time once again for community form and we're very lucky to have with us live in the studios this morning jury hands jury hands is with washington physicians for social responsibility and she is the organizer for the medical service delegations that regularly go to gaza gerri thank you very much for coming to spend time with us this morning thank you mike so you and your organization w p s are planning on doing a delegation to gaza coming up this coming october just right yes a little over a month away we plan to leave the united states at the end of october and stay into november probably the tenth or twelfth of the member go gaza takes they to get there and then a day to get in and hopefully we'll be able to serve in the hospitals and clinics there we are looking forward to helping in some of our colleagues in gaza set up some training programs that will be ongoing so that we don't just go in and do immediate work which we will do but also have set up long term training programs for people and things like trauma residency is one of our goals and i'll be  working with the school of nursing on setting up a grief and bereavement program so we're looking forward to that time to be with them we anticipate that we will find a lot of devastation and we know that our colleagues and our host in the gaza community mental health program have all been traumatized by what has been going on over these last weeks so we're anticipating also working on that kind of trauma response and you just last been there in april yes we were there in april and we took in surgeons and one of the surgeons is a trauma surgeon from harborview and he has now formally collegial relationships with people there israel isn't allowing us and we were invited to apply to come in and so we put together a team of two neurosurgeons and the trauma surgeon and i c u traveling nurse a cardiologist and myself we were going to go in and see what we could do just to be helpful over a period of a couple of weeks but our application was never answered the united nations relief works association which feeds over probably seventy percent of the people in gaza and and the world health organization were helping to host us but we just didn't ever get an answer now whether that's because the application process failed or we weren't allowed we don't know and we will never know that but now will apply again to go in october at the end right so you have been in constant communication with friends and colleagues yes i am in c communication i have called there nearly every day and talked with one friend who works at the gaza community mental health program and i in fact talked with him this morning and said to him what would he like us to be able to know here in the united states about what's happening in gaza and his first words were we want peace we want peace we're so tired of being constantly on the alert for bombs people have gone back into their bombed out homes because they would prefer to be in the place of their homes and he has one friend who said to him yesterday you know i'm going to go back to my home even though it's not habitable right now but as soon as this and i'll build one room and i'll stay there because this is the sacred place for me to be in my own home and i have a friend whose mother and three brothers were killed and i know that he will be looking at how he reconstruct his life a lot of the people that we know are also caregivers because we go in with medical people and so we know right now that the medical caregivers are also  traumatized palestinian medical relief committees says that probably between one hundred fifty and two hundred thousand children are in need of psychological support because their brothers and sisters were killed their parents are killed there you know the death is all around the destruction is all around probably they estimate that at least fifteen hundred children are now totally orphans so the mouth of real trauma is hard to quantify we can only think that if this happened in seattle we would be well we'd be devastated just like the money point eight million people in gaza are devastated gaza is such a small place it's only about of lake washington and about five miles average wide so one point seven to one point eight million people and that space and a good third of the agricultural land is off limits to them so the space becomes even more crowded and that population density grows even higher you can see that once the bombing by israel started in these intensely populated areas there was a lot of and destruction and devastation as many of the photos clearly show homes apartment buildings schools hospitals u niversities they're just completely destroyed yes the islamic university was reconstructed after the two thousand and eight two thousand and nine bombings by israel and we've all talked there and this mom again  know something about the way they have handled their teaching mechanisms which are very forthright very forward looking and we teach in english and they learn in english their medical students chart in english and now this beautiful building that they are building the building these many buildings that they constructed are destroyed or at least partially destroyed very sad the mainstream media liked to cover that at the beginning anyway of this latest attack by israel that there were leaflets dropped saying you know giving people a chance to get out but my understanding is there's were you know in a crowded situation like that where you going to go the leafleting or what they call knocking on the roof of a house as it's it's so awful so sad because if i am in a house and there are now one hundred people in my house because some of them have had their homes destroyed and now you know i got my roof and tell me that get out you have three or four minutes to get out where am i going to go with one hundred people in an area that is so intensely populated that there really is nowhere to run and and really i know of several instances where those knocks occurred people left their homes and then waited for fifteen minutes or so up to maybe three hours went back in and then their house was destroyed with the people in it so the knocking is such an odd thing to think that that's a justification for killing all of these people