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I continue to think that there is no reason to conflate the Cooper incident with murder.
By saying that nobody has harassed me at Twitter, I mean that nobody has ever written disrespectful or threatening replies or direct messages. Regular people haven't harassed me; I won't take the time here for another discussion of hacking.
DA Rollins' account isn't the only Twitter where I have replied over the past several weeks. If I had begun to receive harassing or threatening Tweets or DM's, which I didn't, they could have been from people who disliked what I had to say in other contexts.
I had all of my followers unfollow me as a precaution. I didn't have a lot of them, nor had I sought to have a large following or any followers. I started that Twitter, and the one before it, which was suspended and never reactivated, after years of emails, phone calls, in-person conversations, use of the Pine Street Inn's grievance process, and other attempts at advocacy had failed to prompt systemic change. I don't think that the Pine Street Inn had Twitter suspend my first Twitter about homelessness; I think that another agency that is supposed to help homeless people did.
The Pine Street Inn accurately claims that it is the best provider of homeless services in the Boston area; it's worse everywhere else, in terms of human rights violations and systemic dysfunction. You'd never know, from walking in the door of the Pine Street Inn women's shelter, what living there is really like; the pink everywhere creates the impression of walking into a pastel birthday cake. The decor is less crucial than other modernization which ought to have kept pace and hasn't.
A very high percentage of homeless people are physically disabled. Before being homeless, I had never personally known anyone who was going through MS or other degenerative illnesses; now I have known several.
The Pine Street Inn women's shelter has more guests (homeless people are called guests, to which I don't object) with walkers, wheelchairs and canes than I have ever encountered in one population in my entire life.
There ought to be advocacy, case workers, housing specialists and other services at all homeless shelters that are specifically for the physically disabled.
The last I knew, the homeless guests at the Pine Street Inn women's shelter were still being refused access to that shelter's washers and driers, despite there being no handicapped-accessible laundromat within miles. I have previously documented the Pine Street Inn's treatment of disabled, homeless people at Twitter; I won't describe all of the neglect, abuse, gaslighting and retaliation at this page.
There was a situation a few years ago which prompted me to start seriously considering that systemic change was necessary. What it did provided incredible evidence of what generations of living in a country which is based on democratic principles does. Community organization and advocacy spontaneously and immediately occurred, in response to an inhumane, degrading and dangerous decision by the administration. People in wheelchairs, people with addiction issues, younger people, elderly people, people with trauma history, transgender people; race was irrelevant. Whether or not anyone was previously friends with anyone else wasn't a factor, either. We knew that we had rights.
Although not everyone got involved, enough people did for every stereotype about homeless people to be proven false. Homeless people are not imbeciles; they are people who have problems.
Unfortunately, if that administrative decision hadn't also turned out to be unpopular among the staff, who were inconvenienced by it, and if other, more respected advocacy hadn't gotten temporarily involved, it might not have been reversed.
Social services frequently talk about being overwhelmed. I won't dispute that they are; dysfunctional systems are always overwhelmed.
As far as money is concerned; before I was housed, I witnessed the renovation of an area that had been donated, years ago, as part of a program for homeless guests of the women's shelter. It is now an employee lounge, with a locked door, inaccessible to homeless people without permission. I remember when the renovation started, walking by and seeing the plaque which had been taken off the wall and set aside, probably before being discarded. It had the year that the gift was implemented, the name of the donors, and the inscription of their hope for the people whom they were trying to help.
