homeless_oregon2

On the eve of Martin Luther King's birthday (his real birthday, January 15) my partner Wolfe and I drove over to City Hall for the umpteen-dozenth time in the past two weeks, to see how the homeless protest was going. We had given a ride to two other people who had participated in it; and their number added to the others already there didn't total more than half a dozen. The shopping carts, food table, signs and literature boxes were all gone. So, to all appearances, this year's third annual homeless encampment had dwindled down to virtually nothing, except that someone was talking about attending the City Council session the next day.

We could no longer even legally park in front of the building, as there were hoods over the parking meters saying "No Parking Any Time". We stayed there and chatted for a few minutes, though, with the remaining people and while we were doing so, a police cruiser pulled up next to us, occupied by a lone female cop with a sour expression. She glared at me through the window that it was time to "move on", and when we did so, she followed us for several blocks, around several corners, before she was convinced that we weren't going back there, and went on her way.

What all was accomplished by this year's encampment remains to be determined. And our purpose in having been there is still only partially understood. It certainly got a rise out of the Portland Police, though, judging by their extremely paranoid reactions. They at least seemed to think we little people actually had the power to change something through our actions! I can't go into too many specifics now, as we have several IAD cases pending. Suffice it to say that we know the cops here do harass people in cars with out-of-state license plates, they harass such people when they participate in homeless protests and appear in the TV news, AND they harass them for making complaints about police harassment!!!!

Such a lot of attention we have gotten in the mere two-and-a-half months since we moved here from Boston in the hope of finding a better life! In one way it was a bit of a shock, as I hadn't known before how inhospitable Oregon can be to newcomers trying to settle here. But it was not news to us that people who are obviously homeless are subjected to a lot of prejudicial treatment by people who have never been on the street. Especially in such conservative times as these, the homeless segment of the population is viewed with suspicion by those more fortunate, or at least as an aberration, an eyesore, an extra limb that can bear to be amputated. It is so much easier to sweep those unsightly bodies off the street than to begin examining the economic causes of their homelessness, and the police are there to do the sweeping so others will not have to see, or think.

I became extremely sensitized to this reality a little over three years ago, when I had a home in Boston but someone very close to me had lost his home, and began telling me horror stories about the police harassing street people in very gross ways, arresting them for no reason and subjecting them to all sorts of barbaric treatment in the process. I began writing letters to City Hall about it and tried everything I could think of to get something done about these injustices, and no one seemed to care, and for about two years I seemed to be getting nowhere and I was going insane with frustration--during which time my friend died on the street--until one day my cries were finally heard and the Homeless Civil Rights Project (HCRP) was born. It was sponsored by Jobs with Peace, an organization that has numerous chapters around the country but none yet in Oregon. We went to work collecting affidavits of police brutality and harassment from scores of homeless people and educating them about their civil rights as citizens.

Then, after a few months of doing this, I became homeless myself. I could no longer afford those monstrous Boston rents (three or four times what they are in Portland) after my housemate moved out and the city-funded jobs I had used to work at no longer existed. I started camping out on the streets of Cambridge and it was there that I paired up with Wolfe. I had met him once before, a year earlier, at a planning meeting for a Jobs with Peace-sponsored homeless protest (much like the one we just had here). We recognized each other across the table at one of the free meals; he commented on the HCRP button I was wearing that said "I AM SOMEBODY!" and asked if I had any more of them. The next night I joined him in his tent in Longfellow Park and we've been together ever since.

In the months that followed I started producing, through the HCRP, a newsletter called the Homeless Times which enjoyed a huge amount of popularity with the street people, particularly the ones in Cambridge that I saw every day. But also during this time Wolfe announced to me his plan to move to Oregon. He had been laid off from his job at Harvard University in February of that year and been evicted from his house in Waltham in May. He was convinced that he would never again find a decent job or housing in Massachusetts, as the economy there is completely down the tubes now, but that there were still many such opportunities in Oregon, more jobs and a much lower cost of living. He had been in Portland in 1988 for a few months and thought it was worth trying again. He also wanted me to come with him.

I had very strong feelings against moving, especially since the Homeless Times was doing so well. But I also didn't have any better economic prospects than he did; the summer was over and I was facing spending another Boston winter on the street if I didn't go with him. I finally decided to go. We kept telling ourselves we could start a new Homeless Civil Rights Project and maybe another newsletter in Portland, where it would surely be needed.

When we arrived here we found the economy to be in much worse shape than he remembered from before, and we have had a much harder time getting established than we had ever imagined. We are still living in our car which has become such a target (and risking getting a ticket for it any time as it's illegal to sleep in one's car here), and engaged in an uphill struggle to put a few hundred dollars together for a real home. We have been robbed several times and harassed in all sort of ways. Still, we haven't given up, and we are certainly not about to leave Oregon like the cops are always trying to scare us into doing; we still don't see much better prospects anywhere else.

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