Housing emergency and manure
RReuse, the European network is located in Pamplona, 6-8.11.19
18 August 2019
Barriere, letter to the Mayor of Genoa
22 August 2019
Housing emergency, inequalities, poverty. There social crisis shows its most obvious signs - the manure on the streets - right on Golden coast, California, USA. A few miles from Hollywood and Silicon Valley. 'Make toilets not war!'Short food for thought.
California, the 'manure crisis'
It's not Bernie Sanders but the Wall Street Journal to report the social hardship experienced by the homeless in California. There are over 36.000 homeless between San Francisco and Los Angeles. It hadn't happened since 1929, at the time of the Great Depression. But the last century the phenomenon could at least be explained by a deadly economic crisis. The current disaster is instead a symptom of an unprecedented crisis of civilization, the decline of the empire.
Human droppings they mark the extent and severity of the phenomenon. Where the lack of tools to support the lowest incomes is compounded by the void of other social assistance measures. Poverty is often accompanied by conditions of physical and / or mental disadvantage, as well as family breakdowns that the public sector does not deal with. In the alleged homeland of democracy, everyone is guaranteed the freedom to die of starvation or cold and disease.
Snapcrap is the famous app developed by the young Sean Miller, in the hope of mitigating public hygiene problems. Inspired by that of the municipality of Frisco - SF311, 'San Francisco at your service'- this app allows users to photograph manure, dirt, potholes, etc. Snapcrap geolocate the images and notify the Municipality of the request for intervention. Assuming that the garbage collectors are equally effective and diligent.
Some apps, equipped with maps, they also locate the concentration of brown points in what has been defined 'the US capital of doo-doo'(excrement). The most famous state of the first military power on the planet is an open sewer. Like this Human Wasteland, perhaps the first of these apps, has been deactivated to invite civil society to deal with the real problem, precisely inequality.
Housing emergency and poverty, what to do?
Observe, share and act. And this the invitation of the San Francisco organization he had published Human Wasteland. An invitation that not surprisingly recalls the scheme proposed in the ABC of Égalité and it can be applied everywhere to drive social innovation. With a series of practical indications on how to support a network virtuous who is already active, if still in need. In San Francisco, for example:
Wash mae, an association that provides mobile showers and toilets to the homeless,
Project Homeless Connect, an NGO that offers all-round assistance (including for example dental care) to the needy,
St Anthony Foundation. Food (2.400 meals a day), clothing, medical care, addiction recovery assistance, access to technology, social assistance and vocational training for those living homeless and in poverty. With particular attention to families and child poverty.
'When in a company there is a homeless citizen, a landless peasant and a worker without work or without dignity in work, that is an unacceptable society. ' (Pope francesco)
A call to arms of the common good, which every human being has the responsibility to bring about. The shortest and most memorable American poem, pronounced by Mohammed Ali in 1975, comes to mind. 'Me,I Us'. The collective feeling (We) is part of the individual (Me), and viceversa. And a desire spontaneously arises, to be addressed to those who sit at the oval table in Washington today:
'Make toilets not wars'!
60% of the population of the planet earth, equal to 4,2 billion people, still does not have basic health services. This is what emerges from the relationship WHO- UNICEF 18.6.19. 'Progress on Household Drinking Water, Sanitary and Hygiene, 2010-2017. Focus on Inequalities'. Without hygiene, people die, especially as children, from apparently the most trivial causes.
Dario Dongo
Note
(1) Charles Kesler (2019). California's Biggest Cities Confront at 'Defecation Crisis'. Wall Street Journal, 16.8.19/11565994160/XNUMX https://www.wsj.com/articles/californias-biggest-cities-confront-a-defecation-crisis-XNUMX
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
