Come On Down...To Jail

You can tell you’re in the Bible Belt when you see more churches than Starbucks

Down here (West Texas) there are more prisons than Starbucks

- from the movie `Life Of David Gale'

A group I’m involved with, the Real Change Organizing Project, has recently taken up the cause of not building a new prison in Seattle. Projections that the county made for estimated prison population is about 4,000 people short but the city wants to build a new prison anyway.

I’ve always felt the worse thing about prisons is that the powers-that-be always find a way to fill them. Prison population in this country went from 19,000 in 1980 to 251,200 in 1999 no doubt in large part to the countries ill-advised war on drugs.

But it wasn’t until recent years, when I stopped writing just about sports and took a shot at more real world stuff, that I discovered the whole concept of privatizing prisons. Prisons just like wars and TV news has become nothing more than a way to make money. And that means more prisoners. Dick Cheney’s company, Halliburton, is involved in prisons.

Sometimes it’s hard to find who actually owns your neighborhood prison. A Seattle paper is using the Freedom of Information Act to find out who’s building the new Seattle prison. When I did a google search, ``who’s building Seattle prisons,’’ I couldn’t get anything.

However, I did stumble across one of the great Internet rumors which is that former Price Is Right game show host and Happy Gilmour star Bob Barker, owns 90% of the prisons and makes $3,000 on every prisoner. If you don’t watch game shows this is the guy who’s always yelling for people to ``come on down.’’ Insert your own joke about Bob Barker greeting prisoners here.

It turns out that Bob Barker Company of Fuquay-Varina, N.C. is in fact American’s leading detention supplier (and we all thank them for that). But this Bob Barker has nothing to do with game shows. It’s actually a family run business that started with plumbing and now even provides the telephones at the prison in Minneapolis.

Nevertheless, there are people who still believe that TV’s Bob Barker, who also tells people to neuter their pets, runs our nation’s prison system. It makes for a good blog posting but I’ve always felt that the really ridiculous conspiracy theories just get in the way of those that have some truth to them. Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you.

A tie to the past

Recently I attended a Boston Red Sox game against the Mariners at Seattle's Safeco Field. The first Red Sox game I attended was at Fenway Park in Boston, September 18, 1967. The Red Sox beat the New York Yankees that day, 9-1. Mickey Mantle played in that game. So did Jim Bouton, who wrote ``Ball Four,'' one of the best sports' books ever. I enjoy telling Red Sox fans I meet that I probably saw my first game before they were born. I'm usually right.

I'm one of those nerdy fans they talked about on ESPN after Boston won the World Series in 2004. People who thought about parents and grandparents who had long since passed away having never seen the Red Sox win a world championship. My parents weren't huge fans but my dad took me to my first game and many others after that. My mother didn't know a lot about baseball but Red Sox Hall-of-Famer Carl Yastrzemski was her favorite player. She called him Carly. And I often think of the words of former Red Sox relief pitcher Mike Myers (one of the most obscure players on the team) who said ``when a New Englander finds out you were on the 2004 Red Sox they don't say congratulations they say thank you.''

So it's hard for me to scoff at Seattle Sonic fans who feel a void now that they've lost their team. For me, following the Red Sox (and other Boston teams) 3,000 miles away is a tie to home and to the past.

The Red Sox beat the Mariners, 6-3, in 12 innings. There were loads of Boston fans on hand. Many were born after 1967. It wasn't Fenway Park and Carl Yastrzemski didn't play but you can't beat a day at the ballpark.

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.