Tent City Update: On the Move

“Tent Cities are America’s de facto waiting room for affordable and accessible housing. The idea of someone living in a tent in this country says little about the decisions made by those who dwell within and so much more about our nation’s inability to adequately respond to those in need.” -Neil Donovan, National Coalition for the Homeless.

After a month of being at the Beaman property in Antioch, we’re moving the Tent City residents to a new location. If you can help us move, please meet us THIS SATURDAY, July 3^rd at 9am at Tent City’s current location in Antioch (e-mail amoshousemercyfund@gmail.com for directions and to let us know if you’re coming). If you can, bring water and a car/truck/van/bus/trailer. We need all the help we can get, so please bring your friends and their cars, too! We will have the new temporary location secured and available by Saturday.  

 If you can’t come at 9am, we’ll be meeting at Otter Creek Church (409 Franklin Rd, Brentwood, TN 37027) for lunch at 1pm. In the coming weeks, we’ll continue to need assistance with providing meals for the residents, individuals and groups who can stay with the residents as “Inn Keepers,” and drivers who can assist residents with going to housing and medical appointments. Please e-mail us if you are able to help and we will put you to work! If you’d like to provide meals, please e-mail ingrid.mcintyre@gmail.com.

Also, don’t forget to pick up the latest copy of The Contributor which hits the streets this Wednesday for further information and reflections on Tent City.

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The Invisibles

By Jeannie Alexander (Originally published in the June 2010 issue of The Contributor)

On the banks of the Cumberland before her rage, her screams, her mighty storm, there lived a community of ten people: four women, six men and a dog. A quiet community with humble dreams of lives lived in different circumstances, but lives lived nonetheless with dignity and grace.

They were a cooperative group who sought solace in their life together—lives free from drugs and focused on hard work at car washes and temporary day labor agencies. Lives of determination applying day in and day out for one job and then another. Lives, for some, of haunted dreams and restless nights, where the morning peace of the river whispered to anxieties born long ago in a Southern prison. Lives of laughter and living, of working and cooking and praying together, life lived as community. Lives determined to make their corner of the world better than it was when they found it.

And so as they founded their community and settled their unconventional family on the banks of the Cumberland by LP Field. They began the hard work of cleaning up years of accumulated trash under the bridges, and after removing thousands of pounds of rubbish (most of it deposited by those passing overhead on the James Robertson and Woodland Street bridges and those who parked in the LP Field lot) they worked together and landscaped their home, creating beautiful pathways lined with stone and a stairway made of river rocks. They built elaborate fire pits and constructed dwellings of bamboo tarps and thatched roofs. There was even a community kitchen where meals were prepared and eaten together. Below the camp they created a clean beach area perfectly situated so the residents could enjoy the concerts at Riverfront Park directly across the river, or play fetch with the camp dog.

And they were good neighbors, quiet neighbors, honest neighbors. But these good residents of what we came to know as the TA Camp committed a crime so severe that they were banished, their community was broken apart, and their carefully constructed homes would have been demolished by public works if the river had not taken their camp mere days before it was set to be razed. You see, these good people, your neighbors, who cleaned up a blighted area of Nashville and made an unwanted invisible area of downtown home, committed the terrible, unforgivable trespass of being visible.

They laid bare the truth of poverty in Nashville, and instead of hiding, they dared to wave and smile to those walking on the bridges overhead. Foolish, foolish people—they thought their fellow citizens of Nashville would be pleased with their hard work in cleaning up the riverbank under the bridges. Foolish people who dared to think that they could be liked and accepted in their unconventional home. Foolish people who did not know that, for some of those to whom they waved and smiled, appearances count far more than the right to life and dignity, that appearance counts far more than the right to exist and be left alone when you are causing no harm to those around you.

How could they know that some passing overhead would not see the beauty of their creation, but instead would only see the ugliness of homelessness, would only feel the embarrassment of peering into private lives, viewing people living each and every day by their own hand in homes they had constructed from the materials around them.

