It’s Time to Run Up SOS Sign

Next Monday evening, the Costa Mesa City Council will meet to decide--among other things--the fate of Share Our Selves. I only wish it could be the other way around, that Jean Forbath and her associates at SOS could be meeting to decide the fate of the Costa Mesa City Council. Maybe someday that is precisely what will happen--the Ultimate Solution.

Meanwhile, SOS is in immediate peril of losing the place from which it has offered a compassionate helping hand to the sick and the hungry for almost 20 years, and also a new facility that the city dangled like a carrot and then withdrew. Both actions left nothing but a lot of angry and determined citizens, led by Forbath, who have vowed to take to the streets before knuckling under to the death sentence of a group of politicians who spell compassion mostly with dollar signs.

I’m not at all sure that Orange County deserves Jean Forbath--or the relative handful of other private citizens who have tried rather desperately to do something about the onus this county carries of being rich, selfish and uncaring cheapskates. You’ve read the studies that show the ratio of giving to income in Orange County to be one of the lowest in the nation. That’s an attitude Jean Forbath and her associates deal with every day--and that far too many of our local political bodies reflect.

But Forbath doesn’t completely buy this dark package. She’s convinced that the politicians are listening to a relatively few people and that the majority of our citizens would like to see public support for SOS and similar organizations. And this optimism, Forbath told me the other day, isn’t gauzy, but rather is based on the outburst of spontaneous support she has been receiving ever since her latest tiff with the Costa Mesa City Council became a public issue.

“The phone hasn’t stopped ringing this past week,” Forbath said. “People are coming out of the woodwork to offer support, people of good will who just haven’t shown up before. We’re hoping that if we can get hundreds of people to respond, we can energize each other. This weekend, we’ll see if they mean it.”

Meanwhile, positions have hardened. Costa Mesa Mayor Peter S. Buffa is saying: “SOS dragged its feet on this and thought that when it actually got down to the wire, they could turn things around politically. But it’s not going to happen.” Forbath is equally determined that there be no restrictions on the people being served by SOS and that the agency remain in Costa Mesa. And the 20,000 needy people served each month by SOS are caught in the middle.

The City Council has made no effort to address itself to filling the void that would be left by the demise of SOS; it seems to be solely concerned with forcing the organization out of business. “And if we’re shut down,” Forbath says, “people will just suffer more. Other social organizations have already said they can’t pick up the slack. So it just means more desperation for people who are already desperate.”

The argument made by the City Council that upsets Forbath most is its insistence that the agency attracts undesirables who spread out in the neighborhood around SOS, urinating in yards and otherwise harassing homeowners. Forbath denies this angrily.

“It’s one of the big lies we constantly have to deal with,” she says. “We want to know where, when, who--and we haven’t been supplied any of those details. We’ve driven up and down in the SOS neighborhood dozens of times to check out the accusations, and these things simply don’t happen. The people who come to us for help don’t do any of the things they are accused of doing.”

Forbath accepts the fact that SOS will probably have to turn to private funding for help (in fact, it was announced Friday that $300,000 was received), something the agency has not stressed because it wanted to put its energies into serving its people rather than fund raising. “If we had the place,” Forbath says, “we could probably raise the money. But it’s important to realize that the money problem isn’t basic. What’s basic is public acceptance of SOS in the community.”

The public has an opportunity to express that support over this weekend--and to begin to turn around the image of Orange County citizens (whose per capita giving last year was less than half the national average) as socially indifferent and selfish. SOS is holding a rally from 2 to 4 p.m. today at the park adjacent to its headquarters at 611 Hamilton St. in Costa Mesa. And from the rally, a group of supporters--Forbath hopes a large group--will move on to the steps of the Costa Mesa City Hall where they will fast until the City Council meeting begins Monday night.

Although the council members say none of this will have any impact on their position on the closing down of SOS, it is a given in the American political system that the people who run it are very conscious of numbers. Thus far, they’ve been hearing mostly from those who want SOS out of the community. The time has come for them to hear from the citizens who feel otherwise.

The needy aren’t going to go away, however much the City Council would like to see that happen. They are simply, as Forbath pointed out, going to get more desperate. Those local citizens who want to see SOS retained in the community while the problems of a new location and financing are worked out need to speak up. Not very often will individual citizens have an opportunity to make their voices heard more effectively. Those who show up to support SOS this weekend will be counted--and every number will be significant in the decision-making process.

As the Catholic Diocese of Orange’s auxiliary bishop-elect, Michael P. Driscoll, said at an SOS press conference last Monday: “It is a sad indictment of the world we live in that SOS would even need to exist. It is a sadder thought that those people elected and entrusted with responsibility for the common good could not find another solution to the problem.”

And the saddest development of all would be if the citizens of Costa Mesa don’t turn out en masse to register their support for SOS this weekend.