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Homelessness and the Desecration of Democracy in Denver, Colorado

2020-08-07T15:27:42Z

Denver Municipal Code § 38-86.2 — known locally as the ‘urban camping ban,’ enacted by the City Council in 2012 (in a vote of 9-4) — makes it unlawful for any person to sleep on public property with a blanket or “any form of cover or protection from the elements other than clothing.” But there are hundreds of people living in Denver who have nowhere else to sleep, and must nevertheless sleep and shelter themselves, who are therefore made criminals by the municipal code and treated as such by the police (a July 17, 2020, count found 1,328 people living in tents in Denver).

Such an inhumane law has resulted in some organized political resistance, of course. In 2019 volunteers coordinating through an organization called Denver Homelessness Out Loud managed to get a referendum (Initiative 300, the “Right to Survive” Initiative) on the ballot, bypassing the council in favour of direct democracy. If accepted by voters, the initiative would have made it legal in Denver “to rest and shelter oneself from the elements in a non-obstructive manner in outdoor public spaces.” The potential protection of such an essential freedom was apparently too much for Denver’s business community which launched a campaign, endorsed by the Chamber of Commerce, to oppose the measure. That campaign spent $2.4 million to try to convince Denver voters that acts of survival by some of the already least advantaged citizens should remain criminal acts (compare to the $0.1 million spent by supporters of the measure). That campaign was successful, and on election day the Right to Survive initiative was rejected by voters 81%-19%.

If democracy, the “rule of the people,” means anything of substance, then it can’t mean mere majoritarianism and instead must refer to a society which, in the words of Kevin Carson, tries to “maximize the agency of individual people, and their degree of perceived control over the decisions that affect their daily lives.” I’d go farther and say that any worthwhile version of democracy is one guided by something like a Rawlsian difference principle whereby social and economic institutions work “to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society.”

An examination of any actually-existing democratic society will make it clear that by those standards democracy is a lie. The United States of America is both the revolutionary birthplace of liberal democracy with its dreams of republican equality as well as one of the world’s foremost engines of inequality. American politics is dominated by two political parties which in their rivalry never imagine a world outside of a struggle over the spoils of capitalism. The two American parties, appropriately called the Republican Party and Democratic Party, mirror the double lie of democracy itself: the promised “rule of the people,” a fair society in which we have a say over our own circumstances, is a false promise; but so too is its less lofty illusion as “rule of the majority.” Would-be cynics hold their lanterns up to democracy and declare that it is in fact nothing more than mob rule, a majority of wolves caucusing with a few sheep over lunch plans. But in practice even this cynical view is optimistic and democracies tend instead toward oligarchy, the rule of the few on behalf of a privileged class.

The case of Denver’s Right to Survive initiative being rejected by an overwhelming 81% of voters might seem like a counter-example to the charge of oligarchy. I’ll concede that any electoral system that allows Denver’s wealthy residents to decide the fate of the homeless is like polling the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah to decide how strangers should be treated; it immediately puts the lie to any pretensions of a just rule of the people. But even in this egregious case of democratic-process-as-mob-violence, the oligarchic tendency of democracy is visible in the background. Looking at the election numbers shows that less than half of active, registered voters in Denver cast a ballot on the issue. The defeat of the initiative was the result of a hateful minority, whipped up by a campaign funded by business owners, to preserve oppressive legislation originally enacted by nine city council members.

Eight years (and counting) of the urban camping ban has not reduced homelessness in Denver, but it has exposed some of Denver’s most disadvantaged residents to increased stress, danger, and police harassment. More recently, amidst a nation-wide rebellion against murderous police and a pandemic-fueled recession, Colorado’s capital has been rocked by protests and shifting homeless encampments as city police sweep one location after another. In June Colorado Governor and millionaire Jared Polis opted not to renew an emergency moratorium on evictions. After protests against police in Aurora (Denver’s most populous suburb), the governor also re-opened an investigation into the 2019 killing of Elijah McClain, an unarmed black man who was attacked and killed by police while walking near his home. The officers involved in McClain’s death remain at large, and protests are ongoing as I’m writing this.

By July the state capitol building and other state property in Denver were marked by substantial vandalism and encroached by growing tent cities. In response to questions about these scenes during a press conference, Governor Polis pressured the city to grant authority for his state troopers to help enforce the urban camping ban and likewise encouraged city police “to come onto our property and remove tents.” The city immediately granted the requested authority and a few days later state troopers effected a sweep of the homeless camp in front of the capitol building.

During the press conference, the governor offered these words to emphasize the importance of more aggressive policing:

It’s not just a building. It’s a big part of our Republic. It’s who we are. It’s our state Capitol. It’s symbolic. It’s important. And frankly, when it is desecrated, we all are desecrated and democracy is desecrated.

Governor Polis reveals here the actual content of democracy: sacrosanct symbols of state power elevated above struggling human life. If ever there can be a society in which individuals have a real say over the management of their own affairs and in which our economic and political institutions benefit the worst off the most, it begins with the desecration of this present democracy. “Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down.”

On the road to May Day: A non-report-back from Denver 2017

2017-05-11T19:09:59Z

Figure 1. “Diogenes Asking for Alms” by Jean-Bernard Restout (1767). Here Diogenes is begging from a statue, which he did to practice being rejected.

A spectrum of beggars

Being asked why people give to beggars but not to philosophers, Diogenes said, “Because they think they may one day be lame or blind, but never expect that they will turn to philosophy.”

Every other day of the year I’m dismissive toward churches, parties, unions, and holy days; but on May 1st, I’m somehow always hopeful that a large number of radicals will turn out and cause trouble. It’s been a few years since I’ve written a post complaining about the tameness of May Day in Denver. That’s because I realized that I’m too shy to contribute to or get much out of protests and stopped attending them. This year, however, with good weather, the drama around Trump, and the centennial of the 1917 revolutions, I thought the demonstrations could be big. I searched online and saw that the Democratic Socialists of America and some other groups planned a “May Day Against Trumpism” at the capitol building. Wanting to not miss out, I took the bus to the city.

Between Union Station and Denver’s capitol building is a mile of pedestrian shopping called 16th Street Mall. Recounting one’s walk down 16th Street Mall is often to sketch a continuum-forming typology of beggars:

Figure 2. A print-quality diagram depicting the perfectly sensible multi-dimensional typology of begging. I’m not at all embarrassed of the concept or drawing. The bus icon is by Naomi Atkinson; the capitol icon is by Loren Klein (CC-BY-3.0). The lines were drawn by me: ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Click image for SVG version.

Almost as soon as I stepped outside of the bus station a woman approached me and asked if I had “a dollar or something to help with food.” I remembered that I had grabbed some extra change with my bus fare and handed her the two dimes. She cheerfully assured me that every little bit helps. This is the unpretentious beggar: she offers nothing in exchange for taking money except to live and beg another day. Every other beggar I’d meet on my way to the capitol would present their case as an exchange; they’d tell me that either I or an even more helpless third party somewhere would benefit from my donation.

A girl with a clipboard standing at the nearby intersection who witnessed my twenty-cent donation caught my eyes and asked, “Do you want to save a child with me today?” From what I gathered before the crossing light changed, the plan was for her to get paid to solicit donations for some sponsor-a-child charity scheme and for me to give her my money. I couldn’t even think of a sensible response to that offer of teamwork and just awkwardly shook my head before crossing the street. Later down the mall I met some more clipboard beggars, and I did much better. One girl got my attention with a friendly greeting and then explained that with Trump in office it is very important that I give to the ACLU. I told her I didn’t have any money. She was understanding and told me that I could donate online whenever I do have money.

