Rally for the Right to Exist and Palm Sunday on the Streets

This Palm Sunday,  April 1st, join us for worship, a rally, and a sleep-in to protest the criminalization of homelessness. Just as Jesus entered the gates of Jerusalem, wept over the city, and embraced the suffering therein, we also enter our city, weep over the injustice we see, and embrace the suffering, seeking to transform it.

Do you think it is a crime to be homeless?

Do you think law enforcement should engage in “social profiling?”

Do you think it should be possible for people to be locked away for a year in jail and charged with a $2,500 fine just for sleeping on State property?

If you don’t (or even if you do), you’re invited to a “Rally for the Right to Exist!”

What: Nashville homeless advocates will host a “Rally for the Right to Exist” with food, teach-ins, documentaries, music, and discussions culminating with a mass “sleep-in” to stand (and sleep) in solidarity with our unhoused neighbors and to support the civil and human rights of all, particularly the poor and homeless. This rally and act of civil disobedience is intended to draw attention to Metro Nashville and the State of Tennessee’s onerous anti-homeless laws. The event is part of a larger bi-national day of action with more than a dozen other cities across the United States and Canada participating to raise awareness about the ongoing criminalization of homelessness in our communities.  

Where: Legislative Plaza, 301 6^th Ave. North, Nashville, TN 37243. (In case of rain, check our Facebook page for this event.)

When: Sunday April 1^st from 1:30pm until Monday April 2^nd at 7:00am. (Come whenever you can!)

Schedule of Events:
1:30 p.m.         Free lunch with Food Not Bombs
3:00-4:00         Meditation, talking circles, and Palm Sunday worship with Amos House
4:00-5:00         Mobile foot clinic
5:00-6:00         Pot-luck dinner with music (bring food if you can!)
6:00-6:30         Welcome and introductions
6:30-7:30         Teach-ins including “Know Your Rights” and “Criminalization in Nashville”
7:30-9:30         Screening of a documentary
9:30-Sunrise    Sleep-in on the Plaza

Who? Everyone! Students, families, unhoused friends, advocates, activists, couch potatoes, legislators, service providers, the faith community, the non-faith community, and everyone in between!

Why: On March 2nd, Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam signed HB 2638/SB 2505 into law, making camping, sleeping and cooking on state property a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by almost a year in jail and a $2,500 fine. In addition, “quality of life” ordinances enforced by Metro Nashville Police officers have disproportionately targeted members of the homeless community for carrying out non-criminal acts in public spaces, especially since 2007. Laws that prohibit sleeping on public property and staying too long in public passageways may make our cities more “attractive,” but the downside of these “quality of life” laws is that they criminalize the very existence of people with nowhere to go. Furthermore, these arrests and citations make it more difficult to get a job and housing and further perpetuate the cycle of poverty with court fees and jail costs. On any given night, there are not enough shelter beds or affordable housing units to accommodate everyone in need. Hundreds of men, women, and children have no place to go save the streets and public spaces, yet these laws further victimize them for doing so. Furthermore, in Davidson County alone, vacant housing units (24,479 in 2010) vastly outnumber the people who lack affordable housing (approximately 4,000).

Nashville Stats (Summary Report of Committee on Police/Homeless Issues to the Metropolitan Homelessness Commission, February 7, 2011):

- From 2004 through 2009, the number of physical arrests by police for obstructing a passageway increased by approximately 500% (from 102 in 2004 to 520 in 2009).

-  From 2004 through 2009, the number of physical arrests by police for public intoxication more than doubled (from 2029 in 2004 to 5,031 in 2009) DESPITE the existence of Room in the Inn’s “The Guest House” which exists to provide a less expensive, more holistic alternative to jail for those who struggle with addiction issues.

- As physical arrests of homeless individuals for “quality of life” offenses were increasing between 2004 and 2009, the number of state citations issued during that same period of time drastically reduced.

