We're All Workin' for the Pharaoh

Earlier this year, I posted a video clip of Rev. Rich Lang on the modern pharaohs. He said something about the Mayor having his head so far up somewhere or another that the only air he breathes is perfumed by someone or another's flatulence. I don't really remember. You'll have to watch it if you want the exact quote.

Anyway, someone commented that Richard Thompson has a song on the whole pharaoh thing, and I found him performing this in 1990 at Bumbershoot.

Pharaoh he sits in his tower of steel
The dogs of money all at his heel
Magicians cry "Oh truth! Oh real!"
We're all working for the Pharaoh

A thousand eyes, a thousand ears
He feeds us all, he feeds our fears
Don't stir in your sleep tonight, my dears
We're all working for the Pharaoh

It's Egypt land, Egypt land
We're all living in Egypt land
Tell me, brother, don't you understand
We're all working for the Pharaoh

Hidden from the eye of chance
The men of shadow dance a dance
We're all struck into a trance
We're all working for the Pharaoh

The idols rise into the sky
Pyramids soar, Sphinxes lie
Head of dog, Osiris eye
We're all working for the Pharaoh

And it's Egypt land, Egypt land
We're all living in Egypt land
Tell me, brother, don't you understand
We're all working for the Pharaoh

I dig a ditch, I shape a stone
Another battlement for his throne
Another day on earth is flown
We're all working for the Pharaoh

Call it England, you call it Spain
Egypt rules with a whip and chain
Moses free my people again
We're all working for the Pharaoh

And it's Egypt land, Egypt land
We're all living in Egypt land
Tell me, brother, don't you understand
We're all working for the Pharaoh

Pharaoh he sits in his tower of steel
Around his feet the princes kneel
Far beneath we shoulder the wheel
We're all working for the Pharaoh

Go With God

Tonight, I attended the annual dinner of the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness, which this year honored Reverend David Bloom's more than thirty years of service to our community. David laid the groundwork for the ITFH somewhere between his work at the Church Council of Greater Seattle and one of his numerous faux "retirements" while he was employed as the "Faith Community Organizer" at Real Change. While that position wound up being something we couldn't sustain, David's work led to the first Building the Political Will to End Homelessness conference and the deepened involvement of congregations in homeless advocacy and service provision. Over the years, I've learned that seeds that at first don't seem to take can send down roots that remain hidden for years. Then, one day, there's a new tree for people to climb on.

It feels as though the faith community is on the verge of a turning point of sorts. The Church Council of Greater Seattle has new leadership in veteran community organizer Michael Ramos, and is more committed to their social justice mission than ever. More and more congregations are supporting SHARE/WHEEL's tent city work by hosting the encampment on their property. Numerous congregations have aligned with the Sound Alliance organizing effort for economic justice. The Archdiocesan Housing Authority is organizing churches for legislative advocacy on housing issues. Rich Lang over at Trinity is working with faith community allies to engage more deeply in this work and move through charity toward justice. The Rauschenbusch Center for Spirit and Action has roared to life and is starting to hold public speak-outs in Westlake Center.

Tonight David spoke of the difference between optimism and hope. He is not optimistic, he said, over our prospects of ending homelessness. This pessimism is well-founded. Bullshit pronouncements from the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness aside, things have been getting worse for approximately thirty years, and that trend line shows little prospect of changing.

There is, however, reason for hope. Optimism under these circumstances is just whistling through the graveyard. Hope, on the other hand, is an exercise in prophetic imagination. Hope is visionary, and is less about belief than will. Hope, said Emily Dickinson, is "the thing with feathers that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without the words, and never stops at all."

When Michael Ramos spoke on behalf of the Church Council at Camp4Unity last June, it gave me hope. That hope is sustained and furthered whenever I see people or institutions extend themselves in the service of justice. We're not winning yet, but the tide, it seems, is beginning to turn. Michael's speech is reproduced below.

