Disappearing the Homeless 101
1) There is nothing on the calendar this week!
2) FYI Section:
2A) Climate Crisis Resource Guide from Olympia FOR
2B) First World Problems Project
3) Mark Your Calendar Section
3A) Media Island/ PiPE Benefit Brunch
3B) Olympia City Council Meeting
3C) Meet and Greet the Washington State Legislators 2013
3D) Martin Luther King Day Action at the State Capitol
4) Bonus Tip of the Day
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Hey Kids!
Some people think it highly un-cool to talk about religion or politics.
When it comes to religion I am a fanatical evangelical agnostic. I know just enough about this universe to know how much there is that I don’t know; I understand just enough about this universe to understand that that there is all kinds of very powerful stuff going on all around me all the time and that I don’t have the slightest frigging clue as to why or how any of it is happening. I also suspect that not only does nobody else have the slightest frigging clue as to why or how any of it is happening but I suspect that nobody else is even capable of having the slightest frigging clue as to why or how any of it is happening.
Seemingly unlike most of my fellow humans I seem not only able accept this but I revel in it.
In one of my novels the protagonist spends the entire novel wandering all over the Universe seeking the Answer. The Answer turns out to be that if you knew the Answer then there would be no Question and with no Question then what would be the point?
I live surrounded by miracles awaiting my regard. I am content with that.
I am not content with my city government though, so on to politics…
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Disappearing the Homeless 101
For all intents and purposes the City of Olympia just made being homeless within the city limits illegal.
First off, since this week’s newsletter targets our city council, city manager, and police chief, I have decided to invite them to join us! Let’s all welcome our intrepid civic leaders to the comment portion of this week’s Oly Oly Action Alert! Say hi everyone!
Be aware, though, that I am an unapologetic practitioner of advocacy journalism and that I tend to use my pen rather like a flamethrower — and for this particular issue I tend to turn the oxygen up to full-blast.
For you regular readers who may be unfamiliar with how our city government conducts business I will provide a quick and simple guide on how to gauge their priorities: If they don’t want to do something they don’t have the money and if they do want to do something they do have the money.
Thus we have homeless people stooping in the bank’s flowerbed and in front of city hall at night because there are no public restrooms while our councilpersons enjoy their private gym in that ugly $50 million monstrosity they recently erected on a prime downtown lot.
To add insult to injury I must now look at it every time I sit in front of my favourite coffee shop.
As for their new law I cannot believe that the council did not understand that sparks will now fly and that several bags of feces are about to hit a wide variety of fans. (I know this because I will personally be helping to dump some of those bags into some of those fans.) It brings to mind an old aphorism about what you reap when you sow the wind (or sow bags of feces, as the case may be…)
Note the ‘Mark Your Calendar” section of this week’s newsletter. The targeted city council meeting is 7 pm Tuesday January 8th, though the street show is likely to start earlier. Live music, guerilla theatre, and even a little civil disobedience is likely to ensue for your dining and dancing pleasure. Admission to this circus is free. Bring your drums and your kids.
Councilman Steve Langer once accused me of enjoying protesting for its own sake. His implication was that I could find better things to do with my life than to protest him. Actually I protest because I don’t want my granddaughter’s civilization to collapse into a fiery apocalypse. I am sure Dr. Langer also supports this goal and other than our disagreement on priorities in achieving that goal Dr. Langer absolutely right: Protesting is a frigging blast. You get to interact in a magical way with lots of magical people and do a good deed while you’re at it — and it’s not like we’re short on material or anything.
As evidenced by the Olympia City Council.
For purposes of full disclosure understand that I have personal history here, that I am radical uncompromising and intemperate, and that I am of the in-your-face school of political activism. Since I don’t have a corporate expense account to amplify my voice I tend to use a 40-watt bullhorn instead and most of my communication with politicians consists of me yelling at them at exceedingly high volume whilst waving signs in their faces.
My bullhorn is named “The Bullhitter”.
Part of my job is to encourage policymakers to accommodate the calm and reasonable activists so that they don’t have me in their face yelling at them through the Bullhitter and waving signs in their faces. We are sort of the last resort when the policymakers ignore the calm and reasonable people.
