city council

Local matters

/ Tracy Abell / 9 Comments

The last time I posted here was two weeks ago when I lamented a city council member’s plan to propose a camping ban. Things did not look good. Well, I’m here with a happy update: this past week, the city council voted down that council member’s motion! And not only that, the council voted in favor of further research and discussion around sanctioned camping areas and sanctioned parking areas for those living in their vehicles! They’re also looking into additional public restrooms and trash receptacles! None of this is a done-deal but they voted down the worst of the proposals and in favor of some humane policies. For that, I’m grateful.

How did this happen? Community involvement! After an earlier council meeting at which people with the “lived experience” of getting clean shared their stories (which were very much in favor of criminalizing homelessness and insisting “the only way to get clean is go to jail and be forced into drug treatment”), it became clear we also needed to hear the lived experience of community members currently living outside. So we gathered statements from about 20 people without housing, asking a handful of questions including:

  • what happened in your life that you ended up living outside?
  • what would a camping ban mean to you?
  • what do you wish people understood about what it’s like living outside?
  • how long have you been a resident of this county?

We then transcribed their responses and lined up volunteers to read the statements at the next council meeting. It was eye-opening to hear stories of a death in the family or a divorce or job loss or rent increase that lead to them living outside, circumstances that could happen to any of us. Equally informative was that the vast majority of people were long-time residents of the county, some for their entire lives, and that information poked massive holes in the haters’ lie that “homeless junkies move here because they have it so good.” Each statement read at the city council meeting ended with “What do I wish people understood about what it’s like living outside?” followed by insights such as :

  • “People drive by and throw cans at us.”
  • “We’re just trying to survive.”
  • “When our belongings are taken and thrown out, that includes things like doctor appointments and court dates. Losing that stuff makes it even harder for us to pull ourselves together.”
  • “It’s not easy. Our nervous systems are in permanent survival mode.”

It was a powerful public comment period, both for those in the audience and the volunteers who amplified the voices of the most vulnerable in our community. I can’t help but believe those statements played a role in this week’s vote by the city council.

Local activism for the win!

I’m sharing that here as both an update to my earlier post and because these days are so very difficult. It feels as we’re powerless in the face of all the cruelty and violence being inflicted on people, not to mention the very real threat of nuclear war. It’s tempting to check out. True, we have zero control over this regime or the actions of our so-called opposition party, something I find both terrifying and rage-inducing. But we’re not powerless. Each of us can work to strengthen our own communities.

As Mariame Kaba and Kelly Hayes and other veteran organizers say: pick something that matters to you and focus on that. For instance, do you have a public library in your community?

Libraries are under attack from those who fear learning and knowledge. Book banning has reached such horrifying levels it’s affecting children’s publishing. (An excellent resource for learning about books and book banning, including what may be happening in your state, is BookRiot.com.) Library budgets are being slashed, but there’s some recent good news. Librarians are losing their jobs and they’re coming together to support each other.  There are all sorts of ways to get involved (my easy/fun experience is below):

My fun and easy experience? Yesterday, I gathered with others in our mutual aid group to support our local library system and we wrote 100 postcards to voters, expressing our support for a Proposition to restore the library levy rate (which would result in a $0.17 increase per $1,000 assessed value). It felt great to take action on behalf of our community. During our time together, I didn’t think about the smorgasbord of atrocities going on in the world. Instead, we talked and laughed and marveled at the gorgeous Eric Carle postcards provided by the Proposition organizers. Take a look at a sampling of those beautiful cards:

Eric Carle postcard sampler

As a parent who owned and read many Eric Carle books with my sons, it was a trip down memory lane. And it felt very right to use gorgeous pieces of art to ask for support of the library. Books literally save lives.

Okay, this is much longer than intended so I’ll stop here. 🙂 Thank you for reading this far. Please, if you’d like to share a sentiment about your public library or maybe a community effort you support, or really, just anything not-awful, I’d love to hear from you.

Until then, solidarity.

