The Turnip Gets His Say (Sort Of)

My sock puppet post seems to have hit a nerve. Wes was telling me recently that he's never seen Bill Block get mad. Well, I have. I think the secret is to compare him to a turnip. Bill emailed to say I'm more interested in having a colorful blog than in checking my facts.

I do hate to be dull.

There are a few corrections to be made. The handout and PowerPoint were created by Leadership Tomorrow for anyone who intends to speak on behalf of CEHKC, and not for the benefit of the Consumer Advisory Council (CAC) alone. It's in beta stage. SHARE/WHEEL didn't hear it that way, but as Anitra so delicately put it, "When you're getting fucked all the time, you develop a habit of expecting to be fucked." So maybe Bill should clarify with them as well, so they can stop holding strategy meetings about how they're going to metaphorically kick his ass.

I'm also informed that there are two CAC reps on the Interagency Council, which turns out to be true. Out of 38 seats. Filled mostly by high level government bureaucrats and senior staff from the largest human services and housing agencies in King County.

Bill says the CAC is being empowered.

He has offered, for example, to get some board training for them. I'm not really sure that this addresses the issue.

SHARE/WHEEL, I'm informed, is the only organization that has actually been allowed to have organizational representation on the CAC, and they fought for that tooth and nail. All other homeless and formerly homeless people are instructed to leave their affiliations at the door. They are on the CAC as individuals.

I wonder if that's true also for, say, Paul Lambros, the ED of Plymouth Housing, or Adrienne Quinn from the Office of Housing. Or City Attorney Tom Carr. I sort of doubt it. I mean, how would that work?

Anitra says it's pretty easy to be intimidated if "you don't know that you have 300 people standing behind you." I'm sure that's true. I mean, the other people at the table come from more privileged classes, make about ten times as much money as you do, and can talk insider jargon that you don't really understand without even knowing they're doing it. And there you are. You're outnumbered about twelve to one, and you've been informed that you don't represent anyone but yourself.

Here's the other thing. When I asked Bill about the Governing Board handpicking their representative from the Consumer Advisory Committee, his response was that no one else gets to choose their representation. That very "powerful" organizations wanted on and were refused. To me, this misunderstands the point.

The person Real Change nominated to the CAC, for example, is a recovering addict and a felon with limited formal education. He is staying clean, dealing with major health issues, and working toward his dream of one day holding a job in the field of waste management. Everyday life for him borders on the heroic.

He sells Real Change for a living. To pretend for a moment that this guy is on an even playing field with people like Greg Nickels or Paul Lambros or Tom Carr is just fucking sick.

It seems to me that there are two ways one could go about building "consumer" representation into the coalition. One would be to understand the vastly different relationships that people have to power, and attempt to compensate by encouraging genuine empowerment along the lines that SHARE/WHEEL has achieved in their representation. The other is to tokenize and to call that empowerment.

Rachael and I met with Bill shortly after he took this job to talk about homeless representation. If you want homeless people's ideas to really inform this process, we advised, forget about putting individuals in the position of representing "the homeless." Hold forums. Do surveys. Get real feedback about how the issue is viewed from a broad spectrum of those most affected and analyze those results for meaning.

But that's not the route they chose to go. I wonder why?

I don't think Bill Block is the issue here. There aren't many people who could hold together a coalition of county and city officials, high level career human service administrators, housing developers, business people, faith community advocates, and foundation heavyweights.

Let's face it. Most of these people aren't all that interested in what homeless people think. They already have their own ideas, and these have to do with their own self-interest. Lets remember our Niebuhr here. Individuals behave morally. Institutions act upon their self-interest. This is a coalition of institutions. This homeless inclusion stuff is ten percent reality and ninety percent useful fiction.

Are we such children that we don't understand this?

I don't believe for a moment that homeless people are an authentic part of CEHKC. Power sets the agenda and dictates the terms of inclusion. SHARE/WHEEL has some ability to push back, and those who have power don't like that a bit. It hasn't been that long since the city basically went to the mat in a failed attempt to defund the opposition.

Or have we forgotten that already? Somehow, I doubt that SHARE/WHEEL has.

Yellow Brick Road

On a lighter note, I stumbled across this video tonight of Captain Beefheart's Yellow Brick Road set to some Simpson's clips and footage from the Wizard of Oz. Somehow, the lips in the Simpson's footage seem to synch with the lyrics. I think I'm having a flashback.

The Sock Puppet Rebellion

The Consumer Advisory Council (CAC) of the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness is going ape-shit this week because, with all due respect and I say this as a friend, Bill Block sometimes has the political sensitivity of a turnip.

First, a little background. The Committee to End Homelessness in King County has three main groups that meet. There's the mucky-muck Governing Board, which has a few rich business people, some top level human services administrators, a handful of electeds, a United Way President, and a former Governor. They make the decisions. Then you have the Interagency Council. Other than homeless people themselves, these people have the most knowledge and experience because they work in it everyday. They advise the Governing Board, but mostly lack the means to hold them accountable. Then there's the Consumer Advisory Council, made up of those who have actually been homeless. No one has to listen to them at all, but everyone agrees they're an important part of the plan.

