by Fillmore Lankford

Since May of 2012 the Repeal The Urban Camping Ban Coalition has been boycotting businesses that pay dues to belong to the Downtown Denver Partnership, the group which pushed the Camping Ban through. After 10 months, Snooze-An AM Eatery recanted their support of the Camping Ban stating that none of the promises for more shelter or better, centralized services have been met.

After only 5 months, The Palm, on the 16th Street Mall, recanted their support of the Camping Ban the day before there was to be an international boycott of their restaurants.

And since November 2013 the Camping Ban Coalition (to which I belong) has been boycotting the Tattered Cover Book Store on the 16th Street Mall and Wynkoop. We feed hungry people outside of the Tattered Cover every Friday evening starting at 5:30pm, and we also protest. We are asking the Tattered Cover owner, Joyce Meskis, to recant her support of the Camping Ban but Ms Meskis states she will stand firm on her decision to not take a stand either way because this is a political issue and Ms Meskis will not take a stand on political issues. 

The Camping Ban Coalition is having a hard time wrapping their heads around Ms Meskis's position as sleep, food, and water are human needs NOT political issues. We ask Ms Meskis to rethink her position on the inhumane Camping Ban and would like to wish her congratulations on her new contracts with the Denver City Council and the Hudson Group inside Denver International Airport. The first Tattered Cover opened December 6th, 2013 in terminal B with up to 4 more by summer 2014. This just means that there will be more stores to boycott.
 
For more information go to DownTownDenver.org
See you Friday at 5:30pm at the Tattered Cover!
Repeal the Urban Camping Ban!

by Jan Lightfoot

It matters not if you cannot pay your rent because you became unemployed, or you came back from the service and can not sleep inside, or if you escaped abuse, and are sleeping in a car, with or without your children. It matters little, if you and your partner just could not get along and they left, or you kicked them out. Then you found your income alone was incapable of paying the rent or mortgage. You are still a person, you are capable of kindness, you have feelings and needs. Your basic needs are the same as anyone else’s. If you just had enough funds to pay first month’s rent plus deposit, you’d no longer feel rudderless and without safety. 

As someone who is unhoused and income challenged, what do you do to stay alive? Do you panhandle for the price of a motel room? And if you fail to raise the $40 or so required to place your head on a pillow, do you buy food or alcohol to escape feeling inhuman, and you sleep in the weeds? If you try sleeping, say, in the back of a newspaper office or King Soopers, someone working late will say move along, then send the cops to insure their building is safe. The cops can make you move along because, like many other cities, Denver has outlawed sleeping outside. 

By passing such laws, too many cities across the country have outlawed compassion. In many cases, the courts have found such laws to be unconstitutional. For example, in Colorado Springs, where I live, part of a panhandling ordinance was ruled unconstitutional because it violated the first amendment right of a person to tell the public: “I do not have enough funds to live. Our society is goofed up. I require the aid of strangers.” This is protected speech. Society can stop people from blocking doorways to businesses, but can not prevent panhandlers from being on the sidewalks at all, or from asking people for money in order to survive.

Like the anti-panhandling ordinances, the anti-camping ordinances are in fact anti-survival ordinances. The Preamble to the US Constitution states that “We the People” established that document in order to “provide for the general welfare.” When you lack a home, your welfare takes the shape of a warm blanket covering you from the elements. But panhandling and other ordinances targeting homeless people--including Denver’s camping ban--remain on the books and are enforced throughout the country. The time to question the fitness of such laws, in court, is before people die from them.

Instead of aiding each person in a financial bind, society has legislated hate saying it is fine not to give funds to people in need because somehow “they goofed,” or it’s illegal to share change, or food with the poor. Or for them to sleep out in public.

We the voiceless society seem to approve of our city lawmakers legislating hate. If not, we would speak out and make sure these laws didn’t pass. There should be NO urban camping ban on Denver’s books. The people whose rights are violated by this cruel law should bring suit against it. And if you think it costs too much to get a lawyer to take these cases--poor people need to know that, under federal law (15 USC § 4304 and others), any person who wins a case against the city has the right to have attorney fees paid by the city. And also, some lawyers will take these cases for free, because they believe in seeing justice served. It is time for Colorado to become known as the land of justice for the weak.  You cannot be weaker then when you are homeless.

The system sees not the the radiance, the worthiness of each person, only the stereotype. Even when the homeless manage to wash and put on clean garments, it’s as if their credit score is known, or guessed at, and most treats dogs better than they treat the homeless. The homeless are not rabid wolfs, but once they are set up in a home, they add to society.

Society says because you are bad consumers, you are less than human. They care not if you die, while you can not pay rent. I say, partly because I have been there, you are important human beings and that it’s society which has failed, by not helping those who are most in need.  

Even while we are homeless we need to stay alive. Taking away blanket or bed rolls is not the way to keep humans alive. We need to stay warm enough to have our bodies continue to function. We could accomplish major things down the road, or just become fair sheep and consumers. But we the homeless are people and we deserve to live. We are reduced to primitive beings, filling our most basic needs, but we who have been homeless, are like you.

What can society do to help us? Tell Our Federal government to stop setting the poverty level based upon financial information from the 1960’s. This will help all of you who are working for a living. While they are at it, increase the minimum wage. And re-figure the livable wage, so it really represents what people need to earn in order to pay their bills. 

We the homeless are on the streets because the shelters are over loaded and are a place of violence and rape. Shelters are not safe, and too often not available. In a city of 5,000 homeless, it is lucky to have 500 beds. Our society is insufficient for its citizens’ needs.

Yet our media tells us otherwise, and most believe it. Why? Because it is comfortable. Why? Because we are afraid to challenge the eon's failed system in which a greedy few get rich at the expense of the many. It is time to bring humanity back into our society. The homeless are the sons and daughters of the housed. They are parents who society has been brutal to. Who think outside the box. They are human yet they are punished, when society fails everyone.