Body Count Letters

I didn’t get much response from these letters, but a regular body count on the front page still seems like a good idea to me. It would surely get the public’s attention---and keep it---every week, reminding us that, as long as homeless people are dying on our streets, we haven’t solved the problem.

A Weekly Body Count?
Date Fri, 04 Feb 2000
From: rmander@postoffice.pacbell.net
To: bruce_brugmann@sfbg.com
Mr. Brugmann:
Since the Public Health Dept. tells us that 169 homeless people died on our streets last year, why not run a weekly body count of such deaths? The body counts the media used during the US war on Vietnam prevented anyone who read the papers or watched the news on TV from forgetting about the war. If you could pry a weekly body count from Public Health, why not box it off and run up front in the Guardian?

Running it By the Coalition on Homelessness
Subject: The Body Count
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000
From: rmander@postoffice.pacbell.net
To: coh@sfo.com
An idea for putting and keeping the homeless issue uppermost in people's minds: Given the shocking annual casualties among the homeless on our streets, get your friends at the Bay Guardian to put a body count of the homeless who died each week on their front page. The weekly American body count in the mainstream media was one of the things that made the US war against Vietnam impossible for the public to forget. It could have a similar galvanizing effect in the city.

Running it By the Chronicle…
Subject: The Homeless Body Count
Date: Fri, 03 Mar 2000
From: rmander@postoffice.pacbell.net
To: chronletters@sfgate.com
Editor:
Homelessness---and the fact that 169 homeless people died on our streets last year---is something a lot of people in the city can put out of their minds, especially if they don't actually have any homeless people living in their neighborhoods. Hence, it's tough to sustain the political will to deal with homelessness.
The Chronicle can do a public service thusly: Get a weekly tally of the number of homeless who have died on our streets and box it off on the front page.
The weekly body count of Americans killed in Vietnam helped focus public opinion on the war and, in my opinion, helped generate the political will to end it.

And the Independent (which at least published the letter, Sept. 23, 2003)
From: Rob Anderson
To: letters@sfindependent.com
Sent: September 6, 2003
Subject: The Body Count
Editor:
It was good to see the homeless body count on the front page of The Independent. That’s the kind of story that helps focus readers’ minds on the fact that we have an ongoing emergency on our streets.
A suggestion: why not box off a weekly body count on the front page of every edition of The Independent to keep the issue alive in readers’ minds? Remember that one of the things that helped mobilize opposition to the US attack on Vietnam was the weekly body count released by the government to the media.