MOHAI – History on the Move
30 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
in MOHAI, Museums, Nickelsville, Pearl Jam, Seattle Tags: Center for Wooden Boats, Lake Union Park, Lincoln Toe Truck, Maritime Heritage Center, Northwest Seaport, WTO
This year on Museum Day, September 25, I decided to check out the Museum of History & Industry (MOHAI). Amazingly enough, I had not been to MOHAI before, even though it’s current location is a short distance from me, just across the Montlake Bridge from Husky Stadium in the U District. The Smithsonian’s Museum Day provides a printable ticket for free admission to the museum of your choice (for up to two people), so it seemed like the perfect time to check it out.
Carroll's Clock
Greeting you at the entrance of MOHAI is the old Carroll’s jewelry store clock, which seems out of place in MOHAI’s park like setting. It is not out of time, however, at least not literally. There was a clock repairman performing maintenance when I got there.
Great Seattle Fire
The Great Seattle Fire on June 6, 1889 burned down 32 city blocks according to the MOHAU sign. One of those epic events that changed the city. All because a glue pot boiled over in a carpenter’s shop.
This glue pot:
Glue Pot
Wow! This is it? This little pot filled with glue boiling over and much of the city was gone.
One exhibit I couldn’t photograph (because there was a sign asking me not to) was the visiting Women’s Votes, Women’s Voices exhibit from the Washington State Historical Society. I was really impressed how progressive Washington State has always been on women voting and other equal rights measures. In addition to being the 5th state to give women the right to vote in 1910; twice – in 1883 and 1887 – the Washington Territorial Legislature gave women the vote, only to have the Territorial Supreme Court stike it down. An equal pay law in 1943!
Details on the Washington State Historical Society’s timeline: http://stories.washingtonhistory.org/suffrage/Times/Default.aspx
History is on the move into the museum. . .
Hey, wait! What’s the Lincoln Toe Truck doing in here? I miss going by it on Fairview on the bus. . .
Lincoln Toe Truck
. . . and I guess now the Lusty Lady sign is officially history. . .
Lusty Lady Sign
. . . of course, we all miss the wild & humorous Lusty Lady signs. I know. It’s a family museum. Actually, those real signs were across the street from the Seattle Art Museum, often with long lines of school kids on field trips, though. Hopefully that wasn’t all they remembered when they got back to class!
Sometimes WTO seems like really ancient history, in spite of, or maybe because of?, the fact I lived through it.
WTO Turtle Costume
The turtle costumes were great! They got people asking why and learning how the treaty, created for large corporations benefit, knocked down laws to protect sea turtles.
Of course, WTO wasn’t Seattle’s first major protest that shut down downtown. In 1919 the Unions were also out for the Seattle General Strike.
A dire warning from The Seattle Star newspaper:
Seattle General Strike Headline
Another epic part of American history, including Seattle’s, was the Great Depression. A photograph of Seattle’s Hooverville, stretching out in the current SODO neighborhood where there are now two sports stadiums is at MOHAI.
Seattle's Hooverville
It was kind of jarring to walk by Seattle’s current Nickelsville tent city on the way home.
Nickelsville
We seem to be going backwards. While I’m glad at news from this week’s Real Change newspaper that Nickelsville may soon have a permanent location, we really need housing (and living wage jobs) for all.
One of my favorite exhibits were the ship mastheads:
Ship Mastheads
I hadn’t realized there were ones of men as well as women. Wonder if that’s where the expression “like ships passing in the night” comes from?
History is really on the move with MOHAI, because MOHAI is moving. Evidently the planned I-520 expansion for the Evergreen Point Floating bridge is displacing it from it’s current beautiful, but obscure, location; and it’s going to be moving into the old Naval Reserve Armory building on South Lake Union.
In fact, MOHAI has a separate website on the move: http://www.historyismoving.org/
Wait! Is that a picture of Pearl Jam I see? Well, at least it’s under “History is Relevant”!
Old Armory/Future MOHAI
It will be a great location for the museum. I checked out the new Lake Union Park that’s around the old armory building following an Sunday afternoon Amnesty International planning meeting at the Westlake Ave. Uptown Espresso.
