October 3, 2011 by mike.

The City of Olympia responded to my request last month that they include public bathrooms in the Artesian Well improvement and reported they don’t have the funds to include public bathrooms at the Artesian Well.  That’s fine for now.  But the national and state economy are putting more people on the streets every day and public bathrooms seem like the least we can do for folks and let it not be said that we did not do the least we could do, right?

Last week, I sent a message to the City Council asking them to open the bathrooms at City Hall 24/7 to improve the lot of people living on the street and to reduce the public blight of sidewalks, alleys, doorways, etc, being used as after-hour toilet facilities.  I did not get a response last week, so I am renewing my request today.   I suggest that those of us who support public bathrooms 24/7 let our voices be heard.  I think there is a City Council meeting on Tuesday at 7 pm at City Hall.

Here is my email to the City Council:

Dear Sirs and Madams:

I did not receive a response to my earlier email, so I am sending it again.  I hope you will consider this proposal.  I believe that a lot of the groups that work with the houseless population in Olympia are eager to work with the City to resolve any concerns that the City might have regarding public bathrooms.  The bathrooms need to be in areas that are routinely patrolled by police or security officers and they need to be seen as a private/public partnership to improve the downtown area.

I look forward to hearing from you regarding this proposal.

Sincerely,

Mike Coday

On 09/23/2011 09:02 AM, Mike Coday wrote:

Dear Sirs and Madams:

Could the City make arrangements to have the public bathrooms at City Hall open on a 24 hour basis?  We have already paid the construction cost, there is pretty good security in that building and there is daily maintenance of the bathrooms.  We really need to increase access to public bathrooms in downtown Olympia.  This is a win-win situation.  We could “clean up” downtown Olympia in a meaningful way by making sure that visitors and residents of downtown Olympia can find a bathroom when they need one. 

Thank you for considering this request.

Sincerely,

 Mike Coday

Want to add your voice?

Doug Mah <dmah@ci.olympia.wa.us>

Craig Ottavelli <cottavel@ci.olympia.wa.us>

Stephen Buxbaum <sbuxbaum@ci.olympia.wa.us>

Karen Rogers <krogers@ci.olympia.wa.us>

Jeannine Roe <jroe@ci.olympia.wa.us>

Rhenda Iris Strub <rstrub@ci.olympia.wa.us>

Steve Langer <slanger@ci.olympia.wa.us>

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September 23, 2011 by mike.

Dear Sirs and Madams:

Could the City make arrangements to have the public bathrooms at City Hall open on a 24 hour basis?  We have already paid the construction cost, there is pretty good security in that building and there is daily maintenance of the bathrooms.  We really need to increase access to public bathrooms in downtown Olympia.  This is a win-slanger@ci.olympia.wa.uswin situation.  We could “clean up” downtown Olympia in a meaningful way by making sure that visitors and residents of downtown Olympia can find a bathroom when they need one.

Thank you for considering this request.

On 09/19/2011 08:27 AM, Danelle MacEwen wrote:

 

Mr. Coday:

 

Thank you for your suggestion and comments.  Unfortunately this is not something that can be done as part of the immediate improvements to the artesian well area due to budget constraints.  Please let me know if you have any other questions regarding the improvements at the well scheduled for this fall.

 

Thanks,
Danelle

Danelle MacEwen

City of Olympia Public Works

601 Fourth Avenue E.

P.O. Box 1967

Olympia, WA 98507-1967

Office: (360) 753-8211

E-Mail: dmacewen@ci.olympia.wa.us

 

From: Mike Coday [mailto:mike@smallblueplanet.org]
Sent: Sunday, September 18, 2011 1:13 PM
To: Danelle MacEwen; publicworks; Karen Rogers
Subject: Improvements to the Artesian Well - public bathrooms!

 

I suggest that the City consider addition of public bathroom to be open 7 days per week, 24 hours per day in the vicinity of the Artesian Well to improve the beauty and convenience of the downtown area.  This would be a great location for public bathroom.  It is in close proximity to City Hall and the Police Station, so maintenance and security of the bathroom would be easier in that location than it might be in several other locations in the downtown area.

The increase in numbers of people living on the streets and woods in Olympia have created increased demand for public bathrooms.  I believe the City should address this problem with a compassionate solution and expand public bathroom access in the downtown area.

Thank you,

Mike Coday

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September 22, 2011 by mike.