A man begging on behalf of Save The Children, an organization currently helping victims of the Syrian civil war, asked if he could talk to me about their work. I told him I don’t have any money, and he politely asked if he could give me his spiel anyway. So I listened. When he got back to asking for a donation I wished him luck and walked on. It turns out that while he’s trying to extract money from unemployed anarchists on the mall, the President and CEO of Save the Children, Carolyn Miles (whose background is in marketing, specifically in selling American Express cards to college students), is paid $455,000 per year.

Further down the mall I looked down and walked fast to avoid interacting with a pair of clipboard-holders wearing Greenpeace shirts.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself. When I crossed to the other side of 16th Street, on the first block of the mall, there was a man playing the flute along to some kind of electronic jazz music playing from a loudspeaker while also talking to passers-by trying to get them to dance. It was a tough crowd, but he was a skilled performer and there were several dollars in the wooden box on the ground in front of him.

Unlike most beggars, buskers are generally not only tolerated but desired by downtown business improvement districts because they provide some cultural authenticity which makes shopping a less sterile experience. People often give to buskers because they genuinely enjoyed the performance rather than out of pity, in which cases street performing is a commercial art rather than begging proper. While I’ve not witnessed them in Denver, other cases in which unsolicited services are pre-rendered with the expectation of payment, such as squeegee beggars who clean windshields at stoplights for donations, probably rarely make that transition (and so precede busking in the spectrum).

The claim that donations are actually payment for a service is a rhetorical game Diogenes played when he said people should pay him “not for alms, but for repayment of his due” (presumably for being such a great philosopher). And like some guilt-tripping clipboard beggars, he also tried leaning on potential donors' sense of fairness and morality to reason them into giving to him: “If you have already given to anyone else, give to me also; if not, begin with me.”

Jesus, the founder of the other ancient tradition of begging which has been gnawing the foundations of Western civilization for over 2,000 years, also gave some rather cynical advice on how to handle beggars. Included in his Sermon on the Mount are three of his most characteristic pronouncements. The first, “Do not resist an evildoer,” is followed by three examples of enduring more abuse than one’s day-to-day abusers expect (if someone slaps your face, turn turn the other cheek; if someone sues you for the literal shirt off your back, give them your cloak too; if you are conscripted to walk a mile, walk two miles). The third is “Love your enemies,” after which Jesus points out that even tax collectors — the very agents of exploitation — are nice to their friends, so that should be, like, the absolute minimum standard of behavior.

Perhaps less famous (though not less vexing) than those two paradoxical sayings is found right between them: “Give to everyone who begs from you.”

Jesus’s first followers were propertyless peasants who had left even their homes, were used to putting up with abuse at the hands of their social betters, to going without sufficient clothing, to walking more than even soldiers, were more often beggars than givers, and who nevertheless treated everybody well. Whatever the deeper and more general applications of these sayings, then, on their surface they not only presented the lifestyle of the early Christians (that which potential followers would be expected to adopt), they also seem to be lightheartedly self-serving in the same style of the Cynics who taught that it was virtuous to give to homeless philosophers.

The co-optation of Christianity by the rich and powerful not long after Jesus was executed imbued these sayings with even greater difficulty for their future audiences, especially “give to everyone who begs from you” which cannot be so easily philosophized away as a paradox. As an example, consider the case of a 19th-century Russian aristocrat named Leo Tolstoy who after a legendary career as a novelist attempted to take the sayings of Jesus seriously. His struggles with “do not resist an evildoer” produced several works which had profound influences on social justice movements around the world and are still read by pacifists and anarchists today. But it wasn’t until he was quite old that he finally got the courage (if sneaking away from one’s wife in the middle of the night counts as courageous) to leave all of his possessions by setting out on train with nothing but the clothes of a standard Russian peasant. He developed pneumonia and died within days of leaving home.

The pretensions of the cynical beggar are ironic in that the audience is aware of the rhetorical game, but like in the case of the street performer, it is the decision of those who give as to whether they are giving out of pity or gratitude. Beyond that, the type of beggar represented by the Cynic and the Christian are honest both in the sense that they present neither sob stories nor pretended friendliness, but even more so in that they invite their listeners to throw off their own pretensions about the society they are living in and reproducing. That is, to the Cynic and the Christian, giving to beggars is not in tension with more systematic solutions to poverty, it is the systematic solution to poverty. The clipboard-holding fundraiser, in contrast, who has perfected the sob story, the salesman-like friendliness, and who claims salvation is found in non-profit organizations, is perhaps the paragon of the dishonest beggar.

I didn’t have occasion to mention it, because I have thankfully never been a witness or victim to a robbery (not that such crimes are unknown on the 16th Street Mall), but robbers also make no claim to be helping their victims and should logically precede the unpretentious beggar in our spectrum. While of course theft and robbery, being characterized by their involuntary demands, are not begging properly, even muggers sometimes couch their activity in the language of a market exchange (‘your money for your life’).

Julian, the fourth-century Roman emperor (a nephew of Constantine) who tried to peacefully revert the empire from Christianity back to Paganism, was annoyed with the openly atheist and crude Cynics of his day. He wanted all Cynics to be as pious and educated as he imagined Diogenes and Crates were, and argued that most Cynics were even worse than bandits and pirates who were at least decent enough to be ashamed of their lifestyle and live in their faraway hideouts instead of preaching at people in the streets. He also referred to Cynics as “monks,” intending the association with Christians to be an insult (Christians were only one or three gods away from being atheists themselves).

At many of the intersections along the mall I saw newspaper salesmen — often older men with all of their possessions in bags on the ground at their feet — selling the Denver VOICE for a suggested $2 per copy. Originally founded 20 years ago as “a grassroots newspaper created by homeless people for homeless people,” the VOICE is now written for a general audience and sold by homeless vendors (who buy the papers for $0.50 each) as a way for them to earn some income. (The Denver VOICE is independent, but its operating model is influenced by similar street newspaper vending networks which operate in cities around the world.)

These charity vendors, whose sales depend at least as much on pity as on satisfying the wants of their customers, are located in the middle of the murky space where begging becomes selling (somewhere to the retail side of the children in third-world cities who sell trinkets to Western tourists).

Of course the entire mall is lined by actual retail shops and beggardly advertisements. Salespersons and advertisers (and the business owners they work for) likely imagine they are much further along the spectrum of begging than they actually are.

Downtown business associations and city councils will often commission artwork to help beautify shopping areas and, as in the case of buskers, will happily tolerate some guerrilla murals which provide a degree of authenticity to the shopping environment. But for the most part any art or graphic design which might distract from the commercial purposes of the property is forbidden. In the words of the street artist Banksy, “The people who truly deface our neighborhoods are the companies that scrawl their giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. They expect to be able to shout their message in your face from every available surface but you’re never allowed to answer back.”

Banksy’s observation echoes one by GK Chesterton a hundred years earlier that “It is really not so repulsive to see the poor asking for money as to see the rich asking for more money. And advertisement is the rich asking for more money”:

A man would be annoyed if he found himself in a mob of millionaires, all holding out their silk hats for a penny; or all shouting with one voice, “Give me money.” Yet advertisement does really assault the eye very much as such a shout would assault the ear. “Budge’s Boots are the Best” simply means “Give me money”; “Use Seraphic Soap” simply means “Give me money.” It is a complete mistake to suppose that common people make our towns commonplace, with unsightly things like advertisements. Most of those whose wares are thus placarded everywhere are very wealthy gentlemen with coronets and country seats, men who are probably very particular about the artistic adornment of their own homes. They disfigure their towns in order to decorate their houses.

