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| Our Sponsors |
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Visit Our Sponsor
 | | Loaves & Fishes |
Visit Our Sponsor
 | | Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee |
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 | | Francis House |
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| SafeGround in the News |
Number of homeless students in Sacramento County schools jumps 50% plus, Sac Bee, 7/14/11
Editorial: Litigation isn't the answer to homelessness, Sac Bee, 6/6/11
After ruling, Sacramento must figure how to handle homeless campers' property, by Cynthia Hubert, Sac Bee, 6/6/11
Would you support a homeless shelter near your home? Online forum about Safe Ground on Facebook
Still no safe ground - by Hugh Biggar and Jimmy Spence, Sacramento News & Review, 4/14/11
Sacramento's nomadic winter shelter deemed a success, but what next?, by Cynthia Hubert, Sac Bee, 4/6/11
Safe Ground supporters hold vigil, call for a state of emergency, by Hossana Paida, Sacramento Press, 3/15/11
Safe Ground offers strength in numbers, but its homeless must move often, by Gina Kim, Sac Bee, 3/5/11
Homeless In Harper's,
Sac News & Review, 3/3/11
Editorial in the Bee by Our Exec Director, Steve Watters 2/19/11
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Tents Needed
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We are in desperate need of 4-person tents that are lightweight, which work best for transporting daily.
If you would like to donate tents, sleeping bags, or any other equipment, even office equipment, please contact us at 916-448-2448 and/or come by our office, located across from Loaves & Fishes, in Friendship Park:
Safe Ground Office
Friendship Park
Across from Loaves & Fishes
1321 North C. St.
Sacramento, CA 95811
7:00AM-2:45PM
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Safe Ground Sacramento's
Best Wishes to David Moss
on his Retirement
Special Edition, August 2011
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Congratulations on a
Well-Deserved Retirement David!
 | | David Moss |
Our special friend David Moss is retiring and moving with his wife Cedar to Mt. Shasta where they will be caretakers for a wilderness lodge on the sacred mountain. No one deserves retirement and a great retirement job more than David who has helped untold numbers of homeless and other vulnerable people throughout his lifetime. Simply put, David has been a critical link in the fight against homelessness in Sacramento for many years and has personally helped many homeless friends find a way to regaining control in their lives. David, who has also devoted much of his life to fighting for peace, disarmament and social justice, worked here in Sacramento with TLCS from 1984 to 1988 and came to Loaves & Fishes in 1987 where he served as the Director of Brother Martin's Courtyard. As the Courtyard gave way to Friendship Park, David organized to provide outreach to homeless guests at the Park. He started a newsletter and a group that helped lead to the Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee (SHOC).
 | | David Moss and Richard, 1992 |
David was drawn to help the homeless that built encampments along the levees on the American River. In the early 1990's, among the many river encampments David worked with were Freedom Camp, Hope Camp and Rubber Tramp Camp. David supported and aided in their non-violent fight for homeless rights in a city and county that refused those rights to its homeless and instead enacted an anti-camping ordinance that made it illegal to sleep and allowed law enforcement to unfairly confiscate the belongings of the homeless.
David also fought for the right to affordable housing. He was a member of the Mad Housers of Sacramento in the 1990s. The Mad Housers constructed a small hut at the State Capitol, demonstrating that with the investment of minimum dollars and a little time a great deal could be accomplished to help provide shelter for the homeless. David, along with his Loaves & Fishes and other colleagues, campaigned hard for the construction of 1000 small cottages in the early 1990s, a campaign that led to the eventual construction of Quinn Cottages.
 | | David Moss in 1992 |
Between 1994 and 2009 David returned to the parish ministry where he served as a Methodist minister for 15 years in several communities until returning to Loaves & Fishes in 2009. At that time in July of 2009, after the Sacramento Tent City was dismantled and Safe Ground Sacramento was about to get started in earnest; David identified a need to build a liaison between Loaves & Fishes and the new SafeGround community on the river. He soon became the Safe Ground Camp Liaison. David worked with SafeGround members and leaders during these first few years, helping implement a camp supply system, an office in Friendship Park and an Elder system for self-governance. More than all that, David has been there for each and every homeless person that he could serve. While providing personal ministry, guidance, and mentorship, David has helped the homeless community through their good times and their bad times. He has been there to help say 'goodbye' to lost friends in memorial services, "I do" to new partners in community weddings, to celebrate new jobs, homes and successes and to regroup to fight again when battles were lost. David will be missed and fondly remembered by many and forgotten by none.
 | | David and Cedar Moss |
On behalf of the Safe Ground community I wish David and Cedar a wonderful and sorely well-deserved retirement in one of the most beautiful and sacred places in our state, Mt.Shasta. Have a wonderful retirement David and please
 | | Steve Watters, Executive Director |
come visit.
