RC Blog
“Panhandling” panel to talk Tuesday night, March 9
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By now, you probably already know: Seattle is considering a new law that will make “aggressive solicitation” — which includes yelling, following someone or asking for money within 15 feet of a parking meter or ATM — an illegal act, one that carries a $50 fine. Councilmember Tim Burgess proposed the ordinance in late February, basing it, he said, on a similar ordinance in Tacoma. Some people have praised the ordinance; others have denounced; still others are on the fence. But it’s hard to have a fully formed opinion if you don’t know the particulars.
So what does the ordinance actually say? And what does the ordinance really mean, not just for the panhandlers, but for the buskers, the Real Change vendors, the GreenPeace-niks and Girl Scouts? On Tues., March 9, from 7 – 8:30 p.m. you’ll have a chance to figure out.
That’s when the Human Rights Commission’s Public Safety Task Force will host a panel at Seattle University School of Law, Sullivan Hall, Room C5, 901 12th Ave. that will examine the proposals’ ins and outs. On board to speak will be Burgess; Jon Scholes, Policy Director of the Downtown Seattle Association; Anita Khandelwal, lawyer for the Defender Association’s Racial Disparity Project; and Real Change Exec. Dir. Timothy Harris.
It’s always impossible to predict what will happen at any panel, but here’s a safe bet: Burgess and Scholes will support the ordinance, Khandelwal and Harris will express grave doubts. And then there will be you, concerned citizen, who, after attending, will be able to put the whole situation into greater context.
Hundreds turn out to protest UW budget cuts
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Jessica Boone, UW student. Photo by Jane Austin
Coming around the corner from Red Square to the Quad, I was doubtful. Last year, in the midst of protests against budget cuts at the University of Washington, students and staff had turned out strong numbers in their protests, but, since last fall, continuing events aimed at calling attention to budget cuts have been a bit, well, anemic.
I was stunned, however, to see how many students had come out—perhaps 500 altogether—holding signs stating “No Layoffs,” “Tax the Rich,” and “R.I.P. Our Future.” After a few statements from the organizers, they marched around the lawned courtyard of the Quad, then into Kane Hall, across Red Square and on up University Way, chanting various slogans like “Who’s university? Our university!” and for a brief moment that WTO refrain, “This is what democracy looks like!”
The event was part of a National Day of Action to Defend Education that took place today on dozens of campuses across the nation, including Seattle Central Community College, Evergreen State College and Western Washington University. While the protesters didn’t shut down the campus the way students did today at UC Santa Cruz, it made this old alum very proud when, around 1:30 p.m., students in the top floors of the Art Building (of course!) unfurled a gigantic banner addressed to the university’s president. It read: “Emmert, Another Budget is Possible.”
Last year, in the wake of the Great Recession and state revenue shortfalls, the University of Washington’s budget was cut $73 million, leading the school to lay off 700 workers and increase tuition 14 percent. With tuition slated to go up another 14 percent this fall and more cuts expected, the protesters say the university has lost sight of its public mission—providing an affordable education.
Instead of raising tuition and cutting jobs, the school could start, say members of the UW Student Worker Coalition, which organized the event, by trimming the salaries of administrators who make more than $150,000 a year, with many participants calling UW President Mark Emmert’s $906,000 salary excessive. The coalition is also calling on the university to freeze tuition, halt the work speed-up that it says is affecting custodians (who had 39 positions cut last year, 17 of them direct layoffs), and provide real financial aid instead of loans that bury students in debt.
Jessica Boone, 20, said she is the first in her family to go to college and currently works two jobs to pay for her schooling, but is having a hard time keeping up. She wants to get a degree in sociology and go on to the UW School of Nursing, she said, but is considering enlisting in the Navy as a way to get her nursing degree.
“Mark Emmert makes over $900,000 a year,” she said. “I don’t think I’ll make that in my lifetime.”
Kayla Huddleston, 21, said she’s worried that further cuts to the university’s Office of Minority Affairs, which funds retention and mentorship programs, will deprive more people of color of a chance to get a college education. “If tuition goes up any further, it will be less affordable for those without scholarships,” she said.
“It’s ridiculous we’re balancing the budgets on the backs of students, workers and people of color,” said Steve Hoffman, an electrician at North Seattle Community College and member of the Washington Federation of State Employees, the union of the UW’s trade workers. “There’s a better solution, which is taxing the wealthy and corporate profits.”
News from the Poorhouse
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The New York Times reported recently that the Federal Government is overhauling the way it evaluates poverty. The standard formula, which measures only the income of a family, is being supplemented with other factors like the use of food-stamps and the existence of a mortgage. Poverty advocates have argued for years that the nearly 50 year-old poverty formula needed to be changed to more accurately reflect the true poverty numbers in the U.S.
A new study looking at the health of every county in the U.S. was recently released. The most unhealthy county in the nation turned out to be Orangeburg, South Carolina. It was found that the most key factors in determining a person’s lack of health, later on in life, were: Obesity, unemployment and childhood poverty. 22 percent of all Orangeburg residents were assessed as being in poor health 32 percent of all children were assessed as living in poverty.
John McClosky, a geologist at the University of Ulster, said recently that “…earthquakes aren’t killing people, poverty is.” He says this because, as is explained in the article written by The Daily Mail, the lack of earthquake-safe buildings and absent medical care are the cause of far more deaths than the actual events. The recent earthquake in Chili was nearly 1,000 times more powerful than the one which hit Haiti, however, it killed far fewer people because of the country’s more stable economy and infrastructure.
The rate of homeless youths attending public schools has risen in conjunction with the crash of the economy. In New York the situation is extreme with (as of February 26th) 15,495 families with children were living in shelters. The report, released by the NYC Department of Homeless Services, is a sharp reminder that often the people most vulnerable to poverty and homelessness are children.
The proposed “anti-panhandling law”
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Today Seattle City Council Member Tim Burgess proposed a law re aggressive solicitation. It will be a new section of the Seattle Municipal Code, 15.48.050. The law is available on his website as a pdf: http://www.seattle.gov/council/burgess/attachments/2010st_disorder_leg_aggressive_solicit.pdf
I’m glad that the law doesn’t call for any new licensing. Most of the provisions look reasonable to me, although I wonder why it is necessary to write a law specifically prohibiting solicitors from engaging in the activities covered. Why can’t these prohibitions also apply to non-solicitors? Why should it be OK for a non-solicitor to block my progress along a sidewalk?
But, never mind, for now. I’ll content myself to just complain about a couple of the provisions that bother me.
Part A. 4. of the proposed law defines some forms of aggressive solicitation. The introductory paragraph says it includes but is not limited to a number of activities that are then listed, 6 in all, a. through f.
The two that concern me are b. “intentionally using physical gestures or profane or abusive language that would cause fear or alarm to a reasonable person while making a solicitation;” and f. which deals with soliciting within 15 feet of an ATM, pay station etc. The problem with b is that it isn’t specific enough and it’s open to abuses. It is a wide open invitation to class discrimination. The very sight of homeless people alarms some otherwise reasonable people. So?
The problem with f is that selling, say, a newspaper, within 15 feet of an ATM, could get you a fine, even if you aren’t even addressing your pitch to the person using the ATM. You could even be facing the other way! It’s too broad.
The IWW’s Revolutionary Culture
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I’m newly in love with the IWW after reading Break their Haughty Power: Joe Murphy in the Heyday of the Wobblies”. At 13, Joe Murphy was forced to flee his home and became part of the wandering army of casual laborers who built America’s roads, rails, and dams, cut her lumber, and harvested her crops in the early part of the last century. He was 16 when he witnessed the brutality of the 1919 Centralia Strike here in Washington State. By the time of the Colorado Miners strike, he was a statesmanlike 24. By 30, he had seen the rise and fall of the most radical labor movement in US history.
This remarkable biography, lovingly written by labor activist Eugene Nelson from notes and taped conversations with Murphy as an old man, reconstructs one of the most vicious and yet hopeful and revolutionary periods of US labor. With so much of the rich IWW history taking place in and around Seattle, local history buffs will also appreciate the nicely drawn scenes from our city’s deeply working class past.
In the light of what often feels like the rather anemic political convictions and actions of the current “left,” the depth of the typical Wob’s commitment to his fellow workers and to a revolutionary fight for a better world seems like something of another world. This was a time in the US when workers were treated as little more than animals, and their revolt was considered a criminal affront to be ruthlessly crushed. Vicious beatings. Lynchings. Machine guns emptied into crowds. Long jail sentences under horrible conditions. Political executions. These were the understood consequences of fighting back. Yet, they did it anyway. For more than 25 years the IWW, the self-described “shock troops of the labor movement” organized like hell to gain some dignity, safer conditions, and a slightly higher wage. And the guys with money fought them with everything they had.
Since this book was written by an organizer about an organizer, the inner mechanics of grassroots revolution under extremely repressive conditions are on display. How did they keep going? A few themes emerge that remain relevant and deserve renewed consideration during these volatile times.
Organizing is about relationships. People got to know and respect each other under fire. Strangers were addressed as “fellow worker” and it was sincere. Solidarity meant that if people were being beaten, jailed, and killed, your obligation was to risk all of that yourself if it could bring about some justice. Over the years, people from various struggles would reappear in your life, and you knew what they were made of.
Know which side you’re on. Face it. Power unchecked will eventually seek to crush you. Wobblies knew who their enemies were and what to expect from them. They embraced conflict as a struggle of strategy and force. They claimed moral high ground and shamed their opponents into action, and they understood the power of ridicule. They used sabotage and other property destruction if it would help.
Nonviolence was a tactic, not a fetish. Wobblies understood that the owners and their hired guns — which often included the state — had the clear monopoly on armed force. More simply put, shoot back and you’re really dead.
Respect Yourself. To be a Wob was to demand and to be worthy of respect. They worked hard, fought hard, and didn’t take any shit, unless, of course, to do so was strategic in the short term. Their answer to being treated like animals was to fight back and to be there for one another. In commitment was meaning.
Don’t give up. What appears as loss may, in the span of history, be a gain. You have to fight anyway. Colorado Miners Strike was as vicious as could be. Troops fired upon strikers and their families with machine guns. People died. Lots of them. And yet, the violence turned public opinion. The deaths were not, in the end, meaningless.
Sing. Without music and shared songs, there could have been no IWW. The power of shared culture to build belonging, create values, and offer protest is enormous, and a movement for change that lacks this will suffer for it.
Have fun. Even when the stakes were deadly high, the IWW used tactics that kept their spirits up to defeat their target. They were creative, strategic, and knew how to use the element of outrageous surprise.
Think big. They understood that the object was revolution, and that the small skirmishes of the day to day need to build toward something that turns the injustice of the world upside-down. Otherwise, all you have is the little stuff. This is why a collection of, at their height, 30,000 dirt poor workers, could strike terror into the heart of the owners and their allies.
Nuclear Power - Clean Energy?
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The first new nuclear reactors since 1974 are slated to be built in Atlanta, Georgia:
“The largest investment in clean energy history” promises thousands of jobs, reduced dependence on foreign oil, and an energy production process with zero carbon emissions. Sounds dreamy, doesn’t it? But how “clean” is nuclear power?
A byproduct of nuclear power production is harmful radioactive waste that we currently have no effective means of storing.
Breakdowns in the power production process can expose workers, communities, and surrounding ecosystems to this radiation. While plant safety has improved since Chernobyl, accidents continue to occur.
Nuclear power is generated from uranium, a non-renewable, fossil fuel which is obtained through uranium mining. Uranium is obtained through open-pit and underground mining, often on land previously occupied by indigenous peoples, and produces radioactive waste. This process, too, poses risks, as one New Mexico community experienced “when an earthen dam, operated by the United Nuclear Corp., failed and let loose 94 million gallons of toxic wastewater into the north fork of the Rio Puerco on Navajo Nation lands.”
Uranium is enriched to be used as fuel for nuclear power. However, this capability can be a step toward the highly enriched uranium used in nuclear weapons. Remember the debate around Iran? Our choice to approve nuclear power sends a message to other nations that constructing reactors is desirable, and in fact, the “technology of tomorrow.”
The technology of tomorrow will be paid for in taxpayer dollars, but what is the cost to our health and to the earth?
Black History Month, updated, in pix and vocals
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Well, it’s February, and you know what that means, don’t you? Some might claim it heralds the arrival of Punxsutawney Phil and his forecast (it was for six more weeks of winter, as the East Coast, victims of Snowpocalypse, will wearily verify). And that wouldn’t be wrong.
But it’s also Black History Month, that four-week period where elementary schools are rife with reports on people like Rosa Parks or (one of my personal favs) George Washington Carver. And even though there are some cracks to be made about how this country’s celebration of black history occurs in the calendar’s shortest month, some solid education and thoughtful reflection of how things of have changed — and haven’t — can still be found in these 28 days.
Take, for example, this photo essay from The New Yorker. In some 19 portraits, more than 30 people who played pivotal roles in the Civil Rights Movement — or who had relatives who did — are pictured. Charlayne Hunter-Gualt, the first black woman to attend the University of Georgia (and currently a journalist for PBS and NPR), the daughters of Malcolm X and Betty Shabazz, and Muhammad Ali are included. The list goes on. It’s an amazing photo spread. And better still, there’s audio with the pix. The whole spread is complemented nicely by an essay by editor David Remnick.
It’s a great testament to the strength and courage of those who stood up to fight when fighting could’ve meant you’d lose your life. And it’s enough to make you wish it was Black History Month every month. And Latino History Month. And Women’s History Month. And Queer History Month. And Native American History Month. And…
Extra, extra: Different ways to see — and hear — the Olympics
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Can you see it? There, off in the distance, the Olympic Torch wending its way to Vancouver, for the start of the 2010 Games on Feb. 12. Isn’t it just exciting? Well, maybe if you’re NBC, which has a lock on TV coverage in the U.S., allowing only live online coverage of hockey and curling. Ain’t that sweet?
Still, there are a few other ways to get your coverage of the Games, as they’re called: If you’re going to be in Vancouver, you pick up a copy of one of our sister publications, Megaphone, the city’s street paper. It’s a special double issue, focused on the Downtown Eastside, the much-maligned section of Vancouver that provides a stark contrast to all the glitz, glamour and gold the Games offer. Copies go for $5, and will be on sale throughout the Olympics and the Paralympics, which run from March 12-21.
Or, if you find yourself in Canada and think it’s time to brush on your Objibway or Inuktitut, you have another option: You can watch the Olympics via the country’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium, a partnership of several networks that will offer the Games in 22 languages, from Native tongues to the languages of immigrant populations. (The Opening and Closing ceremonies will only be featured in 13 languages.) And while you may not be able to understand Gujarati or Mechif, isn’t it good to know that when U.S. figure skater Johnny Weir competes, many of Canada’s residents will be able to hear about his outré outfits in their own tongue?
More from Jaron Lanier
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Rob Alford’s interview with Jaron Lanier in the current issue was about the limitations of technology, from social media platforms to the determinative force of free-for-all content. As always, we had to cut a fascinating conversation down to fit in 1.75 pages of newsprint. Here’s the unabridged transcript of the interview, with Lanier discussing his book’s surprising reception in the computing world.
Lanier, by the way, had just appeared on KUOW’s Weekday program before his conversation with us. Thanks to the KUOW staff for kindly lending us a quiet room in which to record.
My “Structural Objection to Society”
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It’s that time of year again. About a thousand people last week in King County hit the bricks in the pre-dawn hours for the federally mandated one-night count.
It’s become a bit of a ritual. Bil Block, the head of the Committee to End Homelessness, will say we are succeeding. Should actual count numbers not support that statement, he will complain that the count is inaccurate. Alison Eisinger, the head of the Seattle-King County Coalition on Homelessness, will say the number, regardless of up or down, finds way too many people and is, by its nature, an under-count. She will express faith in the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness because she heads a coalition of service providers and they expect that of her. It’s probably safer to say it than not.
And then there will be me, the Man From the Moon, saying that homelessness is an expression of our nation’s relentless descent into deepening inequality, and that the 10YP stops far short of addressing root problems, and therefore cannot on its own succeed.
This year, CR Douglas convened us all on City Inside/Out for the post-count conversation.
Bill was unusually keen this year to steer the discussion from vexing problems of supply and demand to individual successes. An article by NYT columnist Nicholas Kristoff on selling African aid one successful uplifting face at a time has become the new 10YP media strategy du jour. He made a few attempts to go there, but CR kept bringing him back to his core competencies: fudging the numbers to look like progress and sounding optimistic.
Linda Rasmussen from the YWCA sat between us to offer the service provider’s middle ground of “yes there are successes” and “no it is not enough.” To my left sat Paul Guppy of the Washington Policy Center, who seasoned the mix with his anti-tax, “government-solutions-to-poverty-will-always-fail, there is no society, there are only individuals, and we should fear them” message.
For my part, “Is the Ten Year Plan Working?” just sounded like a dumb question. The plan, I said, can only solve homelessness to an extent that is acceptable to those in power, meaning those who don’t exactly love the poor. My job, my mission, is to fire photon torpedoes until the Plan’s system-salving invisibility cloak is finally disabled.
Alison was no help at all. Her interview in the 8 minute set-up piece, was all about the optimism. If she’s heard of pre-count sweeps activity, she didn’t say. Team player.
I was clearly on my own here.
My Man On the Moon standing was clarified when CR Douglas raised the issue of my “structural objection to society” and stole what is usually Bill’s rap: the odds of my revolution happening are pretty much nil. Our stand then must be with the tinkerers and mitigators, for they may not inherit the earth, but at least they shall receive the funding.