Wordful Wednesday: assorted musings

/ Tracy Abell / 14 Comments

For years and years, I exercised my writing muscle as I wrote novels for young readers in hopes of publication and did so almost every day until my literary agent dropped me while we were on submission to editors in August of 2024. That split was a deeply traumatizing gut-punch and I immediately stopped writing the second draft of my work-in-progress. Unfortunately, I’d suffered a series of such gut-punches and couldn’t put myself through that process ever again, so I quit. The thought of getting my hopes up again only to be cast aside without thought by someone I’d considered my advocate was too much to bear. It was painful not having my creative outlet but it seemed best for my well-being to stay out of that arena.

Eventually, I couldn’t ignore the creative itch or GRAPPLE which was the manuscript that’d been on submission. I reread then revised it, cutting over 10,000 words in the process, and was so happy being in that mode again! I truly do love me some revision. I’m so freaking proud of that very timely story (friendship story set against the backdrop of a small town divided over the presence of a private prison and proposed expansion of a detention center) and submitted the manuscript to one publisher that accepts unagented submissions. Now I’ve started thinking about another project I started and abandoned years ago. It’s unlike anything I’ve written and I’m kinda-sorta considering revisiting it. I do so love writing middle grade novels. At the same time, I’m also very tired of writing books that are never read by my intended audience. Anyway, I’ll sort through all the feelings and do whatever’s best for me.

Why am I sharing this now? Because earlier this week I struggled big-time to write a 3-minute comment I’d planned to present to city council last night. And that struggle was probably due to the fact that my writing muscle had gotten rusty. Writing for young readers had been such a huge part of my daily life and now I wasn’t doing it. How could I keep in shape?

*smacks forehead*

Hello, maybe you could fully utilize that blog  you call “Another Day On the Planet”?

So here I am, publicly recommitting myself to this space and my writing. As mentioned before, I love reading old posts about stuff I’d completely forgotten. And in that spirit, I’m going to document a few things now before they also slip my mind.

  • I did successfully complete my public comment regarding the unhoused, our shared humanity, my opposition to criminalizing homelessness and forced treatment for substance use, and read it at last night’s city council meeting in a voice that shook because (1) public speaking is hard for me (2) I was flustered from accidentally showing up late and (3) my turn came after two speakers who shared their views in loud and aggressive tones–views that did not match mine–and I was convinced the room was filled with their supporter so it was like being in enemy territory, and for context I’ll add that one comment can be paraphrased as “I was in a basement jail cell during 9/11, one block away from Ground Zero and that’s how I got clean because you have to hit rock bottom to get better and my rock bottom was a block away from Ground Zero and everyone’s recovery has to look exactly like mine!”
  • On Saturday morning I ran 1.75 miles on the Olympic Discovery Trail next to the water, the farthest I’ve run in months (YAY!) as I rehab my right heel, and when I slowed to a walk and looked over at the water I saw a brown furry head looking my way and then it was gone and even though I watched the surface for another minute I didn’t see it again but maybe it was one of the Otterly Magical gang?
  • A few minutes ago I took advantage of the break in rain and walked Emma Jean-Jean around the neighborhood where she enjoyed all the aromas while I enjoyed the rain-scrubbed air and rescued four earthworms from the streets.
  • Right after that last worm rescue we saw two dapper crows walking and poking around a neighbor’s yard and I wondered if crows eat worms, and after a brief search of the interwebs upon our return I can confirm that YES, crows do eat earthworms.

One last thing to share: hellebore plants in the front yard. The photo on the left was taken after today’s walk and the other from a couple weeks ago is the more common representation of these plants which like to hide their faces which mean’s today’s sighting is a gift, and that visibility is due to the fence’s support. All hail the hog wire!

             

 

Thinking globally while head explodes locally

/ Tracy Abell

Zippy and I just returned from a city council candidates’ forum. We heard from the three candidates running for one of the two seats in our ward. It was my first time attending a ward function.

Ugh. Our neighborhood ward is essentially run by a cabal of older, reactionary people.

Know what? After fifteen minutes trying to arrange my thoughts in a coherent manner for this post, I give up. I can’t bring myself to rehash their disrespectful, clique-ish behavior or the dog whistle language they use to work everyone into a fear-based lather. It pissses me off too much.

Instead, I’m going to escape into my fiction. Some of the characters in my novel are also horrible people, but I ultimately have power over their lives. If I want to load them all on a bus and drive them over a cliff, I can do that. In real life, not so much.