now the number that we get this morning is two thousand and seventy six people have been killed i understand that there is one israeli child that was killed by a rocket  the last couple of days and that's a tragedy in my work i work with parents whose children have died i have a pretty good understanding of the devastation that occurs in the heart of parents when their child has died  there are hundreds of children who have been killed in gaza there's no way to quantify the sorrow and the long term effects of your child being killed by violence but the volume in gaza is so enormous that the population is what we call continuously stressed and traumatized we don't talk about post traumatic stress injury in g talk about continuous traumatic stress injury in gaza because always these children are on the alert the parents are on the alert when i have the problems that happens too is that the children who are in a normal situation look to their parents for protection now begin to realize that no one can protect them because everyone is at risk and the stress is also based on the fact that this current attack has been going on so long for what week are we endow it's is an you were saying earlier breaking the cease fires and in gaza blames israel for breaking the cease fires and there's so much finger pointing that it's hard to know about who to blame and really it's sort of not very functional to do that the fact is that there was an eight day i was a three day cease fire but that was extended for five days and then it was broken and at that point then there was more bombing and there were more rockets and  collaborators killed and you know the whole thing has just become so incredibly war weary some and horrifying to the people who are under constant attack or under threat of constant attack that we have to put ourselves in the place of those folks and try to imagine what that would be i know it's impossible but having been in gaza maybe twenty times since one thousand nine hundred three i begin to have a feeling about what that would be to be in one of those concrete buildings and have the sound of a drone go over when we were there in april there were drones going overhead instantly you could hear this sound of the drone going over and now what isn't reported very much is that the people of gaza live with that almost constant sound of drones and the drones are dangerous because they they're armed their weapons in and o themselves so it isn't just the shelling from bullets in it isn't just the shelling from tanks and it isn't just the bombing overhead all of those things far more destructive than rockets coming out of gaza but it's also this constant application of the horrifying little insidious sound of a drone going over knowing that the drone could fire at you at any moment and there's one of the articles on your facebook page pointed out john that runs a medical facility there the drones can actively see what's going on so when they fire at a medical facility that injured people are in you know there's just no fallback for that terms or excuses no and really medical people have been hurt or killed ambulances have been targeted and the ambulance drivers killed many journalists have been killed so you have to think about if there pinpoint targeting by israel of the people in gaza is true then there are lots of mistake or mistakes being made or the targeting is pretty horrible and i understand the rockets are are without the same kind of targeting the rockets that come from gaza into israel but the destruction done by the rockets is of course miniscule not that that four year old boy falls into that category or that those sixty four soldiers fall into that category because sixty four soldiers families are now devastated and the four now four civilians of israel those families are devastated and the two thousand and seventy six families of the people in gaza are devastated and there is no codify any of that on a personal basis so we here in the u s have a role in this it isn't just something that is out of the media presents it that way it's something far removed it's not so far removed financial and military support to israel well our press is known for being pretty much biased toward things like if you see if you hear that someone in israel was killed you hear that someone in gaza died there's a subtle difference in that and yet it's not very subtle the terrorists kills  israeli is really does what he does and then people die and i have many friends in israel who want that to stop so i think it's essential to know that the movement for peace is not just from the people of gaza but also from hundreds of thousands of people in israel who are wanting both  government and the israeli government to step forward like real humanitarian and end this disaster whether the disaster is brought about by a natural gas reservoir which exists off the coast of gaza and has had almost no press here but it is well acknowledged by the people of gaza as being enlivening factor for all of this we don't know that we don't know all of the subtleties behind what's happened what we see is the result of the failure of our human soul to come to some kind of way to rectify that inability of people to come to peace so somehow or other we have been we have learned to play unfairly in the world and if the united states is supplying weapons that are killing people in gaza then i feel a personal responsibility about that i feel my tax dollars are going to kill my friends in gaza i don't like that at all i met with jim mcdermott about that and we know he knows that this has to stop we know that there has to be a way to come to some kind of sense of responsibility as human beings about stopping this killing we just haven't found the path yet some time ago archbishop pantelis and said regarding their rock war we need to put the leaders of the world in a room together and require that they give one another a benevolent glance before they can do anything about moving toward war i'd like to see that kind of wisdom perpetuated so has either anyone so far put forward plans for cease fire and or peace in a situation oh yes of course israelis want a complete disarmament of gaza and they have some some ideas about what will work and what will work the people of