In the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, we read, “God says, this rather is the fasting that I wish; releasing those bound unjustly, setting free the oppressed, breaking every yoke. Sharing your bread with the hungry, sheltering the oppressed and homeless. Then, your light shall go forth like the dawn and your wound shall be quickly healed.”

The Church Council of Greater Seattle mourns the deaths of the more than 250 women and men who were homeless and who have died in recent years. A county and city as prosperous as ours can only be considered great when we are moved with radical compassion such that the most displaced are valued with the most affluent, and that our very selves are offered as a bridge to mend the unconscionable gap between rich and poor in our midst. Homelessness is, from a faith and human perspective, a scandal that calls for a conversion of heart in all of us, lest we grow complacent and tolerant. Behind each death is a name and a life, that that to the Women in Black, Church of Mary Magadalene and Real Change, matter. In memory of these people, let us stand so that others may not fall.

Our faith traditions call us to prioritize those who are poor. The measure of our economic and social decisions is our impact on those who are most vulnerable. What is done FOR the people most affected? What is done TO the people most affected? How do they take part in the decisions that affect them? When more than 2,600 people can be counted on the streets in our county as homeless on a given night, a 15% increase in the same areas over last year, we must ask ourselves how we are addressing this priority. When one night in May, 42 people are turned away from Operation Nightwatch, a final sanctuary for those without a place to stay, the crisis is lack of shelter, not a few tents in the woods. The principle must guide the policy must guide the practice. The people who are marginalized, neglected, abandoned, homeless need to be made the basic criteria for a continuum of care that provides for shelter first even while we create new sources of housing.

As a key partner in the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness in King County, we too believe that housing is a right and that we need to come together to provide the home and the support services for each in need. More than 150 of our congregations demonstrate their commitment to this vision each year, as well as our own programs. Yet, when there is nowhere else to go, even the legitimate health and safety considerations for our public spaces must yield to the demand for survival of those who camp in order to live. As sweeps become a matter of policy, it is these people who bear an inherent dignity who must have a say.

We appreciate the 20 additional shelter beds and the case managers who visit the tent encampments. But, the primary concern for safe shelter has not been adequately addressed. We ask the city to revisit the Tent Encampment policy so that the loopholes in it not serve as an excuse for further harm to those with whom we ought to be concerned. That would be a thoughtful follow-up to another memorial for those whom society judges, but whom we uphold and affirm as people whom God deems worthy and valuable in his sight.

For People Who Are Homeless

Tuesday I went to a meeting of pastors that was convened by Rich Lang to begin a dialogue about how churches could perhaps take the work on homelessness up a notch or two and maybe even fight for justice when they're not too busy making sandwiches. Lots of my favorite people were there. Rich joked that I was invited as an honorary pastor to talk about Real Change's Organizing Project, and offered to have everyone do a laying on of hands to seal the deal. He also offered to convene an exorcism if that might be more helpful.

As an honorary pastor, I got to help read the closing prayer. It's from a radical minister in Atlanta named Eduard Loring, and appears in the collection Prayers For the New Social Awakening. I quite like it.

Hungry are we, Oh God of the oppressed, for justice.
Thirsty are we, O God of liberation, for human rights.
We come before you on this day-for-free.
Oh Creator,
That you are making
In the midst of the Empire's weapons
of mass distraction.

We come
to focus,
to commit,
to act,
to struggle,
to fight,
to love,
to shout as loud as we can,
to wage peace

for your abandoned ones
who wander the mean streets
with nowhere to go
in this nation at war
with Iraq, at itself.

You Companions of Compassion
who dearly love
beggars & prostitutes
children fighting rats under bridges,
starving mothers whose milk cannot nourish,
prisoners who sit in abandoned hell holes,
without the visits that your son commands.

You who
come to us in the stranger's guise as
drunks and addicts,
widows and orphans,
beggars in velvet,
mumblers and incoherent poets of your word of fire,
lost lawless lawyers whose bar code is: Out,
teachers who dared to tell the way the truth the life,
veterans who fought our war abroad,
& have no homes in their homeland (no security, no
patriots act for them.


