If you’ve ever walked down a street strewn with fallen fruit and thought “Too bad that food went to waste,” this may be the volunteer opportunity for you.
Solid Ground’s Lettuce Link program is looking for help with its Community Fruit Tree Harvest, which delivers apples, plums and pears picked from Seattle fruit trees to food banks and meals programs. Last year, volunteers harvested more than 19,600 pounds of fruit.
Monday, August 2, 6:30pm – 7:30pm, Douglass-Truth Library (2300 E Yesler Way)
Here’s what you’d do as a Community Fruit Tree Harvest volunteer:
“Scout” trees in your neighborhood to see if they are ripe before sending volunteers to harvest.
Harvest at scheduled work parties.
Be “on call” to harvest fruit in your neighborhood. (An email will go out to the volunteers in a particular neighborhood when a tree there is ripe. Available volunteers will make arrangements for picking.)
Provide garage storage for ladders, picking buckets and/or harvested fruit.
Deliver harvested fruit to food banks and meals programs.
If you’re unable to attend an orientation, we’d still love to have your help! Contact Sadie at fruitharvest@solid-ground.org or 206.694.6751.
If you have fruit to donate, please contact Seattle Tilth’s Garden Hotline at 206.633.0224 or help@gardenhotline.org.
The Seattle chapter of StandUp For Kids, a charity aimed at homeless and at-risk children, will be holding a fundraiser from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. this evening, Wednesday, July 14 at McMenamins Pub, located at 200 Roy Street in Lower Queen Anne. In addition to hosting a raffle and spinning wheel game with prizes from local businesses, the restaurant will be donating 50 percent of all food and beverage sales purchased during the event to the charity.
StandUp For Kids is a non-profit, secular, apolitcal organization dedicated to providing food, clothing, and other support for homeless and at-risk children. Founded in 1990, the organization now has chapters in 44 cities, and continues to grow.
Local businesses who have donated prizes to this event include The Maxwell Hotel, Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley, Beecher’s Handmade Cheese, and Pala Pala Dress Boutique, among others.
SHARE has announced that after three nights of protesting in front of Councilmember Tim Burgess’ Queen Anne home, tonight they will be moving to sleep in front of City Council President Richard Conlin’s Madrona home. In a press release, SHARE gave credit to Councilmember Burgess for speaking openly with the group over the last three nights, and writing about his experience on his blog, and called Council President Conlin “pedantic and patronizing.” They wrote:
This evening, the homeless men and women of SHARE will be sleeping on the sidewalk outside of City Council President Conlin’s house.
Last night’s sleep out protest in front of Councilman Burgess’ home went well despite the torrential rain. Mr. Burgess is keeping the line of communication open with the people.
Councilman Burgess seems to have some trouble understanding why we refused the strings on a proposed advance from the City: They expected us to promise that we would not be closing down the shelters when we run out of money.
Our expenses in November and December (not including bus tickets) will be over $80,000. We have $14,000 in bills outstanding today. If we spent the last $50,000 from the City in October there won’t be enough to pay the bills in November and December.
Councilman Burgess called the City’s Offer a ‘Sound Financial Practice.’ How does telling people to spend their last dollars on new expenses when old expenses aren’t paid equate to ‘sound financial practices’?
Do the math….Our budget already relies on SHARE raising $30,000 in October on our own with no City help. We cannot guarantee that we would raise more than this.
At least, Mr. Burgess has been blogging about his experience with us and is willing to talk to us rationally about our bus tickets crisis.
So far all we have heard from Councilman President Conlin is a pedantic and patronizing reaction to our request for an extra $50,000 in funding. On September 28th in the Seattle Post Globe he called it “a bizarre proposal” and said that we should ask King County.
With all due respect, Mr. Conlin is bizarrely ignorant of the fact that King County Metro has been giving reduced rates on bus tickets to organizations such as SHARE and that the City has been supporting this program!!!
What’s more, METRO gave SHARE 20,000 free tickets in January and the King County Council people located in Seattle wrote to Council President Conlin in March asking for his help – bizarrely, Council President Conlin blew them off too!
Until we can afford a steady supply of bus tickets, we will “bizarrely” keep sleeping outside of these “bizarre” politicians’ houses.
There have been a lot of community reactions to SHARE since their first protest in front of Mayor Nickels’ home on Monday night. In the comments section following our story on Tuesday night’s protest and those thereafter, discussion arose over whether or not SHARE members are forced into participating in these protests. tstcman wrote,
i am a member of this so called SHARE group. its not fell will thats puts these people in this mix. it is mandated by the SHARE office THAT ALL shelter dwellers HAVE to BE INVOLVED i.e. sleep out until funds are found.
tstcman also responded to speculation over the uses of the bus tickets SHARE is fighting over, saying that at times in the past people have stolen and resold them. Name wrote,
SHARE is requiring the homeless they proclaim to serve to attend the protest. One member even reported in the comments section of a related article on the Seattle Times online that SHARE was closing their indoor shelters and shifting people over from both Tent City 3 and Tent City 4 in order to have people at Nickelsville and Burgess house.
What do you think about SHARE’s three-night protest on Queen Anne? Or their week-long camp outs that will move them to Council President Conlin’s house tonight? Comment or email us at tips@queenanneview.com.
