Warming Shelter

Last week was extremely humbling and honestly a little frightening for me. Being in town to work on coordination for the New Year's Eve tornado disaster cleanup, a group of us were put in charge of manning most of the shifts at our Emergency Warming shelter. St. Louis had a snow storm that brought freezing temperatures and called for us to open our doors as an overflow homeless shelter.

We were not exactly equip with enough personnel to man the shelter because most of ERT was out on projects in Southern Mo and IL and the Education team couldn't work overnight shifts because they needed to be in their schools during the day. This put the few of us in town on extremely weird sleep schedules and on emergency mode.

Without judgement or harsh rules we opened our doors to an amazing experience. The brief experiences that I have had working at a homeless shelter were extremely different than what I have experienced at ours. Getting to know some of the men and women that have been guests at our shelter will forever alter the way that I view homelessness.

I wrote a paper on the Shalom House, a long term women's shelter, during high school where I interviewed several of the women living in the shelter creating a profile of their stories. There were mental illnesses, lost jobs, and abusive relationships. I was sheltered from the fact that there were probably addictions floating in the midst of the women as well but by the time they reached that program the immediate highs or withdrawals had subsided.

Some of the guests at our Emergency shelter were in a visible altered state of consciousness, which being around was an extremely new experience for me. Especially taking on the role of shelter staff and not just being the volunteer that is just there to serve dinner. While paranoia and irritability set in with one of our guests, I felt extremely nervous in this new responsibility, which is not a normal feeling for me. Luckily the others on call with me helped to calm him down by offering him a cigarette, and got him to go to bed in fear of being kicked out of the shelter.

While this circumstance was extremely negative for me, it was only about 5% of the cases. There was a young couple on their way to school to become dental assistants, construction workers, travelers that were on their way to a better opportunity in a different city. A woman with MS and her boyfriend that was extremely caring and attentive to her condition. Some people were adamantly abstinent to drugs and alcohol and there were those who just loved living off the land. There is absolutely no one reason that people end up without a traditional home but there is always a story.

Meeting an 18 year old kid suffering with a drug addiction made the book Beautiful Boy come to life for me. The book was a father's account of his son's addiction with cocaine and how he and his family were affected. The guy in my story came in the first night extremely coherent even played Candyland and Chutes and Ladders with me. He told me about his 4 children that he already had with different women and that his 19th birthday was in a couple days. I heard reports of him coming back to the shelter completely messed up and almost passing out at dinner with spaghetti on his face. He wasn't back at the shelter until the day after his birthday. I couldn't help worry about him while he was gone and wonder if there is a family out there that is worrying about him just like my book.

Martin Luther King Day

I spent January 17th, Martin Luther King Day, standing in the rotunda of St. Louis's Old Courthouse. Not only is it extremely beautiful, it holds a lot of history making it very fitting to hold the Martin Luther King Day celebration. The courthouse was used for one of the Dred Scot Cases that ultimately never won his freedom from slavery, but definitely brought attention to the country that a change needed to be made. Sadly our country was still too stubborn and biased to grant Scot his freedom, but less than a year before passing away, his owner's son's granted his freedom.

Being from St. Louis, it's sad to think that we could have had a much different role in the history of equality for African Americans. That definitely had an effect on me growing up. I remember reenacting the court case during a field trip in Elementary or Middle school. It was a choose your own ending kind of play so that we could change history if we deemed to do so. It was probably

also so little kids wouldn't have to abstain from granting someone his freedom and teach us about equality.

As we listened to gospel singers, speeches on the state of our present fight for equality, and prayers from community pastors, I felt extremely honored to be wearing my AmeriCorps "A". This was a day of service, instead of a day off of school or work. While I was going to be marching in the Martin Luther King Day Parade, half of my team was out in the neighborhoods of St. Louis passing out energy efficient light bulbs as part of our annual service project. I would also be going back to the office to continue my position this month as Volunteer Reception Center Coordinator for the New Year's Eve Tornado.

Marching in the Parade was also a first for me this year. I'm still in awe of all of the things that I hadn't done in St. Louis and Missouri until this year with Americorps. The parade route led us through North City, which is known for low-income housing, poverty, and gang violence but today it was filled with a group of people that were not only remembering MLK's dream but exclaiming that work was still to be done. One of the very few news reports I've actually listened to this year described the shooting of a young man just a few blocks away from the streets we were marching on. The day was definitely a sobering reminder of our past but also gave me a lot of hope for our future.