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Blogs by Patrick Joesph Schnerch
Field Work / Research / Victoria, BC 6/24/2009 6:42:05 AM
"City of Gardens: The Invisible Society" has new connections with the street community. This new book is will be largely committed to the mentally ill, addicted and homeless. It will help give them a platform to speaak from and break the silence. I am hoping to dedicate between 200 to 250 pages to Victoria's most vulnerable. The next few months will be very hectic for the remainder of the book research and writing will be very time consuming. The Invisible Society will perhaps be the most important book in the series.
The street community has every right to be respected, treated fairly and heard. Very seldom is this really the case.
Governments, istitutions and the public base their decissions on how to deal with these issues without the feedback or participation of my friends of the street.
It find the absolute truth behind these conditions, the true gage of this reality is in the eyes of those directly affected.
Reports, surveys and counts are just numbers. This book will put faces behind these numbers and the ink used will represent their blood. The most interesting and important part of last year's book was the interviews from the streets. This had a lasting effect on the reading audience.
This book series is a street publication. It does not cater to governments, institutions or society as a whole, the focus is on the lives' of those on the streets. As for me, I am just a survivor of what could have very easily put me on the streets as well. I am not an author, scholar or expert about these issues.
I go beyond textbooks, classrooms and lectures. My research is from ground zero. It only makes sense that the attention should focus on the areas where these issues are more prominent.
Classrooms don't provide the reality and sense of disparity as looking in the eyes of a homeless person. Not even this book series is capable to accurately conveying this truth. It does carry a great deal of merrit for the words are from Victoria's Downtown Core, but seeing is believing and this cannot be duplicated by any other means.
This book series puts aside stigma, discrimination and fear and replaces it with respect, sincerity and love. This is what I want in the series. Big, complicated words that no one understands does not represent our street community fairly.
The idea behind the book series is to keep it real. Numbers, stats, and surveys have a large margin of error and is only an estimate of what is really happening in Victoria. The truth is found in their eyes.
Many scholars rarely have actually had regular contact with our street community. There are short-lived studies, programs and events that just skim the top of the truth. The reality is found in the heart and soul of our most vulnerable.
Offices, waiting rooms and one hour appointments every two or three weeks serves its purpose, but progress is thwarted by red tape. I talk to my friends and offer them coffee and cigarettes and sit on the sidewalk with them and respect them and their surroundings where they feel the most comfortable.
Information gathered from this technique is far more indepth and perspnal, thus revealing real emotions of disparity, inner pain and destitution. Textbooks will never do this, nor will any book.
The books series is just being used as a instrument to provoke our attention and direct where it should be. It is up to society to decide what they want to do about it once they are provided the neccessary information to provoke action.