gaza have a ten point plan for a ten year truce that they've presented his role and so far the israelis have not moved on on making sure that that could happen but from my reading of it those points on their ten point plan are not unreasonable they want an end to the siege they want to be able to move freely back and forth between is between themselves in the west bank so there could be a corridor established they'd like to have a seaport they like to have open fishing you know the restrictions on fishing and gaza are are horrible because right now fully and partially untreated sewage runs right into the mediterranean sea and the fishermen of gaza who used to provide a major part of the protein source for people of gaza are not allowed out feather further than three not a whole miles and so they're fishing in polluted  water they want to be able to go out to into the ocean into the sea to be able to fish in fresh water they also want to be able to build sewage treatment plants and have free access to electricity right now their electricity is very sporadic during the height of this conflict they were without electricity for days on end or only had two or three hours of electricity now they're having maybe four hours on and twelve hours off or maybe six hours on and twelve hours off depending on where they live in gaza but it's hot there now you know and to have no way to make sure that your food is safe or that you have clean drinking water and it's  humanitarian disaster in gaza as well as a medical this aster the public health of gaza has been almost destroyed right now also in gaza that communicable disease problem is accelerating incredibly they're having a lot of ski b s which is highly contagious disease and when people are living one hundred posts it's hard to avoid being  mutually infected and so they don't have adequate medicine for the treatment of scabies they're seeing the hydration and a lot of g i problems that gastrointestinal problems that is vomiting diarrhea  clean water to clean that up with and that you can imagine that these problems that are medical accelerate into just ongoing problems that are contagious and  and carry with them also psychological trauma so they have been had he had an outbreak of cholera that i'm aware of but that sort of seems to be on the public health or out maybe the next thing that they're going to be looking for but scabies is really a problem for them right now and right now it doesn't appear that any other organizations and any third party either nations or n g o s are getting in to be able to help the situation sure egypt is really trying you know well egypt is the place of negotiation how much that trial is ongoing we don't know john kerry as you know all went over and tried to broker a peace between and that apparently just didn't work other arab nations have had things to say but other arab nations have not brought a lot of pressure to bear on this and now there are all sorts of conjectures about that that probably are worth getting into here in this short amount of time about who pays who what money to make sure that people hold off on their demands but  f it's a problem that other nations might be demanding and probably could demand more than they are the united nations is certainly stood up to say th again prior to this latest military attacks gaza physically was in bad shape to begin with you mentioned one of the peace and allowing medicines to flow in freely allowing the transfer of at agricultural goods in and out what's happened in gaza which was a highly agricultural area is that because of the siege they have not been able to fully export the things that they raise also because the gaza awkward for has been over pumped and the sea water is flowing into their aquifer the water that they get is sale and eyes so you know if you water your crops with sale and eyes water the crops don't do as well so what are is a huge huge issue there in g and in the seeds would mean a way to desalinate as the water or to put water free flowing into the aquifer right now israel has drilled wells along the long land border and they take fresh water that for it has become a terrible problem they get water in and trucks maybe from israel and israel well reports that they send in food and that they administer things through it's not sufficient for the population and so many of these things people should be able to relate to here because in a way we're dealing with similar problems but on a much smaller scale of course like bringing trucks of water to detroit you see how absurd that is it's like pardon the pun it's a drop in the bucket for what people need yes that's right so if we begin to see that on a on a miniscule scale really that we know that that's not an answer the answer is to allow people to have fuel to cook with people to have fuel to drive with all aspects of our life that we can imagine that make us mobile and functional are missing are highly curtailed and gaza because of the siege there are people who are able to go out for medical care but there are people who are not able to go of her medical care and april when we came through the border there was a young woman holding her baby in an ambulance at the border and the baby was being taken out for open heart surgery  jerusalem which was fine in the baby went to a palestinian hospital in jerusalem and we actually visited that baby in jerusalem a couple of weeks after the transfer was made but the mother was not allowed to go with him so that aspects of siege are tiny and huge and pervasive and absolutely limit the way people can live a life that has high quality to talk about that now people can support sure we are going in october we hope we are going to get permission to go in october through the air it's checkpoint between israel and gaza there are about fifteen of us who are queuing up to go and we are hoping that people will support that we all pay our own way we are volunteers physicians take their time off nurses take their time off i who i'm not employed with i can go more freely so anyone who would like to contribute to that could make a taxi that double donation to washington physicians for social responsibility b a w w w p s r s org and those mon will be fully one hundred percent used to purchase medical