Valentines Day, Boston, 1987

I recently came across this transcript of a Union of the Homeless speak-out in front of Boston City Hall on February 14, 1987. During my visit to Boston last November, Jim Stewart at First Church Shelter in Cambridge let me go through his files to see what history I could find. There wasn't much, but this made it worthwhile. The last time I'd laid hands on these speeches was more than fifteen years prior, and it was a bit of a thrill to find another copy.

As homelessness tripled and quadrupled in American cities over the 80s, the Union of the Homeless formed as the militant voice of the new dispossessed. They aggressively asserted the principle that homeless people needed to be in charge of their own movement and were briefly a presence in Boston. By the time I was working as a homeless organizer, the Union wasn't much more than their president Savina Martin, pictured above, and a handful of others. A few years later, the Union had pretty much flamed out entirely.

The transcript of homeless people haranguing a panel of their supporters was produced by Jill Nelson, the millionaire lawyer with Communist Labor Party connections who was founder and President of National Jobs with Peace. I've discussed the CLP's role in the Union elsewhere. Dan Satinsky, who pipes up toward the middle to give the background on the Union and praise their militancy, is a friend of Jill's and, I think, a lawyer as well. Mel King, who aptly quotes Frederick Douglas and is the only panelist identified, is a legendary Boston community organizer who even by then was a revered griot cum elder statesman of the Boston left. The photo here is of me introducing King to another activist I no longer remember at a 1989 Jobs with Peace event.

The Union of the Homeless had demanded that the City deed a house to them for use as an organizing center. The Flynn administration was smart enough to not say no, but they never really said yes either. This 1986 article from the New York Times gives the back story. Much of the testimony of the more than twenty homeless who spoke focused on their demands for the house and their frustration with the City's dilatory tactics.

Needless to say, they never got the house.

Homefront 88, the roving self-managed encampment that formed a year later. would make a house their central demand as well, and were managed just as deftly.

As I read the transcript, the pain of those who have lost so much, if they ever had anything in the first place, comes across loud and clear, but the downside of the identity politics that the Union of the Homeless adopted comes across just as strongly. The blustery rhetoric had little to back it up in terms of organized power, and the city knew it. The Union treated its allies like the enemy even as they sought their support. Homeless pride flips over to become a defensive shield, and some speeches inspire less than complete sympathy.

Yet, their militancy, if things had gone differently, could have lit a fire underneath the whole top down and often co-opted homeless advocacy movement. If their closest allies hadn't chosen to park their common sense at the door of "homeless empowerment," and had offered real resources and authentic partnership, things would look very different now.

Now, the boarded up homes they speak of have mostly been renovated or purchased as tear-downs, but the condos kept coming for the next twenty years. Again, you can download the thirteen-page transcript here.

The Street Years: Part Three

The Davis Square Street Magazine house was a second story apartment in a house where the landlord, Larry, lived downstairs with his wife. She was nice enough, but Larry was a boozer. He soon decided, given the traffic through our apartment, that we must be dealing drugs. It was a tense relationship.

Every few months or so we'd get an issue together. Between Jon's manic-depression and perfectionism, our poverty, and my own chronic distraction, it's a wonder we published at all. Every once in a while though, a truck would come, and we'd get ink all over our fingers as we carried the precious bundles upstairs.

The times of no money continued. I remember standing near a Burger King in the Northeastern University student union. A volunteer was driving me around to drop papers at the distribution points. I was starving. Literally. I smelled the greasy food and longed for a dollar to buy french fries. I read Knut Hamsun's Hunger that year, and knew just how he must have felt.

I would later come to think of this as my boiled potatoes and shoplifted cheese period. Jon was the thief. I'd lost my nerve for that sort of thing by thirteen. He specialized in string cheese and cigarettes, reserving most of his actual money for 12-packs of Rolling Rock. At least we kept the rent paid.

