{"id":800,"date":"2013-02-27T23:57:34","date_gmt":"2013-02-27T23:57:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/?p=800"},"modified":"2013-03-04T23:59:42","modified_gmt":"2013-03-04T23:59:42","slug":"talk-back-at-looney-bigotry-showcased-as-angry-activism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/talk-back-at-looney-bigotry-showcased-as-angry-activism\/","title":{"rendered":"Talk Back at Looney Bigotry Showcased as Angry “Activism”"},"content":{"rendered":"
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A drumbeat of right-wing vitriol is now being lionized in the media.\u00a0 Ken “Skin-Dog” Collins has his guts in the right place but his head in a tv show starring citizen cops and homeless villains.
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\nMy reaction to the Santa Cruz Weekly article below:<\/p>\n

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Cleaning up trash is one thing, talking trash and treating people like trash is another. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n

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Recognizing politicians ducking issues and holding them to account is one thing, pressing a
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violent senseless Drug War is another.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n

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Calling for the resignation of powerful top-salary institutional bureaucrats like Martin Bernal is <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n

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one thing, calling for a search-and-destroy policy against homeless people destroying <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n

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homeless services and bulldozing homeless camps–is another.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/div>\n

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Step back and consider who the real culprits are as the war, surveillance, and bankster
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economy crushes us all.
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Santa Cruz\u2019s Angriest Man<\/h1>\n

Big-wave surfer Ken Collins has become a public-safety activist and controversial figure<\/h2>\n
– See more at: http:\/\/www.santacruz.com\/news\/2013\/02\/26\/santa_cruzs_angriest_man#sthash.iGYqVYnw.dpuf<\/wbr><\/wbr><\/wbr><\/a>
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Ken Collins, a Santa Cruz big-wave surfer turned controversial activist, talks to an officer while cleaning up at Harvey West.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ken Collins has been talking nonstop for fifteen minutes. His voice is getting hoarse, and the cold he fought off a day earlier sounds like it\u2019s coming back. \u201cThis is a small surf city with big city problems. It should never have gotten this bad,\u201d he says, sitting at a picnic table about thirty yards from the Harvey West Park woods where he played hide-and-seek as a kid. These days, Collins wouldn\u2019t let his children on the playground.
\nCollins has with him an empty plastic milk carton of cigarette butts and used syringes he found on the ground. When he goes to a city council meeting, he brings the same carton with him, and shakes it like a rattle in between public commenters.
\nCollins, better known as \u201cSkindog\u201d to the extreme sports world, is one of the world\u2019s premiere big-wave surfers. He competed in the Mavericks Surf Competition last month\u2014and from the looks of it, probably hasn\u2019t smiled since. Collins took up this local cause after a long Tuesday walk in November when he and about 20 others found a bunch of trash on the railroad tracks and stormed into the city council chambers to give the politicians an earful.
\nCollins isn\u2019t the only person angry about used needles and homeless addicts around Pogonip City Park, the San Lorenzo River and Cowell Beach, which ranked as the worst beach in California last year. But he might be the most<\/p>\n

\u201cSanta Cruz is a supermodel with AIDS,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s this beautiful place that\u2019s completely diseased.\u201d
\nCollins calls the Homeless Services Center a \u201ccrack house.\u201d (HSC director Monica Martinez says the shelters have a no-drug policy.) He says the city manager should be fired for failing to address Santa Cruz\u2019s public safety, and accuses city councilmembers of not doing their jobs, even though two of them began their first terms less than two months ago. Collins is a little short on patience.
\nVolunteers Craig Lambert and Gary Young are working nearby in the Harvey West\u2019s baseball field to build a batting cage. Last season, the two men, both of them fathers, showed up early before little league games to clean trash off the field. They say someone has to do what Collins is doing.
\n\u201cWhen I was a kid,\u201d Young says, \u201cwe\u2019d play outside until we got hungry and come home for dinner. You can\u2019t let your kids play out until dark anymore. You have to practically drive them everywhere.\u201d
\nIt\u2019s tough to deny that Collins, regardless of what anyone thinks of what he spouts, embodies the frustration that erupted after fellow surfer Dylan Greiner made a YouTube video in November about three tons of trash in the caves near Cowell Beach.
\nCollins says he\u2019s not just harping on problems, but also has solutions. He suggests the city build public restrooms with surveillance cameras out front, while also hiring a ten-member group to pick up trash and a four-member team of police officers with all-terrain vehicles and horses to \u201charass\u201d homeless people and chase drug dealers out of town. The city is looking at healthy reserves for the first time in years, and Santa Cruz might hire new cops, but plans like Collins\u2019 would be no small expense for a city.
\n\u201cThere are good homeless people,\u201d Collins says. \u201cI have compassion for the homeless people that are down on their luck and need help, and they\u2019re seeking help. But there are junkies who use the homeless population to hide themselves and camouflage themselves to do their dirty seedy work.\u201d
\nThere’s no evidence that Santa Cruz’s recent high-profile crimes\u2014two shootings, a grocery-store robbery, and a rape at UCSC\u2014were committed by homeless people. But Santa Cruz Police Captain Steve Clark says a “playful attitude” about drug use has plagued Santa Cruz for years, and leads to more crime.
\nAt a recent city council meeting, councilmember Don Lane cautioned against dividing homeless people into different camps.
\n\u201cThose are all people who are homeless, and they may have different needs, and the community may want to deal with them differently, but we do need to deal with them,\u201d Lane said at the Feb. 12 meeting. \u201cThe fact that someone\u2019s homeless and a drug addict does not make them a non-human being in our community. And we need to deal with those folks in a constructive way, too.\u201d
\n“Skindog” is not backing down. “My approach has been very aggressive. I\u2019m very aggressive,\u201d he says. \u201cI don\u2019t pussyfoot around this. I don\u2019t tread lightly trying to be polite, because that\u2019s not going to work.”<\/p><\/div>\n

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RESPOND TO THIS MISPLACED AGGRESSION WITH YOUR OWN COMMENT AT<\/div>\n
http:\/\/www.santacruz.com\/news\/2013\/02\/26\/santa_cruzs_angriest_man#sthash.iGYqVYnw.dpuf<\/wbr><\/wbr><\/wbr><\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A drumbeat of right-wing vitriol is now being lionized in the media.\u00a0 Ken “Skin-Dog” Collins has his guts in the right place but his head in a tv show starring citizen cops and homeless villains. My reaction to the Santa … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[56],"tags":[3,96],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=800"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":801,"href":"https:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/800\/revisions\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=800"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=800"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=800"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}