The Move Is On
The latest developments with Nickelsville, seattle and their quest to exist... i find this communique a fine insight to the issue and their struggle:
Nickelsville goes on. Many have helped us make this opportunity to stay together and safe out of very little. Today's update focuses on how to keep Nickelsville safe from police action on its Permanent Site at Terminal 107.
Friday night, after a hard day of work getting the new location in shape, Nickelsville was visited near dusk by Port of Seattle Police.
They asked everyone to come out, handed out Notices to Vacate, and requested the names of all who took them.
The Notices were addressed to three different parties: Those on the site, Nickelsville Attorney Robert Siegel, and to Nickelsville Agent
the Reverend Michael Ramos. We kid you not. As most of you know,
Michael Ramos is the Executive Director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle. On behalf of the Church Council he has done an outstanding job of mediating and advocating for Nickelsville. But he and we recognize that does not make him the Nickelsville Agent.
The Port not understanding Mr Ramos's role is another example of Governments expecting Churches to solve the public problem of homelessness through social services. But the minute churches realize the solution to homelessness is a matter of justice, government usually tells them to shut up. That's what Mr Ramos is being asked to do today, in the same way the Interfaith Task Force, ROOTS, the Church Council and many others were treated by the City last fall they were told to to knock it off or get fined.
Today, Sunday July 26th, Nickelsville asks everyone, but particularly churches, to rise up and demand that the Port of Seattle stop threatening Nickelsville and work out a permanent home for Nickelsville. Tell them you will stand with us - if necessary - to prevent our eviction.
Friday's update included contact information for the Port Commissioners and Director. Please use it today and encourage your religious community and your friends to do the same.
Following this (below) is Nickelsvilles response to recent claims of the Port. It is long, but we thought many might find it useful.
Sorry that we havent figured out how to do attachments yet.
Thank you!
***********************************************************************************************************
Nickelsville
A Project of Veterans for Peace Ch92
P.O. Box 2548
Seattle, WA 98111
(206) 450-9136
scott@nickelsvilleseattle.org July 27th, 2009
Mr. Tay Yoshitani, Executive Director
Port of Seattle
2711 Alaskan Way
Seattle, WA
Dear Mr. Yoshitani:
Greetings from Nickelsville! There are several purposes in our writing to you today. First we would like to clear up some factual errors made recently by Port Staff. Secondly, we would like to challenge you to reconsider several assumptions the Port of Seattle has made prior to evaluating all the facts. Finally, we would like to bring to your attention a good neighbor in our community, and how their example can help us all.
1) FACTUAL ERRORS
A) FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY: On July 24th the Port of
Seattle put out a statement about our home. It said that Port Staff has communicated information to Nickelsville advocates over the past week, both verbally and in written form. In fact, no Nickelodeon either resident or staff was communicated with until July 23rd.
The only communication of the 23rd was one phone call to the above number by a Port of Seattle Worker asking for our fax number. While it was provided, no fax was received. Around 10:00 PM that night several Nickelodeons talked to 3 Port of Seattle Police Officers.
This failure to communicate is disappointing to us, as we have asked in writing on 3 separate occasions to meet and talk. The first was around September 25th, 2008. The second was in late June (see attached June 29th letters to Kurt Becket and John Creighton.) A 3rd effort was made the following week, with a similar letter setting out new deadlines.
Nickelsville goes on. Many have helped us make this opportunity to stay together and safe out of very little. Today's update focuses on how to keep Nickelsville safe from police action on its Permanent Site at Terminal 107.
Friday night, after a hard day of work getting the new location in shape, Nickelsville was visited near dusk by Port of Seattle Police.
They asked everyone to come out, handed out Notices to Vacate, and requested the names of all who took them.
The Notices were addressed to three different parties: Those on the site, Nickelsville Attorney Robert Siegel, and to Nickelsville Agent
the Reverend Michael Ramos. We kid you not. As most of you know,
Michael Ramos is the Executive Director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle. On behalf of the Church Council he has done an outstanding job of mediating and advocating for Nickelsville. But he and we recognize that does not make him the Nickelsville Agent.
The Port not understanding Mr Ramos's role is another example of Governments expecting Churches to solve the public problem of homelessness through social services. But the minute churches realize the solution to homelessness is a matter of justice, government usually tells them to shut up. That's what Mr Ramos is being asked to do today, in the same way the Interfaith Task Force, ROOTS, the Church Council and many others were treated by the City last fall they were told to to knock it off or get fined.