Listening to the voice of the homeless is a key piece of Ten Year Planning efforts everywhere. Philip Mangano does it all the time. It lends an aura of saintliness, which he finds useful in numerous situations.

But having a voice and having power are different things entirely. More on that later.

You may have noticed that I used the phrase "the homeless" just now. That was wrong of me. I know this because I've been working in this issue for twenty years and realize that some people find that phraseology to be objectifying and prefer the term "homeless people," or the more cumbersome, "those experiencing homelessness." I also know it because it's in the 15 page handout Bill Block gave members of the Consumer Advisory Council to help them talk about this issue.

The CAC has been feeling kind of stabby over their obviously tokenistic role for awhile. They have no defined relationship, for example, to the Interagency Council, which is where, supposedly, recommendations get formed. Until a few months ago, they had no representation on the Governing Board either. They meet with Bill, and Bill conveys their concerns.

The CAC decided awhile ago that this arrangement lacked a certain, shall we say, formality, and the Governing Board responded by selecting a formerly homeless person to represent them. This person had everything she needed to be effective in this role except any real relationship to the CAC. So that just pissed them off more.

So then the Governing Board said, "OK, we can handle two consumer representatives on our 24 person board. We hand picked the first one. Send us three choices, and we'll hand pick another from those. If we don't like any of the choices, you'll have to send us more candidates from which to hand pick."

That was the deal. The CAC, ingrates that they are, have rebelled against the colonial overlords to insist on choosing their own representative. Dr. Wes Browning, who is probably smarter than anyone on the Governing Board except for Ron Sims, who is really fucking smart, is smart enough to be mostly amused by all of this, but also pissed enough to want to quit the CAC if CEHKC doesn't stop treating them like the total tokens that they probably are.

But that's not why people are freaking out. Apparently, a homeless speakers bureau is forming out of the CAC, and Bill Block helpfully provided them 15 pages of talking points, along with a CEHKC PowerPoint that he'd like them to use. This is where the turnip analogy comes up.

When Paul Boden of the Western Regional Advocacy Project was here recently, he told a story about when he was homeless and some advocates invited him to speak at a rally. He talked to his friends, and prepared for his big moment. When it was time, he was handed his speech.

This is sort of like that. But it's worse. Because in his turnipy way, Bill has managed to piss off not only the CAC, but also SHARE and WHEEL, who run the Tent City encampments as well as numerous other homeless self-managed shelters. Here's sample Question and Answer #2 (out of 24). This being a blog and not a book, I won't get into a critique of the whole handout.

Q: Tent city isn't a long-term solution. Why is this?

A: The purpose of the plan is to change from just providing shelter to providing long-term housing. There won't be a necessity for shelters or tent cities when the plan succeeds. I should also note that, in context, the tent cities are only a small fraction of the shelter beds in our system. The two tent cities only house 150-200 people (of 2,500 in the shelter system). So in some ways tent city is not really about shelter. What tent city has accomplished is educating communities that homeless people not just "are like us," they are us. Community members have the opportunity to realize that the people living in tent cities are moms, dads, and grandmas just like us. There is extensive testimony from people who have recognized that people who have become homeless are not a different "species." Viewing homeless people as neighbors has been a productive part of tent city.

So, if you're wondering what's wrong with this, it's not the "people who are experiencing homelessness are people too" rap that starts about half way through. The part that has people doing the war dance is the denial that Tent City is anything other than a public education campaign.

Here's the thing. If CEHKC was listening to homeless people at all, they'd know that when planners talk about closing shelters, it freaks people out. That's because there is presently a 2:1 ration of people needing shelter to available beds, and little to no evidence that homelessness is actually being reduced.

People who stay at Tent City do not regard themselves as props. They are people who would otherwise not be sheltered at all. This is especially true in this Brave New 10YP World in which no new shelter is politically possible.

But that's not in the script, is it?

In other news, here's something from yesterday's Seattle Times.

Isaac Palmer, 62, was apparently inside a sleeping bag concealed by blackberry bushes in South Seattle when he was run over by a state Department of Transportation (DOT) contract worker. The King County Medical Examiner's Office said Tuesday that the death was caused by tractor-mounted brush-clearing machinery. ...

After striking Palmer, the subcontractor saw his body roll out of the blackberry brambles toward an access road, according to a Seattle police report. Palmer died almost immediately after the 11:40 a.m. Saturday accident, the report said.

"Everybody believed the site was clear," East said, adding that the area is popular with transients. "This person had crawled into a sleeping bag and burrowed his way amongst the blackberry bushes. He wasn't visible to anybody."

In the days before the accident, police, DOT employees and contract crews were in the area working and advising transients about the upcoming work, East said. They were told to abide by the no-trespassing signs and leave the DOT-owned area.

