…One Less Scene

The Real Change Organizing Project arranged a camp out last night on the Seattle City Hall property, with a Survival Gear Swap planned for 7:00 this morning. The action was to bring awareness to the city’s sweeps of homeless encampments, which are unbelievably heartless in these sub-freezing temperatures. Ironically, no one at Real Change was expecting it to get quite this cold, and they actually sent out an email that stated, “if you have a warm place to sleep tonight, you should do it. This is a safety issue.” That was all it took for me to chicken out and stay home, but the Real Change crew, as well as Seattle’s heartier homeless, were all stretching and yawning when I showed up for the gear swap this morning. The Seattle chapter of Food Not Bombs was also there with hot drinks and food, defying a Seattle city parks order that they be arrested for distributing free food. 

What a weird city.

Today on KUOW I heard a City of Seattle official talking about extra emergency shelters that were being opened during the cold and that there were 175 available new beds (I guess that’s really good?), and that there were many open beds available.  I hope it’s true.