Here’s what I think. When people preemptively surrender the possibility of system change as a solution, they pretty much give up the whole game. I’m always astonished by the tendency of mainstream “homeless advocacy” to begin from there. That’s not fighting homelessness, That’s accommodation to radical inequality and social dehumanization. We have to do better.
Olympic torch arrival shines light on Vancouver’s Eastside
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Hey, it’s gold medal time. The 2010 Vancouver Olympics start on Feb. 12 and, chances are, if you don’t have tix yet, you’ll probably have to watch the Bobsleigh competition on TV or computer. Of course, if you live there, you might have a better chance of seeing it firsthand.
That’s probably not the case for people who live in Vancouver’s Eastside, a rough-and-tumble district in the city’s urban core. A place where the homeless are visible, where drug deals can be seen and where the impact of poverty is hard to ignore: It’s a place tourists are often told to avoid. After all, who wants to see life’s dark truths, when you can see the pretty-pretty?
Well, here’s a little photo slideshow of the darker side, courtesy of the NYTimes. The pix go with the story, “In the Shadow of the Olympics,” which certainly is worth a read. But you know: Sometimes, pix say it all. And while these may not say everything, they at least say something. Which is better than nothing.
Good news for local homeless youth programs: $7.75M in grants
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In the early morning hours of Jan. 29, the One Night Count found 5 percent fewer homeless people in King County than the year before (2,675 people for year 2010, as opposed to 2,827 for year 2009). Of this year’s current total, only 17 people under 18 years of age were counted, in Seattle, Renton and Federal Way. That’s not a lot of young people, but still: Wouldn’t it be better if the number was zero?
Which begs the question: How could that happen? The charitable group Raynier Institute & Foundation may not have the answer, but it might have a partial solution: Provide money to organizations serving this community, so they can offer more housing and shelter to homeless youth. And so the foundation did just that, giving out grants to the tune of $7.75M.
Raynier Institute & Foundation announced on Feb. 4 that YouthCare — which provides a drop-in center, offers emergency, short- and long-term housing, not to mention job training to homeless youth — will receive two grants totaling $3.6M to help create 15 emergency shelter beds, as well as helping to retire a mortgage; and ROOTS — which offers shelter and a free meal to homeless young people between 18 and 25 — will receive two grants amounting to $2.05M, to underwrite services and pay for capital improvements. Another $2.1M will go toward the “Catalyst,” a pilot program co-created by YouthCare and ROOTS that focuses on homeless youth who are most marginalized; the program is currently underway at the Straley House.
Hip hip hooray to the Raynier Institute & Foundation, for giving Seattle a little bit — make that a lot — of good news. Or, as young people like to say: The Raynier Institute & Foundation gets major props.
Still alive: Housing Trust bill and ban on insurers using credit scores
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A bill that would have raised a $100 million bond for the Housing Trust Fund, the state’s main source of construction funding for affordable housing, died Monday in the House when Rep. Mark Miloscia’s (D-Federal Way) HB 2906 didn’t make it out of committee. But on Wednesday the legislation was reborn as House Bill 3177, a new bill put forward by Rep. Sharon Nelson (D-Maury Island).
Even though Tuesday was the cutoff for House bills to make it out of their policy committees, Nelson is hoping to buy extra time for the effort by getting the bill referred to one of the House’s fiscal committees, which have until Feb. 9 to vote out legislation. The $100 million bond would be paid back by adding a $62 fee when existing mortgage loans change hands. Without the new revenue, housing advocates say, low-income housing production in the state will come to a halt in the coming year, as the $100 million allocated to the Housing Trust in 2009 is already committed to projects.
The Senate Committee on Financial Institutions, Housing & Insurance also passed a version of the bill sponsored by Sen. Joe McDermott (D-West Seattle), SB 6817, to the Ways & Means Committee on Wednesday. Another bill that would have required banks to give homeowners on unemployment a one-year pass before foreclosure—SB 6694—didn’t make the cut, however, ending hopes this session for stopping foreclosure actions.
The debate over insurance companies using credit scores, education or income levels to set insurance rates is also still alive: Senate Bill 6252, a bill sponsored by Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle) to ban the practice, made it out of the Labor, Commerce & Consumer Protection Committee on Wednesday.
“Respect Washington” initiative targets illegal immigrants—again
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Here’s a group of people who just won’t take no for an answer. But, according to today’s article in The Seattle Times, they think they stand a better chance this year—after five previous failures—to get enough signatures to put an initiative on the ballot that would outlaw providing non-emergency services or benefits to illegal immigrants. Why? In the Great Recession, The Times reports, the initiative’s backers at Respect Washington believe more out-of-work citizens will sign their petitions.
In addition, The Times says, “The measure, I-1056, would require all employers — public and private — to use a free federal employment-verification system, E-Verify, to weed out those ineligible to work legally in the U.S.” Hard to believe that all citizens, particularly Hispanics, would not be looked up in this verification system, which immigrant rights activists have repeatedly pointed out is riddled with errors. Not good news for legal workers of any color.
Nickelsville moving Friday
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From our friends living in the tent city named in honor of Seattle’s last mayor:
After a great 90-day stay at New Hope Missionary Baptist Church, Nickelsville moves again. This will be our 11th move in 17 months. This time, we’ve been invited to stay at Greater Mt. Baker Baptist Church, led by Pastor Kenneth Ransfer. Join us Friday as we move-out from the old site and set-up community spaces with our new temporary host. We will be at both locations throughout the day.
In the meantime, we are waiting for Mayor Michael McGinn to respond to our request for a meeting. As always, we are grateful for the support we’ve received from the people of Seattle, its churches, and other organizations as we seek our goal: a permanent site that can hold up to 1,000 people. Together we can find a solution.
New Hope Missionary Baptist Church is located at 124 21st Ave. Greater Mt. Baker Baptist Church is at 2425 S. Jackson St. (east of the Red Apple grocery at Jackson and 23rd).
News from the Poorhouse
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While the Winter Olympics are soon to begin, another starkly different event is taking place as well. In Vancouver B.C., approximately 500 people will participate in the “Poverty Olympics”. The event, organized by the Carnegie Community Acton Project, is aimed at “…trying to embarrass Canada in the eyes of the world because of the poverty that it’s creating among its own citizens…” The “Poverty Olympics” occur on February 7th and have three mascots – Itchy the Bedbug, Chewy the Rat, and Creepy the Cockroach.
It is common knowledge times are tough in America, and the world, at the moment. However, poverty is now hitting the American middle-class like never before. Today 1 in 5 Americans is unemployed or underemployed, 1 in 9 can’t make their minimum credit-card payments, and 120,000 families a month are filing for bankruptcy. The Commerce Department, this week, released a report saying that it is harder to “live and maintain a middle-class lifestyle than it was 20 years ago…” One of the main reasons sighted for this hardship is the ever-climbing cost of health-care (which has risen 325% in the last 20 years) and sharp increase in the median house price (which has risen 150% in the past 20 years).
Another aspect of the hardships many are feeling currently is illustrated by a poll recently released by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). The study reported that 18.5% of families polled said that they – at some point in the last 12 months – did not have enough money to buy food necessary for the family. This number only represented families without children, for those with children the percentage rose to over 25% who could not obtain necessary food. These increases are the largest in recent history in the United States.
Between 2000 and 2008 the percentage of poor people living in the U.S. rose by 15.4%, nearly twice the growth rate of the overall population. Surprisingly the poverty rate in the suburbs has gone up over 25% in the same time period, and is growing much faster than the national average or the urban poverty rate. The suburbs now contain the largest growing poor population in the United States.
Next Thursday: Come support the Olympia Newswire
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It’s been a little less than a month since Real Change formed an editorial partnership with a start-up journalism project to cover critical stories during this year’s state legislative session.
It’s thrilling work. The wire is publishing stories that wouldn’t be otherwise told: of the challenges to public education, to a sustainable tax system, to social programs that meet people’s basic needs for income and health care.
But it needs support. The business model of conventional print journalism has deflated. The nation’s flagship publications are bleeding money: the Washington Post lost $53.8 million in the first quarter of 2009, while the New York Times lost $74.5 million. What we see in Seattle, after the P-I’s closure, is that experienced professionals are chronically underemployed, doing public relations for the institutions they formerly covered, or not working at all. What remains at SeattlePI.com is a few people spread way too thing.
Everyone’s looking for new ways of doing things. Well, here’s one: non-profit public interest journalism that’s focused in its mission and fills a gap.
Please come on out to a special mid-session talk about the high-stakes legislative session with me, Trevor Griffey, George Howland Jr., and Margie Slovan. We’ll talk about how state officials are wrestling with the $2.6 billion deficit: the hard choices they’re confronted with, the contrast between what’s in the interest of a balanced budget and what’s in the interest of our state’s residents.
Please see the Facebook event invite, or, if you’re not FB-ified, here’s the Evite invitation. Or — oh heck, here’s the details:
The Olympia Newswire Presents: A Mid-Session Review/ Preview
Thursday, February 11, 2010
Bar 41 @ B&O Espresso
204 Belmont Ave E (enter from Olive)
Seattle
Co-sponsored by Real Change & Reclaim the Media. It is free and open to all, but donations will be requested.
House bill to ban insurers from using credit scores bites dust; up to Senate
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Opponents of using credit scores to set insurance premiums lost a battle to get House Bill 2513 out of committee this morning in the Legislature, but not before putting up a dramatic fight.
The bill, sponsored by Rep. Sharon Nelson (D-Maury Island), would have banned the use of credit scores to set insurance rates, a practice the industry says is a good predictor of risk but critics argue is discriminatory to minorities and unwarranted in tough economic times when people can’t make credit card payments due to layoffs.
The bill was set for a vote this morning in the House Committee on Financial Institutions & Insurance, but at the start of the meeting, committee members immediately went into a closed caucus. When they finished, Rep. Sharon Tomiko Santos (D-Seattle) put forward a substitute bill that, instead of prohibiting insurance credit scoring in Washington state, would have commissioned a study on the effects of the practice. The study would have been paid for by charging insurance companies a 10-cent fee on driving abstracts, or data, that insurers purchase from the state.
Before a final vote in which the bill was defeated, each committee member weighed in.
“I’m really disappointed in this, that it’s down to a study,” said Rep. John McCoy (D-Everett). For people of color, because of a practice called red-lining, he said, “there are circumstances (in which) institutions won’t make loans to these individuals, so consequently they have to do everything by cash.”
“They don’t have a credit score, they have no rating,” McCoy said, and that creates a situation of more red-lining. “They run into this every day,” he said, “and it’s quite discouraging.”
“I’m disappointed this bill is even in front of us,” said Rep. Jay Rodne (R-North Bend). “Credit scoring has been proven as a reliable acturarial assessment to determine one’s credit risk and one’s risk in general ... We have to start emphasizing personal responsibility in this Legislature.”
The companion, Senate Bill 6252, remains alive for now in the Senate, where it’s scheduled for a vote at 1:30 p.m. in the Committee on Labor and Commerce & Consumer Protection.
No Reason for Pride
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What do you call it when, in 2009, the One Night Count of Homeless People in Seattle found 2,827 homeless people outdoors after midnight, for a 2% increase over 2008, but this year found “just” 2,759, for a 5% decrease? A statistically insignificant variation. The difficulties involved in counting homeless people after dark are, no matter how “good” we’ve become at this, daunting at best. A few points up. A few points down. I’d say it’s about the same, as far as we can tell.
To say that this 5% “decline” is evidence that the Ten Year Plan to End Homelessness is “working” is a bit of a reach. It’s a little like the head of Homeland Security saying the “system worked” when civilian passengers catch a terrorist in the act of lighting explosives on an airplane.
In 2006, the Year the One Night Count began, there were 1,946 people counted outside. Even though the count has expanded to add some new areas, to call a 42% increase since the plan began “success” is just reality-challenged..
“Ending Homelessness” means that, coming up on the midway-point, the number should be down from where it began, not up. Right?
Car campers counted this year were up. 891 were found, compared to last year’s 852. This, even though the sample is small and the numbers lack accuracy, is interesting. While calls for shelter to the city’s 2-1-1 emergency line saw a 11% drop, the two largest categories of callers over 2009, heat and light assistance and rental assistance, went up by 25% and 29% respectively.
What happens when middle class people become homeless? I’ll tell you. They do not show up at Union Gospel or DESC. They stay with friends and family, or, worst comes to worst, they sleep in their car.
As services continue to be pared away during these times of increasing economic vulnerability, the worst is yet to come.
Five percent down
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We’re not talking about home loans. This morning SKCCH announced the results of last night’s One Night Count, and
the number of people living on the streets of King County is down 5% since last year.
Five percent fewer people (that’s still 2,759, mind you) without shelter on a dry, relatively balmy night: counting with a group in Kent, I passed a bank sign saying the temperature was 42 degrees.
Maybe Danny Westneat was on to something.
Bankers say no to Housing Trust bill
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At a time when the economy is stalled and construction jobs, in particular, have taken a heavy hit, affordable housing advocates say there’s no better time to put money into the state’s Housing Trust Fund, the primary source for affordable housing construction in the state.
HB 2906, sponsored by Rep. Mark Miloscia (D-Federal Way), would do that by issuing a $100 million bond for the Trust Fund. The bond would paid back by charging a $62 document recording fee when a home’s deed of trust is resold. The $62 fee is already collected today at the time a home is purchased, with $48 of the money directed to affordable housing efforts under four previous bills passed by the Legislature since 2002.
In a hearing this morning before the House Local Government & Housing Committee, however, representatives of the state’s banking industry said enough is enough. Marc Gaspard, speaking for both the Washington Mortgage Lenders Association and Washington Financial League, said his organizations had supported the previous efforts at raising recording fees to pay for affordable housing, but it was with the understanding that the fees would not be applied to later deed-of-trust transactions.
Miloscia said that was not his understanding. But Denny Eliason, a lobbyist for the Washington Bankers Association, explained that lenders would have few choices but to charge the extra fee to the home buyer on the front end, doubling or tripling the $62 the purchaser already has to pay.
Once loans are made, Eliason said, lenders bundle and sell them as securities to large financial institutions. It would be next to impossible, he said, to figure out a way to charge the institutions the $62, so lenders would have to raise interest rates to cover the cost or try to estimate how many times a loan might trade hands over the course of its life and charge that to the home buyer, possibly resulting in a front-end cost in the hundreds of dollars.
“This will be borne, we believe, very directly by the first-time home buyer,” Eliason said.
The Housing Trust Fund was reduced in 2009 Legislature from $200 million to $100 million. Housing advocates say that money is already committed to projects and that, in the coming 2010-11 fiscal year, there will be nothing in the way of state funding for affordable housing without more revenue.
Local jurisdictions such as Seattle depend on the funds, said Daniel Malone of the Washington State Coalition for the Homeless, to match dollars they have already allocated for affordable housing. By law, he said, the Seattle Housing Levy that voters renewed last fall can pay for no more than 40 percent of a given project, making Housing Trust Fund dollars critical to building any new affordable housing in the coming year.
Another affordable housing bill heard today by the committee—HB 2900, put forward by Rep. Roger Goodman (D-Kirkland)—seeks to replicate the model of Seattle’s 1811 Eastlake, a building developed and run by the Downtown Emergency Service Center that houses chronic inebriates and allows them to drink on the premises.
According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, residents of the building have cost the state and city $4 million less in emergency room, jail and medical costs in just one year, DESC Executive Director Bill Hobson told the committee, the majority of it in Medicaid dollars that the state saved.
Goodman said the model should be rolled out to other counties, but that a substitute bill will be offered in place of his original legislation.
Marijuana still in play in Senate
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Last week, the House Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness Committee voted down HB 2401 and HB 1177, two bills aimed, respectively, at legalizing and decriminalizing the possession of marijuana.
But that doesn’t mean decriminalization has died this session. Doug Honig of the ACLU of Washington points out that a bill introduced in the Senate last year to decriminalize pot—SB 5615, introduced by Sen. Jeanne Kohl-Welles (D-Seattle)—is still in play, though not scheduled at this time for a vote in any committee.
The bill would decriminalize adult possession of small amounts of marijuana by reclassifying it as a $100 civil infraction that can be paid like a traffic ticket, rather than as a misdemeanor with mandatory jail time.
The state’s Office of Financial Management estimates the bill would save state government and local jurisdictions $16 million per year—at the risk, opponents in law enforcement and drug treatment say, of sending a message to the young that drug use is OK.
Says Honig in an e-mail: “Though HB 1177 did not make it out of committee last week, the companion bill SB 5615 is alive and we are hopeful it will move forward ... The Washington State Bar Association’s Board of Governors has endorsed the bill, it has picked up substantial support among legislators, and last session SB 5615 passed out of committee in the Senate with a bipartisan ‘pass’ recommend.”
Governor’s aide questions “Disability Lifeline” bill
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Gov. Christine Gregoire and Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson both want to reform a state disability called General Assistance-Unemployable. But they don’t agree on how.
At a committee hearing Thursday on House Bill 2782, legislation introduced by Dickerson (D-Seattle) to reform GAU and change its name to Disability Lifeline, Gregoire aide Alexis Oliver raised objections that could indicate the governor does not support the bill.
“The bill is trying to achieve cost savings through better management,” Oliver, the governor’s executive policy adviser, told members of the House Human Services Committee. But, “It’s very hard to understand how the few policy changes (in the bill) would create any type of programmatic savings.”
