Also, remember to take MBRU’s new TRANSIT SURVEY! We want to hear from riders all over Memphis about how you use MATA service in your neighborhoods. We’re working on translating versions into Spanish and for people with visual impairments. Take the online survey, HERE, and we’ll have paper surveys at all our town halls this year!

Finally, we love our friends who are bus drivers, mechanics, and information specialists with the Amalgamated Transit Union! We wanted to highlight this story from ATU’s Local 689 in Washington DC. This weekend, white nationalists will be rallying in DC, and transit drivers there have refused to use private rail cars to transport members of hate groups. “More than 80% of Local 689’s membership is people of color, the very people that the Ku Klux Klan and other white nationalist groups have killed, harassed and violated. The union has declared that it will not play a role in their special accommodation.” Read more about the union’s efforts here.

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As you may have noticed in our recent newsletters, there have been a considerable number of deaths over the past years of people living on, or formerly living on the streets., most of which H.O.P.E. members knew as friends until their passing. Our charge today, is that one death is far too many! We must let the powers that be know that we need more affordable housing for people experiencing homelessness. People are not expendable, and they certainly have rights. Housing is a human right! So, H.O.P.E. wants to keep stirring the pot until this topic boils to the top and is an everyday topic.

H.O.P.E. is planning a Day at City Hall, 125 N. Main on August 14 at 4:30 p.m. Parking will be FREE in the Mud Island lot at Poplar & Front Street. Although we are not on the agenda, we are going to pull comment cards for the ‘Public Comment’ section of the meeting. This may take some time, because we have to wait until the regular agenda is over. We want to pack the place with supporters and signs to demonstrate how unfair it is to allow people to die without a home and be forced to live in uninhabitable conditions. We want the council to feel our pain, and pledge to do something about these travisties. Please meet us on this day to stand up for those who can’t and be an advocate for people experiencing homelessness!

For more information about how you can help donate or support HOPE or those who do the work to combat homelessness,or would like to put on a HOPE shirt and volunteer,  contact Tamara Hendrix, (901)725.4990 or  tamara@midsouthpeace.org.

Feed the Movement!

H.O.P.E. would like to thank Marcos Pizza for providing pizzas for the H.O.P.E meetings on the 1st Wednesday of the month! H.O.P.E  is a supportive advocacy group for people with the experiences of homelessness. For many groups and organizations offering free food at meetings is a plus for their attendees, but for H.O.P.E. it is a necessity, due to the fact that most often the meal offered at H.O.P.E. meetings may be the only meal they will have that day. 

How can you help? You can help by donating prepared foods on Wednesdays to our meeting that afternoon. Don’t have time to cook or buy prepared foods and bring them to our meeting space? We also accept monetary donations towards this cause. Neither of those options seem feasible for you presently? We are also looking for restaurants willing to donate food to our meetings. As always, all forms of donations are completely tax deductible.

If you would like to discuss how you can offer support to HOPE please call Tamara @ 901-254-5964 or email tamara@midsouthpeace.org.

Greetings, transit warriors! MBRU’s South Memphis Town Hall is THIS Thursday! We’re coming to South Memphis to listen and gather in-person feedback from residents, stakeholders, and politicians. We will also have the Shelby County Election Commission helping register people to vote! Meet us Thursday, July 26th from 4-6 PM. We’ll be at Second Baptist Church at the corner of McLemore and Florida–right along the #12 and #17! We’re working on more town halls throughout 2018, so keep an eye out for your neighborhood!

Also, remember to take MBRU’s new TRANSIT SURVEY! We want to hear from riders all over Memphis about how you use MATA service in your neighborhoods. We’re working on making versions in Spanish and for people with visual impairments. Take the online version here, and we’ll have paper survey at all our town halls this year!

Finally, the Memphis Business Journal recently wrote a long report on the state of MATA. MBJ reporters talked about funding issues, Memphis 3.0’s new plan, and how transit is perceived publicly with MATA CEO Gary Rosenfeld, members of the MATA Board, Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell and Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland. There are good things to take from this report, and it’s great to see City and County leadership talking about the value of transit. At the same time, many of these conversations miss an important perspective: the perspective of bus riders who experience MATA’s limitations every day, and how they want to see our system progress. Please read these articles and see what our leaders have to say!

Imagine:  You wake up in a parallel universe where you and everyone you know can (and indeed must for survival) start over again with nothing but your collective knowledge and memories from your time spent on Earth. How do you organize yourselves in such a way as to sustainably provide for all the needs of your community? How do you protect your new society from falling prey to the handful of people in your new world who merely want to use all of you for their own benefit alone? How do you decide what values are most important to your new society and how you do you prioritize your methods and plans for upholding them?

These are some of the persistent questions we’ve been asking ourselves at StreetWise INK as we work toward fine tuning the details of our founding documents.

StreetWise INK is a one of kind venture, organized and operated entirely by people with current or former experiences of homelessness, with the goal of creating the type of society we wish to see in the world through the creation of a democratically founded and controlled, socially and economically just, Screen Printing Worker-Cooperative.