There’s more history behind the armory building, with the Northwest Seaport Maritime Heritage Center and their historic fleet, including the 1889 Arthur Foss Tug, which they let you wander around on (and have a donation box, suggesting $1 a person):
Arthur Foss Tug
Next door to the Lake Union Park is the Center for Wooden Boats:
Center for Wooden Boats
Native American boat carvers were working on a boat that day.
Boat carver talks to a family
You can wander around and check out all the beautiful wooden boats:
Wooden Boat
All of which will add to an interesting visit once MOHAI moves into the old armory in 2012!
More information on MOHAI and current exhibits at: http://www.seattlehistory.org/
Nickelsville Fundraiser & Updates
28 Nov 2008 Leave a Comment
in Homeless, Mayor Greg Nickels, Music, Nickelsville, Protests, Seattle Tags: Aaron Stephen Beaucage, Brenden Foster, Jeff Greer, Katie Costello, Q Cafe, Raging Grannies, Real Change, Tim Harris, U2, University Christian Church, University Congregational Church of Christ
So, I’m behind again, and it’s been nearly 2 weeks since the Nickelsville fundraiser at Q Cafe.
First, some updates. According to the Seattle PI, Mayor Nickels is insisting Nickelsville must move from their current location at the University Christian Church by December 5. As noted in the Seattle Weekly, the Mayor is trying to fine the church, citing that only one tent city can exist under the consent decree (even though there’s obviously not enough room to combine the two, and Nickelsville is separate and aiming to be a shanty town). At the moment, at least, it looks like they’ll be able to move a few blocks to the University Congregational Church of Christ.
While the Mayor has come up with no real solution (one night in the shelter, pushing out someone else who also needs the space does not keep anyone in out of the cold for long), he insists on the one hand that these are terrible, scary people living in the greenbelts, and on the other, that they are all just activists involved in a political protest who have nice, warm beds to go home to.
So, on November 15, there was a packed fundraiser for Nickelsville at Q Cafe. Opening, and playing off and on throughout the evening, was Jeff Greer and his band.
Jeff played a mix of U2 songs, including, It’s a Beautiful Day (as an opener), and One (with a montage of scenes from Nickelsville in the background). and his own originals, including In the Name of Freedom, about the hypocrisy of claiming war is in the name of God, and 1:46, about the child sex trade.
Then we had the Raging Grannies singing a set on housing and homelessness, including the one below, from a summer Nickelsville gig.
I found it a little unsettling to realize the Grannies now have at least one member who’s only a few years older than me. Of course, everyone else would find it a little unsettling if I were to join them. Trust me, you don’t want to hear me sing!
Then some of the Nickelsville residents spoke for themselves.
Next, Tim Harris, editor of Real Change sang a set, some with Revel (above). Not surprisingly, I Like Pink was his biggest hit of the evening.
Then they had a video of Brenden Foster, the little boy who recently died of leukemia and who’s last wish was that the homeless at Nickelsville (and around the country) be fed.
And a child shall lead them.
Katie Costello, a young woman with a beautiful voice, who come and sings at Nickelsville took the stage next. One of the songs she sang was penned after seeing people out with their Hope signs election night, next to a homeless man sleeping nearby.
and how can we talk about hope and change
when we’re just like those fools
just as selfish, just as strange
its our policy to consume and ignore
we drink till we’re too drunk
to hear the cries of the poorits not men in high towers
its not the powers that be
who decide history
no, its you and me
and we can do it differently
Towards the end of the evening, a poet and resident of Nickelsville, Aaron Stephen Beaucage, came to his stage to recite his poems, which were then performed as lyrics set to music by Jeff Greer and his band.
Here’s a clip, from Nickelsville, of his Cactuses and the Infinite:
All in all, a great evening and successful fundraiser.
It does strike me that all the Mayor is being asked is to let the residents of Nickelsville be, while they create their own community at least giving them a minimal level of shelter, and probably more community than many of us have in this day and age. Mayor Nickels apparently would rather they all live separately in doorways or alleys somewhere (although, heaven forbid, not our green spaces), so that people like young Brenden don’t notice them.
Meanwhile, affordable housing is disappearing for more of us as condos go up and the city talks about “workforce housing” for people who make double what I do. I’m no saint in dealing with the homeless, to be honest, but I know, like many people, I’m just a paycheck away.