supplies and medicines and books or some aspect of the library  and as well as people with medical backgrounds participate in your delegation we're looking for a medical specialists for this delegation because there are the seeds has resulted in medical people not being able to go out and get continuing education in the way that they were free to go before the siege and so what we're hoping is that we will take in instructors as well as practitioners so we can  help up lift medical practitioners in what they're doing and again as i said earlier that we want to help them for medical training programs in areas where they have not been able to do that because of the siege gaza how do some of the things that he does and we're hoping now that the trauma surgeon will do the same thing for  rex why don't you tell us a little bit about facing homelessness ok so facing homelessness is a nonprofit and our mission simply is to change the negative stereotype against the homeless  we want people to get engaged and to stop seeing the issue as this overwhelming something other and actually bring into their life find their own personal answer to addressing homelessness so out of underneath that nonprofit we have a number of projects one of them is our facebook site homeless in seattle but we also have other projects that such as service that occurs project street hard which  started simply by her coming in the door telling us that she had been watching the almost in seattle site and had been touched by the stories in the photos and wanted to volunteer wanted to get involved and that and that brought on this beautiful conversation about what was important to her and as an artist she began to talk about you know the beauty that she saw in the people in the street and that led to the project that we're here today to talk to you about yeah yeah so it kind of started out with an idea painted this sign for them and that kind of grew from there and then charlie newton another artist that comes into homeless in seattle who is also served by them but also does a lot of our work himself  said i had started painting a portrait and our idea was to pay to fill the entire back wall of the homeless in seattle office building with portraits and i told rex i said this is going to take a long time for one person to fill this entire back wall have a kid i'm going to school and so charley came in one day and he said well why don't why don't you guys get a bunch of artists to do it and we're like done yeah charly that's what we should be doing so you know within a few weeks  was march we had created a call to artists and it was really well received we got a bunch of artists that sent in their proposals and applied and we accepted as many as we could take for the amount of paint we had we actually had not even a drop of paint left in the paint cans and i think the show which i would say was all donated which is like miller paint yeah miller paints generously donated all of that and then done lumber gave us a cut on the wood chris that done lumber and matt miller paints both of those managers have been really helpful and great but as we were handing the supplies over to the artists had to tell them he said so don't spill this paint don't tropical don't don't anything like that happen but if you run out we'll work something out more get you get you extra pain so just everything came together really really well and the twenty six twenty five artists that we have are amazing people  they're great artists but i have more to say about them as a as a person as people and there are some you know that's one of the things that actually i wanted to throw in is that is that this answer to addressing homelessness  isn't a formula you know the important thing is that each person finds their own answer and that can be something as simple as just saying hello or it can be something as beautiful and big as what sarah was doing with the street hard project  but the important part of that is that you draw on what your strengths are and your you know your heart feeling in this on this issue and this is the thing that i love about the project st heart is that artists bring this very important thing to us as a community they they show us the things that we're missing you know the beautiful things in life they they have this special view and when they do art you know that allows us to see their view and i think specifically with this issue of homelessness when artists get involved they're looking at the person you know just as sara said you know it's there are but it's also their connection as a human being to this issue and i think that's something that's that's profoundly beautiful about this project is that the artist actually really spent time studying yabbies individuals from from black and white photographs and then they brought to that yeah their feelings the color that sarah gave them yeah well not only that though so the artists were given these black and white photographs of the the people they would be painting but in addition to that several of the artists probably half of them on there were opportunities to meet the people that they would be painting to establish kind of a reporter relationship get to know them you know what colors do you kno like you kind of you meet somebody new sort of get an idea about their personality are they vibrant are they a little bit more calm or the interviewer did are they extroverted and so you kind of start to choose colors based on on the emotions that person gives you but  basically yeah about half of the artists established you know meeting times to go and meet with these people and talk with them we did provide back stories and kind of bio's as a printout when they got the car were just so they had an idea of who they were but in addition to that the artists a lot of them took it a step further and wanted to know the person that they were painting and i think that that just added another another layer of complexity to it that i wasn't expecting because we're asking these artists to do it for free of course we providing the supplies but they gave a lot of their time and these were huge portraits you know four feet by four feet three feet by three fee and then two three two feet by two feet one of the artists her name is joan now she