You, Oh God of justice
cry out
like a woman alone in childbirth:

"Housing is a human right
Go tell it on the mountains
in the sanctuaries
on the streets
at the courthouse and the halls of congress,
House my People today,
I say,
In the fierce urgency of now.

Woe to you prosperity preachers,
Woe to you blind cruel police
who hurt and harm my unhoused.

Woe to those who own two houses while I sleep
in a barn.
Woe to the rich while I suffer from poverty.
Woe to the well-fed while I stand in a soup line.
Woe to those who cheer for tax cuts while
my people have nowhere to go but jail."

Help help help
us not simply to endure.
Grant us the strength to build the beloved community
on earth.
Carry on with love & struggle & sacrifice
on the streets.

Grant us dignity
as we build a destination of righteousness & justice,
of love & peace,
of equality and housing for all,
of human rights.

In the name of the one who lifted Dr. Martin
Luther King Jr.
to be the brightest light of this nation
As he followed in the footpath of Jesus the Human
One.
And as King confessed with his back against the wall:
"But amid all of this we have kept going with
the faith.
that as we struggle, God struggles with us
& that the arc of the moral universe, although long,
is bending toward justice."

In the names of
Abraham and Sarah,
Yahweh-Elohim,
Allah,
Jesus the Human One,
Harriett Tubman,
Malcolm & Martin

Amen.

The Prophetic Imagination

Just noticed that my hero Reverend Rich Lang of Trinity United Methodist Church was in the Ballard News Tribune a few weeks ago calling for churches to pro-actively stand for the poor by providing alternatives to camping in the city's greenbelts.

"You can't solve homelessness without talking about housing. The church has a moral obligation to work with the state for common wealth," said Lang.

"As a representative of a church, I see no reason whatsoever, why every church can't house someone who is homeless, with 1400 church buildings (in Seattle) empty at night," said Lang. ...

"When you see neighbors naked, give them clothes. When they are hungry, feed them. They are not animals. Begin rebuilding the person to get them back in society."

God I love this guy. My own disenchantment with Christianity began in the fourth grade at Saint Mary's School with Monsignor Sullivan's Mercedes Benz. Each year, the Monsignor (this is the middle rank between priest and bishop) upgraded to the latest model. "He works hard," my mother explained. "He deserves it." Even as a fourth grader, his job looked pretty cush to me. I didn't buy it.

The lawn at Saint Mary's was known as "Monsignor's salad," as in "Don't walk on Monsignor's salad." The utterly radical and infinitely appealing message of the Sermon on the Mount, to my young eyes, was displaced by the hypocrisy of the late-model Mercedes driving old fart with the sanctified and apparently edible lawn. This, I decided, was Christianity in action. A harsh assessment, but sadly accurate.

Since then, I've met enough real Christians to overcome my precocious dismissal of God, but my opinion of most churches remains unchanged. Lang's different. He's the real deal. Were more churches to take Christ's message to its conclusion — as opposed to reflecting the narcotized, self-indulgent consumerism of our time — the world would be a very different place.

The church can't replace government's responsibility to provide a base-line level of human dignity and economic security for those who are otherwise abandoned, but they can help, and they can mobilize their resources and congregations to build the power it will take to change the rules of the game.

Is that an audacious vision? No more so than Jesus.

Dry Bones Get Up And Walk

Rev. Rich Lang turned out at the encampment last night to serve dinner in full ecclesial drag. Rich always looks good in white, and the colorful stole brings out the ruddiness in his cheeks. He was joined by around ten other faith community leaders in that most basic of communal activities, the serving of food.

Not that I was there. In an unusual fit of self-preservation, I slept for 12 hours last night in a warm bed. I've seen Rich in drag enough that even this wasn't enough to get me out in last night's rain.