Nickelsville Moves to My Neighborhood
11 Oct 2008 Leave a Comment
in Homeless, Mayor Greg Nickels, Nickelsville, Seattle Tags: University Christian Church, University District
Nickelsville has found a new home – in my neighborhood! Mayor Nickels has forced the encampment (named in his honor) to move again on Friday, this time from Discovery Park to the parking lot of the University Christian Church on 15th & 50th in the University District.
Amazingly enough, even though the self-described Nickelodeons have now moved off city property, that may not be enough to please his Honor. According to the Seattle PI:
Authorities have been vague about what the city’s next steps are, although they have previously threatened fines on property owners who sponsor Nickelsville.
Not only that, groups who help them have been threatened with fines, according to the Daily Weekly, the Seattle Weekly’s blog:
The city’s notice to Nickelsville in Discovery Park is a “final” one that applies to all future encampments within city limits. It says that no notice will be required for future campsite removals. In addition to encampment residents, the notice names a number of advocacy groups— the Interfaith Taskforce on Homelessness, SHARE/WHEEL, Veterans for Peace— that will be fined (up to $150 per day) if Nickelsville resurfaces on city property.
I talked to one of the campers who had previously had his belongings including a new tent and gear he saved $300 to buy destroyed by the city in one of the city’s sweeps of green spaces.
He said the city had even threatened to fine the Honey Bucket people!
Meanwhile, according to the PI article, the Mayor has so far refused to meet with anyone from Nickelsville. His office also claims that “Seattle bears a disproportionate burden caring for the area’s homeless and that officials are doing the best they can.”
Well, some of that may be. Seattle is central to the region, easier to get around without a car and doesn’t sprawl as much as the suburbs. Yet, when it comes to tent cities, the fact is that they have been hosting at least a couple at Eastside churches.
So why is it so difficult for Seattle to do it’s part? It’s easy enough to get permits to condo builders and a trolley to nowhere for the area where Paul Allen owns a lot of land, or a new stadium. Hey, wait a second, I got an idea! The Nickelodeons should ask for money for a stadium. They could help build it and staff it. . . No, wait! Think big! They can supervise it’s building and staffing and afford nice places for themselves in Medina! Then the Mayor would talk to them! Oh, wait, isn’t he supposed to serve Seattle’s citizens?
In all seriousness, though, it’s totally disturbing that, not only won’t Mayor Nickels meet with the homeless residents of Nickelsville or do anything to help them; he wants to keep hounding them wherever they try to settle down for a while. Evidently he thinks they should all be back in the elements, sleeping in doorways; or maybe just that they should disappear.
Portland has built a Dignity Village for their homeless. Short of providing actual housing, why not have one in Seattle?
PS: Sounds like they University neighborhood, including students, has been considerably more welcoming than the city, including bringing food.
Nickelsville At Discovery Park
05 Oct 2008 Leave a Comment
in Homeless, Justice, Mayor Greg Nickels, Nickelsville Tags: Daybreak Star, Discovery Park, United Indians of All Tribes
So, Mayor Nickels forced the homeless encampment, Nickelsville, to move again last Wednesday night. This time the Nickelodeons (as they call themselves) moved to the grounds of Daybreak Star, the cultural center for the United Indians of All Tribes at Discovery Park.
Unfortunately, as the Seattle PI reported, it turned out that, while members of the United Indians of All Tribes Foundation were accepting of their new neighbors, the land for the center was leased from the city, who posted 72 hour notices by Thursday evening. An update from the neighborhood blog, Magnolia Voice, reports that the campers now have until Wednesday to move, although the city is planning on fining Nickelsville $150 a day starting Monday night at 5 pm.
In spite of past intervention by the Governor (mentioned previously), and, Seattle area State Legislatures, according to the Seattle Weekly’s blog, the Nickels’ administration’s only interest in the situation seems to be punitive – send police, levy fines, and move the homeless off city land. Claims of providing housing for everyone who needs it do not appear to be true.
Personally, I think Mayor Nickels is like Senator McCain. He just doesn’t get it, and, let’s face it, he’s working for the downtown business interests and those of the wealthy like Paul Allen. While high price condos are going in and affordable housing destroyed, the Mayor is focusing on “workforce housing” for people who make over twice what I (and many others) do. While I do think it’s important to keep housing for middle class workers (and it says a lot when even that is disappearing), where is there left for low income workers like myself (unless you’re lucky enough to have a below market unit), let alone the homeless? Yes, there is money for subsidies, but it’s not enough to cover all the people who would need it; let alone the fact most people just want affordable housing, not charity. There are plans to help the homeless, in the future, but more affordable housing is disappearing and where do they go meanwhile?