Shop and restaurant owners on the 16th Street Mall have been known to be hostile to the more needy beggars operating on their turf and have enlisted the police to carry out revanchist actions against the most vulnerable. In 2012, legislation criminalizing the act of sleeping outside with shelter (defined as “any tent, tarpaulin, lean-to, sleeping bag, bedroll, blankets, or any form of cover or protection from the elements other than clothing”) was passed on behalf of downtown business owners. Under the authority of that code, police have conducted winter raids on homeless camps to confiscate blankets. Recently three individuals accused of camping with shelter were tried by jury, convicted, and sentenced to several days of forced labour.

The City of Denver in collaboration with downtown business owners has installed mechanical panhandlers — modified parking meters — which are meant to compete with live beggars. The city has promised the money collected by the machines will go toward “job training, meals and permanent housing options that help get people back on their feet,” but it has been caught spending it instead to help fund the police sweeps of homeless camps.

The mall ends where 16th Street dead-ends into Broadway. To the north is the financial heart of Denver’s business center. On 16th Street itself are the two Denver World Trade Center buildings and Republic Plaza (the tallest building in Denver); scattered beyond those are more high-rise office buildings and skyscrapers. These buildings exhibit almost none of the colorful and chaotic elements of the shopping mall and are instead dark, sleek, and inauspicious.

The craft of capital allocation and investment, which is practiced in many of these buildings, does not depend on demanding, begging, or offering so much as on staking ownership and simply taking interest. Like the robber on one end of our spectrum, we have financial capitalism on the other: the bandit subsumed. The full spectrum of begging plays out between these dialectical bookends of the modern capitalist economy, as it does everyday between Union Station and Broadway.

Walking a block south on Broadway brought me to the state capitol building. I could see maybe 100 demonstrators nestled up on the steps waving red and black flags. A large banner facing the street read “No War But Class War,” and another further back read “Workers & Oppressed People of the World Unite!” There were no police or pro-Trump counter-protestors in sight.

The prospect of joining them seemed both socially overwhelming and boring. Like some sort of party. So I continued walking down Broadway and spent my afternoon in the Denver Public Library. It was a good May Day.

Other people’s May Day 2017

Of course, some people actually followed through on their plans to attend a May Day demonstration. The local Fox News affiliate was kind enough to both get the word out about various May Day protests in Denver as well as to follow up with a short video and a couple of pictures from the event at the capitol: “May Day events taking place in Denver” (Fox31, 1 May 2017). More photos can be found on the Facebook event page.

A few cities around the world saw major protests, with the riot in Paris getting the most headlines because protesters responded to police tear gas with spectacular petrol bombs. Hundreds of protesters and six cops were injured during the clashes.

In the United States the most unusual thing about May Day this year was the presence of Trump-inspired right-wing counter-protesters who turned up in several cities. Seattle was unusually quiet though there was a minor confrontation with participants of a “Stand Against Communism” rally.

The most rowdy demonstrations were in Portland and Olympia. In Portland a minor riot broke out after a few protesters threw full cans of Pepsi at riot police who responded by charging into the mostly peaceful crowd of marchers. The bloc’d up [mostly-anarchist, no doubt] protesters who instigated the police response have been criticized for endangering the rest of the march.

There was also a small riot in Olympia where protesters threw rocks at police (and some counter-protesters threw rocks at marching demonstrators). In one unfortunate and embarrassing instance, a protester tried to pepper spray some taunting counter-protesters and accidentally sprayed passers-by including a dog. Most cops are not even that irresponsible with chemical weapons.

The Red Guards Austin, a Maoist group which has gained some notoriety in recent months due to their open-carry demonstrations, tried to march in Austin, but they were surround by an alarming number of reactionary counter protesters. Apparently racists and anti-communists of the InfoWars variety are numerous in the Austin area (I didn’t realize until now that Alex Jones lives in Austin and hosts his show there). Some Red Guards members were carrying rifles, and so were a few of the right-wingers. In their public self-criticism which they posted to their weblog, the Red Guards described this scary moment:

Early on in the march a fascist named William Fears physically assaulted one of the comrades who was guiding chants and for this Fears came very close to forcing our units to use lethal force. Those in attendance could see fear in his eyes as the Partisan unit moved into the ready position prepared to chamber a round.

My impression is that the Austin PD did a good job keeping the groups apart and possibly from literally killing each other. The independent journalist Kit O’Connell was present and wrote a good postmortem of the event: “Unpacking The Fascist Rampage On May Day In Austin: What Happened, What Went Wrong.” I could not find a single report from a main stream news outfit.

Sources of quotations

The sayings of Diogenes quoted above can be found in Diogenes Laertius’s Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book VI. Those of Jesus are recorded in Matthew 5:38-48. Julian’s thoughts on Cynics are preserved in his seventh Oration: “To the Cynic Heracleios.” The Banksy quote is from his introduction to Wall and Piece. GK Chesterton’s opinion on advertisements can be found in his 1920 book The New Jerusalem.

Updates on the Enforcement of Homeless Codes In Boulder and the Rest of Colorado

2016-03-11T21:30:17Z

In Boulder, CO, it is illegal to sleep outdoors with “shelter” (defined as anything other than clothing — so the use of blankets and sleeping bags turn sleeping outdoors into a criminal offense, regardless of temperature or availability of indoor shelter space). Boulder is not the only city in Colorado which has implemented such anti-homeless legislation (Denver itself passed a similar camping ban in 2012).

In February, law students at the University of Denver working on the Homeless Advocacy Policy Project (HAPP) published their report on the extent and expense of anti-homeless ordinances enforced by Colorado cities. The report, Too High a Price: What Criminalizing Homelessness Costs Colorado [PDF], is based on a survey of 76 Colorado cities which encompass 69% of Colorado’s population (almost 3.5 million people). It is the most comprehensive state-level survey of anti-homeless laws I’ve seen, and I hope projects in other states follow HAPP’s example. Highlights include:

The 76 cities surveyed have enacted 351 anti-homeless ordinances. “These ordinances typically include camping bans, prohibitions on sleeping, sitting, or lying in public, and limitations on begging or panhandling. It is difficult to imagine these laws being enforced against anyone who is not homeless.” (10)
“The cumulative effect of anti-homeless ordinances is clear: living without a home in Colorado nearly guarantees that a person will break some law.” (11)
People without fixed shelter are disproportionately targeted by police under all city ordinances: “Although homeless individuals represent less than one hundredth of one percent of Colorado’s population, they make up five percent of all citations issued under local municipal codes.” (15)
Boulder issues the most citations for camping than any other city in Colorado by far. Between 2010 and 2014, Boulder issued 1,767 citations for camping, which is about 2 citations for every homeless individual living in the city (at any given time). But Fort Collins is even more aggressive per-capita, issuing almost 3 tickets per homeless individual during the same period.
“We estimate that just six Colorado cities spent more than five million dollars ($5,000,000.00) enforcing fourteen anti-homeless ordinances.” (25)
The cost of enforcing Boulder’s camping ban for 2010-2014 is estimated as $946,457.20.^[1]

The publication of Too High a Price coincided with the introduction of the Right to Rest Act in Colorado’s House of Representatives. Unfortunately that bill died in committee (for the second year in a row). But back in August 2015 the Department of Justice filed a statement of interest in a case involving the anti-camping ordinance of Boise, ID, in which it agreed with the homeless plaintiffs that the enforcement of the ordinance even with no shelter space available is a violation of the constitutional protection against cruel and unusual punishment as provided by the Eighth Amendment. That case was ultimately dismissed for lack of standing (as Martin v. City of Boise), but the issue remains: by the Department of Justice’s standards, Boulder’s aggressively enforced camping ban is clearly unconstitutional.