The governor has proposed rescuing GAU program, which she put on the chopping block in her December budget, by reducing the monthly grant recipients get from $339 to $250 and putting a lifetime cap of six months on the benefits, which come with state-paid medical coverage. The Security Lifeline bill proposed by Dickerson, (D-Seattle), chair of the Human Services Committee, would maintain full benefits without a cap, but seeks to move people more quickly from GAU to federal SSI – Supplemental Security Income for the poor and disabled.
The legislation would do that by giving the Department of Social and Health Services a three-month deadline to put new recipients in a separate category called General Assistance-Expedited for people the state expects to get SSI. Once they get SSI, the feds reimburse the state for what it has paid out in GAX funds.
Dickerson said it currently takes DSHS up to 18 months to make the decision and, last year, $614 million in federal funds went unclaimed.
Oliver said it generally takes six to nine months to document a disability claim for SSI, however. “The timeline is a tad bit constrained,” Oliver said. And “we’re not understanding how that would capture significant cost savings.”
Dickerson said she would revise the timeline in the bill, but “millions of dollars are lost,” she said, “if we accept the timeline of 18 months.”
Oliver also questioned what she called “vague language” in the bill to give GAU recipients priority for substance abuse treatment and, for those leaving GAU, priority to get on the state’s Basic Health Plan. She also questioned how a housing pilot that Dickerson calls for in the bill would be paid for.
The two-county pilot would pay GAU recipients a lesser grant of $250 but provide housing, Dickserson said. It would be modeled on 1811 Eastlake, a project of the Downtown Emergency Services Center that does not require sobriety of residents. About 25 percent of GAU recipients statewide, and up to 40 percent in King County, are homeless, Dickerson said.
The Security Lifeline bill would also support a philanthropic effort already led by Seattle’s Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to create a “one-stop” Internet portal where people can sign up for benefits and expand the Food Stamp Employment Training program from 12 to 15 colleges.
The governor’s aide said a full proposal for the governor’s plan to reform GAU should be released next week.
UPDATE: Gregoire spokesperson Karina Shagren said Monday that the governor has taken no position on the Security Lifeline bill.
Health care reform on the rocks? Change the rules, McDermott says
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The pill is bitter, critics say of the final health care reform bill being hammered out right now between the U.S. House and Senate. But with Tuesday’s special election in Massachusetts, where a Republican won the seat long held by Democrat Edward Kennedy, Americans better take the medicine quick or face losing health care reform altogether.
That was the message Sunday from Congressman Jim McDermott and two key state legislators on health care – Sen. Karen Keiser and Rep. Eileen Cody – at a union hall forum where they urged more than 250 health care activists and constituents to accept compromise and press for passage of some legislation, even if far from perfect, even if Democrat Martha Coakley lost the Massachusetts Senate race and the 60-vote majority needed to block the Republicans from filibustering reform to death.
“If we don’t get this passed now, we’re not going to see it in our lifetimes,” said state Rep. Eileen Cody (D-West Seattle), chair of the House Health Care & Wellness Committee. “We can’t lose this one. We’re too close.”
On Tuesday, Coakley, the state attorney general and heir apparent to Kennedy, lost to Republican Scott Brown, a political newcomer. That doesn’t mean health care reform is over, said McDermott (D-Seattle), but it could mean Democrats will have to change the rules to get it.
“My resolution to the Senate: Change the filibuster rule,” he said, by reducing the number of votes required from two-thirds to a simple majority of 55. “We’re not stuck on this 60 votes. That’s not democracy. Democracy is majority rule, not 60 percent rule.”
Senators won’t want to give up the filibuster, but the Democratic leadership “is going to have a come-to-Jesus meeting if they lose that seat in Massachusetts,” McDermott said.
Another plan, The New York Times reported Sunday, could be to call for a House vote on the Senate version of the bill, which the House could pass as is and send directly to President Obama for signature.
In both versions of the bill, insurance companies would reap millions in tax subsidies for health policies, detractors said at Sunday’s forum and, under the House bill, women would lose private health coverage for abortion. But, like Medicare before it, the bill can be fixed once it’s passed, McDermott said.
“Using this as back door to undo Roe v. Wade,” he said of the Supreme Court case that legalized abortion in 1973, “is simply not going to stand.”
Day of Advocacy
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Yesterday I went to Olympia for an event sponsored by a number of not for profit organizations, too many to mention really. The focus was on five legislative priorities, to create, preserve and maintain quality affordable housing, income supports for working families, mortgage foreclosure protection, quality affordable health care, and a balanced approach to the budget.
Two of the speakers made a particular impression on me. A mother talked about her struggles raising twins one of whom is autistic. I cannot remember all of the details but DSHS told her she could go to school for nine months, limiting her to earning a vocational certificate, and to qualify for assistance for her autistic son using her home based business the business would have to earn 250 percent of the poverty level, thus disqualifying her for benefits.
Another woman, an immigrant spoke about her need to act as an interpreter for her very ill father, and how she was the one to inform him of two amputations, and finally she had to deliver the bad news of his imminent death. No child should be put in that position, and the proposed cuts in the state budget eliminated interpreter services.
My elected representative was not available today, but low and behold when the march ended at the Capitol steps and the speeches started, Larry Seaquist was introduced. When he was done speaking I made my way down to thank him for coming out today and handed him the issue of Real Change with the 2010 Declaration of a State of Emergency.
I enjoyed the workshops and being with so many people passionate about the welfare of others. When Martin Luther King was quoted “A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.” It made think of the King County budget which dedicates 70 percent of revenue to peace & justice while nothing is dedicated to social services. This is not to say King County spends nothing on social services but that nothing is dedicated or mandated.
Supreme Court to rule on release of R-71 petitions against gay marriage
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The final word on whether initiative petitions are public record in Washington state is going to come from the U.S. Supreme Court.
The Washington secretary of state’s office said Friday that the high court has agreed to hear a case brought by Protect Marriage Washington, the group that fought last year to defeat the state’s new domestic partnership law through Referendum 71. They argue that people who signed petitions to put Ref. 71 on the ballot could be harassed or hurt by gay activists if the names are revealed.
The court is expected to hear oral arguments in the case as early as April 19.
Yesler Terrace: Eye on the ball?
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So many committees, so few members: Less than half of the 25-member citizen committee that’s monitoring the Seattle Housing Authority’s plans for redeveloping Yesler Terrace showed up Thursday for the first meeting of 2010 – a year when the public will have a lot more to scrutinize as the agency moves forward on a potential $310 million project to replace the First Hill site’s 561 low-income apartments.
Adrienne Quinn, who resigned from her post this month as head of Seattle’s Office of Housing with the arrival of Mayor Mike McGinn, is no longer participating, said committee Chair Germaine Covington. Others were absent, she said, because the housing authority gave them little advance notice and they had made other plans.
That left 11 members, including Covington, who spent the evening deciding how to divide themselves among four subcommittees that will carry much of the discussion this year on various aspects of the project. The subcommittee topics came from a housing authority list of subjects the group voted on, with “streetscape” design drawing the most votes and “community services” and “office” drawing the least.
The three other subcommittees will focus on what types of housing and open space the development should have and how to create a “social infrastructure” of educational and economic opportunities for Yesler Terrace’s future public housing residents. The work will parallel an environmental impact study of the 30-acre site. The housing authority plans to release a first draft of the study for public comment in August, said Brian Sullivan, development manager for Yesler Terrace.
The project follows redevelopments of public housing at Holly Park, High Point and Rainier Vista and is the housing authority’s largest to date: The site’s World War II-era units, which overlook downtown, will be rebuilt in a largely privately owned community of office buildings and high-rises that will include up to 5,000 residences when finished. The agency expects to finance the project largely by selling much of the site’s publicly owned land to private developers.
“Hands off my doobie”
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It’s not just smokers who want to legalize marijuana: Lawyers, doctors and a law enforcement group endorsed the idea Wednesday at a House hearing on whether the state should decriminalize or legalize the herb.
“The way we handle the War on Drugs is clearly wrong and we can do better,” said James Anderson, president of the King County Bar Association.
“As doctors, we are concerned about the health consequences,” said Charles Heaney, executive director of the King County Medical Society, which supports decriminalization. “People who are incarcerated are at risk for physical violence, sexual assault and related communicable diseases and exposure to harder drugs a lot more harmful than marijuana.”
House Bill 1177, sponsored by Rep. Dave Upthegrove (D-Des Moines), would decriminalize marijuana by reducing the penalty for possessing 40 grams or less from a misdemeanor to a civil infraction. Instead of getting arrested, a user 18 or older would get a ticket of $100. Possession by those under 18 would remain a misdemeanor.
Another bill introduced by Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-Seattle), House Bill 2401, would legalize marijuana altogether for those 21 and older. Sales would be regulated by the state through state liquor stores. Dickerson said the plan could generate more than $300 million for the state over a two-year period.
Both bills face questions about whether they would run afoul of federal prohibitions on marijuana, but Shankar Narayan, legislative director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, said 13 states had already decriminalized the drug. He added the state would save at least $10 million in criminal prosecution by doing so—$6 million less than identified in the fiscal note accompanying HB 1177.
Marijuana laws have not only served to drive up the price of the drug for traffickers, others said, but can give criminal records to young men and women that keep them from getting financial aid for college or jobs—for no clear reason, said Gil Mobley, a physician who said he has interviewed hundreds of marijuana users in his occupational medicine practice.
“Anyone saying that MJ is addicting is either misinformed or flat out lying with a hidden agenda,” Mobley said. “It’s no more addicting than your favorite TV show, sex with your spouse or playing with your dog. [And] it is certainly not a gateway drug, any more than caffeine or Coca-Cola is.”
Don Pierce, with the Washington Association of Sheriffs, disagreed. “If you believe that it is OK for kids in school to use marijuana and be high, then you should pass either one or both of these,” he said. Marijuana is used much less frequency by the young today than alcohol specifically because it is illegal, he said.
“We have substances now that are legal [and] we have issues with impairment,” said Bruce Bjork of the Sheriffs and Police Chiefs Association. “I, for one, would prefer not have another substance that’s going to allow an impaired individual in a legal fashion during the hunting season, for instance, using a firearm, operating a vessel on a very crowded lake, operating a motor vehicle [or] flying a plane.”
But, if legislators don’t pass one of the bills, “We’re going to take it out of your hands,” said Rick Smith with Sensible Washington, a group that has filed a statewide citizens initiative to legalize marijuana. “Penalties for cannabis, no, it’s no good.”
The committee is scheduled to vote on the bills Jan. 20.
What Gregoire plans to save with $779 million in taxes
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Gov. Christine Gregoire gave the Senate Ways & Means Committee a price tag Tuesday of $779 million for the programs she would save in her “Book 2” budget, which assumes the Legislature will agree on some new taxes in that amount.
She proposed raising about $70 million of the tab by imposing the state’s Business & Occupation tax on out-of-state companies that do more than $500,000 worth of business in Washington state, even if they have no offices here.
That’s a start, but she and lawmakers would need to raise another $700 million in taxes to “buy back” the programs, which would otherwise be cut as part of $1.7 billion in state reductions she proposed in December.
The second budget, human services advocates say, still leaves $1 billion in services cuts. Among the programs she would save:
K-12 Levy Equalization – $165 million
Provides state financial support to districts with a lower than average property tax base.
Basic Health Plan – $160 million
Saves 65,000 Washingtonians from losing state health coverage.
Higher Education State Need Grant − $146 million
Restores grants to 12,300 low-income college students.
Redesigned General Assistance-Unemployable Program − $84.5 million
Imposes six-month benefit maximum, reduces grants from $339 to $250 a month.
K-12 All-day Kindergarten, Gifted Program and Reading Corps − $42 million
Funds kindergarteners in school districts with the highest levels of poverty.
Working Connections Child Care Option − $39.5 million
Partially restores childcare payments to welfare recipients.
Maternity Support Services – $28 million
Provides services to more than 50,000 women with high-risk pregnancies.
Optional Medicaid Services – $21 million
Restores dental, vision and podiatry services for Medicaid recipients.
Housekeeping for Elderly, Developmentally Disabled—$18 million
Restores housekeeping and laundry services to help 42,000 people stay in their homes.
Early Childhood Education – $10.5 million
Restores funding for more than 1,500 low-income, 3-year-old children.
Senior Citizens Services Act – $6.9 million
Helps provide meal assistance, transportation, in-home services and counseling.
Adult Hospice Care – $6.1 million
Provides end-of-life services for more than 2,600 adults.
Outpatient Drug Treatment – $5.4 million
Provides chemical dependency and detoxification services for 12,800 clients.
HIV/AIDS Client Services and AIDSNET Grants – $4.8 million
Outpatient Community Mental Health Services – $4.1 million
Children’s Apple Health Insurance – $4.1 million
Homeless shelter, with a twist
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Sometimes, if you’re looking for some help in turning your life around, you can never be sure who your ally will be. The man in the three-piece suit might stand up for you long before the self-proclaimed progressive sporting the Patagonia fleece jacket.
Case in point: Dan de Vaul. A sharp-tongue codger with a penchant for guns, Mr. de Vaul has given homeless people in recovery a place to live in San Luis Obispo, CA. Of course, just because he’s supplying housing doesn’t mean that everyone loves, or even likes, what he does. Actually, authorities have come down pretty hard on him.
The NYTimes just published a feature about Dan de Vaul that’s pretty good. But if visuals are your thing, check out Dan de Vaul in a video profile. It spells out all the issues and puts a nice, little zoning spin on NIMBY— Not in My Backyard.
News from the Poorhouse
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In Michigan child poverty rates are some of the worst in the country. A new study reveals that 1 in 5 children in Michigan are living in poverty and more than 30,000 are victims of abuse or neglect.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has approved a grant request for six Springfield, Missouri programs attempting to combat homelessness. The grant totals $894,253 and will fund 5 programs – The Kitchen Inc., Salvation Army, The Housing Authority of Springfield, and the Missouri Department of Mental Health.
In a story by Sightline Daily it was reported that Seattle, while being a city of good life-expectancy and median income, has a poverty level of 12.5 percent and an unemployment rate of 9.1 percent.
While the economy may be on the rebound a new story in USA Today reveals that the effects of the recession will continue to reverberate for years to come. Today 15.4 million people are unemployed, twice as many as in December 2007. Beyond this a cited study in the article reveals that most countries affected by postwar financial crises, on average, have an 86 percent rise in public debt after three years.
In a run-up to the hosting of the Winter Games Vancouver is doing everything possible to confront its homelessness issue. The city adding more beds to its shelters to make a total of 1,250 available to the homeless and 480 permanent housing projects were been built in the last year, with 600 more to come. These projects are part of the city’s stated goal of eradicating homelessness by 2015.
20,000 “no cuts” signatures presented to governor
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House Speaker Frank Chopp is calling it the “smart recovery.” Human services workers, low-income housing developers and educators who have formed the Rebuilding Our Futures Coalition are calling it “no cuts.”
By either name, it’s a way of saving the $1.7 billion in social programs that Gov. Gregoire put on the chopping block in December to balance the state’s budget. Yesterday, during the 2010 Legislature’s opening day, the coalition presented Gregoire and Senate Majority Leader Lisa Brown (D-Spokane) with petitions and postcards from more than 20,000 Washingtonians opposing what’s called the “all-cuts” budget.
The group, which says it gathered the signatures in just a few days and has grown to more than 100 organizations, says the cuts would leave hundreds of thousands without health care, education, housing, and environmental protection. In a presentation scheduled today at 3:30 p.m. before the state Senate’s Ways & Means Committee, Gregoire plans to outline how she would “buy back” about $700 million in services such as the Basic Health Plan and Apple Health for children, in part by closing a tax loophole that allows out-of-state companies doing business in Washington to pay no tax.
Tony Lee, advocacy director for Solid Ground, a Seattle nonprofit that provides services to low-income families, says that would still leave about $1 billion in cuts.
Dickerson looks to reform General Assistance for disabled
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If you don’t know what GAU is—a state disability program for those who can’t work—you’re not alone. For 18,000 people like Marvin Gnad, a 48-year-old who became homeless after medical problems threw him out of work a few years ago, the $339 a month and medical benefits they get from the state’s General Assistance-Unemployable is all they’ve got.
But they may not have it much longer if the state can’t find a way to save the program, which Gov. Christine Gregoire put on the chopping block in the supplemental budget she proposed in December to fill a shortfall of $2.6 billion.
After the governor makes her State of the State address tomorrow at noon, she’s scheduled to appear before the Senate Ways & Means Committee at 3:30 p.m. to discuss what the politicos call her “Book 2” budget—a second budget in which she’s expected to put a price tag on the social programs she would “buy back” if lawmakers approve any tax increases. In December, she said would like to see about $700 million in tax increases, but Gregoire is waiting to see what Congress does with a jobs bill and healthcare reform before putting any taxes on the table.
The governor’s proposal would only save $250 of Marvin Gnad’s monthly check and it’s not like he had a lot of spending money to begin with at $339. “I’d lose my place,” Gnad says of the room he rents from a nonprofit agency for $60 a month. “I’d be back on the streets.”
Enter Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson (D-Seattle), chair of the House’s Human Services Committee, with a new idea for saving the state disability program. For starters, she says, it’s time to change GAU’s name so people know what it is.
