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Grand Junction's War Against The Homeless

January 8, 2008 by TheRedPill

This spring and summer has seen a massive push by the City of Grand Junction to evict homeless camps along the Colorado River. Dozens of camps have been evicted. One source I spoke with said that he had been evicted from five different camps this spring and summer.

The city has had a policy since 2000 of clearing out homeless encampments in the spring, but this year the city “has been coming down harder,”
The raids on homeless camps is just the tip of a larger campaign by the city to make life harder for homeless in Grand Junction.

On April 21st, Carl, a 37 year native of the Grand Valley, was given a ticket while helping a friend move his camp. Carl’s friend had been contacted by the police and was told that he had one hour to move camp. “After half an hour they came back and started handing out tickets.”

Mark doesn’t look homeless. He’s clean shaven and he’s dressed business casual. “Just because we’re down here living in a tent don’t mean that we want to be here forever. Piling on tickets just makes it harder to get on your feet.” Mark said. Mark was forced to move his camp to BLM land after police told him and his campmates to beat it.

Mark’s girlfriend added that she’s “so stressed about getting kicked out [of their current camp by the police] it’s hard to work and hold down a job.”

Dodi has been homeless for two years. She and nine others have a camp just outside of city limits. In May, GJPD officers and a single Mesa County Sheriff came out to thiei camp and issued three tickets and told the occupants to vacate the area. “They haven’t come back,” said Dodi. “I’m not worried, people have been living there for 20-30 years. Since May, the Mesa County Sheriff’s Department has been out to Dodi’s camp a couple of times for unrelated calls and have always been polite. “They told us ‘you guys keep a good camp,’” said Dodi. “The Sheriff has always been cool, they’re [the city] the ones that hate our guts.”

“I’ve lived in town for 37 years, and the City Council, Mayor and the city police have an unwritten policy for the poor and homeless and in the past Mexicans: If you’re rich, the police and city is here to serve and protect, and if your poor they’re here to harm and harass,” said Carl.

The City has stated that they want to run the homeless out of Whitman Park and has already taken steps in that direction. In a November 20th, 2007 article The Free Press reported that one of the stated goals of the proposed $98 million Fire/Police Safety Building is to ‘reclaim’ Whitman Park from the ‘transients’. The $98 million building is to be constructed adjacent to Whitman Park. The architect of the project, Dennis Humphries, said, “To help reclaim that lost piece will benefit (the city) and the citizens of Grand Junction.” Then Mayor Jim Doody was reported as saying “I think it’s a great opportunity to reclaim it [Whitman Park].”

Two weeks ago the City locked up the bathrooms and turned off the water fountain--further limiting the homeless’ access to clean water, and further
criminalizing the homeless who now have no legal place to go to the restroom. It could be argued this is their first step towards ‘reclaiming’ Whitman Park.

The City, Grand Junction Downtown Partnership, Grand Junction Chamber of Commerce, and others have all teamed up for the “Giving Spare Change Won’t Make a Change” campaign, which encourages people to give to local shelters and charities rather then give panhandlers cash. What they fail to tell anyone is that it costs $3 a night to stay at either the Mission or at the Homeward Bound North Avenue Shelter. These people need to come up with $3 every day just to insure that they have a place to stay, but these signs continue to stand on the prominent ‘spanging’ corners throughout the city.

Attacks on the places where homeless people camp, sleep, congregate, and earn a few bucks, is a coordinated campaign to run the homeless out of town and amounts to Class War against those among us who have the least.•

From The Red Pill Vol. 6 No. 10 Homeless Issue: Download the current issue
at www.gjredpill.org

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