The embarrassment that the camp engendered was a dangerous embarrassment, for it was not caused by the moral shame that one should feel when confronted with the knowledge that a city of such wealth and possibility would allow some of its citizens to live in tents and bamboo dwellings because, despite working hard both day and night, they were denied a living wage. It was not embarrassment at the failure of a city to meet such desperate poverty with love and compassion. Neither was it embarrassment that those of us in the city have failed miserably to love our neighbors as ourselves. All such shame is and would have been appropriate.

Instead, the embarrassment was that such a camp dared to be visible, dared to exist, and therefore dared to run the risk of shattering our illusions about the quality of life in Nashville. And even more importantly, the camp dared to harm the image of our fair city, for such camps are like the leper’s skin abrasions, the tell-tale signs of rotting within and the first indication that all is not right.

And so employees of the district attorney’s office who walked over the bridge each and every morning, and whose eyes were greatly offended, complained to the district attorney who then registered formal complaints with the downtown central precinct against the camp. Offended eyes are the key to our heart, so let us blot out that which offends us lest we transform our human condition—those living below would have been better off if you had plucked out the eye that offended you. These complaints were filed not because the residents were a menace, and certainly not because they were concerned about the camp generating trash (the camp was spotless), and not because there were loud parties or fights, and not because members of the camp ever threatened or intimidated those who parked in the LP Field parking lot. They filed complaints simply because they did not like to look at the camp as they walked overhead on the bridges on their way to the office.

Oh what a hard inconvenience for those working in an office allegedly dedicated to the protection of Nashville’s citizens to witness the damnable truth that such protection does not extend to the harm inflicted by the whores of capitalism and the fiend of indifference. How dare the truth convict them and make them victims of their conscience?

Yes, the mere existence of the camp made some uncomfortable, and so in our society of immediate gratification, sound bite analysis, and unexamined lives where we do not treat the causes of illness, only the symptoms, it should not be surprising that the solution was not to address the injustice of poverty, extend hospitality to those in the camp, or offer the camp residents living wage jobs; the solution was to make the problem disappear by simply making the camp disappear.

My God, what hellish power some wield to destroy lives and homes because they do not like what they see. I wonder, could I drive through your neighborhood and decide that your mere existence was an affront to my sense of well being, and, deciding that I really did not like the look of you and your neighbor’s house, call Commander Huggins at the Central Precinct and have your homes razed in thirty days?

The week we were notified that complaints had been filed we visited the camp and marveled at its landscaping and enjoyed the excellent hospitality of its residents. Thinking that there must have been a mistake, because we were told initially that there were safety concerns and concerns about trash, we brought a representative of the Homelessness Commission to the camp, an “important man” as some at the camp later said. He, too, was very impressed and promised to speak out for the residents and to arrange a meeting with the district attorney. He promised to convey a message from the residents of the camp to the district attorney’s office inviting all who were concerned about the camp to come down to the camp and meet the residents. He promised to send a group of concerned Nashvillians down with trash bags to help clean up the areas under the bridge away from the camp where trash still remained, an area the camp residents were currently cleaning because they wanted not just their home but the land around their home to be clean too. They wanted people to be proud of their work.

After the important man left we consulted with the residents and asked them if they wanted to organize students and congregations to resist the closing, or if they wanted to work with the important man in an attempt to avoid the closing—and, if closing was inevitable, to then work with the police in an attempt to gain as much time as possible to close the camp down properly. They had some faith in the important man, and they were a quiet people not wanting to cause trouble and so they opted to work with the important man and with the police in an attempt to save their home.

So the little community was cheered and felt more at ease because an important man had come down to their camp, had said good things, had promised to be on their side and then had gone away to act as their champion.

