the REFUGE

oday, the State of Florida has before its legislative branch of government two adjoining bills that will provide the state’s courts and judges with the ability to assess risk factors for a potential parental child abduction. Collectively, this is known as the CHILD ABDUCTION PREVENTION ACT.

Tragically, there are over 370,000 child abductions in the United States alone each year. The majority of these are parental child abductions. Thousands of children are stolen across international borders each year. Too many of them do not come home. They can’t. They are gone forever.

Please show your sign of support for Senator Eleanor Sobel’s bill now before committee (SB1862), and Representative Rouson’s adjoining House of Representative Bill (HR787).

We urge all parents and children who have experienced abduction to share your stories (they will be submitted to the various Senate and House committees) at www.floridachildabductionpreventionact.info

PLEASE TAKE A LOOK AT THIS ARTICLE THAT SPEAKS TO A VERY FASCIST ANTI-HUMAN RIGHTS RULING BY A FAR RIGHT FEDERAL ACTIVIST JUDGE. THE JUDGE IN QUESTION, IS STEVEN MERRYDAY, WHO IS CONSIDERED ONE OF THE MOST CONSERVATIVE ACTIVIST JUDGES IN THE UNITED STATES. ONE THINKS OF JUDGES WHO RULED IN FAVOR OF THE GOVERNMENT IN GERMANY IN THE 1930’s. IS THIS JUDGE SUPPORTING A POGRAM OF THE CITY AGAINST THE POOR? WE AT THE REFUGE(WWW.REFUGESTPETE.ORG) AND THE POOR PEOPLE’S ECONOMIC HUMAN RIGHTS CAMPAIGN WILL NOT STAND BY IDLE. WE WILL NOT ALLOW THE POLICE AND THE CITY GOVERNMENT TO HAVE FREE REIGN TO HARASS AND MISTREAT THE HOMELESS COMMUNITY. HOMELESSNESS IS NOT A CRIME!!!!! FOR MORE INFO. CALL 727 278 1547

Federal Judge dismisses much of claims in homeless lawsuit

By Michael Van Sickler, Times Staff Writer

Published Thursday, March 11, 2010
ST. PETERSBURG — Federal Judge Steven Merryday tossed out nine allegations in a federal lawsuit that accuses St. Petersburg of violating the rights of homeless people by enforcing a series of punitive ordinances, scoring what appears to be a major victory for the city.
Merryday also denied class action status for the lawsuit, meaning the scope of those making the allegations is limited to Anthony Catron, Michael Lile, Jo Anne Reynolds, Raymond Young and William Shumate, a popular homeless leader in downtown St. Petersburg known for repairing bicycles.
Essentially, Merryday upheld the city’s right to arrest people for sleeping during the day in downtown public rights of way and storing personal property on public land. The city also has the right to ban people from city property if they had committed crimes there before.
Assistant City Attorney Joseph Patner called the rulings significant, saying it showed the ordinances that were alleged to be unconstitutional were appropriate.
Merryday wrote in his ruling Wednesday that individuals don’t have a constitutional right to store personal belongings on public land. The city’s ordinance, he wrote, gives people 36 hours to remove items before confiscation and allows them a month to reclaim seized property.
“The risk is exceedingly low that an individual will be unjustly deprived of personal belongings,” Merryday wrote.
Banning those previously arrested from public buildings and parks was legal, Merryday wrote, because government has a right to control the use of public land “for its own lawful nondiscriminatory purpose.”
Three groups represent the five homeless plaintiffs: the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty, out of Washington, D.C., and the Southern Legal Counsel and Florida Institutional Legal Services out of Gainesville.
Catron was cited in 2006 and 2007 for trespassing and is banned from city parks. Young got a warning for having too much property, which included two suitcases, bags, clothes, groceries and other belongings. He was told the city’s limit was two bags, a backpack and one blanket. Reynolds was removed from public property because she had too many belongings. Shumate had his property confiscated three times. Lile was arrested for public urination, and served five days in jail in 2008.
“We’re obviously disappointed with the court’s decision,” said Catherine Bendor, an attorney with the National Law Center. “We’d prefer that the city devote its resources to alternatives to criminalizing homelessness. We’re considering our options at this point with respect to this litigation.”
Last month, Kirsten Clanton, an attorney with Southern Legal Counsel, told the Times that St. Petersburg’s ordinances were exceptionally onerous.
“They make it difficult for people to move out of homelessness by putting them in jail for just trying to live,” she said. “It costs more to put them in jail then it does to actually address the problem.”
Two allegations remain: that police have no right to ask homeless people for identification and that it’s cruel and unusual punishment to arrest people for public urination when restrooms aren’t available. Patner said the city will file a motion asking for those to be dismissed as well.
More litigation may be ahead, according to city attorney John Wolfe. He told the City Council on Thursday that the same legal groups are expected to challenge the panhandling ordinance.
Bendor said her office wasn’t pursuing a legal challenge.
Wolfe has told city officials not to talk publicly about the suit or even discuss the general issue of the homeless.
“My concern is that something they say may be misconstrued” and affect the lawsuit, he said.
As a result, the city is in something of a holding pattern in dealing with a problem that most say is growing worse by the day. Council members can only discuss it privately, as they did Feb. 11 in a closed attorney-client meeting.
Mayor Bill Foster is limited in explaining how he will tackle the issue, which he said would be a priority in his administration. In December, he said he’d consider building permanent bathrooms at the Society of St. Vincent de Paul South Pinellas.
But now, with the litigation, those bathrooms are “off the table,” Foster said Thursday.
Michael Van Sickler can be reached at (727) 893-8037 or mvansickler@sptimes.com.

