You Can't Register A Complaint Here

One of the things about being a political activist, who by definition is tilting windmills at the establishment, is that you occasionally run into one of those delicious moments right out of the books 1984 or Catch-22.
Nickelsville opened Monday at 4am in Seattle, a new shantytown/homeless camp, named after our beloved mayor Greg Nickels. A hard-working group of homeless who don't have anything else had their pink fuscia tents set up (thanks go out to the Girl Scouts for those) by evening. Then the cops showed up and put up a sign giving the campers 72 hours to evacuate.
I work at an activist organization on Wednesday and my boss thought it would be a good idea that instead of writing the events calendar like I usually do, I should round up some people in the office to call the Mayor and register complaints about Nickelsville closing. Many people around the city were doing the same thing.
While I sent out an e-mail to the Mayors office and wrote a few letters, three women made calls. One couldn't get through, another had her name taken by the main reception who said the Mayor's office would call back (she's still waiting for that call) but a third women hit the jackpot.
She talked to the City Hall receptionist who was quite friendly and got transferred to one of the Mayor's aides. By the way, the Mayor is getting new aides all the time, he could solve the homeless problem just by hiring the people at Nicklelsville as aides.
Su wisely asked the aide if the Mayor was still planning to close Nickelsville. When the female aide, not as friendly as the receptionist, said he was, Su said she wanted to register a complaint. The aide replied, "you can't register a complaint here, you can only leave a message."
Several people I've told that story too have responded with various degrees of amusement. But there's no missing that it shows just how arrogant the Mayor's office has become. Sadly, not unlike other politicians, Nickels has gone more-and-more to putting policy pronouncements on his web site so he doesn't have to deal with the media directly. So much for accountability.
Hopefully, the electorate will hold Nickels accountable in the next election. And if his aide winds up living in a pink tent in Nickelsville - don't complain, just leave a message.