During the last battle in the War on the Homeless I helped form an organization called Citizens in Violation of Illegal Laws [CIVIL] and I helped organize the two Busker Parades to protest Olympia’s criminalization of playing music on the streets. We held a free concert all day in Sylvester Park and then about 80 of us marched down 4th Ave during rush hour with clowns directing traffic as we played music. Then we surrounded the city hall playing illegal music to greet the arriving city council members.
I used the Bullhitter to warn passers-by that our music was a criminal act and that if they wanted to report us then there was a police station located directly behind us.
Like I said, a blast. The most fun I ever had breaking the law. (Felonious chord progressions? Assault with a friendly weapon? Distributing the peace?)
There are lots of career opportunities available, by the way. We need pretty much everything and everyone. Feel free.
I think this link is open to the public but you’ll need a Facebook account and you might even need to ‘friend’ me if you’re not already, but here are some cool pictures of the Busker Parade:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2265415309298.128433.1065988629&type=3
Like Red Emma Goldman said, “If I can’t dance at your revolution then I don’t want to come.”
Anyway, in a move that suspiciously resembles the city council flipping CIVIL a bird, they rescinded the busking law as part of the heinous new sidewalk ordinance. It’s like they said, “Okay, we’ll rescind the busking law — so now take this!”
Or maybe this is their twisted politician’s version of a ‘compromise’?
Anyway, if you haven’t been smoking too much of that legal pot then you may remember my newsletter from all the way back to last week wherein I pointed out how the Machine will often take an incident caused by an individual or small group of people and then use that as an excuse to make an overarching law targeting everyone. Case in point; the target this time is an entire demographic and the city government has employed the very trick I just described last week in their persecutions of homeless kids — only this time they used a problem dog as pretext rather than a problem person! Ingenious!
Olympia City Hall Besieged! Emergency Law Rushed Through!
This most recent figoobliation began when a bunch of homeless kids began camping in front of city hall because they are young and helpless and vulnerable and due to recent murders they do not feel safe in the alleys or the woods and because the awning above the entrance to city hall is relatively dry and brightly lit and because there are cameras and an adjoining police station.
I’m hazy on the details but from what I can gather one of their dogs bit and tore someone’s raincoat.
They already have laws about dogs doing things like that and I’ll bet that if Mayor Buxbaum’s dog bit a raincoat that an entire demographic would not be made functionally illegal as a result — but the dog-biting-the-raincoat incident was their perfect pretense: Their argument for the need to pass such a drastic emergency law is that a bunch of cold broken scared and abandoned kids pose a danger to the safety of the staff and patrons sitting in the massive imposing armed edifice of their ugly new city hall.
The irony here is that as opposed to the ephemeral and mostly theoretical threat these kids pose to the safety of city hall, the policymakers of city hall (not to mention the police) very concretely and in actual actuality represent a very real threat to the safety of the kids.
The only thing these kids have is the consciences of others; they have no money no influence no cigarettes and no political power. They tend to piss off conservatives and embarrass liberals so both sides just want to sweep them out of sight under the nearest rug where we don’t have to see them and then out-of-sight out-of-mind becomes so much easier.
Since I am somewhat noted for my immoderate prose I see no need to change that now, and so — always with an eye toward the enlightenment and education of my loyal readers — in an historic move I am as of this very moment creating a brand new feature for Oly Oly Action!
This will be the first new feature since adding the Bonus Tip of the Day!
(Imagine now if you will a joyous fanfare accompanied by triumphant choral arrangements…)
Ladies and gentlemen and various other permutations of those memes! Tonight for your dining and dancing pleasure it is my honour to present to you my brand new Oly Oly Action Feature!
(Imagine now if you will a giant curtain slowly sliding down to reveal…)
I’ll tell you what I really think!
Yeah, I’ll tell you what I really think all right! I think that last week I sat through a disgusting debacle of a city council meeting. I think I suffered through the disgusting experience of listening to several disgusting Olympia City Council members and our disgusting city manager cry disgusting crocodile tears over their concern for the homeless even as they were preparing to pass a disgusting law further criminalizing degrading and endangering the most helpless and vulnerable members of our community.
