My Camp4Unity Photo Album

Shortly after I arrived Sunday night, I spoke to these workers while one interpreted for the three. They were up from Vegas and hoping to land a flooring job in the morning. They said the shelters were full and that the authorities keep stealing their blankets, and that these were hard to keep replacing.



I kicked off the program that night by talking about why we were there and encouraging people to reclaim the word "comrades." After I spoke, people broke into small conversational groups to get to know one another.



The homeless remembrance sculpture offered a wonderful reminder of why the Mayor needs us on his doorstep.



I spoke to a regally dressed homeless woman who was born in 1927. She opted to sleep in a chair out in the open that night.


I did my first interview Monday at 4 AM. Fuckers woke me up.


Tons of media came in the morning to see us arrested, and lots of us got to do interviews. Here's Lead Vendor Staff Danina Garcia, telling it like it is.


It was a kick for us to see the favorable press in the morning papers.


Women in Black stood in front of the homeless remembrance sculpture and read the names of the 280 homeless who have died on the street in Seattle since 2001.


Church Council President-elect Michael Ramos thundered prophetically while surrounded by clergy just before we all went out into the street.


SHARE Executive Director Scott Morrow and I carried the tent out where it didn't belong.


You can always tell the true CD junkies. They're the ones right up front, staring down the cops.


I chat up my arresting officers.


We weren't sure police would choose to arrest RCOP activist Mike Smith, but with proper encouragement and forewarning, they obliged. Mike was given a ride to his door in an unusually nice ACCESS van.


"Free at last! Free at last! Lawd, Lawd, free at last!" The Camp4Unity 15, sans Mike Smith, released to the sidewalk behind West Precinct half an hour after our arrests.

All photos by Doug at Whitney's Corner. Additional photos and commentary may be found at his excellent blog.

Inconvenient Math

My friend over at Whitney's Corner offers this homely urban scene along with his typically stunning nature photography this week. It's the Crisis Clinic suicide prevention sign, posted at either end of the jumper magnet that is the Aurora Bridge. He points out that the Crisis Clinic declined to be listed as the resource referral point for homeless campers on the very excellent grounds that no "resources" exist to which those displaced might be referred, and that this means you have better odds of being helped if you're a suicidal bridge jumper than a harassed and homeless camper. A reporter I recently spoke with tidily described this as the "inconvenient math" of the homeless encampment issue.

Since I flunked algebra twice in high school, I should probably get Dr. Wes to help with this, but let's try to render the equation. More than 2,600 people surviving outside during a recent One Night Homeless Count translates as >2,600. The number of full shelter beds that night are still being tabulated, but we do know that the emergency overflow capacity of about 100 beds was maxed out at 140 occupants. So max capacity might be represented for now as x + 140. So (x + 140) - >2600 = ->2600 mathematically demonstrates there are more than 2,600 people who were counted on one night surviving outside of a maxed out emergency shelter system.

It's almost painful to watch Patricia McInturff dodge C.R. Douglas's dogged line of questioning regarding this problem. She trips over her victim-blaming rhetoric as she visibly struggles to evade the obvious. No simple thing to do in public. No wonder she's retiring. Having spent whatever credibility she has telling transparent lies in service of the Great White Whale, a lanai in Hawaii must be looking pretty damn good.

Back to the Crisis Clinic, we have an email to the City from their ED Kathleen Southwick. If the City puts their number on the signs, she writes, displaced campers "will just be mad at us and we won't be able to help find their stuff and most likely won't be able to help them find shelter. ... I know the City's goal is to keep people off their property, but people are living there because they don't have anywhere else to go."

It's that inconvenient math thing again.

But Community Service Bureau Director Darby DuComb didn't have this problem. She just followed orders and listed their number. What's she have that the Crisis Clinic doesn't? Outside of a different boss?