My phone buzzed around 1:15 in the morning, a text message from an unfamiliar number. “The cops just woke us up and they are arresting us for sleeping,” the message said.
“Where are you?” I texted back.
Alley Valkyrie. Photo by Rob Sydor.
I wasn’t sure who it was on the other end of the line, but it didn’t really matter. People are arrested on a regular basis for sleeping in Eugene, and my determination to fight these laws and policies has resulted in many late-night texts such as this one. Countless folks on the streets have my phone number, and they know I will always respond to an emergency, no matter the day or time. Given the struggles of their daily existence, making myself available in this regard is the very least I can do.
I sat up in bed and started to look around the room for my shoes. I glanced out the window momentarily. It was rainy, windy, and bitterly cold. Sleeping outside in this weather was punishment enough; to be arrested for it was unconscionable. I fumbled around for my keys but then hesitated, waiting for a reply. There was no point in getting into the car until I knew where I was going. A few minutes went by before the phone buzzed again.
“We’re under the bridge at Sixth Street. They’re leaving a few of us here with the dogs and taking the rest of us to jail. I have to put the phone away now.”
Although my instinct was to rush right over, I knew that I couldn’t change the current course of events at that point. The bridge was a few miles away, and they would already be en route to jail by the time I arrived. I still didn’t know who was texting me, but everyone who was currently being arrested would appear in the jail inmate database within the hour. I would be able to figure it out in the morning, and nothing could really be done until then. In the meantime, given the fact that the next day would be yet another inevitably stressful chapter in the fight for the right to sleep, I needed to try to get some sleep myself.
Campers under the bridge where they were arrested.
I got back into bed, closed my eyes, and reflected on the fact that to be able to simply put one’s head down and drift off without having to fear being woken up and dragged off to jail is a privilege that most of us take for granted, and a privilege that thousands of people in my community do not have. In Eugene, Oregon, if you don’t have a home, its literally illegal to sleep.
For two years now, I have been on the front lines of a battle concerning homelessness that has raged for a generation in this town, a debate that has pitted businessmen against activists, police against lawyers, and neighbors against neighbors.
And from the front lines, I refuse to yield in my steadfast belief that socioeconomic status should not affect fundamental human rights. From where I stand, there is no debate. Everyone has the right to exist, and everyone has the right to sleep. Nobody is “less than” anyone else. Everyone is inherently a reflection of divinity, and everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of whether you sleep in a mansion or in the bushes.
The issues and debates around homelessness in Eugene have literally torn this community apart, a community whose reputation for contentiousness is as old as the trees that serve as shelter for those who have no other option. There are many in this town from all walks of life who question Eugene’s laws and policies towards the homeless from both a human rights perspective as well in terms of fundamental constitutional rights. However, despite widespread public awareness, consistent news coverage, a federal court decision that declared such arrests unconstitutional, and involvement from national organizations such as the ACLU and the NLCHP, the arrests still continue. And despite their sympathetic overtures when asked to comment on the issue, for thirty years now local officials have been unwilling to overturn or modify the laws that literally criminalize the existence of anyone and everyone who can’t afford a place to live.
Over the years, homeless advocates had tried numerous times to change the laws with no success, and most of those who had fought the city in the past had given up long ago. The current crop of advocates, however, many who were first brought together through the Occupy movement, were not so easily discouraged. We publicly vowed not to quit fighting until everyone had the right to sleep, and our presence has been felt and noticed at every City Council meeting since October of 2011. After a year-and-a-half of relentless lobbying, our dedication and determination had finally resulted in the Eugene City Council reluctantly agreeing to revisit the issue at a work session in the near future, but given the failed attempts of the past, few had hope that anything substantive would come of it.
I woke up at dawn the next morning to learn that eight people were arrested under the Ferry Street Bridge the night before, ranging in age from 18 to 37 years old. They were held in jail for nearly 12 hours, pled no contest to illegal camping the following afternoon, and were fined $100 each with no consideration given to the fact that they spent the night in jail.
Upon their release, I met up with them, got their side of the story, and then hit the ground running. I contacted both elected officials and media outlets, rattling off facts, figures, and circumstances. Even in Eugene, arresting eight people in one place for sleeping and holding them overnight was unprecedented, and I wasn’t about to let the story go untold.
In the midst of my frenzied afternoon, I ran into a close friend and fellow activist downtown. Upon telling her what happened the night before, she looked at me and smiled calmly.
“This is a gift”, she said. “This is a gift.”
I paused for a moment, and let her words sink in. I understood immediately what she meant. As appalling as the circumstances of the incident were, the timing could not be better. The Council’s scheduled work session on the camping ban was only two weeks away. Perhaps these arrests would shock the conscience of the Council enough to finally take action. Perhaps enough public outrage over this incident would finally pressure the powers that be into doing the right thing.
Under the bridge where the arrests were made.
The Ferry Street arrests, as they came to be known, became the talk of the activist community for the next two weeks. A few days after the incident, I wrote an open letter to the Mayor and City Council, outlining in detail exactly what happened under the bridge and pointing out the numerous violations of law and policy that occurred the night of the arrests. The following Monday, four of the arrestees spoke in front of a packed City Council meeting at my urging, testifying as to their experience being arrested and the fact that they had absolutely nowhere to sleep. It was evident from watching the expressions of several of the Councilors that they were genuinely affected by what they heard, and afterwards the Mayor stated that the arrests were unacceptable in her opinion and that an investigation was warranted. Media coverage, including letters to the editor from several angry citizens and a write-up of the incident in the Eugene Weekly, added to the pressure that had been building for the past eighteen months.
By the time the Council met for their work session two weeks later, nearly everyone in town had been made aware of the incident. The room was packed with homeless advocates, concerned citizens, and numerous homeless members of our community whose daily lives were severely affected by a law that kept them from sleeping soundly at night. News cameras lined the back of the room, and reporters from various media outlets hovered over their notebooks in anticipation.
Eugene City Council work session.
And after thirty years of criminalizing homelessness, it took the Eugene City Council only ninety minutes to unanimously agree to draft a temporary ordinance that would allow legal camping on designated public parcels of land.
The audience was in shock. None of us could quite believe what had just happened. The work session was adjourned, and as the room cleared I was immediately bombarded by friends, acquaintances, fellow advocates and news reporters. “I’m not sure what to say right now,” I told them, walking away towards the door. “What just happened speaks for itself. You don’t need a quote from me.”
I needed to process. I needed to breathe. Most importantly, I needed a moment to myself. I stepped outside, away from the crowd. I was shaking, on the verge of tears. I had poured my heart and soul into this, fighting with ever fiber of my being for nearly two years, and yet the enormity of what just happened was simply too much for me at that moment.
While struggling to regain composure, a homeless friend of mine came up next to me and offered me a cigarette. I wasn’t a smoker but at that moment I took her up on it. As I lit up, she looked me straight in the eye. “What drives you?” she asked me. “What drives you to fight so hard? Why do you care so much?”
“Because we’re no different, you and me,” I replied. “The only thing that separates us is luck and circumstance. We are equals, we are equally sacred. And yet I enjoy privileges that I never earned, while you are stigmatized and treated as less than human through no fault of your own. And I can’t sleep at night knowing that you’re not allowed to do the same. It haunts me to the core.”
She hugged me, long and hard. “I guess you can fight City Hall after all,” she said to me, smiling.
I looked back towards the crowd. The reporters were still inside waiting for me to come back. I paused a moment, looked at my friend, and realized that I had a few quotes for them after all. I finished my cigarette, wiped my eyes, and walked back into the building.
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