Especially disgusting was the city manager Steve Hall, infamous for his quote in the Olympian last year: “It makes people uncomfortable to have to step over people who are sleeping on the sidewalk.”
Yes, Mr. Hall, your deep concern for the comfort of comfortable wealthy suburbanites and business people is well noted but do you really want us to now believe that your failure to express any concern whatsoever in your Olympian interview for what was surely the much greater discomfort experienced by the person who was actually sleeping on the sidewalk — are we to now believe that this was just an oversight on your part? With all due respect (which always means with no respect) I found your lamentations concerning how you agonized over your decision to exile a bunch of scared kids by turning their mere presence on public property into a criminal act disgusting and the accolades to your deep humanity that flowed upon you from others — including even our one ally on the city council — almost made me puke.
And that is what I really think!
At the council meeting Mr. Hall also noted that throughout human history we have always had the poor — as if that makes it okay or something. I would note that until very recently in our human history we always had slavery and women were treated like brood mares; just because it’s always been doesn’t mean that it was ever okay or that we should just accept it. It’s called evolving, Mr. Hall, and it is my strong suspicion that the human race needs to do some hyper-evolving right about now if we are to survive this adventure.
Lights in the Darkness
My sense of irony was satiated by the fact that this disgusting city council meeting was also leavened with magnificent light and enlightenment during the public comment period: Almost everyone in town who has the actual expertise on this issue — all of the service people who do the down-in-the-trenches work and who know the issue and who know the street and who know actual homeless people on a personal basis — spoke very eloquently and passionately for over an hour and every single one of them laid out numerous and compelling reasons for not passing this horrific ordinance. Not one person spoke even slightly in favour of it.
The council listened to what they said and then — after the aforementioned torrent of aforementioned crocodile tears — they passed the ordinance.
Disgusting.
If you are wondering why the councilpersons are so insistent that this law is not targeted at any specific demographic even though it is so very blatantly in-your-face obvious to a 5-year-old child that it is targeted directly at a very specific demographic (though even I’ll admit that it will be just as illegal for Bill Gates to sleep on the sidewalk as it is for anyone else) (though I suspect the police response would prove measurably different) (oh, gee, Mr. Gates! Would you like a pillow and a cup of coffee? Can we do anything else for you?)
Er, yes. Anyway, if you are prone to pondering this question you should consider that targeting a specific demographic with a law has been — with very good reason — ruled to be unconstitutional. Thus, due to legal concerns our intrepid civic leaders are forced into what must certainly the highly uncomfortable position of having to spout such complete crap in public.
Jeannine Roe (bless her delightful dingbat little heart) probably (and almost certainly inadvertently) provided the most truthful excuse (I say ‘excuse’ because there is no ‘reason’): Ms. Roe asserted that there were large numbers of other people in the community that strongly supported this law. I don’t doubt that for one nanosecond. In matter of fact I know who a lot of them are. However, since not a single one of these alleged supporters saw fit to add their voices to the on-the-record public discourse at the council meeting then I am thinking that their opinions were mayhap instead opined in secret back rooms or golf courses? Methinks it also likely that perchance some campaign lucre occasionally changed hands in conjunction with the articulation of all this opining, eh? Thus, there is no need for them to embarrass themselves by publicly associating their names with such a controversial travesty on the public record! Taking the heat is what they pay the politicians for!
Speaking of: The central pushers of these laws seem to be councilmember Steve Langer, city manager Steve Hall, and police chief Ronnie Roberts with enthusiastic assistance from council-people Julie Hankins and Jeannine Roe — and with acquiescence if not spoken support (though acquiescence is the same in effect as outright support, so an ungenerous assessment of their action could call it a chicken-shite cop out) from Karen Rogers and Mayor Stephen Buxbaum.
Nathaniel Jones split his vote — another kind of wtf move. One of the votes was aimed at all homeless people and the other was specifically aimed at the kids in front of city hall and I forget which ordinance Mr. Jones voted for and which he voted against, but whatever. He either voted to make the homeless illegal or he voted to make the kids illegal.