You can see a photo of the meal being served underneath the canopy I purchased on sale Thursday night at Big Five for $99. Here's the Seattle Times story by Sharon Chan from this morning. She counts 10 tents during the meal, but Paul Boden told me this morning that they counted 48 tents last night, not including the cardboard boxes and "burritos," which is what organizers called the hardy plastic sheet wrapped sleeping bag people strewn throughout the site. What can I say? The Real Change Organizing Project rocks hard. And the "facts" in the reporting kinda suck.

But Rich has been kind of losing it lately because the church, for the most part, is deep in the same narcotic, consumerist slumber as everyone else. Instead of being the passionate and inspired counter-cultural centers of resistance and community that these times call for, most churches and synagogues are lukewarm at best.

And any product of the Catholic schools such as myself knows how the lord feels about the lukewarm. Revelations 3:15 was the very first bible verse I'd memorize, due to its immense appeal to a second grader. "So then, because thou art luke-warm, and neither cold nor hot, I will vomit thee out of my mouth."

Other translations have different renderings. The words spew and spit are also used. The more delicate Modern Translation avoids peristaltic unpleasantness altogether with "I will have no more to do with you."

Revelations 3:17, however, gets to the heart of things. Because you say, "I am rich, and have become wealthy, and have need of nothing," and you do not know that you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked.

Anyway, Rich hasn't been so impressed lately with the social justice commitment of most churches, and was deeply disappointed when a Seattle church opted this week against hosting Tent City for no other reason than that it would not be proper.

And so, his most recent sermon, Dry Bones, is a masterpiece of vision, passion, love, and yes, frustration. He rolled out a bit of it last night at the event. But listen to the real thing, where he riffs off of Ezekial, delivered at Trinity last Sunday. You could just read it, but it's not the same. You'd miss the revisions and ad libs and hearing him get all choked up in the beginning. The recording starts with a few minutes of something else, so don't let that throw you. Preacherman can preach. Make them bones get up and walk. Amen.

Marching Up the Hill of Principle

One of the many people I’ve been privileged to know over the time I’ve done this work is Lisa Peattie, a retired MIT Urban Planning professor who, more than fifteen years ago, was my friend and Board President at Boston Jobs with Peace. Lisa is an avid student of social movements, and has written extensively on the subject of airport expansion protests. These usually involve massive land transfers that benefit a small group of elites at the expense on large numbers of those who are poor and low-income. In looking at the dynamic, broad-based and militant coalitions that these fights often engendered, she arrived at a brilliant insight.

While the technical details of land use certainly played a role in these protests, that’s not what made them work. Dweeby zoning talk doesn’t build movements. Technical details offer a hundred points of potential difference. By beginning with airport land-use protests, and then broadening to social movements in general, Lisa saw that all successful protest movements are grounded in what she called “the march up the moral hill of principle.” Organize from the universal principles that you feel in your gut. The details are relevant, but they’re not where one begins.

So when confronted with Mayor Nickels’ twenty or so pages of administrative rules and procedures that detail just how the City of Seattle will harass desperate people the fuck out of town, one thing was obvious: if we engage on the terrain that the City has created, they’ve already won. This fight in Seattle over homeless encampments isn’t about whether 48 hours is enough notice to destroy someone’s only belongings, or which belongings must be destroyed and which saved. This fight is about the criminalization of survival. It’s about elite interests waging class war on the most vulnerable people you can imagine, and then dressing that up to look like some sickly and perverse form of compassion.

Now that’s a fight worth having.

So when we kicked off our own speak-out an hour before the City’s public hearing, the intention was to steal the Mayor’s thunder and to re-frame the issue. We weren’t there to debate the details of a poor people’s holocaust. We were there to talk about morality, class, and our human responsibility to one another. As Rachael Myers prepped emcee David Bloom, she said, “We’ll begin with our moral triumvirate, and then move to an open mike.”

