12/06/2016
Ghost Ship. According to Wikipedia "A ghost ship, also known as a phantom ship, is a ship with no living crew aboard...". We hear about ghost ships mostly in and near the Bermuda Triangle, or after being raided by pirates [...and yes, in 2016 they still exist!].
The Ghost Ship here is not a vessel, has no starboard side, no Marconi radio, no life boats, and hasn't sailed a single knot on the seas. In fact it was on land. Instead this was a place for artists [and their businesses] that had no place else to call home.
There are many artists out there. Some are quite wealthy, but many are not. Most artists are actually among the poor and homeless. A second group with many artists are the disabled followed by the elderly. Many of those belong to that first group.
Because many artists are homeless or near homeless, causes places like Oakland, California's Ghost Ship to exist in the first place. If they did nothing else right, the place was definitely appropriately named, as most poor and homeless people in our American society are treated as if they are little more important as a ghost or goblin's soul on one of these ships. We have city counsels who tear down buildings they can take over and then turn over to artists and other crafts people. Then these counsel members claim their city is broke, when the can offer this space at super low rents and reap a windfall of revenue.
Here in Kansas City, it's a great city except for how it treats it's poor and homeless. SWMCA has no general office, and the founder of our 39 year old business and is looking towards Detroit as an option to relocate the company if we can't acquire Greenwood School. {Until this post, our founder has never made these plans public}. We had something similar planned, but with a building being fully brought to code, and fire sprinklers being a must. We plan to make the improvements using historic preservation grants, and buy the building via crowd funding. While this is an excellent way of mothballing space for future use, it's too bad because this is what the city should be doing instead. They choose TIF projects over helping the citizens instead, turned our downtown into a place where only the upper class can afford it, and has made tearing down KCI Airport as a higher calling than helping it's poor that has committed to this city...many lifetime residents. Sometimes one may wonder if our police department in KCMO is more committed to destroying homeless encampments that solving and preventing crime.
Maybe if we do as the control in the lower left says in red...STOP... then look at people be they artists or not for what they can do rather than their income, places like the one in Oakland would not need to exists. Sure homeless pay no rent on apartments, instead they PAY RENT at sleazy motels and on storage units, and usually far more that they'd ever pay renting decent housing. Amazon has hired the homeless, why can't SWMCA and our rivals? The laws make it hard for small business to help the homeless with employment, and the same is true with labor unions being equally as restricted.
We mourn the loss of 30 plus artists having no Christmas at all in 2016, and those they leave behind having a miserable one. Let's work towards getting living wages at jobs like Walmart and the fast food chains. Lets defend Social Security and disability plus Medicaid, and make it so where the homeless CAN contribute to society again. Most of us want to. We just need some help doing it.
Let's make sure there's no more land based Ghost Ships under a different name. This was good intentions for the homeless gone wrong, let's learn from it!
