Community Fruit Tree Harvest needs your help!

Our Community Fruit Tree Harvest is gearing up for the 2011 harvest season and we need your help!

Be a Harvest Leader
This is a great way to get to know your neighbors, share food with your community, and keep that beautiful, organic fruit in your neighborhood from going to waste!

Harvest Leaders coordinate one to two harvests per week in their neighborhoods and make sure the fruit is donated to local food banks, shelters and meal programs. Mileage is reimbursed and fresh fruit abounds.

Please see the position description for more details. To apply, submit a volunteer application and a short statement of interest to Molly at fruitharvest@solid-ground.org by Friday, July 8th. Please save the date for a Harvest Leader orientation on Thursday, July 14th, from 6-7:30pm.

Volunteer
There are lots of ways to help out! We need volunteers who can do one or more of the following:
- “Scout” trees ahead of time to see if the fruit is ripe
- Harvest at scheduled work parties
- Be on-call to harvest fruit in your neighborhood
- Provide garage space for storing ladders, picking buckets and/or fruit
- Deliver fruit to food banks and meal programs

To get started, please fill out a volunteer application and join us at a volunteer orientation:
Tuesday, July 19th, 6-7:30pm, Douglass-Truth Library (2300 E Yesler Way)
Thursday, July 21st, 6-7:30pm, Solid Ground in Wallingford (1501 N 45th St)

To RSVP, or if you’d like to volunteer but can’t make it to an orientation, please contact Molly at fruitharvest@solid-ground.org or 206.694.6751.

Donate your fruit
If you have fruit to donate, please contact Seattle Tilth’s Garden Hotline at 206.633.0224 or help@gardenhotline.org. Depending on where you live, they can connect you with us or one of the other fantastic groups harvesting fruit in Seattle!

(Editor’s note: This post also appears on the Lettuce Link blog.)

Fresh sprouts: The Seattle Community Farm opens!

Caitlyn Gilman bubbles over at the Grand Opening of the Seattle Community Farm

We held the Grand Opening of the new Seattle Community Farm this past Saturday, June 25th. OK, that is such a blasé sentence, inadequate to convey the buoyant sense of hope and possibility that was in the air as surely as crops to feed a hungry community are about to break forth from the Farm.

The words “grand” and “opening” are so overused, conjuring images of chain stores popping up like weeds, nothing more grand than asphalt, nor more open than your wallet. But if we stop for a second to really consider these what these words mean, we’ll get a better sense of the what was going on this lovely afternoon.

Lettuce Link Program Manager Michelle Bates-Benetua

A third of an acre of neatly contoured garden beds, the Seattle Community Farm runs in a narrow strip from Andover to Lilac streets, a stone’s throw from the Link Light Rail tracks on MLK Jr Way S, snug up against the hindquarters of Beacon Hill.

While the size might hardly seem grand, the design of the farm certainly is!

Aidan Murphy and Caitlyn Gilman paint worm bins

Borne of the growing urban agriculture renaissance and shepherded by Solid Ground’s Lettuce Link program, the project has turned a neglected strip of defacto parking lot into a model for how we can nourish a community.

The Farm has drawn in the resources of the City of Seattle’s Department of Neighborhoods, the Seattle Housing Authority (who owns the land), the US Department of Agriculture (which provided startup funds for the project), residents of the Rainier Vista housing development and Rainier Valley communities, local designers, artists, AmeriCorps teams and many others.

Landscape designer Eric Higbee and scarecrows

Through months of hard labor, the land has been transformed. Literally tons of rock for walls and structures, sand for drainage and topsoil were moved and sculpted into 90 loamy garden beds, a children’s garden, and a community gathering space. The site was designed by landscape architect Eric Higbee with input from the neighborhood.

Scott Behmer's office is cooler than yours!

Its transformation was  overseen by Farm Coordinator Scott Behmer, whose office in the corner of the large tool shed (built by volunteers from the adjacent Habitat for Humanity build site) is truly a room with a view, with an open window surveying the property.

