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A Catholic priest in France (born Henri Antoine Groues), Fr. Pierre gave up a life of luxury to go into the priesthood. During World War II, he served as a member of the French resistance against the Germans. (He kept his code name, Abbe Pierre, after the war.) His specialty was forging papers to get people out of the country. After the war, he was appalled by the plight of the poor and homeless, and helping them became his mission. In 1954, during a cold snap where nearly 100 people died, the French government rejected funds for emergency housing. So Pierre talked his way onto the radio to alert his countrymen of the problem. Then he went to a Luxembourg station to tell them, "Look, French radio has just run this. If you don't want to be scooped, give me the microphone right away!" -- and repeated the plea. The result was an outpouring of charity so huge that army trucks had to be called in to haul it all. The government reversed itself, agreeing to build homeless shelters. The police let the homeless spend the night in their station houses. And the tiny charity that Fr. Pierre created, the Emmaus Society, grew into a worldwide social service organization. Abbe Pierre died January 22. He was 94. From This is True for 21 January 2007 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Coe Booth List Price: $7.99 Amazon Price: $7.99 Editorial Review: Tyrell is a young African-American teen who can't get a break. He's living (for now) with his spaced-out mother and little brother in a homeless shelter. His father's in jail. His girlfriend supports him, but he doesn't feel good enough for her -- and seems to be always on the verge of doing the wrong thing around her. There's another girl at the homeless shelter who is also after him, although the desires there are complicated. Tyrell feels he needs to score some money to make things better. Will he end up following in his father's footsteps?  By: Jonathan Kozol List Price: $13.95 Amazon Price: $11.86 Editorial Review: The story that jolted the conscience of the nation when it first appeared in The New Yorker Jonathan Kozol is one of America’s most forceful and eloquent observers of the intersection of race, poverty, and education. His books, from the National Book Award–winning Death at an Early Age to his most recent, the critically acclaimed Shame of the Nation, are touchstones of the national conscience. First published in 1988 and based on the months the author spent among America’s homeless, Rachel and Her Children is an unforgettable record of the desperate voices of men, women, and especially children caught up in a nightmarish situation that tears at the hearts of readers. With record numbers of homeless children and adults flooding the nation’s shelters, Rachel and Her Children offers a look at homelessness that resonates even louder today.  By: Kim Hopper List Price: $19.95 Amazon Price: $17.96 Editorial Review: "It must be some kind of experiment or something, to see how long people can live without food, without shelter, without security." —homeless woman, Grand Central Station, winter "Homelessness is a routine fact of life on the margins. Materially, it emerges out of a tangled but unmysterious mix of factors: scarce housing, poorly planned and badly implemented policies of relocation and support, dismal prospects of work, exhausted or alienated kin. . . . Any outreach worker could tell you that list would be incomplete without one more: how misery can come to prefer its own company."—from the book Kim Hopper has dedicated his career to trying to correct the problem of homelessness in the United States. In his powerful book, he draws upon his dual strengths as anthropologist and advocate to provide a deeper understanding of the roots of homelessness. He also investigates the complex attitudes brought to bear on the issue since his pioneering fieldwork with Ellen Baxter twenty years ago helped put homelessness on the public agenda. Beginning with his own introduction to the problem in New York, Hopper uses ethnography, literature, history, and activism to place homelessness into historical context and to trace the process by which homelessness came to be recognized as an issue. He tells the largely neglected story of homelessness among African Americans and vividly portrays various sites of public homelessness, such as airports. His accounts of life on the streets make for powerful reading.  By: Joel Blau List Price: $30.00 Amazon Price: $27.00 Editorial Review: Taking an in-depth look at the causes of homelessness in the U.S., Blau debunks the convenient myths that most homeless are crazy, drug addicts, or lazy misfits who brought their suffering upon themselves. He argues that current government policies at every level are mired in pointless headcounting and quick-fix solutions that don't deal with the underlying causes.  By: Peter H. Rossi List Price: $25.00 Amazon Price: $25.00 Editorial Review: The most accurate and comprehensive picture of homelessness to date, this study offers a powerful explanation of its causes, proposes short- and long-term solutions, and documents the striking contrasts between the homeless of the 1950s and 1960s and the contemporary homeless population, which is younger and contains more women, children, and blacks. |
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