The Glendale Star
10
November 11, 2021
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Resources to help the homeless are available in Glendale BY JUDGE GERALD A. WILLIAMS North Valley Justice of the Peace
Becoming homeless for many, if not most, can be as simple as a job loss plus a major unexpected bill. When people need food and shelter, their need is often obvious. Legal problems can be just as significant — but are often hidden. Thankfully, there are some resources available. A place to start is the Arizona Justice Center, which advocates for the homeless and for the working poor. Its services include free legal counseling, marriage and family counseling, addiction counseling, mail assistance for the homeless, and ID document storage for the homeless. It is also a SNAP (food stamps) distributor. Its office is located at 7142 N. 57th Avenue, Glendale. Its phone number is 623-847-2772. The Brad Riner Assistance Office at the First United Methodist Church is a little over three blocks away from the Arizona Justice Center. It can provide clothing, toiletries, sack lunches,
food boxes and, in some cases, limited assistance with utility bills and with bus passes. The Riner Assistance Office is open from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays. It is located at the church at 7102 N. 58th Drive. On Wednesdays, there is an informal worship service at the church at noon, which is followed by a free meal. Maricopa County has a regional homeless court. It is designed to resolve problems for people who have arrest warrants for victimless misdemeanor offenses. Prosecutors, public defenders, counselors and judges work together to resolve cases and to allow people to perform community service in lieu of their fines. It is not an easy program and often takes months to complete. Various justice courts and municipal
courts can refer cases to the Regional Homeless Court. The court meets in a shelter, Central Arizona Shelter Services (CASS), at 204 S. 12th Avenue in Phoenix. Its secessions resemble more of a graduation ceremony than a traditional court hearing because the judge is usually only giving good news. The Regional Homeless Court can be contacted at 602-506-0063.
Many people are homeless, or about to be homeless, through no fault of their own. If you are not in a position to help cure homelessness as a societal problem, perhaps you are in a position where you could help one person. Judge Gerald A. Williams is the justice of the peace for the North Valley Justice Court. That court’s jurisdiction includes part of Glendale.
Baseball and politics are America’s pastimes BY J.D. HAYWORTH
Glendale Star Columnist
Whoever thinks there is no divine sense of humor may want to reconsider — especially after the latest occurrence of “the first Tuesday following the first Monday in November.” In other words, Election Day 2021 or, as it will forever be known in Atlanta, “World Champions Day.” With an ethereal sense of timing, politics and the national pastime again collided. And in this instance, the “Home of the Braves” prevailed. The inaugural iteration of this column chronicled a rhetorical baseball
“beaning” of the city of Atlanta and the state of Georgia, which left both seeing stars — but not all-stars. Opening Day brought a verbal brickbat, delivered by the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue via ESPN, which apparently now stands for Expect Sports Politicized Nonstop. Sure enough, Joe Biden — though old, slow and confused — apparently possessed enough verbal and muscle memory to use a “woke weapon.” During his ESPN interview, Joe at-
tacked Georgia’s election reform law, calling it an “atrocity” and “Jim Crow on steroids.” He ignored the fact that the new statute expands early voting to 17 days statewide and gives counties the option to add two Sundays of voting for a total of 19 days of casting early ballots. Never mind that Biden’s home state of Delaware provides no days for early balloting — the fictitious flames, fanned by ESPN, other outlets within the partisan press and, of course, the White House, soon stoked a “woke fire.” Ol’ Joe then chimed in with his “remedy” of preference: Major League Baseball (MLB) should move the All-
Star Game out of the Peach State. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred — no “Mighty Manfred,” he — morphed into “Rollover Rob” and hastily did Biden’s bidding, with the specious claim that moving the AllStar Game from Atlanta to Denver was the “best way to demonstrate our values as a sport.” If so, it was a curious way to demonstrate a commitment to racial justice. When the All-Star Game exited Atlanta, a city with a population that’s 51% Black and historically known as a center of Black commerce, the economic loss was estimated at $100 milSEE HAYWORTH PAGE 11
