A quick note to pass on word about a benefit that Chaki's band Mystic Defender is playing -- the purpose is to generate enough money to preserve Dome Village, "a non-profit organization which offers a structural alternative for homeless people unable or even unwilling to live in traditional shelters or return to the 'mainstream' life style." The 20 Omni-Sphere geodesic domes that make up the village were designed by a one-time student of Bucky Fuller. The site's landlord, responding to the shocking surge in downtown land values, has raised the tenant's rent by 700 percent, or as a Downtown News article states, from "$2,500 a month (plus $10,000 in annual taxes) to more than $18,000 a month."
While I don't agree with the across-the-board assertion of founder and soi-disant Republican Ted Hayes (who himself is homeless) that homelessness is a choice and a full-stop rejection of mainstream values, I appreciate that countercultural ethic (I've been learning about the street politics of the post-neoliberal world and trying to steal material from Neil Smith's The New Urban Frontier: Gentrification and the Revanchist City for an upcoming paper). I'm torn between applauding the hyper-romanticized outlaw nobility of the hobo/squatter aesthetic and the fact that Hayes' survivalist-wackjob philosophies trivialize the very real plight most homeless people have, namely mental illness and addiction and just plain horrible circumstances. His project's emphasis on self-sustainability and personal responsibility is admirable though -- if a little uncomfortably like a bizarro-world Ayn Rand. But for those homeless people who have all their mental faculties intact and didn't get their legs blown off in a war and have even a smidgen of optimism about their future, Dome Village's "workshops in computer literacy, jobseeking, legal issues, and children's theatre, a community art program, two cricket teams, [and] community garden programs" may very well prove useful.
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