The possibility of being non-compliant with Federal standards has caused the Boulder City Council to return to discussions about the camping ban. The council asked the municipal court to compile statistics about the enforcement of the ordinance, and earlier this month the court published its findings. The Daily Camera provided a summary as “Report: Most Boulder camping violations are just for camping” (March 7, 2016). Highlights include:

3,253 tickets for camping were issued between 2009 and 2015. 26% of those tickets resulted in jail time.
The average jail time for a camping ticket in Boulder is 1.81 days.
“The vast majority of people who get camping tickets in Boulder committed no other offense besides sleeping with shelter.”

Eight Outdoor Homeless Deaths During 2014 in Boulder, CO, Where it is Illegal to Use a Blanket for Warmth

2015-01-02T01:03:08Z

“Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.” (The Wealth of Nations, Book V)

— Adam Smith

Eight homeless people died outdoors or in public buildings during 2014 in Boulder, CO, which the Boulder Camera has chosen as its #3 local story of the year (Mitchell Byars, “Boulder’s spike in homeless deaths,” December 28, 2014). That is more than the total homeless deaths which occurred during the past three years combined.

The Camera reported that in six of those 2014 deaths substance abuse was definitely or possibly a cause or contributing cause (including alcohol poisoning, heroin intoxication, and one man who died after falling off of a ledge on the CU campus while he was drunk). The cause of the latest death, Jason Gray, 42, whose body was found in November, is still under investigation.

One man, Paul Klavoon, 52, died of hypothermia without the aid of any drugs during a very cold night in September.

As per the city’s revised code § 5-6-10, it is illegal to “camp” anywhere on public or open space in Boulder while using “shelter”. For the purposes of the ordinance:

“camp” means to reside or dwell temporarily in a place, with shelter, and conduct activities of daily living, such as eating or sleeping, in such place.
The term "shelter" includes, without limitation, any cover or protection from the elements other than clothing.

Those definitions apply to all residents of Boulder, including those with no homes or money and so no other place than public places to eat and sleep. While people literally freeze to death on the streets of Boulder, using anything other than clothing for warmth is illegal and makes homeless bodies vulnerable to further harassment at the hands of police.

There was at least one case where a homeless man was cited under the city code for sleeping under a tree. The policeman apparently considered such proximity to vegetation to be “protection from the elements other than clothing.”

Inspired by the success of Boulder’s harsh camping ban at withstanding legal challenge (including a suit brought by the ACLU), in early 2012 Denver’s city council passed an anti-camping bill which borrows its wording from Boulder’s law. Denver’s Revised Municipal Code § 38-86.2 includes the following definitions:

“Camp” means to reside or dwell temporarily in a place, with shelter. The term “shelter” includes, without limitation, any tent, tarpaulin, lean-to, sleeping bag, bedroll, blankets, or any form of cover or protection from the elements other than clothing. The term “reside or dwell” includes, without limitation, conducting such activities as eating, sleeping, or the storage of personal possessions.

When Police Kill the Homeless

2014-04-16T14:03:07Z

Homo sacer

In Western politics, bare life has the peculiar privilege of being that whose exclusion founds the city of men.

— Giorgio Agamben
Homo Sacer

Homer sacer (“the accursed/sacred man”) is an obscure figure from ancient Roman law whom anyone can kill without committing a crime, but who may not be sacrificed: an outlaw. Homo sacer thus inhabits the threshold of the political realm by being included within the law only by being abandoned by both profane and divine law. In his extensive study of this archaic figure, the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben sees remnants of the original foundation of the Western political sphere in which political life (Aristotle’s bios) is constituted by excluding the ‘bare life’ (zoe) of the home.

The other limit of the political sphere is the mirrored figure of homo sacer: the sovereign whose inclusion in the law consists of the exclusive ability to suspend the law by declaring a state of emergency (the “sovereign exception”). Insofar as subjects are exposed to legal homicide (such as extra-judicial executions) under the state of exception, sovereign power produces bare life. “The sovereign sphere is the sphere in which it is permitted to kill without committing homicide and without celebrating a sacrifice, and sacred life—that is, life that may be killed but not sacrificed—is the life that has been captured in this sphere.” (83)

In his book Citizens Without Shelter, Leonard Feldman presents a theory in which the homeless body is seen as an example of homo sacer. Through readings of U.S. case law on anti-homeless ordinances (those municipal codes which forbid begging, public feeding, sitting on sidewalks, sleeping outdoors, etc.) he shows that the courts have constructed homeless life as bare life. The homeless life, even when lived in the very center of the city, is included by the law only through its exclusion from political life.

Homeless life shares similar ambivalence as the sacred life of homo sacer: private and public, disgust and august, reviled and romanticized, criminal and victim, excluded and included. In recognizing homeless life as sacred life, Feldman has done well in following Agamben’s directive: “We must learn to recognize this structure of the ban in the political relations and public spaces in which we still live. In the city, the banishment of sacred life is more internal than every internality and more external than every extraneousness.” (111)

Even anti-authoritarian or pacifist utopians might concede the benefit of a professional peacekeeping organization whose members, authorized in the use of violence, are dedicated to defending victims and seeking out and providing comfort to the hurting. But in the parlance of actually existing cities, `peace officer' is synonymous with `police officer,' who is often dedicated to enforcing the interests of the strong against the weak and to making cities into safe, clean spaces for bios — for capitalists and their worker-shoppers — by excluding bare life (and relegating the activities of bare life as much as possible to the sphere of the home).

If the production of homeless life within the cities of global capitalism can be seen as an instance of (or at least an approximation to) the production of bare life by sovereign power, then the sovereign counterpart to the sacred life of the homeless is the professional policeman (who shares the same, if mirrored, ambivalences as the homeless: respected and reviled, defender and criminal, public and private, human and animal, etc.).

In a quotable line from his Homage to Catalonia, George Orwell emphasized the role professional police play in maintaining property and class relations when he called the policeman the “natural enemy” of the worker. But a more diametric contrast would be between the policeman and the unemployed [non]worker: those unwilling or unable (or just too unlucky) to fit into capitalist society, including the ill and homeless.

In downtowns throughout the world, the homeless beg outside of skyscrapers which are guarded by police and full of financial workers allocating and reinvesting immense concentrations of wealth. Visible on these homeless bodies, refugees with no camp (or whose camp is the streets in the business district of the city), living without homes in the hearts of cities which have banned homeless life, is not only the ancient foundation of political life itself but also the extreme contradictions which characterize life under global capitalism today.

The interactions between the police and the homeless sometimes show the relation between homeless life and sacred life as more than mere approximation. When the police kill the homeless, they often do so with impunity. Below, I highlight four recent examples of police in the United States needlessly killing homeless men in plain sight of the public and video cameras. In all four cases it is undisputed that the police directly ended the life of the victim, and in three cases the state (local) jurisdiction determined that no crime was committed while carrying out the killing (in the other case, it was a jury which made that determination). Each of the cases reached national attention in part due to street protests following the announcements that officers would not be charged with criminal homicide.