The Soldiers of God Go Underground

Last April, after coming across the Soldier of God product line in an Oriental Trading Company catalogue, I wrote a post called Kill for Jesus. Never one to take anything at face value, I was a little amazed to see little rubber duckies and teddy bears in army helmets, toy military gear emblazoned with crosses, camouflage clothing items with the Soldier of God logo, and so forth, all targeted at kids 10 and under. While these toys represent a small part of the Vacation Bible Study product line, which is in turn a small part of OTCs overall inventory, they still very much creeped me out.

Happily, I was not alone. Freelance writer Corey Habbas wrote Holy Warrior Toys Sell in America for an online publication called OpEd.com. The article quotes various faith leaders and educators expressing various levels of dismay that a market exists for such toys and that this company has filled the niche. Habbas' piece caused OTC to pull the toys from their catalogues and website. Few wins come this easily.

As it turns out, this one didn't either. Habbas has found that the company continues to sell their Soldier of God toys through their call center. The products have not come off the market. They've just gone slightly underground. A petition has been set up to ask the company to stop selling the products altogether. It takes 30 seconds to sign. For what it's worth, please do. And pass it on.

The Pen IS Mightier Than The Sword

Wow. Suddenly I feel like a real internet journalist. I received the following email today from Corey Habbas, declaring victory over the Soldiers of God:

Thank you so much for supporting this effort. I am really glad to have had you as a catalyst that sparked awareness to this whole issue via your blog. Also, I have good news! as a result of the petition and the article that appeared off of the Google news search this morning, the OTC issued a formal statement this morning to the reps that this product line would not be sold any longer. So as of this morning, they are no longer selling it.

Interesting to see that the Oriental Trading Company has visited my blog about 20 times so far today. And nice to know that little Apesma, which was about one month old when I posted Kill for Jesus, could spark this outcome. A Big Thank You to Corey for taking on the fight, and an even bigger thank you to Oriental Trading Company for recognizing that God, militarism, and kids toys is not an appropriate sales niche for a respectable company.

Rachael's Dream

Today Rachael told me about a dream she had. I was in it. Rachael is Real Change's Director of Advocacy and Organizing. She's been here for five years now, which in Real Change years is really more like twenty. In this scheme, I've been at Real Change for about 50 years, which seems about right.

In her dream, the staff and the board are sitting in a room talking, and everything is going fine except that we're all bobbing around in these weird sort of bouncy chairs, and every once in a while someone's chair would just sort of hurl them off into oblivion. And Rachael says, "Hey, I don't mean to be a pain, but could we get some normal chairs?" She's not sitting in a bouncy chair. She's not having any of that. She's sitting on a phone book instead.

Rather that resolve the chair situation, I start screaming at her that she's being unreasonable. I tell her that we need to go to mediation to figure out how she can stop being a problem. And she's saying, "I don't want to be a problem. I just want a normal chair!"

I tell her to stop the whining about the fucking chairs. We're a non-profit. We can't afford chairs.

No. She didn't dream that part. I'm embellishing.

Chairs figure largely in Rachael's history at Real Change. She reminded me today of another story.

When she first came to work here, she had a choice between two chairs. One smelled like cat pee, and the other was screwed up in a way that threatened permanent damage to her back. One day she arrived at work and I was assembling a new office chair. It would be the best chair at Real Change. It was hers. I said, she reminded me, that no one should have to choose between the cat pee chair and the torture chair.

That was the moment, she said, that she decided she might actually be able to stay.

But now, this. She didn't read any deep meaning into her dream, but I did. Being symbolically inclined, I got it right away.

The life of making do in an under-resourced nonprofit gets to be a drag after awhile. Eventually, you want to stop being bounced around by circumstances beyond your control. You want to be able to just do your job, and not worry about being unexpectedly hurled off into oblivion.

That's not a lot to ask for. We have one more month to our summer fund drive. We've raised about $45K toward our HUGE $140K goal. We need your help. Find out more here, or make a donation at our secure site. Please do what you can. Thanks.

Say A Prayer With Leonard

For the past several weeks I've been listening to Leonard Cohen and Sharon Robinson's Ten New Songs CD at least once a day. In the last six years since it came out I've probably played this two or three-hundred times, and it still floors me. Becoming an ordained buddhist monk doesn't seem to have hurt his songwriting at all. There's a depth there that still feeds my obsession. The whole album feels like a prayer.

For the innermost decision
That we cannot but obey
For what's left of our religion
I lift my voice and pray:
May the lights in The Land of Plenty
Shine on the truth some day.

I prowled YouTube looking for something that does Leonard justice, and couldn't do better that this live performance of "Everybody Knows," which seems to have run on Spanish television sometime in the late 90s.

The Air Force Years: Part One

In the summer of 1979, the military became my ticket out of Sioux Falls, South Dakota. At 18, I was an emaciated hippy with a serious recreational mesc habit. Between my work, the poverty diet, and the drugs, I was rail thin at 6'2 and 145 pounds. With frizzed out hair down to my elbows, I resembled a brown-eyed mop that had been plugged into an electrical socket.

