Christ Came To Nickelsville

Tonight I drove my codeine cough syrup addled ass down to Nickelsville for a 7 pm "strategy meeting" to discuss how the homeless campers were going to deal with their eviction, scheduled for sometime after 5 pm tomorrow. The media keeps asking us for a convenient time to arrive for the requisite dramatic footage. The answer, for the record, is "We don't know. Ask Greg."

The meeting was all about morale boosting and solidarity building. With media and cops in attendance, little actual planning was either possible or desirable.

There were numerous moments that made being there worthwhile. Within moments of my arrival, for instance, El Centro de la Raza Director Roberto Maestes greeted me as "young man." While this was probably because he couldn't remember my name, it still did my about-to-turn-48 heart good. This is a guy who was in the thick of Wounded Knee when I was just a pimply thirteen-year-old stoner.

I also spoke with a mysterious man named Harry. The last time I saw him was when we met at the Camp4Unity demonstration last June. A few hours before my arrest, we had a brief conversation that culminated in him handing me a hundred dollar bill he'd found on a sidewalk. "I don't want you to just pay the electric bill with this. Do something special." I told him tonight that one of our more challenged vendors had told me that he and his equally challenged wife were having a very tough time, and he just wished they could afford go out for dinner. I was able to say, "I'm going to make you very happy. Go somewhere nice." This, in turn, made Harry very happy.

Jim Page told me that if Mayor Nickels evicted the campers, he'd retaliate by playing a concert on his front lawn. This is the most original threat I've heard in years.

I told Nickelsville organizer Scott Morrow that I'd been spending my idle moments while home sick pondering what his life was like right now. This made him smile.

But the moment that had me thinking on my drive home was my conversation with the young man in the tan cap. He was PTSD, he said, and had lost a good ninety jobs in recent years. "I can't stay in shelters," he said. "I can't cope with the people." His cap said Heb. 10:10 across the bill. "What's Hebrews 10:10," I asked.

He grew slightly agitated and reached for his pocket bible. "You'd think I'd know this by now," he said, "since people keep asking."

He found it. "By this will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all," he read. His face grew serious and he looked me dead in the eye. "I think that if Jesus were alive, he'd be right here in Nickelsville."

"Jesus is right here in Nickelsville," I said, believing every word of it. "Places like this, where people come together to love and care for eachother, is where Jesus lives."

As I drove home, I considered how it is that I, an existentalist agnostic if ever there was, could say such a thing and actually believe it to be true.

The answer is surprisingly simple. God is love, and you don't need to believe in God to believe in love. Our notions of God are just framework for what's real. What's real is love, and love is real. And anyone who was at Nickelsville tonight knows just what I mean.

Nickelsville: In the Pink

As I was leaving Nickelsville this morning, three homeless guys with backpacks crested the hill to behold a sea of 150 fuchsia tents. The oldest of them — tall, gaunt, and weathered as the road itself — beamed at the sight. Snapping a few final photos, I must of looked something like press. "You looking for a headline," he smiled? "How about, "We're in the pink?"

Pink, fuschia, whatever. The 150 tents that were unwittingly donated to Real Change last week by the Girl Scouts of America look a lot like salvation to the hundreds of homeless who have been chased pillar to post in this town since the City began hounding homeless campers more than year ago. Apparently, the use of these tents for their annual Jamboree is a one time deal. Normally, we would have passed these on one at a time to those who have had their survival gear stolen by the city. Due to a happy accident of timing, however, we were able to expedite the process by passing them onto the Nickelsville organizing committee.

When we arrived at slightly after four this morning, the advance guard was still hacking a trail through the blackberry brambles into the Highland Ave and Marginal Way site that led down the hill from the small parking lot. Piles of pink sat in wait, and the tents went up in the dark first by twos and three and then fives and tens as more people arrived. The atmosphere was a bit tense as we raced against the expected arrival of the police. Organizers maintained cover by asking cars that pulled into the lot to discharge their loads and repark elsewhere. As the sun came up, the site was bathed in gold and god rays reached down to kiss the ground with radiant light.

The police never came. Nickelsville supporter and El Centro de la Raza Director Roberto Maestes was one of the first on the scene along with Scott Morrow. The site, he thought, was on Duwamish land. This we speculated, might add an interesting wrinkle to the common expectation that police would soon arrive in force to deliver the standard five minute warning before clearing the area.