was telling us she painted  beautiful painting of andy andersen and she was standing there telling all of us that over the last you know eight weeks as she was painting this in her kitchen and he became kind of a person in their home her children would say how's that and you do in have you finished andy's eyes yet oh indy's hair looks great mom and they just it started a conversation around their dinner table talking about this person and so you know friends and family coming in and out of their homes talking with them about what they were working on what project they were working on that that's part of this project the idea isn't just to paint these portraits and then auction them off to fundraise for facing homelessness homeless in seattle the idea also is just just spread that conversation and that get people talking about it in our community locally even further and everyone of these single artists i imagine that they have told you know numerous people about what they're doing and what's going on and so yeah it's just it's a lot more than just the art for sure for sure i haven't told you just yet sara but  yesterday tony fox came into my office and we're all the paintings are currently which i'm getting this yeah this beautiful daily experience of having these twenty five paintings in my office but tony fox came in and saw the painting of her for the first time and you know she just was so taken by it but then she she said you know my eyes are brown though you know they're green and because again the the painting was done from this black and white portrait and the artist had not yet met with her and and then beef by the time she left she said you know my mom's eyes are brown and it and and she talked about how she looks at this painting now and she sees herself and her mom in this painting and how that you know mom's passed away and how that connects are and i think just as you were talking about now these layers of meaning and connection is where the strength of this project is yeah it's all kind of unfolding you know like you just explain with tony that that that's just another another something that's sort of unfolding so because the artists they get a print of the portrait that they did and so does the person that participated so tony would get a print of her portrait that she could you know keep into it she wants with so i think that's really cool that's what she yeah and this is the thing that we're excited about is that this is a project that we're going to continue you know so it's so we have this one of the now that's happening actually and so hemmer twelve in colombia city of the collaborative organ six pm exactly it will be music and food and wine and and and but the idea is like sarah mentioned earlier this the power of this is to create conversation you know when you're at a coffee shop or you're at a dinner table maybe out with three or four friends three or four other couples or whatever that gives you the courage to just bring up in conversation hey what's your feeling about the issue of homelessness you know what your connection to it you know how do you feel about stopping in talking to somebody that it's living on the street ultimately you know that i think is what's going to help solve homelessness is if we all have an opinion we all have some sense that we're doing something yeah i think that i've i mean i've heard you explain this before but i don't know if everybody has kind of heard sort of your your take on it and why why you we have the slogan just say hello and that's that the perception of you see people standing on the side of the street with a sign at the you know if you're getting off of the freeway or you're walking down the street and they're they're laying there they're sleeping and you see all these people around them and you think that people are talking to them that they're part of the conversation in that people are knowledge in them but often they're not most people don't even turn their head to look at them when they're standing there it doesn't matter if you if you have money to give them if you want to give them anything even water you don't have to do any of that but it's more from a human perspective about just turning your head looking at them and genuinely giving them a smile that level of acknowledgement or really really  just brightens their day but it also does something for you because i think it it's a lot more work to not look at them to ignore them it is so easy to just to let that fear down you know what the border that what's the worst they're go oftentimes you're going to get a surprised look from them at first like oh they're they're saying hi to me honestly there they will look at you surprised with a twinkle in their eye and then they're just their face and their whole demeanor because we love connection and we want to be connected and they are a part of our community and they they need that connection as well so as my as much as we do i want to encourage people to just look at them and smile and if and if they can just say hi to them just say hope you have a good day you know help people treat you kindly today or something because a lot of a lot of people give them a hard time i think that i think the problem that we all experience is that the issue is so overwhelming you know it's huge and we know that when we're five minutes late for a meeting or our mind is filled with a daily business that we all have that we don't have time in that moment to stop and and help somebody fix somebody but it's just as you said you know we're not there to fix somebody we're there just to make them feel seen most people feel invisible that are homeless and that's a crippling part of what they're going through if you can imagine  every person that is on the street is there for a reason they didn't just wake up one morning and say yeah hey i think today i'm going to start being homeless they some trauma some incidents repeating  whatever that brought them to this state has them in a place where they're suffering and when our response is to now just ignore them it's a little bit like kicking them when they're down yeah right the very opposite should be happening somebody suffering in front of us we should be reaching out with the bare minimum of saying i see you i know you're