I'd dropped out of high school to get away from my parents the previous year, and worked building mobile home rafters for a bit better than minimum wage.

A guy named Leonard and I were assigned to the same machine. We didn't like each other much. I think they paired me with the only guy there who was a bigger idiot than me.

I worked the lead. We'd put down gang nails on the magnetized plates and I'd toss him a 12-footer to slap into the jig. We'd put down the uprights and I'd throw him another piece that we'd bend into an arc to form the top. Pneumatic hammers locked everything in place while we put down another set of nails. I'd swing a radial saw over the end, hit the button to activate the press, and then pull a stop to pop the rafter off the jig. Leonard would hoist it over his head to the cart behind us. As he turned back, another 12-footer would be flying his way.

It became a dance, performed day after day until it became a matter of pure muscle memory. I'd sometimes imagine that my parents were hovering somewhere above watching, marveling at my amazing skill. It was a ridiculous fantasy. They had no idea what I did or who I was.

Rate was forty-five rafters an hour. I was bored out of my mind.

I could easily see my future in the collection of stoners who manned the saws and jigs and forklifts at Component Manufacturing. At 18, I was the youngest person there.

An accident in an uninsured car knocked me out of my rut. I was high. Really high. Somehow the cops never noticed. I stopped for the sign and pulled my Country Squire station wagon that I'd bought for a quarter pound of pot onto Minnesota Avenue out by the airport. Then I saw the motorcycle. He was speeding. I froze. He tried to lay his bike down and skidded sideways into my rear panel.

Later, I visited the guy in the hospital where he was in traction with a seriously busted up ankle. He was remarkably forgiving about the whole thing, but his insurance company wanted money I didn't have. My life needed to change.

The military recruitment center was in one of those low ugly shopping areas that were everywhere in Sioux Falls. In towns where land isn't worth much, most buildings are low and flat. The Marines, Army, Navy, and Air Force had adjacent storefronts.

It took less than a minute to decide on the branch. I had no interest in killing or being made uncomfortable, so the Marines and Army were out. I didn't know how to swim and was afraid of water. That left the Air Force.

The recruiter regaled me with tales of air conditioned offices and cushy desk jobs. There would be women to flirt with by the water cooler. I'd do my forty hours, and then be my own person. There would be money for college. I could retire a young man.

His talents were wasted. I'd made up my mind before I walked in the door.

First, however, there was the small matter of qualifying. I was, after all, a high school drop out with a GED who looked like a total fucking addict. He asked about that and I gave all the right answers. That was good enough for him.

A date was scheduled to show up at 7:30 for my ASVABs. The Air Force was selective. I'd have to do well.

As much as I looked forward to my new life of air conditioned administrative leisure, I was having the sex, drugs, and rock and roll summer of my life. My sound track was Journey, Foreigner, Aerosmith, Black Sabbath, and REO Speedwagon.

I was a bell-bottomed cultural product of the 70s mid-west.

Home was a downtown SRO above the Arrow Bar and across the street from the Nashville Club. I had three girlfriends, all named Lisa. Lisa number one dealt mescaline, and I mostly got mine for free. She was actually a former girlfriend, but once it was known that I was going we started having sex again. Lisa number two was pretty and blond and working class. She would leave town for welding school shortly before I left. Lisa number three, my true love, was beautiful, poised, and unattainable. She would later become a lead singer for a popular local rock band. We were friends, and it secretly drove me insane.

My drinking buddies made it clear that once I was gone, all Lisas were fair game.

As it turned out, my big breakthrough with Lisa number two came the night before I took the ASVABs. There had been a party, and she told her boyfriend to get lost. I'd been hovering in the wings for months.

We had a fifth of Bacardi 151 between us and plenty of weed. There was never any shortage of $15 lids of Mexican or $40 bags of Columbian back then. Even working poor losers like me could usually afford to stay stoned 24/7.

At 1 or 2 AM we found our way to her place. She still lived with her mom, but we were quiet. I took a cab home. A few hours later, when I pulled my pants off the floor, they didn't fit right. Somehow, in the dark, I'd worn her jeans home instead of my own. I put on my other pair and rushed out the door.

The plan had been to get a good night's sleep and arrive sharp and refreshed. Instead I was still half drunk and smelled like rum, pot, BO, and sex.

About a dozen of us sat in testing cubicles under florescent lights, quietly filling in ovals with #2 pencils. The test came in sections, each timed by a buzzer. I kept finishing too early.

I figured that was the end of that.

Maybe my test got mixed up with someone else's, but I didn't just pass. I did absurdly well. The AFQT, or average score, was a 97 out of a possible 99. For the Air Force, a qualifying grade was 35.

The recruiters looked at me differently after that.

Later came the physical. Being flat footed and under weight wasn't a problem. In July, 1979, at a few months shy of 19 years old, I was sworn into the United States Air Force and put on a plane to Lackland, Texas to begin Basic Training.

