G.A. Minutes 8-30-16
We’re off to an unusual start this evening. The Fire Magician went down to People’s Plaza in the afternoon to sweep up a lot of broken glass he had noticed when he was at a rally in the Plaza yesterday. When he had finished, got into his truck and began to drive off, he noticed that he had absolutely no brakes. Not good but actually very lucky. If he hadn’t gone to do the sweeping, his brakes probably would have gone out as he was driving down the hill with all the fire stuff for the meeting. He could have landed in the middle of the busiest intersection in town.
Tonight all the fire stuff is packed into the car of the Occupier who brings the food. She doesn’t have room for the chairs so we’ll have to make use of the many benches that are scattered about the Plaza.
This evening’s weather will be well suited for a fire. Temperatures are in the low 70s, the sky is clear, the sun is already behind the buildings and we have a noticeable but non-bothersome breeze.
A veteran hippie homeless couple is sitting with the first arriving Occupiers when the supplies for the circle arrive. They have attended a few of our fires since we’ve been at People’s Plaza. They appear to have had and/or are having experience taking heavy drugs but they tell good stories and are quite amiable.
The city official arrives; right behind him are a couple of neighborhood youth. The teenagers have come for snacks to fill their growing bellies. They smudge first then survey the table. The boys are pleased with the commercial snack foods that have been supplied by the newest Occupier. They roll cigarettes from our tobacco.
When they leave, an Occupier comments, “I know we should be discouraging the young ones from taking up smoking but as I’m sitting here smoking a cigarette myself, it would be hypocritical of me to tell them not to do it. Besides, judging by how well they can roll them, I’m betting they’ve already been at it for a while”.
Most of the Occupiers attended yesterday’s Socialist Action Support for Standing Rock rally here at the Plaza. The turnout was great and many Native activists joined us. We managed to get reasonable if slanted coverage from two Duluth TV stations.
We start up the fire and the hippie couple tell us a few stories. A few years ago the male hippie moved into an apartment in a rough neighborhood in Minneapolis. A couple of blocks from his new home, he ran out of gas. A cop drove up and asked him if he was there to buy drugs. When he told the cop that he lived in the neighborhood the cop said, “Oh yeah, well I’m gonna search your car”. The hippie man answered, “You can’t search my car unless I give you my permission and I’m not gonna give it to you”. The cop says, “We’ll just see how much I need your permission”. The cop then proceeded to tear the guy’s car apart. He slashed all the upholstery and broke the doors and dashboard. The cop added, “From now on, I’m gonna tell all the cops around here to stop you every time you try to go anywhere. You’re gonna have to move”. The man continues, “The cop was right too. They harassed me so much that I finally had to move”.
The hippie woman reports, “About a year ago I was walking down a public beach. I was singing while I was looking for agates. Somebody called the cops. Four cops showed up and surrounded me. They asked what I was doing there and when I held out my cup of agates, one of the cops went for his gun. I asked him what he was doing that for and he said, ‘I thought you were gonna throw them at me’. I mean, come on, he was gonna kill me if I threw a small cup of little rocks at him?”
The man tells another story, “A while back, we were over in Superior. The cops beat the hippie woman so bad that she ended up in the hospital. While all this was going on the cops took all my belongings from me. After she was hospitalized, the cops gave my belongings back. They put a small bottle with meth in it inside the case where I kept all my daily meds then they arrested me for possession of meth”.
We all discuss some of the many problems with police. Everyone thinks it’s a good thing that many regular people now have cell phones that can film well. We think it’s also good that cops have to wear body cameras. The hippie couple informs us the cops in Superior don’t have them.
Menagerie Woman arrives. So does the multi-racial couple who had recently become homeless and were forced to stay at CHUM. We ask the couple how things are going for them and the woman replies, “We’ve saved enough money to rent an apartment. Now we’re trying to find someone who will rent to us. We have a possibility a little east of here and we should find out in the next few days. I sure hope we get it”.
We get a surprise visit from the Occupier who has moved out of town. He states that he expects to return to the Twin Ports within the next few weeks.
The woman of the multi-racial couple comments, “I saw a really bad thing today. We were up having lunch at the Dom. A black woman was serving the food. An older man in the food line refused to eat food that had been touched by a black person. He threw his food tray down and stomped out of the building”. An Occupier responds, “Good enough for him. If he wants to be a hater, he can go without lunch”.
We get another surprise visit. It’s from the retired neighborhood man. He says, “I heard a rumor that you were down here now. So you’re not exactly ministering to the most destitute anymore?”
An Occupier explains, “A lot of the folks from the Clayton Jackson McGhie Memorial area are willing to make the two block walk down here to sit with us. We spent most of last summer and fall having the cops and fire people show up and forcibly put out our fire. The former CJMM BOD president threw his weight around and somehow forced the police department, the fire department and the City Attorney to attempt to chase us off. The BOD said our fires were the reason so many homeless or poor people hung out at CJMM. I notice that since we’ve been gone the population there has remained the same. We stood our ground until winter forced us indoors.
“Over the winter we talked about what we thought was more important, fighting the cops or having a fire circle for neighborhood people. We decided the fire was most important. We’ve been having them here since April and have yet to be bothered by five-o types. They know we’re here but they leave us alone. Go figure”.
The newest Occupier is leaving. She says she’ll see us on Saturday. Another Occupier reminds her, “We expect to be here on Saturday but next week there’s a lot of other stuff we’ll have to do. The next Homeless Bill of Rights meeting is on Tuesday evening, September 6th, the meeting at the Red Herring about sexual harassment of women on 1st Street is Wednesday evening, September 7th and the Hildegard House Vigil for Trafficked Women is on Saturday evening, September 10th”. The new Occupier replies, “Sounds like a plan”.
The multi-racial couple needs to leave too. They must be back to CHUM before 9pm. They load up on snacks so they will have something to tide them over until tomorrow.
We just start to pack up when Ms. Community Cleanup and her partner come up the stairs. They have a bedraggled looking guy with a big bandage on one foot and a walking cast on the other in tow. Ms. Cleanup tells us she has made him a new bandage with one of her shirts. She says, “His foot looks pretty ugly but it’s not gangrene yet”. They are all very hungry so begin chowing down.
Ms. Cleanup reports that she and her partner have been having a hard time trying to apply for social security disability. She explains that her partner is schizophrenic and is not being well taken care of by the mental health care system. When she tells us this, a light goes on in many of our heads. We first met her partner over a year ago and were puzzled by much of his behavior. We had hypothesized he was very burnt out from doing massive amounts of synthetics or something. Now we understand.
We start to pack up again when a few women we haven’t met in the past arrive. One says, “Do you have anything that me and my very pregnant friend can eat? We are so hungry”. We offer them all the food we have left and they are thrilled. In fact, all the street folks have been thrilled with the food tonight. Especially with the small bottles of something called Sunny D.
Once the women take what they need, the food is completely gone. This time we pack up for real. We expect to be back at People’s Plaza on Saturday.