I was thinking last night about how unwise it can be to underestimate the poor and how much I've learned from our homeless friends at Nickelsville.
There was a time, about three and a half years ago, when SHARE founder and Nickelsville organizer Scott Morrow called to invite me for a walk. I knew what he was going to say. I'd been waiting for this.
Mayor Greg Nickels was on a mission to eradicate homeless campers from Seattle, and our relentless pleas for moderation had been mostly met with arrogant indifference. Homeless folks were ready to take things up a notch.
Winter was coming. We'd gotten lucky and scored around a hundred cheap pink tents. Plans had been made and pushed back andmade again. It was time.
As we slowly circled the block in Belltown, I repeated back what I'd heard him say. "So, what you need is for us to get a bunch of people out, on less than ten hours notice, to go somewhere that you can't say, and this needs to happen at like, 2 a.m. on a Monday morning, and when we get there, there's a pretty good chance that we're all going to get arrested? Do I have that right?"
He looked at me and laughed. "Yep. That's it."
"Well, OK. Then that's what we'll do."
Come Monday morning in West Seattle, a dew-misted field of pink on green shone in the morning light like the promise of hope. Audacity and determination had rendezvoused with serendipity and Nickelsville was born.
It took a few days for the City of Seattle officials to send in the cops, but there was land next door that they didn't control. Nickelsville moved, and then they moved again and again and again and again. What followed was a game of guerilla warfare that ended with Mayor Nickels losing his re-election bid in the primary. Nickelsville is still standing.
Mayor Nickels could refuse to meet with homeless people, bully their allies, and try to shut down homeless encampments. That was his choice. Ours was to up his cost. Those were Greg Nickels' homeless sweeps, and Nickelsville was about two things: homeless people's safety and survival, and taking down Greg Nickels.
He seemed determined to assist us in this however he could.
I don't know if Mayor Nickels learned anything from all this, but I know I did. When Scott first told me his plan I thought, "This is insane," but then I suspended disbelief and went where he asked. I let go of what I thought I knew and trusted in what was right. It was a good call, and I have done the same many times more with no regrets.
Too much safety, I think, can corrupt. The risks always seem riskier to the comfortable and secure. We become too preoccupied with what can go wrong and forget what's possible. I've learned never to underestimate those who have nothing to lose.
They can show the rest of us how things are done.