Now I'll explain a little more about the Armitage situation. The location where the homeless people were camped was on the north banks of the McKenzie River, five miles north of Eugene and just south of the little town of Coburg. It was dubbed "the Armitage camp" because it was across the river from the well-groomed, state-owned Armitage Park. There was a movement afoot to open a legal and supervised homeless camp in said park, to replace the ad hoc encampment on the other side of the river, but the State of Oregon wasn't going for it. Their "solution" instead was to kick everybody off the state-owned land, put up a barricade to prevent motor vehicles from re-entering the area, and get a restraining order to prevent the campers from ever setting up camp there again. However, a handful of us were camped on another section of land at a higher elevation on the other side of the parking lot, which was county-owned. And

Lane County was willing to let us stay there for the time being. The majority of the people evicted from the state land eventually left, but the ones who wished to stay and continue the protest moved to the county land. Most of these people were from out-of-state, as Rick and I were, also having moved to Oregon in the hope of finding a better life. This ad hoc collection of modern-day pioneers shared that land as a "tribe" for a little while, and were engaged in an ongoing protest in which we insisted that the government not drive us off until we had some other feasible place to move to. We made protest signs, one of which read 'WHERE ARE WE SUPPOSED TO GO?" This question became our official anthem. As I said, this protest received large amounts of media attention, which we milked for all it was worth.  Many people responded with donations of food, clothing, propane and other needed items. The attempt to "take" Armitage Park was a failure, but it did result in the state's kicking out $40,000 to put us into motel rooms and help us look for other housing by the time winter set in. (More on that part a bit later.) But before the governor's decree that this money be allotted to us, we were subjected to some vicious game-playing by the state and others. The following piece describes one example of this. I wrote it in the hope of getting it into the Register-Guard as a guest editorial, but they didn't print this one. ARMITAGE CAMPERS GET THE ROYAL RIPOFF On October 14 the remaining homeless campers at Armitage were robbed at gunpoint. The thief was the State of Oregon, and the weapon they used to keep us at bay was the temporary restraining order they had placed on us on October 7 to prevent us from re-entering the lower camp while "work" was being done there by a Forest Work Crew. The restraining order claimed that we would be sure to cause the state to "suffer immediate and irreparable injury, loss or damage in the form of environmental damage to the site, and sanitation, health, and safety risks to plaintiff and the surrounding community" if we were allowed to go back there. How could they make such a ridiculous claim? The only reason we were entering the site was to salvage the usable items that the former campers had left behind, mainly a large number of wood palettes, auto parts, furniture and miscellaneous household items. Lane County has no problem with our camping on its land, nor does the town of Coburg. The state, however, has a major axe to grind against homeless campers. And now, as I write this, they are demonstrating their contempt for us in a particularly vicious way: they are having a crew of prisoners trash all those precious items we had been trying to salvage. We could have gotten them out of there ourselves if the state hadn't put up that barricade to prevent vehicles from entering the area. The first time the work crew was brought in, on October 5, Steve Purchase promised me that they would leave all the wood palettes behind, as he knew we needed firewood. But there were no witnesses to that conversation, and he has since reneged on that promise and shown himself in his true colors. Yesterday they took out a very large number of the firewood that we had been depending on for warmth, and as they hadn't given us advance warning that they would be there, we didn't have a chance to go back and get a supply of firewood for the day. Today they took out the last dumpster that had the remainder of the palettes in it. It is mid-October; we are feeling the autumn chill and expecting to spend the winter camping out in lieu of other options. Yet we could do nothing to stop them from stealing our firewood because of the restraining order that claims we would be doing "immediate and irreparable injury" to the state by going back there to claim it ourselves. So we sat and shivered while they held us at gunpoint (figuratively speaking) and took the wood, the auto parts and all those other things out right under our noses. We can't go to court to even challenge the restraining order till October 26, by which time of course all the damage will have been done There would have been no harm in their leaving those piles of wood palettes there till we were able to get them out. There also would have been no harm in their removing the barricade long enough for us to get a truck back there so we could haul them all out at once. And there would have been definite benefits to us and to the state if we had simply been left alone to finish cleaning up the site ourselves and get paid by the County to do it, as County Commissioner Jerry Rust was trying to arrange, rather than spending school funds as they claimed they were doing and having prisoners do the job. There is no reason why the state should have treated the remaining campers this way. WE have never shown ourselves to be anything but a cooperative and responsible group of people. We are currently living together as a closely-knit tribe, with everyone consciously looking out for the welfare and safety of the others.  Since October 1st there have been no police visits to the camp because of domestic violence or any such complaints that had commonly been made about the campers in the past. Because there is a small number of us now, we are sticking together and not losing sight of our common purpose of survival, and we are getting along very well for this reason. The state doesn't want to admit this, doesn't want to admit that the mini-camp we have set up on this chunk of County land has been successful! And that furthermore--god forbid!--it serves as a model of how a larger camp could work if it had legal sanction and a minimal amount of organization. No, they would rather continue treating us as if we were the irresponsible criminals they originally made us out to be, despite all the evidence to the contrary that they have seen in the past two weeks. And they will do everything in their power to prevent us from establishing the cooperative community we could have with a little help. They are determined to keep us forever on the run, or let us freeze to death, while the Steve Purchases of the world luxuriate in the warmth of their own warm fireplaces. SHAME ON YOU, OREGON!!!! October 15, 1992 (signed by seven of the campers) (click here for next page)

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