But then the important man was not heard from again, and those of us who had witnessed the destruction of three large camps within the previous five weeks began to smell blood in the air. By Thursday we were simply told that the DA’s office never returned the call made by the important man and by Friday—the last Friday in March—we were told that the camp was going to be torn down Monday morning and assured “nothing can be done to stop it.”

I wish that I could tell you that advocates and pastors met with the police and Homeless Commission members and appealed to the better angels of their nature and that they in turn responded with compassion and said, “Oh my, what were we thinking, ten people and one dog with little to no resources cannot find a safe place to live in three days. We want to act with compassion and justice. Please tell us how much time they need, and in fact let us see if we can find some section-eight vouchers to help make housing them easier and to provide them with more options.” But that would be a lie. Instead, as always, the only language that those who live by the threat of inflicting violence through force speak (and never forget that it is always force at the end of the barrel of a gun) is the language of counterforce, and it was only when we made known our intention to engage in non-violent soul force in the form of organizing non-violent resisters to guard the camp that we were given 30 days (ultimately 37 days) to relocate and house the residents of the camp. It was only after the promise of resistance that any meeting occurred.

The residents of the beautiful camp were devastated. “So they just want us to disappear, to be invisible?” In their attempt to grasp the consequences of a world ruled by mammon, the illogic of the camp residents ran thus: “If they don’t want to use the land for anything, and we haven’t hurt anyone, and we have actually made the land better by cleaning it up and landscaping it, and if by living here we aren’t dependent on community resources to provide us with housing, and if we just want to be left alone, why can’t we stay?” The police response, predictably, was: “You’re trespassing, you don’t own the land, and somebody registered a valid complaint.” To which the reasonable question is raised, “Complaint about what?” And the truth of the matter is confirmed: “The people walking overhead don’t like the look of the camp.”

Time and time again we bear witness to the confusion and hurt and fear inflicted upon the least of these when those in power want them to “move along” and become invisible. And I hear the ghosts of Steinbeck’s Tom Joad and tenant farmers: “But it’s our land. We measured it and broke it up. We were born on it, got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good it’s still ours. That’s what makes it ours—being born on it, working it, dying on it. That makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it… And now the owner men grew angry. You’ll have to go… But if we go where’ll we go? How’ll we go? We’ve got not money. We’re sorry, said the owner men. The bank, the fifty-thousand acre owner can’t be responsible. You’re on land that isn’t yours… Maybe you can go on relief.”

But there is no relief, no sweet air, no peaceful river to lull you to sleep. There is only the indignity that the powerless and poor have always suffered, the indignity of being herded and forced to move along. During the 34 days we worked to relocate the TA Camp residents, we learned that before the flood it had become the unofficial policy of the central precinct to destroy all encampments and to relocate the camp residents to Tent City, thus turning Tent City into a defacto reservation. Dare we thank God for natural disasters?

You magicians of secular power—for all such power is mere illusion—what must we show you, what must we say, what must our brothers and sisters do to convince you of the fact that they too are human and thus possessed of certain God-given dignities and rights? What must we do to convict your hearts and win your minds? How many faces covered with tears must you see, how many shaking hands clenching air, hands rendered impotent by your guns, as they stand forced to watch as you destroy their homes over and over again? Ears ringing with your policy of “move along,” muscles aching, feet bleeding, minds clouded from lack of sleep, depression and alcohol—each insular and seemingly benign act of “move along” having the cumulative effect of a death march. By your sinful, capricious whims, and at the command of “valid” complaints, communities are destroyed and living, breathing, beautiful humans made in the image of God are tossed around and shuffled like so many dirty rag dolls.

Our brothers and sisters are told to “get it together” and to “take pride” in themselves, but how can they take pride in themselves when every single day the message is sent in no uncertain terms that they are not wanted, are a damn inconvenience, and are not even to consider themselves citizens? And they know that if you do not want them to cease to exist outright, then at the very least you want them to become invisible. Numerous times in the past I have witnessed friends leaving an area where they were minding their business and doing no harm because they were told by police to “make yourself invisible.”

