Path to the Promised Land: Tent City Seeks Justice

A young man squints against the camera flash. His long dark hair falls on shoulders hunched beneath an orange jail suit. He looks uneasy…. His uneasiness is not that of an embarrassing moment or an uncomfortable situation; it is the deep uncertainty that comes when the world falls out from under you. He flinches against the mug shot.

The next day his face appears on the front page of the local newspaper under the headline: “Rape suspect lived in Watershed. Man appears to have stayed in underground hole.” In the following days, the newspaper prints sensational photos of his underground “bunker”, photos of his belongings strewn about by the police, and short clips – taken out of context – from his private journal.

The article directly above his reads, “Olympia Council tells Tent City to disperse.”

**

A young woman pulls a trash bag, heavy with the weight of two days’ garbage, out of a can and ties the ends. She moves quickly, collecting heaping ashtrays and wiping surfaces in a single motion.

Kandace, 19 years old, is a resident of Camp Quixote, Olympia’s new tent city founded by the Poor People’s Union (PPU). Kandace joined the Union two weeks before Camp Quixote was founded.

“It’s about brainstorming solutions together for poor people to survive in today’s economically challenged world,” she says of the Union, “…about helping people who don’t have other options to have an option. Including myself.”

**

David Lukas Lynch, age 23, was accused of raping an 11 year old girl.

The rape occurred on February 5^th. The attacker entered the girl’s home and raped her at knife point while her family slept.

Police found David the next day, huddled in a church parking lot. They asked him if he hurt anyone the night before, and he said, “Yes, I think so.” They arrested him and searched his camp, finding a hunting knife and a journal in which David mentioned his desire to quit “child hunting”.

The Olympian reported later that David was behaving “irrationally” and was so “out of control” that he had to be placed in four point restraints and put on suicide watch. The judge presiding over his case ordered a mental health evaluation to determine if he was capable of standing trial.

**

Kandace grew up in foster care and was left to survive on her own at 18, when she aged out of the program. After bouncing between shelters, camps, and friends’ couches, Kandace discovered the PPU and the plans for a new tent city, which she described as “a doorway to something new, a way to be productive.”

Camp Quixote was erected by the PPU on February 1^st. The encampment served as a means for the homeless to establish their right to exist. Having already been squeezed out of the parks, the homeless were frustrated when the City passed an ordinance banning panhandling and sidewalk sitting last November. Camp Quixote was built the day the new ordinance went into effect.

Asked about her opinion of the ordinance, Kandace commented that “the safest place for [homeless women] to be is on the sidewalks where there is light and people around.”

The encampment was initially sited on a vacant City-owned lot at the corner of State and Columbia streets, in the heart of downtown Olympia. Its location made it highly visible. Cars driving by frequently honked their horns in a show of support for the camp residents. Local businesses donated food, and Evergreen students thronged to the site in a show of mass solidarity.

Camp residents checked in regularly with neighboring businesses to make sure they had no complaints. They set up security patrols, and organized volunteers to pick up trash in the neighborhood.

When an elderly, senile woman who had been thrown out of the Salvation Army showed up at the camp, residents took her under wing and made sure she had a good tent and food to eat.

**

David Lynch’s underground camp was impressive. About the size of a fifth-wheel trailer and built with plywood, it even sported a window, and was well hidden from public view.

Sensing a hot story, the Olympian published lavish photos of the camp, calling it an “underground lair” in one “breaking news” update on their website. Readers commented on the Olympian’s website:

“Put him back in the bunker and cover up the hole. Its a good place for someone who rapes an 11 year old.”

“This guy is transient because he is lazy. He is a predator because he is wired wrong.”

“I hope [he] gets repeatedly raped in prison until he has to wear diapers for the rest of his miserable life.”

“Put him in with the rest of the houseless in prison.”

When contacted for a sensational tidbit by the daily Olympian, David’s ex-girlfriend replied, “I want people to understand that he is a brilliant man and a complex thinker and a poet… [David] doesn't have a bad heart."

**

The City of Olympia was unimpressed with the accomplishments of Camp Quixote. Angry about City property being taken over by the homeless, City Manager Steve Hall told the Olympian that “It seems like a terrible way to start a conversation… it seems like a poke in the eye.”

Neither the City Manager nor the Olympian noted the fact that 120 people, mostly members of the PPU, showed up at a November public hearing to express their opposition to the proposed sidewalk ordinance.

After one week at the downtown location, Camp Quixote residents were served with eviction notices from the City.