I lived upstairs in a roughly finished attic room across the stairwell from our photographer David, who converted a closet into a darkroom. Jon was downstairs with two of my friends that I knew from college. Doug and Claudia were Central America activists and ran a teeny non-profit called the Student Central America Network. I was hired to run their phone bank.

This was, without question, the most pathetic fund raising operation in the history of half-assed non-profits. We'd cold call from the phonebook, and anyone unfortunate enough to pick up would be treated to an "update." This would begin with the latest atrocity of that blood-soaked time and end with an earnest plea to support student organizing to change U.S. foreign policy.

It's amazing that anyone ever gave us anything. A strong night would bring in around $100. Doug weaved and dodged every time I asked to get paid. The three of us would sometimes visit Al Sais, a friend of Doug's in Cambridge, who would cook a nice dinner and get us high. By this point, eating a real meal was a rare treat.

During one especially desperate week, where I had no money even for bus tokens, Al wrote each of us a check for $100. Mine bounced.

Al Sais would later be fired from his long time job as book keeper for the Central America Solidarity Association in Cambridge. It turned out that at least some of the much discussed string of "FBI break ins" that plagued Old Cambridge Baptist Church during the sanctuary movement were really just Al covering his tracks.

Doug eventually skipped out on his rent and we confiscated his guitar and amp in retaliation. Jon got good at surfer licks, and could slay me every time with his cover of Sargent Barry Sadler's Ballad of the Green Berets. The irony thing was very in.

By then, my focus was turning more and more toward homelessness. It was 1988, and Bennett and Harrison's The Great U-Turn: Corporate Restructuring and the Polarizing of America offered a framework for understanding the incredible growth in visible poverty that occurred over that decade. Homelessness in American cities had tripled or quadrupled, and a politicized grassroots movement had arisen along with a still nascent sheltering industry.

Boston's Kip Tiernan was running around quoting Walter Bruggeman, talking liberation theology, and asking qui bono? "Situations of cultural acceptance breed accommodating complacency," she would say. A bag lady doll went on the market and Kip went ballistic. I found this irresistible.

A few years before, a chapter of the Union of the Homeless was founded in Boston. While there were a few radicals running around acting like this was a real organization, it was clear that there wasn't much there. The happening place was First Church Cambridge, where Jim Stewart and Stuart Guernsey were leading the direct action revolution.

Jim was a cynical divinity school grad who dressed in black, wore James Joyce glasses, and read Adorno and Horkheimer. He was a CD junkie, and ran a small shelter in the church basement. Guernsey was a soft-spoken southern minister who'd somehow come north to run another small shelter in Dorchester. They acted as Northeast lieutenants for Mitch Snyder, and would regularly go on some sort of extreme fast in solidarity with their hero.

Around them were a mixture of politicized homeless people, church folk, and shelter line staff who were down for the revolution. I found myself in the First Church function room more and more often, drawn in by the drama and the people. At the conclusion of every meeting, Guernsey would offer a little benediction. After awhile, Jim took pity and gave me a job doing overnights.

The summer of 1988 brought the CCNV's "Take off the Boards" demonstrations. Mitch Snyder had a genius for mobilizing coordinated direct-action events that kept homelessness in the papers and turned up the heat for action. Take off the Boards was a week of housing takeovers in cities throughout the east coast. There was a boarded up house in Boston's South End that Jim and Stuart chose as a target. A group of around 60 met up at Boston's City Hall for a brief rally, and marched toward our destination.

"What do we want?"
"Housing"
"When do we want it!"
"NOW!!"

This chant would be good for at least another 20 years. My favorite variation would come at the 1989 Housing Now! march more than a year later. My Boston affinity group came up with "Hey you's guys! How's about a house!"

Much better.

Only a few leaders actually knew where the house was. We came to a stop at a boarded-up Victorian, and a half dozen guys raced up the steps with crowbars to pry at the plywood. An advance contingent was to have taken care of this. They were there and inside, but hadn't managed to loosen the nails.