I had no idea what was ahead of me.

See also:
The Beginnings
Young, Gifted, and Miserable
Everybody Must Get Stoned
Life Begins at Seventeen
The Year of Living Dangerously
The Air Force Years: Part One
The Air Force Years: Part Two
The Air Force Years: Part Three
The Air Force Years: Part Four
The Air Force Years: Part Five
Working Poor In Waltham: Part One
Working Poor In Waltham: Part Two
Birth of a Student Radical
Harvest of Shame
The Owl of Minerva Flies at Midnight
The Road to Street
The Street Years: Part One
The Street Years: Part Two

Sisters

Twins A&B at Folklife last weekend, and again this morning, in their summer dresses.

Lick My Decals Off, Baby

People who know me realize I have other obsessions besides a burning contempt for Philip Mangano. Homer, for instance. And Captain Beefheart. My blog's name comes from a thing he does at the end of Shiny Beast. I couldn't really say why I find it so damn amusing.

I'm just weird. Really, really weird.

This ad was produced in 1971 to promote one of his earlier albums, and has a Dada genius to it that most will never appreciate. The television station in LA wouldn't touch it, so the spot never ran. Fortunately this cultural artifact survives on YouTube.

I found this statement from the record company at the Beefheart website.

In the eyes of Warner/Reprise, the commercial is anything but obscene "We knew the station might not understand what we were doing, but we didn't suspect they'd turn us down cold. ... It's unfortunate that the station should be so frightened by it."

For more posts on Captain Beefheart, click here.

Speaking of Phil ...

It's been a great source of amusement to me that if one Googles "Philip Mangano," high among the various awards, adulatory articles, official statements, and even a page of ridiculous quotations, are a few of my blog posts, which have been slightly more critical. At one point I was in the number seven spot.

Imagine my surprise when a softball interview we ran when he was first appointed homelessness czar in 2002 suddenly appeared today way up in the number five position! In those first few months, we gave him the benefit of the doubt. Six months later I had a different opinion. I don't think Phil will be going out to dinner with me again any time soon.

Obviously, Google rankings can be manipulated. The world's most popular search engine looks at the number of links to a page to assess its popularity. Links from "important" pages weigh even more heavily. Someone probably went to some trouble to boost our adulatory puff piece of a five-year-old interview to its stellar #5 ranking. We've returned the favor by editing the page. Next time Google's spider bot runs, the language in that number 5 spot will change a bit.

If you have a website or blog, you can help keep a little truth in Google by linking to the page yourself. Let's see if we can boost its ranking right up to number one! The article from StreetSheet in the number four spot deserves a higher ranking as well. You might even pass this on to a friend. Yeah. I'm petty. But at least I'm having fun.

Against the Servants of Mammon

One of the more unusual books in my library is Walter Rauschenbusch's Prayers of the Social Awakening, a lovely volume that was published in 1910. Rauschenbusch's Christianity and Social Crisis is considered the seminal work of the social gospel movement that helped animate the Christian left during the first half of the last century.

Rauschenbusch's theology sprang from the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount, and sought to be relevant to the issues of the day. His ideas paralleled those of John Dewey, another influential philosopher of that time, who held that evil was mostly a function of ignorance, and that the promise of education offered a future of steady progress toward a just society.

The optimism of the social gospel would be challenged in 1932 by Reinhold Niebuhr, who's Moral Man and Immoral Society argued that self-interest dominates human affairs and is at the core of our society. While Niebuhr's return to the idea of original sin outraged progressive Christians at the time, his views later came to be accepted, and Rauschenbusch's optimism came to be regarded as somewhat naive. Niebuhr's ideas became an obsession for a young Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. The theologian's clear-eyed analysis of power, politics, and morality helped form the theoretical underpinnings of the civil rights movement. Niebuhr's thought, which is anathema to the religious right and an uncomfortable challenge to the complacency and materialism of mainline Christianity, now languishes in relative obscurity.

And yet, there is something about Rauschenbusch that remains very attractive. The 1910 volume is a book of prayers that still, nearly a century later, often feels entirely relevant. I was paging through it last night and found this, Against the Servants of Mammon.

e cry to thee for justice, O Lord, for our soul is weary with the iniquity of greed. Behold the servants of Mammon, who defy thee and drain their fellow-men for gain; who grind down the strength of the workers by merciless toil and fling them aside when they are mangled and worn; who rackrent the poor and make dear the space and air which thou hast made free; who paralyze the hand of justice by corruption; who blind the eyes of the people by lies; who nullify by their craft the merciful laws which nobler men have devised for the protection of the weak; who have made us ashamed of our dear country by their defilements and have turned our holy freedom into a hollow name; who have brought upon thy church the contempt of men, and have cloaked their extortion with the Gospel of thy Christ.

For the oppression of the poor and the sighing of the needy now do thou arise O Lord, because thou art love, and tender as a mother to the weak, therefore thou art the great hater of iniquity and thy doom is upon those who grow rich upon the poverty of the people.