What better place than Olympia to gather if the Washington State economy has put you on the street?  Come to Olympia to assemble and petition for redress of grievance.   Come and sit on the streets of Olympia as a demonstration and act of free speech.  Come to Olympia and greet the legislators and the policy makers who will have to step over you, or walk around you, as they move around in their daily lives.  The City of Olympia is criminalizing poverty in the downtown area, but the First Amendment comes in…    uh…  First!  We have the right to sit, recline, sing, grieve, and beg for good public policy in Washington State.  Come to Olympia.

If you get hassled by the Olympia Police Department for exercising your free speech rights, email the particulars:  Where, when, police officer name to olympiacopwatch@gmail.com and we will challenge the City and the Police Department to justify the violation of your first amendment rights.

I know that some folks get scared when they have to be close to houseless people.  I encourage those folks to come down to the Artesian Well during daylight and introduce themselves to the people who move through that setting.  There are lots of tattoos, piercings, and a fair amount of cursing, but there is also a lot of openness, music, support, and community. There are scary, dangerous folks everywhere, on the street, in the burbs, in the police force, but most of the folks everywhere are just human being like you and me.  Make the effort to connect and see what happens.  Stop thinking, “there but for the grace of God, go I” and start thinking “there by the grace of God, go I.” Really attempt to connect with the folks and see what happens.  If they ask you or tell you to leave them alone, leave them alone.  It ain’t rocket science.

I have no problem with an ordinance against aggressive panhandling.  I am politely asked to share what I have in my pocket on regularly and I share what I can.  When I say, hey, wish I could, but I am short, I almost always get an “ok, thanks” type of response.  I don’t want to be harassed when I say no, and it doesn’t happen to me. I suspect it doesn’t happen because I really engage with the people asking, I look them in the eye when I tell them I am short.  I don’t avoid the folks.  I treat them with respect and they respond in kind.

Although I am not keen on the whole idea of prohibition (I have some libertarian impulses) I think I am supportive of a ban on fortified wines in downtown.  I hope for a day when there alcohol, drug consumption and possession are not a crime and when the money saved from the “war on drugs” is redirected to substance abuse treatment on request, fully funded. I guarantee you that this approach to dealing with drugs will be more cost-effective and humane.

Come to Olympia.  I will see you in the streets.

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September 21, 2011 by mike.

if you’re talking about destruction, don’t you know that you can count me out…

I share John Lennon’s ambivalence about the revolution, but I think there are revolutions coming.  Maybe a revolution doesn’t have to include the choreography and armament to take the Bastille?

How about a revolution in agriculture?  We watched a video about colony collapse disorder last night: Vanishing of the Bees.   Well done, sobering, broad review of the situation for our pollination partners.  I used to keep bees.  Most beekeepers develop a pretty strong connection to their hives, to the collective being that is a beehive.  The beekeepers in this movie certainly showed that connection.  I don’t want to give the story away, so I will just say that I think the filmmakers are correct to identify bees as “canaries in the coal mine.”  I think we need a revolution in the way we approach agriculture and food.   Global food.  What should it look like?

Also thinking about our global economic system.  Tikkun has a piece by Leonardo Boff on the Crisis of Capitalism.  This is an interesting read.  I do have a sense that the current global economic crisis is qualitatively different from previous downturns.  We face some pretty staggering demands from the natural world.  We now live in a world of more extreme weather and the likelihood is that the trend to more extreme weather is just getting started, so the solution is a really major retooling of the world economy where sustainability rather than profit is the goal. Stabilizing the environment is going to require more than a game of three card monte based on cap and trade.  The shell game has always been entertaining, but the game is fixed and the outcome is about fleecing the mark.   (if you look around and you can’t spot the mark, you are the mark).  Here’s a little taste of that Boff piece:

I believe the present crisis of capitalism is more than cyclical and structural. It is terminal. Are we seeing the end of the genius of capitalism, of always being able to adapt to any circumstance? I am aware that only few other people maintain this thesis. Two things, however, bring me to this conclusion.

The first is the following: the crisis is terminal because we all, but in particular capitalism, have exceeded the limits of the Earth. We have occupied and depredated the whole planet, destroying her subtle equilibrium and exhausting her goods and services, to the point that she alone can no longer replenish all that has been removed…

The second reason is linked to the humanitarian crisis that capitalism is creating.

