Connecting Central Appalachia to Los Angeles and Beyond

Harlan, Kentucky

Several important court and legal cases have been on mind for the last week or so. You may or may not have the heard of them, and you may or not agree with me that these cases are potentially related to one another.

I have been thinking much about the $83 million opioid settlement reached between the State of West Virginia and Walgreens. You can read about it here. As the article says, "The settlement resolves a lawsuit that alleged many pharmacy chains failed to maintain effective controls as a distributor and dispenser that contributed to oversupply of opioids in the state." West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey office claims to have won over more than $950 million in opioid litigation. Next on the chopping block is The Kroger Company and its pharmacies as they likely did not monitor their sales of opioids and sound any alarms so long as they were making profits from misery and substance abuse.

If you ask me, Kroger is making a big mistake by not trying to avoid the courts. Walmart, CVS and Rite Aid have reached settlements with the state totaling about $175 million since last August. CVS, Walgreens and Walmart have agreed to pay $10 billion in order settle similar lawsuits with state and local governments and Native American tribes elsewhere in the United States. Kroger looks like a vulnerable bad neighbor right now.

It's hard to keep the settlements and the court cases straight. The settlement that has gotten the most coverage was the one that included the OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma and the Sackler family. The family has to pay something like $6 billion and. Their company is supposed to be taken over by another company that will put its profits into combating the opioid crises. None of this would have happened had there not been activists on the ground forcing action against the Sacklers. There are also the lesser-known settlements involving Johnson & Johnson, Amerisource Bergen, Cardinal Health and McKesson and twelve states that put $26 billion in corporate money into state hands and obligate these companies to put some safeguards in place regarding opioid distribution. Some counties in Ohio won $650 million from Walgreens, CVS and Walmart over additional opioid-related claims.

These billions of dollars are spare change when you balance it out over the companies that have to pay and consider the damage done and the callous attitudes and the corruption that brought all this to pass in the first place. This all sounds like lots of money, but remember that West Virginia led the nation in overdose deaths per 100,000 people, with 81.4 per 100,000 people just three years ago. Kentucky ran a distant second, with a death rate of 49.2 per 100,000 people. Heck, more than 564,000 Americans died from opioid overdoses between 1999 and 2020.

But it doesn't stop there. The Sackler family will not acknowledge that what they did was wrong, and they have no legal obligation to do so. Walgreens gets to pay their $83 million over an eight-year period, staggering their costs. The company contributed to an “oversupply” of prescription opioids in West Virginia and across Central Appalachia. At some point, either by accident or lack of oversight or callous disregard for human life, the drugs were being diverted for street and holler use. State medical, treatment, adjudication and imprisonment and costs hit hard. Communities were divided, families suffered, and people died. We are living with synthetic opioids like fentanyl poisoning our communities. I heard in church yesterday that dozens of houseless people in my community have died from overdoses since the beginning of the year. I often wonder why the companies involved and the Sackler family and the investors and salesmen and the bought-off "researchers" and doctors who front for these companies are not being prosecuted for running multi-state criminal rings and conspiracies. Once their payments are made the companies will try to walk away from the great damage they have done. In the meantime, they are positioning themselves as caring community partners who want what is best for us and are cutting jobs and raising prices.

The other legal case that is weighing heavily on my spirit is the City National Bank-Los Angeles County redlining case. Here the Department of Justice found that the bank engaged in discriminatory practices by refusing to underwrite mortgages in predominately Latino and Black communities between 2017 and 2020. These practices discouraged or prohibited home ownership and undermined community stability. A sort of "banking desert" was created in the Latino and Black communities as well. These communities were underserved, disregarded, ripped-off, and destabilized. City National will have to pay over $31 million dollars. The bank will create a $29.5 million fund to subsidize loans to Black and Latino borrowers. City National will also spend $1.75 million on advertising, community outreach and financial education programs in Black and Brown communities. The bank is not admitting fault or guilt but is giving in nonetheless. The settlement only covers what the Department of Justice could prove took place between 2017 and 2020. Mr. Mark Alston did an excellent interview with National Public Radio on the issues involved in the settlement.

