Of all the small, local companies that could take an interest in the ongoing Occupy Seattle protests, Jim Rose’s Capitol Hill startup JakPak just might be the most useful.
A combination jacket/sleeping bag/tent, the waterproof JakPak is everything a homeless person, or in this case an anti-corporate greed protestor, needs to stay dry, warm, and mobile while practicing democracy. And when Rose saw Seattle police arresting demonstrators and confiscating tents last Wednesday night, he decided to drive down to Westlake the next day with more than $6,000 worth of his mighty morphing jackets.
“We’re a very, very small company—there’s only about three of us,” Rose tells Seattle Weekly. “I may not totally agree with everything they’re talking about because we’re a business. But we can’t get loans either!”
Rose brought 25 JakPaks altogether. And at $250 apiece retail, it was no frivolous donation. The company has only been around for about a year, and Rose still works a separate full-time job elsewhere to make ends meet. He says the donation was the most he could afford, but he wanted to do whatever he could. And it’s a good thing he did.
Just days after Rose dropped off his supplies at Westlake, Mayor Mike McGinn and the Seattle Police Department made it even more difficult for protestors to stay warm and dry. Citing an ordinance that outlaws “tents or structures” in public parks, on a drizzly Saturday night cops began to instruct those massed downtown that they would no longer be able to take shelter underneath umbrellas unless they were physically holding them aloft. In other words, for a brief moment and under specific circumstances, Seattle—the city in which they’re needed most—made umbrellas illegal.
Of course, Rose had no way of knowing that his donation would be needed so desperately. He was only trying to help. The same can’t be said, however, of the folks behind Big Mario’s Pizza, who, unlike Rose, didn’t make the most useful donations, just the most delicious. (Take a wild guess.)