I fear not just for my friends suffering under such injustice, I fear too for those who are forced to execute the hell-born policies of this city that crush individuals while hiding under the false pretense of community standards and twisted paternalism. The oppressors themselves are dehumanized and violated when acting under orders to “clean the city up” and to “clean those encampments out” because they are “dangerous.”

Those in uniform often dreamed of being police officers because they were told all of their lives that the police were the “good guys,” and they wanted to be good guys, they wanted to make the community better for all, and while there are far too many who put on a police uniform because they get off on the false sense of power that it imbues, there are even more who simply want to do good. And so, “woe to you, teachers of the law (policy makers and judges), you hypocrites” who, through your lies, “win a single convert, and when he becomes one, you make him twice as much a son of hell as you are.” Woe to you who dehumanize your strong arm by teaching it to dehumanize others. Woe to you who create and feed a system that creates disproportionately high rates of divorce and alcoholism among those charged with carrying out your orders. And woe to you when those whom you oppress by locking them up, and those you oppress by destroying their own inner moral compass so that you may use them to harm others: realize that they are both victims of your lies and iniquities and refuse to do your bidding anymore.

There will come a time—in fact, it comes now in fits and starts—when we will live our reconciliation with God through being reconciled with our brothers and sisters. And when that time comes, as it comes now, we will embody Paul’s message to us that we are no longer Greek or Jew, male or female, master or slave, for we are all heirs. And when we truly know that we are all heirs we will weep for the injustice that we have perpetrated, and we will weep for joy as we remove our policies of invisibility from our brothers and sisters, and, with open arms, we will embrace them like Lazarus unwrapped, retrieved from the tomb where he was laid because we didn’t know what to do with him.

This flood which devastated poor and rich alike left hundreds who lived in encampments along the river without community and without a home. As I evacuated the last of my friends from the TA Camp that Saturday night when the heavens opened up and the river rose with heretofore unseen fury, my friend “Jon”, a camp resident, smiled sadly at me and said, “At least it was the river that finally took our home and not people and bulldozers.” The river at least allowed my friend some dignity as it equally destroyed all in its path, rich and poor alike. For once, my friend was not singled out to bear a burden and a shame that others do not bear.

In a sense, perhaps the flood was a baptism, another chance to start over for all of us. Let us die to this world in the waters of the flood and be reborn not of this world but of as heirs and children of God’s Kingdom. Let us take this God-given chance to help rebuild the lives of all of our siblings, those in neighborhoods and those in campsites. And as the Kingdom of God works exactly contrary to the kingdom of man, let us go together back down to the private wooded areas and once again calm river banks and rebuild instead of tear down. And then, with renewed conviction, let us create housing affordable and safe for all, and then let us go back down to those riverbanks, reach out with love and compassion, not judgment and reproach, and bring our brothers and sisters fully into our community. And let us ask for forgiveness and weep for joy, for it is we who were prodigals, saved at last by those who were outcast, God’s chosen ones.

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What is the Crisis at Hand?: Further Reflections on a Town Hall Meeting

by Andrew Krinks

It has become all too clear in recent days that we now find ourselves, once again, at a moment of crisis in our work with the homeless community in our city. But perhaps that is somewhat of an understatement. For indeed, the last month has consisted of one crisis after another after another. First came the floods of May 1^st and 2^nd—a crisis for many thousands of people in Middle Tennessee. As for those of us trying to walk alongside our brothers and sisters trapped on the underside of a system that they struggle to survive in, we have seen firsthand the crisis of displacement—displacement after displacement after displacement.

After the Red Cross shelter at Lipscomb University closed; after the week-long shelter of motel rooms and gracious churches expired; after driving those Tent City residents left with no other place to go out to Otter Creek Church to wait and scramble for another plan to come through so that our friends would not be abandoned, we found ourselves taking up the offer of the only landowner willing to help us out. And as we all know by now, that final move led to the crisis of a vehement people. Crisis after crisis, displacement after displacement—a familiar rhythm for people without homes or adequate community.