In some of the cases below, the Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are still conducting their own review of the incidents. Even if those investigations reveal violations of constitutional or federal law, however, it seems unlikely that the individual police officers who carried out the killings will be indicted for homicide by the federal government.

In the footnotes I provide at least one link to video of each incident. Most of these videos, and other videos of each incident, are available from several locations on the Internet.

Marvin Booker

On July 9, 2010, five Denver Sheriff’s deputies held, beat, and shocked Marvin Booker to death in the waiting area of Denver’s Van Cise-Simonet Detention Center. Booker, a 56-year-old homeless street preacher, was being held on charges of possession of drug paraphernalia. The incident was witnessed by tens of people and captured on several surveillance cameras.^[1]

Just as sacred life is excluded from legal sanctions against homicide, “The coroner ruled that Booker’s death was caused by homicide, meaning he died at the hands of others. But the deputies were cleared by a criminal investigation which found they had not broken any laws.”^[2]

In 2012, the FBI announced that it would investigate the slaying, but it’s been two years and no report has been released yet.^[3] In November, 2014, a federal civil suit found the deputies to have used excessive force. The City of Denver paid a record $6 million to Booker’s family.^[4]

Kelly Thomas

On July 5, 2011, officers in Fullerton, California, confronted Kelly Thomas, an unarmed homeless man whom they incorrectly suspected of breaking into cars. Thomas became impatient with the policemen’s questions and did not immediately comply with all of their demands. A digital recording device carried by the police captured one of the officers, Manny Ramos, calmly make the following statement to Thomas after putting on some white latex gloves, “You see my fists? They are getting ready to fuck you up.”^[5]

Two officers then began striking Thomas with their batons and tackled him to the ground. Once on the ground, backup officers arrived who helped to restrain, shock, and beat him. Thomas began apologizing repeatedly, complained he couldn’t breathe, called for help, begged for mercy, screamed in pain, and cried out “Dad! Help me, Dad! They’re killing me, Dad” before losing consciousness.

When paramedics arrived, they were directed to treat an officer’s minor injury while Thomas lay dying in his own blood on the street.^[6] In the eyes of the police officers at the scene, the bare, biological life of Kelly Thomas was excluded not only from the protections of law, but from also from medicine. Five days after the beating, Thomas was removed from life support and died.

An unusual element of this case is that (after significant public protest) three of the six officers involved were actually charged with crimes: officer Ramos was charged with murder in the second degree, and the other two officers were charged with involuntary manslaughter. A jury found the first two officers (including Ramos) not guilty, and the charges against the third officer were dropped.

The city of Fullerton agreed to pay Thomas' mother $1 million in order to avoid civil litigation.^[7]

Milton Hall

On the morning of July 1, 2012, members of the Saginaw Police Department in Michigan responded in force to an aggressive man suspected of stealing a cup of coffee and being impolite to the owner of a convenience store.^[8] The police confronted Milton Hall, a 49-year-old black man, in a parking lot. Hall was armed with a three-inch folding pocket knife — hardly a deadly weapon. The confrontation was witnessed by passing motorists and captured on video by both police dashboard cameras and a witness’s cellphone camera.^[9]

The dashboard cam videos were shown during a news conference and are available on the MLive website.^[10] The videos show that eight police officers (including a K9 unit) formed a semi-circle around Hall. Six of the officers had firearms, both pistols and rifles, trained on Hall who was squatting in a defensive position with the small knife in his hand. At one point, the K9 handler backed up, apparently deciding not to sic the dog on Hall. In response, Hall seemed to relax, took a few steps backward and then two steps to his right. But when Hall appeared to take a step back toward the police line, all six officers opened fire, discharging 46 rounds in a few seconds and killing Hall.

A video obtained and broadcast by CNN was captured by a witness across the street and shows the incident from a different angle and with audio.^[11]

An investigation by the Saginaw County Prosecutor’s Office and the Michigan State Police into whether the shooting was justified concluded that “Criminal charges aren’t warranted.”^[12] The Department of Justice and the FBI then conducted their own investigation and likewise determined that “this tragic event does not present sufficient evidence of willful misconduct to lead to a federal criminal prosecution of the police officers involved.”^[13]

Milton Hall’s mother, Jewel Hall, described the shooting as “a firing squad dressed in police uniforms.”^[11] It is worth noting, however, that while the police presented themselves to Milton Hall as executioners and ended his life with an extreme degree of overkill reminiscent of a firing squad, the killing was not carried out according to any legal ritual or due process. Like homo sacer, Milton Hall’s homeless life was exposed to death by being excluded from both legal prohibitions against homicide and from sacrificial rites.

James M. Boyd

Jewel Hall is a retired public school teacher and community organizer in the Albuquerque, NM, area. In a tragic coincidence, at the time her son was killed by police in Saginaw, she was working to get the federal government to investigate an alarming pattern of shootings and use of force by the Albuquerque Police Department. In 2011 she wrote an opinion piece for the Albuquerque Journal urging “a full investigation by the Department of Justice.”⁠^[14] A year and a half after her son’s death, a similar shooting unfolded on the outskirts of her hometown in which police with a K9 unit shot an uncooperative homeless man to death.^[15]

On March 26, 2014, members of the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) approached and attempted to frisk 38-year-old James M. Boyd based on the suspicion that he was camping without a permit in the Sandia foothills just east of town — he was suspected, in other words, of getting his zoe all mixed up with the city’s bios. Boyd, who was homeless with no private place where he could legally sleep, refused to cooperate. The situation escalated into an hours-long standoff including a tactical team and a State Police liaison. Home video aired by KRQE News 12 shows six regular uniformed officers holding Boyd at gunpoint even before the APD Crisis Intervention Team arrived.^[16]

Boyd remained defiant. He armed himself with two small knives, and at one point he warned the officers that “I would have the right to kill you right now because you’re trying to take me over. Don’t get stupid with me.”⁠^[16]

The APD has released video footage from the helmet camera of one of the officers on scene which clearly shows how the standoff came to an end.^[17] Boyd, who had apparently had enough of the negotiations, began gathering up his belongings to leave the scene. One of the officers called out, “Do it!” and a flashbang grenade detonated a few feet in front of Boyd. Simultaneously a dog was released which appeared to bite Boyd’s hand, and both the dog’s handler and an officer with a rifle moved toward him. Boyd dropped his bags and put his arms up to his side (while still holding at least one knife.)

Boyd then turned to walk away, which is when two officers with rifles fired six live rounds at his back, striking him at least once. Boyd fell forward to the ground. Mortally wounded and lying prone, he was apparently unable to move his hands. The officers demanded that he drop the knife that was still clutched in his left hand. Boyd replied, “Please don’t hurt me. I can’t move.” Instead of moving to render aid, officers repeatedly ordered him to drop the knife while firing three beanbag rounds into his back from a shotgun. After some deliberation, officers then released the dog a second time. Boyd was unresponsive as the dog chewed at and pulled on his leg. Officers finally moved in, stepped on one of his hands, removed the knife from his other hand, and handcuffed him.

Boyd died from his gunshot wounds in the hospital the next day. At a news conference several days later, APD Chief Gordon Eden announced that the officer-involved shooting was justified.^[16]

In January of 2015, in an exceptional move which brings a challenge to the sovereignty of the police, Bernalillo County District Attorney has brought murder charges against the two officers who shot Boyd.^[18] The charges came in the wake of almost six months of large protests across the nation after district attorneys in several jurisdictions failed to indict police officers who shot and killed unarmed black men. Whether the charges will result in a criminal trial depends on the outcome of the preliminary hearing which will be held in a few months — at which point the charges may be downgraded or dropped.