Homeless men and women from SHARE (Seattle House and Resource Effort) camped outside of City Councilmember Tim Burgess’ Queen Anne home last night and the organization has just announced that protesters will return to his house again tonight. After camping outside of Mayor Nickels’ West Seattle home on Monday night and having the opportunity to speak face to face with Councilmember Burgess outside his home yesterday, the group said they were able to straighten out some misinformation and will return in the hopes that tonight’s repeat performance will bolster awareness even more.
In a press release sent out just after 10 a.m. this morning they wrote:
For the second night in a row, the homeless men and women of SHARE are sleeping outside of City Councilman Burgess’ house.
Last night’s sleepout protest was a far cry from Monday. First and foremost, there were no police cruisers posted outside of Mr. Burgess’ house. Apparently, the powers that be realized what a waste of taxpayers money it was to assign 6 police cars to watch people protesting peacefully. A few SHARE participants also had the opportunity to talk at length with Councilman Burgess. It seems that he was under the mistaken impression that the offer of a $50,000 advance on our regular funding was with no strings attached. He was not aware that we would have had to promise not to close down our shelters if/when that money ran out during the coldest months of the year. Mr. Burgess also told us that he would look into the matter. It seems that finally, the correct information is starting to come forward.
SHARE is a grass roots organization of poor people empowered by our system of self management. We provide more than 500 shelter beds every night in 15 indoor shelters and 2 tent cities. The City funds us only in the amount of $300,000. Meanwhile, the City spends $400,000 a year on its Roy Street shelter which only houses up to 50 people. You do the math…
The sad reality is that unsheltered people die outside. So far this year, the Women in Black stood for 29 homeless people who died outside or by violence.
Until enough affordable housing is available, interim survival mechanisms such as the SHARE shelters and Tent Cities—and also Nickelsville–are necessary.
The reality of our sleepout is that it is not political in nature. It is about survival of the poorest in our community.
But despite the organizations claim that their cause is not a political one, but rather a social issue, many disagree. One reader, SorryButNo, commented on last night’s story against the SHARE/WHEEL protests. They wrote,
They already receive $300,000 from the city, and are using this media event to extort more money from the city in a time of dire financial crises. Just say no, Seattle.
SHARE/WHEEL has long ago moved away from its mission to help the homeless, and has instead moved into political activism, at the expense of the very people it is supposed to help. They have people who have been living in tent cities for YEARS. They have become a con game, and a haven for scam artists.
Other groups are far more effective in assisting the homeless. Donate your time and sympathy to them.
According to SHARE, the group did receive $300,000 from the city for the 2009 year, money which they say ran out when the Metro bus fare went up, rendering them unable to provide around 16,000 bus tickets for their 500+ members. With protesters returning to Upper Queen Anne for the second night in a row tonight, we’d like to hear what you think. Comment or email us at tips@queenanneview.com
Last night some 50 homeless men and women, members of the homeless-advocacy group SHARE (Seattle House and Resource Effort) camped outside Mayor Greg Nickels’ West Seattle home in peaceful protest of the city’s denial of funding for bus passes used to get from shelter to shelter. (See the West Seattle Blog coverage here). Tonight they’ll be bunking down on top of the hill, in front of Seattle City Councilmember Tim Burgess‘ home starting at 8 p.m.
The video above is from the West Seattle Blog’s coverage of last night’s protest outside Mayor Nickels’ home.
SHARE, a grassroots organization, helps 400-500 homeless people organize together and find housing each night at one of their 14 self-managed shelters and two Tent Cities. In a press release sent out prior to last night’s protest, the organization explained that last year they submitted a request for additional funding from the City for bus tickets for their members so that they could travel between shelters, service organizations and tent cities safely. On September 22, their bus fare money ran out. Here is what they wrote:
A year ago, SHARE, a grassroots sheltering and organizing effort of homeless people, submitted a green sheet asking for additional funding from the City. Our green sheet mysteriously disappeared in the Mayor’s office and never made it in front of the City Council to be voted upon!
The politicians failed to heed SHARE’s pleas for an additional $50,000 in funding to keep 500 men and women going to and from their shelters with bus tickets. This is only $100 per person and shows the overt contempt the City Officials have for homeless people.
Our elected officials are inept in more ways than one especially when it comes to practicing the three tenets of good government (Justice, Compassion, Common Sense). They are more likely to respond to corporate pleas for bailouts than to the needs of the poor.
$50,000 is a ridiculously low amount of money for a City which wastes millions of dollars on a useless computer tracking survey and is wasting 1.6 Million bailing out an underused and useless light rail.
Apparently our leaders are more interested in monitoring homeless people’s activities than in keeping them together and safe at low cost.
Our shelters cost less than 3 dollars a night compared to the City “sweeps” shelter which costs over 21 dollars a night
Having been ignored, this leaves us with no other choice but to close down our shelters due to lack of transportation and sleep outside of the Mayor’s and the City Council members’ houses.
All we can say is SHAME!!!
(206) 448-7889
According to SHARE, all neighborhood bus shelters except one got to their safe places without a bus ticket, due to the kindness of city bus drivers. (The organization is keeping a tally of member riders who are given transport to their shelters without bus tickets so that they may reimburse METRO as soon as funds are available). Those who cannot get to their shelters will spend the night outside Councilmember Burgess’ home.
The protests were planned at a SHARE meeting on Monday morning (see Seattle Post Globe coverage here), in an attempt to take direct action and alleviate homelessness in Seattle.
Queen Anne View will be covering the protest tonight, so check back for updates.
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If you’ve ever walked down a street strewn with fallen fruit and thought “Too bad that food went to waste,” this may be the volunteer opportunity for you.
The Seattle chapter of 