Today, Sunday July 26th, Nickelsville asks everyone, but particularly churches, to rise up and demand that the Port of Seattle stop threatening Nickelsville and work out a permanent home for Nickelsville. Tell them you will stand with us - if necessary - to prevent our eviction.
Friday's update included contact information for the Port Commissioners and Director. Please use it today and encourage your religious community and your friends to do the same.
Following this (below) is Nickelsvilles response to recent claims of the Port. It is long, but we thought many might find it useful.
Sorry that we havent figured out how to do attachments yet.
Thank you!
***********************************************************************************************************
Nickelsville
A Project of Veterans for Peace Ch92
P.O. Box 2548
Seattle, WA 98111
(206) 450-9136
scott@nickelsvilleseattle.org July 27th, 2009
Mr. Tay Yoshitani, Executive Director
Port of Seattle
2711 Alaskan Way
Seattle, WA
Dear Mr. Yoshitani:
Greetings from Nickelsville! There are several purposes in our writing to you today. First we would like to clear up some factual errors made recently by Port Staff. Secondly, we would like to challenge you to reconsider several assumptions the Port of Seattle has made prior to evaluating all the facts. Finally, we would like to bring to your attention a good neighbor in our community, and how their example can help us all.
1) FACTUAL ERRORS
A) FAILURE TO COMMUNICATE DIRECTLY: On July 24th the Port of
Seattle put out a statement about our home. It said that Port Staff has communicated information to Nickelsville advocates over the past week, both verbally and in written form. In fact, no Nickelodeon either resident or staff was communicated with until July 23rd.
The only communication of the 23rd was one phone call to the above number by a Port of Seattle Worker asking for our fax number. While it was provided, no fax was received. Around 10:00 PM that night several Nickelodeons talked to 3 Port of Seattle Police Officers.
This failure to communicate is disappointing to us, as we have asked in writing on 3 separate occasions to meet and talk. The first was around September 25th, 2008. The second was in late June (see attached June 29th letters to Kurt Becket and John Creighton.) A 3rd effort was made the following week, with a similar letter setting out new deadlines.
These letters were all hand delivered to the front desk of the Port Terminal Offices. None have been responded to.
B) PROHIBITIONS ON HOUSING/SERVICES: A second inaccuracy in the July 24th Port Statement is the suggestion that the Washington State Auditor prohibits the Port from doing anything useful outside whatever is deemed Port Business. In fact both you and the Auditor know that temporary use of public property for emergency uses is fitting and proper. Not only has there been an emergency shelter on a Port Pier for 20 years now, but an underused Port Warehouse Terminal 47 was used as shelter for 2 1/2 years with no objection by auditors. If helping the public was really a prohibited use of public funds as you claim, the Port would have to shut down all its property to the many beautiful parks, promenades, gardens and etc that are present now.
If you had accepted our request for a meeting before sending out your statement, you would have learned Nickelsville is not requesting any services from the Port.
We are not asking you to provide us with education, health or housing. Our hope is that you simply allow us to stay together and safe during this emergency period.
C) HEALTH & SAFETY CONCERNS: You will also learn, on meeting us, that the Port of Seattle need not worry that Nickelsville will foul the environment. We are able to have Port a Potties and Dumpsters onsite, in addition to a grey water holding tank which is pumped out when needed. Look at our last site we left it exactly as we found it.
While these health and safety problems are easily solved, without the Ports assistance, the larger health and safety problem of literally thousands of Seattle Citizens sleeping alone, outside, at severe risk of death and injury every night, will only get worse.
D) ORDER TO LEAVE: On Friday night the Port of Seattle Police Chief
had a Notice of Trespass delivered to Terminal 107. Strangely, it
called Reverend Michael Ramos our agent. This is wrong. Michael Ramos, the Executive Director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, has indeed been a good friend and advocate for Nickelsville.
As we told the Port in our June 29th letter, he has mediated for us.
But he is not our agent, and has even told the Port that himself.
It was disappointing to us that your Notice of Trespass was not delivered either to the Staff we have told you we had, or to our camp leadership, but that instead individual Nickelodeons were asked who they were, expected to give their names and then given inaccurate and confusing legal paperwork late in the evening, well into the dusk.
Given that the Port knows how to contact both our attorney and staff person, and have obviously reviewed the legal filings we have made, this could and should have been done in a more respectful and civilized manner. It reminds us of the tactics of fear and intimidation used by the City of Seattle against both ourselves and those who supported us last fall.
2) RECONSIDER ASSUMPTIONS & TAKE ON CHALLENGES
The July 24th Port Statement suggests that the public problem of homelessness should not be solved with public land. It suggest using public land for this public purpose would be disobeying the law.