On Thursday, February 8^th, the Board of the Olympia Unitarian Universalist Congregation, sensing the urgency of Camp Quixote’s situation, voted to offer the camp sanctuary on church grounds. Camp Quixote accepted the offer, and the Rev. Art Vaeni contacted the Olympia City Manager to inform him that the camp would be moving to church property the following day.

But the City of Olympia apparently wasn’t satisfied to see the camp move of its own accord. Several dozen armed police officers surrounded and barricaded Camp Quixote in the pre-dawn hours of Friday, February 9^th. They threatened that, if the camp was not moved immediately, the residents would be arrested and their belongings seized.

Camp Quixote residents rushed about in the rain to gather their belongings and load them into vehicles supplied by local volunteers, including a truck belonging to T.J. Johnson. T.J. is the only City Council member who has spoken in favor of the encampment.

The tent city is alive and well today, standing on property belonging to the Unitarian Universalist church. The church has offered to let Camp Quixote stay for 90 days. It is likely that another church will step up and offer to host when this 90 day period expires.

But the City of Olympia remains opposed to the existence of the tent city, setting itself at odds with local faith communities, and the Unitarian church faces fines if it fails to comply with the expensive and complicated process of applying for a special use permit.

**

On the morning of February 21^st, the following headline appeared in the Olympian: “DNA tests clear rape suspect.”

David Lynch is innocent. He did not commit the crime. Yet he was declared guilty in the court of public opinion. He was sentenced to several weeks locked in the Olympian stocks and pillory, with his life and home splayed out for the world to see and scorn.

Christ once said, “What you do unto the least of these, you do unto me.” If David’s story has one lesson to share, it is that we as a society have failed to end the practice of crucifying our Lord.

The problem isn’t that the cops made a mistake, nor is it that the media was out of line. They made the same assumptions that any reasonable person would make. They found a young, disheveled, confused, mentally ill man who lived in a hole very near to the victim’s home. He possessed hunting knives. He mentioned “child hunting” in his journal. He was homeless. Almost anyone would have found him to be suspicious.

The problem that must be faced, however, is that there was no concrete evidence of David’s guilt. In fact, the little girl who was attacked described her attacker as brown skinned, with short dark hair, a pointed goatee and mustache, and wearing glasses. David is pale, with long shoulder length hair and a clean shaven face. He did not fit the victim’s description of the attacker. David was merely mentally ill and in the wrong neighborhood.

So the problem was not that anyone was out of line… The problem is that sometimes being reasonable can have dramatic and harmful consequences. It was normal, reasonable people whose assumptions led them to burn young women to death for the practice of “witchcraft”. It was normal, reasonable people who endorsed and participated in the Jim Crow system. It was normal, reasonable people who crucified Jesus. And today it is normal, reasonable people who believe that the mentally ill and the homeless are a danger to society.

The truth is that reasonable people are a far greater threat to the homeless than the homeless are to society. And because of this, the homeless are vulnerable when they camp alone. They are not safe from us.

This is why Olympia needs a tent city. So that the homeless can be safe. But there is also a greater need that can be met by Camp Quixote… our very desperate need to find the way to a better life.

Jesus said, “Blessed are the poor.” The homeless do not have many of the worldly comforts that the rest of us enjoy. But God’s Kingdom isn’t about worldly comforts. It is about what we do and who we are. The residents at Camp Quixote take care of one another. The same cannot be said of the rest of our society. All too often we are driven to complacency by our comforts… while our neighbors suffer. All too often we step over the needs of others as we strive to achieve the “American Dream”. All too often we allow our thirst for power and for security to send us into war.

Maybe if we start paying attention to the poor, if we start noticing the way they share their most basic resources like food and blankets, maybe we just might discover what it means to be “blessed”, or holy. And maybe we’ll think twice before we persecute the next David Lynch.

Dignity Costs No Money

(Posted on Olyblog on Feb 7^th)

The City continued its justifications for turning its back on the poor at the Council meeting last night. Mayor Foutch talked at length about the growth in services in the last twenty years. Laura Ware talked about the City's offer to allocate $200,000 to services this year. The City Manager talked about his notion that homelessness is a regional and national issue, and that the tent city had picked the wrong target.

Let's get a few things straight:

1. Tent city residents are not asking for money for new services. In fact, the City is clearly not connecting the dots between the $200,000 it has offered for services and the fact that Tent City residents ARE asking for a service review committee to ensure that service agencies treat their clients with basic dignity and respect.

2. Tent city residents are not asking the city to fund new housing projects. They ARE asking for the opportunity to be self-reliant as a community... an opportunity that will not be found in government funded housing projects.

