| ON THE NEW CAR CAMP PROPOSAL |
| Last night, July 12, there was a meeting of the Amazon Neighbors steering committee to discuss the proposal for a new homeless camp at the 4J Bus Barn. In some ways this meeting was reminiscent of the Springfield City Council meeting last summer where the Church of the Nazarene's car camp proposal was discussed. That is, the NIMBY's ("Not In My Back Yard!") people were again out in force, spouting their usual Reader's Digest statistics about the homeless and their same tired old prejudicial fears of what would happen if a homeless camp--horror of horrors!--was opened in THEIR neighborhood. Once again, I was told that I am a thief, a child molester and a crazed drug addict who must not be allowed to share the same neighborhood with "decent" people. It was heartening, though, to also hear from numerous people whose minds weren't so closed, who were willing to look more closely at the reality of what the Centennial camp was like instead of just blindly believing whatever "facts" they find in Reader's Digest about the homeless. There were also several former residents of the Centennial camp present; Rick was the only one of these who spoke. Ron Chase and Richie Weinman, representing the New Shelter Work Group, did an admirable job of attempting to dispel all the fears and prejudicial views of the neighborhood residents and to present the best possible case for the placement of the camp in this location. It is as yet uncertain what the outcome of all these discussions will be. But from what I'm hearing about the tentative structure of the new camp, it sounds as though, in order to get the Amazon residents to accept it, there will be far too many oppressive restrictions placed on the campers at the expense of their civil rights. In other words, because this camp will be much closer to a residential area than the Centennial camp was, it will be correspondingly less democratic for the campers. I've been hearing about such things as a flat-out "No Alcohol" rule, a curfew, and--here's the one that bugs me the most--MANDATORY CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECKS of all the campers as one of the admission requirements!!! From the residents' point of view, this requirement is valid; these intruders in their neighborhood should at least have to prove they're not criminals before being allowed to live side-by-side with them and their property and children. But from the viewpoint of many of us homeless folks, this represents yet another encroachment on our civil rights that must be resisted. We are citizens, no less than the established residents are. If they didn't have to submit to criminal checks to be allowed to live in that neighborhood, why the hell should we?! We need to get a little perspective here and remember one of the original reasons we wanted a legal homeless camp: to have a haven from criminalization! It should by now be a well-known fact that the homeless are constantly, through no fault of their own, getting into situations where they are treated like criminals. We are expected to submit to ID checks by cops any time we're found in the "wrong" places or doing anything that looks to other people like "suspicious behavior". It's a major example of how we're discriminated against on a daily basis: we are considered guilty until proven innocent for the SOLE REASON that we are homeless! Part of the reason the matter of background checks was even suggested to the SWG was that this procedure is also becoming part of standard landlord credit checks of prospective tenants. But that practice is also a major setback for the civil rights of low-income tenants and poor people in general. It's another step in the direction of a Gestapo police state in which the poor no longer have ANY privacy rights and the principle of "innocent until proven guilty" goes completely out the window. I for one, am very, very tired of cops checking my ID only to find that I don't have a criminal record, and I know I speak for many people when I say this. We do not need to be creating yet another situation where the likes of myself are subjected to this demeaning treatment simply because we lack a "normal" home. But it is clear that, in order to assuage the fears of the most paranoid of the Amazon residents and thereby get them to accept the camp at all, many compromises will have to be made, and as I said, these compromises will mean making the new camp even LESS democratic than Centennial was. The campers will still have absolutely zero voice in the making of the rules they are expected to follow, and the rules themselves will be even more oppressive and dehumanizing than before. In other words, this will be a step backward in the direction of the old shelter mentality, rather than a step forward for homeless civil rights. I had once thought that a movement to set up legal homeless camps was also part of a movement to promote our civil rights, not to take more of them away. We need to be reversing the trend of criminalization, to be part of the solution rather than the problem. I don't see that happening now. (click here to view next page) |
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