Within a minute there were about ten cop cars on the street and a couple of horses. These were Boston cops. They don't fuck around.

The plywood came off just as the police swarmed the house. The crowd lost it as cops started throwing bodies down the stairs. No one was prepared for a police riot, and things escalated within seconds to full-on pandemonium, which only made the police more aggressive. They pushed us back to the street, and then to the sidewalk on the other side.

I was stalking back and forth on the street and sidewalk, alternately screaming chants and yelling at cops. I saw one near by catch another's eye, point to me, and say, "him." They closed in.

For me, nothing brings on hyper-focus and a sense of calm like the prospect of getting my ass kicked. I locked eyes with the lead cop, raised my hands loosely over my shoulders, and slowly backed away.

Suddenly, they turned and ran. My scrawny hippy ass was saved by dumb luck and distraction.

The media had arrived, and several cameras were trained on a police horse as it trotted straight down a crowded sidewalk to bowl over a septuagenarian former nun. The cops seemed to know this was the end. The de-escalation was immediate. An ambulance arrived, and she was taken away for treatment of minor injuries. A few arrests were made, but most of us just huddled for awhile in small groups and walked away.

The story played the same way in nearly all of the media. Peaceful protest turns violent. The violence was blamed on the cops, and the TV stations found their footage of the horse running over the old lady irresistible.

This, I decided, was the revolution I was looking for. I'd found my people.

See also:
The Beginnings
Young, Gifted, and Miserable
Everybody Must Get Stoned
Life Begins at Seventeen
The Year of Living Dangerously
The Air Force Years: Part One
The Air Force Years: Part Two
The Air Force Years: Part Three
The Air Force Years: Part Four
The Air Force Years: Part Five
Working Poor In Waltham: Part One
Working Poor In Waltham: Part Two
Birth of a Student Radical
Harvest of Shame
The Owl of Minerva Flies at Midnight
The Road to Street
The Street Years: Part One
The Street Years: Part Two
The Street Years: Part Three

Cambridge Photos, and Me, as Rock Star

These will have to do as the post for today. I took the top photo this morning as I left my room at Episcopal Divinity School. Apparently, Jim Stewart has some sort of an in there that allows him to score free lodging for guests. This is Burnham Hall, where I'm staying. The guest lodgings are are on the nice side of college dorm-like, which is surprising, considering the building looks like some sort of medieval manor. The wide windows in my room have a built in 1863 feel, and the steam heat gurgles happily in the iron radiators. It's lovely.

Below that is Greg Daugherty, who is Spare Change's most successful vendor. Greg dates back to my era, which was about 14 years ago. He twirls in a circle like some kind of an autistic paper selling machine and finds something to say to each person who passes by that connects to them personally ("How are you, young maaaan? Help the homeless today?"). He is a street paper vendor genius. It's always nice seeing him again.

Finally, there's me, in 1990, accepting an award from the Massachusetts Coalition for the Homeless for Boston Jobs with Peace's key role in the local 1989 Housing Now! March mobilization. My memory is that Boston sent 39 buses. I think I look a little like a rock star giving a speech at the World Economic Forum at Davos. I purchased the suit that day for the occasion. Jim Stewart bought me the tie.

Homeless Civil Rights Project, 1990-1991

I'm in Boston this weekend to give a talk at First Church Cambridge, which was a center of Boston homeless activism in the late eighties and early 90's. I'm here to give their annual Mitch Snyder Lecture, which feels like a huge honor, even though Jim Stewart, the long-time shelter director here, would be the first to lower expectations in that regard. He said I could dis anyone I wanted, so long as I don't swear.

Why does everyone always feel like they need to tell me that?

Jim Stewart was a Mitch Snyder lieutenant in this region and took me under his wing during my boiled potatoes and shoplifted cheese period that ensued after college. I worked three or four overnights a week at the shelter, and this paid enough to keep things together while I was doing Street Magazine and learning to be a homeless activist. After a year of this, I had enough street level organizing under my belt to be a credible candidate for a paid activist gig at Boston Jobs with Peace.