O God, we are afraid, for the thundercloud of thy wrath is even now black above us. In the ruins of dead empires we have read how thou has trodden the wine-press of thine anger when the measure of their sin was full. We are sick at heart when we remember that by the greed of those who enslaved a weaker race that curse was fastened upon us all that still lies black and hopeless across our land, though the blood of a nation was spilled to atone. Save our people from being dragged down into vaster guilt and woe by men who have no vision and know no law except their lust. Shake their souls with awe of thee that they may cease. Help us with clean hands to tear the web which they have woven about us and to turn our people back to thy law, lest the mark of the beast stand out on the right hand and forehead of our nation and our feet be set on the downward path to darkness for which there is no return forever.

Mitch Snyder is Spinning in His Grave

I've heard from several very well-placed sources that the upcoming Seattle conference to more deeply engage the faith community in providing housing and services to homeless people is not tied to the Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. Apparently, there's a small pot of money left over from the Fannie Mae Foundation melt-down, and this is part of how it's being spent. While the OFBCI does have a strategy of sponsoring conferences around the country, this is not that.

The Church Council's Sandy Brown and Seattle Office of Housing's Adrienne Quinn are co-chairing the organizing committee, and there is said to be a huge amount of latitude in creating the goals and outcomes for the conference. While I'm satisfied that this is being driven locally and not from DC, organizing for this has intentionally been below radar, and that's set off some alarms for people. If we're really about building a movement to end homelessness, we need more transparency and discussion and less secrecy and control.

That said, here's some stuff for conference organizers to consider, since they never asked.

• Churches have been doing this work for a long time, and in most cases don't have a lot of resources themselves. Whatever thoughts people are having about churches being the backbone of the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness needs a serious reality check. Earth to CEHKC: The mainline churches are in decline and mostly composed of those old enough to have voted for Kennedy. The evangelicals are interested in other things and the mega-churches have perverted Jesus into some kind of an Amway salesman for God, where if you pray hard enough, you'll be rewarded with a new Ford Explorer. This strategy has its limits.

• The Bush administration is engaged in a structural reassignment of responsibility for managing the wreckage of robber baron capitalism, and they're not it. But they love churches. Love, love, love. And Phil Mangano's got that God-talk thing down cold. It's a great system. Untrammeled capitalism creates, figuratively speaking, a never ending stream of lepers, and the church folk get to line up to wash their feet. Everyone wins. The rich get richer, the faithful get an in with God, and some of the lepers get clean feet. End unfair but hopefully thought-provoking metaphor.
  

• Exactly when was it that everyone turned into a total chicken shit and stopped talking about raising hell to end poverty? The Ten Year Plan, until people get a backbone and start getting real about poverty and the role of federal policy in creating inequality, is not "ending homelessness." It's managing homelessness at a higher level of sophistication with fewer government resources.

• Ending homelessness will take new federal priorities, and that's a long hard fight that too few are talking about. The fact that we've allowed a fast-talking, disingenuous, refugee from a community theater production of The Music Man who also happens to be a shill for the Bush Administration to become the national spokesperson for "ending homelessness" is the saddest commentary on what homeless advocacy has become that I can possibly imagine. Mitch Snyder is spinning in his grave.

Last night I was at a meeting that was billed as a Progressive Roundtable. It was mostly enviros, politicos, and think tank types talking about how to build a progressive movement, and there were guests from successful progressive coalitions in Michigan and New Mexico bearing rumors of effective strategy. One described how 501(c)3 organizations who provide services need to operate at the very edges of the quite substantial amount of lobbying that is allowed. I found myself at once very excited by this rather obvious idea, and very saddened at how far this is from our reality.

If Fannie Mae wants to pay to convene a conference, we should use it to talk about how the movement to end homelessness has been co-opted by bureaucrats and rendered about as politically threatening as a newborn kitten. We can hold the conference at a Catholic church. Then we can all make our confessions and do some penance by getting off our safe and complacent asses to do some real organizing.

Well! Isn't That Special?

"It is that massive effort by people of concern and people of love to save lives which will change our nation for the better. In the midst of our plenty, there's darkness, but there's always hope. In the midst of plenty, there is sadness and loneliness, but there's always a soul to put your arm around and say, 'I love you.'"

- President George W. Bush
Remarks at the 11th Regional
White House Conference on Faith-Based
and Community Initiatives
Los Angeles, CA, March 3, 2004

Ever since I heard that a Fannie Mae-financed Seattle conference is in the works to link up churches with the largess that flows from Bush's Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives, I've been abnormally curious about who these people are and what they're up to.

The most surprising thing I've learned is that there isn't simply one Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. In 2003, Bush issued an Executive Order instructing each of his cabinets to create their own version of said office.

Therefore, the Department of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Labor, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Education all have their own Centers for Faith-based and Community Initiatives, and are all encouraging churches and other non-profits to assume the work of caring for the needy, since the feds sure as hell aren't going to.

