Cambridge commits to reviewing municipal contracts for ties to firms that allegedly violate human rights, endorses Democratic bill in Congress to restrict some aid to Jewish state
The City Council's moves reflect the charged emotions and complicated dynamics surrounding how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict plays out in local environments.
Rachel Carp 2 of 2 Patricia Nolan said not having an address or a bank account has kept her from receiving her check.
Rachel Carp
For people experiencing homelessness, accessing the third round of COVID-19 relief money requires resources often not available to them. Some North Texas organizations are helping people get online or get a mailing address so they can get paid.
Before the pandemic, Jesse Hawkins had a job and a home. Now he lives at Camp Rhonda, a homeless encampment in Dallas. When COVID first started I lost my job, businesses shut down, what money I did save up I spent to survive, couldn’t get a job because nobody was hiring so this is where I ended up, he said.
For Americans with a fixed address or a bank account, the third stimulus payment has arrived without them needing to lift a finger. It simply showed up in their checking account or mailbox.
But not for Dallas’ unsheltered homeless population, who lack fixed addresses and often don’t have a bank account. Some even lack basic identification. As much as they could use the money, many unsheltered people in Dallas simply fall through the bureaucratic cracks.
This is certainly the case for more than half a dozen residents of Camp Rhonda, the embattled homeless encampment in southern Dallas.
The city of Dallas has forced or pressured the camp to move twice: first in February after the city issued a code violation to the property owner where the camp originally was formed, and again in early March when dozens of cops pushed the camp out of Pioneer Park near City Hall.
[Images: arsa35/iStock, City of Cambridge]
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A decade ago, when BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded and started spewing millions of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, a Toronto lawyer had an epiphany while sitting in traffic on a 14-lane highway and listening to a public radio station talk about the disaster.
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“They had expert guests and a bunch of callers all saying in unison, ‘Shame on BP, ” says Rob Shirkey, the lawyer-turned-activist. “And I’m looking at thousands of vehicles in front of me and thousands of vehicles behind me. I kind of had this moment where if I thought if I could put on X-ray goggles and magically see through all the cars, all I would see is people sitting on tanks of fuel. But for us engaging in this activity, collectively, the incident would never have happened.”