It is true that the world has been topsy turvy with this kind of thinking for some time, with the illusion that government was not meant to help people, but only business. The last year has taught all of us the folly of this. The greed of the Bush Years is now requiring that we all pull together, and that government take quick and bold action to save threatened parts of our nation and community.
C) HEALTH & SAFETY CONCERNS: You will also learn, on meeting us, that the Port of Seattle need not worry that Nickelsville will foul the environment. We are able to have Port a Potties and Dumpsters onsite, in addition to a grey water holding tank which is pumped out when needed. Look at our last site we left it exactly as we found it.
While these health and safety problems are easily solved, without the Ports assistance, the larger health and safety problem of literally thousands of Seattle Citizens sleeping alone, outside, at severe risk of death and injury every night, will only get worse.
D) ORDER TO LEAVE: On Friday night the Port of Seattle Police Chief
had a Notice of Trespass delivered to Terminal 107. Strangely, it
called Reverend Michael Ramos our agent. This is wrong. Michael Ramos, the Executive Director of the Church Council of Greater Seattle, has indeed been a good friend and advocate for Nickelsville.
As we told the Port in our June 29th letter, he has mediated for us.
But he is not our agent, and has even told the Port that himself.
It was disappointing to us that your Notice of Trespass was not delivered either to the Staff we have told you we had, or to our camp leadership, but that instead individual Nickelodeons were asked who they were, expected to give their names and then given inaccurate and confusing legal paperwork late in the evening, well into the dusk.
Given that the Port knows how to contact both our attorney and staff person, and have obviously reviewed the legal filings we have made, this could and should have been done in a more respectful and civilized manner. It reminds us of the tactics of fear and intimidation used by the City of Seattle against both ourselves and those who supported us last fall.
2) RECONSIDER ASSUMPTIONS & TAKE ON CHALLENGES
The July 24th Port Statement suggests that the public problem of homelessness should not be solved with public land. It suggest using public land for this public purpose would be disobeying the law.
It is true that the world has been topsy turvy with this kind of thinking for some time, with the illusion that government was not meant to help people, but only business. The last year has taught all of us the folly of this. The greed of the Bush Years is now requiring that we all pull together, and that government take quick and bold action to save threatened parts of our nation and community.
We therefore challenge the Port of Seattle to join other government bodies that are looking honestly at the mess we are all in, and taking steps to restore the common good. The public is way ahead of most governments in understanding this, and their support for our efforts has grown dramatically since last September.
We challenge you to look seriously at your claim that the State Auditor wont allow emergency shelter when thousands are homeless and hundreds over the last 5 years have died outside and by violence in King County. We will assume without specifics that this vague claim is just another way of saying its not my job.
We challenge the Ports Claim of working in Good Faith. You have not contacted us and sought out the facts before saying you cant be there so leave. That kind of approach is not how the Port got the 3rd Runway Built, or led to your enormous commitment to contribute to a big bore tunnel along the waterfront to replace the viaduct.
We challenge the Ports Priorities. It is time to stop thinking of the public only as those well off enough to ride the Cruise Ships docking in the Harbor, or passengers getting off the planes at SeaTac. We have equal value as citizens, but will settle for much less of a subsidy than the Cruise Ship and Airline Industries get from the Port.
Our Nickelsville Community has resolved to take a stand on a historic piece of land. The Duwamish People have called it many things. One name was Yil eq qud - where the horse clams are. People have lived where we are now for over 1,400 years.
Within 30 years of the first settlers of European ancestry settling on this land, in the 1930s, squatters and shanty towns where here. That is how those people survived that depression.
3) GOOD NEIGHBORS
Nickelsville has been blessed to have many good neighbors. We would like to hold up one of those many for your consideration Chairperson Hanson and the Duwamish People. At our first site supposedly owned by the City of Seattle and reserved for a future jail Chairperson Hanson visited us and blessed the land. Since then she has visited often, bringing some supplies and much soup, salmon and frybread.
Chairperson Hanson tried to get other governments to look after us, and called many Leaders in the week before we left our last site. But few called her back to help. That is why she stood near our site on July 23rd, while we packed, with a sign reading SHAME.
We appreciate her telling us where her people used to use the land around the Terminal 107, and her concern for our well being. We are grateful for her talking to us and seeing what we need before judging us.
Nickelsville needs more neighbors and leaders like the Duwamish and Chairperson Hanson. We hope to meet with you soon and begin working toward the common good.
Sincerely,
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