Dry Bones: A different look at life in Denver

By Sarah Harvey

We began just north of Union Station, in the shadow of Coors Field, and made our way southwest along Delgany Street; it was a small stretch of land near the railroad tracks that development had missed (for now). We walked past a warehouse, past dirt lots just waiting for the right buyer. We stopped for a few minutes near an empty lot, where Robbie and Matt, our tour guides, reminded us to think about the meanings behind things we saw. At one point during the walk, Robbie pointed to an orange bottle cap in the dirt, explaining that he knew the group that handed out orange juice with just that color bottle cap. That piece of plastic on the ground was litter—but it was more than that too. It marked a place where someone had received help.

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Tough Love

By Tom deMers

Home was the third floor of a house with a balcony out front. It was the top floor a few blocks from one of Denver’s busiest streets. It was secure. Three locked doors separated the apartment from the street below. But it wasn’t safe. Renee had keys to none of those doors. She was allowed out once a week when they went to Wal-Mart. She wore oversized sunglasses to hide the bruises and always walked behind him. He pointed to things, she put them in the cart. If the damage to her face wasn’t too bad, they stopped for lunch. He sat between her and the exit.

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Hate Crimes

By Margo Pierce

John Johnson needed 18 stitches in his head and his girlfriend was in fear for her life after an April 10 attack at a camp in Cincinnati where they lived. Johnson, 52, says he was sleeping under a highway overpass at about 3 A.M. when four men attacked him.

“I was awakened by four young men telling me to exit the property,” he says. “As I was complying with them, they started beating me with pipes and bats upside the head and up and down the left side of my body.”

Johnson’s attack is part of a bigger pattern of abuse that is becoming more apparent across the country. Homeless people all over North America are being set on fire, beaten, stabbed, shot, strangled, brutalized by police, harassed and raped. Many of these crimes go unreported, and the ones that do come to light might not necessarily be recorded as hate crimes.That means statistics for tracking the violence in order to find ways to address it are inadequate.

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ACLU Fights Anchorage

The ACLU is continuing to push the city of Anchorage, Alaska, to extend the window of time homeless campers have to vacate illegal encampments. After a local law made it illegal for the homeless to camp outdoors in the city, and gave violators 12 hours to vacate after being notified, the ACLU filed suit in court. The ACLU is insisting on a 10-day window to vacate encampments, and said it will not drop the lawsuit after the city proposed a 7-day compromise. 

Little Junction in GJ

Last month, Grand Junction residents protested a decision by the city to change Colorado West Park, known locally as the “wedge,” into a median. The decision will impact the homeless in Grand Junction, where it is illegal to panhandle in medians.

Homeless advocates, many of whom for safety reasons supported the law prohibiting panhandling in medians, told reporters in June that they were going to fight the city’s decision to convert West Park into a median. They say there was no public input before the Grand Junction officials re-oriented the park as a median.

According to local news sources, the city says nothing illegal was done because the area of land in question was never officially a park, it was just commonly referred to as one. The land in question is located at the junction of two state highways.