And so, here we are. The Moral Triumvirate. Sally Kinney of the Puget Sound Jewish Coalition on Homelessness, myself, and Reverend Rich “in whose church I have slept” Lang, talking about our “stewardship of each other’s right to live,” Seattle’s long, apocalyptic slide toward radical inequality, and calling out Mayor Greg Nickels as a modern day Pharaoh whose head is screwed so far up … well, you’ll have to watch.

Sally Kinney: An Inhumane and Immoral Policy




Timothy Harris: Waging the Fight of our Lives



Rich Lang: Taking on the Pharaoh

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.

This Is What Democracy Looks Like

It isn't often that one gets to be in the front row of the revolution, but tonight, from my perspective at the far left of the first pew of Trinity United Methodist Church, it felt as though history was in the making. An overflow crowd turned out in Ballard in response to Rev. Rich Lang's call to action against the growing unconstitutionality of our government and the mounting evidence that America is one precipitating event away from martial law and a grave curtailment of political liberties.

The meeting was nicely managed. There was a group sing of Woody Guthrie's This Land is Your Land, a reading of the Declaration of Independence, a warm-up speech from Linda Boyd of Washington for Impeachment who argued that impeachment "is the legal, peaceful way to regain our constitution," and then, Rich Lang delivered what might be the fifteen minute speech of his life (download here).

"The most important thing we have is each other," he began. "Remember that."

After a brief disclaimer "for the benefit of Caeser" that tonight was not a function of the church, but an opening of their space to the community, he began. Here is Seattle, we are in a bubble. We do not appreciate the urgency or the danger of the moment. The nation is possessed by a demon spirit that is doing great harm. We ourselves are in a trance. "We now know the answer to the question, 'How could good citizens allow the Nazis to come to power.'"

"The urgency of multiple crises is upon us," said Lang. "But tonight, the focus is on one crisis: breaking the trance and finding our voice. Not just the voice of Seattle. The voice of a nation."

Then, to the roaring approval of the capacity crowd, Rev. Lang offered his plan. On Tuesday, September 11, 2007, we all call in sick to work to perform nonviolent Acts of Democracy. We make 9/11 a day of the people. And then, we have a party.

"The empire steals and controls our voice, so we will take our voice to them. To the graveyard of our public media. We will hold direct actions at each of the major corporate media locations in our city. In groups of tens, hundreds, and thousands, all without permits of any kind."

"The authorities want to bind us with chains in the graveyards of silence," he said, "but we are a free people in a free land. So act like it!"

As I left to get home to my kids, the crowd of several hundred was breaking up into groups of six to consider creative acts of revolution. And so it begins. There will be a follow-up meeting at TUMC on August 6, at 7 p.m.

Bringing Up the F-word

It's hard to talk about the threat of fascism without sounding like an alarmist crank. But more and more, the F word is showing up. Robin Meyers used it last year in Why the Christian Right is Wrong. Kevin Phillips, a one-time Nixon speech writer is also concerned with "proto-fascist" tendencies in the Christian Right. Local journalist David Neiwert tracks developments on the extreme right on his excellent Orcinus blog. Chris Hedges, the distinguished war correspondent with an M.Div. from Harvard has a scary book out, and then there's the new book on the Blackwater Security forces to keep you up nights as well.

And that's just what comes up on the Real Change site.

Reinhold Niebuhr's The Children of Light and The Children of Darkness, published in 1944, is a discussion of democratic theory that expands on many of the ideas first published in 1936 in the landmark Moral Man, Immoral Society. The book examines what was the key question of the time: how did this happen?

It's a question that almost always gets asked too late. Niebuhr described the blindness of liberals to what in hindsight is often all too obvious in a passage that is as relevant today as it was 63 years ago.