“One of the reasons GAU has had such a difficult time with proper funding is that neither policymakers nor the public understand who these adults are,” Dickerson says. “GAU means nothing to the public and often nothing to legislators, who have to be knowledgeable about 1,000 different things.”
Dickerson’s multifacted Security Lifeline bill would change the GAU program and its name to Disability Lifeline.
Lawmakers would still have to come up with funding to continue recipients’ $339 a month and state medical benefits. But if they are eligible for Supplemental Security Income—federal disability assistance for the poor—Dickerson would put them on a fast track to get it. That, in turn, would put the state on a fast track to get repaid: The feds reimburse the state for all disability funds paid out to individuals accepted by SSI.
“The more people we get to do that, the less it costs the state,” Dickerson says.
The bill would step things up by giving the Department of Social and Health Services a 90-day deadline to decide whether a new state disability recipient is eligible to apply for federal SSI and should be put in a category called General Assistance-Expedited, or GAX. The state currently takes up to 18 months to make this decision, Dickerson says.
The bill would also expand the state’s Food Stamp, Employment and Training program and create a one-stop website where people can apply for federal, state and local benefits, ranging from college financial aid to nutrition programs.
“A majority [of GAU recipients] are battling mental illness, many are homeless, and a large share are veterans who have served our country,” House Speaker Frank Chopp said Monday during his opening speech in the Legislature. “These reforms will save lives, save money, and make ‘general assistance’ more understandable to the general public.”
Office of Housing director leaves
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From the McGinn campaign:
SEATTLE – Today Mayor Mike McGinn announced that he had accepted the resignation of Office of Housing Director Adrienne Quinn, who is leaving Seattle to live closer to her elderly parents. Quinn served as housing director for five years, the longest serving housing director since the office was created in 1999. Her resignation is effective February 5.
Quinn is leaving for a job as VP of Public Policy and Government Relations for Enterprise Community Partners, an affordable housing tax credit provider. (She’ll also be back East, says the Mayor’s press release, closer to her aging parents.) Enterprise’s financing, and the Office of Housing’s, allows local non-profit developers to build and preserve below-market rate apartments.
I’m expecting a call from Quinn tomorrow for more on the move.
Something beautiful and amazing
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This woman in Seattle is doing something very cool she calls Freestyle volunteering. Basically she connects with homeless and mentally ill folks she meets on the street and takes them out for coffee. That’s it, one hour of coffee and companionship and seeing someone as a human being. Too bad that’s so rare. Good on her for being there and showing us the way . Here’s the link: http://freestylevolunteer.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/about-freestyle-volunteering/
This week in Olympia
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It’s the start of a brand new legislative session, with high stakes and lots on the agenda. Here is a preview of some items important to health care and human services this week.
House Bill 2484 sets a new 60-day notification standard for landlords to end a tenant’s month-to-month rental agreement, with some exceptions. It’s getting a public hearing in the Judiciary committee on Wednesday at 8 a.m.
A holdover from last year, when the House passed it 59-37 but the Senate failed to vote, Engrossed House Bill 2138 frees up surplus government land for construction of affordable housing. It’s getting a hearing at the same time, Wednesday at 8 a.m., before the House’s Local Government & Housing committee.
House Bill 2497, a bill that would increase the penalty for assaulting a homeless person — classifying it as a hate crime under the state’s malicious harassment law — gets a hearing before the House Public Safety & Emergency Preparedness committee on Tuesday at 10 a.m.
A day after she presents her budget “buy-back” of part of the state cuts she laid out in mid-December, Gov. Gregoire’s budget is explained in detail by the Office of Financial Management before the House Appropriations committee. That’s Wednesday at 6 p.m. in Room B of the capitol’s John L. O’Brien Building.; a public hearing will follow.
At the same time, in the next room over, human services spending gets its own overview and public hearing in front of the Health & Human Services Appropriations committee. Public feedback on the same subject continues before the same committee on Thursday at 1:30 p.m., and again, before the Ways and Means committee, at 3:30 p.m.
Committee work sessions are the legislators’ way of mulling over vital issues that aren’t captured within a given bill. They’re informal discussions in which no votes are cast, and this week they’ll address:
• Research into the child welfare system (8 a.m. Thursday before the House Early Learning & Children’s Services committee)
• The state’s use of funds from the federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (10 a.m. Thursday in front of the House Community & Economic Development & Trade committee)
• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families — welfare — and child care (1:30 p.m. Thursday in front of the Senate Ways & Means committee)
• Child welfare and housing (1:30 p.m. Friday with, again, the House Early Learning and Children’s Services committee).
Look for more Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning, as we see which services the governor wants to buy back — and how. And look for more coverage over at the brand new Olympia Newswire, where we’ll be proudly cross-posting.
Super Stills from Surviving the Streets
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Real Change and our friends Michael Grabham and Patti Dunn of The Finish Company collected outdoor gear donations all over Seattle to help homeless folks survive the winter freeze. Coats, sleeping bags, socks, handwarmers . . .170 people served in 2 hours! Thank you for your donations.
Photography by Revel Smith
News from the Poorhouse
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In a recent article written by The Economic Times it was reported that in India 1 in 3 people are living below the poverty line. This new data reveals the poverty level of India to be far higher than once estimated – over 10 percent higher – with 37 percent of the total population living below the poverty line.
As the healthcare debate continues in the United States a recent article written by the New York Times reveals that people receiving medical benefits through Medicaid may be receiving questionable treatment. New federally funded prescription drug research reveals that children covered by Medicaid are prescribed powerful antipsychotic medications at a rate four times higher than children covered by private health insurance.
In New York City, as of December 8th, city shelters were at 99.6 percent capacity. Last week’s citywide census of homeless individuals showed that 6,975 adults were in shelters. However, this census does not include the 30,698 homeless individuals in short-term housing for homeless families or chronically homeless individuals who have entered the Safe Havens program.
In Marina, California, shelter workers are reporting a vast upswing in the number of homeless individuals who have college degrees. In the story, written by KSBW, it is reported that James Scott has recently become homeless despite degrees from UC-Berkley, MIT, and the University of Chicago.
A recent report released by the U.S. Conference of Mayors shows that requests for emergency food assistance increased by 26 percent in 2008. This is the largest average increase in demand in the last 18 years. Seattle also reported a 30 percent increase in people requesting food assistance for the first time in their lives.
Turning Points Is Here
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The Turning Points DVD has arrived and is for sale by Real Change Vendors.
If you need help finding a vendor near where you work or live check out Find a Vendor.
Description of Turning Points:
Our lives are constantly shaped by transitions - some positive, others negative, some life affirming, others crushing. All of us have stories to tell. In Turning Points we hear from eight homeless and formerly homeless Real Change vendors about the transitions in their lives. Whether its the strength of a relationship, the experience of war, or the salvation in finding community, each story illuminates the intense human ability to persevere against all odds.
Governor splits the difference
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Or nearly so. The draft budget Gov. Christine Gregoire put out today falls about a billion dollars short of balancing next year’s $2.6 billion shortfall, cutting a bunch of vital services.
Gregoire’s expected to release another document listing the tax increases that’ll fill the billion-dollar void. But by the sound of bipartisan reaction to today’s missive, she’s got an uphill battle.
Republican leaders won’t condone new taxes. Democrats will, but in ways that are very likely to continue a revenue system that leans hardest on those least able to pay: the poorest. It will be very hard to have a genuine conversation about tax reform in the midst of a crisis — especially when neither party was willing to do it in better times.
A little — and a big — story about food stamps
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Just a couple of blocks for Real Change stands one of those urban markets: full of over-priced foodstuffs, most of them of a rather poor quality. I found myself there a couple weeks ago to get some yogurt.
At the counter stood a young woman who was buying some chips and a big bottle of soda. She handed the cashier a card— an EBT card. Or, what used to be known, not so long ago as food stamps. Trouble was, she didn’t have enough on it to buy her food. She looked flustered; the cashier appeared tired. I offered to cover the difference — not even a dollar — which seemed to surprise everyone. The woman left with her food, barely able to acknowledge me, which was fine. If the situation had been reversed, I might have felt the same.
What the whole scene did was remind me of all the people I’ve known and seen who’ve used food stamps. When I was a kid in Maryland, elderly people used them at the grocery store; in Maine, where I went to college, locals shopped with them at mini-marts; on Cape Cod, where I spent my 20s, people who didn’t have winter jobs in the seasonal economy used $20 food stamps to buy an orange at A&P, then took the change and bought beer and cigarettes at the liquor store around the corner. So many people.
These days, there are even more people. A recent NY Times article, “Food Stamp Use Soars, and Stigma Fades,” spells it all out: “In more than 800 counties, [they] helps feed one in three children;” “places with soaring rolls include populous Riverside County, Calif., most of greater Phoenix and Las Vegas, [and] a ring of affluent Atlanta suburbs;” and “food stamps reach about two-thirds of those eligible.”
It’s a long article, by online standards, but it’s chock full of sad, yet important, information. And, if you can’t read it all now, then at least check out the multimedia map of the U.S., a third of the way down the page. It puts in all into color-coded context.
And makes me realize that woman I helped out, she’s not alone. Not by a long shot. And hopefully one day, her stigma will disappear.
“Women Behind Bars” not allowed behind bars
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Last year, on a journalistic visit to the Sex Offender Treatment Program at Twin Rivers Unit — part of the Monroe Correctional Complex — I visited the library. There weren’t a lot of tables and there weren’t a lot of prisoners there, but the near-dozen or so people sitting or walking around were leafing through books. Perhaps it was the writer in me, but I wondered why there weren’t more books around. But then I remembered: not every book requested by a prisoner makes into that prisoner’s hand.
Take, for example, “Women Behind Bars: The Crisis of Women in the U.S. Prison System.” Written by Silja J.A. Talvi — a Real Change board member — the non-fiction work has been banned by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, along with “Perpetual Prisoner Machine: How America Profits from Crime” by Joel Dyer. (Both books were ordered by prisoners.) Refusal to allow prisoners to have these books has led to books’ publisher, the Washington-based non-profit Prison Legal News, to file a federal lawsuit saying the prisoners were denied their constitutional rights.
Why were the books banned? According to the Criminal Justice page of change.org, the TDCJ claims they are too graphic, not because the books are critical of the prison system.
In the case of “Women Behind Bars,” the book does offer up frank language in regards to sex. But the language doesn’t aim to entice; it aims to educate, namely about sexual abuse. Even so, the Texas system i.d.’d Page 38 of Talji’s book, which contains the following passage:
“The dark secret of her life was that she had been forced to perform fellatio on her uncle when she was just four years old. … This unresolved trauma became ‘the template for a lifetime of distrust, fear uncertainty and a spirit of self-negation.’”
The 11-page lawsuit states, in part, that the “TDCJs censorship regime … is arbitrary, serves no legitimate penological purpose as applied to PLN publication[s], and violates the constitutional rights of publishers like PLN.”
In a 2007 Silja J. A. Talvi interview printed in Real Change, Talvi talked about “Women Behind Bars” and the work involved in the writing it. Among the great things she said was this:
“As a journalist, these women are my subjects. I am not supposed to be friends with them, but in truth I am. I am friends with women who are survivors. These are women who don’t trust anyone on the outside, they have been screwed their whole lives. And to get letters from them and their family members saying you gave us this ray of hope, that someone is actually listening to me, that’s a good feeling.”
One hopes, sometime soon, these women — survivors — will be able read both books. As for yourself, you can read the whole lawsuit to let Texas female prisoners receive “Women Behind Bars” and here.
Queen Anne vendor dies
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Real Change vendor Linda Spafford passed away on Wed., Nov. 4. Spafford, who sold the paper outside the Metropolitan Market in the Lower Queen Anne neighborhood, died of a heart attack.
Her maiden name was Linda J. Funston, and she moved with her family from Bismarck, North Dakota to Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood when she was 14. Kicked out of her apartment with two kids in tow in the mid-1990s, she stayed in Belltown homeless shelters for about a year, then moved into public housing and in 1999 began selling Real Change to make ends meet.
A diabetic with high blood pressure, Spafford, 57, left behind her adult children, five grandchildren, and a small garden she kept outside her Queen Anne apartment building.
Her family is holding a memorial service Sat., Nov. 28 at 2 p.m. at the Renton Church of the Nazarene, 850 Union Ave. NE, Renton. Donations for a funeral are being accepted.
Best timeline ever
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Preparing for Wednesday’s issue, which marks 10 years since Seattle protesters ripped corporate globalization a new one, I finally spent some time at the WTO History Project, featuring an excellent trove of accounts of the protests by organizers and participants.
Their timeline of events, here, makes for gripping reading. Even having been there — I was involved with the infant Independent Media Center — I’m struck by the extraordinary success of the activists and the ham-fisted government response. Example, from the timeline:
7:15 am, Dec. 1, 1999: “Let me get this straight,” an officer says over the radio. “We’re just supposed to arrest all the protesters?” “That’s affirmative,” a supervisor answers.
For another pretty great blow-by-blow account, check out the November issue of Seattle Metropolitan, in which veteran local journo Eric Scigliano smartly reconstructs the proceedings from the wildly varying perspectives of organizers, protesters and local boosters.
Panhandling: What people are saying
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Speaking of people’s comments about begging:
Cydney Gillis has been digging through public documents from City Hall to nail down the details in the city’s new frontal attack on instances of “aggressive” panhandling. Her story this week provided some insight into Councilmember Tim Burgess’ ideas for increased policing. And it quotes just a few of the, uh, colorful comments by folks telling the government, with startling candor, to do something about these needy folk. As in, crack down on them.
Like Kevin Clark, president and CEO of Argosy Cruises. With Argosy’s waterfront presence and its perennial investments in the campaigns of local officials, you know Clark’s e-mail gets read:
I saw many more in a stack of correspondence to City Council last month. But the one that has stuck with me is from the man turning in a fiftysomething panhandler who pursued him in a slow-motion chase. The writer’s worried about what kind of harm a guy like that might do to people less imposing than himself. Money quote:
If panhandlers get beat up by hostile pedestrians, can they get workers comp?
Brother, can you spare… up to $13/hr?
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Ahh, the holidays. The season that keeps on giving. Though in this case, it may not be the season, so much as the issue: panhandling.
Perhaps you already know that City Councilmember — and former cop — Tim Burgess wants to institute new legislation to stop “aggressive panhandling.” And, from time to time, Real Change vendors get lumped in with panhandlers, making this issue — of people in need asking for financial assistance and whether they’re worthy of that assistance — all the murkier. But sometimes, a little story can say a lot more than a rant. So, here’s a story, as related by a P-I blogger.
It tells the tale of a young woman panhandling up on Capitol Hill. So much gets said about the (ulterior) motives of panhandlers, it’s hard to know what to believe. So hats off to blogger Justin Ames for at least talking to the person he was writing about. Whether or not you agree with the young woman’s motives, it may help you to realize that her actions carry no guarantees. Sitting out the rain, she can make, if she’s lucky, $13/hr. Or, if fortunes prove bad, $5/hr.
Ames’ post offers no answers, but it paints a picture of the panhandler as a human. A person. And that, all too often, gets lost in the discussion.
(Oh. And don’t forget to read the comments, too, especially the fourth one...)
Portland vs. Seattle, part billion and one
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Portland has a streetcar that actually goes somewhere. You can eat pizza, drink beer, and watch a movie in public there about as cheaply as you can in private in Seattle. And we’re one closed bookstore away from losing our reputation as a place literate folks like to live.
But as sister streetpaper Street Roots points out, we’ve got a housing levy.
Turning Points Premiere
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Premiere of Turning Points
Tuesday December 8th 7pm
Trinity United Methodist Church, Ballard
6512 23rd Ave NW
Seattle, WA, 98117
View Map
This premiere showing of Turning Points is free and open to the public, and will be followed by a reception with refreshments.
Turning Points is a collaborative video-documentary created by Real Change vendors, staff, and volunteers.
Our lives are constantly shaped by transitions - some positive, others negative, some life affirming, others crushing. All of us have stories to tell. In Turning Points we hear from eight homeless and formerly homeless Real Change vendors about the transitions in their lives. Whether its the strength of a relationship, the experience of war, or the salvation in finding community, each story illuminates the intense human ability to persevere against all odds.
Turning Points will be for sale by Real Change vendors during the 2009 holiday season.
City Council eases budget cuts, restores some library hours and jobs
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Members of the Seattle City Council held a press conference today at the downtown library to congratulate themselves, in part, for rescuing some of the library hours and jobs that would have been cut next year under the mayor’s plan to fill the city’s $72 million budget hole.
The $860,000 in restored funding will keep 11 branches open seven days a week and cut fewer library jobs. But other branches will still close two days a week and lose staff. Among other differences with the mayor’s plan, the council fully restored $40,000 to food bank and meals programs and $186,000 that the mayor had sought to cut in human services advocacy money that funds groups like the Seattle Human Services Coalition.
The council also restored more than $1 million in funding for three programs that help the addicted or mentally ill get off the streets—Co-STAR, GOTS and CURB—that Mayor Nickels has tried to zero out before. On the down side, it looks like the Technology Assistance Center, which helps nonprofits, had its $176,000 budget slashed.
The council plans a final vote on the package at its regular weekly meeting on Monday, Nov. 23, starting at 2 p.m.
Unemployment: higher than you think?
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Hey, did you hear? The recession’s stalled and the unemployment rate just went down. No, wait, it went up. No, no, no: It’s holding steady, no change.
So which is it? Well, that depends on whom you ask.