The only councilmember who unequivocally and even quite eloquently stated what was really going on around here was Jim Cooper and he was the only solid “no” vote on the entire council.
Good on you, sir.
Concerning Steve Langer, the most vociferous response I ever got to one of my newsletters was last year when I trashed Dr. Langer for his part in the previous incarnation of the city’s attempted criminalization of homelessness. Every liberal in town regaled me with tales of Dr. Langer’s many admittedly impressive accomplishments in local environmental issues and other good causes.
In addition — kind of weirdly and on a much more personal level — it turned out that Dr. Langer was also the psychiatric therapist for a very good friend of mine that I hold in very high regard whose worldview I give great credence and respect — and she also sang the praises of Steve Langer.
(FYI: Her theory about Steve Langer in the context of the War on the Homeless is that there are powerful political forces at play that he can’t talk about in public. As for that; speaking as someone who spent six years in a federal prison standing up for principle I believe that this is one area in which I have standing to look down upon others who would sell theirs — especially if it is sold for lucre.)
On the other end there was a kind-of-weird incident concerning Dr. Langer and my very good friend Carolyn at a homelessness forum at the county courthouse last year.
First a word about Carolyn: In spite of her young age (she is 24) Carolyn is one of the most knowledgeable and brilliant analysts/ activists that I know. She is right-there-right-now she is passionate she is highly knowledgeable she is funny and witty and she is as sharp as a razor. I hold her in awe and it is my great honour to know and to have worked with Carolyn and I love you and I miss you since you moved to Seattle and I really wish you would stop by Olympia sometime soon and come see me.
Anyway, my theory about the kind-of-weird incident in the courthouse was that it came about partly due to the fact that Carolyn’s appearance belies her attributes; she looks and vibes like a very young and very naïve little schoolgirl.
My theory is that Dr. Langer saw Carolyn hanging out with me and thought that she was some idealistic novice fresh from the suburbs and that he could charm her over to his side and rescue her from my evil influence or something — so he came over and sat down next to Carolyn and talked for about 10 minutes whilst we were waiting for the forum to start.
At the time Carolyn was up to her neck working with Stand Up for Kids and CIVIL. It was Carolyn, in fact, that came up with CIVIL’s name.
Another name-idea she had was United Citizens in Violation of Illegal Laws [Yep: UN-CIVIL].
Anyway, Carolyn did not appreciate Dr. Langer’s presumption.
I will concede the possibility and even the probability that Dr. Langer has a good heart. Dr. Langer also has impressive academic credentials. Other than sitting in on a few classes I have no advanced education but I absolutely love really smart girls so I have spent a good portion of my adult life in college towns seducing college girls — thus I have peripheral knowledge of academia. (In a way I got to learn all the cool stuff they learned without having to put up with everything else.) As awesomely much as academics do indeed learn, though, there are many things that academia doesn’t teach (I often beat the college girls in Trivial Pursuit, for instance) and I think possibly that Dr. Langer has a problem common to accomplished academics, i.e. since he knows so much about so many things he assumes that he is expert even in things about which he actually knows shite. As an example of this I would note Dr. Langer’s repeated insistence — both during our last encounter and during this new one —that homeless people must be held responsible for their actions. Get it? This is a psychiatrist (i.e. PhD) saying that a population made up highly disproportionately of seriously mentally ill people needs to be ‘held responsible for their actions’. If Dr. Langer feels that our society bears any responsibility toward this vast sea of broken people that keep washing up on our curbs then he has never mentioned it and I’m sorry, Kids, but Steve Langer gives me the creeps and he gave Carolyn the creeps and as good as Dr. Langer is on all of the great Liberal Causes and as good a psychiatric therapist as he may be, he totally sucks on the homelessness thing.
And I view the homelessness thing as a litmus test.
During the previous incarnation of the Olympia Homeless Wars a couple of activists gently criticized me for spending so much time on the homelessness issue when so many ‘more important’ issues so desperately needed so much of everything from everyone.
