Another Day At Which I Marvel

Astonishing Occurrence #1: I step in for sick staff and do vendor orientation yesterday morning for the first time in a few years. It's like riding a bike. There are three people in attendance: a really nice hippy-chick who has temporarily dropped out of the middle class for reasons I'll never know; a charismatic hobo guy who, having learned that I started the paper, keeps repeating "Dude, you've done an amazing thing." His wife, a hard drinking good hearted woman of "a certain age," is moved to tears during the Real Change video. She smiles and cries throughout the orientation.



Astonishing Occurrence #2: One of our volunteers shows me a paper that was published by a group of 50 academics in Los Angeles that bills itself as a "reality-based approach to ending homelessness." They lead with supporting fair wages and creating employment and protecting and expanding housing stock, and call for an end to the deplorable treatment of homeless people in LA. Southern California increasingly looks like the front lines of the war on the homeless, and people are fighting back in very interesting ways. This is encouraging.

Astonishing Occurrence #3: Sherman Alexie reads from his new book at Town Hall to benefit Real Change. He has a sense of timing and an ability to work a crowd that blows my mind, modulating through various moods (levity, wonderment, solemnity, anger, hope) with a facility I have never really seen in another speaker. He does stand-up comedy that looks and feels completely conversational and natural. His technique is so well honed it never looks remotely like technique. He is masterful. He advises white liberals to consider voting with people of color instead of pursuing "romantic bullshit." We could destroy the Republican party for decades to come this next election, he says, if stupid liberals can just once refrain from fucking things up. "Vote to destroy," he says. He trashes The Weekly up one side and down the other for their dumbshit Real Change article. "I'd just like to say Fuck the Seattle Weekly," he says. The crowd goes wild.

I Just Read Huan Hsu's Article

... and he pretty much wrote the snark-laden story I was expecting, although, for the most part, it was fair. Apparently, I use the word "fuck" a lot. And I talk about things in my personal blog that I give a shit about, like how much The Weekly sucks.

Guilty as charged.

Huan took on the burning issue of whether Real Change vendors are bilking the public by not always being pathetic and needy enough for his taste. And he, being some dumb-ass journalist who's thought about it for an hour or two, thinks a turf system that rewards and creates success for vendors who work hard is too capitalistic a path for an organization that's supposed to be helping people.

The Weekly found a mildly disgruntled vendor who compared our incentive system to "tax breaks for the rich," and got our star vendor, Ed McClain, who earns every fucking penny he makes, to say he doesn't feel guilty about taking people's money.

Bravo, Mr. Hsu, for uncovering the greatest injustice of our age.

Given that every internal document about Real Change that exists is open to public inspection at realchange.wikispaces.com, he could have dug into our policies and the thinking behind them in a more nuanced and interesting way, but that would have lacked the drama and conflict he was looking for.

The article gives both sides, and is therefore "balanced." But I don't think this article will be winning any awards for the Weekly.

For that to happen, you have to write about things that matter.