On Nov. 9, the New York Times reported that the unemployment rate had risen to 10.2 percent, the highest in a quarter century. That’s not good news. But then on Nov. 10, another Times article, penned by the Times’ chief financial correspondent Floyd Norris, added a caveat: Things weren’t so bad for some (that would be those with college degrees), but pretty bad for others (those without). Or, in short:
...The number of jobs fell for those with less education. If [the Nov. 9] report does indicate that the job recession is ending, it is an end that is providing immediate benefits for the educated, not for many of the people who most need help.
Overlooking the use of the term “educated,” it seems like the recession’s impact is far from over for people who haven’t, for whatever reason, received that college degree. But, if that’s the case, just how bad is it? Michael Lind has an idea.
Lind, the Senior Research Fellow and Policy Director of New America’s Economic Growth Program, provides some startling numbers: the unemployment rate may be as high as 18.8 percent. How so? Well, it all comes down to those people who, after not finding a job for so long, have given up; their numbers usually go unreported. Factor them in and, well, the numbers go from bad to worse. Read all about it, if you will. It might make you more inclined to upscale unemployment numbers, the next time you see them reported.
Hunger in Washington up 24 percent
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The U.S. Department of Agriculture delivered a grim report today: 49.1 million Americans faced food insecurity at the end of 2008, a 35 percent increase from December 2007 and the highest jump since the department started tracking the data in 1995.
Food insecurity means that, on any given day, a household’s members may not have enough to eat—something that has driven more and more families to food banks and meal providers as the economic downturn has worsened.
In Washington state, the number of food-insecure households increased to 288,000 in 2008, an increase of 13 percent. The rise in households experiencing hunger—a more dire category of food insecurity—jumped to 112,000, or 24 percent. According to the Children’s Alliance of Seattle, that means as many as 373,000 children in the state live in households where food is in shortage.
“These numbers are even worse than we anticipated,” Linda Stone, the Children’s Alliance senior food policy coordinator, said in a statement. “Families will go to extraordinary lengths to make sure their children get something to eat, but this report shows that more and more families can’t put food on the table no matter how hard they try.”
Cheri Honkala: cool
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Preparing for the 10th anniversary of the WTO, I googled the leader of the Kensington Welfare Rights Union and found this, Al Jazeera English’s profile on her, which is worth the 11 minutes because it knits together a story of Nashville’s crackdown on the visibly poor with Honkala’s life story:
Cheri was arrested during the WTO; during her return to Seattle for trial, contributing writer Joe Martin did an interview which, too bad, is no longer online.
Leave it to a Qatar news channel to tell U.S. audiences about a civil rights hero.
Poor headlines
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[Note: the following was written by Evergreen State Colege intern Nicholas Rapp, who doesn’t yet have his own blogging identity, but I’m working on that. —ed.]
Death at an early age: The average age of death for homeless individuals in the U.S. is 47, according to a report by the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, and it’s three to four times more likely that a man or woman on the streets will die young than one of their neighbors living inside.
New census data reveals that last year poverty climbed to 13.2 percent, its highest point since 1997. Latinos’ median income has dropped the most, by 5.6 percent, double the loss of non-Latinos.
These trends will be difficult to change without new employment on the horizon, and that prospect is looking bleak. Unemployment nationwide is at 10.2 percent. The news for young people and minorities is worse with a startling 11.4 percent of males 16 or older who are unemployed and 15.7 percent of blacks who are unemployed.
King County Council makes immigration status a non-issue
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“Don’t ask.” Unlike some jurisdictions around the state (namely, Lynnwood), sheriff’s deputies in King County aren’t in the habit of making immigrants prove they’re in the country legally. With a measure passed today, however, the King County Council has prohibited officers or public health workers from asking about immigration status—a move that the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington, which pushed for the measure, says is good for the health and safety of all county residents.
That’s because immigrants shouldn’t be afraid to step forward to report crime or seek preventive medical care when they are sick. The legislation, originally sponsored by Councilmember Larry Gossett, makes county services available to all residents, regardless of citizenship or status, except where prohibited by federal law.
“If an epidemic starts in a population that doesn’t have access to care, it’s only a matter of time before it spreads to everyone,” said Councilmember Julia Patterson, chair of the King County Board of Health, in a statement. “Diseases like H1N1 flu don’t discriminate based on whether or not you’re a legal citizen, and therefore, restricting access to care for some hurts us all.”
In addition to ensuring equal access to services, the ordinance requires that:
· King County Sheriff’s deputies cannot request specific documents, such as passports, alien registration cards or work permits, for the sole purpose of determining whether the individual has violated federal civil immigration laws,
· Deputies cannot use stops for minor offenses, such as traffic stops, to determine an individual’s immigration status,
· Deputies shall not initiate any inquiry or enforcement action based solely on a person’s civil immigration status, race, inability to speak English or inability to understand the deputy,
· Public Health - Seattle & King County shall not condition the provision of health services on matters related to citizenship or immigration status.
Inspiring Women
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Thursday evening, November 5th, the clothing store Eileen Fisher hosted an event called “Inspiring Women,” in which four local, entrepreneurial women came to discuss how following their passions has led them to satisfying and life-giving careers. Christina Baldwin, author of the book Storycatcher; Susan Goodwin, a self-taught jeweler; Alissa Leinonen, founder of Gourmondo Catering; and Molly Woodruff, founder of Molly Baby Baking Company, gathered in the intimate setting to talk about their challenges, successes, and celebrity clients in front of the audience of women. All of these women fell in love with their craft, and were excited to share their stories to inspire other women.
What was exciting for Real Change was that Annie, a Real Change volunteer and employee of Eileen Fisher, talked up the “Women of Real Change” program at her work and convinced them to let “Vendor of the Year” Susan Ford and I go speak on behalf of Women of Real Change. The Women Of Real Change program was started in 2004 in an attempt to provide a safe space for female vendors to build relationships and support each other through fun and educational activities like going to the zoo and taking Home Alive self defense classes together. Female vendors often face greater challenges while selling because of intimidation or harassment by men and the safety issues involved. Susan was a great speaker and charmed the other women in the room talking about her love of Real Change and her customers: “I’ve just met so many wonderful people out there.”
Molly Woodruff provided mouthwatering “Molly Babies” cookies for the “Inspiring Women” event, Alissa Leinonen’s company Gourmondo catered it, Christina Baldwin was selling her numerous books on journaling and reflection, and Susan Goodwin had her beautiful jewelry on display and for sale. Susan Goodwin was especially kind in her decision to contribute 20 percent of all proceeds from the night’s event to the Women Of Real Change.
A big thank-you to Annie, and to everyone who came to “Inspiring Women” for supporting the Women of Real Change!
RC intern in the NY Times
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Usually, this blog reports news that makes you shake your head in shame for the plight of the poor. But how about some good news, born, only slightly, of our own office?
In the editorial department, we’ve been fortunate enough to have a steady flow of interns, though we hit somewhat of a dry spell in ‘07. But early that summer, I got an email from a young man named Patrick Reis. Fluent in Spanish, Patrick said he wanted to write for a publication dedicated to social justice. Unfortunately, with my in-box clogged, I lost track of that email. No matter: One day, Patrick showed up at the office. Giving him points for persistence, I met with him. His journalistic passion was true; his clips were sound. So I thought, Let’s give it a go. It was a good decision, because Patrick worked hard that summer, turning in some good articles, including a nice feature about the Penny Arcade Expo.
But. interns move on, and he left Real Change that fall. These days, he lives in D.C., where, along with spying the likes of Sen. John McCain, he works for an online mag devoted to energy and enviro policy, greenwire.com. His beat: mountaintop mining.
Well, one of his pieces, about the Endangered Species Act, was printed, with a co-byline, in the NY Times last month. And another, about biodiversity in Appalachia, found its way into Scientific American. Give ‘em a read.
And to Mr. Reis, we say: Nice work, Patrick. It was good to have had you here…
Eastern Wash. rep stumps against health care bill
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From a GOP email this morning:
Representative Cathy McMorris Rogers [sic] will discuss how Speaker Pelosi’s health care bill will pit government bureaucrats between [sic] patients and their doctors from 2:20 – 2:30 PM PST.
McMorris Rogers Rodgers is a GOP darling. She’ll be addressing the effect of the House health care bill on rural and low-income people during her time slot. Tune in here.
Want to know why health care reform is a really bad idea for low-income people? Or why rural Washington is better off as is? Call RNC Regional Press Secretary Jahan Wilcox at (202)863-5342 and pass on your question.
Big social services cuts in the works
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It’s a good thing Washington voters rejected Initiative 1033, Tim Eyman’s bid to retard government spending. With state revenues still lagging from the recession, the Washington State Budget & Policy Center reports that the Department of Social and Health Services is looking at “cuts on top of cuts” in 2010 to cover a nearly $2 billion deficit.
According to a recent memo from DSHS’s Health and Recovery Services Administration, that includes cutting nearly $70 million in medical assistance for the poor, $11.6 million in children’s health coverage, and $12.9 million in mental health care—along with costing the state an estimated $101.4 million in federal matching funds.
Election news: winning the war, losing a battle
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Opponents of Initiative 1033 and supporters of Referendum 71 — I’m in each camp, as are most King County voters — are happy this morning. Both are going down, according to the Secretary of State’s incredibly handy electoral map.
Those are the R. 71 results to date. A daunting sea of anti-gay voters — misleadingly so, of course, since most of these counties have very few people.
But the state legislature will be a little less blue come January. After this election, rural eastern Washington is sending only Republicans to Olympia. It ought to concern Dwight Pelz, Frank Chopp and Chris Gregoire that they have no rural voice from the state’s eastern two-thirds — not even from Walla Walla.
Health care and the undead
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Some people are willing to be arrested; others just want to replay Thriller. Real Change contributor Elliot Stoller tagged along with some Zombies for a Public Option down at Pike Place on Halloween.
Every year an estimated 20,000 Americans die because they can’t get needed medical care, according to those who know. These are just the ones who dance best.
Health care arrests in support of single-payer plan
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I didn’t see a single news item about seven protesters’ civil disobedience Wednesday in the Seattle offices of Regence Blue Shield. But here’s a photo by Real Change contributor Luke McGuff: former School Board member Sally Soriano is led out of the health insurance giant’s downtown lobby that afternoon.
Luke says the demonstrators were taken away, very gently, then released. No arrests were made.
Participant Jim Squires M.D. shared the following with Luke:
“The primary problem is the private health insurance industry being the means by which you access the health care system. This is a totally dysfunctional system that leads to many people not having health insurance, tens of millions underinsured, and medical bankruptcies. It’s also increasingly expensive, and more and more unaffordable for average people. The solution to the health care crisis is really very simple: medicare for all, with a single payer system.”
Seattle United for Single Payer Health Care isn’t getting exactly what it wants, but you can’t discount the power of the federal government effectively negotiating prices with providers.
Cracking down on Homelessness in the Land of the Midnight Sun
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Today’s high in Anchorage, Alaska: 38 degrees (though, according to weather.com, it feels like 27). Not the best of forecasts if you’re homeless in Anchorage.
But the 50th state’s homeless have to contend with more than weather. They’ve also got to be worried about how that state’s largest city has decided to deal with them.
Just check out this NY Times article and video from Sun., Oct. 25, “Homeless Deaths Rise, and Anchorage Copes,” which addresses the deaths of 13 homeless people since the spring. Republican mayor Dan Sullivan has set up a task force and staff position to deal with homelessness.
That sounds great. But the city has also authorized the police to dismantle encampments — “with just 12 hours’ notice.” And there’s more: A detox and alcohol abuse center, run by the Salvation Army, has also begun accepting chronic inebriates “who have been taken there essentially by force.” All someone — a cop, doctor, a family member — has to do is convince a judge that an individual’s alcohol abuse makes that person a threat to himself or others. The judge can order the person held for 30 days. Or longer. “The person does not need to have committed a crime.”
All of which might make some people go, Hmmmm, that seems a little tough. Or ask, Why are so many homeless people there dying? And what’s going on with public drunkenness?
The article never really delves into these concerns. But it does provide a really interesting comment toward the end of the piece:
“Experts say the problem of public drunkenness is part of a larger homeless problem that disproportionately affects Native Alaskans, particularly men who have moved in from rural parts of Alaska and lost their way in the city.”
Now, doesn’t that make you wish somebody, at some news organization — The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, hell, even the NYT — went out to those rural towns and saw what life was like there, to see why these Native men are leaving those small outposts to venture to Anchorage. Maybe then, a more effective way of cutting down on homelessness and alcoholism could be found long before people die on the streets of Anchorage.
Too bad Real Change doesn’t have a sister paper there. It might be worth the trip.
Hung jury in Wyking Garrett case
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Greg Lewis, one the witnesses in the trial of Wyking Garrett, reports that Garrett is headed to re-trial: “Hung Jury (!) and therefore a mistrial,” Lewis writes in an e-mail. “4 Jurors were for NOT GUILTY and 2 were for GUILTY.” The new trial is set to start Nov. 23.
Study finds Community Court cuts recidivism a whopping 66 percent
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Seattle’s city attorney released findings today that, in fact, if you give people a way out of their addictions, they go to jail a lot less. Who would have guessed? From the news release:
SEATTLE—The Seattle Community Court Executive Committee announced today that an independent evaluation of Seattle Community Court outcomes conducted by the Justice Management Institute (JMI) of Denver, Colorado has concluded that:
“The community court is significantly more effective at reducing the frequency of recidivism than is the traditional court process. The community court group committed 66% fewer offenses within 18 months of the intervention, while the control group showed an increase of 50%.” writes Elaine Nugent-Borkorave, JMI’s principal researcher on the project.
“This finding in and of itself represents a potential tremendous cost-saving to the city of Seattle. Given that most of the offenders are held in jail at the time of their arrest, fewer arrests among the community court participants translates into a decrease in scarce and expensive jail bed usage.” continues Nugent-Bokorave.
The study examined the criminal histories of 209 defendants who entered Community Court between July 0f 2005 and June of 2006 and compared them with a control group of 230 defendants who were offered Community Court during the same time period but rejected it.
The study found that Community Court defendants dropped from an average of five cases within eighteen months prior to being in Community Court to only two cases after, while the control group actually showed an increase from two cases before to three cases after.
The positive findings cut across race and gender lines. Only whites males as a group did not appear to do as well in terms of recidivism.
... The findings were all the more remarkable given the challenging population that this problem-solving court serves. The study described the challenging nature of that population, nearly 60% were unemployed, over 50% were homeless, and 41% had drug addictions with an average length of 13.7 years.
City prosecutor calls black activist Wyking Garrett “dark sheep”
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Derek Smith didn’t really say that, in court, in front of a jury, did he? He didn’t really compare Wyking Garrett to the “dark sheep” who always makes trouble in a family?
He most certainly did. And I found it racist.
In his closing remarks this afternoon at Seattle Municipal Court, the city prosecutor compared Garrett, who was arrested after making some unplanned remarks last year at the grand opening of the Northwest African American Museum, to the “dark sheep” that family members are afraid will make trouble at the wedding, but have to invite anyway.
If the unwanted but unavoidable guest were to grab the microphone at some point and start saying the bride was making a horrible decision, Smith asked the jury, what would any family do?
I don’t think they’d slam the guy to the ground and handcuff him the way Seattle police did Garrett on March 8, 2008, after he spoke at the mike before the ceremony began—something Garrett’s attorney asked Mayor Nickels to confirm in his testimony this afternoon. Afterward, the prosecutor urged the jury to find Garrett guilty, arguing that Garrett had no right to do what he did nor to say no to the police because they had probable cause—suspected trespassing—to arrest him.
But in Smith’s wedding analogy, the guest is invited. And Garrett’s trial wasn’t for trespassing (the city dropped that charge), only for resisting arrest—that is, for whatever happened in a room of the museum between the five officers and what the prosecutor described as a “mad, “out of control,” “spleen-venting” “dark sheep.” It was disgraceful.
Garrett’s attorney, Theresa Allman, argued Garrett had a right to be at the event, a right to speak his mind—which he’s seen doing rather calmly on a YouTube video of the event—and a right to be found not guilty because there was no resistance: The same video shows the “out of control” Garrett putting his hands in the air as the officers close in.
The jury went out at 3 p.m. Stay tuned for the verdict.
Ballot Party
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It’s time to vote! Come to a Ballot Party tonight, October 29th, at 6pm at Franklin High School. There will be food (Ezel’s!), entertainment, and prizes. Bring your ballot and bring your friends and family. It’s important that every voice is heard to ensure racial and social justice.
Ballot Party
October 29th
6pm
Franklin High School
3013 Mt. Baker Blvd S.
Click Here for Directions
Juror assaulted on way to Wyking Garrett trial and testimony of mayor
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Truth is, indeed, stranger than fiction.
I arrived at the Seattle courtroom of Wyking Garrett’s arrest trial this morning to find Mayor Nickels sitting in the gallery. He had been subpoenaed by Garrett’s lawyer and was waiting to be questioned about the opening ceremony of the Northwest African American Museum.
Garrett is the son of one of the people who occupied the old Coleman School building back in the 1980s to demand the creation of an African American museum and community center that the activists hoped, in part, would teach black youth their history and offer them new ways forward. He was arrested last year during the museum’s grand opening for stepping up to the podium and denouncing the project, which he and his father say the mayor’s allies at the Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle have turned into a toy museum of cardboard cutouts and 36 condos.