I entered a few key numbers into my cel and wandered over to the main intersection to wave in the bewildered media vans who couldn't see shit from the road. My other thought was that if I saw something that looked like a bus full of robocops I might be able to offer a few minutes advance warning. No robocops came, but KOMO soon had their twenty-five foot live transmission tower telescoped into the early morning sky. A news copter circled overhead. After this, the site was easier to find.

By noon, Mayor Nickels had informed an inquiring media that the site would soon be posted for clearance in three days, per city protocol on homeless encampments. I guess the protocols are good for something. In three days, hopefully, enough supporters with plastic in their pockets and little to lose by risking arrest will arrive to act in solidarity with the homeless and help hold the fort.

Please understand that this isn't a "protest." It's a survival strategy for the hundreds of homeless people who have nowhere else to go. This year's one night homeless count found 2,631 homeless people surviving outside after the shelters were full.

To offset the campsite clearances, the city added 55 new beds. For the curious, that's about a 47:1 ratio of outdoor homeless to new beds.

More than a year ago, Mayor Nickels began a ruthless zero tolerance policy of campsite clearances from public land, knowing full well that the shelters are packed like a 358 bus headed north at rush hour. That's the bus that blows past you without stopping after you've waited twenty minutes for it's arrival. Frustrating. But not as bad as showing up for shelter and being turned away with maybe a blanket and a bus ticket once the beds are full.

As I left at around ten, the Honeybuckets were coming off the flatbed and being carried down the hill. Nickelsville was established.

I just did an interview on the sidewalk outside Real Change with the omnipresent Linda Brill of King 5. When Brill asked me to respond to the Mayor's assertion that Nickelsville was "political" i said, "It's not political. What's political is the mayor chasing homeless people out of town to make way for downtown condos. This is about survival."

"There will be a standoff, I said, "and the Mayor will have a decision to make."

The story continues.

Photos by Revel, except for Iwo Jima Honeybucket. That one was me.

Another Day in Belltown

This morning I arrived to work at a bit before 8 to find a vendor waiting on the sidewalk and someone huddled under a ratty light blue blanket sleeping in our doorway. A puddle of urine spread from the right side of our storefront across the sidewalk.

The vendor pointed. "Guy peed on the building. That's fucked up."

I looked at the sleeping bundle. "He's reduced to sleeping in doorways in November. It's hard for me to get real worked up over some pee. Maybe I'm just used to it."

"Yeah," said the vendor. "But it's still fucked up."

We both stood looking at the blanket. It wasn't moving. Well-worn work boots were nestled between the sleeping man and the doorway. I thought about what it must be like. Needing to pee in the cold dark. All your stuff is there. Do you pack up everything and head to an alley, or do you just pee a few feet away and go back to sleep?

Tough call.

"You know," I said, "Belltown's like everywhere else. They're gearing up to hire private security to drive people like this guy away."

"Yeah. I'm coming to the overnight encampment on Wednesday," said the vendor. "The last issue had three great articles on this stuff. That was great. I hope the police don't mess with us."

"It's not really in the City's interest," I said, "But you never know. We're ready if they do."

The vendor smiled. "I remember going to Colman School with SHARE, cutting the lock to the gate with bolt cutters. The cops were there in force. Holding their big clubs. They gave us a half hour to clear out before arresting everyone."

This was during the period when the City was pushing pack hard on SHARE's tent city in Seattle. If I remember correctly, it was after the El Centro encampment, where the City threatened to fine the community organization for each day they allowed SHARE's camp on their property. El Centro director Roberto Maestes stood on principle and let the camp stay.

"That was before Trinity United Methodist pushed back hard," I remembered. When SHARE's tent city went to the church in Ballard, Reverend Rich Lang reframed the issue as a matter of church and state, and stood up to the City's new strategy of intimidating host organizations.

Afterwards the Tent City migrated to Saint Mark's in Capitol hill. The faith community rallied around the campers' right to survival, the press turned on the City's hard-ball tactics, and SHARE won the right to a peripatetic Seattle encampment largely free of City harassment.

The vendor smiled at the memory. "Scott was always trying to get us arrested," he said. "We stood up to those fuckers."

The faith community stood up for homeless people too, and it made all the difference. My vendor friend beamed at the memory.

"I need to get some work done." I turned to the doorway, unlocking the top bolt and then the bottom.

"Hey," I said. "I'm just going to step over you." The blanket stirred slightly. I lifted my feet high to cross the threshold, and gently closed the door.