Republished from the Tahoma Unitarian Universalist Congregation website.
On Wednesday night, a group of peaceful protesters gathered outside the LeMay car museum in downtown Tacoma. A “business summit” was being held to air concerns that business leaders have about crime and other issues affecting them. On the agenda was instituting “sweeps” encampments of unhomed people.
Members and friends of TUUC took part in the protest that included families with young children. As they stood on the sidewalk holding signs, a blue pickup truck swerved onto the sidewalk into the group, hit and severely injured a woman, and sped away. The woman suffered a broken pelvis along with other injuries. The shocked protesters carried on as the emergency responders arrived and transported her to the hospital where she remains.
The issue that the protesters were offering opposition to is the proposal that there be a camping ban enacted in the city, a practice that is devastating to those who are trying to survive without any place to live.
Tacoma, along with other communities, has inadequate will to fully address the number of unhomed people who are struggling to survive on its streets, and has tried to manage the people who gather together to form small communities and camp on public lands by periodically by forcefully removing the people and destroying/removing everything that they can’t carry with them. The people who are displaced again and again by these actions are continually traumatized and their tenuous survival is further endangered.
Last spring, our congregation voted to become a site for the Safe Parking Network’s pilot program and began offering a place for people who were without a home and living in their cars. As the Coordinating Team has gotten to know some of the participants, and heard their stories, we’ve learned more intimately how hard it is to survive when you have no place to live.
We continue to do our small part in making the life of some of our vulnerable neighbors less dangerous and difficult. Our Safe Parking Team can always use extra help (contact me at minister@tahomauu.com to get connected), and our voices make a difference as the city leaders consider the camping ban. Get in touch by checking this page: https://www.cityoftacoma.org/government/city_council.
Let’s keep at it, friends. Together we can make a difference.
Two things: Is this article about the protest or the hit and run? Anyone want to take odds on the driver of the blue truck being an “unhomed person?”
I seriously doubt that an unsheltered person would attack a demonstration that was happening on their behalf. I would say it was more likely fascistic terror. Who benefits? Who has proven repeatedly, that NO PROTEST is their preference in Tacoma. I was the livestreamer unlawfully detained at the North West Detention Center in June 2018, raided by TPD, locking up ten protesters, as a lesson and to stop a mushrooming, community-wide protest there. That was during the snatching of children by the trump regime, at the border. So, given history of TPD and their attitude about lawful or any protest, well, I’d say it was more likely aided and abetted by TPD. And also, the City tried to IGNORE what happened at LeMay. Their very strange behavior, and three-week late, found concern about Theresa, was not persuasive to me.
Kerpal’s query is probably correct. And TUUC strikes me as another well intentioned, but misguided “enabler.”
Responsible reporting and studies reveal that the “homeless community” is predominately drug addicted and/or suffering mental illness – and resistive to being housed.
Why is TUUC not seeking “camping” options at Western State Hospital where those who need intervention to clean up their lives might have ready access to services? But then, I know where the resistance to such an idea would come from. And leadership isn’t there on this issue in any form, especially since we’ve seen the accreditation debacle allowed by the State for that institution. So we just gets band aids like the protestors offer. Sad.
Not sure what you are saying about Western State. All I know is that Covid is raging there, having over 400 cases for a while now.
Good questions. Strike one as also a bit of an advertisement.
Change comes out of pain.
The more soft we make the landing, the less change we see.
People have to want to change.
Ironically, over time people will endure discomfort beyond the pain of change.
That’s called self-infliction.
We cannot dwell at that level without sacrificing ourselves to it.
So many of these things spring from unintended consequences.
The idea of relocating all “campers” to the grounds of Western State – now that seems like an idea worth exploring, as the health and security resources could be consolidated there as well.
Translated: Get them out of my sight, I don’t want to see them. And, if they can’t pull themselves up by their bootstraps, no matter what this cruel “socety” has thrown at them, well, to hell with them. Did I miss something here? Thanks for this post, and the work you are doing at a real church.