by Debbie Brady
Why are we, as an advanced civilized society, asking law enforcement to solve our social _problems for us? Where has this gotten us? The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, by far. Those other mamby pamby countries, like China, aren’t even close. Our law enforcement officials have gunned down more unarmed citizens (mostly black men) in the last year then most of these other countries have ever killed.
When we put society's problems in the hand of cops--as happened at Sustainability Park on October 24th--the results are seldom good. It should be common knowledge by now that if you call the police to report problems with a mentally ill or disabled relative, what you are going to end up with is a deceased relative who is no longer mentally ill or disabled, they are just dead, with no cure possible. Social solutions from the barrel of _a gun.
On October 24th several hundred friends and I took part in a very moving event, the birth of Resurrection Village. Brenda Budd, a Native American who grew up in this neighborhood, gave a wonderful talk on the history of this land and the people who lived here in harmony with the earth. We hoped to carry on that tradition.
This plot of land belongs to the Denver Housing Authority, in other words, the City of Denver, in other words the citizens of Denver. This is our land folks. How about a little history here. I don’t know the exact date when this land was stolen from the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes that lived and hunted here, but it was sometime after Col. Chivington and his band of bloodthirsty volunteers slaughtered Black Kettle and his group of peaceful Cheyenne in their sleep at the big bend in Sand Creek, southeast of Denver. You can Google the dates. They are important dates to remember but don’t really pertain to this story.
As the city grew and awareness of poverty as a social problem increased, the City created The Denver Housing Authority and gave it a mission as quoted from the horse’s mouth: _DHA’s mission is to serve the residents of Denver by developing, owning, and operating safe, decent and affordable housing in a manner that promotes thriving communities."
In pursuit of that mission they built public housing on this plot of land in the 1970’s, to house people who were without housing. These buildings housed hundreds of people who would have been living on the street. Poor funding by the city however resulted in lack of maintenance and the gradual decline of these buildings, and in the 1990’s they were condemned and demolished and Denver’s supply of low income housing was decreased, in the name of urban renewal or some such thing.
The land sat empty for a few years and then in 2009 a group of organic urban farmers formed a coalition of groups to lease the land for urban organic farming. It was great! The plot of land between 24 and 25th St and between Lawrence and Arapahoe St was named Sustainability Park and organic urban farming began on a big scale. They not only produced healthy organic produce and vegetables to the food desert that is the Curtis Park neighborhood and surrounding areas, but they demonstrated daily how to live sustainably with a small carbon footprint in an increasingly mechanized world. The Denver Urban Farmers were going at it great guns until last year, when DHA refused to renew their lease because it had decided to sell the land to a private developer. This sale would result in further gentrification of an already over-gentrified neighborhood. Do you remember DHA’s mission statement?-- DHA’s mission is to serve the residents of Denver by developing, owning, and operating safe, decent and affordable housing in a manner that promotes thriving communities. Does anybody read. “Sell the people's land for profit “in this mission statement?
We decided this was not acceptable. It’s not acceptable to turn public land into a monetary profit when there are thousands of Denver citizens living in the streets, without shelter.
Oct 24th was the last day for the farmers to move out and we decided it would be a good day for us to move in. It was a beautiful day. We got there early. I didn’t get there till 8am, and already there were two almost complete homes and another three under construction. I went toward some friends who were sitting at a picnic table making signs. I sat down and we talked while they worked. I am an old lady and not much good for anything these days except for shooting off my mouth. I don’t play with hammers and nails and I suck at making signs, so Terese asked me to hand out flyers and information and talk to people. This I can do, so I said, “sure.”
With that I acquired a ringside seat in one of the most beautiful ceremonies I have ever attended. The Birth of a Village. It was beautiful, starting with Brenda’s talk on the history of the land and her attachment to it, _to talks about how the village would be structured and coordinated by the people who were going to live there and were in the process of building their own homes. They were unsheltered people who were committed to building homes for themselves in a self-governing sustainable community.
The sun shone. It was a beautiful day. Hammers hammered, saws sawed and screwdrivers screwed, I handed out pamphlets and talked to people, while my friends made some beautiful signs. I was envious of everyone’s talents, but I enjoyed the camaraderie as I watched a village come together. It was like magic really, you could see it happening. People were helping each other, discussing logistics, making decisions together--it was beautiful. It reminded me of my youth in the ‘60s. We had similar dreams and many of us still hold to them. It looked to this old hippy like it might happen. Denver Homeless out Loud was in the process of reclaiming a plot of public land and returning it to the public. We were all excited and looking toward the future.
Then the cops came.
I wasn’t there when the cops showed up, about 70 strong, along with the SWAT team, of course. I was not planning to stay overnight because I’m an old lady and I did not want to spend the night sleeping on the ground, when I have a warm bed 15 blocks away. So I walked home before it got dark and as I was crawling into my warm bed, ten of my dear friends were getting hauled off to jail. The Police not only arrested our 10 brave pioneers, but they gathered up all of our tools and material as well as the tiny homes and tossed them into trucks and took them... God knows where.
This is a classic example of tasking law enforcement with solving social issues. Once the police show up there is no thought of compromising. The cops have a job to do and they do it quite well, with a show of force. This heavy handed approach to solving social issues is enjoying a hay day right now in much of the world, except in some small areas where humans have evolved to the point where they have learned to solve social issues, socially. Let’s all hope that the rest of _humanity _is not too far behind them.
