Let’s not forget that homeless agitator and full-time accomplice of Robert Norse, is Becky Johnson, who is in full support of bull-dozing the homes of Palestinians, the slaughter of civilians, and the continued occupation of Palestine. It is laughable that HUFFists proclaim indignation over the treatment of the poor. We should never forget that Mr. Norse sued the city because his feelings were hurt when he was 86’d from council chambers. A common misconception is that he was arrested for his nazi salute, this is wrong, he was arrested because he refused to leave. Naturally the judge threw out Deep-pockets’ frivolous lawsuit, but the thousands of dollars the city had to spend defending itself could have been better spent helping the poor. We should never forget the excellent work Paul Lee, Page Smith and others have done to actually help the poor and homeless in our community even while having to fight off the Norse nonsense. Anyone truly interested in Homeless Issues ought to read Paul Lee’s book “The Quality Of Mercy Homelessness in Santa Cruz 1985-1992.” In his book on page 39 Lee recalls Norse first appearance in our town:

...During that time we had to cope with the counter-productive tactics of Robert Norse, a self-styled homeless advocate who suddenly appeared one day out of the blue. We had no idea where he came from and what he was up to except that he was going to be trouble, not only to the local authorities, but also to us. He reminded us of the worst vision of a 1960s “outside agitator” type who comes to town to fuss things up. The type that never does anything productive, and never means to do anything productive-but is especially good at making a fuss. For its own sake. An old style agent-provocateur with a t-shirt reading “epater le bourgeoisie”. There were those among us, especially Fred, who came to believe that Robert intended to cause disruption for the benefit of those who wanted our enterprise to fail. Most of us came to believe that he lived off an annuity of some sort and was free to agitate full time. Moreover he got lots of press.

Norse has continued to get press and has been working diligently sowing the seeds of hatred among us. We need to weed out his lies and hatred from our struggle and work with the many positive people in our community.