***UPDATE FROM SLEEPS*** As I believe everyone knows, the Council went on vacation having instructed the City Manager to begin closing down Whoville by April 1 with an absolute legal closure of April 15. They left after also voting to locate two new Rest Stops (#3 and #4) so that the core residents of the Whoville Sanctuary, could go directly from the Broadway/Hilyard site to the appropriate Rest Stop. However, due to poor choices by City Staff of site locations, neither of those Rest Stops is yet open, one permanently cancelled, one heavily contested by the Science Factory, Nearby Nature and the Cuthbert Theatre. In spite of the Councils vote that there be 30 legal spots for Whovillers prior to its forced closure, the City Manager is shutting down the site prematurely, in earnest on April 1 in a process that will take more than a day and be completed in the first week of April.....without the 30 slots for residents. There is absolutely no justification for jumping the gun on the shutdown, in clear disregard to the Councils wishes and with absolutely no consideration given to the health and safety of those who have sought refuge at Whoville and will now be evicted back onto the streets instead of sent to Rest Stops as the Council thought they had provided. There are many good reasons, primarily the safety of the whovillers, their advocates and the police, to delay this premature shutdown and instead plan a shutdown on the legally stipulated date of April 15 so that the Whovillers can safely transition to the Rest Stops. This would allow the vacationing Council to vote at their April 9 meeting, 6 days before the legal shutdown date, to approve new and satisfactory sites for the two Rest Stops they have already approved and intended to have open by now. It was never the intent of the Council to close Whoville without the two Rest Stops to accommodate 30 people. Please, immediately write your City Council representative and your Mayor and ask them to intervene. Ask them to direct the City Manager to postpone the premature forced shutdown until the legally stipulated date so that they can vote to relocate the two approved Rest Stops upon their return for the April 9 meeting. Please send your emails to the following addresses so that they become part of the public record and please cc them to [email protected]. Since the shutdown is starting April 1, it is so so important that you write right now. Unless we are officially notified that the City Manager has been instructed to await the Councils return, we will need our SLEEPS members to help provide witnesses on the Broadway/Hilyard site beginning April 1. We will try to set up a calendar so that we can always have several members on site to bear witness to police actions. If you are already a legal observer, we especially need you. If you have peacekeeper training, that is important, too. But we greatly need citizens who bear witness and establish solidarity with those who reside in Whoville. Additionally we are diverting our attention from the safe transition we had been planning and instead planning peaceful acts of protest as well as acts of civil disobedience to try to stop the City Manager from this unnecessarily premature eviction. We will keep you posted and let you know as plans evolve.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Apr 2014 19:40:47 +0000
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