Ending Homelessness, Chicago-Style

Fresh from the rumor mill: Reverends Bill Kirlin-Hackett and David Bloom cornered Mayor Greg Nickels after a meeting today to ask that hizzoner meet with representatives of the faith community before following through on his promise to raze Nickelsville this week. The Mayor, who has yet to agree to a meeting with advocates to discuss the homeless sweeps issue, ever, said, "Absolutely not. It's going down."

A reply worthy of a man who is reputed to worship legendary Chicago Boss Richard J. Daley.

The Mayor went on to say, "Dose fockin' pink tents, see? Dose is makin' me look bad, see? You take all dose tent poles you got dere, you bundle 'em up togeddah, and you cram 'em up yer mudda-fockin' a-a-a-ss, see? You got dat?"

OK. I made that last part up. But it's probably what he wanted to say.

Less Amelioration, More Agitation

I was on an ending homelessness panel tonight at Seattle University. The small auditorium was full. The panel covered the spectrum of approaches. Bill Kirlin-Hackett of the Interfaith Task Force sat to my left and said "No one is to your left."

He was speaking figuratively, I guess.

When it came my turn to solve homelessness in six minutes (Nancy Amidei was having entirely too much fun with her kitchen timer), I said we need less amelioration and more agitation.

I said we know how to solve homelessness because we've solved it before.

America's last period of massive homelessness, like the one we have now, was also the result of major economic dislocation. Civil War demobilization collided with industrialization to release hordes of hungry war-torn men to unemployment at a time when the rural and home-based economies were being destroyed by the factory. Between then and World War II, there were three depressions, and hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions, of men roamed the country in desperate search of work.

Skid Rows were born, with whole economies of cheap rooms, baths, food, booze, and sex to meet their needs. Hobo camps were ubiquitous. The homeless were a despised class, viewed with disdain and scorn by those whose positions were more secure.

World War II ended all of that with full employment, but the demobilization this time was entirely different. Even after kicking all the women and Blacks out of the factories, there would not be nearly enough work. The government had a choice.

Did they really want a to turn a bunch of deeply disillusioned hungry men out into the streets? Men who had seen war, were expert in the use of small arms and explosives, and not in the mood to take any shit?

They did not. Most of the white guys got the GI Bill, which delayed the shock by absorbing many into the university system. This was perhaps the greatest engine of class mobility this nation has ever seen. There were FHA loans that made homeownership broadly accessible. Roads were built. Ambitious public works projects meant good jobs. The 1949 Housing Act promised decent housing to all. A pact of sorts existed between government, business, and the civil sector that recognized a mutual interest in some pursuance of the common good. This led to modest but steady economic growth and declining rates of inequality right up to 1973.

Homelessness had been ended. A few small missions looked after the winos and hard cases. Nearly anyone could manage a roof over their head. There was plenty of cheap housing. The bottom rungs of it had been built before the war to satisfy a large market of migratory labor. It was still there.

Homelessness was solved by the same policies that boosted the middle-class and brought prosperity to many. Then, over the seventies and with Reagan, things pretty much went to hell. The economic restructuring this time around was globalization, and as bad as things are, they could well get much, much meaner.

Corporate control of our politics has reduced government to a means of enhancing the bottom lines of global entities run by an elite floating class of the super-rich. Prisons are big business and one in ninety-nine Americans is behind bars. I'm not making that up.

No Child Left Behind is to education what Ending Chronic Homelessness is to poverty: a big fucking photo-op smoke screen to hide the obvious fact that poor people are getting raped a little harder every day. Higher education at any university that could actually change your class standing is largely out of reach of the bottom 80%.

There is no money to rebuild the decaying national infrastructure because we're too busy shoveling dough to warlords like Dick Cheney so that they can steal Iraq'a oil and start World War III.

And housing? No money for that. Too busy cutting taxes for the rich. Grover Norquist's dream is coming true. Soon, government will be small enough to be drowned in a bathtub.

We're in some sort of post-1973 parallel reverse universe, where everything about the economy that worked for the majority has been turned into its opposite.

And then, as I gazed into a sea of impressionable young faces, I heard myself saying that the Black Panthers had it right. You need to do the work that meets people's needs and brings them together, and you have to make revolution.

And given the above, who can argue with that?

After I got home, I started thinking about what it meant that I had been out telling college students to be revolutionaries. It felt a bit like I'd turned a corner. Had I just advocated for the overthrow of the United States government? These are dangerous times for that sort of thing.

And my immediate thought was, "what government?"

Government, in a way, is a sort of a neutral entity. It's a set of administrative functions concerned with budgeting and oversight and such. The question is who owns it? Are the people in there anywhere, or has it mostly just become a vehicle for the furtherance of elite interests?

So to me, being a revolutionary is about understanding that inequality is about two sides growing further and further apart, with the benefit to one coming at the expense of the other, and that this other side is willing to do almost anything to keep what they have and get even more.

They always want more.

