My Buddy

If you were born in Providence, Rhode Island in the late 1950's you only remember about four mayors in your lifetime. But the most famous (or infamous) was ``The Prince Of Providence" Buddy Cianci, mayor of the city on and off for about 30 years, six terms, thrown out of office twice, put in jail once, and barely avoiding prison stripes on a couple of other occasions.

But there was always the perception that Buddy was competant (sort of a Bill Clinton without Monica) and he oversaw the city's great renaissance of the 1990's. I never saw the charisma that people claimed Buddy had (there was a lot of ego and self-congratulation in what he did) but he was certainly loved by Providence's strong Italian-American community.

Word out of Hollywood is that an actor has finally been selected to play Buddy in ``The Prince Of Providence,'' Mike Stanton's book which is being turned into a screenplay by David Mamet. Oliver Platt, who played George Steinbrenner in the ESPN mini-series last year, has been tabbed (as they say in the biz) to play his second blustering character in a row. Russell Crowe and Paul Giamatti had also been prominently mentioned for the part.

A Rhode Island message board had asked people who they'd like to see play Buddy and other actors mentioned included Robert DeNiro, Kevin Spacey, Danny DeVito, Al Pacino (who doesn't resemble Buddy but would be good in the scenes where Cianci went a little crazy), Nathan Lane, Robin Williams, Paul ``Pee Wee Herman" Reubens, Dustin Hoffman and Paul Sorvino, a longtime character actor who probably resembles Buddy the most. As one posting noted only Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep didn't receive votes.

I'll try and post more Buddy movie news as it develops.

An effective way of dealing with hecklers

Back in the mid-1980's I saw George Carlin for the first and only time at a place called the Providence Performing Arts Center. About mid-way thru the act when everyone else was laughing a fan yelled out in that falsetto voice people seemed to heckle with back then, ``hey George.'' Carlin immediately wheeled in the direction of the heckler and exclaimed (I won't edit the words in honor of George), ``shut the FUCK up. If people want to start busting my fuckin' balls I'm walking off this fuckin' stage right now.'' In that brief diatribe, George might have dropped 3 or 4 more F bombs, but you get the point. Needless to say, no one gave Carlin anymore shit the rest of the show. All in all, an effective way of dealing with hecklers.

Pitching A Tent In Downtown Seattle

I was with over 100 people in downtown Seattle on Monday morning and I don’t know if anyone had the same feeling that I did. When the Women In Black finished their service in front of City Hall, for those who’ve died homeless on the streets, everyone began scurrying around the corner where 15 people were about to get arrested protesting the city’s sweeps of homeless encampments.As I turned the corner I was overwhelmed by the site of Mike Smith, one of the leading members of the Real Change Organizing Project (RCOP) sitting in his wheelchair next to a tent that read “Stop The Sweeps.” It was actually one of the coolest moments in my life. This wasn’t something I was watching on TV but something that I was personally involved in. Almost since I joined RCOP on March 26 (and thanks for the invite Rachael), we’ve been working towards this moment, Our Camp4Unity. The service and the arrests were preceded by our third campout on City Hall the previous night. About 125 people walked through City Hall on Sunday night and many camped overnight – homeless, activists, students, Catholics and Buddhists. Why all the fuss?

Well, the city’s approach to homeless encampments used to be the same as the police approach to streakers in the Fremont parade. Nothing was really done unless someone complained. But then last summer the city started to take a pro-active approach; the city invaded the camps, chasing people out and destroying their property. The city kind of wants it both ways, they don’t want people camping out but there are no shelters and low-income housing is dwindling.

The arrests last Monday were very ritualistic. 20 cops stared down 15 advocates. Then there were two announcements in five minute periods by a cop with a bullhorn, “by Seattle ordinance you must disperse, blah, blah, blah.” Finally the police started arresting people. On this day at least, Seattle police weren’t wearing their Darth Vader helmets and weren’t handcuffing people. Each protester got a hand as they were led individually to a bus. I reverted to my Fenway Park bleacher days; yelling out the names of people I knew, as they led away.

Looking back, I don’t think anyone ever asked me if I wanted to get arrested. I guess I could have volunteered. Apparently, the rule of thumb is that if someone’s on medication they’re discouraged from civil disobedience. A guy in my book club reading group, who’s a veteran of the anti-war protests, says there was a famous case in New York City where they took the anti-depression meds away from jailed anti-war protesters. To the surprise of no one, the Camp4Unity people were back on the street within the hour. Now it’s up to the city whether to press charges but I think it just hopes RCOP goes away.

On a personal level, I wanted to make a contribution. Early on, I made up a list off Seattle media people who’ve written articles on homelessness, which Revel, our media guru, found helpful. I took a lot of pictures on Sunday night and kept an eye out for media people as they arrived. From a media standpoint the event was a success, with every TV station, both dailies, and one of the two weeklies giving us coverage. But political activism isn’t always exciting, since most of the people who set up were arrested; I was part of the understaffed crew that had to clean up.

