Guest host John Fletcher's commentary for Wednesday December 13, 2006 

This last weekend in a the city of San Francisco, I witnessed the shame of
America. The shame that blights our nation is the human discards that roam
our cities and towns seeking food, shelter and dignity.
They are our sons and daughters, our brothers and our sisters and they are
our fathers and mothers. They are the veterans of our wars.

We have abandoned them to their own resources and assuaged  our guilt by
throwing a few dollars in the Salvation Army pot in front of the post
office. Yet the homeless still wander the streets of our towns an cities:
still sleep in doorways, under overpasses and in the wood of our rural
communities.

Many of these citizens ore mentally ill and lack the treatment and therapy
they so desperately need. Victims of the conservative notion that government
should have no part in the mental health business.

The answer to the problem of homelessness lies in the hearts of each and
every one of us. We can ignore the problem, we can hope that someone else
will deal with it or, we can, each of us rise to the situation and demand
action from those who we elect to solve the problems of society. It is a
simple choice but lives depend on the correct choice.

There exists in our own Nevada County an extraordinary group of individuals
who have come together to shelter the homeless. Lead by activists Utah
Phillips, Joanna Robinson, Cindy Maple and scores more Hospitality House,
modeled on the shelters of The Catholic Workers who sheltered a young Utah
Philips back from the Korean war drunk and despondent of the horrors of that
awful conflict.

These people have worked tirelessly to create a shelter for the homeless in
the last county to open such a facility. They did this without any kind of
government funding.

The County of Nevada has for too long ignored the homeless in it's midst,
thankfully some of its citizens have not.