I was hired as Executive Director, but, being the only staff person there, that was a bit of a joke. There were no benefits. I saw my first dentist in twenty years in around 1997, when the years of neglect drove me to the free clinic at Yesler Terrace for some extensive work.

But in 1987, $18k seemed like a fortune, and benefits just weren't expected. My job was to make the organization look much bigger than it was, and that I knew how to do. This morning, I was able to scan the JwP photos that remain from that period into my laptop. The above was my favorite.

This was taken at a press conference we held at Au Bon Pain to announce some protocols they'd developed after the Homeless Civil Rights Project I'd organized targeted them for sometimes refusing to serve homeless people. Au Bon Pain was sort of like a proto Starbucks on the east coast, but with croissants.

The agreement was a bit of a slam dunk piece of organizing. Burger King was a lot harder. We also got an asshole — known by the homeless as RoboCop — who terrorized folks on the Boston Common transferred to a desk job. That was harder still. The HCRP was in the news a lot in those days.

The guy I hired to be the Director of the project had been a leader in the Walpole prison uprising while he was in for bank robbery. Jack McCambridge was a jail house lawyer, a natural organizer, an exceptional tactician, and had plenty of charisma, whether he'd been drinking or not.

I fired him. Three times. When the last one stuck, he mobilized every ally he had and put me through the wringer.

I was hanging out at Spare Change today talking with James Shearer, one of the co-founders of that paper (which I organized after the HCRP in 1992), and Macy Delong, who I knew from homeless organizing even before I started at First Church. It's kind of cool that these people are still around doing the work. We've all grown.

We got to talking about Jack. Macy told me Jack had been out of prison for two years. He killed Dick Doyle, the man who had been his closest friend in the organization. For awhile, they were actually co-directors. Emily, the new ED at Spare Change was there and hadn't heard the story. She got it in three part harmony. It was fun watching her eyes get big.

The first I heard was when Jim called me at home with a heads up that The Boston Globe would be calling for comment. I turned on the TV and there it was.

A Bread & Jams van was spotted by police weaving down I-128. This was a homeless-run outreach organization based in Cambridge. Dick had become one of their drivers. When the police went to pull them over, the van sped up. A chase ended with the van going off the road and rolling. Dick was thrown and crushed. Jack was pinned behind the steering wheel, unconscious.

When Dick's body came into Boston Hospital, they realized he'd died before the crash of a gunshot to the head. The gun was on Jack.

I said something to the Globe about my shock and surprise, and that Jack was a kind and gentle man. I've always regretted that quote.

After Jack was fired, his next six months were spent in a haze of hard booze and coke. His behavior had become increasingly threatening. No one really knew what went on between Jack and Dick. There had been an incident a few days prior involving a baseball bat and a car. Jack was out of control.

Whatever happened on the night Dick died, there were no witnesses.

Dick, a middle-aged working class guy from Southey who had beat his own alcohol problem, was beloved. Lots of people came to the funeral. Most were crying.

During the trial, Jack fired his lawyer and went pro se. A murder trial. The media loved it. The Boston Herald did anyway. High profile homeless activist kills homeless activist and fires his lawyers. What's not to like?

His defense was two-pronged. A.) I was in a blackout and remember nothing, and B.) Dick was a child molester. This last part was a bizarre twist, and there wasn't any supporting evidence.

I didn't get it. Eventually the logic dawned. Jack was a guy who did better in prison than on the outside. He stayed relatively sober and he knew the rules. Behind those walls, he rose to the top of the food chain. Child molesters were at the bottom.

He'd shrewdly combined his defense with his re-entry strategy. Jack was sentenced to eight years. Amazing. The absence of witnesses got the charge bargained down to manslaughter.

Even more amazing: last year, he was asking around the homeless scene in Cambridge to see if anyone was hiring. The answer was no.