A photo juxtaposing a tent city with a Capitol Hill view of Seattle’s city lights is one of Time magazine’s pictures of the year. The image shot by photographer Aaron Huey captured a spring night during Tent City 3’s 2-month stay on the grounds of St. Mark’s Cathedral. You can see more of Huey’s work on his blog.
The leaders, like the outgoing mayor and the state’s gov should hang their heads.
But many of us contribute in small and oddly significant ways.
This challenge needs 3 things now: ironwilled persistance, generous development /funding, and uninhibited creativity.
Please help.
Too much for your busy / stressed / poor life? OK. I hear you.
Even in small ways, you can help: Buy an extra 20 bucks of non-perishable, no-cooking-required groceries and drop them at the Orion Center. Volunteer with PSKS.
More than anything else:
Look the homeless in the eye (and say something nice). Don’t let these thousands in our city become invisible.
My girlfriend and I both lived in both tc3 and tc4 for over 5 years. We finale moved to Spokane to get permanent housing. We’ve had our own apartment for 3 years. I spent more time on the Executive Committee then most. The main reason we left tent city and came to Spokane was because what was going on in camp. Three years ago while at St. Georges in Lake City those of us on EC started seeing thing going out of control. We decided to clean the camp. We barred those using drugs and drinking in camp, we also got rid of the people stealing donations so they could sell them. Thing were going well for about a week. Scott Morrow who was in charge came in and barred 3 of the EC saying they were trying to take over the camp and said they had to much power over others. I stayed on there for 5 more months. We were told not to call the police for any reason unless Scott or Leo Rhodes allowed it. They said we needed to keep the population in camp up no matter what. They also stated if we called the police for any type of help it would make their record look bad, so we couldn’t call even at the risk of our safety. We watched cash donations meant for camp use go to Scott for gas and insurance for his car and to be used to buy him food. He passed up good, Guaranteed camp sites because it wouldn’t get Tent City enough press time. We were not allowed to update the sex offender list and had to use outdated lists. We had 3 people elected to EC in 6 months that were on that list. To keep crime from being linked to the camp people were allowed to sign in to camp without Id. They would also edit the list when someone got in trouble. At Cherry Hill church we were told to take in two couples with kids they stayed for 3 weeks. We also had an overdose by a man named Birch yet he was allowed back in camp. Three months later at Haller Lake the same man while on drugs tried to kick in the door to the church’s daycare next door saying they took his kids. None of it was reported to the police because the church did not want to cause problems for Tent City. There’s a lot of things that happen there that’s unreported.