Strangely, three of Garrett’s original four charges, including criminal trespass, have been dropped. The trial is over a final charge of resisting arrest, a sort of Orwellian twist in which Garrett is left to fight an arrest for which there was apparently no cause.
So we waited. And waited. The bailiff came in. The bailiff went out. But a juror who was missing in action—the cause of the delay—could not be located.
The judge came back in and said she had a situation she had never encountered on the bench: The juror had been assaulted on the bus on her way to the court and was at the police department giving her statement. At 11:30, the juror was brought into the courtroom and the judge asked her if she felt up to continuing with the trial. The juror looked shaken but in one piece and said she could. Garrett’s attorney asked, however, if, given the help she had just gotten from three King County Metro Transit police, she would find herself more aligned with a prosecution case that rests largely on the testimony of Garrett’s arresting officers.
The juror’s answer was a quiet but firm no. “I already felt positive about them,” she said of police. “I don’t think it changed my opinion.”
No one asked her if the incident had changed her thoughts on people of color. She and five others on the six-member jury are white. She was attacked, the prosecutor said, by a woman who screamed racial epithets at her after she had asked the woman (or, perhaps, was herself asked) to stop talking loudly on a cell phone.
The mayor’s testimony starts at 1:30.
City Council “fast-tracks” hearing on $100 million Mercer West Project
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If you missed this evening’s public hearing on the $100 million Mercer West Project, you’re not alone—so did the dozens of people who signed the protest letter below, which the Seattle Displacement Coalition sent out this afternoon. The letter objects to the Seattle City Council’s decision, at the last minute, to “fast-track” a public hearing on the project.
The hearing was squeezed in before a well-advertised budget hearing that was supposed to start at 5:30 p.m. The number of people who showed up to testify on Mercer West speaks for itself: Precisely five people made it to this sneaky “public hearing.” Given who benefits—billionaire Paul Allen and his Vulcan developments along Mercer—should we be surprised?
Should we be surprised that council budget chair Jean Godden pooh-poohed the complaints she had gotten about the short notice by saying there will be other opportunities to speak about Mercer West—in the middle of your workday morning prior to budget committee meetings that start at 9:30? (For those who can, that’s Oct. 29, Nov. 2 and Nov. 3.) Or that four of the five who made it to the “public hearing” were project supporters?
The detractor was Kirk Robbins of the Queen Anne Community Council and he gave Ms. Godden a piece of his mind. The Mercer Corridor Stakeholders Group that recommended the project convenes at the behest of Vulcan and “has a serious thumb on the scale for property owners in that area,” Robbins said, adding that a meaningful stakeholder process is needed.
In the meantime, “There’s supposed to be a serious Mercer hearing here,” he said, “and this isn’t it.”
From the letter sent out this afternoon by the Displacement Coalition:
Dear Councilmembers,
We are writing to strenuously object to the fast tracking of a hearing this afternoon on the Mercer West project - without notice and without any opportunity for the public to even be made aware of it, let alone show up and testify. How ironic that you would hold up the council hearing on the budget (which you take pains to point out will require $72 million in painful budget cuts to basis services in our city. And then to hasten construction of one our city’s most wasteful and needless boondoggle you fast track a hearing on Mercer West! ...
We urge the Council to postpone this hearing until the public receives proper notice, can review materials, and make informed comments. I am unable to attend today’s hearing but wish to weigh in with my objections.... thank you.
- John V. Fox for the Coalition and on behalf of 20 plus community organizations and over 150 community leaders opposed to use of city funds for the Mercer Project. Other groups opposed to Mercer funding include:
Magnolia Community Club
Rainier Beach Community Club Executive Board
Queen Anne Community Council
Southeast Seattle Crime Prevention Council
Othello Neighborhood Association
Columbia City Community Council
North Seattle Industrial Association
Aurora Avenue Merchants Association
Fremont Chamber of Commerce
Ballard District Council
Seattle Community Council Federation
Northeast District Council
Metropolitan Democratic Club
Seattle Marine Business Coalition
36th District Democrats
Seattle Displacement Coalition
University District Community Council.
Individual Signatories of this letter include:Matt Fox, Pres. U-District Community Council (endorses this statement)
David Bloom
Sally Kinney
Joe Martin
Toby Thaler Board member, Fremont Neighborhood Council (ID purposes only)
Gene Hoglund, No Tunnel Alliance
Kent Kammerer
Kris Fuller
Gloria Butts
William Bradburd
Brian Ramey
Irene Wall
Steve Rubstello
Cheryl Trivison
Mary Hisken
Dennis Saxman
Rick Barrett
Dennis Ross
Michael Oxman
Ken Meyer
Charles Pickel
Gary Clark
Ishbel Dickens
Bill Kirlin Hackett
Kris Weber
Stephen Lamphear, President, Evergreen Democratic Club (ID purposes only)
Christal Wood, JD
Brian Foley
Cameron Chapman
Keith Biever
Midge Batt
Harvey Friedman
Elizabeth Campbell
Doris Nicastro
Patt Watts
Patricia Stambor
Lynn Sereda
Tim Baker
Penny Lewis
Sooz Appel
Dorli Rainey
Jim and Diane Snell
Polly Trout
Sharon Scully
Robby Barnes
Sylvie Kashdan
Geov Parrish, Political Commentator and Journalist
Faith Fogarty
Maureen Bo
Anthony Jamerson, (former) Chief Steward OPEIU Local 8 & community activist
Roberta Nelson
Jackie Dempere
Chris Gordon Owen
Janine Blaeloch, Public Lands Activist
Jef Jaisun, Pres. Ravenna Park Action Council
Ishbel Dickens
Todd Tollefson
Cleve Stockmeyer
Bob Barnes
Benjamin Wojcik
Jane DeHaan
Denise Vaughn
Sinan Demirel
Madeleine Sosin
Brie Gyncild
Carla Bueno
Mary Kline
Rich Haag
Mike McCormick
Rev. Rick Reynolds
Sean Brailey
Patricia Paschal, SE Seattle Resident
Martha Baskin
Faye Garneau, Executive Director, Aurora Avenue Merchants Association Inc. as authorized by the Board of Directors 1/12/09
Kari Olson, “The Friends of Interlaken Park,” Seattle’s Urban Forest Stewards, Naturalist
Kenny Telesco
Cheryl Jones
Carla Miller
Erin O’Connor
Daphne R. Schneider
Cathy Dempier
BettyJo Reed
Edyth Koch
Melanie Cosette
Craig Salins
Joan Wisnowski
Margaret M. Boyle
MaryLou Pederson
Mary Lou Barian
Maurice Cooper
Flo Beaumon
Scott Species
Jenna Walden
Jeanne Legault
Joe Szwaja
Andrew Kirsh
Meredith van Ry
Jon Hiesfelter, CWA 37083 (ID purposes only)
Jen Domeier Seattle, WA
Ray Akers Gerrard Beattie & Knapp Realtors
John Barber
Joyce Moty
Lauren Ehnebuske
Marty Oppenheimer
Cheryl Petterson
Kevin Wildermuth
Marsha Shaiman
Sarah Prostak
Matthew goossen, president, Leschi Community Council
Cindy Domingo, Legislative Aide, King County Councilmember Larry Gossett
Monica Bradley
This is not what “women and children first” should mean
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It’s no secret that the state keeps cutting funds for public health services—$35 million in the last biennium and $4 million for 2009-11—but what seems largely hidden from public view is the effect: more women, children and elderly folks left on the doorstep of despair while a swine flu pandemic looms.
That’s the upshot of a report released today by the Washington State Budget & Policy Center on the effects of recent cutbacks to local health jurisidictions. The report is based on two surveys of county health officials conducted by the center and the Washington State Association of Local Public Health Officials, who found that out of the 31 health jurisdictions that responded (there are 35 total in the state), 24 of them had experienced significant funding cuts and had to reduce or eliminate programs and services this year.
That includes laying off more than 320 public health workers such as nurses and epidemiologists—44 of them in King County and 70 in Snohomish County.
Among the losers, Mason County eliminated a program in which a public health nurse made visits to the homes of at-risk first-time mothers, policy analyst Stacey Schultz of the Washington State Budget and Policy Center said today on a conference call announcing the report. In Kittitas County, said Laura Hitchcock, director of the Washington State Public Health Association, a co-sponsor of the report, officials had to declare a state of emergency so they could get paramedics and EMTs to distribute swine-flu vaccine.
The cuts come on top of a $200 million shortfall in public health funding that was identified before the recession even began, said Barry Kling, administrator of the Chelan-Douglas Health District. If they continue, Kling said, public health will not only lose its ability to control disease outbreaks, but end up looking more like a Third World health system—a warning meant for voters as they consider whether or not to approve Initiative 1-1033, a tax-cutting measure of Tim Eyman’s that the budget center warns would gut public services of all kinds.
Public Health opens four swine-flu centers to inoculate uninsured
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Show of hands—who can tell me why public health departments are important? Because they take care of giant health problems no one doctor or hospital can.
Case in point: Public Health of Seattle-King County opened special swine-flu vaccination clinics today at four of its public health centers to inoculate the folks most likely to be stricken and least likely to get the H1N1 vaccine: Uninsured people (through age 64) whose health is already compromised from conditions such as heart problems, lung disease, asthma, kidney disease or HIV/AIDS.
Giving them the vaccine helps keep the rest of us from getting swine flu—the type of holistic public health approach that the Washington Budget & Policy Center called attention to today when it released data on the effect that state budget cuts have had on public health services in the past year.
The four H1N1 vaccination clinics will be operated at the following locations:
White Center Public Health Center, 10821 8th Ave. S.W., Seattle
Alder Square Public Health Center, 1404 Central Ave. S., Suites 101 & 112, Kent
North Public Health Center, 10501 Meridian Ave. N., Seattle
Federal Way Public Health Center, 33431 13th Place S., Federal Way
All clinics are open 8:30 a.m. - 5:30 p.m. every weekday but Thursday, when the hours are 8:30 a.m. - 7:00 p.m. All clinics are walk-up (no appointments will be scheduled). For directions, go to the Public Health H1N1 influenza website. As of today, Public Health is also staffing a 24-hour flu hotline at 877-903-KING (5464).
UW students continue fight for Tent City 3
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God bless those social-workers-in-training at the University of Washington—they’re not taking no for an answer from UW President Mark Emmert. It may have taken the students a while to respond to his July 29 letter denying their request to host Tent City 3 on campus, but, then, Emmert’s answer was timed to the dead of summer when the students would be away.
With the autumn quarter, the students have returned, they’ve regrouped and they are, of all the glorious things, trying to negotiate His Presidency into a small compromise: In a letter sent to Emmert today, they are asking that faculty and students be allowed to formally interact with Tent City 3 when it stays on the grounds of churches close to campus.
Humble, it’s true. But they’re not giving up. They’re organizing a winter-quarter exhibit on displaced peoples, both at home and abroad, and plan to hold another “teach-in” style public forum in January on bringing Tent City 3 to campus for a three-month stay.
From today’s announcement:
Students for Civic Engagement on Homelessness (SCEH) responded by letter today to University of Washington President Mark A. Emmert’s decision not to host Tent City 3 on the Seattle campus during the 2009-2010 academic year. ...
In his denial Emmert cited the main reasons for his decision as the complexity of issues involved, stating that ... “To introduce a tent city into this mix would compound the complexity of our daily activity in ways that would further complicate the business of the University.”
In response, SCEH wrote in its letter, signed by president Abbey Pearl: “Of all the reasons for not hosting Tent City (and we believe there could be some legitimate ones), this is the most perplexing.” ... “The University of Washington doesn’t know how to do complicated things? Our beloved home of world scholars works on cures for cancer, exploring archeological ruins, and preparing diplomats to negotiate peace treaties. We host huge football games, study-abroad programs, and controversial research. Our very purpose is to think up complex things and bring them into the realm of the possible! Hosting Tent City is actually a rather modest ambition compared to the things our people do here every day.”
In his July 29 letter, President Emmert also said that, while working to understand homelessness is part of the university’s core mission, setting up a homeless community is not. “You can’t possibly be suggesting,” the students responded, “that as scholars our job is merely to understand problems, but not to get our hands dirty in attempting to wrestle with them in real life?”
More information on Students for Civic Engagement on Homelessness and its tent city proposal can be found here by e-mailing the group at tentcityuw@gmail.com.
Port of Seattle race: Holland and Doud
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Last night’s Port of Seattle debate before the Magnolia Community Club held little drama. Candidates largely sympathized with members’ concerns over airline noise, adverse traffic, the bite of Port taxes on county homeowners, and the future of Terminal 91, a vacant industrial lot east of the residential neighborhood. The three contestants and a surrogate for candidate Max Vekich, who couldn’t make it, frequently agreed with each other on these issues.
But one candidate frequently tried to mix it up: David Doud.
Doud, an Eastside businessman, is running against biofuel salesman Rob Holland for an open seat on the five-member commission. Doud’s been said to have gone negative in recent weeks, with a push poll against Holland that brought up both his race and his sexual orientation.
Doud denies that his campaign ran a push poll. He says it was legitimate research — and that it didn’t make an issue out of Holland’s race or sexuality.
It asked, he says, whether voters knew that Holland “was active in the movement [for] I-200,” the 2000 anti-Affirmative Action initiative — “even though he is gay and black?”
I don’t know where to take that. The “pollster” is obviously bringing three pieces of information to the voter’s attention: that Holland once opposed Affirmative Action. That he’s gay. And that he’s black.
Consequentially to these three pieces of information, the poll results showed, Doud says, that voters are “really concerned” with Holland.
Doud hasn’t shared all the findings with us.
Making a campaign issue out of Holland’s sexuality may be the most extreme methods Doud’s using to damage his candidate in the countywide race. The pollsters also brought up Holland’s overdrawing of unemployment benefits for a business; when that happens, a court issues a tax warrant notifying you that you owe the state money. “For the court to issue a tax warrant is of real concern to the voters,” Doud told me in an interview yesterday.
The tax warrant accusation has already been discredited here: Holland says it’s been paid.
At the Magnolia debate, he took another jab at Holland. When Holland said that commercial real estate investments had been “a money loser,” Doud countered that they constituted 40 percent of the Port’s revenue stream (which doesn’t negate Holland’s point, since the Port is reliant on property taxes, too). Since the Port is the county’s largest landowner, “Don’t you think it’d be good to have [a commissioner] with experience in commercial real estate?”
I talked to Doud about this after the debate. He defines commercial land as any property not devoted to residential use — which doesn’t mirror Seattle land use code, nor does it keep with the recent debate over the city’s eroded industrial and maritime job sector.
But his stance shows how this race, more than the Albro-Vekich contest, offers starkly different visions of what the Port of Seattle is for.
Doud told me that Port land all across the county lies empty while the Port ignores the market’s call for its “highest and best use.” Holland, who shares the fiscal conservatism of a number of other candidates, hews much more closely to the Port’s mission as an engine of jobs and trade. Machinist ≠ office clerk, longshore worker ≠ bellhop. When you turn a once-industrial site into a hotel, the industry, with its middle-class wages, won’t ever come back.
No Comment
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Seen on the side of a Metro bus at Second and Lenora this morning:
Nice how a guy — and the author had to be a guy — has a mastery of both racism and misogyny but doesn’t know how to write plural noun’s nouns.
SHARE campout suspended
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A SHARE member says the roving protest that began outside the mayor’s house was put on hold on earlier this week, after 14 nights.
Two gifts — one from a local non-profit — will keep SHARE’s shelter users traveling on Metro to and from their church-based shelters for the next four weeks. Sunday’s sleepouts, outside the southeast Seattle homes of councilmembers Bruce Harrell and Richard McIver, were the last for now.
No word from SHARE yet as to who donated the money.
Port of Seattle race: Albro, Vekich on Nickelsville
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I interviewed Port of Seattle Commissioner candidates Max Vekich and Tom Albro yesterday; they’re facing off in the Nov. 3 election. Vekich is running with the backing of labor on a port-reform platform; Albro, owner of the operating company for the Seattle Monorail, has some supporters that run the political gamut.
All Port candidates talk about how to maintain the public waterfront’s competitive edge in trans-oceanic shipping. They’re half educating voters, half stumping for themselves. Obvious differences in the candidates crop up when you look at their campaign-finance forms.
I had more than an hour with Albro. I asked him about his Republican ties — he’s got them, he admits, but says he’s an independent and disclosed his mixed history of political involvement. In 2004, he caucused for Kerry. In 2008, he caucused for McCain. Then last November he voted for Obama. Which explains his “no” response to the West Seattle Democrats to the question “Are you a Democrat?”
And the Republican donors on his campaign forms? Politically necessary, said Albro: While money undeniably buys influence, to win a Port seat you need to ask for money from those who are paying attention. That group of people includes Republicans — and even the people who’ve given to those who’ve run before. Even retiring commissioner Pat Davis, whose secret deal for Port exec Mic Dinsmore latched the door behind her.
If Albro’s unfairly painted as a Republican, Vekich’s campaign is misconstrued as being solely backed by Big Labor. Vekich addressed a range of issues in his 30 minutes on the phone with me (he had to reschedule an in-person meeting because of another commitment, and he won’t make tonight’s candidates forum in Magnolia). For his day job, he strategizes the movement of cargo off ships. He’s also an executive board member of the ILWU.
One clear distinction between the two was their stance on an issue neither would have conceived of before entering the race: whether the Port should shelter the homeless.