I don’t think so. I think that that a culture is defined by how it treats the least among us. Currently our culture lavishly rewards incredibly vile behaviour while more often than not honourable behaviour is punished. That is, I believe, one of our central core problems. I really don’t think we can fix anything else until we fix that and not abandoning anyone much less mentally ill people and scared kids to the rainy streets at night seems pretty basic to me.
Anyway, the calm and reasonable people spoke with great eloquence and at great length — and their advice was completely ignored by the city council.
Thus, we the brave knights of CIVIL are once again dusting off our armour and tending to our trusty mounts. Action is imminent. (Remind me to check the Bullhitter’s batteries…)
If you would like to participate in direct action I’ll keep you posted through this newsletter and/or you can contact CIVIL on Facebook.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/222844007745192/?fref=ts
Solutions to Homelessness 101
Numerous studies unanimously conclude that the cheapest and most effective way to deal with homeless people is to house them. The cheapest and most effective way to deal with mental illnesses and substance abuse problems is to provide counseling.
And I would maintain that the most humane thing to do is to provide a place to die with at least some dignity for those who refuse or are unable to give up their self-destruction.
These studies also unanimously conclude the most expensive and least effective way to deal with homelessness/ mental illness/ substance abuse is to criminalize the victims.
This is not a mystery. The numbers are there and not that hard to find. Why do communities throughout the United States invariably choose the most expensive and least effective method of dealing with problem people?
I would also note that for every homeless person in the United States there are five empty foreclosed homes deteriorating away and lowering property values. In many cases the banks who claim to own these homes can’t prove that they do, in fact, own them — and even if they do, in fact, own them, then they probably stole them as part of the largest criminal fraud in human history; i.e. the ‘economic collapse’ and subsequent ‘bailout’.
Weirdly, if you define a ‘Christian’ as someone who thinks that Jesus was an awesome role model then I am a Christian; just please do not ever call me one or associate me with them. I’ve always sort of had a love/ hate relationship with our Christian brethren as the very best and the very worst people in both history and contemporaneously seem to be Christians. Several of my favourite humans on this planet are Christians but I have no desire to be associated in any way with burning the library in Alexandria or the Inquisitions or the witch burnings or the Children’s Crusade or the promotion of the African slave trade or the genocide of Native Americans or the current War on Gays/ Muslims/ and anyone else who is to the left of John Birch and I want no association with a book in whose name more death torture agony rape suffering and genocide took place than any other object in all human history — but I consider the Sermon on the Mount to be right at the top of the hit-parade as one of the most incredible moral statements of all time.
My problem with most Christians is that they seem to have never read it.
At one point in the biblical narrative the Disciples ask Jesus what they have to do to get to Heaven. Jesus says they had to feed him when he was hungry, clothe him when he was naked, and visit him when he was in jail.
If I may paraphrase, the Disciples responded thusly: “Dude, you’ve never been hungry or naked or in jail! What you’re saying is that we’re screwed!”
Whereupon Jesus replies (quoting this time): “As you treat the least of those amongst us, so you treat me.”
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One final word: Several council members mentioned that Olympia does more for its homeless population than any other town of similar size. I have not researched the accuracy of that claim but the fact that this assertion is very likely to be true is one of the saddest frigging comments upon our culture that I can imagine.
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Wagging Penises and Other Dangerous Hazards
Due to my opposition to gun control a woman who has never met me and doesn’t know me just told me, amongst other things, “You expect to be heard, to have space to voice your opinion, over and above the voice of a woman, in complete disregard of that woman, because that is your privilege as a male. You jump in, wag your penis around, and then expect there to be no consequence because that’s your privilege as a male.”
Then she cut me off her blog without allowing me to reply; since this was done in a semi-public forum and since I take personal offense I will take advantage of this forum to reply even though probably no one who read that will read this.
Whatever. For the record: I literally worship women and I consider women to be superior to males in almost every way that really counts. I believe that all policy decisions should be subject to veto by a council of mothers. I could almost instantly provide 20 or 30 female references (and given time many more) (and including several radical feminist activists) who have worked with me for years and who — unlike my critic — know me well. They enjoyed a good laugh over this portrayal of me as a dominating sexist.