Baby broccoli

All but one of the beds is planted, and while our dreary spring has dampened the progress, there are so many seeds germinating and starts rooting that you can practically hear the chard, beets, tomatoes and myriad other crops shooting from the soil and reaching for the sky. The land is vibrating with potential! A few weeks from now it will be a riot of organic produce, the grand outcome of sunshine, healthy soil, water and caring human hands.

Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin and guests

As for opening: In this newly created Rainier Vista neighborhood, the Farm represents a truly open social experiment. It is a vessel of opportunity to be filled by the volunteer contributions of people who have come to the Rainier Valley from all around the world. At the grand opening alone, among the 100 or so guests were community members whose gardening experience started in East Africa, the Pacific Islands, Mexico, the Middle East and even the Midwestern US.

Many hands make light work!

Through a developing work trade model, neighbors who volunteer will receive a bag of fresh produce for every two hours of work, giving people living on low-incomes direct access to the healthiest organic produce possible.

Produce not taken through the work trade model will be delivered to the nearby Rainier Valley food bank for distribution to the broader community.

The Farm!

The model is open and evolving to meet the neighbors’ needs and interests, gleaned through a series of community outreach meetings that brought people from many cultures and lands together over food, language translators and the desire to eat more healthful food.

AmeriCorps member Mariah Pepper leads a farm tour

The event this weekend featured a few guest speakers, Seattle City Council President Richard Conlin and Department of Neighborhoods’ Bernie Matsuno, but the real stars of the show were the men and women from the community. When the speeches were done they walked through the rows, knowingly eyeing the nascent crop, excited voices in languages I could not even identify, hands pointing with passion at the healthy future to come.

Tyree Scott Freedom School seeking applicants

The Tyree Scott Freedom School is an amazing way for young people ages 15-21 to learn about racism and how to organize to undo it. A joint project of the American Friends Service Committee and People’s Institute Northwest, it brings together the best anti-racism organizers in our community and offers a profound opportunity for the next generation of leaders. Details are on the flyer (below), or email Dustin Washington to learn more, or to apply. Applications due July 15!

Straight talk on free phones

Living on a low income and can’t afford a cell phone? There are a few options available to receive a free cell phone with low-cost “Lifeline” pay-as-you-go plans, and it’s becoming a big business, with full-page newspaper and internet ads touting one brand or another. (In fact with SafeLink using Google ads, it is quite possible that you, dear reader, will find a SafeLink ad on this very blog post!) Why so much marketing money being spent on a what seems like it should be a loss-leader business?

Lifeline cellphone programs are funded by the Universal Service Fund (USF), a fund created by the FCC to help low-income consumers get connected. All phone companies must contribute to this fund; their “contributions” largely come from Universal Service Fees, which they charge telephone consumers on our monthly phone bills. The Universal Service Administrative Company (USAC) reimburses the phone companies around $10 a month for each Lifeline customer.

We asked Lambert Rochfort, Program Manager for Seattle Community Voice Mail (CVM) and an expert on telecommunications access issues, to evaluate the two main plans available in  Washington, Assurance Wireless and SafeLink Wireless. Here’s what he had to say (the bulk of this originally appeared on the Seattle/King County Community Voice Mail blog earlier this year.)

If you or someone you know would like to get a low-cost, pay-as-you-go cell phone, I want to let you know about the two Lifeline prepaid cellphone programs currently available, Assurance Wireless and SafeLink Wireless. SafeLink (from Tracfone) and Assurance (from Virgin Mobile) both offer a free phone, up to 250 free minutes every month, plus free voice mail, caller ID and call waiting. SafeLink also offers two other options: 125 minutes that carry over to the next month or 68 international minutes (that also carry over monthly). These programs do not require a contract, monthly bills, or a credit check.

There are also Lifeline plans (contracts) offered by AT&T and Sprint, which we do not recommend because they require a one- or two-year contract, they are more expensive than prepaid programs, and require a credit check. They also don’t offer many minutes and have limited coverage areas, charge overage fees for additional minutes, as well as roaming fees for using the phone out of the coverage area. These overage and roaming fees have caused many low-income people to get into major debt with the phone companies.

