Squatters & Marchers

Into Seattle's ten-story County-City Building one night last week swarmed some 3,000 hungry, ragged men, women & children. For months they had been living on food from county commissaries. Now the Legislature had decreed that they should get it from neighborhood grocers with requisitions issued by a State Relief Commission. To the desperate 3,000 this meant a 40% cut in their food supply, a pride-hurting investigation of their need. Mayor John Francis Dore told police to let them alone. Grateful, the demonstrators furnished their own police, who shoved through the mob crying: "Keep moving! Don't bother anybody or the cops will be after us. Keep orderly!"

In the County Commissioners' auditorium, crammed to the doors, spokesmen argued themselves hoarse for more cash and food relief, free light and water, 5,000 gal. of gasoline for a motor march on the State Capitol at Olympia. Just as hoarsely the Commissioners argued the impossibility of granting their demands.

The demonstrators settled down to stay until they got results. Mothers with babes in arms got sleepy first, dropped off in the comfortable chairs. The rest lay down on the marble floor--hard and cold but better than Seattle streets with icy winds whistling up from Puget Sound.

Next day the demonstrations became a big, grim picnic. Sandwiches, foraged from nearby restaurants, were passed around. From the county jail came coffee. Someone got hold of a gavel, used it to beat time for a song. Pinocle games started. Other groups squatted against the walls, swapped stories.

More jobless kept coming until some 5,000 of them, squeezed and sweaty, had the second and seventh floors almost to themselves. Still no one interfered. Official Seattle is inclined to be lenient with its unemployed. For nearly two years they have been organized in a self-helping Unemployed Citizens League of high political potency. Municipally-owned public utilities furnish free light and water to thousands. Lately a mortgage company fixed up a fine home in one of the city's best residential districts. Before a prospective renter could move in, several unemployed families had taken squatters' possession of the house. Hundreds of such squatters are scattered through Seattle apartments and houses. Court sympathies are with the cashless tenant, against the landlord who wants to evict or foreclose.

After two days & nights authorities decided that the picnic had lasted long enough. Police spent two hours gently herding out the crowd. From the roof deputy sheriffs used a fire hose to quench the spirits of some 500 or 600 who tried to force their way back inside. P: Some 4,000 Nebraska farmers slept on the State Fair Grounds two miles out of Lincoln one night last week. Next morning they hitched up their overalls, raised their banners, marched shouting and singing to the Capitol. Half of them got into the legislative chamber, presented to a joint session of the Legislature two sets of demands for relief, including a mortgage moratorium law. Then all went peaceably home. Next day Nebraska's Senate and House Judiciary Committee voted to report out Governor Bryan's bill to halt farm foreclosures for two years.

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