In the end, was it worth it?
I went to the Real Change offices a couple of days later only to hear about a volunteer who took some homeless campers over to West Seattle where their gear had been stored. The word was - their isn’t a lot of stuff there regardless of ownership. One of the campers lost all of his tools for work and the people at the storage center went into the backroom to find him some usable stuff.

Not very encouraging. But the most important thing I've learned - you can’t give up. Don’t let the bastards win.

Inconvenient truths

When Nancy Reagan was leaving the White House she said what she’d miss most was the convenience. Apparently First Lady’s don’t really do anything; they have it done for them.

Being homeless is the polar opposite. In Seattle for example, most homeless ``live’’ in the downtown area. To get a pass to sleep in a shelter they have to go to the Central District, a few miles East of the downtown (and uphill), and then head back downtown, sometimes with only minutes to spare before the shelters close.

Then after sleeping in a shelter, sometimes on the floor and practically on top of other people (I once heard a homeless person say people shouldn’t sleep so close together unless they’re in love); they’re kicked out of shelters, sometimes as early as 5:30; even though there’s no place open for another two hours, it’s like being in a hurry not to get anywhere.

And being homeless means always waiting in line; waiting for breakfast, waiting to do your laundry; waiting to take a shower. In recent months, the city of Seattle has added a few more inconveniences. Since the shelters are pretty full these days, people have taken to sleeping outside more than ever. However, if you camp outside, the city has thrown a few more obstacles in your path.

Since last summer, the city has conducted ``sweeps’’ of campgrounds. If people weren’t present – say working or looking for work – people had the only pictures of family members destroyed or backpacks with their only forms of ID confiscated.

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels, who unfortunately (for him) looks like a grownup version of Pugsley, the child character from the Addams Family TV show, announced a series of protocols at the end of March – a more humane way of dealing with homelessness. Homeless activists say that the loopholes in Nickels’ protocols are large enough to drive an SUV through.

It was around this time that I joined the Real Change organizing project – quality people fighting the good fight. RCOP has sponsored two campouts on the steps of City Hall, both times in a drizzling rain, and recently we made an appearance at the City Council’s Public Safety Human Services and Education Committee (it seems odd that this committee deals with homelessness and not the Housing and Economic Development Committee).

Tim Harris has a play-by-play description of the day on his blog – http://www.apasmaslament.blogspot.com. I don’t know if we made any headway but Nickels and the Council’s homeless guy, Tim Burgess, know that someone’s watching.

Most of the RCOP people spoke in the open forum portion of the meeting. I decided to focus on what happens to anyone who has his or her personal belongings confiscated, the stuff’s taken to West Seattle, away from downtown on the other side of the Sound. Still not far if you have use of a car, but it’s almost an hour bus ride. And, oh by the way, the last bus stop is still a quarter of a mile away. Not ideal for someone with health problems, and if your ID or bus tickets were part of the confiscated goods; then things really get dicey.

It adds up to inconvenience for the homeless again. Not something they’d put up in the White House.

And Now A Few Words About Homelessness

Growing up in Providence, Rhode Island in the 1960’s and `70’s I never saw any homeless people. The closest may have been Freddy The Freeloader, a character on the Red Skelton show. I think even Red grew tired of playing the character after the while.

Then around the `70’s or early `80’s, there was a guy that started sleeping in the park near my house. I remember seeing him a few times and how unsettling it was, the soot caked on his face because there was no place to wash up. Around this time, local legend has it that a transient known as John The Bum (these were definitely politically incorrect times) had a memorable chess game against Providence’s notorious mayor, Vincent ``Buddy’’ Cianci at Leo’s Bar and Restaurant. I don’t know how the match came out but in retrospect it seemed like the mayor could have done more for John than just play chess with him. At least the people who ran Leo’s gave him odd jobs and a place to sleep sometimes.

I may have missed a few homeless people wandering about Providence back then (the homeless are generally invisible to the rest of society) but statistically there wasn’t a lot of homelessness from the 1940’s to the 1980’s. Maybe Franklin Roosevelt just knew how to run a war more profitably than George Bush but there were also housing programs in place after WWII not to mention things like the GI Bill which put my father through college.

In the 1980’s, the shit started to hit the fan. Hospitals closed and the mentally ill were put on the streets. In the 1990’s, low-income housing dwindled as many big cities decided they only wanted yuppies living in their town.

As someone who’s been called a homeless advocate I sometimes think we make the homeless situation more difficult than we have to. Radio talk shows for example, invariably focus on panhandling even though about one percent of the homeless partake in that endeavor. Well-meaning types think you can cure homelessness with job programs even though about 30 percent already do some kind of work.

Alcoholism and mental illness; those are toughies. I don’t know how to solve them; but homelessness- build more low-income housing and don’t tear down what we already have. It would be a step in the right direction.

