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| AARON ELIJAH COLYER [email protected] NICKELSVILLE INTERVIEWS by Tom Hastings � 2008 Aaron Colyer is 28 years old, white, and wears a slight beard under his jaw like Henry David Thoreau. He often chairs the nightly 6PM meetings. He hands out business cards that read: �Aaron Colyer, Homeless Marine Corps Veteran, Resident of Nickelsville, Servant of God.� AARON The reasons people are homeless are as varied as the people that are homeless. I�ve met people that had their own businesses and made six figure salaries and were very successful, but unforeseen things happen in their lives that break them�. People on parole from correctional facilities usually have fines and court costs that exhausts all their money. They are forced to choose between paying the fines and fees to stay out of jail or having a place to live. I�ve heard the number as high as 3,000 who are released from King County Jail straight out to the streets totally homeless. I�m 28 years old�. Born in St. Petersburg, Florida, raised in Dayton, Ohio�. My mom died at a young age in Ohio. I then lived with relatives in Tennessee, then Virginia, then back to Tennessee. I was abused�. Bad decisions you make as a teenager can affect the rest of your life�. Bad things that happen in childhood have profound impact on your life, and that�s also true in my case�. I�m a Marine Corps veteran. I don�t get help from the VA.... I do get a check from GAU. I joined the Marine Corps at 17 years old and served my country two and a half years. I dropped out of high school at 16 and got my GED, scoring third highest out of over 100 people, scoring high enough to go to college, so when I was 16 I went to community college fulltime as I supported myself working fulltime at night. Played soccer, went to Church on weekends. Now I�m about 20 credits short of an Associates Degree in Electrical Engineering�. I slept outdoors all last winter at Tent City 3. There were nights when sleeping bags were not enough to keep warm and my whole tent was frozen�. I�ve slept in my car, slept under the bridge, slept in a tent behind a church. A church kicked me out because they said it was against the law. I replied, �What about the Law of God?� I�m a Christian Marine from the Deep South so you assume I must be conservative republican. But I consider myself to be an Independent. I was always against the Iraq War as illegal and unnecessary�. I miss the Marine Corps. I learned things like Honor, Integrity, Self-Sacrifice. But I don�t agree with the Iraq War. So I would not be a good marine to fight for what I consider to be an Illegal War. We�re wasting billions of dollars on an illegal war when that money could be spent here at home on Green Technology, creating jobs, starting a new era of energy infrastructure. America used to be a nation of democracy and compromise, but now it is too polarized into extremes. When Americans come together without selfish ambition and are willing to listen and compromise, we can accomplish great things. My first plan was to get a job on a fishing boat, make money, finish college. Didn�t get the jobs. God had other plans for me. Now I�m doing things I never imagined I�d be doing, like meeting with City Council. I never imagined I�d be homeless! Without any family or support system, I had been homeless a few other times, couch-surfing with friends. Actually I only had my own apartment maybe three times in my life. In that sense you could say I�ve been homeless my whole life! WE HAVE A GREAT SENSE OF COMMUNITY HERE. We share everything. All we have is each other�. I feel called to be here�. There are going to be more families homeless because of this economy. We�re bailing out the greedy bastards that caused all this, while doing nothing for the regular folks. Now they want to bail out General Motors for being dumb enough to make all those SUV�s no one wants. Well no one bails me out. I pay for my bad choices�. Look at the bank bailouts: Banks are using their $700 billion bailout to buy other banks, to control the whole financial system. Destruction of the financial system I think is deliberate, to allow financial institutions to consolidate power�. Maybe we should let the whole system collapse so we can build something better. I WANT TO SEE NICKELSVILLE GROW INTO A COMMUNITY WITH CENTRALIZED SERVICES AND HOUSING FOR OVER 1,000 PEOPLE. We can build green structures, eco-friendly structures. I already built a house out of pallets, ten 2x4�s and two boxes of nails, mostly recycled materials. You can build a house for $250 worth of materials. I�d like to build a whole neighborhood, complete with gardens where we can farm and grow our own food�. Nickelsville costs less than $5,000 per month to sustain 100 people and everything they need, from the Portapotties and dumpsters to building materials. There are 3,000 people now sleeping in the streets according to the latest night count. I�d like to take 1,000 of those people and build our sustainable city. Abraham dwelt in the land as a stranger in a strange land, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, heirs of the same promise, the promise of a city that has foundations, whose builder is God. That�s us. We�re living in tents waiting on this same promise, waiting to build this city�. Currently we are looking for a place around Seattle, about 2 or 3 acres. We could set up on private land donated by the owner. We can use donations, food, clothing, charcoal for our grills, survival supplies�. We�re all about SURVIVAL. |
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