Before, it was limited to the peripheral countries. Now it is global, and it has reached the central countries. The economic question cannot be resolved by dismantling society. The victims, connected by new venues of communication, resist, revolt and threaten the present order. Ever more people, especially the young, reject the perverse capitalist political economic logic: the dictatorship of finance that, through the market, subjugates the States to its interests, and the profitability of speculative capital, that circulates from one stock market to another, reaping profits without producing anything at all, except more money for the stockholders.

So our gaze in the US of A is currently fixed on the three card monte game that is the national election cycle.  Here we go, keep the cards rotating, let the media cover the “debates” and comment on who won and who lost, like a winner could be found in this crowd (Huntsman?  What is he doing in the GOP?) The media talking heads perform like they have one lonely brain cell in their pretty little heads, they stay away from any significant, in-depth questions, or if they ask a good question, they watch as somebody pulls the string so the candidate can recite a talking  point that may or may not have anything to do with the question or the underlying and significant issue.

Just think about how bad it is when the country is having trouble deciding whether Obama is a better choice than a candidate like Perry or Bachman.  Yikes!  Obama has made some disastrous choices, starting with his choice of Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner and he’s turned out to be sort of an Eisenhower Republican, though maybe some of us were hoping to get a democrat in the WH or even a Rockefeller Republican.  Can’t get there from here.

Imagine this country electing an FDR type democrat?  That would be a revolution (and would probably spark one as well).

Posted in News, Eco Criminals, Politics, Connect the Dots, Small Foot Print, Global Warming | Print | 1 Comment »

September 15, 2011 by mike.

Signed a petition this morning online through PDA to ask the super committee to save a trillion dollars by fixing Medicare Part D.  The change requested would allow the Feds to negotiate drug prices with Big Pharma instead of the current model.   I haven’t studied this hard, but you don’t have to study much to know that the ability to negotiate prices is a good idea.  It’s kind of free market stuff, isn’t it?  Doesn’t the right love the power of the free market?  Let’s see how far this thing goes.  Senator Kyl has jumped off talking about savings from attacking Medicare fraud, but the CBO guy told him point blank, this approach does not address the deficit and tax changes needed. 

I also responded to a request from the FCNL - Friends (quakers) Committee on National Legislation and sent the following letter to my Senator, Patty Murray:

I live in Chehalis, Wa and have been pleased to have you as my Senator.

In my lifetime I have watched the tax table leveled and it has had disastrous effects on the US economy and US politics. The well-to-do, the middle class, and the poor continue to pay their fair share. The “haves” and “have mores” as George Bush called them have had their tax burden greatly relieved and now we face a budget deficit that is a pretext for cutting essential government services that are important to the majority of Americans, but mean little or nothing to the have mores.

In addition to the tax structure tilted to the rich, there is a question of war profiteering and the failure to raise taxes to pay when this country goes to war as it has done too quickly in this century.

The Pentagon budget has doubled in the last 10 years–without even counting what our country has spent on the two wars. It now amounts to more than half of the money Congress appropriates to federal programs each year.

But the main problem is falling revenues and that related directly to the tax hatred and demagogery. A steep tax structure promotes investment in infrastructure, jobs and factories instead of second, third, and fourth homes for the captains of industry.

You are in a very difficult position. It seems you are the only woman on the Super Committee and perhaps this country’s needs more matriotism and less patriotism to turn it around. I send my thoughts to you with the prayer that you will stand larger than a single person on this committee and that you may turn the country in a new direction from your position.

Be strong, be well. Do wonderful things.

Sincerely,

I don’t have much time for this email activism, but I took a minute this morning.  I am generally more directly involved in political action.  I spend more time making signs and materials and engaging in political action than I do sending signing online petitions pleading for change in public policy.  But I took a couple of minutes for this stuff this morning, mainly because FCNL asked me to take a minute.

The Friends, the Quakers, were the folks who ran the underground railroad moving enslaved humans to freedom when slavery was legal in part of our country.  They probably wrote letters and signed petitions as well, but some of the friends of that era believed action was required.

We stand on the shoulders of giants.  Will we stand?  Do we stand for anything?

Which side are you on, boys and girls?

Be strong, be well, DO wonderful things.

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September 10, 2011 by mike.

let’s do the Downtown Oly two step. Let’s tackle beauty first:

Step 1:  Holy smoke, there has been a lot discussion about how scary and disgusting it is to walk the street of downtown Olympia.  The latest installment of this sad story ran in the Daily Zero on Sept 4th.  It led with a line about drunks urinating on the sidewalks.   Boy, is this a sad old story with an axe to grind.  But, let’s just take it straight.  Do drunks urinate on sidewalks in downtown Olympia.  I think that could happen.  Probably mainly at night because there are so few bathrooms available in downtown Olympia after hours unless you have the bills to buy a plate of food to get bathroom access.