3. Tent city residents are not asking the city to lobby the Federal or State governments for relief. They ARE demanding to be included in our community, to be visible, and to have the right to exist.

Laura Ware particularly failed to understand the nature of the conflict in our city. She claimed that the opposition to the new sidewalk law and the request for a permanent location are two separate issues.

Yet they truly are one and the same. Tent city residents are demanding the opportunity to exist in peace, to have at least a few spare moments in the day when their lives are not subject to the whims and prejudices of the social service system and the police. Until recently, the sidewalks served as THE ONLY place where that was possible. Now that this opportunity has been taken away, the tent city residents are taking direct action to uphold their basic right to dignity.

Residents of the tent city will likely be arrested today for refusing to disperse. Please come downtown to offer them your support and your witness.

Open Letter to Olympia City Council and Staff

Dear Mayor, Council, and City Staff:

I do not often write to the City on issues of concern to me. I know that you all are very busy people, and besides that I’ve got enough opinions to fill a library. I must, however, take a moment to share my concern and disappointment regarding your reactions to the new tent city, “Camp Quixote”.

Several months ago the homeless people of Olympia began gathering together for community discussions. They talked about their concerns and fears regarding the decreasing availability of public space for their use and the increasing hostility they were experiencing from the daily Olympian, the police, the City, and the general public. They were particularly concerned about the proposed sidewalk ordinance and the impact it would have on their community.

In the course of their discussions, the homeless community resolved to undertake a campaign of nonviolent direct action in the tradition of the various civil rights movements of the last 50 years. This was a very serious decision and was not entered into lightly. Please allow me to explain.

Classism is as real, as pervasive, and as hurtful as racism and homophobia. For ages, the homeless have endured such pejoratives as “bum”, “transient”, and “vagrant”. They have been beset from all directions with the opinions that they are lazy, criminal, violent, dangerous, irresponsible, and incapable.

The homeless have been outlawed in almost every city in the nation, by means of “quality of life” laws banning sleeping, sitting, loitering, urinating, panhandling, and carrying blankets. The supporters of the homeless have been attacked with laws criminalizing the public feeding of the homeless. The homeless have been exploited by payday loan companies and day labor outfits that charge for transportation, safety equipment, and check cashing so that the pay often falls below minimum wage.

Our social service system also contributes to this persecution. The homeless often find that when they do as they are encouraged and go in for services, they are maltreated by hostile, belligerent, and condescending social workers. Service administrators encourage the maltreatment of the homeless through stereotype driven policies that create barriers to services. The disabled must work full time at proving that they are incapable of doing so. Working families are forced to attend humiliating classes for “job preparation” in which they are instructed on how to dress for job interviews. Access to higher education, which is the most effective ticket out of poverty, is barred to the poor by the same welfare program (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) that claims to move people from dependence to independence. The mental health system often punishes or refuses to serve people due to behavioral problems related to their untreated or under-treated mental illnesses.

Hate crimes against the homeless are not uncommon. The National Coalition for the Homeless documented 84 violent hate crimes against the homeless in 2005 alone. The homeless have been stabbed, beaten, set on fire, raped, poisoned, and run over with automobiles. Several years ago, while working as an EMT, I responded to a call for a homeless man who was viciously and repeatedly stabbed by a pack of teenagers, right here in Olympia.

It is not difficult to observe the mentality that drives the persecution of the homeless. Commentators on the Olympian’s website, encouraged by the newspaper’s slanderous editorials, have made such statements as the following:

These people are a disease.

These bums do not fit any characteristic of "civilized”.

More than half the time, these people sit in front of you & have their pity party hoping you'll believe their performance worthy of an Academy Award. They lie, they cheat & they steal and want you to feel sorry for them while they're doing it.

Poor People's Union... AKA: PPU... PPEEEEEE UUUUUUU sums it up pretty well I'm sure!

Start arresting the turd balls!!!

Drug addicts, alcoholics and general scum of the earth breaking more laws to suit themselves regardless of what the majoirty of society votes for. Hey loosers.....get a job, be responsible for your actions, have some self respect, pay for your own way in life and then maybe you won't have so much to complain about.

I passed at least half a dozen of these "waste of human life" begging me for my hard earned money… These worthless souls have chosen to be lazy and a drain on society. I could care less if they freeze to death.

WE DON'T WANT THE HOMELESS/PANHANDLERS IN OLYMPIA. WE WANT OUR TOWN BACK. Take your little pity party & move on.