Warmest Regards, Steve Steve Watters Executive Director |
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 | | David and Cedar Moss at Last Year's SafeGround Jubilee |
Words From David Moss
David Moss has been the Liaison between Loaves & Fishes and Safe Ground, and is retiring at the end of August after xx yearsI was prepared for my work with SafeGround from a number of experiences, but the most important was from Frank Holdenried. He was a rich kid who inherited a lot of money from his father but didn't let it go to his head. He spent it all by the time I came to know him in Kelseyville in 1974. He was a world traveler, had hobnobbed with jet setter celebrities, was the editor of a British Dog Show magazine, then became a novitiate in a Cappadocian Monastery in Spain, then as a Jesuit in California. By the time I met him he was penniless, living in an RV on his aunts property. I met him through her. She was a member of my church. He worshipped with her Sundays and we became friends. The rest of the story is complicated. There was a 7.5 magnitude earthquake in Guatemala February 4th, 1976 at 3 am local time: 23,000 people died, 76,000 injured, crushed as they slept under their heavy tile roofs and thick walled adobe houses. Frank was at a friends in Los Angeles. The friend had a Guatemalan maid. She was beside herself with anxiety that her family may have perished. Most areas of the country were shut off from the world for days. Frank, being unemployed, agreed to go down to Guatemala, to look up her family and bring them what cash the maid could provide. She called others and soon he found himself the ambassador for 24 other Guatemalans who networked with the maid. They gave him a round trip ticket and each put envelopes full of money in his pockets and asked him to find their families. Not knowing Spanish, or even where Guatemala was, he flew to Guatemala City, linked up with the Jesuits and went to work. Before this period of his life he had been depressed, had low energy and seemed lost. He was struggling with an overwhelming sense of meaninglessness. But after living with the Jesuits and helping the families he came back a different person. He talked enthusiastically of the things he had done and the people he had met. He had a purpose for his life. He talked of the lives he had saved with what little knowledge he had of first aid. He spoke movingly of seeing the eyes of God in a little boy on a steep path into the Limonada, a slum in Guatemala City. He decided to go down again to help the thousands of new orphans who survived the disaster. Our church bought him an old farm truck and filled it with practical tools and he drove back to Guatemala City, settling in a slum filled with 2,400 people called Santa Luisa. Santa Luisa, like SafeGround, was on someone else's property. It was not a "legal" encampment. The land was owned by the ruling family. Frank lived there on pennies a day, taking 6 orphans under his wing, giving them good food and hiring (with my churches help) a tutor to teach them to read. His shack had a dirt floor. In spite of the heat the inside was covered with plastic because Santa Luisa did not have proper toilet facilities, and by breathing the dust you could get diarrhea. The little church I served in California kept giving him money, never enough. He would use his truck to haul co-op beans & rice and as an ambulance for ill or injured residents. They built a tin Community Center behind his house. He was on the ride of his life! He invited me to live with him once & I came for the month of October, 1978, and it changed the direction of my life too. I lived with him at Santa Luisa for 21 days in his shack with his beloved orphan boys, with the rats and the feral dogs and the naked children of Santa Luisa, surrounded by human suffering I had never seen before. At night the sounds carried right through the tin and cardboard of the shacks. The wretched coughing would go on forever. It sounded like people where trying to turn their lungs inside out. When the the babies weaned and began to crawl around they picked up stuff in the dirt, put it in their mouths and began to die. One such child, unable to hold anything in, died of dehydration while I was there. The family was reluctant to bother Frank with an ambulance call because he had an important visitor (the gringo from the US). The next day we went to the wake. The hut was like all the others, black