In Hard circumstances, Berkeley Man Holds onto Hope

By Martin Snapp
Contra Costa Times
Posted on Sat, August 2, 2003

"Everybody who is homeless was somebody else before," says Ken Moshesh. "But when you're homeless, you're nobody."

Moshesh has been homeless himself for almost 10 years. "My home got ripped off, and I had no choice but to hit the streets," he says. "I never thought it could happen to me."
Before that, he was an associate professor at UC Berkeley, teaching in the African-American division of the original ethnic studies department.

He's also an accomplished jazz percussionist who has toured with Sun Ra, a kung fu teacher accredited by the Hong Kong White Crane Foundation, a filmmaker who is documenting life on the streets in videos for Berkeley cable access Channel 25, and a veteran of the civil rights movement and the Black Panther Party.

He is instantly recognizable by the Pan flute hanging from a cord around his neck and a small "talking drum" dangling from his belt.

Among his homeless friends are an artist, writer, hotel manager, computer technician, elementary schoolteacher, dot-commer -- even one of his former students at Cal.

"But to tell you the truth, that's the one conversation you never enter into: what you did before you were homeless," he says. "It's just too painful."

Moshesh is one of Berkeley's estimated 1,200 homeless people, a number that's hard to peg.

"Nobody knows for sure because it's so difficult to count them," says Cisco De Vries, chief of staff to Mayor Tom Bates. "There are people sleeping on the streets, in shelters, behind bushes, in their cars. There are couch surfers, who are crashing with friends and family. All we know is that the numbers are increasing because of the economic downturn."

At the same time, local organizations that help the homeless are facing drastic budget cuts.

"We were able to maintain the city's grants, but the county took a huge whack at them, and their private funding has all but dried up," says De Vries. "And we still have the state to hear from."

Safe places

Moshesh's day begins either at sunrise or when the first person comes along, whichever is sooner. "You learn to 'sleep with one eye open,' as we say in the homeless community. Whenever you hear the sound of approaching footsteps you have to wake up right away, because you never know who it might be."

He has found about a dozen relatively safe places to sleep, including an abandoned house, a classroom building at Cal, a park bench, and under a tree in someone's back yard. He never reveals their location to anyone.

"But wherever I am, I have to be out of there before the 'normal' people arrive to start their day," he says.

The first order of business is finding breakfast, usually at Trinity Methodist Church on Bancroft. The staples are donuts and coffee, but every once in a while there will be some kind of meat -- usually leftover dinner meat from a nearby restaurant.

The homeless people patiently line up for these meals -- they call them "quarter meals," because the token charge is 25 cents. They're used to lining up and waiting; it's what they have to do for practically everything they get.

After breakfast, the next item is finding a bathroom to wash up. "BART, UC Berkeley, business buildings, parks -- wherever you can go that has a basin," he says. "The problem is that everyone who's homeless knows where they are too. So it's another long wait in line. It takes up most of the morning."

Next: finding lunch. Only one hitch: The free lunch program is at St. Vincent de Paul's at 21st and San Pablo in downtown Oakland. If Moshesh has enough money for a bus ticket, he'll take the bus. If not, he may have to go without lunch that day.

A complicating factor is that these meal programs have rigid hours. If Moshesh has been held up in line waiting for a bathroom that day, he might not get to the free lunch in time. So he'll not only go hungry, he'll face a new problem: how to get back to Berkeley in time for dinner at Trinity Methodist Church.

"Sometimes, I have to make the calculation that it's just not worth the risk," he says.

Dinner doesn't start until 4:30, so Moshesh's task in the afternoon is to "make myself as unobtrusive as possible." He knows he could be rousted by the police at any time, so he tries his best to stay out of their -- and everyone else's -- way.

"The Free Clinic opens at 3 o'clock, so I can sometimes hang out there," he says. "But they only have a dozen chairs, so I have to get there early and line up for one of them."

Finally, it's 4:30 and dinnertime. Moshesh lines up with the other homeless people, waiting for a numbered admission ticket. After all the tickets have been handed out, the homeless people are admitted, 10 at a time. Often, the meals are served by volunteers from such places as the Walnut Creek Presbyterian Church and UC Berkeley fraternities.

Dinner lasts until 5:30. "That's when they kick us out, and it's back to the Free Clinic to kill more time until 9 o'clock, when they kick us out. After that, it's time to figure out where I'm going to sleep."

Though bone-tired from the daily grind, he treks to six or seven different shelters, checking each one out. "Is it quiet enough? Is the security OK? Are there too many people? Often, I'll reject all shelters and sleep outside. But when the weather gets bad, there are nights when I have to use a shelter."

But inside or outside, he won't fall asleep right away. "Too risky," he says. "You have to memorize every sound first, to know which ones are dangerous and which ones you can safely ignore. Some nights, I'll decide it's too dangerous to sleep at all, and I'll stay awake until dawn."

Caught in a loop

Then the next morning he's up to start the whole grind all over again. For many homeless people, it feels like a vicious cycle they can never escape.

"A job? That's so remote a possibility, it's not even a consideration for most homeless people," says Moshesh. "We don't even have an address for employers to respond to, much less a place to store our job interview clothes, assuming we have any. Sometimes it's just a question of getting a full night's sleep the night before the interview."

But Moshesh isn't giving up. In addition to his videos on Channel 25, he's just recorded a CD of World Beat music titled "Heart to Hearth," which will be released by Oakland-based Mindseed Records in September.

"I've been in the music business for a long time, and I instantly recognized a unique talent as soon as I heard him," says Mindseed CEO Ed Anderson, a noted jazz musician. "He plays drums in the Congolese style, using all sides of his hands, and that's rarely heard here in America."

"I feel like I have one foot in the grave and the other at the end of the rainbow," says Moshesh. "I have to have hope. That's what keeps you alive."

Ken Moeshe has won an Honorable Mention in the arts category at the Berkeley Video Film Festival. To see his film called "Poetic Injustice" please visit the Berkeley Video Film Festival website at www.berkeleyvideofilmfest.org.

Reach Martin Snapp at 510-262-2787 or e-mail msnapp@cctimes.com.

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