The solution is simple. The City Council should buy them all bus tickets to Hanford where they can all become radioactive. When they try to come back to Olympia they can all be denied entry because the city is, as everyone knows, a nuclear free zone!

Just give downtown to the sodomites and bums. Oh, wait a minute. They've had it for years.

I wouldn't allow those dirty pigs near my dogs.

There is only one way to deal with these people, run them out of town, period!

If you wonder why the homeless community has resorted to such a drastic measure as direct action, please observe that the passage of the sidewalk ordinance is understood by the street community in the context of everything I have written here. It was the proverbial straw on the camel’s back.

The City Manager was quoted in the Olympian as saying, "It seems like a terrible way to start a conversation with the city about more help with the homeless… It seems like a poke in the eye."

You must understand, however, that this is not the beginning of the conversation. The homeless poured their hearts out to you at the public hearing last fall. But you did not hear them.

You might point to the new Drexel House, and to your offer of $200,000 towards services, and say that you have done so much for the homeless already. Yet you must understand that they are not asking for money, but rather for dignity. And it is likely that they will not find it in the services that this money will fund.

The Poor People’s Union has indeed followed all of the appropriate steps for a non-violent campaign. They attempted dialogue. They discerned, contemplated, planned and prepared. And now, as they have been squeezed out of the parks and libraries, and even off the sidewalks, they are taking direct action to meet their needs.

The pages of history are filled with such stories of the struggles for liberation. We find in the death of Socrates, the Exodus from Egypt, the persecution of Christ and His followers, the labor movement, Gandhi’s Satyagraha movement, the women’s liberation movement, the black civil rights movement, and the gay rights movement the same narrative repeated over and over again. It is the narrative of a people, robbed of their dignity and treated as sub-human, who show the courage to take a stand in service of a vision of a world built on fellowship and love.

People in positions of power play an important role in this narrative. We have, on the one hand, Pharaoh, Herod, and Bull Connor. On the other hand are Jethro, Joseph of Arimathea, and Lyndon Johnson.

It is my understanding that you have resolved not to negotiate with the Poor People’s Union. Please reconsider. Please ask yourself: “Which role will I choose to play in the story of liberation?”

I know you can do the right thing.

The Poor People’s Union has three very basic requests:

1. A safe and permanent site to live while in transition following the model set by Dignity Village in Portland.

2. A “service review board” comprised of service recipients to ensure that people are receiving services that respect their dignity and humanity.

3. Representation at the city level regarding matters that affect poor and houseless members of the community. (Please note that this is different from your willingness to listen to advocates. The street community wants you to be willing to enter into dialogue directly with them.)

Please honor their requests.

Tent City springs up in downtown Olympia

Please show them your support! Take food, socks, tents, blankets, etc to the empty lot on State and Columbia.

Time to Dig Trenches

The sidewalk ordinance passed. Albeit with some alterations...

Beginning in February, it will be illegal to sit, lie down, or panhandle within 6 feet of the edge of a building downtown. This law, however, will only be in effect between 7 AM and 10 PM, allowing the homeless to seek shelter under the awnings at night. People will also be allowed to obtain permits for busking within the 6 foot zone.

So the law isn't as bad as it could have been. It doesn't ban necessary survival functions for the homeless. But that doesn't make it good.

My good friend and fellow Bread & Roses community member, Rob, offered this explaination of what makes the new law bad:

The city is STILL taking the sidewalk away, and telling homeless people that they can rent parts of it if they can play an instrument, and that they can use it after all the normal people are tucked away in their beds. That's telling someone they can't be a part of the community if they don't have something to offer. That's wrong.

The law is still segregationist. It still limits the poor, who as a class are defined by social marginalization, from participation in community.

We need to stop this law from going into effect. There are a number of organizers who are now looking into the possibility of dragging the new law through the referendum process. We'll be looking at opportunities for litigation.

Mostly, though, we've got to work even harder at empowering and enfranchising the homeless.

For more information on anti-homeless laws around the nation, visit the National Coalition for the Homeless.

The Problem with Social Services

In July of 2001, I started volunteering regularly at the Bread & Roses soup kitchen. I loved the pace of work in the kitchen. The mass quantities of food and dishes required us to work briskly, but there were always good conversations and smiles as we worked. Most of the faith communities in the area took rotations for meals, so that on Monday there might be a Buddhist group cooking, and on Tuesday a Catholic team. The guests always helped with the dishes.

The staff of Bread & Roses lived together at the house on 8^th Ave. The staff was made up of a handful of young people who offered one year commitments through Brethren Volunteer Services, Selena, a middle aged woman who had left the Carmelite order for the Catholic Worker, and a handful of people who had moved from homelessness to volunteer positions with Bread & Roses.