The harsh realities of people living on the streets and/or those who suffer extreme and abject poverty is tragically quite different. In Memphis, if you don’t have a phone number, an address, access to hygiene products, access to transportation, or even proper nourishment to keep your body functioning after nights of having to sleep with one eye open in all kinds of weather, options for any work at all are practically nihl. If you are lucky enough to get any work at all, it is likely by being hauled off to clean up blight for the City’s Work Local program, which caps how much you can actually make. There can be dignity in any kind of work, of course, and you’re glad to have it as you push down the knowledge that you’re being treated in much the same way as the trash you’re picking up, and that this charity is basically just the City’s way of killing two birds with one stone.

This is where something new is needed. This is where StreetWise INK comes in. People who have been abandoned and discarded by our current system, taking it upon themselves to create a better way, not just for themselves but for anyone who knows the impossibility of the bootstraps scenario, anyone with similar experiences who wish to try something new.
Creating a better way of life together.

StreetWise INK will be meeting several times this month to fine tune our goals and plans as we continue to learn more about bylaws and operating agreements. We are grateful to have a thoughtful and dedicated group of individuals on our Advisory Board who spare their time and expertise to assist us in moving forward.

If you are interested in being a part of our success, or would like to donate time, experience, or resources, please get in touch with us at streetwise@midsouthpeace.org.

If you’d like to donate funding to help our members get to and from meetings and work, please donate here: https://midsouthpeace.org/our-work/streetwise-ink/

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With the ever present reminders of a harsh summer still upon us, it’s difficult to think ahead to December, when advocates and members of the homeless community will commemorate the lives of those lost on the street, during the annual homeless memorial day.  We have lost too many friends and allies, even HOPE members, in the recent past, and unfortunately, many of those deaths could have been prevented by the stability and security provided by housing. We are deeply saddened at the rapid number of deaths amongst our people, particularly because, we know that are solutions to this madness dying on the streets. We have got to stand together to make sure that our most vulnerable can receive affordable housing especially during times of rough weather.

Since this is an election season, we are encouraging our members & supporters to attend candidate forums and ask those who want your vote what they plan to do about people dying on the street, as well as how they will address homelessness in general. Will they support local funding for direct homeless services and new affordable housing? Will they support the development of a Free, accessible shelter that meets the needs and respects the dignity of those experiencing homelessness in our community?  Call the Shelby County Commission at (901) 222-1000 and flood them with questions on which candidates have homelessness on their platform. Call City Council at  901) 636-6786 and demand that they finally allocate funding for direct homeless services, and invest in affordable housing.

Summer Survival Continues, YOU can help!

Our Summer Survival campaign is still underway!  Throughout this summer, H.O.P.E. members are feeding  vulnerable and hungry folks, and their children at Morris Park. We are providing sandwiches, bottled water, and chips, as well as hygiene kits. We’re always in need of more volunteers to help distribute items, which is a great opportunity for anyone who may need community service hours. Youth volunteers are welcome, but must be accompanied by an adult if under 18. We need your help to make this summer great for those in need!

During our first Summer Survival day, we gave away 50 snack bags! Folks were so happy and excited to see us because some of them literally did not know where their next meal was coming from. The next Summer Survival date was this past Thursday  July 12th,. With the help some volunteer youth from Creekwood Church from Dallas Texas, we were able to give out 50 bags this time as well  at Manna House. Thanks so much for spending your servIce time with HOPE!

For more information about how you can help donate or support HOPE or those who do the work to combat homelessness,or would like to put on a HOPE shirt and volunteer,  contact Tamara Hendrix, (901)725.4990 or  tamara@midsouthpeace.org.

Feed the Movement!

H.O.P.E. would like to thank Marcos Pizza for providing pizzas for the H.O.P.E meetings on the 1st Wednesday of the month. H.O.P.E  is a supportive advocacy group for people with the experiences of homelessness. One of the ways in which we learn about the aforementioned needs and strategize how we can best support one another through this work is through our weekly Wednesday meetings in which we invite people experiencing homelessness to fellowship, share, and brainstorm. It is very important that H.O.P.E. continues to hear from the homeless community about the differing levels of oppression that many of us may face when attempting to navigate through the impending hardships of scarce services available in Memphis. For many groups and organizations offering free food at meetings is a plus for their attendees, but for H.O.P.E. it is a necessity, due to the fact that most often the meal offered at H.O.P.E. meetings may be the only meal they will have that day.

As H.O.P.E. grows in numbers our expenses grow as well. How can you help? You can help by donating prepared foods on Wednesdays to our meeting that afternoon. Don’t have time to cook or buy prepared foods and bring them to our meeting space? We also accept monetary donations towards this cause. Neither of those options seem feasible for you presently? We are also looking for restaurants willing to donate food to our meetings. As always, all forms of donations are completely tax deductible.

If you would like to discuss how you can offer support to HOPE please call Tamara @ 901-254-5964 or email tamara@midsouthpeace.org.