Redlining and housing discrimination are not news in Los Angeles. City National Bank is just one institution of many that have engaged in these outrageous practices and profited from them, and this way of doing business goes back many generations. Richard Rothstein can give you an eight-minute lesson on how discrimination in lending has been linked not only to residential segregation and the deterioration of communities but to environmental disasters as well. A report by Ailsa Chang, Christopher Intagliata, and Jonaki Mehta will explain this to you in the most engaging ways possible. But whatever the history and tricks involved, systemic oppression and discrimination draw much of their power from the ability of elites to discourage, disappoint, divide, frustrate, and rip people off over time. Patterns arise and poverty and trauma are passed on from one generation to the next unless a healing and activist social movement arises and can counteract some of the damage done. The Department of Justice settlement is huge by their standards, but it cannot, by itself, reverse the traumas associated with discrimination and oppression. 

And that brings me back to my point that these cases, the ones from Central Appalachia and the most recent housing discrimination case from Los Angeles, are potentially related to one another. How so? Notice the patterns of corporate greed and the assumption that corporations will rip us off, even to the point of causing deaths, and they will continue to do so until they are caught. They arrived to where they are with an Us vs. Them way of thinking. They will fight having to pay for the damage done or will lowball the costs of that damage and will fight having to accept legal responsibility for their actions if they are caught. Racism figures mightily into their thinking, but they also see great opportunities for profits where large companies and industries have shut down and where people are desperate and where part of the population can convinced to support get-tough-law-and-order barbaric policies and take employment in law enforcement and the prison industrial complex. The Us vs. Them becomes Them vs. Them.

Something else ties what happens in Los Angeles to what happens in Central Appalachia and the so-called "Rust Belt." Mark Alston, mentioned above, has much that is helpful to say about housing discrimination in Los Angeles. He makes a good point that the money is too little and comes too late for many and that whatever advancements are made from this point depends much on who is designing and administering the next steps, but that the settlement may do some good. The Biden administration has done the right thing by prioritizing stopping and punishing redlining. But at the local and grassroots levels the settlements mentioned above will hit particular walls besides what Mr. Alston and West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey talk about.

Houselessness in Los Angeles and the conditions that are creating it and enabling it are swamping the region. Attorney General Morrisey has said that the money won in the West Virginia settlements will “provide help to those affected the most by this crisis in West Virginia,” but syringe laws and the state laws covering how naloxone is administered and paraphernalia laws and licensure requirements for harm reduction programs---all of them based on a fear-driven law-and-order worldview and the rejection of the idea that substance abuse is a disease or disorder---really limits the reach and the effectiveness of anti-drug and lifesaving efforts. In both L.A. and Central Appalachia, the money is there for companies or non-profits or state or local governments to administer programs, but the money is not there to empower people and give them the means of determining their own needs and destinies.

Now, imagine if a national peoples' movement came together and took on Big Pharma, the real estate industry, the banks, and all of the destructive and oppressive forces that destroy our communities and divide us. Imagine if people in Central Appalachia and L.A. and elsewhere were working from the same playbook and could see themselves and one another as leaders and if we operated from a point of solidarity with one another. If the small harm reduction efforts in West Virginia, the volunteer activists who pushed the Sacklers to the walls, and the leading poor and working-class Brown and Black activists in L.A. could win the kind of ground that they have then even stronger regional and national movements can win more, and they can win even more by being in solidarity with one another. 

 Los Angeles

Elliott---Rest In Peace

The fellow below is Elliott. I don't know much more about him than his first name, that he was houseless and struggled with some kind of substance abuse disorder, that he lived on streets in the town that I live in, and that he died last Friday.

I say it often on this blog---he was somebody's son. Regardless of what he got wrong in life and struggled with, he was a human being. He was one of us. I pass houseless people every day and try to provide what I can when I can, but there my solidarity stops. I feel helpless, and it hurts to think that I am complicit in anyone's suffering. Maybe you feel the same way. I carry an added burden here because I have spent so much time in my life struggling with my own demons and getting so much wrong. You would think that someone in my situation would do more and do better.