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REFUGE NEWSLETTER AND UPDATE FOR MARCH 2010

Dear Friends and Supporters,

I hope and pray that all is going well for you. So many good things are going on for the Refuge, as well as challenges. This includes several new outreaches. Just recently we opened the Refuge Thrift Store. It is a thrift stores designed to not only support the work of the Refuge financially, but it will also be a source support to needy individua ls and families in attempting to get resources for their residences. We will be offering a voucher program for poor families to get furniture and other household goods, including clothes. We are also looking for financial sponsors and donation of items for the store. The store is located at 510 49th st. North, in St. Petersburg. If you want directions or to make donations, please call 727 278 1547 . The store hours are Tuesday 11 – 5 pm, Thursday 11 – 5pm, Friday 11 – 5pm, Saturday 10 – 5pm, and Sunday 1 – 5pm.
In addition to this, we now have case management for clients that are homeless or in need of services. This includes helping clients navigate their way through the system. We also have another outreach happening with our bread outreaches. We are now distributing to needy families and to a local community center. We continue to do our regular outreaches, as well as planning for the Poor People’s Economic Human Rights Campaign’s Poor Peoples march this spring and summer (go to www.economichumanrights.org).
In closing, we are asking you to continue to pray and keep us in your thoughts. We are in a campaign attempting to raise support on a monthly basis. We are trying to encourage 50 people to give $25 a month in new giving or current giving. We are also in immediate need of $750 within the next days. We especially need that within the next 24 hours. If you can help, please call me at 727 278 1547. You can send gifts to The Refuge 1818 29th Ave. North, St. Petersburg, FLorida 33713. You can also go to pay pal at www.refugestpete.org and hit pay pal option. If you can help with immediate need of $450, please call me. Thanks, Bruce PLEASE HELP IF YOU CAN NEED IS URGENT

Empires Prefer the Baby and the Cross to the Adult Jesus

From Constantine to Bush, power has needed to stifle Jesus’ revolutionary message

by Giles Fraser

Every Sunday in church, many Christians recite the Nicene Creed. “Who for us and for our salvation came down from heaven; And was incarnate of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary and was made man; was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried; and the third day rose again according to the Scriptures.” It’s the official summary of the Christian faith but, astonishingly, it jumps straight from birth to death, apparently indifferent to what happened in between.

Nicene Christianity is the religion of Christmas and Easter, the celebration of a Jesus who is either too young or too much in agony to shock us with his revolutionary rhetoric. The adult Christ who calls his followers to renounce wealth, power and violence is passed over in favor of the gurgling baby and the screaming victim. As such, Nicene Christianity is easily conscripted into a religion of convenience, with believers worshipping a gagged and glorified savior who has nothing to say about how we use our money or whether or not we go to war.

Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire with the conversion of the emperor Constantine in 312, after which the church began to back pedal on the more radical demands of the adult Christ. The Nicene Creed was composed in 325 under the sponsorship of Constantine. It was Constantine who decided that December 25 was to be the date on which Christians were to celebrate the birth of Christ and it was Constantine
who ordered the building of the Church of the Nativity at Bethlehem. Christmas – a festival completely unknown to the early church – was invented by the Roman emperor. And from Constantine onwards, the radical Christ worshipped by the early church would be pushed to the margins of Christian history to be replaced with the infinitely more accommodating religion of the baby and the cross.

The adult Jesus described his mission as being to “preach good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and to set at liberty those who are oppressed”. He insisted that the social outcast be loved and cared for, and that the rich have less chance of getting into heaven than a camel has of getting through the eye of a needle. Jesus set out to destroy the imprisoning obligations of debt, speaking instead of forgiveness and the redistribution of wealth. He was accused of blasphemy for attacking the religious authorities as self-serving and hypocritical.

In contrast, the Nicene religion of the baby and the cross gives us Christianity without the politics. The Posh and Becks nativity scene is the perfect tableau into which to place this Nicene baby, for like the much-lauded celebrity, this Christ is there to be gazed upon and adored -but not to be heard or heeded. In a similar vein, modern evangelical
choruses offer wave upon wave of praise to the name of Jesus, but offer little political or economic content to trouble his adoring fans.

Yet despite the silence of the baby, it should be perfectly obvious to anyone who has actually read the Christmas stories that the gospel regards the incarnation as challenging the existing order. The pregnant Mary anticipates Christ’s birth with some fiery political theology: God “has brought down the powerful from their thrones and lifted up the lowly, he has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty”, she blazes. Born among farm laborers, yet worshipped by kings, Christ announces an astonishing reversal of political authority. The local imperial stooge, King Herod, is so threatened by rumors of his birth that he sends troops to Bethlehem to find the child and kill him. Herod recognized that to claim Jesus is lord and king is to say that Caesar isn’t. Christ’s birth is not a silent night – it’s the beginning of a revolution that threatened to undermine the whole basis of Roman power.