suffering you know i love you you're another human being you know when you say i want to encourage people to reach out and just say hello another place to do this is profound for me as we all know about this event that happens to us when we pull off the freeway on an off ramp and there is this you see that person there down at the end with their sign and there is i think for everybody a certain level of anxiety right is my car going to be the one that stops right next to him and because the light changed and and then what do i fiddle with the radio what it will you know  if you roll your window down and you just say hey i just want to check in how are you doing a guarantee i do this every time i guarantee you that person will go through a transformation right before your eyes the smile come over them i've been doing this for years and nobody has ever said oh a now that you said hi to me can i have five bucks yeah not once you know the connection just as you say sir that connection in that moment is far more important than any anything that you can pull out of your wallet  what i mean as this is sort of this conversation is unfolding what basically you know homeless in seattle and street art is about is that we want this to be accessible and people for anybody doesn't matter who you are and the same thing with our art project when we were taking artists on we we made a conscious decision when we were choosing artists we said we want this to be a diverse group of artists we are not just going to pick professional artists artists who are established artists who've gone to art school we have an artist two artists that had been living on the street one artist who had lived to actually two others who were living on the street and two who had lived on the street in the past and now are professional artists ryan henry ward is one of them and the other is conan yeah well and both of them are phenomenal artists and then there's you know like i said about you know jenelle she's a mom and i don't know that art art is her main gig but she is a phenomenal artist and so we wanted the hobby artists be you know artists who taught themselves the artists who went to school the artists who are pursuing it for a career and then of course the artists that are professionals like you know there's quite a few i would say half of them are professional artists but most people know i think in seattle henry right right one reward if you if you've spent any time driving through neighborhoods of seattle you'll see murals all over town they're these fanciful beautiful creations and then alfredo  famous around the world you know you know as i hear two paintings in the smithsonian and in museums around the world so it is a diverse group of people there's also steve through cough who yeah i talked to yesterday that he finishes he says he's finishing all cruel but he also has been homeless and just recently moved into the our house and is painting rain and he also was painted so he has this unique place in the project that he's he's all he's a subject and humans as we've gone and you know kind of what was right what was right for the organization and so we made choices you know about bringing the community together when we were sourcing supplies but then with our our event coming up  our fundraiser on september twelfth at six pm at the collaborative ory for that event we chose the clabber tour in columbia city also because they are a fabulous nonprofit organization where they have a in meeting area where people can come in use the wife i get some food use the bathroom there's lockers in there and then there's an adjacent room where it's a work shared workspace so people can work there's a learning kitchen there's a teaching garden out back so it is a community hub doing a lot of cool things there's a lot of cool things that are going to happen with them but we wanted to have this at a place where the facility alignment with our values and our goals and that is that just really community and community so you should you should really check out their website and see what they're about because they're definitely very neat and then the musical group that will be performing they've produced a cd with the lyrics and with some of the artists that live on the street you know perform perform music on the street and so they'll be performing something so we just we've been very thoughtful about this night that we're having we want to give people an experience a wonderful experience a rich experience something that a lot of thought and planning has gone into so we're we're fortunate actually a lot of people have come to this project like you said it's curly john curly we currently as we do he's very smart he is he's actually not only is he smart he's actually been helpful to us because you know we're both both here and i or are going through  been kind of our mentor and just been available when we need a mansard questions i really can't say enough good things about him yeah so for those that aren't familiar with the facebook page describe homeless in seattle ok you know is coming up on four years in the making and and primarily it is a photo journal project that started just with this idea that it wanted to reverse the negative stereotype against those that are living on the street and and the issue that i think goes on for people that are homeless is that you know they're living out in front of everybody and the negative of their life is constantly being witnessed we can go into our homes we can put our best foot forward when we're out in the world and we're not judged by that negative people who are living on the street don't have their beauty shown you know they're there all of the shortcomings are out there and and their struggle right so the idea of the project was to just take beautiful pictures just to not to not worry at all about the the rest of the story you know that stor already being told in the negative stereotype but to balance it to bring beautiful photos and to tell something beautiful about that person one of the things i like about the project is that you know unlike architecture for instance which i'm an architect that you have to create this beauty in a project a beautiful thing about taking photos and listening to people that are living on the