with the soot of an unventilated cooking fire, dark without windows, the only light from an open doorway to the street and two large waxen candles. On the crude table was this pure white little coffin between the waxen candles. There was no wailing or anger, just the silence of friends & neighbors bowing in respect; quiet prayer; as we sat along the walls. The benches and the candles were borrowed from the Community Center. When I came back from Guatemala I decided to work with the poor like Frank was doing. But I had divorced a year earlier and I couldn't leave the country because I needed to raise my kids. So I decided to look into another way, which turned out to be the homeless in Sacramento. Like Frank, I found that when I took God's nudge and decided to leave the church and work with Loaves and Fishes the first time and then with SafeGround, I entered one of the most intense and joyful periods of my life. I wouldn't have traded these last two years with SafeGround for anything in the world. Thank you , all of you, for being a part of SafeGround. I've received far more than I have given. I've been truly blessed! David Leeper Moss |
 | | John Kraintz, Board President |
A Few Words from our Board President, John Kraintz
John Kraintz is one of the founders of Safe Ground
On behalf of Safe Ground I'd like to thank David Moss for his years of dedicated service to our organization in its formative years. His compassion and mentorship have been instrumental in forming the direction that Safe Ground is taking. His presence will be greatly missed. We wish him well in his new life. |
 | | Sister Libby, Executive Director of Loaves & Fishes |
A Few Words from Sister Libby
Sister Libby Fernandez is the Executive Director of Loaves & Fishes
On behalf of Loaves & Fishes, I want to express our deepest "THANK YOU" to Reverend David Moss! He has been a part of Loaves & Fishes since the early 90's. In those early days, he worked directly with our homeless guests and helped them build a
community on the river--Freedom Camp and Hope Camp.
In 1994, David created a covenant known as "The 36 Things" for all staff and volunteers on how to work hand-in-hand with our poor and homeless. Today, we still live and learn by using "The 36 Things". David exemplified #14: "Practice seeing the eyes of Christ in the face of everyone you meet. Speak to the Christ in them from the Christ in you". May Christ be with you Dave, as you face God on the mountain of Shasta holding us in your heart with tranquility and peace.
Sister Libby
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 | | Charlene Singley |
A Few Words from Charlene Singley
Charlene is a Church Host Leader from St. John's Lutheran Church on 17th & L in Sacramento
David Moss retiring? That is an oxymoron!
He can retire from the day-to-day experiences of shepherding SafeGround through its infancy stage, but he cannot ever retire from sharing the care and love he feels for SafeGround and its beautiful members. I am fortunate to have been involved with SafeGround from shortly after its beginnings, having worked with Steve Ruder at St. John's Lutheran Church as host coordinators for overnight stays at St. John's.
The love, patience, and caring that David shows for each individual of SafeGround is almost palpable - it can be felt by everyone who comes in contact with him. He has been a calming influence and has offered strong guidance under very trying conditions and during very trying times. Growth is never easy, and David has been there every step of the way - be it through the growing pains of an emerging and coalescing group or the joyous moments as individuals have been able to get back on their feet and move on.
The growth that has occurred under David's guidance has been steady and sure. As a host for our SafeGround guests, I have seen the organization grow from a group trying to find their way to one that is well-organized and surefooted.
None of this could have happened without the caring presence of David Moss. He gives of his time and from his heart for the people of SafeGround. He truly loves each one of them, and they are as much a part of David as he is of the SafeGrounders.
So, yes, David will retire from his daily SafeGround pilgrimage, but he will never really leave them - they will always be in his heart and David will always be at the heart of SafeGround.
Good luck in your new adventures, David. We will miss you dearly!