According the the scripture, "the children of this world are in their generation wiser than the children of light." This observation fits the modern situation. Our democratic civilization has been built, not by children of darkness but by foolish children of light. It has been under attack by the children of darkness, by the moral cynics, who declare that a strong nation need acknowledge no law beyond its strength. It has come close to complete disaster under this attack, not because it accepted the same creed as the cynics, but because it underestimated the power of self-interest, both individual and collective, in modern society. The children of light have not been as wise as the children of darkness.

The children of darkness are evil because they know no law beyond the self. They are wise, though evil, because they understand the power of self-interest. The children of light are virtuous because they have some conception of a higher law than their own will. They are usually foolish because they do not know the power of self-will. ... Modern democratic civilization is, in short, sentimental rather than cynical. It has a ... fatuous and superficial view of man. It does not know that the same man who is ostensibly devoted to "the common good" may have desires and ambitions, hopes and fears, which set him at variance with his neighbor.

It must be understood that the children of light are foolish not merely because the underestimate the power of self-interest among the children of darkness. They underestimate this power among themselves. The democratic world came so close to disaster not merely because it never believed that Nazism possessed the demonic fury which it avowed. Civilization refused to recognize the power of class interest in its own communities.

My friend Rev. Rich Lang at Trinity United Methodist Church in Ballard has called an Emergency Meeting at his church for August 1, at 7 pm. I'm going. Rev. Lang has been concerned with the growing signs around us for some time, but a recent Executive Order signed by the President has him particularly concerned. His column from today's Real Change is reproduced below.

We are in a grave constitutional crisis with a President who seemingly wants to be a king, and a Congress unable and unwilling to oppose him. This administration is building, plank by plank, the framework for military dictatorship. Already in place is a global governing philosophy that uses the military as muscle for invading other nations for the purpose of social engineering and massive corporate profits. The Defense Authorization Act of 2006 empowers the President to impose martial law in the event of a terrorist incident. The National Defense Authorization Act of 2007 permits the President to command National Guard troops without the consent of state governors. The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive gives the President dictatorial powers in the event of a “catastrophic incident.” The Military Commissions Act suspends the right of habeas corpus. This short list doesn’t include widespread wiretapping of citizens, construction of concentration camps, private armies, an ever-expanding military budget, increased government secrecy, non-cooperation with Congress, and the inevitable bankrupting of domestic budgets. And, now, the latest grab for power has the Executive announcing that “our property” can be seized for dissent against the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

We are in a very grave constitutional crisis, folks. I encourage every one of you to make a noise in the offices of Senators Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell, and your congressional representatives. Silence is the death of democracy.

But I think we also need to begin the process of organizing some form of resistance, protest, and/or strategy for impeachment. Our politicians are fiddling while democracy burns. Feeding from common corporate money sources, they are no longer worthy of our trust. Indeed, they have betrayed us.

For example, almost daily some media figure or political operative drops a hint that our country might be hit again by the terrorists. Ask yourself: In the event of another catastrophic occurrence, can you trust this government to stay true to the idealism of democracy, and the laws of limited checks and balances of power, encoded in the Constitution? Can you trust Congress to represent the people?

I certainly cannot. We are, I repeat, in a grave, surreal even, constitutional crisis. We are dealing with a spirituality of tyranny, an unleashing of ruthless, arrogant power that corrupts all it touches.

It’s time to get angry and cast out this unclean spirit from our land. Such a statement can now get me arrested, disappeared, and stripped of all assets. Is this America? Is this the country in which we have been raised? And how long, friend, until you yourself awaken only to discover that there is now a knock on your door?

I call upon all who care to assemble at Trinity United Methodist Church, on Aug. 1 at 7 p.m. There we will begin to strategize how to reclaim the power of the people, the birthright we share from our heritage of democracy.

Knock. Knock.

Civil Disobedience Like It Matters

OK. I know that I run the risk of offending friends here, but today I was at the Lamentation Service at Lora Lake apartments in Burien, and I just have to ask, "What the hell was that?"

