Think of the Kittens

I think it’s time for another Homeless News You Can’t Use Roundup!

In this Eastertide season we have lots of Homeless News relating to Jesus and friends, and I must mention some of them.

In Albuquerque, Rev. Trey Hammond gave a couple of homeless men a camera to photograph scenes from their own lives that reminded them of stories from the last week of Christ’s life, because, you know, Jesus was homeless, too. I had to mention that because every time anyone says, “Jesus was homeless, too,” a kitten is born, and you all know we need more kittens all the time.

On Good Friday in Honolulu, a group of legislators marched barefoot dodging pebbles and broken glass along a 5-mile route as "a small way of acknowledging the suffering" of the poor on a day memorializing the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. They made 14 stops along the way, corresponding to the Stations of the Cross, to pray for and talk to homeless people, and made various donations.

Some of the marchers put duct tape on their feet. When it was suggested that this was cheating, because Jesus and his Apostles had no duct tape, State Rep. Michael Kahikina said, "But Jesus gave us wisdom!"

So in two thousand years Jesus gave us the wisdom to invent duct tape so we can march for the poor and homeless in an approximately barefoot state. There is no limit to what Jesus may give us the wisdom to do in another two thousand years. I want a levitator I can have surgically embedded under my corns, so I can walk on water in an approximately barefoot state. For the poor and homeless. That would be wise.

In a press release circulated for pay on Press Release Network by 55-year old Terry Coleman of Denver, CO, we learn that 55-year old Terry Coleman of Denver, CO, has sung hymns for 40 hours 17 minutes FOR THE HOMELESS, in order to “get into either the Guinness Book of World Records or The Book of Alternative Records.”

Depending on how you read the press release by 55-year old Terry Coleman of Denver, CO, the event of his singing of the hymns was held at Tabitha’s Restaurant either on Feb. 12 or next July. In any case Terry was 54 at the time, and he hoped to raise a lot of money for the homeless, including his homeless brother, but he didn’t. Also, the Guiness Book of World Records doesn’t choose to have an entry for longest hymn singing.

I am just thrilled to learn that I can inundate the world’s news outlets with my own press release for only a couple hundred dollars or so in the hopes of raising funds for the poor and the homeless. I’m thinking of announcing my learning of this fact. My press release will say: Dr. Wes Browning of Seattle, WA, has learned how to flood the world with press releases at a cost of only a couple hundred dollars or so FOR THE HOMELESS. Please make your checks out to Dr. Wes Browning, and put “FOR THE HOMELESS” on the comment line, so he knows how to spend your generous donation of any amount large or small.

Finally, in the non-religious Homeless News You Can’t Use category a 2-1 vote of a 3-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down Los Angeles’ no-sitting ordinance because it violates the 8th Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

You can’t use that news because the court explicitly cited Seattle’s No-Sitting ordinance as one of many such laws around the country that they consider acceptable because the Seattle law is limited to certain hours of the day, and only applies in restricted zones.

Still, it’s nice to know that 2 out of 3 Ninth Circuit justices think homeless people should be able to sleep somewhere, sometime, without being arrested for it.

Maybe they were really thinking of the kittens.

Potatoes Don't Grow On Trees

Last week my copy of the American Civil Liberties Union 2006 Workplan arrived in the mail. Having experienced something of a windfall last year I had dished out some cash to the ACLU in order to fulfill a 13 year old wish to be a “card carrying member” of the organization, just like Dukakis. So now I’m on their mailing list, and by the way I’m also on the mailing lists of countless other organizations seeking money to correct societal ills, because for all their talk about rights to privacy the ACLU apparently doesn’t mind sharing my name and address with the whole world.

But I’m not going to whine (anymore) about that. After all, it hasn’t been so bad. The begs for money just fill my mailbox and there’s a wastebasket right below it, so I don’t have to carry them too far. Plus I find some opportunities that I appreciate. For example the NAACP offered to make me a card carrying member for a price that I thought was quite reasonable, considering that I could use the card for fun things, like convincing dumb people that I’m an honorary Person of Color. Oh yeah, and I like some of the work they do.

Of course you can join organizations without liking everything they do. Believe it or not, even though I’m on the board of this rag-plus-do-good entity, I don’t agree with everything they do. For instance, I think vendors should be able to get papers on Sunday. Or, to take a better example, I think I should be paid for writing this. I would accept the Calvin Trillin /Village Voice deal: one column, one baking potato. Taking into account the fact that Washington grown Russets are now hovering near 30 cents per pound and that single potatoes average less than half a pound, I think that would be eminently reasonable. But, “no, if we paid you a potato, we’d have to pay everybody a potato,” is all I hear.

