Superior Kachiku

I get the Seattle Times every day for the sudoku. The P-I has one, but the one in the Seattle Times has superior "kachiku" ("cattle.")

"Sudoku" means "pointless." You fill a grid with the digits 1 through 9, so rows, columns, and some 3x3 blocks have no repeated digits. When you're done, it spells a magic word! Ha! No! When you're done you have a grid filled with digits.

Also pointless is arguing with Seattle Times editors. It's like arguing with beanbag chairs that blow when you sit on them. But they blew smellier than usual last Thursday with an editorial entitled "Tent City: pointless," and the stench propels me. There are misleads and lies throughout.

In the first paragraph we're told 100 people live in the Eastside Tent City ("Tent City 4", managed by SHARE/WHEEL) "rent-free." The mislead: In fact, the residents pay rent in labor to maintain the grounds and keep them secure.

The second paragraph is a piece of propaganda worthy of Goebbels. They say the small size of Tent City 4 proves "This is not New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina." From that they conclude "there is no public emergency here."

No, there is a public emergency, with more than 2600 people unable to find either housing or shelter every night. The fact that Tent City 4 is so small is not proof there is no emergency, but more evidence of the nature of it. It would be much larger if the response to the emergency were adequate. But, just like New Orleans after Katrina, the government has failed, and SHARE/WHEEL can only do so much in the face of community opposition, such as the vicious, poisonous, lie-laden opposition of the Seattle Times.

"There are always people with private emergencies, and we help them with shelter beds." The Seattle Times is a newspaper. It reports fact. The Seattle Times editorial staff has the job of reading their own paper. Their own paper has kept them informed of the fact that there are shelter beds for only half the homeless in Seattle. I know they do their job well so I know they know that. So when they say, "and we help them with shelter beds," they are purposely lying. Shame.

"We don't need to use tents — and nobody thought of it until some political activists at SHARE/WHEEL devised Tent City eight years ago." The Seattle Times editors don't need to use tents, I'm sure, but when they use the editorial "we" in this case they are knowingly (they're writers!) and deliberately implying the public "we." It's a propaganda technique designed to divide those who do need tents to survive from the rest of the public. It goes along with defining their emergencies as private.

SHARE/WHEEL didn't invent tents. They were needed long before Tent Cities were invented. SHARE/WHEEL brought them together to help each other be safe, first and foremost.

[Above: Maybe Mathew Brady invented tents.]

"The point of it is politics. It is to have homelessness in the face of well-housed people to make them feel guilty." Politics to call attention to an emergency is no vice. The people need to do politics to be heard. The powerful, like the Seattle Times management, would silence the politics of the oppressed. The purpose of Tent City isn't to create guilt but to educate and inspire further action. AND to survive.

"Now... There are shelter beds. There are opportunities for work." The majority of Tent City residents are employed, and still can't afford rent. There are NOT shelter beds enough. (To the Times: You keep on repeating lies, and we'll keep on repeating the truth, and we'll see who wins in the end.)

"Itinerant tent camps are not acceptable in a modern city." Homelessness is not acceptable in a modern city.

Questions To Question By

1. "Why don't you say what you mean, Wes?"

2. "Kachiku?"

3. If homelessness were private would it be homelessness?

4. Exactly how are private and public opposites?