Catch 22 in the People's Republic

“I have to sleep. I go where no one sees me. I get up before it’s light. I do the best I can not to be a violator. But if I choose to stay here, I have to break the law.”

 —Mike Fitzgerald, homeless recipient of six camping tickets

By Tom deMers

When you ask Boulder city councilwoman KC Becker about the tickets given to Boulder’s outdoor residents, aka rough sleepers, she mentions the 10-year plan to end homelessness. It’s a kind of mantra for city officials. Becker calls it a “systemic solution for the long term.”  Okay, but what about years 1-9? How about tonight? “We have a camping ordinance because we have to decide on the best use of our resources,” she says, “in order to keep the city successful. You can be led by your compassionate part or you can focus on permanent housing solutions like Housing First.”

Listening to Becker at the University of Colorado’s law school one evening in April, I wondered why we couldn’t do both. Why we insist on waking rough sleepers with a flashlight and a $100 ticket, all the while planning for Nirvana down the road? Some strange disconnect between the punitive present and the redemptive future. Why not, I wondered, phase the 10-year plan in now as Boulder shelters are closing for the season and a few hundred men and women are forced to sleep rough and break the law? In total, according to the most recent Point in Time survey conducted in Boulder, there are 914 homeless men, women and children in Boulder county on any given night. Where are they all supposed to go?

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Facing Mortality

“It is difficult to think of dying consciously when we notice how incomplete we feel, how frightened we are of life. It is almost as though we were never completely born, so much of ourselves is suppressed and compacted just beneath the surface. So much postponed.”

 —Stephen Levine, Who Dies?

 By Tom deMers

Hank appeared at my door looking exhausted. He was unusually thin. A few months earlier he’d had a tumor removed. He spent the weeks between then and now pursuing treatment, but not the chemotherapy his doctor advised. Instead he chose to go after a worsening of his longtime digestive problems, which now included diarrhea. It was a few days before Christmas when Hank showed up. Although he was Jewish, I’d often sent him a Christmas present. I hugged him and told him he was our baby Jesus. He also had a gift for us although it wasn’t evident at the time. Two months later and two months before his 66th birthday, Hank died.

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Free Speech Reconsidered

By Tom deMers

Photogrpah by Adrian DiUbaldo

Are you ready to take a bullet for free speech? Ready or not that’s the way the protections of the 14th Amendment are construed. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords took hers, so did six others, two of them killed, when a whacko kid attacked them on January 8th of this year. It happened at a rally in a Safeway parking lot, not so safe that day.

Yet the Supreme Court persists in ruling that speech is virtually limitless until it creates or advocates impending harm. Translation: say what you want until someone pulls the trigger or throws the bomb. The “high likelihood of causing imminent violence” is the way one Oxford dictionary describes it. For example, I can defame gay people as “fags” and carry placards that read, “God Hates Fags” and “Fags Doom Nations.” I can claim that dead soldiers in Afghanistan are the result of America’s tolerance of gays and carry a sign that reads, “Thank God for Dead Soldiers,” and be within the law. And when someone shoots a gay person (or an abortion provider), I can shrug and claim I did not tell them to do that. I can deplore the act, say how appalled I am. That sort of disgusting hypocrisy is the way the free speech game is played.

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The Man on the Street in Taos

By Tom deMers

When death, the big wind, blows out our birthday candles, only the wish remains, and only the longing that deepens our wisdom and compassion will be of much use.

— Stephen Levine

I was inching along in traffic half a mile from the main intersection in Taos, New Mexico. Mid-afternoon, late July, less hot than it might be. I could turn right and bypass the mess, but I wanted to go left at the intersection and head out of town. Family vans, passenger cars, trucks, all of us held hostage by the blinking eye.

On the street to my right a figure appeared, a thin, wild-eyed man a few cars ahead; black hair with wisps sprouting loose from his ponytail. His clothes looked slept in. He ran up to cars and darted between them but did not cross the street. He seemed like a messenger on a desperate errand, sputtering, unable to deliver his message. The boys in the car in front of me yelled at him in Spanish. They sounded like snarling dogs. He retreated, then came toward me. Did he want money? His face was distorted, his voice a wail, and his scarecrow legs dangled from shorts so short they were obscene. I wanted to hand him a towel, then power up the window. Instead I dug for my wallet, but he was quickly on to the next car. I watched the couple behind me staring straight ahead.

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A Tale of Two Cities

By Tom deMers

“These campers are using municipal property illegally and our police have every right to shut them down.”                            
—Anchorage, Alaska Mayor Dan Sullivan

Summertime, but the livin’ ain’t easy for homeless people. The only folks who absolutely need to camp are pretty well forbidden to do that in areas they can access. Without saying it, cities are outlawing sleep, hoping that nocturnal harassment will drive homeless campers away, wherever “away” is. It’s classic NIMBYism practiced by homeowners and city officials alike. It seems camping is a luxury for people who already have a place to sleep.

In these situations the ACLU is the best friend homeless people have.

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