My mother was killed by a drunk driver when I was eleven. I’ve had military training, I spent 28 years on the road, I operated an independent marijuana smuggling operation directly in the face of the Seattle police and the existing pot-distribution network, and I spent 6 years in federal prisons — ostensibly for marijuana but in reality for refusing to sell my friends to the feds — which means that I told the feds to go enjoy intimate relations with their maternal ancestors knowing full well they would chew me up and spit me back out several years later for doing it.
You don’t survive the life I’ve led without a wagging penis.
However: I firmly believe that we possessors of wagging penises should wag said penises in the service of women and children and subject to women in general and mothers in particular. If anyone is a sexist around here I don’t believe it is me, so screw you and your venomous man-hating crap.
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Redux: It is now a couple of hours later, my outrage has calmed, and I would like to retract part of that last sentence.
Specifically the ‘screw you’.
It seems likely that Chris (the lady in question) is indeed a man-hating sexist. She did indeed make insinuations concerning my character that were both incredibly vile and not only barking up the wrong tree but she was entirely in the wrong frigging forest — bad enough — but then she frigging cut me off so I couldn’t reply, which I found even more rude and offensive.
In spite of all that I must give Chris proper due: I have off-and-on participated in her blog for several years now and she is a brilliant knowledgeable and totally dedicated heart-and-soul activist. She was very good at coming up with underreported info and she gave brilliant takes on that info. There are always lots of other brilliant and knowledgeable activists also hanging out on her blog and I’m actually going to really miss hanging out there. However: Chris is one of those people who gets seriously upset anytime anyone disagrees with her and we’ve had spats about that before wherein she also played the penis-wagger card. She allowed me a response that time and in my response I thought that I had effectively presented my ironclad feminist cred and thus thought that question was settled — but evidently not.
(On a side note; Chris might consider that a little penis wagging can sometimes be highly useful in fending off the bad guys — after all, the best counter to a bad penis wagger is a good penis wagger!)
In addition: A lot of women are given good reason to hate men. There are a lot of highly notable exceptions but overall I’m pretty unimpressed with most of them myself.
I also suspect that for whatever reason guns are a trigger for Chris. (She lives in Columbia, South Carolina, so several possible scenarios immediately leap to mind.) Thus, I suspect that maybe to Chris any supporter of gun rights is thus automatically a knuckle-dragging penis-wagging woman-dominating father-raping kid killer.
Chris is a utopian; guns have absolutely no place in her utopia.
I totally agree and I am willing to dedicate my life to achieving Chris’ utopia but I also understand that we aren’t there yet and I think that as long as people with guns want to make slaves out of the people who make everything then the people who make everything should have guns too. Again: I am ready to debate anyone over a cost/benefit analysis concerning having to deal with the occasional kid-killer whose task is made so much easier by easy access to firearms versus our ability to protect ourselves from government kid-killers by having an armed citizenry.
The kid-killer in Connecticut was mentally ill and had he survived he would have been held accountable. The kid-killer in the White House is not mentally ill (in the strictest sense) and he almost surely will never be held accountable.
The kid-killer in Connecticut had absolutely no political power and absolutely no one had his back. The kid-killer in the White House is head of the richest country in human history and is backed by the deadliest military in human history.
(Thus I must hang my head in emasculated shame; Obama’s is bigger and waggier than mine…)
So tell me: Which kid killer do you think should alarm us more?
FYI: The attached picture is of three children killed by one of Obama’s drones.
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One final note: If you use Microsoft Word, type a sentence wherein you capitalize ‘He’ (as when referencing God) and ‘She’ (as some people refer to God). The spell checker will tell you that capitalizing ‘He’ is acceptable but that capitalizing ‘She’ is not.
Blatant sexism at Microsoft! Radical feminists Goddess-worshippers and Matriarchists to Arms!
It’s time to get to work…
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1) There is nothing on the calendar this week!
