Posted on 10/23/2002 1:10:12 PM PDT by Glutton
The Eugene Homeless Initiative's seven-week-old protest in downtown Eugene has reignited debate over how to deal with the city's homeless population.
Tuesday morning, Melissa Mona, a member of the city's Human Rights Commission, crawled under a chain-link fence to send food, water, coffee and cigarettes up to "Traveler," who lodged himself in a cedar tree in the Lane County Park Blocks on Oct. 12.
The city erected the fence last Friday to prevent pedestrians from getting hit on the head by items falling from Traveler's perch. His supporters say the city wants to starve him out of the tree by cutting off access and ticketing anyone who tries to help him.
A small crowd clapped and cheered as Mona attached water jugs and a basket of homemade cookies to a rope lowered from the upper reaches of the tree.
"Homeless people are citizens, too," said Mona, who called the city's actions "inhumane." "There are 3,000 more people than we have beds for in the city of Eugene. It's unconscionable to criminalize people for being homeless," she said.
Eugene police videotaped the event and planned to hand out citations for park rules violations to everyone involved, Lt. Pete Kerns said.
The protest started Sept. 4 after a group of homeless people, most aged 15 to 25, gathered in front of the Lane County Courthouse to protest the city's policy against camping along the Willamette River and in city parks.
The group, now organized into the Eugene Homeless Initiative, has tried several strategies to get officials' attention, including the Oct. 8 occupation of a hallway near the Lane County sheriff's office that ended with two arrests, the tree-sitter's ongoing protest, and various rallies and protests downtown.
In response, the city resurrected its Council Commission on Homelessness and Youth - consisting of Eugene Mayor Jim Torrey and Councilors Pat Farr and Scott Meisner - which disbanded in 2000.
The reconstituted commission met Tuesday and drew an overflow crowd to a conference room at City Hall. The crowd was made up primarily of homeless supporters, those who provide services to the disadvantaged, and the media.
At the meeting, Gene "Khi" Mooney, president of the homeless initiative, and John Hubbird, a longtime advocate for affordable housing and the homeless and co-founder of Portland's mobile tent city, asked the commission to consider designating a safe and legal spot for homeless people to camp.
Farr seemed intrigued and expressed interest in spending a couple nights at Portland's Dignity Village. Meisner was hesitant to make any alterations to existing city ordinances and policies without further examining the issue.
Torrey openly objected to the idea, recalling the Centennial Car Camp of the early 1990s and other ill-fated attempts at legalized camping. He also condemned the group's protest tactics as a "tremendous disservice to the homeless population in general."
The mayor criticized the activity on the park blocks, which he said has prompted complaints from food vendors, organizers of the Saturday Market, business owners and passersby who say they are intimidated and harassed by the people squatting there. Many of the protesters are truant children and adult criminals, he said.
"I am afraid of putting in one place a camp that is left to the control only of those people who are in it," he said. "And frankly, you say that the public is supportive of this, I don't hear it from the people who call me."
Instead, the commission voted to support a proposal made by Safe & Sound, a coalition of social service agencies and businesses, which offered to convene a youth forum on homelessness to allow people age 12 to 21 to present their views to elected officials.
Safe & Sound also offered to develop a plan to provide services to the young people squatting on the park blocks while increasing the police presence and staging more activities to draw visitors to the area.
They will present the plan at the commission's next meeting, which hasn't been scheduled.
Members of the homeless initiative left the meeting saying they felt disappointed and ignored.
"They met specially to address this issue, and they did everything they could to avoid the question," Mooney said.
"We're going to push this issue until we get a Liberty Village. I have greater staying power than even the City Council."
I have to say I agree that this is a disfunctional protest. Way beyond the learning curve mistakes I usually see people new to non-violent civil disobedience make.
I am a Saturday Market employee, and I know that many of the artisans hurt by this action are one foot into homelessness themselves the economy has been so bad here.
One of the minions under the tree I procecuted for scratching the window glass of the Saturday Market office. He is a minor who has cost tens of thousands of dollars of property damage this way downtown.
He makes his money selling cheap Canadian import bud. Bags light in weight, and too high in price - by the standards of a "ring his doorbell" dealer of cannabis. He allows the street kid who sells the most "kind buds" to sleep in his motel room at the end of the day.
When I worked overnight guarding our infrastructure during the Eugene Celebration - an annual event - they were drunk, scrapping, and intimidating people getting in their cars. One woman was so scared at being rushed at, she went the wrong way on Oak Street to escape them.
Traveller, the man in the tree is from Wisconsin, not here. These guys are wagging the dog on this issue for personal gain.
They want to live in a twisted urban Never-Never land. But in their version, Peter Pan is the villain, not the pirates.
Protesting using non-violent civil disobedience is to elevate discourse on an important issue, and this is happening here. But they are more interested in creating a Eugene "dignity village" more then they are in creating a fruitful, and responsible diolog with those they set themselves up in conflict with on the full spectrum of homeless issues. And they certainly seem to be blind to important elements of the homeless problem because homelessness is not the root motivation for this protest.
There are pictures in the LINK to this story if anyone wants to post them here. (I am on a University computer that has "view source" off limits.)
Especially in the evening when the crank and alcohol intake gives these guys an edge to them. Nasty business this.
Just close and lock the doors when they are full, and then send the roach motels on wheels south for the winter. ;-)
Now save your neck
Or save your brother
Looks like it's
One or the other
Oh, you don't know
The shape I'm in
I also know sleeping should not be a crime. My opinions on these particular folks involved in this protest are a long time in forming. I went from being someone whom one would expect to default to support and sympathy for them to a jaded sceptic based on my observations and experiences with them.
When many of these people are truly interested in not being homeless and prefering the "Mall Rat" lifestyle, I and many others are very willing to help them.
But not until then.
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