I remember a time in my youth when I could walk down the street without being harassed by police or accosted by people who considered themselves upstanding citizens and felt it was their right to slander my friends and me. I remember a time of peace, a time of mutual respect and understanding. We had things pretty well then, in fact almost not a care in the world. It was a time when food was not any commodity, and we always had places to sleep whether it was cold, warm, day, night, dry, or wet. We were a flourishing culture, those of us living the street life, we were just a bunch of kids from all different places in the world and it did not matter any, nothing could hurt us because we stood strong and stayed together. We helped each other out, always, no matter the circumstances or consequence - we were a pack.

It really wasn�t that long ago, but it feels like decades. I get this feeling most often when I see a police officer harassing some young kid for trying to make a little money to eat or get new parts for his instrument, while all the while, two blocks away, some silly wannabe thug is holding a knife to some guy and some sad, pathetic heroin junkie is getting beat up by a goofy jock. I think about the fact that on several occasions I have been that same kid and that same junkie.

Things have changed for the worse over the years; of this I have no doubt. Daily, somebody out here loses the battle of survival, be that against dying, jail, addiction, or any of the other plagues that have fallen upon us. I have watched so much go down and watched our way of life crushed before our eyes as we continue to try our damnedest to maintain balance, sanity, and most of all some kind of solace from the slavery of American life.

Years ago, when freedom and unity were still prevalent, a person could walk down the streets of such cities as Portland, Seattle, Spokane, or Olympia, to name a few, and see a wonderful community, full of true diversity. On any given day you could see it all, punk rockers sitting back enjoying Pabst Blue Ribbon from twelve ounce cans, while jamming out crappy but hearty noise from their ampless Fender Stratocasters. Hippies and rainbow children sitting about smoking joints while singing Grateful Dead songs over out-of-tune guitars. Goth kids sitting, pondering life and death out loud. Grunge rock kids listening to Nirvana and Jane�s Addiction, while chomping down huge slices of pizza and making out. Everything was serene and true to itself. Now, it wasn�t always peaceful and mellow, there were still some kids who just didn�t chill out. Sometimes a gutter punk kid would get too drunk and start fights with the runaways who hung out at drop-ins and youth shelters. Or some speed freak and heroin junkie would get into a brawl over panhandling spots or places to shoot up. There were the gang banger kids who would hang around looking to recruit runaway kids into their pit of stupidity, but we did not let these things get us down.

Now, despite any problems people had with each other, it was all set aside for that special time of night when we would all gather at a nearby downtown park and stand in line for that free hot vegan meal. Usually consisting of steamed vegetables, soups, breads, and sometimes pastries and other sweets, this time was the highlight of our day. Yes, I mean Food Not Bombs, those wonderful dumpster-diving deities who took time off their busy lives to dig out the freshest vegetables and assorted tasty foods. This was beyond any doubt the one time you would not only see the whole damn street community, but the whole damn street community in total euphoria with itself and the people of which it was comprised.

Yeah, things were great, I mean just super, but then all of a sudden and completely out of left field, some crazy fool politicians started to flap their money-filled jaws. They were a truly heinous group of people. They referred to us as the �homeless problem� and spoke of us as though we had to be eradicated as quickly as possible. They started to create stories via their media puppets that focused only on the negative aspect of the world we loved, thus creating this uproar of hatred toward our cultures (much the same as was done by the Romans concerning Christ or Adolph Hitler and his vicious gang of fools concerning Jews and non-Aryan peoples). They were making it a brutal crime for us to live as we did. They failed to recognize the fact that we were a flourishing subculture of people who were proactively creating our own new set of morals, ethics, ideas, and traditions. Next they employed their police state to come to our streets and run us out. We tried to fight back, but in the end it always ended counterproductively, at best.

I wanted change, and fast, so I decided to quit all the drugs I was on and apply for a four-year scholarship to Lewis and Clark University so as to gain the knowledge and paperwork to be heard. Shortly after graduation I was arrested during a riot for felony assault on a police officer and sentenced to two years in a state penitentiary. When I was released I began traveling again (despite my probation) and started reaching out to the youth of today to teach them how to take the power back and keep this shit from happening to another generation. I am doing quite well with this now and I am optimistic that I will succeed to the point of seeing a change before I die.