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.

Answer the Damn Question!

On Thursday, March 13th, the Real Change Organizing Project and friends will stand with those who struggle to survive in Seattle’s public spaces. Your support is vital. If you have a few hours during the day, we need you. If you can spend the night at City Hall Plaza, we need you. Come stand for human dignity, compassion, and public accountability.

Since last spring, the Mayor’s office has coordinated a campaign of harassment and intimidation against homeless campers. The obvious question has been asked a thousand times: Where are these people supposed to go?

The City has yet to offer an honest answer. While this year’s one night homeless count found more than 2,600 people surviving outside of a maxed-out emergency shelter system, the systematic destruction of homeless campsites has continued unabated. Survival gear is destroyed. No-trespass citations are issued against “unauthorized camping.”

The city has criminalized both the act of sleeping and the storage of survival gear on all public land. All camping is “unauthorized.”

This is an inhumane waste of resources that places the blame for extreme misery and poverty squarely upon the victim.

And to what end? Campers find other places to go. They replace the survival gear that the city destroys. Eventually, they return to sites that have been cleared. They have little choice. Since this new policy of targeting homeless campers seems to have regional coordination with the Department of Transportation, even those who leave town are likely to face similar harassment.

The mayor’s public relations team has vilified homeless campers as lazy and irresponsible, diseased and dangerous. They have offered smooth assurances that the concerns of homeless advocates have been met, and that services and shelter are available to displaced homeless campers. They have couched their assault in the language of compassion.

Simply put, they lie. Here’s what they say, and what they really mean.

Shelter will be made available to those displaced from encampments: This, so far as we can tell, means that individuals will be offered a mat on the floor of a City overflow shelter for a limited period of time that has yet to be defined. Nobody is talking about opening new shelter. Last January 24, on a night when all the shelters were filled and the severe weather overflow shelters were 40 people past capacity, more than 2,600 individuals were found surviving outside in the pre-dawn hours. Where are they supposed to go? The question remains unanswered.

Personal property will be stored for up to 60 days: The City’s draft policy defines all tents, sleeping bags, blankets, tarps, and other survival gear as immediately disposable. When they say “personal property,” they mean identification, military papers, prescriptions, perhaps photos, and eyeglasses. In other words, when people return to their camps on a cold night to find that everything they own is gone, the gear that they need to survive outside will almost surely have been thrown away.

Campers will receive a minimum of 48 hours notice: The notices the City posts are pre-printed with a 48-hour warning for disposal of belongings. While city departments will have ten business days to respond to reports of camping with removal, this does not translate into the nearly two week’s warning that is often implied.

Outreach workers will offer campers shelter and services: Seattle’s Crisis Clinic refused to have their number listed on the notices of removal because they understand that little to nothing is available to callers. Providing effective referrals to those who have little reason to trust means having the capacity to build relationships over time and offering actual resources. Without this, talk of “outreach” is mostly a sham.

By the end of March, the Mayor’s office will finalize their rules and procedures for homeless campsite removal. Minutes of last January’s public hearing are available on the City’s Human Services Department website. In over three hours of testimony, not one person spoke in favor of the draft policy.

On March 13, concerned citizens have the opportunity to send a clear message to the Mayor and his staff.

Our message is simple: Help, Don’t Harass. End the sweeps of homeless encampments. Work with advocates to provide alternatives. Provide real outreach, sufficient emergency shelter alternatives, and expanded services to those in need.

Visibility teams will stand throughout the downtown with banners, leaflets, and petitions to raise awareness of the City’s actions. Dinner, provided by Operation Sacklunch, will be served at 5:30 pm on City Hall Plaza by leaders of Seattle’s faith community. We will camp overnight on City Hall Plaza to highlight Seattle’s critical need for housing and shelter. There will be a final visibility push before the tents come down on Friday morning.

Please go to realchangenews.org and click on the Take Action logo up top. This will take you to our advocacy page where you can pledge your participation in the Day of Action. Sign up for a visibility shift. Commit to staying overnight. Download a petition to distribute, or simply add your name to the many who have already signed.

Silence is complicity. Your action matters. Please pledge your support and help make March 13th the strong showing of community concern that homeless people need and deserve.

A pre-meeting for our day of action will be held on Sunday, March 9, 5 pm, at Trinity United Methodist Church at the corner of 65th and 23rd in Ballard. We encourage you to attend. For more information, email natalien@realchangenews.org, or call 441-3247.

Transitions

Saturday was the last night of "my monastic cell" at Trinity United Methodist Church. For two months, once it was clear that my twenty year marriage was over, this room was home. It was really just an unrented office space that they were nice enough to let me have, but my monkish existence there, without the distractions of internet, television, or stereo, provided an uncomplicated space from which I could move toward clarity.

Last Wednesday, as I was putting Twin B to bed at their mom's house, I told her again that soon I would have a place, and she and her sister would have another bunk bed and another home. She looked me dead in the eye and said, "you keep saying that, but you never do it." She's four. She's that kind of a kid.

By Friday, I had the apartment. Four days later, I was sort of settled in. Today, I set up the bunk bed. A friend grew up in them. Another friend gave me a kitchen table, and yet another came through with chairs to match. Still others moved my 1,200 books and even put them away for me. Yay, friends.

The girls are asleep in their new room tonight. They live in two houses now. And have two parents who love them. They're happy.

As I prepared last Saturday to leave the room at Trinity for good, it occurred to me I'd miss the place. It was here that I came back to myself after the earthquake to renegotiate the shifting terrain of my life. The ground is still moving, but it feels more solid everyday.

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.

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.

Talkin' Trash in Ballard

WRAP Executive Director Paul Boden gave a talk last night at the Ballard library, sponsored by Real Change and our friends at Trinity United Methodist Church and Sustainable Ballard.

I think I've found the one other person on earth who hates Philip Mangano as much as I do. Boden doesn't like Mayor Newsom much either, and privately describes him as a kind of smiley Kennedy-wanna-be who fucks over homeless people.

The Western Regional Advocacy Project this year released Without Home, a critique of federal housing policy that documents how more than 25 years of federal funding trends for affordable housing have created the contemporary crisis of homelessness and near-homelessness.

WRAP is a west coast homeless empowerment organizer's coalition (see blog) that is working to build a bottom up alternative to business-as-usual. Boden started the organization last year after eighteen years as ED of the San Fransisco Coalition on Homelessness.

Boden will discuss Federal homeless and housing policy today with members of the Seattle King County Coalition for the Homeless immediately following the group's monthly meeting.

Paul said stuff that needs to be said and a bunch of people pretty much seemed to agree. We gave away about 30 pounds of WRAP reports before we ran out. I videotaped things, but the download cord got left at the office. So you have to wait, like I do. I'll get something up soon.

WRAP Member organizations:

• Building Opportunities for Self Sufficiency (B.O.S.S.), Berkeley, CA
• Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco (COHSF)
• Los Angeles Community Action Network (LA CAN)
• Real Change, Seattle, WA
• Sisters Of The Road, Portland, OR
• Street Spirit, Oakland, CA