To Nickelsville, which is still looking for a permanent home!
Nickelsville in Limbo
27 Sep 2008 2 Comments
in Economy, Homeless, Justice, Mayor Greg Nickels, Nickelsville, Protests, Seattle
So, Mayor Nickels did send the police in Friday to clear out Nickelsville, as promised. Fortunately, the Church Council of Greater Seattle was able to get Ron Judd from Governor Gregoire’s office to negotiate a temporary reprieve and 42 of the tents were moved to a parking lot on state land until Wednesday, according to accounts in the Times and PI. Twenty two chose to be arrested to make their point while the police tore down the pink tents and wooden shanty town structures residents and their helpers were already constructing.
Where are the people to go, though? According to the PI, “on Thursday night, about 140 people slept in Nickelsville”. The Times claims that the city has offered shelter to all that want it and only 14 Nickelsville residents have taken them up on the offer. Thursday’s PI quotes the Mayor’s spokesperson, Karin Zaugg Black, as saying that “shelters beds were ‘available for everyone or anyone.’ ‘We’ve never had to turn anyone away’ from a shelter after removing him or her from a camp, she said.
But according to the Nickelsville website:
Mayor Nickels continues to argue that there are shelters available. Friday night after Nickelsville was evicted from City land, Operation Nightwatch was still unable to find shelters for all who asked despite the Mayor’s statement that 60-80 new beds would be opened that night. They referred people to the now reduced in size Nickelsville operating in the nearby State of Washington DOT parking lot.
Also according to the Nickelsville site:
During the One Night Count of January 2008, it was found that 8439 people were homeless in King County. 5808 had shelter through existing programs but 2631 were without, a 15% increase over last year. 34 homeless people have died outside this year alone.
While I don’t like the idea of the return of shantytown “Hoovervilles” or a Nickelsville, where are these people supposed to go? At the rate we’re going, both towards ever increasing rents as Seattle goes condo, and with the economy tanking (couldn’t we turn some of those condos into low income housing?), I fear I may end out on the street some day in the not to distant future. A shanty would be more comfortable than sleeping outside or in a tent. It’s becoming in America like it is in the so called third world, isn’t it? There’s going to be the rich in their condos and gated communities, with a vanishing middle class, and the rest of us living in shanty slums.
Yet, consider this – the dignity and determination of those building Nickelsville, while the Mayor, sitting in his comfortable home and office, does nothing to help, only threatening to evict everyone, claiming to put them in shelter space that doesn’t exist. Yet, Mayor Nickels always has time to help his friend Paul Allen build another stadium (ironically, where Hooverville in Seattle used to stand) or unneeded trolley to the neighborhood Paul and his friends are developing.
Have a heart, Mayor Nickels. Let these people stay, or find them real shelter.
Nickelsville Opens
22 Sep 2008 1 Comment
in Homeless, Mayor Greg Nickels, Nickelsville, Protests, Seattle Tags: Real Change
In the wee hours of this Monday morning, the homeless, with the help of their supporters, moved into Nickelsville, envisioned as a future shanty town, currently a sea of pink tents (donated by the Girl Scouts, according to most reports, although KIRO just said they’re from the Race for the Cure).
Mayor Nickels is not amused, and the city has already posted Nickelsville with a 72 hour eviction notice. The Mayor “reiterated his policy” (of bulldozing homeless encampments and throwing away the poorest of people’s meager belongings), according to KIRO 7.
These are not healthy places. These are not safe places for people to be. It’s just wrong in a city in the richest country, America, for people to be living in encampments in our greenbelts and our parks,” Nickels said.
The mayor said he wants to help those who need shelter to find it.
“We are committed to ending homelessness,” Nickels said.
So why hasn’t he? According to Real Change: “This past January’s “One Night Count” found 2,631 homeless men, women, and children living outside after all available shelters had filled up.”
Where are people supposed to stay?
The Seattle Displacement Coalition has documented that the City continues to lose affordable housing faster than it is created. The overall supply of housing affordable to low-income people is less now than it was at the start of the “10-Year Plan.” According to 2008’s One Night Count, 80 percent of the homeless in King County became homeless when their housing in King County became unaffordable.