The philosophical and practical question of the day is this: are we worthy of those who we cause to suffer, either by our actions or through passivity? Is the story of Lazarus a fable or does it have meaning? We have so many warnings. Why aren't we listening?

A family member wrote: "I want to say thank you to all those people who have helped my brother Elliott out while he was in your community. He was homeless and it sounds like commercial st was his area. I’ve ready so many loving stories of people who helped him in many ways. I appreciate you all. He made choices and lived his life how he saw fit. He passed away Friday. I just wanted to say thank you for knowing everyone out there is someone’s son or brother. We tried many ways to get him help, he chose what he chose and we still loved him. This was him clean and sober an Easter Sunday 6 years ago. We will miss him." (Advocates For Unsheltered Of Salem)  

Native American/Indigenous Ministries of the Episcopal Church: This is the 115th weekly report on those who survive on the streets.

Feeling Closed in

This is the 115th weekly report on those who survive on the streets. As I hand out donated food and supplies to anyone I see sleeping on the sidewalk or alleyways, my eyes dart everywhere looking for those who stay hidden and seem to be the most vulnerable.

The young girl hides behind a cardboard carton that used to have fruit in it.

“Are you okay?” I ask.

“What do you think?” she responds with a sneer. Her lower lip quivers and she shakes her head.
“I had a nice place to sleep behind a trash bin but the police came. I put my jacket over my head and ran. I don’t know where they expect up to go when they chase us out of everywhere. I wasn’t bothering anybody. Then some guys showed up and wanted me to (you know) and when I wouldn’t, they kept hitting me until I had no fight left. I feel like one big bruise.”

“Do you want a lift to Healthcare for the Homeless? They will treat you with no question.” I say.

“No,” she shouts. If they start asking about my age, the police will send me back home. And I rather kill myself than go back to where my stepfather comes into my room every night. My mother doesn’t care. She says it will help me grow up. But I feel like the walls close in on me and I can’t breathe.”

I hand her a water bottle, food and other supplies through my window. She looks around first to see if anyone is watching and then quickly takes them. Carefully, she opens up the backpack and starts eating the cheese crackers.

“Thanks,” she said. “I didn’t know I was so hungry. My stomach stays in knots.”

As I hand over a striped tiger beanie baby, she looks at it from every angle. “This will be my good luck charm to keep predators away.” She strokes the little tiger and gives me a crooked smile.

I wish her luck and drive on, discovering my own stomach is tied in knots seeing a teenager try to cope with too much.

Stopping near one gas station where a lot of street people gather, a woman detaches herself from the group and tells me she is a nurse. “I’ve seen you before handing out food. That’s nice. I’m going back to school soon. I’m not staying here.”

Jane has been at this corner for months, saying the same thing. I don’t know if she has dementia or something else but she is stuck in the same story, told in the same words each time. Mental illness accounts for at least 60 percent of people on the street, some calm and some violent. There are so many different stories about how people who are confused try to cope.

Nest, I stop near a man slumped over on a city trash bin. He is sitting on a cushion but no obvious backpack or possessions. He wakes up and walks to the car when I call out that I have food.

“How are things going?” I ask as I hand him a backpack full of food and supplies. He pulls out the socks first and then the Cracker Jacks.

“How did you know that I need socks. Mine rotted off. Cracker Jacks—I have had that since I was a child.”

He carefully adjusts the straps on the back pack and tries it on. “Perfect,” he says. “Thank you and God Bless You. Usually, no one sees me. I’m surprised you stopped. I guess I feel like I have become invisible. People don’t even look away, they just don’t see me anymore.”

He continues, “I have learned the small ways to survive out here but I have forgotten how to plan big things, like getting a job. I feel trapped in seeing everyone just sit and stare. Doing nothing wears me out and I find myself sleeping during the day just because I am so tired.”

“Thanks for seeing me,” he says as he continues to eat the food.