The genius of this only becomes apparent when one considers the political issues involved for any Democratic administration that would dismantle this apparatus. Say what you will about the Bush administration, they understand the meaning of structural change.

Insiders such as David Kuo have criticised the program as ineffective and highly politicized. Jimmy Carter, as part of his recent George Bush is the "worst President ever" remarks, drew special attention to the OFBCI, which disbursed $2.15 billion in 2005 alone.

“The policy from the White House has been to allocate funds to religious institutions, even those that channel those funds exclusively to their own particular group of believers in a particular religion. Those things in my opinion are quite disturbing,” Carter said. “As a traditional Baptist, I’ve always believed in separation of church and state and honored that premise when I was president, and so have all other presidents, I might say, except this one.”

Dionysius Doesn't Dance Alone

The Greeks had their maenads. Women under the spell of Dionysius would dance all night and then rip small animals apart with their bare hands. The Balinese have the Monkey Chant. The Sioux had the Ghost Dance. Hippie counter-culture had the Grateful Dead and The Doors. The French and others have carnival.

Throughout human history, across the centuries and across cultures, people have come together to lose themselves in drink, dance, drugs, music, and ritual. We all want, it seems, to expand our boundaries and lose ourselves in the company of others.

Barbara Ehrenreich’s thoroughly remarkable Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy delves into the history of group ecstasy, its suppression by colonialists, church officials, and political elites, and what it means for us now as we struggle to hold together a society of individualists.

This sort of social history is where Ehrenreich truly excels. While recent work as an undercover journalist (Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch) have brought her writing to new audiences, one hopes they will move along with her to embrace this profoundly meaningful history of joy.

Euripides’ Bacchae, often described as the most inexplicable of plays, explores the tension between ecstatic experience and order as Pentheus the king and Dionysius the androgynous stranger face off in a farcical yet deadly power struggle.

This archetypal conflict of Pentheus and Dionysius echoes on throughout much of human history. As the increasing popularity of such events as Burning Man and the enduring appeal of storefront charismatic churches and small dark music venues attest, the historic victory of Pentheus, while significant, is never complete.

The depth of the European ecstatic heritage is perhaps best illustrated by the cooptation of Dionysian myth in the social construction of Christ. Dionysius, with his various festivals and close association with the benefits of wine, was the most wildly popular of the pagan deities, although Baal and Asheroth were popular as well for many of the same reasons.

Nor are depictions of the Dionysian limited to the New Testament. While the militaristic god that evolves throughout the Pentateuch was well suited to an imperial religion held by a surrounded people, every time the chosen folk got a little breathing room they’d go running right back to Baal.

A dozen or more centuries later, as class and hierarchy increasingly defined the social experience, the central role of dancing and celebration in the life of the community came under fire, and under the watchful eye of the Calvinists was nearly extinguished.

Ehrenreich traces the evolution of the suppression of community to the emergence of social hierarchy. In case after case, the pattern is the same: elites increasingly pulled back from popular celebration into more exclusive and careful gatherings of their own. As elites withdrew, the subversive aspects of carnival-like celebrations offered both the opportunity and organizing structure to parody and sometimes attack the upper classes. They became threatened, and gradually outlawed popular celebration.

As Europeans took their increasingly dour worldview abroad, the suppression of ecstatic ritual was a mere footnote to the wholesale extermination of entire civilizations. Yet, as in the case of American slaves, what was driven underground would often reemerge in less overtly threatening yet still subversive forms.

While Ehrenreich stops short of offering a blueprint for the restoration of collective joy, she offers the universalizing influence of festival as an antidote to the impoverishment of public life. Being responsible to one another, she says, begins with establishing emotional connection. Recovering joy isn’t just about loosening up and having more fun. It may be a matter of survival.

Please God, Make It Stop

"L-O-V-E. There's a lot inside of me. L-O-V-E. There's a lot to share."

This 26 seconds of hell is brought to you by my kids' daycare for Mother's Day. The one in the middle of the front in the purple dress is Twin B, and the one off to the far right who looks as though she might be on another planet altogether is Twin A.

My turn is coming up. For Fathers Day, I get to miss half a day of work so I can drive to some park, eat hot dogs, and make small talk with a bunch of other dads who probably don't want to be there either. I've been told that the girls will be looking for me. Blowing it off isn't really an option.

Personally, if I'm going to miss work to be with my kids, I'd really rather take them to the beach or something on my own, but that's because I don't do social convention so well. I'm liable to offend someone just to liven things up. Who knows, maybe I already have.

Taking Matters Into My Own Hands

I threatened a guy with a crowbar on Friday. I don't know what's gotten into me lately.

It was the beginning of Memorial weekend. Staff had places to be and I was closing. A drunk guy who had come in earlier was asleep on the couch. An hour before he had been singing loudly. Staff was in an indulgent mood. Now he was my problem.

At close to six, I tried waking him and got nothing. Wes and I conferred. I called 911.

