Fourteen statements toward understandings of the Olympia City Council and its detractors, in relation to the controversy over Camp Quixote

from The Phantom Languaging Wing of the Olympia Perturbers' Guild

1.  If a City Council could end homelessness anywhere in the world, there would not be homelessness anywhere in the world where there is a City Council.

2.  Needs can only be met desirably when they are met in a way that the people who need would desire.

3.  When the City Council's bureaucratic solutions proved undesirable, and therefore inoperable to those who will not tolerate undesirable solutions, the Poor People's Union made up a solution that is inherently dependent on the desires and participation of those whom it will house.

4.  I distinguish between "those whom Camp Quixote will house" and "those whom Camp Quixote will benefit."  The latter includes the former and more.

5.  No one's ability to meet physiological needs is threatened by the positions and actions taken by the Poor People's Union.  The stated purpose and realized function of Camp Quixote is to immediately meet physiological and social needs.

6.  By opposing Camp Quixote, the police-protected demands of the City Council threaten the ability of some people to satisfy needs and desires.

7.  Unlike the City Council, the PPU doesn't call for the abolition of ways of dealing with homelessness that weren't their idea.

8.  Some Council members expressed impatience when the City Manager didn't immediately have the tent city removed, forcibly if necessary, by people with guns, restraints, and a jail.

9.  In contrast, Camp Quixote's short list of rules includes prohibition of violence.

10.  In a desirable world, human needs, which are unconditional, take precedence over the pride and preferences of a City Council.  But the City Council (one member excepted) dismisses the PPU as rude and militant, insisting that the City Council knows best.  This in spite of their real or feigned ignorance of the varied desires of the variety of people who are homeless.

11.  The choice to treat a design as rude and militant serves different interests than the choice to treat a design as an attempt to solve problems.

12.  I use the term Civilized Tantrum when I want to talk about the use of legalistic avenues to express indignation, especially when violence is publicly declared to be an acceptable way to deal with a problem that poses no threat of violence.

13.  I say that a person or group Tantrums Civilizing when I want to talk about attempts to make a society, on any scale, that lacks the features of society-at-large that rely on the desperation of its members.

14.  The Olympia Perturbers' Guild is collectively embarrassed by the former and collectively admires the latter.