The Swarm

Dear Friend of Loaves & Fishes,

Watch the Oprah Show at 4 PM this Wednesday, February 25! It's about the recession and homelessness and was filmed at Loaves & Fishes, Sacramento homeless shelters and Sacramento's Tent City. They also filmed in other cities to show this is a national problem.

Please pass the word by forwarding this on to your e-mail groups, colleagues and friends.

The Oprah Winfrey Show asked Loaves & Fishes if they could interview one of the homeless mothers at Maryhouse. Favor Whitesides, a very devoted mother of three bright and beautiful children, agreed to share her story.  Oprah Correspondent Lisa Ling, Sister Libby and I also visited the large tent city in Sacramento with over 100 tents spread out over several acres as far as the eye can see. Over 200 people live there in a scene straight out of the Great Depression. When I asked the film crew if they had seen anything like it anywhere else, the sound man replied, "Only in a war zone."

The show airs this Wednesday, Feb. 25.  In Sacramento it will be shown at 4PM on Channel 3 KCRA and again at 9 PM on Channel 58 KQCA. Showing times in other cities vary. A link to info on Oprah's website is below:

Tent Cities in America: A Lisa Ling Special Report

http://www.oprah.com/dated/oprahshow/oprahshow_20090218_recession 

Correspondent Lisa Ling brings us the new faces of the recession. The desperate search for work, a hot meal, a place to sleep. Meet families who are struggling every day to get by.

The spiraling economy and the foreclosure crisis are causing an increasing number of middle-class Americans to suffer. On today's show, Lisa Ling investigates the emergence of tent cities--makeshift temporary shelters set up by people who simply have nowhere else to go. Our cameras follow a family that went from living in a condo and driving a Lincoln Navigator a year ago to sleeping in homeless shelters and carrying all their possessions in garbage bags. Then, hear from a woman who was making $70,000 a year and is facing eviction. Get an inside look at how more and more families are struggling every day just to get by.

We believe, in the words of Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, that sunshine is the best disinfectant. We hope that those who see this show and its sad and shocking depiction of the pain of homelessness will be motivated to both seek solutions and to help the families and individuals who are homeless now. We will have a special page set up on Loaves & Fishes website by Wednesday for those who wish to help: www.sacloaves.org