Cold &
Hard: Spending The Night In Arnievile - Granny Jane
21 July 2010By Jane Stillwater
Mark Twain's autobiography is finally getting
published -- almost one hundred years to the day after
he wrote it. And from what I can tell after reading
the book's advance reviews, Twain was also one hundred
years ahead of his time, having apparently come back
from the grave just in time to give us a much-needed
warning about being wary of America's oligarchs and to
nail today's corporatists for what they really are --
greedy bastards.
And I think that it was also Mark Twain who said, "The
coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San
Francisco."
Me and my daughter Ashley stopped by Arnieville the
other night, where disabled people are camping out in
protest of Governor Schwarzenegger's callous cuts to
their home-care workers' salaries. Arnieville has been
set up on a traffic island on Adeline Street near
Russell in Berkeley, right down the street from my
apartment. "How's it going?" I asked some folks in
wheelchairs who were sitting in front of the campsite
eating dinner and chatting about stuff.
"It's going okay, considering the horrible mess that
our state's finances are in," replied a blind woman.
"And we've going to try to stay here until the State
of California actually manages to come up with a
budget." Yikes! That could take for-EVAH.
"It's not so bad here during the day," said another
woman in a wheelchair, "but at night it gets a bit
heavy-duty." I can imagine -- you can't just take a
hot bath, turn off the lights and pop into bed here.
No pre-bed glass of warm milk and bedtimes stories
either. Plus you can't even turn off the street lights
-- although the City of Berkeley has been kind enough
to not run the sprinklers at 4 am. And the automobile,
truck and bus traffic on Adeline Street goes on all
night long, just five feet from your head.
"We do have a security team that takes turns keeping
watch so it's fairly safe here, but sometimes I'm the
only woman at night and it gets a bit gender-heavy on
the masculine side. I wish that we had more women
camping out," looking directly at me as she said this,
hint hint. She also wished that the campers had more
monetary donations so that they could pay for their
wheelchair-accessible PortaPotty. That's probably not
covered in the state budget either.
Then I went home and got to thinking. I gots bad
knees. I'm 21% disabled. Those people are doing this
for my sake too. I should be out there camping with
them! So I went back this evening and asked if I could
stay too. "You can borrow my tent," said my daughter
Ashley who used to be a Girl Scout.
And I could wear my warm flannel nightgown and my
bunny slippers!
But then, as we sat there chatting with the
protesters, fog started rolling in from across the
bay, the temperature dropped 20 degrees and I started
to chicken out. "And besides, Big Brother 12 is on TV
tonight," I whined. So much for roughing it for a good
cause.
So. Will I spend the night in Arnieville tonight? Or
will I let people who are even physically weaker than
me end up doing the heavy-lifting for all of us? Will
I protest the injustice of having so much of
California's tax money go to large corporations and
rich people but not to the people who actually need
and deserve it -- or will I just stay home snug in my
bed and turn a blind eye to injustice like most other
Californians seem to be doing?
Or will I bite the bullet, haul my sleeping bag out of
the closet, be brave like the disabled people down at
Arnieville (and Mark Twain), and nail these
corporatists for what they really are -- greedy
bastards.
PS: Yes, I finally did get up enough nerve to actually
go camp out. Remember those baby chickens that I got
at the county fair last week? Well, last night I
looked at them and they looked at me and I swear I
actually heard one of them saying, "And you're the one
that's calling ME a chicken?" So I figured that I'd
better put my money where my mouth is.
"You can sleep in that yellow tent over there, said a
member of the security team when I arrived (chickenless)
at 1:00 am in the morning last night, pillow and
blanket in hand.
"And how's progress on the state budget coming along?"
I asked. Not so good. And camping out didn't go so
well either. The ground, like the Governator, was cold
and hard too. Plus I'd forgotten my flannel nightgown
and bunny slippers. I don't see how these disabled
people do it.
Last night I slept in a yellow tent next to an empty
wheelchair, some crutches and an artificial leg.
PPS: Country Joe McDonald is giving a free concert at
Arnieville on Saturday July 17, 2010 at 3:00 pm.
Please come to the concert. Please support Arnieville.
Please donate air mattresses!
PPPS: You can also donate $$$$ to keep Arnieville
alive (and representing other Californians besides
just the oligarchs) by going to their website at
http://arnieville.org/.
PPPPS: Does anybody out there want to adopt any baby
chickens? Ones that I (almost) promise won't talk
back?
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