What are people supposed to do? People who aren’t upscale condo dwellers? Some have taken matters into their own hands (video from the Seattle Weekly blog):
A Tale of Two Cities: Nickelsville vs. Allentown
30 Aug 2008 Leave a Comment
in Bruce Springsteen, Homeless, Mayor Greg Nickels, Nickelsville, Protests, Seattle
On my way to the Power of One exhibit after work yesterday, I came across a jarring juxtaposition of events at Westlake Park. There was a Nickelsville “die-in” protest in support of (and by) the homeless near the arch (in the traditional protest area).
Across the street, was a WSU Cougar rally, complete with marching band and cheerleaders.
I published them together in a mini-gallery, A Tale of Two Cities, on my Flickr page, noting the irony that even a rally for a rival football team gathers more of a crowd than homeless people talking about their friends who have die.
The real Tale of Two Cities contrast, however, would better be reflected by some of my photos further along on my walk, of Belltown condos. Condos, having sprung up all over the city, driving up rents and home prices, and eliminating apartments for lower income renters and single family homes that being torn down as well (drawing the ire and complaints of wealthier commuters on my rides home from work).
Yeah, nice view of the Space Needle, if you can afford it.
Of course, these condo conversions affect the poorest of our society worse. Here’s the problem with Seattle’s attempts at dealing with low-income housing, as noted in a recent Seattle Weekly article, Welcome to Nickelsville:
Two and a half years after implementation, the committee that oversees the 10-year plan (Nickels is on the 23-member governing board, along with King County Executive Ron Sims) reports that 1,449 units have been built and another 1,411 are in the works. But these numbers don’t take into account the number of low-income units lost during this period. According to the Seattle Displacement Coalition, 3,511 low-income units have been lost since 2005 in Seattle alone due to condo conversion, demolition, or speculative sale.
If low-income housing is disappearing at twice the rate it’s being built, not only won’t you house the current homeless, a great many of the rest of us on the bottom may soon be joining them.
Nickelsville protesters are, quite seriously, planning on building a shanty town to live in, called Nickelsville (and to be settled by Nickelodeons), after our beloved Mayor, Greg Nickels, who is currently sending out the police and city workers on homeless encampment sweeps, often taking and destroying what little these people own in the process.
As Danny Westneat noted in his June 15 article in the Seattle Times, it’s a little scary that we’re talking about going back in times to Hoover. . ., er Nickels . . .villes:
Seattle once had a Hooverville in the 1930s on Port of Seattle land near the current sports stadiums.
Twice the city burned the wood and tin shacks, and twice the residents rebuilt. In the mid-’30s, a census counted 639 people living in 479 shacks.
This is what it has come to: The homeless in 2008 are looking to go back to the 1930s.
Yes, it seems like a terrible idea; but where are these people supposed to live when the city’s ten year plan to end homelessness isn’t working and there’s not nearly enough room at the shelters (let alone actual low income housing)? One of Danny Westneat’s readers asked, what about SROs (single room occupancy apartments/hotels)? Indeed, what about SROs? Why is they don’t seem to exist anymore?
We got plenty of condos though, and always money for new stadiums and trolley lines going through (maybe soon to be developed) warehouse districts for Microsoft made billionaire Paul Allen (who spurred the condo explosion in the South Lake Union area that has caused wags to re-name it Allentown).
Why do the city’s priorities seem to be only driven by billionaires and wealthy downtown business owners? I’m afraid Seattle is going to become just like San Francisco or New York City where only the gap is so stark that only the wealthy and the homeless seem to live any more, and people wonder why the homeless seem so hostile.
I leave you with the lyrics of Bruce Springsteen’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad” (long past due review of his and Tom Morello’s live version and the rest of the Magic Tour Highlights album coming soon):
Men walkin’ ‘long the railroad tracks
Goin’ someplace there’s no goin’ back
Highway patrol choppers comin’ up over the ridge
Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge
Shelter line stretchin’ round the corner
Welcome to the new world order
Families sleepin’ in their cars in the southwest
No home no job no peace no restThe highway is alive tonight
But nobody’s kiddin’ nobody about where it goes
I’m sittin’ down here in the campfire light
Searchin’ for the ghost of Tom Joad
Looks like the ghost of Tom Joad is going to be living on in Nickelsville.
Welcome to the 21st Century in Seattle!
Recent Comments