National Stats (Western Regional Advocacy Project – WRAP):

- Since 1995, the United States has lost over 290,588 existing units of public housing and 360,000 Section 8 units with another 7,107 approved for demolition and disposition since March 2011. In those same 15 years, over 830,000 new jail and prison cells have been built.

- While citizens suffer and are criminalized for simply trying to survive, the banking and financial industry continues to contribute to homelessness. In the last 15 years, 2.5 million foreclosures have taken place, an additional 6.9 million foreclosures have been initiated, and a projected 5.7 million borrowers are at risk. Many of these foreclosures are the direct result of the speculation and predatory lending environment that banks created in order to increase their own profits. Banks have been bailed out while millions of homeowners find themselves in foreclosure proceedings. In Middle Tennessee, as a result of the federally-negotiated foreclosure settlement involving the state’s attorney general and big mortgage servicers, foreclosures are expected to occur at a more rapid rate, spiking by 15% in 2012.

(For more info on this day of action, visit WRAP – the Western Regional Advocacy Project’s website.)

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Ken Goslin, 1963-2011

Our dear friend and brother Ken Goslin passed away Wednesday night. He was greatly loved and will be greatly missed.

We met Ken last summer at the library park when he wheeled up to us in a wheelchair and held out a piece of paper on which he had scribbled one word: HELP. When we met Ken, he couldn’t walk and couldn’t talk, but he could wheel his chair anywhere in the city and he always made us laugh with his wit and humor. In December, Ken was admitted to Vanderbilt Hospital where we were told that the tumor that had taken away his ability to talk would also take his life. Shortly thereafter, he lost his ability to swallow and was given a feeding tube. In January, he was moved to Bordeaux Long-Term Care Facility and in February, we were able to move him to The Drake Motel and get him into Guardian Hospice. His insurance covered hospice care, and a portion of his disability check combined with our Mercy Fund covered his stay at The Drake.

Since February, Ken has been a guest “speaker” at Otter Creek’s Vespers service, he was featured on the front page of The Tennessean’s Easter Sunday paper, he has ridden in a hot air balloon, taken a road trip to Kentucky with our friend Brett, gone to see the new Harry Potter movie, and has shamelessly pumped his beloved coffee into his feeding tube in some of the nicest Starbucks in town!

Ken was born in San Francisco in 1963 to a 17-year-old mother who gave him up to foster care. He cycled in and out of foster homes and was physically, sexually, and emotionally abused until he set out on his own at the age of 14. Though he has felt alone and unloved for most of his life, he died a peaceful, dignified death surrounded by a loving community. It was humbling to sit with Ken in his last days as his worn body began to shut down. It was sacred to hold his warm and weathered hands, to wipe his feverish head with a cool rag, to smooth lotion over his rough feet, and to see his bright blue eyes open as he recognized the voice of a friend.

Ken’s funeral will be held this Monday at 9:00am at Woodlawn. To celebrate his life, we are asking everyone to wear tie dye shirts. We’ll post more details as they become available.

On behalf of Ken, we’d like to thank the following people and groups for your love, support, and presence in his life: Open Table Nashville, our sister community, for surrounding Ken with friendship, love, and dignity in his last year of life; David Schenck who met Ken at Vanderbilt hospital in December and was with Ken when he passed; Guardian Hospice (especially Lauren, Scott, Kim, and Sharon) who cared for Ken from February to August and whose staff became an extended family for him; Alive Hospice who cared for Ken in his last week and provided a peaceful environment so the he could have a dignified and comfortable death; Bob Smietana who helped us get Ken’s story out to the broader Nashville community; The Tennessean reader who wishes to remain anonymous who donated a beautiful plot (valued at $4,000) at Woodlawn where Ken will be buried; Woodlawn Funeral Home for generously waiving the $1,700 cost of having the burial plot opened and closed; Nashville Funeral and Cremation Service who are helping to give Ken a dignified burial; and God who first loved Ken and caused his path to cross with ours, thus transforming all of our lives.