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 | | Pam Tureen, Volunteer |
A Few Words from Pam Tureen and the Church Host Leaders
Pam Tureen is a Volunteer with the Spiritual Life Center
David has been the key person in the relationship between SafeGround campers and the churches that host them. He brought the SafeGround Host Church program to 5 churches in the mid-town area. Whenever we churches provide a meal and respite night for SafeGround, David is there, talking with the guests, counseling some, or perhaps resolving differences. He eats with the guests and he sleeps with them. Most importantly, he does all of this in a way that reflects God's love. David Moss is so effective in this role because he is an open, accepting person who warmly embraces people, smiles, and shares information. He gives of his time freely. For we who work in the host churches, David has always been there. His model of a Christ-like attitude in a Christ-centered ministry has been an inspiration for us all and it is that to which we all aspire. We wish David and his wife an exciting, interesting, and satisfying next step in life as caretakers at a Methodist Church camp. We will miss him dearly and we send him on his way with our love and gratitude. |
 | Jeannie Williams
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A Word from A Safe Ground Camper
Jeannie is a Safe Ground Elder (An Elected Leader)
One time I asked the campers "Tell me what you think of David Moss," and the first reaction was "He's awesome." He is part of Safe Ground. Part of the intricate infrastructure. Someone told me the other day, "Do you know what you call an angel without wings?" The answer is, "A friend." David is a friend to everyone he meets. He's unbiased, non-judgmental. He's taught me a lot. About all kinds of things, not just Safe Ground but all types of things. He's a blessing to everyone he interacts with. I know I speak on behalf of Safe Ground when I say God gave him to us to bless us. His endurance, his compassion, his purity. The love and the caring he gives. He's awesome. It's hard to say goodbye, but goodbye means "God be with you." God is with him wherever he goes. He's the SafeGround saint. We love him. He's a very special person. He has so much love and compassion for everything he does and says and deals with. I've got much love, admiration, and total respect for him. He's been a blessing in my life. Thank you David Moss. |
 | David Moss and Peace Camp
A Bit of History This is a photo of Peace Camp taken April of 1992. Peace Camp was a legal tent city in Sacramento, sanctioned by the City of Sacramento and, then Mayor, Anne Rudin. David Moss is pictured here on the bottom row, third from the right, sitting on the crate with a child on his lap. This shows us that he's been rabble-rousing for and with the homeless for a very long time. |
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 | A picture of Shasta, where David Moss will be living.
Mt. Shasta, California 14,162' Photo by Kevin Lahey
David Moss's Future Home -- David Moss is retiring and moving with his wife Cedar to Shasta at the end of August |
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Going Away Picnic for David Moss
Picnic at Discovery Park Tuesday August 23rd 3:00-5:00 You can get to Discovery Park from: Northgate Blvd, under 12th Street Bridge to Garden Hwy or I-5 to Garden Hwy or W of I-5 at Richards Blvd,turn right over the green bridge. We will try to be at the covered picnic area right in front of the Garden Hwy entrance. If not, check the other picnic areas. Think of it as a treasure hunt. It does cost $5 to drive in. Qs? Call Cedar 530-828-2221
Shasta is calling and David Moss is retiring...really!!!
June 30, 2009 David retired from pastoring Chico Trinity United Methodist Church ...and he hit the decks running the very next day on behalf of SafeGround and Loaves and Fishes. It has been a fantastic and meaningful ride. And now, August 25th, 2011 he is retiring... really.
"I am 68. Living in a cabin in the mountains has been a lifelong dream ofmine. I am conflicted about all this, whether to go to the wilderness orstay here and fight the good fight. But for the most part I want to go upthere and live. I want to learn to know the Goddess of the Cedars, theCreator ofthe mountains, the God of the grand silence, of immensedepths and of inner spaces. I'm trusting that in the wilderness somethingferal and green and new might emerge in me that can be helpful andwhole giving."
So let us gather and celebrate David's life of service! Join us! |
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Save the Date
Safe Ground Second Annual Jubilee
Wednesday, September 14th, 3:30 p.m. - 7:30 p.m. As the time gets closer we will let you know what we have planned for this special event. Save the date! 
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About Us
SafeGround needs churches, synagogues, congregations, union halls and business owners in the Midtown area to permit up to 100 SafeGround homeless persons to stay overnight on their property, from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. the next day. This would provide the SafeGround campers a sanctuary from arrest, and also give them a life-saving night free of the elements. SafeGround provides its own staffing and cleanup. Many hosts also provide a dinner and/or breakfast, but this is not required. Those who sleep with us promise to be alcohol free, drug free and nonviolent. All we need is a large room and someone to open the doors. We provide the rest. We have been doing this for over a year with four downtown churches and they may be contacted for reference at your request. Please contact David
Moss at 916-834-2228 or davidmoss43@gmail.com for more information if you can help.
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Save 33% with this notice!
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Come to Loaves & Fishes, 1321 North C St., Sacramento, CA 95811, 916-446-0874, (where SafeGround is located), and in the Welcoming Center, at the corner of North C Street and Ahern. Purchase a $15 short or long-sleeve T-Shirt at a discounted price of $10. (While supplies last: first come, first served.) Your shirt purchase price, and wearing it, support SafeGround. New Safe Ground hats (tan with logo) and T-Shirts (tan or a subdued green) now available. All hats and shirts are half price for our homeless supporters. Contact us for details. safegroundsactown@gmail.com  | | David Moss Modeling New Tan T-shirts and Hats |
| | Offer Expires: 9/30/11 |
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