My last Sonics post, maybe

Kudos to David Goldstein of horsesass.org, who recently related a story he heard about a top National Basketball Association executive. While some second-hand stories can be a little off-the-wall, sometimes they're probably true.
According to Goldy, a friend of his mentioned to the NBA big-wig that he couldn't believe the league would abandon Seattle, the 12th ranked media market in the country for the 45th, sometimes refered to as that ``hell-hole'' Oklahoma City. The NBA guy said his owners aren't thrilled with the move, but Commissioner David Stern says Seattle needs to be made an example of; a city where politicians had the termerity to ignore what the league wanted in favor of what most of their constituency wanted.
For the unitiated, Howard ``Starbucks'' Schultz, the previous owner, wanted a new arena even though Seattle's Key Arena was rebuilt in 1998. However, City Council president Nick Licata and even Mayor Greg Nickels, who never met a downtown development deal he didn't like, knew which way the wind was blowing; voters were still smarting about the Mariners getting a new stadium even when it was voted down.
Stern then helped broker a deal between Schultz and Oklahoma City's Clay Bennett to buy the Sonics. Local newspapers are now publishing e-mails they acquired between Stern and Bennett that will likely say that Bennett and his cowboy buddies never planned to keep the team in Seattle.
However, Seattle has made some last-minute overtures about getting the Sonics to stay. When Microsoft exec Steve Ballmer said he'd throw $150 million into the pot to help upgrade Key Arena, Stern called it a ``publicity stunt.''
Just like George W. Bush reached a point where he was going to invade Iraq regardless of anything the Iraqis said or did, Stern and company are pulling out of Seattle. Never mind KJR's Sonics Day (in the spirit of full disclosure, I did get a free ticket to the Sonics-Trailblazers game that day); the Save Our Sonics group (well no, they're not our Sonics, they're Clay Bennett's Sonics) or former Seattle superstar Freddie Brown wanted to build the first indoor basketball arena with a retractable roof, the Sonics are pulling up stakes.
Recently Oklahoma City voters passed by a 60-40 margin plans to upgrade the downtown arena to prepare it for an NBA franchise. For a vote like that to pass by that big a margin was unheard of. Plans to build sports venues usually don't go to the ballot box for one simple reason - they usually get voted down. I was in Oklahoma once in the late `80's, and even then noticed the opulent high school football stadiums and softball complexes with their multiple fields and sunbaked red clay infields. All of these venues surrounded by people living in poverty.
There was one post on Goldy's blog that may have summed things up. While OK residents are being told that this is their chance to become major league, one respondant noted, ``I'd be prouder to say I'm from the city that stood up to the extortion attempt of the NBA than to say I'm from a city with an NBA team.''

Dave Zirin comes, the Sonics go, and the buses don't run in Oklahoma City

I dislike calling Dave Zirin a radical writer. In some people's minds, that conjures up images of anarchists throwing bags of urine at cops. But Zirin definitely writes about sports from a leftist point of view, That's made him a favorite of his readers at the web site, www.edgeofsports.com. I like his philosophy that sports is like a hammer; they can build a lot of good things but in the wrong hands can do a lot of damage.
Zirin, who looks just like his picture on the jackets of his books, was on the book circuit a few months ago promoting two new books- Welcome To The Terrordome and The Muhammad Ali Reader. The title of the former comes comes from a Chuckie D. rap song but in this context refers to the Louisiana Superdome.
Michael Vick was a topic that day. Zirin had been involved in a blog feud with a writer from The Nation. He felt, among other things, that Zick's biggest mistake was getting arrested in August when not much else was going on in the sports universe. Zirin, who isn't in favor of dog fighting, drew a few chuckles when he talked about how if a white quarterback like Tom Brady or Peyton Manning had been in the same situation, the media would have called it a ``learning moment,'' where we are all taught a lesson about the evils of dog fighting.
A women asked Zirin about the Seattle Sonics iminent move to Oklahoma. Unlike those who could care less if the Sonics leave or the sports talk show callers who want new stadiums without thinking about who'll pay for them, this woman spoke for another segment of the public. She'd spent a good part of her life rooting for Dennis Johnson, Gus Williams and Slick Watts but she didn't want the new owners rewarded - "welfare for the rich.''
Zirin, who's a regular contributor to SLAM, a slick, hip, pro basketball magazine, replied that it's time for public ownership of sports teams. In this case, not nationalized sports teams, but "municipalized'' franchises, just like in Green Bay where a large segment of the population owns the Packers.
Perhaps it was that woman who motivated Zirin to write in a recent Edge Of Sports column, "basketball fans should press the state of Washington to sue for the right to buy the team back from Clay (Bennett) and his cronies. They should claim that the Super Sonics are the intellectual property - eminent domain - of the people in Seattle, and therefore the city has more of a claim than the Bennetts of Oklahoma."
It's the kind of original, out-of-the-box thinking that's missing from too many sports journalists. However, in the real world, said owners continue to dismantle the Sonics while the city won't let them out of their lease. NBA Commissioner David Stern and Sonic owner Clay Bennett are friends but some of the owners can't be thrilled about the league abandoning Seattle, always ranked as one of the top cities to live, for Oklahoma City, where the buses don't run on Saturday night.