But the crisis I want to talk about is not the crisis of the flood itself. Neither is it the crisis of finding temporary shelter for our homeless brothers and sisters in its wake—whether hotel room, church building, or 124-acre plot of land. Neither is it the crisis of being accused of acting as scheming, manipulative connivers for refusing to abandon our friends, and for moving them to the only place we had left without first asking for permission from area residents (permission that surely would never have been granted, which we only now realize after the fact). To be sure, these are the crises that ring in our ears at such a high pitch these days that it’s hard to sleep at night, hard to keep from feeling exhausted, enraged, and ever at a loss for words. And indeed, we remain awestruck in the wake of the Town Hall meeting in Antioch in which the empty refrain was repeated over and over again: “We love the homeless, but…”

The crisis I want to talk about is the one that confronts us, much like these other crises, generation after generation—a crisis that seems to grow like a weed in our world, never squelched no matter how hard we try. It is a crisis I wrestle with as if it were another person—and one could even say that it is. What is the crisis? It is the crisis of trying to discern how best to love—to be reconciled with—“the people of Antioch”. Why is it a crisis at all? Why should I even care? Because, as Christ says, we find God in “the least of these.” For Amos House and our friends and partners, we are ever finding God in society’s “least”. But as Southern Baptist bootleg-preacher Will Campbell has recently reminded me, if the people who appear the most detestable to me are “the least” then, according to scripture, that’s where I meet God. And to be quite honest, the people who incite the most fury in me these days are those who spewed so much vitriol from the microphone at Living Word Church last Thursday night. And when I contemplate whether or not this could possibly be true, that God resides in them, I feel a rope wringing itself into a knot right in the center of my chest.

If there are no flesh-and-blood enemies in God’s kingdom, then those people of Antioch who are denying the Christ in their poorest neighbors are as family to me. So I guess that means I’m angry with my brothers, upset with my sisters. But they are family, beloved, which means that they lie within the fold of God’s love.

So what, then, is the task at hand? For those of us who have refused to abandon our friends at Tent City, it is to learn to put on the gaze of God—to see in our most-misguided brothers and sisters from Antioch the very presence of God, and in so doing, to seek new ways to bring the good news, and to do so in ways that don’t demonize or diminish. For many of the people of Antioch, the task lies in learning to see in Amos House, in Jeannie Alexander, in Doug Sanders, not conniving, self-righteous bastards who have “dumped” garbage on them, but rather people seeking to be ministers of the God who takes the shape of those cast out from society. Nothing more, nothing less. Brothers and sisters. Their task also lies in walking out of their houses, into Tent City, not with burning anger or clenched fists, but with open hands and hearts willing to go beyond what they have so long considered their charitable way of being. This is an invitation.

Let me clear. This is not some sorry attempt at utopian diplomacy. Nor is it, I pray, merely a fear of confrontation speaking through my words. For if there is no confrontation in Antioch now, if we hear no complaints for our actions, then maybe we are the misguided ones. (Jesus makes clear, after all, that this sort of work will not always be welcomed.) No, on the contrary, what I am interested in is learning the sort of persistent patience that would not dismiss “the people of Antioch” as a homogenous monolith that has struck out and lost their chance to do good. For indeed, we have seen how they are anything but homogenous: many Antioch residents have even come down to Tent City to donate time and resources to those living in the camp. Indeed, there were even those few exceptional men and women who sought to offer more compassionate perspectives on the situation from the microphone at Living Word Church. I even overheard a couple outside of the town hall meeting offer their genuine support to a Tent City resident in need of work, promising to keep in touch about it, even promising to come visit the camp. And whether they ever went to the camp or not, I am here making it known that “the people of Antioch” is anything but a monolithic beast of hatefulness that we “righteous” ones have come to condemn. It is a people—colorful, diverse, lost, found, beloved.