Lora Lake is, of course, the 162 units of affordable family housing that are about to be destroyed by the Port Authority because they and the City of Burien have other plans for that piece of property. Last week, SHARE/WHEEL "occupied" the complex and nine people were arrested while ten supporters stood by to cheer them on. Today, about 15 clergy of various denominations held a lovely service, at the end of which ten people were going to do civil disobedience.

But apparently they changed their minds.

When I drove up, I saw about a dozen patrol cars with flashing lights parked on all sides of the fenced off neighboring lot. There were cops everywhere. But about fifteen minutes into the thing, they smartened up and went low profile. Cops got into their cars and hid behind barriers. The arrest wagon was out of sight around the corner.

The climactic moment arrived and we were all invited to lay hands on those who had decided to risk arrest. A nice touch. There was supposed to be some sort of cutting of a chain link fence with arrests to follow. Instead, they got the two most avuncular cops on the Burien police force to defuse the thing. We're talkin' Grandpa Walton here.

So the cops chat with Church Council leader Sandy Brown, and suddenly everyone's walking away. No one's looking very arrested to me and I'm having a tough time understanding what's just happened. The whole thing seemed to just fizzle.

I see Rev. Rich Lang walking away and I say, "So, are you arrested or what?" And he says, "I have no idea what's going on. Hey, take a new picture of me for my column. The one we're using is terrible." I take two. I'm wondering which one people like. My wife thinks the big smile makes him look like a doofus, but I like it. I prefer a Man-o-God with a sense of humor.

So then someone tells me that the police opted to simply escort them off the property, and to not make any arrests. Which is just weird. Once you've announced that ten people are there to get arrested and the TV cameras are out, there's only one thing that should stop you. That would be Bill Block's cel phone going off and him shouting, "Wait! It's the Commissioner! He's reconsidered!"

Which brings me back to my original question. "What the hell was that?"

If ever there was an issue that merited civil disobedience, it is this. For the Port Authority to tear down 162 perfectly good units of housing in the midst of a housing crisis is criminal.

Sadly, when people are planning demonstrations, they rarely say, "Quick, someone call Tim Harris! He'll know what to do!"

But maybe they should. I only have five arrests, but my wife has ten. Actually, what she said when I just asked was, "I got up into the double digits and kind of lost track."

I consider my crowning moment as an organizer to be the day that I found myself alone in a room with State Trooper, Statehouse Security, and Boston Police leadership, negotiating the terms of a major Boston Statehouse CD action. They set up a processing center for us in the basement. It was all very convenient.

My wife and I are unanimous in our opinion that recent events are well-intentioned, but that people could perhaps use a little technical assistance. So, assuming there will be a next time, I'd like to offer this brief primer on How To Commit Civil Disobedience.

Strength in Numbers
First of all, what was SHARE/WHEEL thinking when they showed up by themselves to occupy 162 units of family housing with NINE PEOPLE! There is a problem here with proportionality. I don't want to diminish anyone's risk-taking here, but lets get real. This doesn't communicate "We mean business." It says, "Swat me like I am an annoying fly." I hear people saying in outraged tones that the police showed up with fourteen cars to arrest nine people, and I think, well, duh. This is to be expected. They probably thought there would be a hell of a lot more of you. Had I been offered more than a dozen hours notice for either action, and known that others were on board as well, I'd have joined them. It's been a good fifteen years. The cause is right. I'm due. My hunch is that many others feel the same way. Where was the organizing?

Nonviolent CD 101
When you do Civil Disobedience, you say that moral laws trump human law. You say that some things are worth putting your body on the line for. You encourage others to step up their level of commitment to match yours. You are providing moral leadership that goes beyond words. You are drawing injustice out into the open for everyone to see. There are few people who have more community standing than middle-class clergy. You have privilege to spare. Unless you're at the School of the Americas, where the feds have taken to handing out lengthy prison sentences like candy, chances are that a CD arrest isn't going to put much of a dent in your credit rating or otherwise unduly inconvenience you. Our privilege is there to be used. This was a squandered opportunity.

