Where can the homeless take free showers in Seattle? Where are the most reliable needle exchange sites in town? Where can women get safe abortions? Where can our youth get free anonymous STD testing? Where can the poor find emergency child care and emergency infant supplies? How can seniors get a utility discount? Where are gay/bi/transgender medical services? Where can the poor find clothing, meals, food, housing, shelter, e-mail and phone services, and other essential services in our Emerald City? This information, and more, is contained within the recently published 6th Edition of the Peace Heathens' "Seattle Crisis Resource Directory."

The "Seattle Crisis Guide," as it has come to be known on the street over the years, was first produced in 1989 by a bunch of local hippie activists calling themselves the "Peace Heathens." The group was founded by Vivian McPeak, director of the Seattle Hempfest. With a flair for psychedelic art and colorful presentation, this group was reminiscent of the early days of Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Ken Kesey. Peace in all forms, including economic peace, was the agenda of this group. 95% of the staff that created the Crisis Guide are also on the Seattle Hempfest staff. As Hempfest grew, it absorbed the Peace Heathens, so this is the sole project left that the Peace Heathens do independently.

The Crisis Guide was the first successful project the Peace Heathens had. The Peace Heathens felt that the music and alternative culture communities would dedicate themselves wholeheartedly to something they believed in--people just needed a vehicle for community service. They wanted to create a project that had an immediate and tangible, rather than symbolic, result. So the Peace Heathens went out and collected all the pamphlets and info they could on community resources and put them in a pile on Vivian's floor and began to separate them into categories. They had a friend who worked at a copy center doing graveyard shift (oh god, how typical is this story?!) and that was the first guerrilla printing of 600 copies.

The Seattle Police began carrying the Crisis Guides in their patrol cars, using them as tools to connect to the community. Instead of telling someone to move on, they could tell them where a shelter was and give them a Crisis Guide. The Church Council of Greater Seattle, the Washington Department of Corrections, the Department of Social and Health Services, NW Hospital, the NW AIDS Foundation, TeenLine, and others, have requested and given away Crisis Guides. Safeco approached the Peace Heathens and asked if they could donate printing and supplies to create the 2nd and 3rd edition printings, but not have their names anywhere on the copies! Thus, the next 12,000 copies appeared on the streets in coffeeshops, at libraries, in shelters. The 4th Edition was printed again by guerrilla printing at another late night graveyard copy shift in town. The 5th Edition was researched, but evolved into the Crisis Guide website at www.seattlecrisis.org, with Joe Mabel as webmaster. A hard copy never was printed.

The new 6th edition is ready to be printed and distributed. Vivian says that they need to get 10,00 copies printed before winter so no one freezes in an alley for lack of information. He said they have never been able to meet the demand for copies yet. He also pointed out the greater need than ever for this resource, as we are in a federal, state, county, and city budget crisis, and there is a conservative mood of contempt towards the poor. So far, 21,000 copies have now gone out to the public without ANY money exchanging hands.

The Crisis Guide is a hand up, not a hand out. Vivian says, "we just give them the resources, they are the ones who need to pound the pavement to make it happen." Over the years, Vivian has worn a leather jacket with Peace Heathens painted on the back. People have come up to him and thanked him for the Crisis Guide, saying it saved their lives when they were homeless, suicidal, and broke, and now they have a family and job. But Vivian says the best reward for him is to see an "Ave Rat" or street punk with a tattered Crisis Guide hanging out his back pocket, as he walks down the street.