Homelessness in Space

[from 10/7/11]

The Port finally evicted Nickelsville from Terminal 107 a few days ago. As usual I was asleep at home about the time it was all happening, because I needed my beauty sleep as you'd know if you'd seen me. I got up and got on the computer to play a few rounds of Orbit Your Unsuspecting Rabbit, when a friend's chat window popped up asking me if it was true that Anitra "Not Yet Ready To Be Arrested Again So Soon After Last Conviction" Freeman was arrested. I then spent five minutes learning what chat, twitter, and mobile phones are really good for.

The good news: Anitra did NOT get herself arrested, so with the clock on her conviction from last year ticking away she should be good for being arrested again in a month or two, when they'll really want another warm body in the police van. The bad news: 12 other people got arrested. Preliminary reports are that the people arrested were occupying space in such ways that it took more than 4 Port cops per to safely nab and extricate them, and that perhaps 30 more cops of some sort hung about just in case the Jaws of Life were needed. Then, more good news, all the arrestees were released the same day, pending charges.

I'm thrilled that space was involved. As a mathematician who specialized in the field inaccurately called geometry, which should have been called space-ology, I am ecstatic whenever space, or more generally space-time, or space-time related thingies, crop up in the news. I am proud to be a space-time cadet; I have the decoder ring, metaphorically speaking.

The situation is all about space. Nickelsville needs surface area to exist. This is part of a larger issue, that homeless people in general need surface space to exist. There's not enough space where they are allowed to be. For example, there are bed spaces in shelters, but not enough of them. Various estimates assess how much space is needed. In the city I would estimate an absolute minimum of 40,000 square feet is needed, here and there, to enable all the homeless people in Seattle, not just those involved with Nickelsville, to have enough to exist. That would be just less than one acre American, less than 4 decihectares for you foreigners.

The average block in the downtown business core is two acres. On top of that two acres are various office buildings, which serve to multiply, by the number of stories they have, those two acres over and over again. About 18% of it is going vacant these days. When all the calculations are done it turns out there are over 200 acres of unused surface space just downtown in commercial buildings. That's 200 times as much space as is needed to shelter all the homeless people in Seattle. There is, similarly, hundreds of times as much vacant space as is needed in Bellevue to shelter all the Bellevue homeless people, and likewise for Renton, Kirkland, and every other community in the entire country.

I can understand why homeless people aren't going to get one half of one percent of the vacant commercial space downtown. They don't have any money to pay for it. I'm just pointing out that there is no shortage of space in the world for human beings to exist. The prices for it are out of reach of a few thousand people, that's all.

All we're talking about here is bare minimum shelter, not adequate housing. To end homelessness would take more than the equivalent of .5% of the available space downtown. It would take closer to 5% of it. But if Nickelsville can't find even what would amount to .05%, the numbers tell you that the goal of ending homelessness will not be achieved, until the system that says no to human needs is overturned.

Meanwhile, is there anyone at all in this city besides Greg Nickels who just can't live without a 1st Avenue streetcar?

Cindy, Miss Direct

[from 6/17/09]

Last Thursday, a day after the last issue came out, and after a full day in which Seattle could discover that this column was not represented in it, a flood of an inquiry asked what had become of the crossword puzzle. The crossword puzzle thanks whoever that was who asked for their concern. (It took a little vacation.)

I myself spent the week on Facebook with all my wonderful Facebook friends. It's hard to believe that I lived for over half a century without belonging to an internet social network. What did I ever do with my free time? I must have stared at screens, but why?

Fortunately almost everyone I've ever known is now on Facebook, too. Anitra "I Am The Web" Freeman was naturally there first, and dragged me to it. Everyone at Real Change is there, although several are hiding from me. Speaking of hiding, even my muse, Cindy Holly, Muse of Other & Muse of Few Words, is on Facebook, where she's using an alias. She's afraid that otherwise she'd be inundated with unsolicited job offers. She's also lying about her age. Putting down "ageless, of surpassing beauty" in the application wasn't an option.