Anyway, when I got my ACLU 2006 Work Plan out of my mailbox, Anitra Freeman was there. Ms. Freeman happens to be a Raging Granny, so she is under surveillance by the FBI for such things as singing parodies that might or might not hurt politicians’ feelings, wearing silly outfits, and lying down on city property, pretending to be dead. So she appreciates a lot of what the ACLU does, but when she saw my mail she complained “the ACLU doesn’t see homelessness as a civil rights issue.”

“Wrong, wrong, wrong,” I thought. “Of course they do,” I thought. For instance they’ve fought LA’s version of a No Sitting Ordinance, not just because they care about the right of ordinary citizens to sit down on sidewalks, but specifically, they care about the right of homeless people to do so. Or, there are the lawsuits in a number of places to stop police from confiscating homeless peoples’ property. Or, there's work that could prevent homelessness, like lawsuits to stop wrongful evictions. A recent case took a landlord to court for trying to evict a battered woman. The landlord didn’t want her out because she was battered. He wanted her out because she called the police. She was supposed to just take it. So the ACLU got involved. So there, Anitra.

But then I read the Workplan itself and could not find homelessness addressed in all 8 pages.

Would it have taken too much ink to mention, somewhere among the ten paragraphs under the heading “Defending the Right to Vote,” for example, that the right of homeless persons to vote has been increasingly under attack in this country? How about mentioning somewhere that the work to protect the right of homeless people to their property is barely begun?

After that I set myself down with pen and paper to think of how many ways homelessness is a civil rights issue, and in two minutes I had two pages of notes on the subject.

Hey, ACLU, you could do that too.

Might Makes Jackasses

Here's a pet peeve of mine that I'm sure you all share: arrogance. We can't stand arrogance. All of us hate it. So how come it keeps happening? My biggest gripe is with people who justify crimes with arrogance.

Once while walking up the Ave in the U District I saw a couple walking toward me, the woman holding a balloon. Before they reached me a group of five frat guys came up and snatched the balloon away. When the woman's partner demanded it back the guys laughed and threatened to beat him up. Just then a policeman appeared and the matter was laid before him.

Incredibly, the frat guys complained to the cop that the couple had no business demanding their balloon back, ON THE GROUNDS THAT THE COUPLE WAS OUTNUMBERED AND EASILY OVERPOWERED. "There's five of us; we could take them; if they cause trouble by telling us we can't have their balloon, don't they know they're asking for it?" They actually said that the policeman should tell the couple to leave them alone, because not to do so would result in a fight that would get them hurt. They were concerned about maintaining the public order!

As amazing as it sounds, there are people in the world who think that way all the time. I first realized the truth of this when I was a cab driver. Hardly a shift went by when there wasn't some cowboy in the cab telling me I had to run red lights to get him where he was hurrying to, ON THE GROUNDS THAT HE WAS PAYING ME.

Once the dispatcher sent me to a house in the neighborhood of 85^th and Roosevelt, and when I arrived nobody came out to get in the cab so I had to go to the front door to announce myself. Two men greeted me, one with a pistol. While I stood in the doorway, not knowing if I would be shot if I said something they didn't want to hear, they told me they were hiring me to drive downtown by myself to fetch them two hookers. They told me I should do what they said BECAUSE THEY WERE GOING TO PAY ME $100. They said it would be OK if I couldn't find them good-looking hookers, ugly ones would do, and that they would share them with me. I said thank you very much, but that nevertheless I would decline their kind offer. They were shocked. I never did figure out why they pointed a gun at me. Maybe it was to keep me from running off with their welcome mat. They were probably thieves as well as johns. No one is less trusting than a thief.

The general rule seems to be: If I'm a monkey and I want to take a dump on your head, it's all right because I'm a bigger monkey than you, or I am just one of a gang of five monkeys and we outnumber you, or anyway I'm paying you so you have to do what I say BECAUSE MY MONEY SAYS I OWN YOU. You could call it Karl Rovism: this is our planet because, owing to our previous thefts of its wealth, we now have all the money, so we own all the people everywhere that we have stolen from.

This rant was inspired by the tiniest of provocations, namely Jeff Tweiten's theory that Seattle's No-Sitting Ordinance shouldn't apply to him while he's trying to set a new Guiness World Record by waiting in line for a movie. As best as I can determine this theory is founded on the principle that he should be able to sit or lie on the sidewalk for 136 days or more BECAUSE AT THE END OF THAT TIME HE WOULD BE BUYING A MOVIE TICKET, THEREBY PROVING THAT HE DESERVES MORE CONSIDERATION THAN HOMELESS PEOPLE, who are just about surviving, and other stupid crap like that.