The dispatcher asked if I'd tried yelling and shaking him. Yeah, I said. He just won't wake up. "Is he breathing?" they asked.

I should have said no.

They declared it a medical matter and said someone was on the way. A half-hour later, there I was, reading my email, listening to the drunk guy snore.

Wes told me how when he drove cab some smelly drunk with no money crawled in the back and wouldn't leave. He pulled the guy out of the car and dumped his ass in the parking lot. Some liberals who saw the whole thing gave him shit for it.

But that wasn't the end. Wes got the guy's bugs on himself. He didn't notice at first, but his date did. Wes didn't get laid that night.

There was a moral to the story. These things are never as easy as they look.

I tried waking the guy up again. This time more vigorously. He looks at me. "Hey, you gotta go. We're closed."

"Fuck you," he said. Then he closed his eyes.

We had a short chat. I called 911 back. "My guy woke up, but now he's belligerent and won't go."

We did that thing where you describe the guy while you're looking dead at him. This is normally asshole's cue to leave. But my guy didn't care. He was going back to sleep.

They said they'd cancel the EMTs and send a car. They were pretty busy.

I waited.

At around 7:20, Wes had another story for me. He told me about how once some guy hit his cab and drove away. It took three hours for the cops to come and take a report.

I let that sink in for a few minutes and went into the back room.

I was striding purposefully toward the front when I heard a far off voice. "Oh God. He's got a crowbar."

Wes was standing next to Anitra, who was hanging out at a computer with one of her StreetWrites buddies. She looked up with mild alarm.

Right. Like I'm going to beat some drunk homeless guy to a pulp with a crowbar right there in the front office of Real Change.

I just wanted to impress him. I'd never seen him before. I wasn't taking any chances.

I pushed and pulled and yelled. He regarded me with disdain. "Fuck you," he repeated. I grabbed his arm, pulled him off the couch, and dragged him down the two steps to the front exit. He sat in front of the door and refused to move. I shoved him out of the way. He looked at the crowbar. I opened the door. He moved toward me.

"Fuck you buddy. I was in Vietnam." His shirt was pulled up. I saw ace bandages. He was pathetic. It was a fucked up situation. He mimed karate moves but was too feeble to present a threat.

Anitra, who is even more ADHD than me, got between us and went nose to nose with him. "No," she said, inching him out the door, "You're leaving." We were both dead calm. In the zone. In a crisis, people like us are good to have around.

Before we knew it, he was on the other side of a locked door. I called 911 again and told them to cancel the call.

"What happened," she asked.

"I got tired of waiting and chased the guy out with a crowbar."

"You took matters into your own hands," she clarified.

"Yeah," I said. "I did."

Oh Great. A Faith Symposium.

Apparently, there will be a "Faith Symposium" held somewhere near you sometime in the near future. Fannie Mae is working through United Way King County and the Seattle Office of Housing to train and fund churches to not only create more housing for chronic homeless people, but to also staff the services that they require.

Fannie Mae, as close readers of this blog will know, is the government entity that favored the National Alliance to End Homelessness with a $5M grant just as they were crawling into bed with the US Interagency Council on Homelessness, thus quadrupling their budget in a single year.

The Faith Symposium is one of seven conferences being held around the country that come out of Bush's Office of Faith-based and Community Initiatives. There have been two quietly organized, invitation only planning meetings. Interestingly, the Interfaith Task Force on Homelessness was not among the invitees.

Adrienne Quinn of Seattle's Office of Housing told attendees of the last meeting that since the feds are out of the housing business, it's time for churches to step into the breach. And not just for housing. For everything else too.

As Bush strengthens his Party's Christian-right base by shifting money out of community development and into his faith-based slush fund, it looks like there are plenty of liberals who are happy to line up for a little dough as well.

Let's just roll back the whole fucking New Deal. We already have income disparity to rival 1929. Now we just need everyone to understand that government doesn't do charity anymore. That it's better left to the churches.

Here's what churches should be doing instead of shoring up their budgets with government funding: Opposing a murderous war for oil that is undermining whatever hope we have for achieving long-term security, urging their members to find meaning in service and not in the empty idolatry of consumerism, and insisting that government use its resources and regulatory power to protect the weak, rein in the strong, and promote the common good.

My Jesus would tell 'em take that money and shove it up your ass.

Also ...

S.P. Miskowski quits the Democratic Party at Daughters of Catastrophe.

The Explainer

This from the National Alliance to End Homelessness website. It's from their fact sheet series The Explainer. I can't find where I got this again, but you can get it here.

Isn't it great how Bush is the Decider and NAEH is The Explainer?

The factsheet shows how if you look hard enough, the federal government is spending more on homelessness than it first seems, but they're still not doing jack on housing, even though that's all they ever talk about.

But then The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities offers this less than promising summary of the President's budget, and it's long-term impact on domestic discretionary spending. Note that the largest cuts are in community development and job training.

It looks like The Explainers still have some explaining to do.