With either Assurance or SafeLink, during the first few days of each month, your monthly allotment of free minutes will be added to your phone. If you use all your free minutes before the end of the month, you will need to buy additional minutes, which can be purchased online, by phone and at retail stores on top-up cards. SafeLink charges 10¢ for each additional minute in Washington (which is $25 for 250 minutes), while Assurance offers either 250 extra minutes for $5 or 750 extra minutes and 1,000 text messages for $20. Prepaid mobile minutes are taxed at a rate of 11%.

Note that to apply for a Lifeline phone, you must provide a unique physical mailing address; they will not send a phone to an address that has already received one, and they will not send a phone to P.O. boxes or commercial addresses. So, you will not be eligible if you live in a shelter or other group housing situation where each resident doesn’t have their own unique address, or if you live in a car or on the street. Although, many people who are homeless or live in group housing use a friend’s or family member’s address on their application, and the phone companies actually encourage this.

To be eligible for either Lifeline program, you must either receive DSHS benefits or your income must be below 135% of poverty level. The eligible benefits are:

• Food Stamps (SNAP)
• Medical Assistance
• Supplemental Security Income (SSI)
• Disability Lifeline (General Assistance)
• Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
• State Family Assistance (SFA)
• DSHS Chore Services
• Refugee Assistance
• Community Options Program Entry System (COPES)

SafeLink and Assurance both require a DSHS client ID and last 4 digits of your social security number to qualify based on program participation.  To apply based on income, your gross monthly income must be below these guidelines:

1-person household: $ 1,218
2-person household: $ 1,639
3-person household: $ 2,060
4-person household: $ 2,481
5-person household: $ 2,901
6-person household: $ 3,322
7-person household: $ 3,743
8-person household: $ 4,164
Each additional person: + $ 421

To qualify on income, you will need to mail them documentation of your income, such as a federal or state tax return, current income statement or W-2 form from an employer, three consecutive months of current pay stubs, Social Security statement of benefits, retirement or pension benefits statement, unemployment or Workers Comp statement of benefits, or other legal documentation that shows income.

Based on Community Voice Mail’s (CVM) analysis, Assurance Wireless is the best deal overall for Lifeline cell phones right now.

To apply for Assurance Wireless, call 1.800.395.2108 or print and mail their application from their website assurancewireless.com.

What would it be like to change the world in one day?

How would it feel to focus all of our community’s goodwill through a single historic philanthropic effort to support basic human services, arts and culture, education, the environment and other areas?

Let’s find out what happens when we all giveBIG together!

GiveBIG is The Seattle Foundation’s attempt to create the biggest charitable giving day in the history of King County!

June 23 is giveBIG day. The Foundation is asking people to make credit card gifts through their website between 7am and 12 midnight.

You can designate your gift to any of the nonprofit organizations that has a profile (like Solid Ground!). A $500,000 match pool will be distributed proportionally to all participating agencies. The amount of a nonprofit organization’s share of the pool will be based on the percentage of donations the nonprofit receives of the total online contributions made through the site.

To direct your gift to Solid Ground, go to our page on The Seattle Foundation’s website.

But remember to do it ON JUNE 23rd so that your gift is eligible for the match!

The giveBIG idea has been very successful in other cities around the country, in part because the community-wide enthusiasm entices folks who are not already philanthropists to get involved.

We want to see The Seattle Foundation’s giveBIG exceed their wildest dreams! We are asking you to help by giving and by letting others know about this unique opportunity. So post something on your Facebook page, send an email to friends, or write a note on your blog about giveBIG!

It would be great to designate your gifts to Solid Ground by going through our page. But you can also go to The Seattle Foundation’s homepage and search for other participating nonprofits.

Just remember, giveBIG is June23rd!

Fabuloso!

One of the elements of the Farewell to Paul event last night was the video Fabuloso, based on the Leonard Cohen song Hallelujah, with lyrics rewritten by our own Liz Reed Hawk. Enjoy:

Farewell to Paul Haas

(Following are a slightly edited version of comments I made last night as we celebrated Paul Haas’ 26+ years at Fremont Public Association/Solid Ground.)

It is a sad time to see such an amazing person leave Solid Ground, but a great opportunity for us all to thank Paul, share some love, and maybe embarrass him a little bit, because for someone who has accomplished so much, he is really not a fan of the spotlight.

Well Paul, tough luck on that one tonight!