Department of Justice Investigation

At the time of Boyd’s shooting, the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice was already investigating the APD for its large number of shootings (37 since 2010) and apparent pattern of other uses of excessive force during arrests. After the video of Boyd’s death was released, and after hundreds of riotous protesters demanded reform to the police department,^[19] Albuquerque Mayor Richard Berry wrote a letter to the DoJ requesting that they expedite their investigation.^[20] The DoJ complied, and on April 10, 2014, about 17 months after the investigation began, it released its findings in the form of a 46-page letter to the mayor.

The findings did not address the Boyd shooting because it is still under criminal investigation. It did, however, refer to Chief Eden’s comments at the press conference as evidence “that more work is needed to change the culture of APD.” (4)

According to the findings letter, the DoJ found “that the department engages in a pattern or practice of using excessive force during the course of arrests and other detentions in violation of the Fourth Amendment” stemming “from systemic deficiencies in oversight, training, and policy.” The report also noted that “A significant amount of the force we reviewed was used against persons with mental illness and in crisis.” (9-10)

Those and similar findings from the DoJ investigation reveal how members of the Albuquerque Police Department routinely constitute themselves as little sovereigns acting in de facto states of exception by suspending the constitutional rights of their victims, especially those subjects with mental illness and in crisis who misfit within and are excluded from the political life of the city.

As a final illustration of how both police (who are excepted from the normal prohibitions of the law) and homeless (who are excepted from the normal protections of the law) share in what Agamben calls the “relation of exception,” here is an account from the DoJ findings letter of an incident in which police confronted an angry 75-year-old homeless man named “Ben” who depends upon a cane to walk:

The incident happened in September 2012 after officers responded to a bus station because Ben refused to leave. When officers arrived, they offered to take Ben to a homeless shelter and also called a Crisis Intervention Team officer to assist. Ben sat on a bench and told officers that he was not going to leave peacefully and that he was angry with the bus company for refusing to let him board. After officers tried to convince him to leave for about an hour, Ben threatened bus company employees and reached for his cane. Officers ordered him to put his cane down, but he refused. As Ben was trying to stand up using his cane (presumably for support), the CIT-trained officer shot Ben in the abdomen with his Taser. He did so even though the threat from Ben was minimal: Ben had trouble walking on his own, a sergeant and three officers were standing around him, and there were no indications that bystanders were near Ben. The sergeant on the scene found the Taser use reasonable, as did other supervisors. One supervisor praised the officers' conduct as “exceptional.” (18, emphasis added)

References and Notes

Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life. Translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford University Press, 1998.

Feldman, Leonard C. Citizens without Shelter: Homelessness, Democracy, and Political Exclusion. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004.

Orwell, George. Homage to Catalonia. Adelaide: The University of Adelaide Library, [1938] 2008. http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/o/orwell/george/o79h/

U.S. Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division. “Re: Albuquerque Police Department.” Findings Letter. April 10, 2014. http://www.justice.gov/crt/about/spl/documents/apd_findings_4-10-14.pdf

1. YouTube video ID: vG7Mjt_j8Cs. Footage from the surveillance cameras is available elsewhere on the web, including the Denver Post website

2. Tom McGhee, “No discipline for deputies in Marvin Booker’s death at Denver jail,” The Denver Post, May 9, 2011.

3. Tom McGhee, “FBI looking into Marvin Booker’s 2010 death at Denver jail,” The Denver Post, February 21, 2013.

4. Noelle Phillips, “Denver to pay $6 million in Marvin Booker jail death settlement,” The Denver Post, November 26, 2014.

5. YouTube video ID: KU0Imk2Bstg. Witnesses with a cellphone also captured video

6. Eileen Frere, “Kelly Thomas Trial: Forensic Expert, Paramedic Testify,” ABC7 Eyewitness News, December 4, 2013.

7. Richard Winton, “Homeless man’s mother settles with Fullerton over his death,” Los Angeles Times, May 16, 2012.

8. David Ariosto, “Prosecutors: Police won’t face criminal charges in Michigan death,” CNN, September 13, 2012.

9. YouTube video ID: YC3OAMi9kjY. The cellphone video obtained by CNN is also available on LiveLeak: “Saginaw Police Shoots Homeless Man (Milton Hall) 46 time in 5 Seconds.”

10. Bob Johnson, “Video: Police cruiser footage shows events that led to Milton Hall police shooting,” MLive, September 13, 2012.

11. Jason Carroll and Sheila Steffen, “Video captures Michigan man’s shooting by police,” CNN, August 17, 2012.

12. Bob Johnson, “Saginaw officers who shot and killed Milton Hall won’t face federal charges,” MLive, February 25, 2014.

13. Department of Justice, “Justice Department Announces Results of Investigation into the Death of Milton Hall,” February 25, 2014.

14. Jewel Hall, “APD Protects a Culture Out of Control,” Albuquerque Journal, November 23, 2011.

15. I’m not the only one to notice the connections between the Hall and Boyd shootings: “Michigan police shooting similar to ABQ case,” Albuquerque Journal, April 8, 2014.

16. Chris McKee, “APD: Officer involved shooting was justified,” KRQE News 13, March 21, 2014.

17. YouTube video ID: dgRkkLyZMKM. A slightly edited version of the helmet camera video (as released by KRQE) is available on LiveLeak: “Police helmet camera captures fatal shooting of James Boyd armed with a knife as he’s turning away” (though the YouTube video has better audio)

18. “Officers in Boyd shooting charged with murder,” KRQE News 13, January 12, 2015

19. Elizabeth Barber, “Albuquerque protest over police shootings turns to `mayhem' (+video),” The Christian Science Monitor, March 31, 2014.

20. Anna Velasquez, “Mayor asks DOJ to fast-track review of APD,” KOAT Albuquerque, April 2, 2014.

Rhode Island's Homeless Bill of Rights

2012-07-03T15:11:59Z

Late last month, Rhode Island’s governor signed into law a bill which establishes a “Homeless Bill of Rights” in that state. In addition to enumerating seven rights guaranteed to homeless persons, the bill amends Rhode Island’s Fair Housing Practices Act to include ‘housing status’ as a trait which cannot serve as a basis of discrimination.

The first right protected by the bill is the “right to use and move freely in public spaces … public sidewalks, public parks, public transportation and public buildings…” In light of the national and global trend of implementing curfews and ‘sit/lie’ ordinances aimed directly at excluding homeless from publics spaces, this is almost revolutionary! The bill also guarantees “the right to equal treatment by all state and municipal agencies” and “the right to a reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her personal property…” So police in Rhode Island will not as easily be able to harass homeless people and throw away their property, which is a routine part of police work in so many other places.

How did a bill like this ever become law? Doesn’t Rhode Island have business improvement districts which are supposed to make sure these sorts of human rights don’t interfere with the comfort of consumers as they shop? And how will the courts interpret the ‘without discrimination due to his or her housing status’ clause which qualifies each right? Will it be more “equality” in the sense of Anatole France’s formulation (“The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread”), or will this bill actually allow homeless people to use public spaces, protect them from police harassment, and give them security in their possessions?

