demand to house the homeless…

In my previous post I showed a picture of the view of Seattle to the south of where I live. Immediately north of where I live is what used to be a house where a lot of kids met until about three months ago, when this house was closed by the landlord and all the tenants were evicted. After that the house was used as a squat. Some time recently the police evicted the illegal residents and today they and a lot of other homeless kids were protesting not being allowed to live in the house.

The police were saying that the kids have no legal right to be in the house, and therefore they had no right to live there. This is true.

The kids were saying that they were not hurting anything by living in the house as the house is slated to be destroyed anyway. As it is, they are homeless and need to live somewhere. If they get sick from living in the snow then they will be miserable themselves and cost money to the city in healthcare, and they are just demanding access to a way to satisfy the basic human need for shelter. Their flyer referenced the current 700 billion dollar government gift to the wealthiest Americans.

One boy had a dog and his dog defecated on the rainy road. There were about fifty kids marching a route between University Way (the business street of the area) and the squat. They were marching on the road with a police escort so this was not a typical walkway, and as soon as I saw the dog do his business I wondered if the police would try to hassle him for dirtying the tires of the cars that would surely drive over the mess. I followed the group and at one point it split with about ten kids leaving the main group. One of those ten was the boy with the dog, and the police stopped him and gave him a ticket. We all just stood by and watched. The police called the boy’s name in and the dispatcher said that he had a warrant for his arrest, but the police decided not to take him in. I do not think the police declined to arrest him because of any pressure from the group, but just because there is no sense in arresting a mostly non-disruptive homeless person for a minor charge.

It’s too bad he got a fine. And it’s really a shame that with today being a holiday, at least 15 marked police cars, 5 unmarked ones, and fifty police officers had to escort this pitiful group of homeless youth to make sure that they did not try to go into the house and rest. I would guess that with today being a holiday the police got double pay, and then also probably they were called in for overtime for this special event. All those kids wanted was a mat on the floor and a blanket so that they could sleep and not get snow or freezing rain on them. In my opinion, it would have been better for the city to rent a warehouse for them to sleep in for just this one cold month than to have police form a human barrier around an owner-abandoned eyesore of a building.

The kids were organized through Team Victory Anarchist Collective.