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1 month ago | 
thestreetspirit.org | Jack Bragen |Bradley M. Penner
When I was young, in my twenties, I took pride in being able to get letters to the editor published. For a young adult with severe psychiatric illness, a letter to the editor in a paper is pretty good. But I wanted more. I really wanted to become a published writer. Periodically, I would submit stories to publications, and if you consider the level of the writing I produced back then, I stood little or no chance of getting something accepted. I married my wife when I was 31.
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1 month ago | 
thestreetspirit.org | Zack Haber |Bradley M. Penner
“All my wishes can be summarized in two words,” Gazan English teacher Asma Mustafa told me in a voice message on January 25, “peace and love among people here.”This was the first I’d heard from Asma since a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas was implemented. We had been communicating on and off through text and voice messages since last September, when she asked if I would write a report about her teaching, which continued throughout the Israel-Hamas war, despite her daily struggle to survive.
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2 months ago | 
thestreetspirit.org | Alastair Boone |Bradley M. Penner
On January 14, members of the Berkeley City Manager’s office held a community meeting at the Second and Cedar encampment in West Berkeley to discuss its upcoming closure, as well as state-funded resources the city says it will provide to the encampment’s displaced residents.
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
thestreetspirit.org | Bradley M. Penner
In December, homeless activists across California organized protests calling attention to the rise in encampment sweeps since the Supreme Court’s ruling in Grants Pass v. Johnson last summer.
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
thestreetspirit.org | Boudia Crow Lafleur |Bradley M. Penner
Disclaimer: this is only for entertainment and recreational purposes. The horoscopes listed down below are manifested through my skill of divination, which involves the use of my oracle cards. If these readings resonate with you, that is awesome. If they do not, that is fine as well. It is your journey. It is up to you to create the paths needed to survive this capitalist and colonialist world we all live in, and to be able to thrive in a new world created outside these systems of oppression.
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
thestreetspirit.org | Alastair Boone |Bradley M. Penner
It’s 1965, and Derrick Hayes is walking to school with his younger sister, Andrea. The two walk hand in hand through the West Side of Chicago, as they do most days, when she spots a dead squirrel on the sidewalk. She screams and bursts into tears at the sight of the dead animal. Right away, Derrick picks her up and carries her to the other side of the street so she doesn’t have to look at it anymore. “He was always my protector,” she remembers.
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
thestreetspirit.org | Jeannette DesBoine |Bradley M. Penner
In the dark times there is relief lurking in the shadows; waiting for dawn to break; waiting for first light; waiting for messages from the far side of caution. In the dark times, reflection hides itself in corners and waits for its moment of awareness; a signal far above the roar of silence. Dark times don’t last forever. Dark times gather ashes whenever the blinding light of truth is switched on. Jeannette DesBoine has been described as a Jeremiadist.
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
thestreetspirit.org | Tim Rudolph |Bradley M. Penner
No direction home but I’m somebody’s someone somewhere Those things that I fear I’m without are often discovered within A trillion trillion stars blink into being, burn out, our little lives mere half-breaths in the iron lung of eternity— I find solace in my neverlastingness Near the off-ramp a change of fortune: a concrete culvert, shelter for this wayward hobo, the lullaby of traffic, a spider’s web my dreamcatcher Desolation feels truer than false hope but I pray nonetheless: That the cold...
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
thestreetspirit.org | Jack Bragen |Bradley M. Penner
At a reasonable guess, most of the readers and writers of this publication are unhappy, to say the least, with Donald Trump returning to the White House. I am no exception. And with my psychiatric issues, I am not as able—as many people probably are—to be resilient and to come back to a normal space. I use the word “normal” meaning baseline and it is not a term used to exclude those who are normally different.
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Jan 6, 2025 | 
thestreetspirit.org | Ellie Prickett-Morgan |Bradley M. Penner
“Rights only exist to the extent of your ability to enforce them.” —Heather Freinkel, managing attorney for the Homeless Action Center. For those experiencing unsheltered homelessness in Alameda County, sweeps are a fact of life. Since the Grants Pass decision this past summer, coupled with Mayor Sheng Thao’s executive order and policy changes on the ground in Berkeley, the rates of sweeps are accelerating. Now more than ever, knowing your rights as an unhoused person is imperative to your safety.
