RantWoman's Light
RantWoman is VERY clear to ask (Again) to be present to hear QuEST fellows speak in their own words and to tend to her personal safety concerns as someone who travels regularly by foot and bus near UFM. RantWoman has more to say further down. If everyone is lucky, RantWoman may hit a stopping point and save some of the more scorching Light roaring out of her inner blowtorch for another post.RantWoman means it about wanting to center the QuEST fellows speaking in their own words. RantWoman also feels considerable compulsion to share her Light. Fortunately or unfortunately, RantWoman is unclear how much of it will be needed at this Adult Religious Education session. Nevertheless RantWoman is clear to offer some of it here.
--RantWoman thinks talking about police abolition is a really good idea. In the meantime, there are good reasons police officers might be around, besides RantWoman (checks notes: praying across the street.). --RantWoman notes that imperfect as current accountability measures are, it MATTERS to be able to expect that officers will have both their name and their badge numbers uncovered. RantWoman further notes that police officers should both have their own bodycams on and expect that others may be videotaping.
--RantWoman would also LOVE to hear out of the mouths of Quakers that at least some of them are familiar with the Office of Professional Accountability, "the consent decree," and the latest in the Seattle Police Officers' Guild contract between police and the city.
--Will the police officers actually show up or will COVID, "blue flu" and mutual mistrust and community exasperation about cop behavior during recent demonstrations get in the way of effective interactions?
Homelessness ministry
UFM has multiple homelessness issues that might require police attention:----Graffitti: Someone scrawled "No Bums" somewhere on Meeting property. There is thought of building a fence. RantWoman is not saying that is necessarily a bad idea; RantWoman is a little worred about vague design issues she has so far articulated poorly. RantWoman is also afraid a fence wll just give the graffiti practitioner(s) a bigger billboard.
--RantWoman's ministry of observing notes another homelessness angle: RantWoman assumes the Sunday morning dog walkers are paying Seattle rents and are not required automatically to be thrilled about opportunities to interact with homeless people. RantWoman may be making bad assumptions but notes a continuing need for neighborhood connections and observations.What might Friends do to tend to this point?
--RantWoman vacuumed up an important statistic recently: the percentage of people identified during the annual one-night count of people living on the streets as having some kind of disability has been steadily climbing to over 60 %. RantWoman has no opinion about whether people with disabilities are explicitly either being targeted or ignored.as far as infrastructure near and immediately around Meeting. RantWoman simply notes tartly that current real estate and land use realities treat all kinds of people equally badly. More to the point, RantWoman as a person with a disability is likely to hear and be able to speak to disability specific issues in ways that people who do not identify as having a disability cannot. In other words, if people are talking about lots of people with disabilities and interactions with cops, it is appropriate specifically to include people with disabilities in the conversation and to do so with reasonable timeliness, not by postponing any action on requests for months.
--RantWoman is not current up to the latest shriek of story about one person who is clearly mentally ill. RantWoman has no opinion about some homeless services questions that come to mind in that case. RantWoman just notes that it can be DARNED difficult to encourage someone to get help, that getting to help sometimes involves multiple traumatizing encounters with police and Emergency Rooms. Even though one's odds of getting shot by police increase if one is mentally ill, the effects of lesser traumatizing law enforcement encounters have much more widespread impact. Truly, some parts of this reality reflect problems that society cannot police its way out of, problems where flat out more revenue is needed and where public funds would be much better spent on community mental health and peer mutual programs than on policing and jails.
--What is the relationship between homelessness issues in UFM's corner of the U-district and flows of people and problems in other parts of the U district?
And add transportation to the mix.
There is a Light Rail station opening nearby within the next year. There are both infrastructure and human behavior issues r elated to pedestrian and bus travel routes near Meeting: many people are right to be highly concerned about personal safety as they travel to and from places like light rail stations. There is a traffic injury accident hotspot near the Meeting. Wherever besides basic policing some of these realities land in governmental functions, right now much but not all of the work falls to the police department. What transformations need to occur and on what timeline to preserve skills and knowledge and create truly welcoming crime-discouraging public transit and safe walking / biking as well as driving routes to handle traffic increases when the new Light Rail station opens?RantWoman has specifically asked to be allowed to hear from QuEST fellows in their own words.
RantWoman is happy to invoke Quaker testimony terms like equality, integrity and community though peace and simplicity are less directly to be had. And community is pretty heavily freighted right now by "I don' wanna" and concepts like gaslighting. So it's another day in paradise, er pandemic, er...
RantWoman humbly wants to note one issue about timing of this missive. The missive has been seasoning for quite some time; the end result timing wise is a fabulous tit for tat repetition of RantWoman's experiences with certain elders who in the past have only been available late at night or late in the afternoon before Meeting for Business. RantWoman gets that not everyone reads their email every day and it is summer when even in #pandemic freeze mode, people like to get outside and tend their gardens. However, RantWoman is also called to make the point that disability is not a deal with it at other's convenience. Disability asks everyone in our community to consider small steps to make someone's life better. RantWoman has the nerve to recommend that small steps also make the community's life better.
Further Full disclosures:
RantWoman has been arrested multiple times for civil disobedience. RantWoman has also stopped participating in Please arrest me protest because of the incredible amount of privilege represented by potential employers who say "Good for you" when the subject of an arrest record comes up.RantWoman has also held crowd management roles and political protest marshal roles where being able to do basic interactions with police has been part of the expectations on all sides.
RantWoman has also called the police many times.
Two recent blog posts related to police matters. The second is tangled. Time was RantWoman LIKED Quakers because they could handle complexity. RantWoman expects SOME Quakers CAN still handle complexity
All Lives Splatter
I pray for
RantWoman was among 89 people arrested in an anti-apartheid / pro divestment sit-in week before her college graduation, RantWoman was part of the "Not Guilty Caucus," a subset of the arrestees who considered it dishonest to plead guilty when we did not feel guilty about what we had done. The sit-in attracted a colorful spectrum of lawyers. The lawyer the Not Guilty caucus talked to most suggested making the campus police officers look like idiots as part of a strategy. RantWoman is very glad that suggestion was unacceptable to everyone in the group.
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