A Drink with Congressman Mel Watt (D. 12th District – NC)

By Dawoud Assad

On July 9-11, 2007 Homeless Helping Homeless sent representatives to the National Alliance to End Homelessness conference on Ending Homelessness: The Time is Now!, in Washington, DC. We also took this opportunity to visit with and lobby our NC senators and representatives about our concerns on homelessness in the United States and North Carolina and Charlotte in particular. Unfortunately, Congressman Watt was in committee at the time of our visit and thus was not available. In lieu of our visit, Congressman Watt did agree to visit us at one of our HHH meetings for lunch, although he did specify that he did prefer not to actually partake of food.

Our meeting with Congressman Watt was very successful. We were able to impress upon him a wide array of concerns of the organization and the community enlarge: from the plight of Mother Betty, to Rollon Washington’s quest for more attention to homeless veterans, to Dirk Thune’s outrage for American assistance to foreign countries, while neglecting to address “homelessness in our own backyard,” and AFFORDABLE HOUSING.

Congressman Watt ended the meeting by thanking us for the occasion and said that the meeting was quite enlightening. It also helped him to put a face on homelessness and to understand that homelessness afflicts people from all walks of life, without consideration of their station, religion, or national origin.

Homelessness is pandemic of the Human Race. By the way, in lieu of food, our beverage of choice was H2O.