Clearly, this does not mean that I have overlooked the poisonous speech that made up the majority of the town hall meeting last Thursday. Indeed, I believe there were many a captive mind, false allegiance, and demon-possessed imagination in that room. But driving home from the meeting, in between fits of frustration, I felt a deep sadness, a heavy pity, a longing to see transformation take place in Antioch. And this, precisely, is the reason I even venture to put these thoughts before you at all. As Will Campbell says, echoing Jesus of Nazareth, prisoners are prisoners; it is our vocation to set them free. Whether an actual prison, or the prison of poverty, our vocation is to help liberate, and in so doing find liberation ourselves. But what is truly scandalous about this vocation is that we are even called to help liberate those held captive in ideologies that oppress, in lifestyles that insulate from strangers and “others”, those lost along those ways of being that mistake safety and property value for the tenets of a meaningful existence.

If we are to find God—the God who has reconciled us to himself, and all peoples to one another—then we should begin by using our imaginations to find new ways to welcome the “people of Antioch” into further reflection and action and community. Yes, many proved that they will refuse to listen, to think critically enough to realize their doublespeak regarding their Christian-ness and good citizenry. For those lost children of God, we offer our prayers tonight. If their hearts remain hard, we will, as my sister Jeannie (and the gospel) says, shake the dust from our feet and move on. But, as ungodly as they have proven themselves to be, I don’t believe God gives up on people, even when they deny him in the guise of a poor stranger. It is for this very reason that we shouldn’t give up on them either. If the grace of God has, and continues, to transform me—a gift I do not deserve—then by all means, I ought to extend that gift to others, to extend the table that has been extended to me by God and by God-in-my-homeless-brothers-and-sisters time and time again. For I have been given a gift from those living on the margins of our city. Therefore, in trying to continually receive this gift, and to receive it well, it is my desire to share it—to share it, especially, with the people of Antioch.

To reference once more that one-of-a-kind prophet and pastor of our time, Will Campbell, unless those who, whether they realize it or not, hold up those systems and structures that dominate and oppress—unless they are enlisted in the communal effort to dismantle the powers of death, then our work might accomplish some good things, and we’ll move on with the people of Tent City to whatever place we can find, but there will still be people in Antioch in dire need of liberation. And so, once again, let this be an invitation. For we have discovered God, the God of freedom, through our communion with the cast-aside and oppressed of our city, and we invite you to do the same.

I don’t presume that these words speak for God or that they encapsulate the heart of what’s true. Indeed, no naïve romance has accompanied the writing of these words, only genuine fear and trembling, and great uncertainty—which makes me wonder if there isn’t something here worthy of being said. But I could also be wrong. In the end, all that I am confident of is that we desperately need the fire of prophetic witness, but not the fire of prophetic witness alone. For if that fire is not leavened with the equally scandalous fire of radical reconciliation—reconciliation that resists that part of our nature that would cast out those men and women who spewed false witness in Antioch—then our holy anger lies in danger of turning sour, dull, incapable of bearing faithful witness. For the battle is not against flesh and blood, but against those powers—powers that hold imaginations captive—that possess those beloved children of God who live in Antioch and have made their voice heard in such a sad way. Indeed, it is my conviction that such foolishness as this, such reconciliation, is, in fact, prophetic in and of itself.

May the people of Antioch—may we all—be liberated into the freedom of God wherein the words “rich” and “poor” lose all their meaning in the wake of radical hospitality, reconciliation, and resistance to those systems and structures that know not what it means to love those deemed unlovable. Let us have the courage, and the faith, to be surprised, shocked, thrown off our “safe” courses-of-action by genuine encounters with those “others” who exist on the far side of our failure to love and be truly reconciled.