So now when I need help from Cindy, I don't have to conjure her up. We can pass Facebook messages back and forth. I just asked her on Chat how I should kick this column back up, and she answered right back, "you should find out what's going on and write about that" followed by a winky-smiley. She knows I can't stand smileys, hence the wink. After thinking a minute I asked "What's going on where?" By then Cindy was off-line.

So I'm going to guess she was talking about Nickelsville, as opposed to, say, the Iranian presidential elections, or the switch to digital TV. For the humorous potential. Nickelsville, you will recall, wants to be a permanent shanty-town/encampment for Seattle homeless people that have been let down by an inadequate shelter system, a Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness that's a joke, and a mayor who treats human beings who won't further his career in any obvious way as waste. It began on alleged city land in West Seattle last year, was booted off by Mayor Nickels, then stopped in Discovery Park, the U District, and south of the city. Now it's back 100 yards from its original site on state land, just out of the Morlocks' reach.

The reason I think Cindy meant for me to talk about Nickelsville, as I've said, is that there's a potential for humor in its unfolding, whereas everything else happening is just bad news.

Being homeless is really the ultimate inconvenience, after all. You don't have a decent place to sleep, no way to get one, and everyone blames you for it and gets in the way of every single effort you make to try to improve the situation. That's why Nickelsville won't ever be downtown, for example.

When Nickels went to the press to justify tearing down camps of homeless people he cited the filth of the camps. So the campers asked that they be allowed toilets and dumpsters, and were turned down.

A lot of people have said that they should never have called it Nickelsville, because to do so "politicized it." But if one man is the political power that threatens to destroy your chances of survival, that's your politicization right there. Nickels is the politician, Nickels is the agent who started the sweeps, Nickels deserves all the credit for making Nickelsville a necessity.

There's humor, anyway, in misdirection. While we're all waiting to see what will come of Nickelsville, SHARE/WHEEL is looking for transportation for homeless people to and from their scattered shelters unrelated to Nickelsville, and if they fail to find it, they will bring that inconvenience to Nickels himself, camping on his lawn as soon as next Monday.

It's Sideshow Bob stepping on a rake. It's wrong to laugh, but you can't help it.

Mayor Fails Sherbert Test

Let's talk about the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA)!

A 1963 Supreme Court case decided that a Ms. Sherbert who was fired for not working on her Sabbath day was entitled to unemployment benefits, establishing the 4 part "Sherbert Test" to help courts determine when religious freedom trumps a law: If 1) a belief is sincere and if 2) the law places a significant burden on the practice of the belief, then the government must prove 3) it's acting in furtherance of a "compelling state interest," and 4) it has pursued that interest in the manner least restrictive, or least burdensome, to religion. If 1) and 2) hold and 3) and 4) can't be proved by the government, then the government needs to step off.

Well, that decision, made by a liberal 1963 court, was whittled away by later liberal courts appointed by different presidents. So finally Congress had no choice but to pass the RFRA in 1993 to get their Sherbert back.

Why do I, Wes Browning, care? I'm getting to that.

First, in 2007, the Justice Department ruled, without notifying me personally, that the RFRA meant that the government can go ahead and give my tax money to faith-based organizations that only hire people of their own religious persuasions, even though the same Congress that passed the RFRA specifically said no to the practice. The Justice Department said, basically, a general vague yes from Congress that they like overturns a specific clear no that they don't like. If the Justice Department's Mommy said "you don't always have to do what Billy wants," and also said "don't hit Billy," the Justice department would decide it could do what Billy didn't want, namely punch Billy silly.

It so happens it's against MY religion to give one dime of my taxes to any organization that only hires Christians to do charity work that Animists could do just as well. But the Justice Department decided that my religious claim on how MY money is spent in MY name doesn't mean SQUAT, because these religious charities that can collect all the money they want from public donations TAX-FREE would be SERIOUSLY burdened by not having my money, too.

