Well the politicians and corporate big wigs, who are watching their 10 year plan to end homelessness go down in abject failure, now have come up with the perfect scapegoat for their own poor planning. It’s all because of that “killer weed” that the people voted to legalize. Never mind that pot wasn’t legal for the first eight years of their ten year plan and it was showing no sign of even moderate success at that point.  

They have their bogey man framed and hung: “It’s all them homeless people coming to Denver for the pot.” You see the politicians did not make pot legal, the people did that. Conveniently the politicians that were most responsible for the ten year plan, the Governor and the Mayor included, opposed the legalization of cannabis.  

So now they can sit back and say they told us so, instead of fixing a failed plan to house those who are unhoused mostly due to the way the Wall Street tycoons, and the politicians who enabled them, blew up the economy in 2008. None of those responsible for making the mess
were ever held accountable--most in fact profited from the whole thing. The bulk of the current crop of poor and displaced former middle class workers are the fallout from this explosion. Many of them, like me, ended up homeless when we landed.  

Believe me. It had nothing to do with smoking pot.  I can see them all now, in some fancy conference room, patting each other on the back and congratulating themselves for coming up with the ultimate scapegoat. How convenient. Not very good for the poor who are suffering because of their failed plan, however. 

OK, so I have had my rant. My mother used to say, “Don’t criticize, unless you have a suggestion to improve the situation.” So here is a suggestion. What is the one thing
the homeless don’t have, that forces them to live in the Street? Oh! I know, a home, somewhere they can perform simple acts of survival behind a locked door. But that’s too
easy, even though, it’s a fact that housing the homeless is cheaper than throwing them in jail.

Now I’m going to criticize again.  In Denver, in 2012, the Mayor and the City Council passed what is known as “The Urban Camping Ban.” In this one stroke they criminalized sleeping, a necessary act of survival that homeless people must often perform in public spaces.  

They made instant criminals of every citizen in Denver who does not have a home. The ratio of shelter beds to homeless people is too ridiculous to even cite here. There were promises made, with no intentions of them ever being kept, like the 24 Hour Rest & Resource Center which after two years has failed to happen and now I hear, may never happen.  

I am just going to finish this by asking all the Politicians and Denver Tycoons who shoved this law down our throats, one question. It is the question every homeless person asks the cop who is telling him or her to move along.  

Move along to where?

by Dara Harvey

I follow that one simple rule to leave no trace I am houseless--been now for two years. This would be my third stint, sadly enough, but working on it to change that. I LOVE to go camping,
fishing, hiking, sight seeing, etc. I LOVE the wilderness and respect it--even in grizzly territory. However, being houseless gives a whole new definition to the word “camping,” whether it be urban or wilderness.  

The idea is “pack out what you pack in.” I have several different campsites in Denver and you would never know I had been there because I follow that one simple rule--to leave no trace.
Consequently, there are other houseless people who simply don’t care and just like pigs “shit in the same place they eat and sleep.” It is abhorrently gross and I see it almost everywhere I walk.  

“Gee, someone’s living there.” I wonder to myself: No wonder regular people loathe the homeless because of the garbage most leave behind. Granted everyone litters on occasion, but come on! However, you know how the saying goes--”It only takes one person to ruin it for everyone.” So what I’m saying to you other sloppy houseless people is: 
Pick upr your F&%#(G TRASH 

The other the day, for the first time in a long time, I went past a bridge that I had called home for three years in the ‘90s.  As the bus passed underneath, I looked up and was shocked and
dismayed to see that the cubby-holes where one used to be able to rest one’s weary bones had been filled in. It saddens and angers me the extent to which some people will go (at what expense?!!) to make other people’s lives more miserable.

I don’t walk softly and carry a big stick, because to me that trend has lost value. The question is, what does one look like participating in that old way of life, when having to deal with these unethical government officials, who are the primary decision-makers for the underprivileged and underemployed American citizens?  

In today’s time, I must walk tall and carry a big stick and point out the harsh realities and social crimes committed by those who unethically and inequitably govern humankind. For we humans today, to participate in the preceding thought theme to walk softly and carry a big stick-while observing at the same time those who govern society rape democracy is the drastic act of helping these big producers nail United States citizens to the now crooked cross. I am not, and I believe no other American should be either, into that old preceding type nature and makeup of one human being that was considered in the preceding time to have had the beyond-average belief system as their general philosophy, which said, that one should walk softly and carry a big stick; because the philosophy that must be the belief system in the 21st century, is that one existing human entity should and must walk with a firm and durable faculty, coupled with carrying a stick of intelligence which fosters a voice that, when used and heard, will penetrate all listeners to where the message given willnever exit their minds.  

I Mr Calvin C. don’t walk softly and carry a big stick because such a method and its results don’t provide man with an ultimate fix.

Today I seem to look upon Denver, Colorado in a whole different view, a view that arises
out of Denver’s rude behavior towards its homeless and lower class population.  Why do I look upon Denver in such a bad light? Four years ago I moved to Denver because I wanted a way
to start over in life. When I first came here everyone was on top of the situation that Denver was a good place for someone like me to start a new life. Now everything has changed, and it has actually changed for the worst.

Starting with the legalization of pot in a community that already was rich, politicians have used this legalization to become even richer. Republicans have taken over as the dominant force in Denver’s up-growing community, and many worthless people have traveled into the city to destroy its cleanliness and beautiful parks and reserves.  The citizens have gone from helping
persons like me to start over, to ignoring the lower classes, and in some instances, whole committees have been formed with the intent of kicking out all of the lower classes.

Where do the homeless go and what are they supposed to do? We are now trapped in a city that will not help, keeps locking us up for no place to sleep, and will not help with the bus fare for those traveling through to make it back home. We are fed well just to keep us alive and miserable.

In 2012 an anti-camping bill was passed in the City of Denver, making it illegal to sleep outside, but with this bill the city was supposed to build a new shelter that would actually provide the homeless and lower classes here a way to receive the help they needed to become productive members of society. Has that happened? No! Many grants later, there has been no effort to do so, and most of the money from the tickets and other citations has been used to build upper-class housing and a new bus station, that let it be noted, does not even have a
pay phone installed.

I openly admit to being an Occupy representative, and openly admit to representing a portion of the lower classes that exceeds more than half of the homeless. In doing so, I came to Denver as a rich man, but now within the changing community, I have become just as homeless and broke as the people I represent.  I wonder if Denver will become the next Detroit, bankrupt due to the Republicans thinking they can run the lower classes out of a major city, or I wonder if it will stay a crime to be homeless in the City of Denver.  

No longer do I love the City of Denver like I did when I moved here in the end of 2009. No longer do I wish to be a part of its thriving community, and by all rights am I wrong for feeling that way? I would hope that Denver changes its over-all outlook upon the lower classes. Without the lower classes, a city can not build itself.  I do everything I can for the lower
classes, but now it has become a crime to stand up against the City of Denver. It has become a crime to be homeless in Denver. Some of us do work when work is available, some of us do right when we have stability in our lives, so remember, the up-rising crime rate of the lower classes is coming from a city that pushes its homeless and lower classes to do things 
just to survive a very evilly transforming community.

I believe that if something is not said against the rich of Denver, we all will be puppets to the ones that Denver hates the most, the good old federal government.  This is the voice for the homeless and lower-class, a voice simply to be known as Miracle, and as my name states, I am
asking for that Miracle to transform Denver back into what it was a couple years ago, a city glowing with beauty and the ability to transform oneself for the better.