I have discovered that there is no one solution to poverty. Trying to fix people or circumstances in one comprehensive swoop doesn’t work. Fixing is a way to gain control over the uncertainty in my life and the lives of those I see in poverty. Trying to find quick solutions can become an obsession to avoid whatever makes me uncomfortable. People don’t need fixing, like it is a mechanical issue. They need to establish relationships and to find resources.

Above all, they need someone to listen to them and notice that they are visible.

Poverty, hunger, homelessness, mental illness, addictions, abuse, violence and joblessness require a radical change in our culture. It requires a restructuring of how to share and distribute resources to include every level of society. We can no longer ignore the growing fragmentation occurring in families no longer able to afford basics such as food and rent. I have lived in developing countries like India and Ethiopia where the majority of the population is consumed by poverty. We seem to be heading down that same path.

With the massive climate change fires, especially north of Albuquerque, so many people are losing their homes and means of sustenance. I fear for those who are trying to move back into society when prices are still rising, even if their homes had not burned down.

I am amazed that people are still sending me gift cards to help the poor when there are so many demands on your money. Thank you for continuing to help in Albuquerque and in your own location. And thank you who are working on systematic change in our culture. We are all together in this and it is not easy for any of us.

Have mercy. Spread kindness, nourish Mother earth, be generous to the stranger and respect those you encounter. Embody hope. Laugh.

Coming soon to a country that is yours...

 

When we judge others...

 

A Salem Memorial For Luke Kagey, Jowand Beck, Joe Posada III, and Rochelle Zamacona...

Our houseless neighbors who died on March 27. They ranged in age from 21 to 54. At least two others were injured, and a driver of the car who allegedly ran into the camp is in jail pending trial. Could all of this not have been avoided had the police not rousted houseless people recently and if we had housing and services for everyone on the streets and affordable housing and healthcare for all?

 

SMELL: It was bad - an unfortunately familiar smell. A homeless man, saturated in cheap liquor and his own pee, sat inside the cafe beside the door to our gathering room...

I got this from the St. Alban's Episcopal Church Facebook page:

S M E L L :: It was bad - an unfortunately familiar smell. A homeless man, saturated in cheap liquor and his own pee, sat inside the cafe beside the door to our gathering room. No one said anything to me about it, but I could tell they wanted to ask “What are we going to do?” It was horribly breathtaking. We looked through bags of clothes that had been donated for times like this, but couldn’t find anything to fit him.

 
What WERE we going to do?
I took that question to Jesus, and asked for wisdom and almost instantly the answer came - “Welcome him.” I’ve learned by now not to argue with Him, so I didn’t. I walked over - introduced myself - he introduced himself as Wayne- and we shook hands.
“I’m glad you’re here Wayne.”
“Thank you, it’s been a while since I was here.”
“I see you have some coffee, can we get you anything else?” His hands were bright red from spending the night in the cold. His eyes were watery, he was hunched over, arms wrapped around his urine-soaked body.
“You had to camp last night, huh?”
“I did.”
“Wayne - are the only clothes you have the ones you’re wearing right now?” He looked at me seemingly fearful and ashamed. He knew.
“Yes.” He looked at the floor.
“Can we get you some new clothes to change into?”
“That would be nice.”
I asked his sizes and sent one of our leaders to Family Dollar down the road to get him some new - everything.
Wayne went to change and clean up in the bathroom. The smell lingered, all day.
As I lay in bed last night thinking about Wayne, Holy Spirit asked me this question. “Shannon how do you think your sin smells to me?” I knew the answer. “And yet . . . I welcome you to come be with me, offering you new clothes - ‘a ring and a robe’ - a fresh start - every time.”
Does your life stink? Are you isolated from God and others? God says “You are welcome.” He has something for you, if you’ll accept it. He’s not put off by the stench of your life. He will clean you up when you get to Him - He has new clothes for you and a fresh start.
And that . . .
is amazing grace. . .
and it smells oh so good.
- Shannon Greer

Shared from Christianity Without the Insanity