[Left: This animist can label and stuff envelopes for a donation drive as well as any Baptist or Presbyterian. All he needs is a chance to prove himself.]

Well, OK, I'm not going to be a sore loser. So long as that same low bar applies everywhere.

Last week, Nickelsville, the world's pinkest tent city that wants to be a shantytown, was forced onto the parking lot of University Christian Church, northwest of the University of Washington, by the persecution of Mayor Nickels and his administration. You'd think they'd be safe on church land. But Nickels has told the church and everyone else concerned that putting Nickelsville up in the parking lot violates Seattle's land use laws.

What does Sherbert say? Let's see.

1) Does host sincerely believe that their religion requires they give sanctuary to the poor? Yes. It's in their Bible.

2) Would making the church clear the parking lot of tents, or produce a replacement parking lot within days, significantly hinder the practice of said belief? Duh! (It might be different if they were granted a reasonable amount of time to provide alternative off-street parking, but Nickels is in a big hurry. He's got to screw'm while he's got the itch.)

3) Does the state, i.e. the city, have a compelling interest? They have an interest in ensuring that people can park on the streets. But compelling? Parking? Compared to survival? Give me a break.

4) Is evicting Nickelsville and/or fining everyone involved $150 the least restriction of the church's freedom to exercise its beliefs in this case?

Hardly. If a mission that only hires Christians can have my taxes, and never pay them back, there's no reason the city can't let a church limit my parking for a lousy month or two, for the sake of homeless people, when every developer in town can do the same for the sake of building bigger and better homes for the rich.

Nickels needs to step off.

I'm So Privileged

Greg Nickels [our mayor] has me so royally peeved, I'm tempted to just write "Greg Nickels is an arrogant, narcissistic, fool" 75 times and turn that in. I've been told by the editor I could get away with that sort of thing. He's said no one would notice any difference in the quality of my writing, so "what the hell."

I won't though, because I wouldn't want to abuse my free speech privilege. Sarah Palin, who aspires to be Vice President of the United States, a job that requires upholding our Constitution, has reminded us lately that freedom of speech is a privilege that the press should not abuse. Indeed, I clearly recall how in 8th grade history we learned the first ten amendments to the Constitution (they formed what was called the Bill of Privileges), and that the first privilege listed after the Privilege of Religion was the Privilege of Freedom of Speech.

Another privilege we learned about was the Privilege of the People to Peaceably Assemble. I'm sure that if Sarah Palin ever gets to be president she'll keep us on the straight and narrow there, too.

[Right: Some women peaceably assembled to ask politely to be granted privilege to vote. "Please, sirs, with sugar on top!"]

Our activist Supreme Court, abusing its privilege to interpret the Constitution, declared decades ago that people retain privileges of association, asserting they could not otherwise exercise their speech and assembly privileges. Palin has clearly understood how wrong this is.

When Palin accused Barack Obama of associating "with terrorists who targeted our own country" she referred to the fact that Bill Ayers, who helped found the Weather Underground when Obama was 8, and Barack Obama have both worked on the same two non-profit boards. Palin would regard that as an abuse of the privilege of association.

She's absolutely right. Suppose I'm helping put out a fire, at, say, a kindergarten, and I know that the guy passing me buckets of water is none other than Bill Ayers, who blew up a critical Pentagon file-cabinet once. I should walk away from that fire because associating with known terrorists is always wrong, wrong, wrong. The kindergarteners would understand, when they got older, if they weren't burned to a crisp. If they were burned to a crisp, they'd have to ask themselves in the afterlife what the heck were they doing going to a kindergarten in the same neighborhood with a known terrorist?

[Above: President Lyndon B. Johnson shakes hands with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. during the signing of the landmark Civil Privileges Act of 1964.]