Little wonder, then, that influential US Christian commentator Jim Wallis created a storm earlier in the year when he penned an attack upon “Bush’s theology of empire”, helpfully illustrated with a picture of Bush made up to look like the emperor Constantine. “Once there was Rome, now there is a new Rome,” argued Wallis.

Constantine was converted to Christianity by a vision that came to him on the eve of the battle of Milvian Bridge: “He saw with his own eyes, up in the sky and resting over the sun, a cross-shaped trophy formed from light, and a text attached to it which said, ‘By this sign, conquer’ “. Soon the cross would morph from being a hated symbol of Roman brutality into the universally recognizable logo of the Holy Roman Empire. Within a century, St Augustine would develop the novel idea of just war, trimming the church’s originally pacifist message to the needs of the imperial war machine.

Like Constantine, George Bush has borrowed the language of Christianity to support and justify his military ambition. And just like that of Constantine, the Christianity of this new Rome offers another carefully edited version of the Bible. Once again, the religion that speaks of forgiving enemies and turning the other cheek is pressed into military service.

The story of Christmas, properly understood, asserts that God is not best imagined as an all-powerful despot but as a vulnerable and pathetic child. It’s a statement about the nature of divine power. But in the hands of conservative theologians, the Nicene religion of the baby and the cross is a way of distracting attention away from the teachings of Christ. It’s a form of religion that concentrates on things like belief in the virgin birth while ignoring the fact that the gospels are much more concerned about the treatment of the poor and the forgiveness of enemies.

Bush may have claimed that “Jesus Christ changed my life”, but Jesus doesn’t seem to have changed his politics. As the carol reminds us: “And man at war with man hears not the love song that they bring, O hush the noise ye men of strife and hear the angels sing.”

· The Rev Dr Giles Fraser is vicar of Putney and lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford – giles.fraser@btinternet.com

Dear Friends, Supporters, and the Curious,

Merry Christmas and Happy Holiday’s to Everyone. I trust that the business of season has not caused us to lose focus and what it is all about. Consumerism too often suffocates the true meaning of this time. A time when Peace on Earth and Good will toward all people can be lost.
As I reflect on this time of year, I often spend time with my children trying to instill in them a sense of what it is all about. Recently, we watched the film, ” A Christmas Carol” based on the novel by Dickens. During the film, which is one of my personal holiday favorites, there is a scene where representatives of a charity ask the main characted, Scrooge, if he would contribute to their charity and he states that he must be about his business of making money and tells them to go about their business. They then state that humanity is their business. As I reflect on that and what the Christian tradition teaches about Wealth and poverty and the meaning of this season, as well as what other faith traditions teach about Greed and power, I am reminded of the fact that all of us should be about the “business” of humanity. That we should be concerned those struggling to make it. That their struggle is our struggle.
It is with that in mind, that I must be candid with you about both myself and the ministry of the Refuge. We are really struggling to make it. We have recently lost 2 donors due to the Economy. Their combined gifts amount $725 per month. This has really hurt us! We have greatly appreciated their support. And, they have expressed sincere regret at having to stop supporting us. Both of them have supported us since the begining of the Refuge, more than 16 years ago. We have truly appreciated their support. And, of course, in addition to all that, we continue to more families and individuals coming to us that are in great need. Let me just share you some of the current needs.
First of all, thanks to everyone who responded to the call for help. We were able to serve about 200 homeless on Thanksgiving. We were also able to help 32 families with complete Thanksgiving dinners. In addition, we were able to help several pay their bills, including some medication for some. Thanks for you help.
However, many families we could not help. We hope and pray that support will come in for the Christmas Season. We help anyone regardless of Race, Creed, Ethnicity, religion or no belief, marital status, or sexual orientation. At this time we have some various serious need. We need to raise about $700 to help with 3 different electric bills for 3 families. THey are facing shut off in next few days. Additional, an older gentleman, who has physical limitations is going to lose his auto insurance and it is the only way he can get to appointments. We need $100 for that.
Lastly, the Refuge is in desperate need of nonperishable food items, gift cards, a lap top and a minivan, as well as blankets for out street outreach to the homeless and for our food pantry. If you can help in any way with any of this or support us in an ongoing way, please email me at bgcwright @aol.com or go to www.refugestpete.org for paypal. Checks can be sent to the Refuge 1818 29th Ave. North, St. Petersburg, Florida33713

Sincerely, Rev. Bruce Wright MA, DMin., CPAC, MAC

PS. From a personal note. These loses in financial support have taken their toll personally. My own ability to support my family is in jeopardy. I am having a hard time making bills and at this point I am what is called “couch homeless”. Please consider supporting us with special gifts and with regular monthly support. Any amount of support helps. No gift is too small. Thank you and God bless.