So we are here to celebrate Paul and his work with FPA/Solid Ground.

At events like this it is often good to have a theme, a metaphor to help give context to a person’s accomplishments. So I’ve been casting about for a fitting metaphor or image.

My first thought was Canonization!

Forgetting for the moment that Paul is Jewish, there is a lot to recommend the idea of seeing Paul as a Saint.

Like many Saints, he has committed his life’s work to solving the problems of the poor and afflicted. He has stood up to power.

He has worked miracles to get projects and programs funded – even raising programs from the dead after local governments tried to defund them. And he has inspired countless others through his words and deeds.

In fact, speaking on behalf of the Resource Development Department team, who have worked most closely with Paul, I can tell you that we all draw divine inspiration from his positive energy.

To us, Paul is certainly the Patron Saint of Relentless Positivity!

And in his absence, we will continue to motivate ourselves to overcome doubt about our work and reticence to stand up against injustice by asking ourselves: What Would Paul Do?

You can’t always do it alone

Faustina Robinson, a former participant in Solid Ground’s Seattle Housing Stabilization Services, shared her story with us for our May 2011 Groundviews newsletter. For more information on Seattle Housing Stabilization Services, visit www.solid-ground.org/Programs/Housing/Stabilization-Sea.

Faustina Robinson in the courtyard of her apartment building

During the two years that Faustina Robinson lived in her car with her cat, there were two things that helped her keep perspective. First, she says, “I had some years in social work – as a counselor for domestic violence and sexual assault survivors. It put me on the other side, so to speak.” She asked herself, “‘What would I tell that client?’ I also heard their voices; I became the student of the people that at one time I had helped. I was learning from their experiences.”

And secondly, “I’m a filmmaker, so I was engaging my art even when I was living in my car. I took interviews of people, took pictures, I had release forms signed. I transcended into this other personality, and that allowed me to look at a larger picture.”

She says, “Living in your car, it’s very survivable – and so it can become a way of life.” During one stretch, while broken down at a highway rest area for 92 days, she connected with others who were also “camping” there. “Out of that experience developed this little community. We realized we were not alone, and we began to find ways to assist each other.”

A turning point

Thanks to her new friends, Faustina eventually found the strength to face facts: “I had been in complete denial. I kept thinking, ‘You can’t be homeless. You do have a little bit of money coming in. You can stay in a motel if you want to. You have a roof over your head. You’re really intelligent.’ I was rationalizing my way through the experience. But I was still homeless!”

However, navigating out of homelessness wasn’t easy. She says, “I had taken all the necessary steps – contacted all the social services, shelters, transitional housing. There’s always some snafu, strange policies. You have to call at a certain time, twice a day.” And with no reliable phone, it didn’t work for her. Finally, she asked her friends to rope-tow her car and park her right outside a housing agency.

She says, “I only had to do it once. I said, ‘I can’t call you twice every day, so I’m just gonna walk in twice a day and let you know I’m still homeless. And if you want me, I’m right out there on the side street!” Laughing, she says, “That got me a really quick appointment! And that was the turning point that got me off the street.”

As a person living with disabilities, Faustina did qualify for and eventually moved into a Seattle Housing Authority apartment – but her journey to stability wasn’t over. She says that by the time she contacted Solid Ground, “It revealed that I was dealing with a lot of issues I had not acknowledged. I have a history of depression. But when I was homeless for those two years, not one day was I depressed. I couldn’t understand that!

“One doctor said there are personality types that when faced with certain kinds of stress, it releases hormones that almost produce a euphoric feeling. So I had been sucking on that adrenaline rush for two years – and when I got the apartment, the first thing that happened was I crashed. There were days I couldn’t even roll out of bed. It happened so quickly.

“I wasn’t taking care of myself or my day-to-day needs; I wasn’t paying my bills. I got behind in my rent; I needed housing assistance. I was going through a number of challenges, because DSHS [was considering] eliminating GA-U [now called Disability Lifeline]. I filed an appeal, so my benefits didn’t stop – but the psychological and emotional stress of facing eviction and loss of some financial support – it had me in rare form.”