As if just to show you don't have to be republican to have the same kind of grasp of law on privilege as Sarah Palin, this past weekend the administration of our Democratic Mayor Greg Nickels put out a Notice of Land Use Violation threatening to fine a long list of individuals and associations for their support of Nickelsville, at least one of whom was listed for the sole crime of having emailed his support to another of them.

The Notice of Violation notably lists SHARE/WHEEL, the homeless grassroots organization that was NOT responsible for Nickelsville, as a supporter, and includes mention of its Vancouver, Washington, office. But the Vancouver WA office is that of an entirely different organization that just happens to have the name Share.

Therefore Nickels carries Sarah Palin's thinking a step further. Not only should people not do good things if the wrong people join in, they should also pay for having the wrong name. Again, this is as it should be. Share House, Vancouver, started in 1977. SHARE/WHEEL started in 1990. Share House has had 18 of its 31 years in existence to change its name. They have totally abused their privilege of name-having.

But Nickels went too far listing John and Jane Doe as "Persons Responsible For The Violations".

We know what he's doing. He's getting ready to fine everybody who so much as wrote a letter to the editor in support of Nickelsville, $150 a day, every day it exists.

Now we need everyone who cares about Nickelsville and the RIGHT of homeless people to survive to declare themselves to be John or Jane Doe -- I am John Doe.

[Below: I already posted this on my other blog Run Off, but it's worth posting again.]

Spartacus [I now think the subtitles are in Turkish.]

Adventures at Nickelsville

Back in the 60s I was a rally chaser. Missing a rally or a march would be like missing an episode of Star Trek. An enormous sense of grief would come over me, made worse by the knowledge that there would be no summer reruns in the case of the rallies and marches.


[Above: May 5, 1970. I was there. The Yellow Indicatrix tells you where. I am NOT between the other protesters and the Tac Squad. I am on the northbound on-ramp. No friend of head trauma, I.]

Now, though, I just want to sit in my little corner in my tiny room and watch the world go by on CNN and the internet. When a public gathering presents an opportunity to be arrested it only strengthens my resolve to hide out in my room, owing to desmoteriophobia (fear of dungeons).

Not all of us have such fear. Saturday I opened up the Seattle P-I to find none other than my beloved Anitra "Smiling Buddha" Freeman gazing blissfully up at a policeman about to haul her radical-hippy ass off to jail. The possibility that this time they could just leave her there and forget to tell anyone either did not occur to her, or it goosed her, or she'd gone batspit crazy and thought the policeman was Wilford Brimley come to take her to Antarea, where she'd be young forever, and learn break-dancing from Don Ameche.

Anitra was getting arrested for refusing to leave alleged city land upon which Nickelsville had been set up. You may recall that two weeks ago Nickelsville was a homeless peoples' shantytown only in potentia. On Friday of last week it was very much concrete, and as Mayor Nickels wanted it to return to being an abstract idea, he sent the police to try to make it so.

Before Anitra got arrested there was a scene, broadcast on KING TV, of her telling residents of Nickelsville ("Nickelodeons") three options the police had laid out. I've watched the video over and over, trying to figure out the logic of the three options. It sounds like what she said the police were saying was the Nickelodeons' options were EITHER 1) stay and be arrested OR 2) go away and not be arrested, OR 3) go away with shipoopy, and no kiss.

I was actually there to witness that episode and the subsequent 22 arrests, in spite of my aforementioned phobia, because I'd spent the night before boiling peanuts for my sweetheart not considering that, what with her spending the night in a fuchsia tent at Nickelsville and then surely wanting to stick around to be jailed, and me without a teleportation device, I would have to go there to deliver her the peanuts. So I went, and it was just coincidence that the police vans were arriving from the donut shop just the same time I arrived by bus.

It's the story of my life. I boil some peanuts for someone, then I think, oops, got to deliver the peanuts. I get there just as the cops do. Oh, look, doggies!