To see Bob’s article commemorating Ken’s life and death in The Tennessean, click here.

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Sanctuary and Burning Stars

by Jeannie Alexander

November brought this city life, new life born in the streets in defiance of indifference, new life preparing us for Advent and the waiting to come.   As this article is written the last few days of Advent lead us to hope in the messianic promise fulfilled, in the fullness of time the revolution in Mary’s belly revealed.  And my boasting and fearlessness is put to the test as I preach to a crowd that the cross that we wear around our necks is a symbol to all that the very worst they can do to us is put us to death, and there is no power in death for we believe in the God of resurrection.  And the world obliges, and puts us to death.

I look to the God of resurrection at 1:00 a.m. on December 2 as my friend and brother in Christ, Cecil, is injected with chemicals deemed too inhumane to be used in the euthanization of animals.  It’s so cold outside as he dies. We stand in the freezing rain outside Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, marking the minutes; bleeding heart abolitionists, Jesus too had a bleeding heart.  I watch the ambulance slowly pull into the prison 10 minutes before murder and I begin to shake, this madness need not continue, and he doesn’t have to die.  This does not have to happen!  I begin to pray: hail Mary full of grace the Lord is with thee, blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb Jesus, holy Mary Mother of God pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death amen.  I pray not for a miracle but for mercy, mercy in death.  My friend dies with the word “love” on his lips.  Sweet mercy.

One week and a day later it is still so cold, so very very cold.  In the morning hour just before dawn another man dies, a man without a home, burning, burning so hot like a star fallen to Earth, silent as a burning Buddhist monk protesting the brutal regime of the South Vietnamese government.   Like a wise woman struck dumb, following a star, I stand at Kevin’s deathbed under a bridge in the dirt.  Three hours after he burns I arrive at his camp, a camp marked now with the carbon etched form of a body staining the ground curled up against the stones of the fire pit; our own little Hiroshima in Tent City.  His camp mates say there was not a sound, no screams from the dying man.  Silent resignation perhaps or perhaps he was dead before he ever hit the ground, infused with yet more killing chemicals, as primed as the creosote soaked timber he was burning.   

We pray as a group trying to understand, and I tell the members of the dead man’s camp “this is not God’s will.  This is not the Kingdom among us.  This is society’s failure to abide by God’s will. In the beloved community every man shall sit under his own vine or under his own fig tree undisturbed.”  Kevin’s death was not the result of divine punishment, but of human indifference.  

Kevin’s camp mate and friend pulls an old dirty grey blanket toward us, it is filled with what the police left behind after their investigation: burned twisted bits of glass, and plastic, shoes, and Kevin.  He tells us that it was Kevin’s wish to be buried at sea.  Although he could not swim, Kevin said it was to be his baptism.  And so we grant his request in the sea of the Cumberland as his friend proclaims “I baptize you in the name of the Father.”  It is finished, and we stand on holy ground, on tortured ground.

Both men were killed by a culture of death: one man directly murdered in a clinical sanitized pantomime of a medical procedure, the other man killed indirectly, but no less assuredly, by a society that will pay millions for the death penalty (hundreds of thousands more than the cost of life in prison, never mind the possibility of restorative justice over the current model of retribution), billions for war, and a brass farthing for low income housing. 

I want to lash out, where were all of you so called pro-life members of the community, be you Christian, Muslim, or Jew?  It’s so very easy to be pro life when the person in question is one so innocent they’ve not yet touched the earth, but what about the condemned man, what about the homeless man?  Where are your demands for life? You hypocrites of omission, your silence kills. 

But I am too tired to lash out.  I need to heal; I look for the resurrection and the life in the world to come. I seek sanctuary.  And though I carry within me the heart breaking knowledge that two more brothers have died this Advent, frozen to death in the Nashville cold, I carry too the aching anticipation of a new world revealed by a Suffering Servant, a God that Thomas Merton described as mercy, within mercy, within mercy.  

(This article was published in the January issue of The Contributor.)

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