The Sept. 30 arrests and removal of Nickelsville from Terminal 107 Park, said Vekich, showed how “gutless” local governments have been in responding to the problems imposed by a group of people left outside the shelters. He said one idea for Port land that wasn’t devoted to maritime use could be to house the homeless.
Albro, for his part, supported the Port’s action, noting legal arguments that the Port can only use public money for its central governmental purpose. When I recalled that Seattle’s 1930s-era Hooverville was stationed on Port land, he noted that the shantytown was also removed, forcibly, by local officials.
Sheriff stands with Susan Hutchison
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“I’m not here to endorse a candidate ... I’m here to endorse a public policy that I believe is good for public safety,” King County Sheriff Sue Rahr said today as she stood with candidate Susan Hutchison at the Seattle Westin.
But as KIRO reporter Essex Porter made note, the picture of the two together could easily give that impression.
The sheriff joined in on a news conference called by the King County executive candidate to announce public safety measures she would take if elected. Hutchison wants to use about $100,000 that’s currently spent on personal security for the county executive to hire a youth violence liaison to coordinate police efforts against gangs. The former KIRO news anchor also wants to put Sheriff Rahr in charge of the King County Jail—a proposal the two said makes sense and would save taxpayer money but, in terms of appearances, looked just a tad self-serving for Rahr, whose office is faced with a proposed cut of $3.5 million in 2010.
The downtown jail and its counterpart in Kent, the Regional Justice Center, are currently operated by the county’s Department of Adult and Juvenile Detention. The sheriff had no estimate for how much it would save if her office took over the operations, but, after Snohomish County turned its jail over to its sheriff earlier this year, Rahr said, it reduced overtime pay, sick time and labor grievances.
Across the nation, she said, sheriffs run the county jail. The fact that a group of cities in South County are planning to build their own jail rather than rely on the county for jail space is “not a wise use of public money,” Hutchison said, “and it underscores the profound dysfunction of county government in its role of providing services to the region’s cities.”
So, should more jails be built? Hutchison said no—but then endorsed expanding the Kent jail.
She also called for transparency in the county’s budgeting process, a point former colleague Essex Porter seized on this later to insist that she clear up an allegation that Democrats filed today with the Public Disclosure Commission that her campaign office space constitutes an unreported donation. The office is located in a home rented by Hutchison’s campaign manager, Jordan McCarren, but neither would state whether the campaign pays rent for the space, which PubliCola says is linked to cell phone billionaire and Hutchison donor Bruce McCaw.
McCarren called the complaint a frivolous, last-minute maneuver on the part of Democratic opponent Dow Constantine because his numbers have slipped in the polls.
Traffic Safety Summit—tomorrow
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We at Real Change use our feet a lot. Some of us use our bikes. And standing on the sidewalk, newspaper vendors have occasion to witness the full spectrum of interactions between motorized and nonmotorized travelers.
So we’re excited by the prospect of tomorrow night’s event, in which traffic-safety advocates, bicyclists and pedestrians are getting together to talk about how to create a concrete disincentive to bad driving: by making people who kill bikers and pedestrians do time.
While accidents like Susanne Scaringi’s seem to come out of the blue, justice is a bit trickier. At tomorrow’s event advocates will explain how a new law could make the driver who killed Scaringi can atone for his negligence.
Seattle Housing Levy in trouble?
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The economy is supposed to on the upswing again. But for common folk, it just seems to keep heading downhill. With the state facing another deficit from lagging sales tax revenue, word has it that the state’s next two-year budget will completely zero out the $100 million Housing Trust Fund, money dedicated to the construction of low-income housing.
Now a campaigner for the Seattle Housing Levy, which is up for renewal on the Nov. 3 ballot, says it’s hanging by a thread in the polls.
The seven-year, $145 million levy would be Seattle’s fifth measure devoted to low-income housing since 1981. The money would help build or preserve 1,670 low-income rental units, provide emergency rent payments to about 4,000 households and make down-payment loans to 180 first-time home buyers—if the levy passes, which supporter Adrienne Quinn made sound anything but assured in an appeal for help she made this evening to board members of the Seattle Housing Authority.
“The voters right now are very grumpy,” Quinn told the board. “When we’ve done some polling, what we find is when people know about the housing levy, Prop. 1, they’re all supporters, but this is a low-budget campaign, and so we need the help of all of you getting the word out because this election is going to be razor thin.”
Part of the problem, she added, is that there’s some confusion among potential voters. “We keep talking about it as the housing levy,” Quinn said, “but, on the ballot, if people look for housing levy, you won’t see it. You will see Proposition 1, [but] the ballot language is so inaccessible. You look at it and you’re like, what is this all about?”
According to filings with the Seattle Ethics and Elections Commission, the Yes For Homes campaign had raised $241,000 as of Oct. 6—more, as it happens, than mayoral candidate Mike McGinn. But he’s getting a lot of press, while reporters see no controversy in the housing levy and have declined to write about it, Quinn said.
A few radio or newspaper ads wouldn’t hurt—something, oddly, that the SEEC filings show the campaign has spent zero money on. The good news, however, is that a group that originally said Mayor Nickels was asking for too much in proposing a $145 million levy—the Downtown Seattle Association—has now endorsed the levy renewal, Quinn said, which would raise the average homeowner’s property tax about $30 a year.
Victims of Affordable Rentals NW get new Section 8 rental vouchers
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Chalk up another victory for Real Change: In the wake of two articles on Affordable Rentals Northwest, the Seattle Housing Authority has re-issued rental vouchers to three people who say they got taken by the Seattle company.
Affordable Rentals trolls for low-income renters on Craig’s List with ads pitching low-cost apartments and “bad credit OK.” All the company sells—for $250—are lists of vacancies that Real Change vendor Rollins Odom and Anne and Jerry O’Connell, a couple who live in a motel, say were bunk.
Odom and the couple had been issued federal Section 8 housing vouchers that were about to expire. The vouchers can pay two-thirds of the rent, but only up to a certain amount. After months of searching, they turned to Affordable Rentals for help—only to lose $250 and have their vouchers expire anyway.
The three met with Northwest Justice Project attorney Eric Dunn, who wrote a letter to the housing authority pointing out the Real Change articles and asking the agency to issue new vouchers. In a return letter on Sept. 28, the agency granted the request—“further proof,” Dunn quips in an e-mail “that reporter beats lawyer.” Odom and the O’Connells now have until January to find apartments.
Celebrate 15 years of Real Change with Rick Steves on Oct 20
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Please join us for a fundraising event that will NOT put you to sleep.
15 Forward: Real Change Fifteenth Anniversary Breakfast
Celebrating our past. Building our Future.
Featuring Rick Steves, travel journalist and social activist
and Laura “Piece” Kelly, spoken word poet and educator
Tuesday, October 20th, 7:30-9am
Seattle Center, Fisher Pavilion, 305 Harrison St.
$60 per seat, $600 per table
Tickets available at brownpapertickets.com
or contact Kathy, development@realchangenews.org, (206)441-3247 x201
Qualified endorsements
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There’s nothing like an opinion to provoke someone else’s opinion.
And so it went earlier today, when the Seattle Times endorsed Pete Holmes for City Attorney. Usually, endorsements — or, rather, reader comments about endorsements — are no big deal. But this is no ordinary City Attorney’s race.
As the election draws nigh, this low-level race is drawing some high-octane attention, as incumbent Tom Carr — who’s served two four-year terms — faces some competition from Holmes. In the last election cycle, Carr went unchallenged. So why the interest? Perhaps it’s the sometimes visible flare of animosity between Holmes and Carr.
This may be due, in part, because they have a history: During Carr’s eight-year tenure, Holmes served on the Office of Professional Accountability review panel, a civilian oversight board that investigates police misconduct. Holmes, who served as OPA president, says that with little direction from the higher-ups, the board had to figure it all out as it went along; Carr counters that Holmes was basically incompetent in the role. And then they tangled over the scope of a confidentiality agreement.
It must be said that the Times’ Oct. 9 endorsement comes with qualifications — “Holmes does bring the risks of the unknown.” — but it’s still an endorsement.
Which didn’t make some readers happy. Case in point: Cleo62, who had this to say, on the Times’ website comment board:
“I have been shifting towards getting my endorsements from the RealChange homeless newspaper. They are biased, as one would expect, but thorough, intelligent, thought provoking.”
Thanks — we think — for the qualified endorsement. But as a non-profit and 501(c)3, Real Change can’t endorse candidates, only issues. That means Cleo62 will have to draw her own opinions.
But never fear: We do have an Election Guide coming out in our Oct. 21 issue. And, yes, we’ll talk about the Carr-Holmes match up, the race that, so far, keeps on giving…
Tonight: David Owen, “Green Metropolis”
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Owen talks up the sustainable virtues of city life tonight at Town Hall.
Science: David Owen: The City as a Green Pioneer
Thu, Oct 8, 2009, 7:30pm
Downstairs at Town Hall; enter on Seneca Street
Here’s our interview with him from last week, in which he throws brickbats at some of the main fetishes of the new eco-friendly consumer ethic. I wish I’d asked him about the downside of recycling.
Nickelodeons moving again, need clothes
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Keystone Congregational Church has agreed to let the homeless campers of Nickelsville, which was evicted Sept. 30 from a Port of Seattle park, stay in the church’s sanctuary for up to a month.
The group, which now numbers about 15, with another 30 or so scattered among private homes, outdoor sites and motels, plans to move midday Wednesday from St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church, the north Seattle church to which Nickelodeons fled after the port’s eviction.
Some of the Nickelodeons staying in motels on Aurora Avenue North may be planning a separate action or stand of their own—stay tuned. In the meantime, most the encampment’s residents left the port’s Terminal 107 Park with only the belongings they could carry and say they are in desperate need of the following, according to an e-mail dispatch sent out today by Nickelsville:
Winter coats, blankets, sleeping bags. Men’s pants, sizes 34 to 36 shirts, women’s size 7–18, large to ex large sweatshirts, and also hygiene such as toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, shampoo, towels, and deodorant.
Ready to eat food for about 30, tents and most of all money to pay for past and future porta potties and dumpsters are also needed.
The Nickelodeons are asking that only these items be brought after Wednesday to Keystone Church (at 5019 Keystone Pl. N. in Wallingford) as they have no storage at the church. If you’re not sure, call Nickelsville at 206-450-5268 to find out.
13th arrest at Nickelsville
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I’m still waiting for the Port of Seattle’s side of the story, but a latecomer who had planned to protest Nickelsville’s eviction from Terminal 107 Park last Wednesday was also arrested for trespassing—making her the 13th arrest of the day.
Holly Eckert, a Real Change volunteer, says she went down to the park last Wednesday after getting an e-mail alert that the port, which owns the property, planned to evict the homeless encampment on Sept. 30. Her husband drove her to the site around 3:30 that afternoon and waited in the car as she walked up to the park to see what was going on. She could see tents, she says, but Port of Seattle officers stopped her and told her she had to leave.
Eckert saw people at the tents, but didn’t know that the port police had already evicted the homeless campers and arrested 12 people who wouldn’t go. The people at the tents were taking them down, but, not understanding this, Eckert tried to walk past the police, who then told her the park was closed for maintenance.
Eckert told the officers it wasn’t “maintenance” but a sweep of the homeless and they shouldn’t hide behind euphemisms. In the ensuing exchange, Eckert says she got loud, telling the police that their actions were immoral, but she had already turned to go, she says, when a port officer grabbed her arm. She flung her arm away and down she went—three officers tackled and arrested her.
While they were on top of her, she says, they gave a variety of reasons for the arrest, finally settling on criminal trespass. She says she was handcuffed and put in a police car, but that her husband talked the police into letting her go. But only after she signed a statement saying she would not return to the park for a year.
Port arrests 12, evicts Nickelsville
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Greg Lewis was being led away by two Port of Seattle police officers when a reporter standing behind the yellow crime scene tape yelled at him, “Why are you getting arrested today?” Lewis’s answer was so obvious that it stung: “Because this is something I believe in.”
For a year now, he and other residents of Nickelsville have been fighting for a place to live. But after allowing the tent city to stay at Terminal 107 Park for two months, the port marched in a phalanx of 49 officers Wednesday to arrest Lewis and 11 other people before clearing the encampment. One of them was 82-year-old activist Dorli Rainey, who is all smiles in these photos taken by Charles Sweeney:
That’s more than four officers for every person arrested. But compared with the arrests last October by Seattle police at Nickelsville’s original site, the eviction was almost cordial. Port spokesperson Kurt Beckett even noted that civil disobedience is “part of our democracy.”
So is talking. But when Beckett stepped into the camp around 1 p.m. to make a final call for the Nickelodeons to leave, it was clear the time for talk was over. That didn’t stop two of them—Bruce Beavers and Raymond Proffitt—from carefully questioning Beckett about the port’s claim that the law prevents it from providing “housing services.” The exchange, a few excerpts of which are below, made Beckett look like a sweating flack.
Beavers: Is it true that the legislator, the speaker of the House, actually said that anything that you needed to allow Nickelsville to be here for three, for many months, they would give you the authority ... why didn’t you all just take that initiative?
Beckett: Well, the port takes seriously its responsibility to adopt policies and follow those policies that ultimately reflect its statutory, its legal authority under the law and based on previous auditor- and attorney general-informed opinions as part of those auditor reviews, the port doesn’t have the authority to provide services for housing ...
It’s not clear to anyone where the legal opinions that Beckett is citing come from: The offices of the state auditor and attorney general both tell Real Change they’ve never given the port an opinion on the matter.
By now, of course, that’s old news. While the 12 arrestees were being processed and released at Terminal 106 – with no charges to be filed, they were told – the remaining Nickelodeons made an emergency move to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church (111 N.E. 80th), where they say they are now in desperate need of food, blankets and tents. And a new home. The church has only given them a week, until mid-day Oct. 7.
Exporting prisoners to vampire country
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In search of cheap jailkeeps, local cities send prisoners to do time on the other side of the mountains — not just to Yakima from Seattle, but from Bainbridge Island across the Olympics.
Like a lot of Northwest towns stationed to harvest fish and firs, Forks is an outpost in search of an economy. And the demand for Bella and Edward can’t last forever.
Real Change reader gives Lazarus $85,000; shelter to stay open 7 days
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Life is filled with so much rush and tumble and, at Real Change, tragedy. But something happened Friday that even an atheist has to call a miracle.
I got a call late Friday afternoon from Flo Beaumon of Catholic Community Services. CCS runs the Lazarus Day Center, a day shelter for homeless folks 50 and over. In this week’s issue of Real Change, I wrote that the center planned to close its doors Mondays and Tuesdays starting Sept. 28 because of an $85,000 deficit—money it had expected but not gotten from the county and city.
Beaumon was breathless. And what she had to say gave me goosebumps. She later sent out an e-mail about it, so I’ll let her tell it the way she told me:
“A woman walking downtown bought the paper from a vendor on Thursday, read the article, and called her attorney to make arrangements to write a check then and there to cover the gap, to keep the program open. I kid you not. CCS received the check on Friday, with the donor’s request to remain anonymous. Today, the Laz stayed open!”
And will continue to stay open seven days a week for the rest of its fiscal year, through June 30, 2010. Bill Hallerman, director of Catholic Community Services, told me later that the donor made a personal visit to the basement that houses Lazarus in Pioneer Square. As she was walking back up the stairs, Hallerman says, she saw notices telling people the Laz would be closed two days a week, reached up and said, “Let’s take those down now.”
“Thank you for the article,” Hallerman said. “It was amazing.”
Thank you, whoever you are, for reading Real Change.
Nickelsville plans standoff with Port of Seattle—after sleep-out at mayor’s
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Tonight, as I write, homeless people organized by shelter and tent-city operator SHARE—the Seattle Housing and Resource Effort—are making their way to Mayor Greg Nickels’ house in West Seattle for an uninvited overnight on his sidewalk.
They’re unhappy because SHARE has run short of money to buy the bus tickets that the poorest of them depend on to get to and from their often-remote tent cities. Last year, SHARE asked the city for an extra $50,000 to fill the bus-pass gap it saw coming in its budget and the City Council wrote it down as an allocation. But, in a still-not-quite-explained turn of events, the allocation dematerialized somewhere between the doors of budget chair Jean Godden and the mayor’s office—likely, some assume, because SHARE and its fellow travelers at the tent city called Nickelsville annoy the hell out of his honor.
The sleep-over at the mayor’s house is to call attention to the fact that SHARE has now run out of bus tickets. It’s also a well-planned media lead-in, if you will, to the standoff that residents of Nickelsville are planning Wednesday when Port of Seattle police are expected to come and evict them from Terminal 107 Park.
The media blitz started Saturday with a birthday party at which the Nickelodeons celebrated the year that has passed since Sept. 22, 2008, when they first pitched a small sea of tiny pink tents in a state-owned field not far from their current site. Like all the sites the campers have moved to since, the port has told Nickelsville it has to go, giving it a final, incontrovertible deadline of Wednesday.
What happens then is anyone’s guess. At Saturday’s birthday party, the Nickelodeons said that they have no new site to move to this time and plan to stand their ground, which could mean another slew of civil-disobedience arrests like the ones that took place at the original site last October.
They are asking supporters to gather at the park anytime after 1 p.m. on Wednesday to stand with them—or help them move, as the case may be. To drive to Terminal 107 Park, take the West Seattle Bridge west to the Delridge exit and stay to the right for Spokane Street. Turn right onto Spokane Street and head to the Terminal 107 Park sign on the left at 4700 West Marginal Way S.W.
Bikes for all?