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Reflections on a Town Hall Meeting

by Jeannie Alexander

It has been just over 24 hours since I left last night’s town hall meeting at Living Word Community Church in Antioch. As I sat on the stage for three hours with Doug Sanders my friend and brother in Christ, I found myself struck dumb at times by the words of anger, outrage, and fear that I heard echoed almost continuously for the entire period of community comments, which lasted for two hours. I am still trying to process what occurred as I write this post. For the crime of moving homeless displaced victims of the flood onto 2 acres of land in the middle of an unused 120-acre tract of land in Antioch, we received the following rebukes and accusations from the angry crowd:

“I’ve known homeless people and they chose to be homeless because that’s where the liquor was.”

“We can’t help what’s going on in the world—this isn’t our problem. You’ve forced charity on us and shoved it down our throats!” (In truth we never asked for charity from the community, only that our friends be allowed to stay temporarily in peace on private property that they have permission to occupy.)

“How many of you have heard ‘Hickory Harlem’ and that the area is trash and dirty? We are trying to bring businesses and schools to Antioch. It’s Antioch together to unite around a common purpose… No more bringing anything to Antioch that is not positive! No more bringing anything to Antioch! The gates of Antioch’s charity are closed!” (These comments were made by Pastor Rodney Beard of Living Word Community Church.)

“I work in a service station and these people steal ice. They don’t buy food; they buy junk and candy… Nashville has a bad reputation for being soft on the homeless. My community is in danger. We don’t want them here…if you want them, you take them!”

“I’m not offended because people are homeless, I am offended because you did not ask us to help but shoved it down our throats. Why is it our issue to be solved instead of yours?”

“I take it personal when you come in here self-righteous and have an attitude about how to care for the homeless… You’re dumping on the people here. For 13 years I’ve watched this neighborhood go down. You pick on Antioch… Now you have Tent City behind Target and if they stay any amount of time Target may move out and then Home Depot.”

“What made you think you had the right to violate codes and sneak in here under the cover of night and dump this on us? What made you think you could dump this on us without permission?”

“And you—that reverend lady with your ‘Jesus Was Homeless’ t-shirt. Jesus was not homeless, he had a mission, his father made him a kingdom… the dome of the sky.” (Our people, too, sleep under the dome of the sky.)

“Jesus was not homeless, he had 12 disciples and a treasurer so he wasn’t poor either.” (Birds have nests and foxes have dens but the son of man has no where to lay his head.)

“I know that you have said temporary, temporary, temporary, but can you assure us that once you move them off you will not rezone and then move them back?”

“You’re trying to play on my compassionate side… When the news reported that they had been flooded out, you (Councilman Coleman) should have been on pins and needles expecting them to land here!”

Over and over again we heard echoes of words spoken on the evening news a few nights before: “Now they’re here on I-24 advertising: come to the dumping ground!” “We’ve been dumped on.” “This problem has been dumped on us!” “We are not a dumping ground!” As if garbage had been brought to Antioch after the flood instead of beautiful wounded human creatures created in the image of God seeking temporary sanctuary—a sanctuary out of sight so they would not offend. Because oh how they have learned that the sight of their poverty offends. But the good people of Antioch (and this could have been any community in the Metro area) have taught us something new, and that is that the very thought of homeless people is offensive whether they be seen or unseen. The majority of the people of Antioch who attended last night’s meeting made it clear that they simply cannot countenance the very existence of such people in their community. They choked on the very thought.

The language of last night’s meeting was the language of hate, fear, and segregation—segregation every bit as vile as the segregation the civil rights movement sought to defeat. Here lies Dr. King’s dream, broken and shattered. And now, as then, pathetic attempts are made to cloak racism (now classism) in the terminology of “codes violations,” “city ordinances,” “property values,” and “bad for business.”  We have lived this sin before; we have heard the lies and the fear; simply substitute the term ‘black’ or ‘Negro’ for ‘homeless’ and your hypocrisy and shame lies bare.