Why are we, as an advanced civilized society, asking law enforcement to solve our social _problems for us? Where has this gotten us? The United States has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world, by far. Those other mamby pamby countries, like China, aren’t even close. Our law enforcement officials have gunned down more unarmed citizens (mostly black men) in the last year then most of these other countries have ever killed.
When we put society's problems in the hand of cops--as happened at Sustainability Park on October 24th--the results are seldom good. It should be common knowledge by now that if you call the police to report problems with a mentally ill or disabled relative, what you are going to end up with is a deceased relative who is no longer mentally ill or disabled, they are just dead, with no cure possible. Social solutions from the barrel of _a gun.
On October 24th several hundred friends and I took part in a very moving event, the birth of Resurrection Village. Brenda Budd, a Native American who grew up in this neighborhood, gave a wonderful talk on the history of this land and the people who lived here in harmony with the earth. We hoped to carry on that tradition.
This plot of land belongs to the Denver Housing Authority, in other words, the City of Denver, in other words the citizens of Denver. This is our land folks. How about a little history here. I don’t know the exact date when this land was stolen from the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes that lived and hunted here, but it was sometime after Col. Chivington and his band of bloodthirsty volunteers slaughtered Black Kettle and his group of peaceful Cheyenne in their sleep at the big bend in Sand Creek, southeast of Denver. You can Google the dates. They are important dates to remember but don’t really pertain to this story.
As the city grew and awareness of poverty as a social problem increased, the City created The Denver Housing Authority and gave it a mission as quoted from the horse’s mouth: _DHA’s mission is to serve the residents of Denver by developing, owning, and operating safe, decent and affordable housing in a manner that promotes thriving communities."
In pursuit of that mission they built public housing on this plot of land in the 1970’s, to house people who were without housing. These buildings housed hundreds of people who would have been living on the street. Poor funding by the city however resulted in lack of maintenance and the gradual decline of these buildings, and in the 1990’s they were condemned and demolished and Denver’s supply of low income housing was decreased, in the name of urban renewal or some such thing.
The land sat empty for a few years and then in 2009 a group of organic urban farmers formed a coalition of groups to lease the land for urban organic farming. It was great! The plot of land between 24 and 25th St and between Lawrence and Arapahoe St was named Sustainability Park and organic urban farming began on a big scale. They not only produced healthy organic produce and vegetables to the food desert that is the Curtis Park neighborhood and surrounding areas, but they demonstrated daily how to live sustainably with a small carbon footprint in an increasingly mechanized world. The Denver Urban Farmers were going at it great guns until last year, when DHA refused to renew their lease because it had decided to sell the land to a private developer. This sale would result in further gentrification of an already over-gentrified neighborhood. Do you remember DHA’s mission statement?-- DHA’s mission is to serve the residents of Denver by developing, owning, and operating safe, decent and affordable housing in a manner that promotes thriving communities. Does anybody read. “Sell the people's land for profit “in this mission statement?
We decided this was not acceptable. It’s not acceptable to turn public land into a monetary profit when there are thousands of Denver citizens living in the streets, without shelter.
Oct 24th was the last day for the farmers to move out and we decided it would be a good day for us to move in. It was a beautiful day. We got there early. I didn’t get there till 8am, and already there were two almost complete homes and another three under construction. I went toward some friends who were sitting at a picnic table making signs. I sat down and we talked while they worked. I am an old lady and not much good for anything these days except for shooting off my mouth. I don’t play with hammers and nails and I suck at making signs, so Terese asked me to hand out flyers and information and talk to people. This I can do, so I said, “sure.”
With that I acquired a ringside seat in one of the most beautiful ceremonies I have ever attended. The Birth of a Village. It was beautiful, starting with Brenda’s talk on the history of the land and her attachment to it, _to talks about how the village would be structured and coordinated by the people who were going to live there and were in the process of building their own homes. They were unsheltered people who were committed to building homes for themselves in a self-governing sustainable community.
The sun shone. It was a beautiful day. Hammers hammered, saws sawed and screwdrivers screwed, I handed out pamphlets and talked to people, while my friends made some beautiful signs. I was envious of everyone’s talents, but I enjoyed the camaraderie as I watched a village come together. It was like magic really, you could see it happening. People were helping each other, discussing logistics, making decisions together--it was beautiful. It reminded me of my youth in the ‘60s. We had similar dreams and many of us still hold to them. It looked to this old hippy like it might happen. Denver Homeless out Loud was in the process of reclaiming a plot of public land and returning it to the public. We were all excited and looking toward the future.
Then the cops came.
I wasn’t there when the cops showed up, about 70 strong, along with the SWAT team, of course. I was not planning to stay overnight because I’m an old lady and I did not want to spend the night sleeping on the ground, when I have a warm bed 15 blocks away. So I walked home before it got dark and as I was crawling into my warm bed, ten of my dear friends were getting hauled off to jail. The Police not only arrested our 10 brave pioneers, but they gathered up all of our tools and material as well as the tiny homes and tossed them into trucks and took them... God knows where.
This is a classic example of tasking law enforcement with solving social issues. Once the police show up there is no thought of compromising. The cops have a job to do and they do it quite well, with a show of force. This heavy handed approach to solving social issues is enjoying a hay day right now in much of the world, except in some small areas where humans have evolved to the point where they have learned to solve social issues, socially. Let’s all hope that the rest of _humanity _is not too far behind them.
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