The “administrator” for Bread & Roses was one of the latter, an impassioned man named Gordy Ebner. Gordy was an odd looking fellow with a long face and thin grey hair pulled back in a pony tail that reached the middle of his back. He wore a long beard and his hooked nose supported a pair of wire framed spectacles. Gordy could be picked out of a crowd by the ridiculous “M.C. Hammer” pants he wore, usually decorated by florescent green geckos or tie-die. Gordy could speak eloquently about our obligations to fight poverty and injustice. He had a powerful charisma that was, no doubt, what landed him in the position of Bread & Roses’ leader. Many of the guests followed Gordy like ducklings lining up behind their mother.

Unfortunately, Gordy was also terribly irresponsible as an administrator. He was abrasive toward those who disagreed with him. He mismanaged Bread & Roses’ funds horribly. His burning desire to help all of the poor exceeded his judgment, and he committed Bread & Roses to projects it was incapable of operating. Many of the guests that he brought on staff were active, violent addicts.

The atmosphere at the soup kitchen reflected Gordy’s influence. It had a definite charm about it, and there was a strong sense of community. Everyone knew each other. It was also deeply marked by illness and depravity. Drug dealing was rampant. Fights were frequent. Ambulances had to be called regularly, and the cops circled the block like vultures scoping out their prey. The cops even wandered through the kitchen, uninvited, from time to time. They wouldn’t speak with anyone, not even the staff who approached them, but just walked around, staring people down.

The atmosphere at the soup kitchen was the inevitable result of providing a very large scale service in a non-authoritarian atmosphere. The large scale of the work required a kind of factory style, impersonal feeding system. Guests formed a line one hundred people deep for a plate of food served across a counter. There was usually only two staff on duty to keep the peace. The volunteers and staff were good hearted, kind people who genuinely cared about the people they were serving.

Unfortunately, caring isn’t enough. The care one feels for another must be communicated for it to make an impact, and it stretches from difficult to impossible to shower authentic compassion on one hundred people at once. The hardships of street life and the hurts of the guests overwhelmed the abilities of the staff, so that the culture of the soup kitchen community became ill.

Many social service agencies would respond to this illness with a set of hard-nosed rules in an attempt to maintain the law and order necessary for effective provision of services. The staff of Bread & Roses, however, had too much heart to degrade the guests with such authoritarian measures. I don’t think it was well understood yet, though, that the factory style, large scale system of the kitchen had undermined the personalist approach of Bread & Roses and degraded the guests in just the way that the staff were attempting to avoid.

It’s too bad, really. It is hard to describe how ambivalent I felt about the old kitchen. On the one hand, the acceptance and openness of the staff to anyone in need was the closest thing to real social justice I had ever seen. I also loved the guests, and delighted in the joys of their community. But the attempt by Bread & Roses to serve beyond its own capacity was taking a toll.

Many of the social services across the country are operated in this way. The overwhelming need for food, shelter, clothing, and health care pushes the people who care to attempt almost heroic feats of charity, to shoulder an unrealistic burden that ought to be spread out across a broader portion of the population. The failure of these heroic attempts to make any real change has become a target of those who hate the poor. The culture at our soup kitchen was the kind of thing that conservatives could point at as the licentiousness caused by liberal, bleeding heart, do-gooderism. And the business community of Olympia did just that.

Scrooge!

This is beautiful... really just perfect. Meta got a postcard advertisement from the Capital Playhouse today: Jeff Kingsbury is SCROOGE, The Musical.

That's right people, believe it. Even as he uses his city council position to hurt homeless people, Jeff Kingsbury plays Scrooge onstage at his job. I wonder if he finds any irony in this?

The play will be showing Nov 30th @7:30PM, Dec 1,6,7,8,13-15 @7:30PM, Dec 2,9,16,20,&21@2:00 & 7:30PM, Dec 3 & 10 @2:00PM and 7:00PM.

I'm thinking of a picket... can you guess the time?

Stop Olympia Anti-Homeless Ordinances!

The Olympia City Council is considering new laws that will effectively criminalize homelessness. Included among the new laws is an ordinance that will create a 6 foot buffer zone from buildings in which it will be illegal to sit on the sidewalk. This will push the homeless out from under the awnings and into the gutter, effectively criminalizing their presence in public.

Tell the City Council to stop hurting the poor! Contact the council at citycouncil@ci.olympia.wa.us or come to the public hearing on Nov 21st at City Hall: 800 Plum Street SE.