Listen to the cabbies

I walked a half-dozen young people through St. Martin de Porres Shelter last night while doing a “homeless tour.” I always check with staff, and try to avoid the fish-bowl problem – not wanting to put homeless people on display. But educating people is important for charity and advocacy. St. Martin’s is filled with “old” men. “Old” in homeless parlance is anyone over age 50. Apparently the interest was running both ways. As my group of lovely young people were leaving, there was a smattering of applause from the shelter residents.

Homeless people and home-d people. There is no difference. We need the same things. We need to tell our story. We need attention. We need to be treated with respect. And most of all, we need love.

So many of our homeless friends are ignored, or worse. All day long.

Four weeks ago I was in a car crash. I stopped at a light, it turned green, I turned left, and from out of nowhere, a pickup truck ran the red light. The woman truck driver jumped out of the car and started yelling at me. Was I crazy? I wondered.

But a lowly cab driver saw the whole thing. He yelled out his window to me: “She ran the light, she’s crazzzzy!!!!” (The full enthusiasm of the Ethiopian cab driver was such a delight, and can’t be captured in writing.)

It took almost three weeks for the cabbie’s testimony to get from one insurance company to another. No one was paying attention. Finally, today, someone paid attention. My car was towed to the repair shop after three weeks of sitting. The right person finally heard the cabbie’s story. Thank God.

That’s how it often is. We don’t pay much attention to the foreign voice, the inarticulate, the uneducated, the marginalized. The life of the city, of commerce, politics, the news, just sweeps on by. We’re all poorer for it.

Let’s pay attention to the cabbies, the homeless guy on the corner, the leper outside the gate.

Some sort of record?

Brother Dave & I parked the car in White Center, took about 10 steps on the sidewalk, if that.

"HEYYY! Are you ministers?" a woman asked. "Would you pray for me?" Sure.

She starts yelling at her friends, loitering outside a tavern. "Come over here, you need prayer!" One guy joined us, she kept yelling. "We need all the prayer we can get, come on," but there were no more takers. So we held hands, the four of us, and asked for God's strength and grace and healing.

It had to be some sort of a record for Operation Nightwatch -- 10 seconds from parking the car to responding to someone on the street.

I'm gonna need a stopwatch from now on.

My boring life

People make a big deal over Nightwatch and I get a bunch of unwarranted credit for the “exotic,” when actually it is pretty mundane.

Take last night. I met a new catholic deacon at our shelter dispatch point. Volunteers were cooking dinner for our homeless friends. The Dick’s Burger guy arrived. I visited Tent City, bringing twenty-five bucks worth of Oreos (probably the best thing I did all day, had no idea these would be so popular). Successfully found protesters sleeping outside city council person Bruce Harrell’s home, where he was holding forth in dialog with about a dozen of the folks. It was 10:00 pm. From here I stopped at one of my favorite bars, where one patron presented me with a bag of donations: razors, candy, an editorial they liked. Another patron tried to give me cash – which I turned down. I mean, taking a $100 bill in a bar just seems bad form to me.

The Oreos were the high point, along with the bartender paying for my refreshment himself. Wouldn’t even give me change so I could leave a tip.

Back at the ranch at midnight, turns out we had a good night. Everyone was civil and only three guys had no place to go. Out of 179 homeless men and women served, not too shabby.

Yep. Boring.

Tent City in Providence shut down

Providence (n): Divine guidance or care; God, conceived as the power guiding and sustaining human destiny.

Ironic, but apparently the city fathers of Providence, Rhode Island feel as though they have no role in care for homeless people. They ordered the closure of a tent city which was erected on private land, because the tents did not meet local building codes. In the words of other well-known New Englanders: BoooOOOOo-gus. Better for homeless people to be unregulated, under a bridge?

Read more.

Promote the general welfare

OK, so now that Terminal 107 is safely back in the hands of the Port of Seattle, I think it's only fair to ask the port commissioners what they are going to do with the space, since they've spent thousands of public dollars to evict people who have no place to go.

Night before last, Operation Nightwatch turned away 25 men because every shelter in town was full. Those guys took a blanket and headed to Belltown, Pioneer Square, Beacon Hill, Ballard, Capitol Hill. It would have been nice to offer an alternative to sleeping under the freeway.

But now that the Port has safely protected the public at great public expense, perhaps they could divulge their plan for that little patch of public land.

Tell us, Port. How are YOU going to "promote the general welfare" with that property, now that you've kicked the poor people out?

Preamble

It seems like a debate that will never end. What role does government have in caring for citizens?

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

For the knuckleheads who object to government intervention, how do you think government can "promote the general Welfare" by ignoring the desperate situation which many people find themselves in today? A nation of sharply divided "haves" and "have-nots" will not lead to domestic tranquility. Homelessness, health-care, poverty are shared problems. There will only be shared solutions. Everyone must shoulder some responsibility.

Fun with the kiddos

What a day.

I took four homeless kids to the fair for the day. Two boys, two girls, ages 7 to 12. They had a blast.

Monster Truck revved up at the gate made them jump a mile.

They went on 8-9 rides each. No one got sick!

Petting a goat for the first time. Petting a cow. Petting a rabbit. Petting a chicken. I thought we might never leave the petting area. The seven year old didn't want to stop petting.

The kids got along so great with each other. I actually got misty-eyed at their enchantment with everything. First fair they had ever been to.

What a great job I have!