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Dr. Wes Browning |
Last Thursday some Real Change
people and friends camped out at the
City Hall Plaza in the second such effort to
draw Mayor Greg Nickels’ royal attention
to our call for an end to his inhumane and
illegal sweeps of homeless encampments.
I could go on and on about the fact that
Greg Nickels gave every appearance of
not giving a damn, and how that means
we’ll be back, and probably back again,
and again, but there will be plenty of time
for that later. What I want to do now is talk
about cross-class sleeping.
My first experience with cross-class
sleeping was the rebound whose Father
owned a multi-million dollar chain of
laundromats back East. Daddy gave her
a red Corvette for her graduation pres-
ent. She owned so many clothes she had
to buy her own commercialsize clothes
rack. Her clothes rack was bigger than
my whole apartment. We didn’t get along
very well. I came to believe that cross-
class sleeping would not bring classes
together, politically.
I now realize how wrong I have been.
There are ways to make cross-class
sleeping work. Those ways involve insomnia, coffee, and wet tents.
Get people together to try to sleep in wet
tents! They will not be able to sleep! They
will then be forced to talk amongst them-
selves, causing social glues to exude from
their pores, sticking them to each other! It
worked last Thursday between myself and a
bunch of strangers. If I can bond to a bunch
of strangers so can almost anyone.
The classes I have bonded with so far
include various intern-classes and legal-
aide-classes. In the future I hope to bond
to other kinds of classes.
One very promising class is the class
of clergy. I came literally within inches of
bonding with representatives of the cleri-
cal class during the camp out. I actually
felt their silky vestments! How many of
you readers have ever come so close to
bonding with clergy that you felt their
silky vestments? (Just a raise of hands
will do. Details aren’t necessary.)
It turns out these clergy were mostly
morning people, so my plans to invade
their tents and bond more thoroughly
did not pan out. But I can plan better for
the next camp out. I am looking forward
to a night, three months from now, of
cross-class alliance-ing with at least
three ministers simultaneously. My plan
makes room for a very early pillow fight. With proper timing, I should be able to
get in, bond, and get out again in time to
bond with some night people elsewhere.
Lawyers or bartenders, conceivably.
Even the little bit of bonding I was
able to do with the clergy at last week’s
camp out taught me a very important
lesson about them. Clergy are human,
too. They have the same needs that we
do. Some of them eat lasagna.
Another class I look forward to bonding
to is the class of Seattle City Councilmem-
bers. I only saw one city councilmember
Thursday, new guy Tim Burgess, and he
didn’t join in the camp out. Next time I
want to see all nine in tents of their own.
I’m sure they all love camping, why else live
and do politics in the Pacifi c Northwest?
I’ll bet Mr. Burgess skis, even.
Further into the future I foresee op-
portunities to ally cross-class-ly to all
sorts of classes I now rarely have occa-
sion to think about. The class consisting
mainly of retired television repairmen.
Whatever class acupuncturists belong
to. The class of jewelers who are also
former tugboat workers. The class of
Times and/or P-I reporters.
Who knew that Times and/or P-I
reporters valued their evenings so much
that none of them could swing by after
rush hour to see it? The lesson: If there
isn’t a riot or a confl agration going on,
Seattle’s mainstream reporters are going
to stay home to watch Lost.
After socially allying with mainstream
reporters, I may be ready for mayors.
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