Plan, Plan, and Plan Some More.
Breaking the law is serious, so act like it. This isn't some kind of game where we're play acting our parts. Things are at stake here. I don't know what kind of prep went into this, but from the way it fizzled after Sandy Brown talked to Grandpa Walton, I'd have to say, "probably not much." I mean, what the hell is that in Sandy's hand? An electrician's wire cutter? A hedge clipper? If you're planning on slicing your way through a chain link fence, I've got two words for you: bolt cutters! You need to think through the various scenarios and know what you're going to do when things get confusing, which leads me to ...

They Don't Want To Arrest You
Hello? "Ten Clergy Arrested In Protest of Housing Demolition." Is that a headline that the City of Burien wants in its morning papers? Not really. So, you might need to work at it a little bit. I remember one arrest at the Boston Statehouse where the police did not want to arrest us at all. I watched Sue Marsh, the 5'6, distinctly nonathletic policy analyst and lobbyist who ran the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless, literally propel her body into a line of Boston cops who were standing between her and her goal, which was to get arrested. We had occasionally had our differences, but at that moment I loved Sue as much as I'd ever loved anyone else in my life. Nothing could have been more out of character for her, but she rose to the occasion because it mattered. She was heroic.

The Media Reports Conflict
There were three or four TV cameras there, but when I surfed around online tonight looking for the story, predictably, no appeared to have run with it. An outdoor sermon minus the civil disobedience is just an outdoor sermon: it may be spiritually uplifting, but it's not news.

Many good things were said today, and I was happy to hear them. The assembled clergy were in fine prophetic form and Amos and Isaiah and all those other guys were well represented. But we must also remember Matthew 10:16. “Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” We've got the harmless as doves part down, but the wise as serpents thing needs a lot more work.

The good news is that there's some major bureaucratic hard ball going on, with King County threatening to go all eminent domain on the Port of Seattle's ass. I have a press release that arrived in my email at 10:45 pm saying that King County and the Port of Seattle have a major announcement on Lora Lake for 10 AM tomorrow.

So maybe we win anyway. But lets not kid ourselves. This was lame.

One last thing. After I got back to my car, I pulled into a driveway to turn around and found myself face to face with someone's personal tank. What kind of people live in Burien anyway? I shot this photo out of my passenger window because, frankly, I was afraid to get out of the car. Who the hell owns their own tank? Can anyone buy one of these things?

Reason for Revolution #347

During a conversation yesterday morning with Rich Lang, the pastor of Trinity United Methodist Church in Ballard, the subject of passion arose. As Thomas Frank notes in What's Wrong With Kansas, right-wing evangelical Christians care enough about their issues to work on them 24/7 and maybe even take out a mortgage on their house if it would make the difference. They have a counter-cultural community that gives their lives meaning and focus.

Liberals, on the other hand, and affluent liberals in particular, don't have that. Our real religion, said Lang, is consumption. I thought of that tonight as I came across this photo essay by Brian Ulrich at the Mother Jones site, which was selected from his Copia project.

"In 2001, citizens were encouraged to take to the malls to boost the U.S. economy through shopping," he says, "thereby equating consumerism with patriotism. The Copia project, a direct response to that advice, is a long-term photographic examination of the peculiarities and complexities of the consumer-dominated culture in which we live."

What's striking to me in these photos is the blankness in people's faces, and the desolation of the landscapes. This, to me, is the perfect metaphor for consumer culture. It's the cure to the disease that never quite delivers, and always leaves you wanting more.

Each weekend, it's my job to do the Costco run. I go with the girls, and they sit next to each other in the dual seat in the enormous shopping cart. They always seem to have a nice enough time of it. I'm used to the place. Its enormity doesn't seem odd anymore. What does feel strange is the overwhelming ennui I always see in my fellow shoppers.

Life is suffering said the Buddha. That's not news. But must it also be boredom and dissatisfaction? I don't think so.