Here are all of the enumerated rights from the senate version of the bill:

(1) Has the right to use and move freely in public spaces, including, but not limited to, public sidewalks, public parks, public transportation and public buildings, in the same manner as any other person, and without discrimination on the basis of his or her housing status;

(2) Has the right to equal treatment by all state and municipal agencies, without discrimination on the basis of housing status;

(3) Has the right not to face discrimination while seeking or maintaining employment due to his or her lack of permanent mailing address, or his or her mailing address being that of a shelter or social service provider;

(4) Has the right to emergency medical care free from discrimination based on his or her housing status;

(5) Has the right to vote, register to vote, and receive documentation necessary to prove identity for voting without discrimination due to his or her housing status;

(6) Has the right to protection from disclosure of his or her records and information provided to homeless shelters and service providers to state, municipal and private entities without appropriate legal authority; and the right to confidentiality of personal records and information in accordance with all limitations on disclosure established by the Federal Homeless Management Information Systems, the Federal Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, and the Federal Violence Against Women Act; and

(7) Has the right to a reasonable expectation of privacy in his or her personal property to the same extent as personal property in a permanent residence.

— S2052 Substitute B

One Year Ago Today: Appalachian Trail Semi-Thru Hike

2012-05-17T00:27:24Z

One year ago today I began my three-month, 1,200-mile hike of the northern half of the Appalachian Trail.

My sisters, my dad, and I ready to begin the hike. My sisters and my dad hiked with me for the first five days.

It Is Now Illegal To Be Homeless in Denver

2012-05-15T15:17:51Z

Yesterday morning 100 police officers from several agencies dressed in crowd-control gear cleared a handful of “Occupy the Farm” participants from the previously unused plot of land where they were living, cultivating vegetables, and protecting wild turkey habitat. The land is owned by the University of California which decided it needs its land back for research purposes.

Watching the police over-respond to squats and guerrilla gardens like this provides such a clear illustration of their primary purpose as defenders of the property status quo. Organizing a society on the basis of title-property, so the rich can live at the expense of the propertyless, requires an immense amount of force and threat of violence (and actual violence against those courageous and honest enough to live in opposition).

Here in Denver the headline being syndicated across the county is that the civil unions bill was killed in a special legislative session. Because the “liberal” battle of the age is expanding the state privileges of marriage to a few more couples. Meanwhile Denver’s city council, specifically district 8 councilman Albus Brooks (pictured below) and eight other heartless or delusional politicians, criminalized being homeless in Denver. One of the most frustrating and disturbing trends during this ordeal was how Brooks and the other supporters of the ban refused to admit what the ban actually is (authoritarian greed aimed at our most vulnerable neighbors and at sterilizing our public spaces into purely consumptive spaces attractive to global capital) and insisted that the motivation was to help the homeless and improve the “health and safety” of the city.

It’s no secret that the primary advocates of banning the homeless from downtown are members of the Downtown Denver Partnership, a business improvement district similar to those which have passed similar legislation in cities all over the country. As Randall Amster put it when discussing the actions of Tempe’s BID, “with regard to economic concerns that the homeless are bad for business […] such concerns are inverted, and that, indeed, it is business that’s bad for the homeless.” Why do we have laws again? To protect vulnerable persons from the powerful? or the other way around?

One person commented on the Occupy the Farm raid that, “I don’t know what to say, other than fuck the police, their time will come, and the people will rise.” That sentiment is far more optimistic than I feel right now. I have no reason to think I won’t live my entire life under the rule of little authoritarians like Albus Brooks and the UC police departments, or that anything other than absentee-landlordship will be the economic norm in my lifetime. But I also know that if there is any meaning to life, it is not found in material equality alone. Indeed if it were then all of the honest people who lived before me lived meaningless lives. What was it God said to the successful farmer in that parable? ‘You fool! You’re going to die, and all you have are things.’ Something like that. As far as I can tell, all Albus Brooks and the business owners who control him have are their things. If there is any life to be found in this life, they would be better off freezing on the streets they insist on owning or sitting in their own jail cells.

Scumbag Councilman Albus Brooks, sponsor of "Urban Camping Ban" bill BR12-0241. His Facebook page lists "From Wild Man to Wise Man" as a favorite book. I’ve not read it, but it is by a Franciscan and appears to be spiritual lessons inspired by such characters, and homeless heroes, as Jesus of Nazareth, John the Baptist, and the saint from Assisi himself. This Brooks fellow is complicated; or just confused.

My May Day in Denver: Trial, Verdict, Sleep-In Protest

2012-05-06T06:00:00Z

My Trial

On April 30th I had my jury trial for the criminal charges brought against me in October when I protested the criminalization of homelessness and the eviction of Occupy Denver by sitting in Lincoln Park and refusing to leave (“I Was Arrested at Occupy Denver”). I was represented by an attorney who volunteered to take my case through the National Lawyers Guild. Several of my friends and family members came to watch the proceedings (many for the entire day — thank you everybody!)

My attorney did an excellent job, and despite my antagonism towards the state and flagrant lack of remorse for my actions, put quite a bit of work into what he hoped was a viable defense. Despite ruling against my motion to dismiss at an earlier hearing, finding that the State’s actions in closing the park did not violate the First Amendment because they were content-neutral and narrowly tailored to the State’s interest (and so fell within valid time, place, and manner restrictions of speech), the Court did rule that my attorney would be able to speak about freedom of speech in front of the jury. She also ruled that if I were to testify he would be able to ask me about my property that was taken from me during my arrest and that the Colorado State Patrol subsequently lost. Two early victories.

The prosecution’s case was not especially strongly argued, despite fairly clearly having the law and the facts on their side in at least one of the charges ("Unlawful Conduct on Public Property" — it was undisputed that I ignored a police officer’s request to leave a public park). During jury selection voir dire he smartly emphasized the oath the jury took to determine only the facts of the case, and not to decide whether a law is just. He even implied that all laws must be obeyed in a sensible society. I wish I (or my attorney) had asked them to think about the absurd implications of that and to consider whether an oath which will cause more harm than good is an ethically binding oath. Oh well.

As far as evidence, the prosecutor’s strategy was to first demonize the Occupy Denver camp and then to condemn me by association. Neither step was very convincing I don’t think, even to an objective observer. Unfortunately my attorney was so focused on his negative defense based on my state of mind (he wanted to argue that I didn’t "knowingly" break the law, because I believed the law to be invalid… or something) so he didn’t focus on the hypocrisy of the State’s actions nearly as much as I’d have liked: that the mess in the park was the result of the state police disassembling tents, that instead of offering toilets or trash service the state offered 100 riot police, that even if there was a good reason to evict the camp (there wasn’t) there was certainly no good reason to arrest me (I was, by all accounts, sitting peacefully at the edge of the park). For my part I wasn’t sure whether to defend Occupy Denver, to defend myself, or to explain why it is unjust to criminalize living in public. When I finally took the stand to testify I was too nervous to say much of anything.

The trial went late, so after both sides finished presenting their case the Court decided the jury would return in the morning to deliberate a verdict. Before adjourning my attorney won one more important dispute: the wording of the jury instructions for the “Obstructing a Law Officer” charge. The DA’s recommendation included only the verb “to hinder” (not coincidentally, my arresting officer testified that while I did not resist I did “hinder” him by not standing up to be arrested — the first time he ever used that language in describing the events). My attorney successfully had the phrase “by force or by using an obstacle” added to the instructions. The next day being May Day I had planned to stay in Denver that night anyway, so after the trial I went and bought a sleeping bag (to replace the one that was lost when I was arrested). I found a good stealth site under some bushes in a city park — my first time sleeping out alone in resisting curfew!

