Uh-oh! Moonbat housing shortage for 9/22-25 DC protest-- How can YOU help?

Desperate Housing Shortage for September anti-war/global justice mobilization (forward everywhere)

All the churches have been called (and are being re-called), numerous housing pitches have gone out to DC residents, activists, students, and others. At this point, we have a huge housing crisis for the anti-war/global justice mobilization. If you can please open up your homes, your couches, your floors, your backyards (I know, pretty scarce in these parts), we need you to post to the housing board at http://www.septemberaction.org/cs/housing .

Here is the current situation. Besides St. Stephens Church, which has up to 400 spots for housing (300 of which are already occupied), there is no housing available for large groups of people. Given that the activities are going on from Thursday night through Monday, and given that many taking nonviolent direct action on Monday could be arrested and could conceivably need housing through Tuesday night, this is a bad situation. What makes it worse is that the housing on St. Stephens must be evacuated and cleaned by 7 AM on Sunday morning! When you consider that there’s a big march, a big concert, and many other activities going on through the night, that leaves people staying at St. Stephens with a potentially very short night of sleep, before waking up, helping clean up, and vacating. Furthermore, the 100 spots not committed will be handled on a first come, first serve basis.

The campsite at Greenbelt Park run by the National Park Service is inexpensive with a lot of sites. You will need a car, though, to get to the Greenbelt Metro station from there.

But, on the whole, the picture is bleak, and while we are continuing to work feverishly to find spaces, we have very little to offer.

The housing boards have several listings but not nearly enough. Even if you add United for Peace and Justice’s housing board, you still have a severe housing crisis, in fact a more severe housing crisis.

We quipped in our working group last night that the housing situation right now is so bad that one recommendation might be for people to be arrested on Friday and hope that they don’t get arraigned until Monday. While we were kidding, the scope of the crisis is very serious.

However, you all can change that by opening up your homes and posting it to the housing board. We desperately need you to do so. If you feel uncomfortable posting, please, please, please look at the housing board for those who have requested housing and see if there’s a good match. What’s more, if you need housing, it will help many people who don’t want to post any of their personal information on the internet, if you will post your needs to the housing board.

If you have big housing space to offer, which is also a desperate need, please get in contact with us at housing@septemberaction.org as soon as possible. If there’s a small cost associated with it, please let us know, anyway.

Another way to help, whether you have housing to offer or not, is to forward this email (usually a personal note with it helps tremendously) to your friends or people on any community or neighborhood list.

People will be coming to DC whether they have housing or not, in many cases, and we don’t need to add to our already overwhelming homeless population. We don’t need activists taking up precious shelter space in town.

We need housing for the entire weekend, but of special need, of course, are Saturday through Tuesday nights, especially Sunday night. Many very important actions are taking place on Sunday and Monday.

Help out if you can. We have worked very hard on this problem, and we are facing a huge crisis despite our best efforts. Please help out if you can at all. Many people are sacrificing perhaps too much to come to Washington; I hope we can sacrifice a little to make their stay worthwhile for the important actions upcoming.

PS Logistically, we will be handling housing from a desk inside of St. Stephens, which will serve as a 24-hour-a-day convergence space starting Monday thru 7AM on Monday. After that, we tentatively plan to set up the desk in Dupont Circle on Sunday (or in another space if there’s rain, on Sunday and Monday and will have a phone number to call for anyone who might need a place to stay on Tuesday).

PPS We also need volunteers from out-of-town to help us with the housing desk at St. Stephens (16th and Newton Streets NW) and to help with housing issues for the large numbers staying there.

Freepers, here's the type of thing you might hear if you, ahem, decide to house some of these folks:

"call for a Revolutionary Anti-Authoritarian Bloc Against the War and Capitalism

While the US military rains death in Iraq, Afghanistan, or wherever else the "War on Terror" deems necessary, the IMF and World Bank wage an equally deadly war against the people of the world. As these arms of the capitalist machine work abroad to secure land, resources, oil, and cheap labor for the wealth of a privileged few, a War wages right here on our own streets and in our own cities--exposing the American Dream as nothing more than a rotten corpse of bigotry, debt, and corporate and state brutality. Capitalism, and the government which supports it, will use any weapon--bomb and bullet, debt and Structural Adjustment Policy, or poverty and prison-- to achieve its end: the exploitation and domination of everything and everyone for profit."

Every Little Bit Hurts
Iowahawk Special Guest Commentary
by Joshua Markos Mikos Atrios
For the Angels of Indignation

Two weeks ago, millions of Americans watched in horror as the city of New Orleans was savaged by the relentless, pollution-fueled fury of Hurricane Katrina. Later, we witnessed the human rights atrocity as George Bush's incompetent racist henchmen dynamited the levees, unleashing a tidal wave of contaminated Halliburton turdwater which forced thousands of our fellow citizens to flee into the dank slave ship-like bowels of the Superdome.

Now, as the floodwaters recede, the survivors of Bush/Katrina face an even greater danger: the danger of complacency. Even as you read this, Chimpy's pals in FEMA and the Red Cross are buying off evacuees with food and cheap blankets and debit cards, slowly robbing the survivors of God's most precious gift -- the gift of focused political rage.

The statistics are staggering. If we do not act soon, tens of thousands of Katrina victims will soon succumb to false hope. Many will return to Louisiana and begin rebuilding, lacking even the most basic idea of BushCo's culpability. Worse, many other poor and minority survivors will remain where they are, anonymously absorbed into the overwhelmingly Repugnican districts that were suspiciously ready to "set up" evacuee "help" "centers."

That's why we in the online progressive community have teamed up to form the Angels of Indignation, a new charity dedicated to getting the survivors of Bush/Katrina disaster back off their feet and on the road to class action. Angels of Indignation is proudly supported by a coalition of some of the top reality-based political sites -- sites like FrenzyBloc, RetardedChimp, Don't Bogart That Truth, BushTard, ConspiraScream, Puke Uprising, Dubyacide, Sanity Underground, Zit Popper, ScreamPukeRageScream, Screamette, and my own online community diary, The Daily Shriek.

Together, we represent the "can-do" sites that millions of progressives like you turn to for clear, level-headed political insight and activism to help you survive the coming holocaust schemes of the Rupugnican Xtian Jihadis in Washington. And now, we are asking for your financial help on behalf of the needy people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast. As you think about your decision, please consider just a few of the things Angels of Indignation can achieve with your one-time contribution of $100 :

1000 printed leaflets to inform survivors about Cheney and Rumsfeld's secret ties with the Klan

Enough red plastic kegger cups to equip over 100 Sean Penn flood rescue safaris
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A flack jacket for an emergency MoveOn voter registration worker
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Enough reserve battery packs to power 3 protest bullhorns for 24 hours
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Thousands of more important fundraising emails like this one
And that's just for $100; just think of what larger contributions can accomplish! For example, your generous gift of $1000 will make a thoughtful campaign donation for a needy progressive Senator on an important investigative committee; a Founder's Level gift of $10,000 will retain a top plaintiff's attorney for almost two days.

Whatever level you choose, your gift will prove the cynics wrong: sometimes a tragedy can bring out the best in people, as we all unite in a joyous harmony of blame. So please, give what you can, whether it is $10,000, $100, or even $1. In the fight against premature Hurricane recovery, every single bit hurts the cause of the illegal BushCo regime.

PS - remember, your gift is probably completely tax deductable. At least according to Al Franken and the Air America lawyers.

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