On the Eve of 2010, Real Change is within striking distance of reaching our ambitious Winter Fund Drive goal of $160,000 in what has been a tough year for nearly everyone. For this, we are enormously grateful.
Since Nov. 1, our friends have come through with $136,186 in grassroots support to help us close the untenable gap between what we have and what we need. For a community newspaper that began 15 years ago out of nothing but a determination to make a difference, this is a truly amazing thing.
Your holiday season gifts, and the many inspiring notes that accompanied them, remind us that Real Change -- and the community it inspires -- is about being real, standing up and staying true. Together, we are strong.
And we know we will, somehow, reach our goal before next Wednesday. Our greatest strength is the broad and deep community support that provides more than half of our budget each year. Over the years, we've learned that if we do the work, the support will come, even when times are hard.
This is a time of extraordinary challenge. For 15 years, Real Change has pushed as far as we can with the resources we have. We've grown enormously as a newspaper. We've pushed hard for change and we've told the truth. We've taken risks and gone out on limbs.
When you see what we see, it's hard to do otherwise.
People who are sick, even dying, who have nowhere to go.
People with mental illness who struggle heroically to cope on the street.
People who have worked their whole lives and still have nothing.
People whose lives were hard from birth, who have fallen into misery and addiction, who long for health and wholeness.
People who maintain their hopes and spirits despite overwhelming hardship.
People who are alone, who find community, dignity and purpose.
People who, like all of us, need love, respect and security.
People who deserve no less.
People who matter.
Homelessness is evil because it says that some people deserve no more that a thin mat on a floor and bugs that bite when they sleep.
Homelessness is evil because the more homeless people there are, the less they're worth. When we can't shelter them all, they sleep on the streets. When the numbers of those get too large, we take their blankets and tents and call them criminals. And when those numbers continue to grow, as they have for three decades, then what?
What then?
Homelessness is evil because when human lives are devalued -- when some of us are so "less than" as to barely even rate a mat on the floor -- we are all dehumanized in the process.
Homelessness is evil because it is a choice of a society that can do better. A product of greed and neglect. A failure of imagination and of human spirit.
Homelessness is evil because each of us, no matter how poor, sick, guilty, shamed, tired, angry, addicted, sad or broken, has at his core a bright center of being of which we are all a part.
Homelessness is evil because, as we grow inured to human misery, we forget that we are better than this.
$160,000 is a lot of money. Why do we need it? What will we do?
Over the past three years, as conditions on the street have become more desperate, we've seen the number of vendors we serve double to more than 400 each month. Our resources and staffing have not grown to match.
When the City of Seattle under Mayor Nickels secretly adopted a zero-tolerance policy on homeless camping and started slashing tents, trashing belongings and threatening arrests, we organized a community-wide response that said people aren't garbage. We camped out at City Hall. We blocked traffic with homeless people and ministers and got arrested. We supported homeless people's survival efforts at Nickelsville with all that we had.
When the city wanted to build a jail to fill with more and more of the poor and, all too often, black, we said no. We said this isn't about public safety; this is about race, class and criminalizing those whom society has abandoned.
We said that Seattle would not sleepwalk its way toward a monument to shortsighted, unimaginative thinking and institutional racism.
Mayor Nickels and his staff said we had no choice. He was wrong. People voted, down the line, for those who thought differently.
We hired an organizer to push the campaign during a time when our own resources were already near the breaking point. We did what we needed to do, and had faith that the support would come.
This is what Real Change does. We do what needs to be done.
Right now, with human service funding in jeopardy, the economy in trouble, homelessness on the rise and none of us knowing what the future holds, Real Change needs to ensure we're here for the long haul.
This, as we prepare to enter an uncertain future strong, is what we need to do.
This means tending to our core and making sure the basics are covered. It means upgrading our technology. It means expanding the physical space we've outgrown. It means having the human resources and accounting systems that a 15-year institution needs to be healthy in the decades to come.
And it means doing it now.
Over the past six months, we've taken a hard look at what we need to remain effective. We've hired the Operations Director we've badly needed for years. We've assessed. We've planned. We've taken dozens of steps toward long-term viability.
We need to end a year that's stretched us to the breaking point with at least a month's operating expenses in the bank, prepared to meet the many challenges that the coming year holds.
Real Change will never be an organization that plays it safe. But to be here for the long haul, we need to be an organization that plays it smart, doing the deeply necessary work of building community, providing opportunity and fighting for a better future.
Through all the difficulty and danger, we know that you'll be there, as you have been all along.
We're very close to meeting our critical year-end goal. With your help over the coming week, we'll arrive at higher ground. Please do what you can. Visit our website at realchangenews.org to make a secure on-line donation, or mail your tax-deductible gift to Real Change, 2129 Second Ave., Seattle, WA, 98121. Thank you.