Homeless advocates protest at Seattle City Hall
Submitted by pirate on Mon, 06/09/2008 - 20:11.
By Given that he was in a wheelchair, Mike Smith says Seattle police officers treated him "magnificently" Monday morning when they arrested him and 14 other homeless advocates who blocked Cherry Street near City Hall.
But the cordial treatment contrasted with the city's sweeps of homeless encampments, he said after his release from custody, likening the sweeps to a death sentence.
A downward economic spiral will keep "people dropping to the bottom," said Smith, who has cerebral palsy and lives in low-income housing near Pike Place Market.
"They're lucky to have a tent and a place to put it to survive. When you take away their means to survive, you're going to kill a percentage of them -- guaranteed. So as far as I'm concerned, the sweeps policy is about killing people."
The demonstration followed the third overnight campout at City Hall held by the Real Change Organizing Project, as well as a memorial service for hundreds of homeless people who have died on the streets.
Following the service, demonstrators put a tent on Cherry Street at Fourth Avenue and stood on the street. About 20 police officers, aware of the demonstrators' plan to be arrested, lined the crosswalk and asked the crowd to disperse or risk arrest.
Among those picked up was the Rev. Rich Lang of Trinity United Methodist Church, wearing his white pastoral robe over jeans and sneakers.
"The sweeps are wrong and we want them to stop," Lang said moments before his arrest, calling for more humanitarian treatment of the homeless by the city.
He lauded churches for providing soup kitchens and sponsoring tent cities for the homeless, but urged them to take a step further and use their collective voice for political influence.
"We need to start talking to each other," Lang said, "because that's middle-class power. And that's the power the mayor's office will listen to."
Homeless advocates have criticized Mayor Greg Nickels for the rules issued by his office. The recently enacted protocol stipulates that city crews will provide at least three days notice before forcing homeless people from encampments on city property.
The city also will provide homeless people with access to social services and store their personal property for retrieval.
The protocol is "riddled with loopholes," said Danina Garcia of Real Change, the homeless advocacy organization that publishes a newspaper of the same name. For instance, the standards would not apply to new camps that emerge in sites that had been swept twice in a 60-day period, she said.
Demonstrators were arrested for pedestrian interference, a misdemeanor, and bused to the West Precinct. Police released them within an hour.
Because police had been in prior communication with protest organizers, the arrests and processing of demonstrators went "as smoothly as it could've gone," a police spokesman said.
Participants in the overnight campout at City Hall included "a bunch of the usual suspects and a bunch of people I don't see everywhere," said Anitra Freeman of Women in Black, an activist group. "It was great."
Just before the street standoff, her group read the names of 283 who it said had died while homeless in Seattle since 2000.
"We are determined to make this a community where everyone ahs safe shelter," said the Rev. Pat Simpson of Sand Point Community United Methodist Church as she led the audience of about 50 people in prayer. "That's the road we travel. And we will get there."
