of Home Affairs and Justice. He warned that "anyone who violates private property will be evicted, arrested and taken to court." Some members of the Metropolitan Police, suspected of helping the ‘invaders’, are under investigation and could face disciplinary action. Caracas Mayor Juan Barreto says that he has a list of buildings which will be "legally" expropriated to house the homeless but the "illegal" occupations must stop.

But the socialism that Elvis envisages – where the needs of the majority are met, including the right to a decent home - will only be possible through the self-organisation of the working class and poor, expropriating not just empty buildings but the main industries, bank and financial institutes and the large landholdings and democratically controlling and planning the economy and society, at every level.

never know anything about homeless people, don't really think of them as people when they hear about them.

You may have seen similar stories in your city with high school kids doing projects which focus on spending one or two nights in the city, living in boxes, living as if they were homeless. Then the tv cameras rush in to interview them, and you can tell they STILL don't get it.

They always know they will be returning to their nice, warm, comfortable houses where they are insulated from the world with poor people in it. Actual harsh reality never really filters through to them.

Even these clueless high schoolers undoubtedly have a sharper grasp of literal helplessness through natural, inborn empathy, identification with, for others than message board trolls, born deficient, who take the time to butt into conversations, offering opinions, "observations," on progressive government, pretending to have a fix on the human condition.

How can any society, or any political group feel there are some people it's fine to see suffering, and never move to help? They dismiss leftist leaders as "buying votes" for working to alleviate the suffering of the masses who otherwise are born, live and die without hope.

s

entitled to a free education through college, and the poor getting aid for items like shoes and lunches. Every Venezuelan adult who wants to return to school--to finish schooling, or to be retrained--getting subsidies for books, for food and other supports, to make that possible. Illiteracy wiped out. Pensions for the elderly, including elderly housewives, whose work is officially acknowledged and honored. Free classical music education for any child interested. Venezuelan street urchins playing Beethoven and Mozart in concert halls around the globe (--and one of them just appointed lead conductor for the Los Angeles Philharmonic!). Well-equipped baseball fields in poor areas never before served by government. Farm land and government training, technical assistance, grants and loans available to the agriculturally-inclined, as long as they produce food. Loans and grants to small business and worker co-ops. Innovative programs, such as the elderly women in a neighborhood employed to cook hot lunches, and create a family atmosphere, for local work crews--a locally generated idea. Community control of federal funds. Support for local arts. Promotion of traditional (as opposed to canned, imported, corporate) music. Maximum citizen participation in government and politics. High levels of voter participation. One of the highest approval ratings in the western hemisphere, as to peoples' satisfaction with the direction of their country, their democracy and their government. Average 60% approval rating for Chavez.

I think you have to look to the prior decade--to the rightwing government that preceded Chavez--for a "decade of misery and abandonment." From open firing on peaceful protestors, killing dozens of people, to the criminal neglect and mismanagement of Venezuela's economy--including a giveaway of Venezuela's oil to multi-national corporations, the creation of an urban elite dependent on imports, the complete destruction of food self-sufficiency, and the gross neglect of the vast poor majority of Venezuelans, you could not have a better example of "misery and abandonment."

But you seem to want magic. You want the bogeyman "dictator," whom you have helped to create, to wave his wand and magically transform decades of the grossest looting and oppression into a well-educated, well-shod, well-housed, well-fed, thriving middle class. You seem to want the very thing that you agitate against--transformation by fiat. It doesn't work that way. There are many people involved, not just Chavez. Many people in his government. Many people in the country. He's just the president. Was FDR responsible for the "decade of misery and abandonment" brought on by the rich in the Great Depression, because somebody didn't have a house yet, in his second term?

Your perspective amazes me. How would you relieve the "misery and abandonment" of the poor? Got any ideas? Let's hear them.

Columbia, Mexico, and the USA are kicking them out.

(But beware of ZORRO! He'll slice you with a "Z" for misspelling Colombia.)

and turns it into an anti-golf story!

Chávez Loyalists Push to Close Golf Courses
By SIMON ROMERO
Published: August 11, 2009

ARACAS, Venezuela — President Hugo Chávez’s political movement has found a new target: golf.

President Hugo Chávez says some golf courses could be better used for the poor.

After a brief tirade against the sport by the president on national television last month, pro-Chávez officials have moved in recent weeks to shut down two of the country’s best-known golf courses, in Maracay, a city of military garrisons near here, and in the coastal city of Caraballeda.

“Let’s leave this clear,” Mr. Chávez said during a live broadcast of his Sunday television program. “Golf is a bourgeois sport,” he said, repeating the word “bourgeois” as if he were swallowing castor oil. Then he went on, mocking the use of golf carts as a practice illustrating the sport’s laziness.



ttp://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/12/world/americas/12venez.html?hpw

Trying to emotionally color any news article has NEVER been allowed by reputable news organizations. But then, how long HAS it been since our corporate media acted honorably, anyway?

This is one abominably written article, from a man who really knows how to smell up the place.