It all worked out half well though. I did not get arrested. Anitra got caught and released. Governor Gregoire granted a reprieve to Nickelsville itself, letting the Nickelodeons cram as many tents onto a state owned parking lot as could fit, out of reach of the mayor. I got to talk to the people the mayor sent from Human Services to refer Nickelodeons to "proper" shelter in the system, and I tried to find out how they could do that with a straight face knowing that the shelters are full every night. Answer: they don't think about that. They just pass out referral cards to whoever takes them and call it a job done.

Here's your irony adventure: Some people took the cards and went to be referred to the shelter that the mayor keeps saying is there for them, and the referral agency gave them bus tickets and sent them back to Nickelsville!

Greg Nickels is like the owner of a row boat trying to bail it out with a Dixie cup after it's already sunk in 10 feet of water. Greg Nickels is a fool.

Nickels Makes History Repeat

I have a column due by 9 AM this morning, and I've also promised Anitra "Not Acting On Behalf Of Anybody In Particular" Freeman that by the same time I'd read a book-length manifesto on Nickelsville that she wrote with a committee. Not being inclined to do needless work, I shall now attempt to combine the two efforts into one glorious slack-off.

[Above Left: Anitra with acquaintance.]

I've talked about Nickelsville here before but I've never spent an entire column on it. This is mainly due to the fact that it hasn't existed yet. I generally find that when I talk about that which is not, the results are even more obtuse than what you usually get when I talk about that which is.

But Nickelsville is poised to be, probably before the next column is out, so it has achieved a degree of concreteness analogous to that of The Melting of the Polar Icecaps and The Rise of the Oceans Due to Global Warming, or The Great Stock Market Crash of 2008 (both expected later today).

So what will Nickelsville be? It will be a Hooverville that is named after Greg Nickels, Seattle's mayor, rather than after Herbert Hoover, a former US President. In the Great Depression Seattle had a Hooverville, a shantytown built by homeless people. A lot of people then thought that Herbert Hoover was responsible for a lot of the Greatness of the Great Depression. So they named the shantytowns after him, the need for them being perceived to be partly his fault.

Today, we don't just think Greg Nickels has a lot to do with how hard it is to survive homeless in Seattle, we know he does. We have listened to him talk a good talk about ending homelessness, while at the same time chasing homeless encampments all around the city and destroying survival gear wherever found. The message from Nickels is, we, the City of Seattle, will end homelessness in the abstract by 2014 (only: not really because the plan isn't to actually end homeless, but hah, hah, that's what we say about it, even though the plan itself says something entirely different, read the fine print), but concretely we will strip all the homeless that are forced outdoors for lack of adequate shelter of all their property, and leave them to the elements.

So as those homeless people who wish to live band together into a shantytown, there is no question whose fault it all is. Nickelsville will be Nickels' fault. Without Greg Nickels and the homeless encampment sweeps he instigated, Nickelsville wouldn't be about to happen. As bad as George Bush is, there would not be a Bushville at this time. Until maybe next week, depending on how many multi-billion dollar financial greed factories file Chapter 11 this week.

As Anitra and Friends' manifesto ably and concisely points out, Nickelsville will cost the City of Seattle nothing. To be less concise: it will not take money out of the general fund. It will not be built by city workers paid by taxpayers. The residents will build and maintain it with assistance from private donors. The city will not be billed for the labor.

People are always saying, "Why don't homeless people ever do anything to help themselves?" Well, they do, everyday. They help themselves by barely surviving in spite of all the obstacles and all the persecution. It's understandable that people can't see that work of surviving, because it's scattered among thousands of personal stories.

Nickelsville should make matters clearer. "What are homeless people doing to help themselves?" Nickelsville, for one thing.

And if, as feared, the city tears Nickelsville down, that would help answer the follow-up question, "Why, if they are helping themselves, are they still homeless?"

The first step in getting out of homelessness is finding a way to maintain and survive every day. If that first step is continually tripped up by the police power of a mayor, then there can never be a second step.