Leave your baggage at the door

After calling Solid Ground but not connecting with resources right away, an attorney at Housing Justice Project contacted our Seattle Housing Stabilization Services on Faustina’s behalf – a program that provides case management and support to people at imminent risk of housing loss. “Within a week,” Faustina says, “Sukanya contacted me.”

Working with Sukanya made a world of difference. “One, she believed in me. And she didn’t patronize me. She valued my input and respected my own experiences and perception in the matter. So I felt like I was making a contribution to my own welfare – and that empowered me.” Faustina also learned it’s OK to seek support. She says, “When I need assistance, I really do need to ask for assistance. You can’t always do it alone. And there’s no shame in that. I had been always the one helping others, and now I needed help.

“I also had to accept that I had made poor choices in some cases. But, you forgive yourself, and then you move on. Leave your baggage at the door. And it’s OK! Extend the same compassion I had for the people I was working with towards my own self so I could heal. And she helped me do that. Solid Ground helped me do that.

“I made a promise to myself: I am so fortunate to have this space, and someone helped me, and I wanted to honor the gift, the assistance. So I volunteer my time. I’ve gotten back into my writing and my filmmaking, and I’ve been working on a number of projects. I do all the media [pro bono] for JusticeWorks. And do you know, I’m doing much better now – I’m in a much better space financially, emotionally, spiritually – than I was! Sometimes when you can’t do it for yourself, it’s OK to do it for others.”

For more information on Seattle Housing Stabilization Services, visit www.solid-ground.org/Programs/Housing/Stabilization-Sea.

Documentary and discussion on tenants’ rights & housing justice

The Tenants Union is inviting tenants, housing advocates and interested community members and activists to attend the viewing of the documentary film The Fall of the I-Hotel on June 29th from 6:30-8:30pm. Following the film there will be a dialogue on tenants’ rights and housing justice issues.

This event will address some of the housing, civil rights and discrimination issues portrayed in the film and focus on Seattle’s own fight to save affordable housing. This community dialog and discussion will include Dr. Estella Habal, author of the book:  San Francisco’s International Hotel: Mobilizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement.

What: Documentary screening and community dialogue on affordable housing
When: Wednesday, June 29th, 2011, 6:30-8:30pm
Where: Rainier Valley Cultural Center, 3515 S. Alaska St., Seattle WA 98118
Suggested Donation: $15, (No one will be turned away for lack of funds.)

To find more information about other ways tenants can become involved in grassroots organizing and advocacy around housing justice issues, how to join the Tenants Union as a member, and other ways to show support go to the TU membership webpage.

Intentional partnerships to overcome barriers: a case study in undoing institutional racism

Imagine you are an immigrant, maybe a refugee from a war-torn part of the world. You’ve made your way to Seattle to make a new life and you are temporarily living with a relative.

Camping out with your family in a living room in South Seattle might well feel safer than where you left. But, you are still in unstable housing. And while you are eligible to receive financial and practical support through local housing stabilization programs, how would you even know?

Immigrants and refugees living doubled up with family members are an underserved population, facing multiple barriers to getting the resources and services they need to stabilize their lives. Barriers can include limited English proficiency, fear of governmental institutions, lack of information about available resources and others. Often times the resources exist, through homeless prevention programs in the community that can be accessed through community phone systems. Unfortunately, the 2-1-1 Community Information Line that serves as the centralized entry point for these and similar programs in King County can also be a significant barrier to accessing the services.

In an effort to reach out to these and other underserved populations, Solid Ground’s Homeless Prevention Programs have for the past year worked to develop “intentional partnerships” with community-based agencies actively involved in immigrant communities, the LGBTQ community, domestic violence survivors and other marginalized populations.

“A part of our intention was to build partnerships where we are able to reach out to marginalized populations who might otherwise fall through the cracks, and who may never have accessed social service systems,” said Sukanya Pani, of Solid Ground’s Seattle Housing Stabilization Services (Seattle HSS).

Grounding in principles of  undoing racism

The effort to reach clients through these intentional community partnerships is a part of the mission of each of the six separate Homeless Prevention Programs (HPP) at Solid Ground. The initiative is linked closely to Solid Ground’s efforts to undo institutional racism in our organization and in our community.