As I stood outside in the frigid Olympia morning, I glanced up at the gray sky. No rain yet, but later we might not be so lucky. I took a deep breath and exhaled, forcing myself to relax. I gathered what intellectual courage I could muster and fell in-step with more than 450 others who, like me, had gathered in our state capital and donned red garb to show our support for Housing & Homelessness Advocacy Day -- to be a voice for continued government funding for the homeless.

Truthfully, I had my doubts as to the true effectiveness of something like advocacy. I know that in theory our legislative representatives care what "we the people" have to say on each and every issue, but let's be honest -- do they really care? Don't they already have their minds made up on any given issue? Can my one opinion actually matter?

Anne Marie Champoux (center) with co-workers, Seth Howard and Margaret Foster, at Housing & Homelessness Advocacy Day on February 12th

Marching toward the Capitol steps in a sea of red, I turned to my co-worker Seth and said, "So be honest with me, is what we're about to do here -- taking meetings with representative's aides, leaving notes for legislators, pulling legislators from the floor to plug our cause -- does all of that really make a difference?" Seth, a former state legislative staffer, looked at me slightly shocked and taken aback. "Yes," he said matter-of-factly, "absolutely it does!" Surprised by his answer, I entered the Capitol Building with a cautious seed of optimism.

By the day's end I knew for myself Seth had been right. In the first place, I learned that politicians are accessible. All it took was the initiative to set up a meeting. Secondly, I had been expecting cold and disconnected customer service. Instead I found genuine interest and concern in the faces of legislators all around me. I observed representative's aides enthusiastically stepping in when the representative was unavailable and engaging in a thoughtful discourse regarding what we had to say about funding for homeless programs. Each one of us really did matter. Each one of us had something important to contribute to the greater conversation.

As a result, I left Olympia feeling as though I wasn't just another face in the crowd, another ant in the ant hill. In the end, as I dashed toward our car, I was soaked to the bone from the rain, but my optimism was in full bloom.

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By the time Inglourious Basterds and Harry Potter had slipped into our discussion, the One Night Count felt more like a fraternizing affair than a civic one. So far, our flashlit trek through Woodland Park had shed more light on the film tastes of my fellow employees than on any hidden homeless population in the woods-and although I was happy to gab Golden Globes, the topic of conversation was clear evidence that we could afford to be distracted. If the homeless were out, they didn't seem very about. And because of it, our search had adopted an air of hollow formality, despite my previous hopes to make this one night count for something.

The search was racking up a number of other forfeited illusions, too, although one or two of them were admittedly pretty silly to begin with:

You mean we

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