Rock star Bono may get a gold star from some quarters for his fight against poverty in Africa, but actor Danny Glover keeps his activism on a more national level. Or at least that was the case when he came to town recently, to address the issue of homelessness.
Glover visited the Emerald City on May 5, when he served as keynote speaker for the 2009 benefit luncheon for Building Changes, an organization that forges public-private partnerships to find innovative solutions to housing and meeting the needs of the homeless.
Garnering numerous rounds of applause from a crowd of 500, Glover, known for his roles in the "Lethal Weapon" series and "The Color Purple," acknowledged that many people hold assumptions about homeless people. On the very doorstep to his office in the San Fran area, he said he'd seen two people -- sleeping, with cups nearby to collect change -- he assumed were homeless. "But I don't know who they are," he admitted. He'd offer money to them, which he thought might help, though he suggested another offering might do more good: "Speaking up."
But why raise your voice? To create "systemic change," he suggested, one that will ensure "we must talk about homelessness."
Nothing will happen, Glover asserted, unless everyone works to create a system that shows the "real GNP is our communities. ... We are the architects of our own rescue."