street is that you're not creating anything it's already there and you're just exposing for the beauty that they already have and and this project which completely surprised me when i started do that actually create a community kind of spontaneously around it and people it spoke to people's inner kind of feeling of wanting to do something and this is the other thing that makes both sara and i so hopeful about the project and the larger work of of changing the negative stereotype against homelessness is that is that i think deep down everybody wants to fix this that want they nobody wants to see anybody struggling and suffering on the street the problem is the how you know what what can i do and and i think this almost in seattle project has allowed people to have kind of a soft entry a simple little entry into the conversation of homelessness to be able to say oh you made me or my dad you know and he needs a sleeping bag i think i'm going to donate that sleeping bag that's been in my basement for three years that i haven't used  and from there once you start this is the beautiful thing about it it's a beautiful think just as sarah said about just saying hello once you start the human spirit starts to take over you know it like if you say hello to somebody on the street you won't be but five or six more hellos with that person that you'll say you know hey tell me your name you know i'm rex what's your name and pretty soon you know you'll be running past on the way to the bus or whatever saying hey john you know whatever you know so following them and i just one day i am a feeling gal i am somebody that makes decisions based on how i feel about something that in a practical sense necessarily not always not always but  it's worked out for it's worked out for me quite well so i think i'm going to go with it but i was sitting there at the computer and i was just looking at their site and i was started reading i think you might have a blog or something somewhere where all of these photos are t bler that's what it was and i just was reading through them and when i finished i got on to the facebook site and i messaged and i said hey i'm an artist you know sometimes i paint stuff or you know three in the in the fall  time fair start is one of them but i said is there anything you guys need that i could you know maybe paint for you guys and you know to help you guys out he said yeah you know we come on down and started talking about how i got interested what homeless in seattle was about and that's how the sign started but really when i just say hello just say hello sign started but really what struck me was yeah the black and white photographs i think do you capture something about them that a color photograph wouldn't ordinarily and also the stories about them i began to kind of identify with the different individuals like steve who was an artist and i really took a liking to him and then as i got to know people i was telling rex the other day that there's a few of them that just really feel these individuals have a special place in my heart johan just has this wicked sense of humor and i just every time i see him my face lights up because he's going to say something really really charming and funny and then chris is a little bit edgy a little rough around the edges but you can just totally see that he's got this soft underbelly and he's really sweet and kind and so it's just yeah it's just something that i just there's something about everybody that i just i love about them and mills some of these people who have gotten to be more familiar with of course have that special place in my heart yeah you know i want to i want to also add that one of the things about coming to the community is how each person then evolves what halmos in seattle and facing homelessness is so i can't tell you enough sara has changed this project you know not just street heart but honestly homeless in seattle and facing homelessness with all her you know compassion and energy and really just genuine love of people she has moved you know the ball of this project you know just forward in a in a big way  so that's that's part of the exciting thing about this is as each person comes to this community they bring their own you know layer to it their own understanding of you know their humanity and the way that they want to reach out to other people thank you sarah yeah thank jack so we've got about two minutes left so people about your event on september twelfth that is going to be a benefit for facing homelessness is that yeah it's it's going to be a benefit  for facing homelessness these paintings are going to be auctioned off but i also want to stress that this is a community celebration of and you know this is really what we're really working to bring community together this this often when  you when i talk about facing homelessness it's it is people want to talk about the homeless right but in fact really the discussion is about the home and people living in homes this is really what we're trying to do is to get people to be involved to step forward to the start about six forty five but you should be there at six because you need to come need to get something to eat you need to have a nice glass of wine you need to look at all the different portraits or water or lemonade whatever whatever you would like but if you're thinking oh my goodness this is an auction so i you know how am i going to buy one of these these portraits well what we have is we have it structured in a way that the originals will be auctioned off because of course those are more  valuable to people who are collectors but also it's the original piece of artwork so it's giant norma's and beautiful and colorful these are colorful portraits i think andy warhol and so what we are then doing with the lovely advice of john curly is we have prints they're smaller prints but they are nonetheless beautiful prints and we will have ten of them of each of these portraits and we will start the bid at one hundred two hundred dollars and we will go up until we have ten people for each one of those portraits could be two hundred dollars and you get a print could be eight hundred could be two thousand what ever your pocket a louse this is all going to the homeless in seattle so this is my sales pitch here