I have to say, I am downtown quite a bit and it just doesn’t scare me or disgust me.  I get asked for money, I give it.   I am tied in to this really old and weird spiritual tradition that included some lunacy about “ask and it shall be given’” and “love your enemy,” and relied on an economic model of trusting that when you need a coin or two, it will mysteriously pop out of the mouth or gut of a fish (apologies to my vegan friends, I don’t fish anymore) or will appear from a tiny seed.  I digress…

Back to bathrooms.  It seems to be a fact that if you have had the good fortune to be born into this world, it’s just going to be a matter of time before you will need to find a bathroom.  And not just once.  and not just during daylight hours.  And sometimes you will be able to wait hours, and walk blocks to locate a bathroom, and sometimes, the bathroom better be right around the corner.

It’s too bad that we are in the position of having to discuss availability of bathrooms because in the whole ten thousand years of God’s creation, since Adam and Eve, there were always these interruptions where a human being is saying, hey, hold that thought, I will be right back, have to powder my nose or check on the Kaiser, pick your euphemism for that moment when nature calls.

You would think that in all that time, we would have made peace with this inconvenience and recognized the need for public bathrooms with running water, sink, soap and connected to the “water treatment” system.  But it appears we have not made that peace in downtown Olympia. 

So, instead of the war on the houseless and the “fallout” that attends having no standard residence, why don’t we just make sure that there are plenty of public bathrooms available in the downtown area, day and night?

The bathrooms already exist at Heritage Park, at Percival Landing, at Olympia Center, at the Capitol, at City Hall, at the Transit Center.  Lots of municipalities, public buildings, and quasi-governmental agencies already have bathrooms installed all over downtown.  Maybe we need to step up and recognize that economic conditions have put a lot of people on the street and while we work to sort out that dismal situation, maybe we need to make sure that folks without a house can have access to a bathroom and a sink?  A showerstall or two would probably be appreciated, but lots of us have managed daily ablutions with just sink and soap, I know it can be done, even though there it’s not the same as a long, hot shower.  I am not suggesting a spa for transients, just “comfort stations” at decent intervals.

I think we also need to put pants on the dogs downtown, but we will come back to that campaign once we have public bathrooms up and running.

Next Step?  Safety downtown!  Stay tuned.

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August 26, 2011 by mike.

Haven’t had time to look hard at this group - Climate Reality, but at first glance it appears to be an education campaign.  I am down with that.

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August 23, 2011 by mike.

The Olympian (is it redundant to identify it as a conservative newspaper?) notes on the bottom of front page from Aug 22 that Thurston County is going to lose all of its FEMA funding.  This is a taste of how tea party politics and the absolutist philosophy that “taxes are bad” is going to play out around the country.  A lot of right-wing folks may think that the only people who will be hurt are poor folks (who will then be motivated to get a job, like that is going to be easy in this economic environment) but the hurt reaches beyond any particular population and what we will actually see is a decrease of money flowing in the community, at grocery stores, to the utilities, to employees of agencies who provide service to vulnerable populations at wages that rival Walmart’s payscale.  Nate Huling wrote the FEMA fund story for the Daily Zero.  I haven’t done fact-checking or even read it close (because I just scan the Zero, actually reading the thing usually just makes me feel nauseous), but I think he has covered the story pretty well.

In another story on the front page, the zero has a story by Brad Shannon on closing tax exemptions or letting them expire.  A lot of us demonstrated and advocated for fixing the budget by closing exemptions in the last session.  Maybe we were heard by somebody?

Here is a quote by an authentic tea party type on taxes:

IT IS ESSENTIAL THAT YOU SHOULD PRACTICALLY BEAR IN MIND THAT TOWARDS THE PAYMENT OF DEBTS THERE MUST BE REVENUE; THAT TO HAVE REVENUE THERE MUST BE TAXES; that no taxes can be devised which are not more or less inconvenient and unpleasant.

