The Seattle Times editorializes today against SHARE/WHEEL’s strategy of sleeping out in front of elected officials’ homes to protest the city’s refusal to provide the groups with $50,000 for bus passes to get to shelters. (We’ve covered it here and here, but the Seattle PostGlobe has been doing the best coverage with on-the-ground updates.) Calling the campouts an “overwrought and unhelpful” tactic “verging on extortion,” the Times’ editorial board hyperventilates:
What’s next, camping out in front of restaurants until free meals are served?
Better question: What’s next, sitting at the front of the bus until the city of Montgomery city hall says you’re allowed to? SHARE/WHEEL is protesting what it sees as a denial of a basic human service by the city—a city policy supported and promoted by city officials. As the officials behind that policy, the mayor and city council members are just as legitimate targets of SHARE/WHEEL’s civil disobedience as the segregated bus systems of the Jim Crow South. (Different magnitude, obviously, but same conceit.)
And note that the homeless advocacy groups’ protests have been not only legal but organized and orderly—by all accounts, the only disruption that’s resulted from their protests has been because of Mayor Greg Nickels’ decision to call out six police cruisers to keep an eye on the protesters at his house. (And, for what it’s worth, Burgess told me he was impressed by the orderly nature of the protest and the fact that protesters left the sidewalk “spotless” in the morning.)
Is camping out in front of officials’ houses the most effective long-term strategy? Maybe not. It’s possible that, as the Times opines, such tactics even distract from “constructive long-term solutions to end homelessness,” like the Seattle Housing Levy that’s on the ballot this year.
The thing is, though, SHARE/WHEEL isn’t in the business of promoting the housing levy. They support short-term solutions to the immediate crisis of homelessness, like shelters and tent cities. Unless you’re naive enough to believe that “ending homelessness” is a realistic goal, shelters and tent cities, or something like them, will have to be part of the long-term equation too.
And—more to the point—that’s their right whether the political advisers at the Seattle Times thinks it’s worthy or not. Just as the Constitution grants Frank Blethen the right to publish editorials against taxes on rich families, it also gives homeless people the right to congregate on a public sidewalk. Even—perhaps especially—when that congregation “embarrasses” elected officials into doing the right thing.