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David Byrne is in town tonight to talk about bicycling in cities and his book on same, and I wish I could go. If you do too, well, tough luck, for the great big room at Town Hall is completely sold out.
I’m betting that Byrne or the local bike-loving boosters on stage with him will make at least one mention of a public-private urban bike sharing network like other big cities have tried. Byrne used one in Montreal awhile ago.
Such systems were talked up by Mayor Greg Nickels about a week before he lost his crown; he and councilmember Timothy Burgess rode them in Montreal as well.
I used a similar system in Oslo this spring, and based on my experience, Seattle’s not a very good candidate for a bike-sharing network.
First, we’re not dense enough: these systems depend on areas with a lot of people. And with enough people, congestion tames the motor vehicles. When cars (and buses) go so slow that even bikers whiz past, then a stand full of bikes at the ready starts to make sense. A bike-sharing program with stations in Ballard (where local entrepreneurs are pushing the concept) and downtown would cover far too much ground. Plus, there’s the Ballard Bridge death trap.
Not to be all-militant and anti-car, but: Bicycling only becomes viable for a large number of people when drivers are made to behave themselves. Byrne, a Manhattanite, knows this, and I hope it’s a point heard repeatedly tonight at Town Hall. If you don’t feel safe riding, you’re not going to. The only place I’d ride around here without a helmet, a light and a bell are the two blocks of Pike Place, where cars drive about as fast as people walk.
County executive calls for cuts to health and human services
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Don’t let anyone fool you: What interim King County Executive Kurt Triplett called the “Great Recession” today during his budget speech to the county council is alive and well in local jurisdictions like Seattle’s where tax revenues are in the toilet.
Last week, however, despite a $72 million projected deficit in 2010, the budget that Mayor Greg Nickels proposed to the Seattle City Council wasn’t too bad to health and human services—at least in terms of direct services, which human services direct Alan Painter says were largely spared. “Considering the economic climate and the overall reductions that the city had to take, the Human Services Department came out pretty well,” he says.
As with his past budgets, however, the mayor wants to zero out $167,000 in technical assistance to nonprofits and at least $259,000 in funding for human services, public health and youth advocacy—dollars that fund groups such as the Seattle Human Services Coalition.
The numbers are small compared with the $41 million in cuts the mayor has proposed overall, including 116 city layoffs. A chunk of the remaining hole will be filled by using $25.4 million of the city’s $30 million rainy day fund and raising City Light rates 8.8 percent.
Even though the county has less of a hole to fill in 2010 ($56.4 million), the budget proposed today by Kurt Triplett follows $93 million in county cuts last year. As a result, health and human services took significant hits—$3.5 million and $3.7 million, respectively. That’s going to cause the closure of three public health clinics—two in south county and one in Bothell. But Triplett said the Northshore Clinic, which provides care largely to women and children, is expected to reopen as part of a new public-private partnership.
I’ll have more details later on what the $3.7 million in human service cuts will mean, but the reduction could have been a lot worse if Triplett hadn’t done some fancy footwork.
He actually cut $11.4 million, the county’s entire general-fund budget for human services. But, thanks to a bill sponsored in this year’s Legislature by Rep. Ross Hunter, he was able to use as-yet unspent MIDD money—revenue anticipated from a county sales tax earmarked for mental illness and drug dependency programs—to make up for most of the cut. Another $7.7 million in MIDD revenue will shore up the services people receive through drug court and mental health court.
Overall, the plan calls for laying off 141 county employees, with Triplett warning that the budget season for 2011—when the county projects a $54 million deficit—will be much worse.
Police riot on Pitt campus, use tear gas inside dorms
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I’m in Pittsburgh for the G20 summit. It’s late and I’ll write a more complete summary of protest and direct action tomorrow, but I wanted to note something totally ignored by corporate media. Yesterday, the police marched onto the University of Pittsburgh campus and stood off with students. They deployed tear gas on campus, pushing students into the school’s dorms. Police pursued the students and deployed more tear gas--this time inside the dorms. Police also unveiled a new anti-protest weapon, a sort of sonic cannon that mounts onto a huge truck. From outside its effective radius, it sounds like a car alarm. Fortunately, I never experienced the full effect of the weapon as I hear it causes severe pain.
Earlier today, angry students distributed thousands of fliers for a hastily called anti-police brutality rally and march. Thousands of students poured into a central plaza where they were met by at least a thousand National Guard and paramilitary Police from across the region. The cops cleared the plaza by force, and now folks listening to police scanners say that police are planning raids of the dorms to apprehend protesters. It’s late and I need to shower before catching up on several nights of missed sleep so I’ll have to recap the rest of the past two days in the morning.
ACLU lawsuit against Tacoma police picks up more protesters
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You can’t pen in freedom of speech. That’s one argument three war protesters have made in a federal lawsuit filed earlier this year against the Tacoma Police Department, which they say acted illegally in March 2007 during 12 days of demonstrations at the Port of Tacoma aimed at stopping military vehicles from being shipped to Iraq.
On Sept. 21, three more protesters joined the lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington and attorney Larry Hildes, a champion of anti-war protesters from Bellingham to Olympia. The lawsuit charges that Tacoma police infringed on free speech by strong-arming demonstrators, insisting they use fenced-off “protest zones,” prohibiting backpacks even behind the fences, and engaging in unlawful surveillance—including infiltrating activist planning meetings and monitoring e-mail activity.
“We strongly believe these steps were taken to make it as difficult as possible for plaintiffs to exercise their First Amendment rights, and to consign them to a location where they would be virtually invisible and inaudible to those their message was designed to reach,” Larry Hildes said in a statement released this week by the ACLU. “We object to the notion that protest can only take place in areas designated by the government for exactly these reasons.”
The ACLU’s news release lists the three original and new plaintiffs as:
Thomas McCarthy, son of a career military officer and born at the base at Ft. Lewis, who has been involved in United for Peace in Pierce County and other local anti-war groups.
Phan Nguyen, who has been an active member of several peace groups in the Puget Sound area and has been involved with the Port Militarization Resistance movement since its inception and testified at Port of Olympia Commission meetings urging that the port not be used for military shipments.
Elizabeth Rivera Goldstein, who has been a long-time activist in peace groups, has founded the Teen Peace Project, and has received a “Woman of Peace” award from an Italian peace organization.Patrick Edelbacher, who became involved in peace activism in high school and initiated a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society at the University of Puget Sound.
Leah Coakley, who has participated in peace activities and has been involved in Tacoma Food Not Bombs.
Charles Bevis, who was involved in peace actions while living in the Puget Sound area and currently resides in Minnesota.
Shhhh*&#!: New borrowing rules for Seattle Public Library
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This weekend, Sept. 26 – 27, bibliophiles will swarm upon Magnuson State Park for the 2009 Friends of The Seattle Public Library Fall Book Sale, to paw over and through more than 250,000 books, CDs and DVDs. If you’ve never been there, the experience can be a little overwhelming.
And so, apparently, is the library’s $1 million budget shortfall. In looking for ways to bridge that budgetary gap, the library came up with two solutions: First, it closed down the whole library system from Aug. 30 – Sept. 6 (that meant no internet, no public restroom and no access to other services for those who depend on the system); the second, which will last a lot longer, begins in little less than three weeks: changes to borrowing limits and fines/fees.
Beginning Thurs. Oct. 15, cardholders will only be able to borrow 50 items at a time, half the current limit; only 25 items can be placed on hold (whether active or inactive holds), down from the present limit of 100 items; and interlibrary loans, currently free, will now accrue a $5 charge for each item.
If you’ve got little ones under 12 who are late returning checked-out items, or if you or someone you know uses ESL or literacy materials and regularly keep them past the 21-day return date, a change is coming for you as well: Those items, which in the past had accrued no overdue fees, will now incur a late charge of $.15 a day. And if you’re a non-resident who wants access to the library’s more than 2 million items, expect to pay $85 a year for the pleasure. (Visitors can pay $25 for a three-month card.)
That institutions and governments are looking at ways to cut back is not news. But the imminent changes in borrowing and fines to a system that has seen a vast increase in users could have a big impact. And finding out about it isn’t so easy.
Sure, the library lists it on its website’s home page, but it’s hard to locate. Look in the “QUICK LINKS” section, toward the right-side of the page. Then you can download a .pdf document that spells it all out. Then you can read it and weep.
And if you ever plan to get to James Joyce’s “Ulysses,” now’s the time…
ACORN sues ‘pimp and prostitute’
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Ah, the ACORN scandal. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. As promised, ACORN—the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—has filed a lawsuit in Baltimore against the young filmmaker and female companion who posed as a pimp and his prostitute to “snare” ACORN staff members in a right-wing media sting aimed at discrediting the organization.
But the 40-year-old anti-poverty organization argues in its suit that it’s not legal in Maryland to record people without their permission.
If you haven’t seen the videos, I won’t deny they’re appalling: A tax preparer and fellow staff member in ACORN’s Baltimore office clearly understand the premise presented to them—that filmmaker James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles want to run a brothel of underage immigrants smuggled into the country for prostitution—and eagerly offer ideas on how to camouflage the operation and what deductions to take.
The only thing the hidden-camera operation really proves, however, is that ACORN’s low-paid employees showed bad judgment. But, then, so did the multi-millionaires at AIG. And no one voted to take away their federal funding—quite the opposite.
O’Keefe, by the way, pulled a similar stunt with Planned Parenthood. Giles is the daughter of a evangelical pastor in Florida who’s flagrantly opposed to President Obama.
In its lawsuit, ACORN is seeking an injunction to stop continued distribution and broadcasting of the tapes. It’s also seeking monetary damages. Its new release also notes that the two Baltimore employees—Shera Williams and Tonja Thompson—have been fired and that “No tax returns were actually prepared.”
Phew. I was worried. But just to be on the safe side, ACORN says in another press release—they’ve been busy, busy, busy fighting this thing—that it has suspended its free tax preparation services pending the outcome of an independent inquiry to be conducted by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger.
Front Porch Theatre with Real Change
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Join us for a FREE Front Porch Theatre reading of excerpts from Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Be “cast” as Lincoln and other characters, and then take part in a facilitated discussion. What are the critical issues today that compel us to confront what seems impossible? Reading is not required, but all are invited to be part of the conversation.
The event is a partnership with Intiman Theatre and the Low Income Housing Institute on Wednesday, September 30 at 7pm, at 2407 1st Ave. We look forward to bringing our vendors, readers, and the larger community together to dialogue about how, together, we can make change.
Harborview: the Ma Bell of hospitals
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I was wrapping up an edit of Robin Lindley’s excellent interview with Dr. Audrey Young last week when I got another perspective on her former hospital, Harborview.
In the interview and in her new book, Young celebrates some of the heroes of the Harborview ER: doctors whose schedules don’t have the dramatic verve of the eponymous [10-cent word alert!] show or of Grey’s Anatomy, but who meet people’s urgent needs every day. If you’ve ever worked the desk at Real Change, you know what this entails: some courtesy. Some listening. Some boundary setting.
Harborview is often described as the region’s trauma center; think airlifts from remote mountain climbing accidents or hair-raising I-5 pileups.
But it’s also the go-to place for Seattle’s poor, the Ma Bell of charity care. And kind of like with Ma Bell, sometimes the service sucks.
I had walked up to the front desk and one of the vendors, Merlyn, asked me to sign a card for his girlfriend Darcie, who was hit by a car the night before and broke her leg. Merlyn was there when the medics came to take her to an ER.
Where’d she wind up? I asked. Harborview, he said, eyes rolling.
“I told them to go to Virginia Mason.” She was let out the same night. “You know why they took her there?” asked another vendor. “Because she’s homeless,” he snorted.
Criminal Justice and Public Safety candidates forum
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How will the next cycle of city officials influence the likelihood of a new municipal jail? Will diversion programs prosper, or will they - along with other human services - be cut all together? Will an anti-panhandling proposal accrue enough political support to be passed into law?
All these things and more will be discussed tomorrow evening at a Criminal Justice and Public Safety candidates forum. All candidates in the race, with the exception of one, will be present to speak on these issues and answer tough questions.
Join the Real Change Organizing Project and put the candidates’ feet to the fire:
Criminal Justice and Public Safety candidates forum
September 22nd, 5:30 p.m.
Rainier Valley Cultural Center at 3515 S Alaska St.
Jail Capacity Study: eliminating jail time for low-level drug offenders won’t stop need for jail
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Yesterday, the report commissioned by the City Council was released with the wrong-headed conclusion that we need a new jail. Using old, inaccurate numbers from King County to project future jail capacity needs, the report assumes a massive jump in jail population for an unknown reason beginning in 2014. When asked about using those numbers, they responded that these numbers seemed high to them but that without any other, more accurate numbers to go by, they have to use the inflated numbers. Isn’t that their job, to find out the correct numbers?
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The red line tracks a stable jail population from 2007 projected to 2014. At that point, all we have is the jail-mongers’ insistence that the jail population will grow dramatically.
In addition to using artificially high estimations of future jail populations, the authors used a narrow definition of “low level drug offenders” to suggest that the jail was needed. They failed, however, to extend their research beyond their initial narrow scope. The report offers no insight into other sectors of the jail population that can be targeted for alternatives to incarceration, nor does it address the decades of “tough on crime” sentencing enhancements that have lead to “most” of the increase in the King County jail population according to the County.
One thing that strikes me about these kinds of reports is that the most important information often falls to the footnotes, such as this bit: “In 2008, individuals arrested by the Seattle Police Department for a drug charge as the most serious offense at time of booking used 255 County jail beds each day on average.” In other words, if Seattle adopted the decriminalization approach that Mexico adopted, Seattle would be most of the way to not needing any additional jail beds in 2022. If sentencing enhancements were rolled back on some of the 80% of offenders in jail for nonviolent offenses, to reduce the need for an additional 50 jail beds, there would be no need for a new jail even by the inflated numbers used by the Jail Capacity Study.
But the underlying historical trends haven’t changed: the incarceration system in the US has grown 500% in 30 years, the US has 5% of the world’s population and 25% of the world’s prisoners, and the US imprisons more people that Josef Stalin did at the height of his terrible regime. We have a choice at this point: do we change into a society that works to build lives and to strengthen communities, or do we continue this cruel love affair with the American gulag?
ACORN to sue Fox News over videos
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This story is just bizarre: In an attempt to discredit ACORN—a grassroots organization that, among many other things, helps homeowners who are in trouble get banks to modify their mortgages—a young filmmaker and female companion took a hidden camera into a number of ACORN offices around the country posing as a pimp and a prostitute asking for help with their “business.”
Three of the resulting videos have aired on Fox News. In ACORN’s Baltimore office, the two appear to get advice from a staff member how to set up their taxes, including how to take deductions for 13 underage immigrant girls they plan to pimp. In video taken in Washington, D.C., an ACORN staff members apparently discusses a low-cost housing loan with them.
I am loathe to spread right-wing propaganda against a group that I know in Washington state has shown immense tenacity and gotten results in taking on financial institutions that prey upon the poor and people of color. But, in a statement released today, Bertha Lewis, chief organizer for ACORN—the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now—says the workers in the videos have been fired, which indicates wrongdoing
“But it is clear,” Lewis adds, “that the videos are doctored, edited and in no way the result of the fabricated story being portrayed by conservative ‘filmmaker’ [James] O’Keefe and his partner in crime. And, in fact, a crime it was—our lawyers believe a felony—and we will be taking legal action against Fox and their co-conspirators.”
In the meantime, Fox News reports that Republicans in Congress are screaming for heads—they’re calling for an investigation and audit of ACORN, which receives federal funding to do mortgage mitigation and other work in the community.
“The relentless attacks on ACORN’s members, its staff and the policies and positions we promote are unprecedented,” Lewis says. “It is not coincidence that the most recent attacks have been launched just when health care reform’—another top issue of ACORN’s—“is gaining traction.”
A 9/11 lesson
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Just in time for Patriot Day, I learned about the original difference between the Sunni and the Shia branches of Islam.
For this I have to thank Lesley Hazleton, who has just written an excellent narrative account of the seventh-century struggle for the legacy of Islam — a struggle that has never been quite resolved.
I had a great talk with Ms. Hazleton yesterday morning, the proceeds of which will be in next week’s issue.
The two branches of Islam arose in the years following the death of the prophet Muhammad, who failed to name a successor. Into the power vacuum flew Aisha, one of Muhammad’s nine widows, and Ali, his son-in-law. Their collision is still reverberating, especially in some of the holiest sites in Shiism — in Najaf, for example, where Ali is buried, or in Karbala, where Hussein consummated his Christ-like ascendence into martyrdom. That’s him, above and to the left, in a scene depicting the killing of his three-year-old son during his last hours.
Hazleton’s is a bloody story; it involves arrows and spears and swords slick with poison. It’s an instructive story; in the story of Aisha, Muslims have had cause to contemplate the role of women in politics, and in Ali, the merit of restraint. Best of all, it’s a story seldom heard in Western ears — something we should have known about before invading the cradle of Shia Islam in 2003. And it’s not too late for us to reconsider. In our interview, I asked Hazleton what we ought to do in Iraq and Afghanistan. “Out, out, out,” she replied.
Hazleton is reading at Town Hall next Thursday, and I expect the subjects will be as contemporary and riveting as our talk yesterday. Her book deserves the widest American audience. If trenchant tracts don’t get the public to ask once, twice, three times about the costs and consequences of our involvement in the Middle East, perhaps a true story, well told, will.
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