This is the first time in two year that this has happened. Whas up wid dat? (I suspect the holiday had something to do with it…)
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2) FYI Section:
2A) Climate Crisis Resource Guide from Olympia FOR
This resource is useful even if you live outside of the Olympia area:
The Olympia Fellowship, an all-volunteer grassroots group working vigorously for peace, social and economic justice, nonviolence, and a healthy environment, has added much new information to all parts of our website’s Climate Crisis page,
http://www.olympiafor.org/Climate_Crisis.html
I’ve been accumulating information for several months from several organizations, and I’ve copied some information from the most recent issues of the Olympia FOR newsletters. Thanks to Ted Nation for submitting some of the new information.
Thanks to Dennis Mills for posting this to the Olympia FOR’s website, http://www.olympiafor.org/
“Dear Future Generations: Please accept our apologies. We were roaring drunk on petroleum.”
— Kurt Vonnegut
Glen Anderson (360) 491-9093 glen@olywa.net
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2B) First World Problems Project
Ava Harvest, our local Free Skool mistress, is always good for weird interesting mind-twisting philosophical discussions.
Ava is working on a project called First World Problems wherein she wants to make short videos of people talking about the biggest problem they had that day.
I ride the bus to Seattle every Wednesday to buy my papers. I figured out that if I arrived at the transit center 15 minutes early I could buy a pass and save 50¢ on my bus fare; my biggest problem on the day Ava made a video of me was figuring out if it was worth waiting at the transit center for 15 minutes in order to save 50¢. (I figured out that 50¢ in 15 minutes was $2 per hr so I decided it was not worth my time.)
When Ava described the nature of her project I instantly understood the weird interesting mind-bending philosophical implications; the biggest problem faced by a large portion of the world is, “what am I going to eat today” and 50¢ represents a half-day wages of really hard work for many.
I think Ava has set up a special email address just for this project but I couldn’t find it and she was supposed to send me a link directly to the project but she never did so I’m just going to publish her personal email: cr607205@ohio.edu Drop Ava a line if you would like to participate and whine about your First World problems.
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3) Mark Your Calendar Section
3A) Media Island/ PiPE Benefit Brunch
Sunday January 6th from 11 am to 2 pm @ Media Island, 816 Adams St SE
We haven’t confirmed yet but next month’s Media Island Benefit Brunch will be a joint benefit with Partners in Prevention Education [PiPE].
PiPE works with abused kids. While we activists get all the fun and all the glory and all the headlines, the service providers doing the down-and-dirty in-the-trenches work are the real heroes around here. They are generally overworked, underappreciated, rarely acknowledged, and they are perennially underfunded.
Come eat good food, hang with good people, and contribute to a good cause.
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3B) Olympia City Council Meeting
Tuesday January 8th, 6:30 pm @ Olympia City Hall, 601 4th Ave E
There will be a large figoobliation protesting the criminalization of homelessness in Olympia. The meeting starts at 7 pm but the sparks are likely to be flying earlier.
https://www.facebook.com/#!/groups/222844007745192/?fref=ts
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3C) Meet and Greet the Washington State Legislators 2013
Monday January 14th All Day @ Washington State Capitol
This is being organized by our local home team. Come greet our returning corporate representatives in a manner they deserve! There are liable to be numerous organizations organizing numerous actions so whether you are into standard protest or you want to engage in some civil disobedience there will likely be an activity for you! Stay tuned!
This from the organizers:
The people of Washington State are invited to gather at the Capitol on January 14, 2013 to present the returning legislature with a set of legislative requests. The people’s legislative agenda is likely to include a Carbon Tax, GMO Safe Food legislation, a State Bank, a Coal Free WA Bill, and so much more. Help us gather and deliver the legislation to our elected representatives.
https://www.facebook.com/events/268522753270071/
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3D) Martin Luther King Day Action at the State Capitol
January 21st, All Day @ Washington State Capitol
This is a huge annual event. People will be bussing in from all over the state and nearly all the local organizations will also be participating. Stay tuned.
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4) Bonus Tip of the Day:
Support your local outlaw.
Peace.
Dana
The Thunderbolt 
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