Perhaps most heartbreaking of all was a pastor claiming that he was “for the homeless” and then whipping the crowd into a clapping and shouting frenzy as he yelled, “No more bringing anything to Antioch! The gates of Antioch’s charity are closed!” And why are the gates of charity closed? Because as the pastor informs us, “We are about bringing business to Antioch…and property value.” I do not know the value of your property, but I do know the value of a human life. And while I may not know all of your zoning laws and codes, I know that God hears the cries of the poor. I may not know how many businesses have opened or closed in your community, but I know the difference between the gospel of Jesus Christ that tells us everyone is invited to the table and that we are to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, house the homeless, visit the prisoner, nurse the sick, and the gospel of counterfeit Christianity which substitutes the good news of Jesus Christ (good news to the poor) for the false idols of capitalism and American nationalism. I know apostasy when I hear it and I know what the love of mammon over the love of God looks like, and I know it afresh today because of what I experienced last night.

While the dominant tone of the evening was that of fear and anger, there were also a few voices of love, compassion, and even joy over the opportunity to serve.  I pray that you will heed the words of a young man who spoke eloquently and told you, “If you knew the heart of God, you would know the heart of God is in these homeless people and that they can change your life. This is a great opportunity to serve and know the heart of God… You have 30 days to know the heart of God, you are wasting your chance to know the heart of God.”

You cannot hide an ideology of fear, intolerance, and hate behind the words “I am a Christian.” Such words ring hollow and are rendered meaningless when the actions that proceed and follow such words betray your true meaning. You are not “for the poor,” you are not “for the homeless,” you are for profit and the sense of false security that such profit provides. So yes, Antioch, we will go, we will be gone in 30 days, for we are a people of faith following a God of liberation, citizens of a beloved community preaching an offensive gospel. But be wary of the path you tread: “Now this was the sin of your sister Sodom; she and her daughters were arrogant, overfed and unconcerned; they did not help the poor and needy. They were haughty and did detestable things before me. Therefore I did away with them as you have seen” (Ezekiel 16:49, 50). We shake the dust from our feet and leave you with the kingdom of man.

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Tent City: Upcoming Meeting and Current Needs

Thanks to all who have been actively supporting the residents at Tent City through e-mails, prayers, and donations. There is another opportunity to show support Thursday, June 3rd at Living Word Community Church on Hickory Hollow Pkwy at 6:30pm. We encourage you to attend as peaceful and supportive witnesses to the gospel and to the human rights and civil rights of our marginalized brothers and sisters. A group of us will be meeting in the parking lot of Woodbine Presbyterian Church on Nolensville Rd. at 5:45pm to pray and carpool to the meeting. We’re unsure as to how the meeting will unfold, but we’re prepared for there to be some hateful words spoken. We hope to see you at Woodbine or later at “Living Word”. If you are unable to attend, please pray with us as we continue on the journey.

Also, below is the list of items we still need:

• Pots and Pans
• Propane
• Long candle sticks
• Flashlights and Batteries
• All Day Bus Passes
• Camping Chairs
• Utensils, Plates and Cups
• Ice (one time and daily deliveries)
• Host a Meal (coordinate through ingrid.mcintyre@gmail.com)
• Hair Cuts, Shaves & Foot Care/Pedicures (coordinate through ingrid.mcintyre@gmail.com)
• ***Make 2 Shower Facilities (that don’t require running water)***
• Laundry

We are asking that most donations be coordinated through Doug Sanders (doug@ottercreek.org) and Amos House because we’ve heard rumors that a couple of people at the camp have been hoarding donations and possibly selling a couple of things. It’s not the worst thing in the world, but we know who has what and where there are needs. Small things like candles, ice, food, and toiletries are fine to be taken out there and left in the donations tent. But we are storing the bigger donations and giving them out daily as there is need… just something to consider.

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