George Washington

The paper led with the Libyan rebel victory over Gadhafi.  I think that battle is not over until Gadhafi is caught, but I guess we will have to wait and see on that.  Like all of the Arab Spring conflicts, I would like to be optimistic that these are populist uprisings that will increase democracy and freedom, but I am not optimistic about the armed conflict in general.  The arms merchants have flooded many nations with small arms and real peace and progress may depend upon the appearance of a cultural leader like Gandhi or Mandela to make real progress.  We could use somebody like those guys here in the States as well.  Kucinich is working on that peace road to prosperity, but it’s a tough slog.

In the absence of leadership or a large cultural shift or propensity toward forgiveness, peace, sustainability and justice, these struggles could just devolve into the cycle of resource wars.

We (the US of A) could/should lead by example.  How about a fair tax structure, a decent safety net, a jobs program based on keynsian economic model of rebuilding green, sustainable, infrastructure?  It’s time to beat the swords into solar panels.

Photo credit to Rob Bishop by way of Wiki Commons.

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August 18, 2011 by mike.

The stock market continues to be on a roller coaster ride as it slides and then rebounds as traders engage in fishing the bottom and making trading commissions, sliding a few bucks out of the pockets of the marks.

Prez Obama is on the road in his magic bus talking about jobs and job creation. The NY Post (bastion of responsible journalism!@!) is reporting the bus was built in Canada.  Well, job creation somewhere on the continent, I guess that’s good, but it might have been a nice touch to have had the thing built here in the USA to go on tour and talk about jobs.  

It’s always easy on the ear to listen to Barack talk and sometimes inspiring, but it’s a bit like holding a shell to your ear and enjoying the sound of the ocean.  It’s largely theater, the connections between the sounds and any reality are pretty slight.

The political decisions that Obama has made - from Geithner instead of Krugman or Stiglitz, to TARP bank bailouts instead of an FDR style green energy public works project, to ditching the public option in favor of a corporate insurance health care makeover, to the late 2010 deal for extending the Bush tax breaks for the have-mores, the spineless negotiation over the debt ceiling - have emptied Obama’s pockets. I think he has no means to create significant jobs legislation.  That opportunity existed in his first 100 days and is now just a faint memory.  Maybe I am wrong about this.  I would love to be wrong about this, but I tend to rely on rational analysis and the rational analysis conclusion I arrive at is bleak.  But who knows, maybe the President will take us all on a snorkeling vacation to Aruba!  Rainbow pie!

Back to rational analysis:

I think we face a different kind of downturn today.  We are so deep in the trees now that the forest vision is long gone.  What I recall is that our means of production, our fuel source, is a disaster from an environmental perspective and is also past its peak from a production angle, so that’s an ugly situation.  I think we are not-facing an existential crisis where we desperately need to look at an energy system conversion to green, sustainable energy infrastructure.  The good news is that the energy is there and will be for a long time because our parent star seems to be in its prime, but we have to wake up and appreciate the relatively clean energy raining down on us every day.  That’s happening to some extent, but there is also the prospect of resource wars and war profiteering is enjoying the low tax rates, so a rational person would have to feel bullish about the prospect for military solutions to scarcity problems.  Arab spring?  Street riots about austerity?  you connect the dots, kemosabe.

Anyway, haven’t had much to say lately.  Have been working on video projects.  Watching the madness of the Tea Party/GOP ramp up as the spokesmodels compete to make the most outrageous comments and seize the low ground for the next election cycle.

And out of the mist, the fog of war, the swirl of drone rocket debris clouds, comes the POTUS in his new bus to cheer us up with talk of jobs.

Holey moley. I don’t think talk of a jobs program is going to get it done, Barack.  What else have you got?  How is life in the bubble?  I know that having someone other than Barack get elected in the next POTUS cycle would be really bad, but getting Barack for a second bite at the apple doesn’t look that good either. The Obama fans will be angry with me for declaring the emperor is parading around naked, but I think Barack has to take a little responsibility for letting the pragmatic partisans on the other side back him into this corner. I never suggested that he bang his head on the wall of third-way politics.

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August 7, 2011 by mike.

The annual peace walk to the Ground Zero Center in Bangor is wrapping up today with a talk by Dennis Kucinich at 6:30 pm.   I was able to speak with Senji Kanaeda for a few minutes on July 31st and am finishing up a short video with Senji’s thoughts front and center.

I still have a little tweaking to do on the video, but it’s almost finished and I wanted to get this up.  I am also using the video to publicize the Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant event at Traditions on Monday, August 8th at 7 pm.  We have to stop nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.  This is a road that leads nowhere.

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