Verdict

After my rather narrow defense, the verdicts the next morning were not surprising to me:

Unlawful Conduct on Public Property: Guilty
Obstructing a Law Officer: Not Guilty
Criminal Trespass: Guilty

My sentencing is not scheduled until June 29th, so that the state may have time to conduct a pre-sentencing investigation report to inform the Court about what sort of threat I pose to society and so what level of jail or probation I should receive. As part of that investigation I was briefly interviewed by a probation officer. Before the interview they had me fill out a form which was almost exclusively about domestic violence and substance abuse. So I filled it in with a lot of sad forever alone jokes and mentioned that while I’ve never had an alcoholic beverage before, I may have had sips. In lieu of filling in the “describe in your own words the events of your crime” section I attached a copy of my “I Was Arrested at Occupy Denver” pamphlet.

The probation officer was friendly and respectful of my convictions and he said his primary recommendation would be fines/costs with no probation, though he was insistent on emphasizing the penalties for breaking probation if that’s what the court ended up choosing. The insinuated logic was “your reasons may be righteous, but the state is scary and living a principled life is not worth it.” The thoughts he left me with as I got into the elevator were that if I end up spending 30 days in county jail “nobody would care” about my reasons and that despite my valid protests if I ended up in jail then I “wouldn’t be doing any good.” Throughout the interview I was the subject of all actions: I put myself in a position to be arrested; I didn’t take the plea deal; I was sent to a probation office that doesn’t have the resources to spend on nonviolent offenders. The State’s role in unjustly arresting me, in overcharging me, in compelling me to trial, in convicting me, and in subjecting me to a pre-sentencing investigation and possibly probation were conspicuously absent from his thinking.

May Day!

After hearing the verdict and visiting the probation office, I went down to Civic Center Park to partake in the May Day events Occupy Denver had organized. On my way I stopped to pick up my backpack from the county detention center where I left it in a locker while I was in the courthouse. While I was in the lobby a sheriff came out with a handful of cables and locks and announced that the lobby was going on lock-down so everybody who wanted to leave should do so now! I got out and found out the reason for the lockdown was a small group of protesters gathering to show solidarity for a few protesters who were arrested (for jaywalking) during the May Day parade (which I missed). One of the arrested, Sole, was slated to perform in the park later, but instead sat in a holding cell while they waited for his fingerprints to be processed. (You can read his account on his message board.)

By the time I made it to the park there were not many people there, but it was a refreshingly radical and friendly environment. Signs and chalk art everywhere said things like “Another World is Possible Ⓐ ,” “No Human Is Illegal” (although that one included a URL to a Maoist website), “Homelessness Is Not a Crime,” and several General Strike, Industrial Worker’s of the World (IWW), and class war slogans. There was a booth giving away seeds and tomato plants, a barter market (which I think was put on by the Denver Handmade Homemade Market folks), an IWW info booth, and food provided by some Food Not Bombs activists. (You can see some photos and reporting on this Huffington Post article.)

Haymarket: The Origins of May Day as Labour Day

Until recently I never took an interest in organized labour struggles. I have had no personal experience with unions, but what little I saw of them was a strange celebration of unpleasant work, wages, materialism, and hierarchical organization. I had, however, never been taught about (or never paid attention to) radical labour movements, like anarchism, which seek not only better working conditions, but the elimination of the wage system and of the separate employer/employee classes. One hundred twenty-six years ago Chicago, IL, was the hub of such radical movements in America. On the fateful day of May 4, 1886, the struggle for the eight-hour workday had spilled into the streets, and as the police were dispersing a crowd from Haymarket Square somebody — nobody ever found out who — tossed a dynamite bomb into the police line, killing one officer immediately and fatally wounding several others.

Eight anarchists were arrested for their roles in organizing the protests, seven of them were sentenced to death, one killed himself before the state could do it, four were executed, and the remaining two had their sentences commuted by the governor. One of the anarchists, August Spies, moments before being hanged shouted out his famous last words, “The time will come when our silence will be more powerful than the voices you strangle today!”

The Haymarket affair (see also this very good short history which was first published in the April 1986 issue of Revolutionary Worker: The Origins of May First) became an excuse for the propertied class to discredit and crackdown on socialists everywhere. The momentum for the eight-hour workday was lost, anarchist groups were constantly accosted by police (and to this day the dark bearded man sneaking about with a round, fused dynamite bomb is the caricature of an anarchist), revolutionary unions like the IWW lost membership to reformist unions like the now-dominant AFL, etc. But Haymarket also became a rallying event for labour movements all over the world, with the First of May becoming an international workers' day in commemoration of the Haymarket martyrs.

Today more than eighty states officially recognize May Day as a labour holiday. The United States does not. In fact this year Obama, like in past years, proclaimed May 1 to be Loyalty Day in a not-so-subtle snub at the Chicago anarchists who gave their lives in the struggle for equality. In past years America has also officially celebrated those deaths as Law Day and “Americanization Day”.

This year, thanks to the organization of the various Occupy movements, May Day was once again celebrated by thousands as a day to commemorate labour struggles (see also the Great American Boycott of 2006). Including me, for the first time.

Sleep-In Protest

After the events in the park, about 50-60 of us walked over to the 16th Street Mall to sleep for the night in protest of Denver’s proposed urban camping ban (which will likely be put into effect later this month). I met several friendly young people, several of whom were currently homeless, recently homeless, or were currently hitchhiking around between jobs. They included me in their conversations, listened to what I had to say, and were generally very encouraging people to meet. The Thunderdome stopped by to make s’mores, coffee, and chai for everybody. Other people brought pots of soup and loafs of bread. (Somebody posted a Flickr photo album of the protest. I’m visible in some of the photos.)

At first there was a large police presence, but once it was clear we were just there to sleep they left us alone. All the local TV news stations were there both at night and in the morning to run short live reports on the protest. At one point during the night a very frustrated man who decided he wanted to get arrested that night tossed a large rock through the glass door of one of the shops we were sleeping in front of. Even to that incident the police reaction was subdued, responding with only one vehicle and at least ten minutes after it happened (there was a group of private security guards keeping an eye on us all night who reported the window smashing immediately). The guy who threw the rock was getting impatient waiting for the police (at one point shouting “Where are the police?!” while standing on the curb with his hands behind his back). The window was boarded up before the news crews came back in the morning, and nobody reported on the incident — I don’t think any news station was ever aware it occurred. (I can be seen walking in front of the camera during a clip aired by 9News.)

There is a similar sleep-in protest planned for next Saturday. I intend to be in attendance.

Appeals Court Upholds Boulder's Camping Without Consent Ordinance

2011-04-09T20:33:08Z

Here’s the Daily Camera's report:

“Boulder judge rejects homeless man’s appeal, upholds city’s anti-camping law”

(Update: the Colorado Supreme Court has refused to hear the case)

If you don’t own property, or rent (or otherwise have permission to use) property from someone else, you can at least still sleep on public property in Boulder. However, you can not use a blanket while sleeping on public property in Boulder. Because the use of a blanket is a serious threat to public health and the environment.

I wish I were exaggerating, but three times (once regarding the first issue on appeal, twice regarding the second) the court depends on the fact that the ordinance “allows people to sleep on public property at any time” to uphold the trial court’s ruling. The crime is not in the sleeping, it is in the use of “shelter” defined as “cover or protection from the elements other than clothing.”

The district court’s ruling also notes that the ordinance allows anyone “to use shelter for daytime napping.” I guess sleeping bags are only an environmental hazard at night.

The law doth punish man or woman
That steals the goose from off the common,
But lets the greater felon loose
That steals the common from the goose.