Revolution, in terms of a social change strategy, is really the only viable option. The power of the ruling class has to be challenged. And the bottom 80% or so of us and more have a mutual interest in taking the bastards on. From there, it's just a question of tactics.

Strategies of mitigation don't touch the logic of the capitalism that we have. If we want to end homelessness, it's a fact we have to face. And we'll all benefit when we do.

Less amelioration, more agitation. I think I'm making a bumpersticker.

The Jesus Strategy

Bill Kirlin-Hackett over at the Interfaith Taskforce on Homelessness has floated the idea that if the City persists in their aggressive campsite clearance policy, which seems more than likely, then the churches should embrace Tent Cities on their property to offer safety and support to those who are displaced. Call it a sanctuary strategy. I like it, so long as the strategy extends into an organizing campaign for a more humane and accountable City policy. I do wonder, however, how many churches and temples would sign on. Some of the most powerful and connected religious leaders in the City seem to be sitting this one out. Which brings us to our newest poll: What Would Jesus Do?

So, imagine. Jesus comes to Seattle. He's drinking too much coffee and feeling a little damp. He sees the City chasing homeless people around the greenbelts and throwing away their survival gear. He swings into action. What's he do? Drive the demons from Marilyn Littlejohn? Join the United Way Board? Or does he organize and offer sanctuary? This is a capable, multi-tasking sort of Jesus, so you can choose more than one answer. As always, vote at top right.

Of the 826 visitors that week, a full 25 weighed in on this critical issue. 18 said Jesus would organize a sanctuary strategy. 12 said he would exorcise Marilyn Littlejohn. This is a pretty high number, given that most people don't know Littlejohn, but if you did, you'd understand. Just 4 thought that JC would come onto the United Way Board. I don't know that he'd much appreciate the company. He'd probably rather be with the poor.

The Smirk

Due to the wonders of video technology, we were able to capture the precise moment when Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis smirked at a homeless women who asked him to explain what the City is doing about the rising numbers of homeless dying on the streets. The moment came at the tail end of a media ambush during our rally and camp-out last week, and was basically his cue to get the hell out of Dodge. The video itself will hopefully be posted soon.

As his gortex-clad back receded into the distance, the woman who asked the question was in tears of rage and humiliation. "He doesn't even feel like he needs to answer the question," she said.

She has a point. The City's big on metrics, but how about this one: More people are dying on the streets now than ever before. Explain that?

If I hear one more opportunistic bureaucrat say we've decided to "end homelessness and stop managing it" as an excuse for leaving people out to freeze in the cold and harassing them in the meanwhile, I think I'm going to have to organize a piss-in on someone's front lawn.

The Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness always had the potential of providing political cover to those who would like to cut back on homeless shelter and look compassionate at the same time, but it's still amazing to see the strategy so ruthlessly pursued.

Ceis, by the way, says more shelter is on the way. With three TV cameras on him, he responded "Yes," when the Interfaith Taskforce on Homelessness' Bill Kirlin-Hackett asked, "Given our lack of shelter space to house those being removed from camps, we'll need to see more shelter space provided, won't we?"

We should have this on tape as well. Do words have meaning? We'll see.

Ceis and Desist

Last night, I overnighted with around forty other folks, about half of whom were homeless, at the City Hall encampment held by the Real Change Organizing project. Somewhere between 11 and 4 am I got some sleep. I don't know how people do it. Even with the benefit of a sleeping bag, air pad, and dome tent, my night in the cold and rain was physically miserable.

For the 1,600 or so people in Seattle whose needs are unmet by the shelter and housing options that are available this isn't a one night lark. It's their reality. The fact that people are dying on our streets is unsurprising.

At the rally against campsite clearances we held to kick off the camp, Seattle King County Coalition for the Homeless Director Alison Eisinger asked a very good question. Why, when the city is doing so much to end homelessness, would the Mayor's office treat us, their allies in the homeless advocacy community, as the enemy? I think what she actually said was, "Why would they want to piss us off?"

She was of course talking about the Human Service Department's high-handed and duplitious response to being called on their secret policy of campsite clearances, and their ensuing scramble to manage the media attention, legal liability, and political pressure that followed.

My guess is that there's pressure coming from somewhere else. I have some guesses also as to where. The downtown condo boom is attracting a wave of affluence to the downtown, as more and more who can afford the pleasures of urban living opt to do so. In the few blocks around Pike Pace Market, 505 new condos will come on line within the next two years with an average value of $2 million each. Over the next three years, 5,000 or so new condos will open downtown. The premise is that those who opt for the urban lifestyle will not be made uncomfortable by some of the harsher realities that prevail.

This represents an enormous amount of investment, presumably by powerful people who have allies, all of whom know the value of a campaign contribution.

Which gives Mayor Nickels a two-year time-line, both to the next election and the move in date for the new Xanadu. This doesn't align very well with projected progress on "ending homelessness." So other tactics are necessary, and the commitment to these tactics is firm.

So some counter-pressure is called for.

