OPINIONS WE
COULDN'T KEEP
TO OURSELVES
Several weeks ago, when Seattle City Attorney Mark Sidran started talking about effectively criminalizing homelessness without any companion measures to help the displaced, I thought that even the mainstream media would skewer him and the rest of the public officials who snapped in line to support the idea.
I knew for sure that the scads of left-leaning organizations around King County would hose Sidran's ideas down the gutter. And I hoped that somebody would run against this man in this fall's election.
I waited for columns in opposition to the proposal to appear in daily newspapers. I waited for TV news shows to interview local leaders who were outraged by the plan. I waited for social-service organizations to stage protests around town. I waited for a bleeding-heart lawyer to register as a candidate against Sidran.
Sidran's idea is now law, and I'm still waiting. It just goes to show that if you wait for someone else to take action, nothing gets done.
About the only people who did anything about it were homeless advocates and homeless people themselves, who gathered together in large numbers at a city Public Safety Committee meeting chaired by closet-conservative Councilwoman Margaret Pageler. (But why should the council listen to voices that it is trying to drown?)
Clearly, they are neither. All that's left to do now is hope that the courts rule that people have the constitutional right to sit on the sidewalk (as long as they are not actually impeding foot traffic), and that enough City Council members snap out of their mindset of intolerance and realize the horrible decision they have made. We might not be so shocked if it was a statewide decision that drew in folks from Eastern Washington and elsewhere. Nope, it was our very own hometown pseudo-liberal leaders; they did it all by themselves.
At least Councilwoman Jane Noland voted against the urination/defecation provision because of the current dearth of public toilets. (Councilman Jim Street, whose record would lead one to think that he opposes the ordinances, was in China at the time of the vote. His aide told me, however, that Street's position is not on record.)
Obviously, council members will not change their minds without a potent shove from you and from me. Call them right now.
You probably won't get these people on the phone directly, but their individual staff people likely will answer the phone. Just tell them you are against the anti-homeless ordinances. You don't need to have a long, emotional speech prepared. Anybody with a beating heart in their body will understand why someone would oppose such unfeeling laws.
University of Oklahoma at Seattle?
I have this clipping in my scrapbook, a couple paragraphs from a Seattle P-I sports story that I cut out and put up on my wall when I was 14. The story was a preview of the Husky football team's upcoming Orange Bowl game with noted pigskin power Oklahoma.
The part I clipped was a quote from an arrogant Oklahoma fan who dismissed the Huskies as follows: "Nobody in Norman I know has ever even heard of Washington. Where is Washington, anyway? Next to the North Pole?... We're going to win the national championship. I don't care who we're playing."
Yes, the Huskies and their fans have become what they formerly disdained. In the program's struggle to gain national recognition and respect, they have also taken on the corrupt college football factory attitude and actions which they always fancied themselves above. As a wise man once said: Be careful what you wish for - you just might get it.
Ever since the Pac-10 Conference handed down the penalties for Washington's numerous misconduct charges, politics has replaced sport in the world of Husky fans. The talk was not about the big games against Stanford, Ohio State, Arizona. Instead, everyone had an opinion - usually a indignant and self-pitying one - on the harshness of the sentence or the "retirement" of Head Coach Don James.
The prevailing attitude seems to be that the Huskies were not punished because many of their players were paid by team boosters basically for being football players. No, it was really because they were too successful, because they had joined Oklahoma, Miami and Alabama as schools who were just too damned good for their own good. "They're just jealous," these fans sniffed.
The opening game against Stanford actually was big, all right - but not for football reasons. Instead, it was a chance for the Husky fans to vent their anger against a world that was out to get them. This world was symbolized by Stanford Coach Bill Walsh, who had the nerve to criticize the Huskies for their documented excesses and rule violations. Walsh was soundly booed by the rabid "Dawg" fans, who turned around and cheered lustily when the Stanford quarterback was injured during the game. Many fans wore their attitudes on their sleeves - and backs. T-shirts proclaiming, "We don't need no stinking Roses" and "If you can't beat 'em, ban 'em" were the fashion statements of choice in Husky Stadium.
It was hard not to miss the irony when the P-I ran another story recently about Washington and Oklahoma. This story was not about a football game, though. This was a comparison between the Huskies 1993 season and the 1974 Oklahoma Sooners, the last team to win a national championship while on probation.
This was the lofty goal to which Washington's season would be dedicated: Could the Huskies dare hope to be the next? Why not - after all, this is the Washington Huskies - above reproach, above the law, and certainly on par with, say, the outlaw Oklahoma Sooners of old.
It's a decade later. Everyone knows where and who Washington is. The Huskies, who won that game in an upset, have since won three straight conference titles and a national championship. And if that fan's tone sounds slightly familiar, it may be that you've been listening to the local sports talk shows the last month or so.
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Contents on this page were published in the October/November, 1993 edition of the Washington Free
Press.
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Copyright © 1993 WFP Collective, Inc.