The Knoxville Homeless Collective led a demonstration Wednesday demanding that the city stop criminalizing the homeless and create a “designated safe zone” where they could rest without arrest or police harassment. About 25 people walked—some with the aid of walkers, some struggling in the hot sun, others being pushed in wheelchairs—from Depot Street in the Mission District through the Old City, some struggling in the hot sun, shouting “Whose streets? Our streets!” as they were followed by four police officers on bikes.
They were delivering a letter to Mayor Madeline Rogero that accuses her of “silence and compliance” while police conduct “illegal camp evictions” and “illegal arrests” of the homeless, naming a particular officer as most aggressive. The letter, which demanded a response from Rogero by Sept. 28, asked the city to work with the collective on a Homeless Bill of Rights.
“We will no longer secure Knoxville’s beguiling rhetoric that our homeless communities are safe, cared for, and treated fairly,” the letter states, noting that the city has too few housing options or shelter beds for people with criminal records. “It is not true, it is not the reality of our lives.”
The letter recounts “mass evictions” in the Mission District last week and says, “Today we see the city constructing over the slab that the homeless community sleeps on.”
Homeless collective member Peggy Sue Morrow says the city, police and railroad officials have “started a war” with Knoxville’s homeless in the past year, destroying camps and throwing out people’s few possessions without giving them a chance to remove them.
“They even took my kittens…. Just because we’re homeless, we’re not worthless,” she says with tears in her eyes. Morrow says she was homeless for years until she was able to get an apartment in Isabella Towers very recently.
“You got dog parks in this city, but you can’t have a people park?” she says. “We’re citizens of this country. What happened to our rights?”
Morrow shouted and rallied supporters for the march. But the crowd paused shortly after starting when she fell to the ground in a small seizure, a legacy of being bludgeoned in the back of the head while living on the street. After some water and a brief rest, she popped back up and continued marching, elbows pumping.
The small crowd seemed to include more homeless supporters than homeless people, but those more fortunate expressed outrage at the city’s effort to block off homeless camps and its perceived focus on downtown economic development over helping the economically disadvantaged who live on the streets downtown.
“Redevelopment is just going to increase the criminalization of the homeless. We’ve already seen that,” says Knoxville resident Karly Safar. “People talk about how progressive the mayor is. What has she done? She should order the police to stop ticketing these people, especially if their ‘crimes’ don’t hurt others.”
Chris Irwin, a public defender who represents many homeless clients in court, took the day off from work to join the march in a suit and tie. He says the homeless often get used by savvy petty criminals, who offer homeless people jobs only to ask them to cash checks or pawn items using their legal ID. The scam artist makes off with the money, and the homeless person ends up in jail.
“If we had a caste system in Knoxville, they’d be at the bottom,” he says, noting how many of his homeless clients are veterans, battered women, or mentally ill. “You can tell how a society is by how it takes care of its homeless.”
S. Heather Duncan has won numerous awards for her feature writing and coverage of the environment, government, education, business and local history during her 15-year reporting career. Originally from Western North Carolina, Heather has worked for Radio Free Europe, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in London, and several daily newspapers. Heather spent almost a dozen years at The Telegraph in Macon, Ga., where she spent most of her time covering the environment or writing project-investigations that provoked changes such as new laws related to day care and the protection of environmentally-sensitive lands. You can reach Heather at heather@knoxmercury.com
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