A funny thing happened this morning. Last night, a well-decorated officer told one of our leaders that the Deputy Mayor would be by to talk with us at 9:00 AM. Mayor's staff called again after sunrise to confirm. We had a message of our own, formulated in the giddy morning hours shortly after the first Starbucks opened at 5:30 AM.

We alerted the media that Deputy Mayor Tim Ceis was coming to talk to us, and that we had an announcement for him.

I need to backtrack here to say I've only had two other interactions with Ceis. Once last summer, I interrupted an interview that Sharon Chan of the PI was doing to show her a finger puppet I'd been playing with. The time before was just after Nickels came into office. He'd requested a meeting after Real Change ran a critical piece on his boss. Amazingly, he told me that unless we allowed prior to publication opportunity to comment on articles, our access would be very limited.

We'd never had access, so I wasn't all that impressed by the threat.

So anyway, Tim arrived, and an awkward conversation ensued.

Ceis: So you guys have some petitions to deliver or something.

Us: No. That's at noon.

Ceis: But you said you had petitions. That's why I'm here.

Us: We said we would deliver petitions at noon. You called us. No one said anything about petitions.

Ceis: Well, I won't be there. Neither will the Mayor.

Us: Well, the petitions aren't ready yet, so we'll just give them to who ever's there.

Ceis: You can give them to the secretary.

Us: Fine.

Ceis: Is there anything else you wanted to say (by now, about three television cameras have homed in on our utterly mundane conversation).

Us: Yes. We're going to be back every three months, until the City has ended homelessness.

Ceis: You can go through Fleets and Facilities to apply for a City Hall Plaza public event permit.

Us: We'll be here, either way.

At this point, the cameras had tightened in. We backed out of the circle, leaving Ceis to be captured by a phalanx of TV reporters who wanted to know how the City was responding to advocates concerns.

We didn't plan an ambush. We really thought Ceis would have something to say. We figured he'd be expecting media and didn't want to disappoint. When the reporters were done, David Bloom and Bill Kirlin-Hackett of the Interfaith Taskforce on Homelessness respectfully continued the grilling. Then, as a homeless woman asked what they were going to do about people dying on the streets (those numbers keep going up) Ceis smirked and fled, and we offered our side of the story.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand," said Frederick Douglas. "Never has, and never will." We're building a demand-side response to the supply-side economy. Ceis is a guy who knows a little about hardball. Think of us as the opposing team.

— photo by Revel Smith

Radio Logorrhea

Rich Lang sobered me up yesterday just long enough to get me onto his weekly radio show Living Faith Now. The cocktail he gave me on the way over (black coffee, Methadone, and Demerol — it's an old Methodist trick) acted like a truth serum, and I babbled on the air like some sort of a snake handling Pentacostal.

There were a couple of moments of lucidity, but my preceding hell week and the insomnia that went with it turned the show into more of a monologue than a conversation, and there are times, when I listen to the recording, where I wish I'd just shut the fuck up.

I coherently discuss Real Change, and get in some great stuff about structural unemployment and homelessness, and I probably manage to piss off ninety-percent of my allies by talking about how Lora Lake is a diversion from the larger problem we have in Seattle, but I get all vague and spaced out when I try to recall why the left is pathetic on class and I ramble and repeat myself when I talk about the problem with Ten Year plans and why I hate Philip Mangano so much.

In all seriousness, it wasn't my finest hour. I wish I'd done more to prepare.

Rich, however, charitable soul that he is, seemed to think it was OK, and bills me as "one of Seattle's finest provocative minds." Well, provocative anyway.

You can stream the show from the website. Rich's line-up up of previous usual suspects also includes the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness' Bill Kirlin-Hackett, the effectively low-key Michael Ramos, the irrepressible Alice Woldt, and Cecile Andrews, who, to my great delight, seems to cross my path every twenty minutes or so these days.

By now, most Lora Lake watchers know that an injunction was issued yesterday that will probably prevent the demolition of Lora Lake until after a March hearing. This legal maneuver comes out of the little discussed King County Housing Authority eminent domain threat that was issued a few weeks ago. Sandy Brown of the Church Council is quoted in the PI saying, "When I heard, I couldn't help but jump for joy."

There's a visual. Sandy pogoing in his office like Joey Ramone in a suit.

Speaking of seventies punk icons, Carolyn and I are going to see Patti Smith at the Showbox tonight. To commemorate the occasion, I found this highly unlikely clip on YouTube: Patti Smith in 1979, on ABC's Kids are People Too, belting out Debbie Boone's You Light Up My life with Joe Brooks on Piano.

It's a little embarrassing, but she's very sweet as she answers questions from girls in the audience and talks about kids taking back Rock and Roll from the corporate exec's. This was the year that Todd Rundgren produced Wave, Patti's final album before her period of professional retirement. Wave featured the brilliant but then unnoticed Dancing Barefoot, which was described by Rolling Stone as,

her mystical ode to sexual rapture. "I think sex is one of the five highest sensations one can experience," she said in 1978. "A very high orgasm is a way of communion with our creator." She added that she masturbated to her own album cover photo, as well as to the Bible.