I've most likely asked this question before in previous posts. And what I'm about to write most likely - given the current censorship climate which exists in these "Titans of the Internet" - will lead to this blog site shutting me down. We'll see.
I work at a sport venue in downtown Seattle during the season which is about to begin tomorrow. I've done it for two-and-a-half years now. Previously, I worked at the other sports venue across the street for another team doing essentially the same thing; providing security services for five years during events. So, over the total of eight years I've personally witnessed the transformation of the northern area of the SODO district - an area of diverse businesses from fast food franchises to large companies like FILSON. The transformation has been depressing and incomprehensible to me.
In 2009, when I first began working at these sporting venues the streets were reasonably decent in that one could get about without concern of being approached by some stranger and not being sure what to expect if an exchange of some type occurred. Now, as I walk two blocks from stepping off the bus to the gate entrance to the stadium, I see mini-tent cities in almost every vacant patch of land I go by. When city police try to get them gone, they only pop up a few days later with someone else living there. Panhandling is difficult to avoid now. Some unfortunate individuals who've left events at either of these sporting venues have been killed by them as they've walked to their favorite bar or just their car to go home.
The homeless occupation, as I call it, has grown over those years because of Seattle city council's policies which have not only invited these people, but they have continually increased funding over that same time period. And it doesn't appear they will change course.
Only blocks to the east is what's been called "The Jungle". During this same period of time the population of tent dwellers - this is the dominant mode of dwelling for the homeless - increased in a stretch of state owned land underneath the raised Interstate freeway which skirts along the eastern hillside of the SODO district as the freeway approaches downtown Seattle where Interstate 90 intersects with I-5. Within this "Jungle" was a combination of drug addicts and prostitution with some children living with their parents. It was a huge issue for a few years and finally was shut down and purged by the city's police after a shooting death occurred.
However, that problem merely shifted over the time since then to one of a run down RVs or other types of vehicles parked on the curbs of certain neighborhoods. Occasional news reports have revealed that the drug use and sex trafficking has merely moved into these "squatters on wheels". A judge in Seattle recently ruled that a man living in his pickup truck could not have it towed away because it was his house.
With all of these developments happening which defend, if not protect, homeless people and illegals working in the city - Seattle is a sanctuary city - I wonder just how much worse things will get. To get an idea of what the future conditions might be, I invite you to read an article by a highly respected columnist about what was going on in the region of California he lives in back in 2010; about the same time I started working in Seattle.
Then too, there's another aspect of this growing problem our nation is facing which some may find even more offensive... the threat of foreigners coming into our country demanding we change to their laws and customs. If you believe that this statement is not true, then I invite you to watch this video of what's been happening in Europe that much of our mainstream news has chosen to not shared with its viewers. WARNING, the content is horrific in some instances, but if we are to be fully aware of what threat is coming our way, we can not hide our heads in the sand and hope it will go away. There have been similar instances of these kinds of assaults and rioting in certain enclaves of the U.S. We just haven't been exposed to them in the news under the sanitized "feel good" type news most outlets feed the public today.
Thank God for the advent of the Internet when it comes to having alternative news sources; especially from outside the U.S.
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