Please read Tami Miller’s words that were posted on Feeding the State St. Family Facebook group and then tell me, won’t you be there today at 4:30 if you can!
I have never been to a protest before, by nature I am a behind the scenes “do-er” ….brought up by parents that taught me to respect police and authority, to follow the law, and to be slow to anger.
I spend my energy helping solve the problems I see with action and practical help. But yesterday, after hugging 7 homeless people who had all of their worldly possessions thrown out into a garbage truck by police…. I can no longer sit idly by and watch while the city, my city systematically punishes the very poor. You can cite instances and rationalize away some of the reasoning for the panhandling ban, the city’s denial or at the very least delay of a warming shelter in winter, the policies of sheltering agencies that ban people from emergency shelter and limit its availability even in extreme weather conditions, even give some seemingly valid reasons for throwing out 7 people’s sleeping bags and backpacks.
The Mayor was just quoted a week ago saying “it’s not the city’s problem…”
But I am saying it’s the city’s REALITY.
I see between 100-200 people who sleep outside each night in this city…on the street, in the woods, in their cars, in tents…. And I am going to this rally because of them….I am going for the United States Veterans I know that sleep off of Carol Street, I am going for the kids who do their homework by flashlight in the tent they live in or the dome light of the car their family sleeps in… I am going for the mentally Ill woman who washes her hair in the capitol bathroom and sleeps on a bench on state street….I am going for the kids who work as telemarketers, or buss tables, and work fast food, the man who drives taxi 7 days a week, the guys who stand in line hoping to get a job for the day as day laborers…who do what we tell them to and still can’t make it. I am going for my friend D who was in the hospital when they threw out his things, for my friend S who is pregnant and sleeping outside, yet still trying to go to MATC to make a better life for her baby….I am going for the people who have fallen through our safety net, people who are trying to survive day by day…people who have lost everything but the clothes on their body.
I cannot in good conscience stand by and wait until another homeless friend dies of hypothermia on Madison’s streets this winter. I won’t go to another funeral at Bethel Lutheran (the only church in Madison to do free funeral services for our homeless friends) and listen to a sermon about how “God has not forgotten you…” I won’t watch another grown man try not to cry in front of me because, despite his best efforts…he can’t make it on his own…and the thought of trying to survive another winter makes him want to give up and just die.
I love these people so I DEMAND better for them. Please join me at 4:30 on the City-County Building steps on Martin Luther King Blvd. if you demand better too.“All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”- Edmund Burke
Thank you Tami for your wonderful heart, endless energy and all the lives that you touch. Thank you for treating my new friends and so many others with the dignity and respect that they deserve and for touching the lives of so many, in so many ways! You are my hero.
First of all, this city takes very good care of its true homeless, providing countless meals and shelters. Majority of those who find themselves on the street have either refused service, or have displayed behavior that has impacted their priviledge for service due to substance abuse and disorderly conduct. (Check the stats, the majority of Dane Co. Homeless are families, which you don’t often see on the street because they actually take advantage of the programs available). And these services are a priviledge, not a right. If you need these services, you should show some sort of appreciation when you recieve them.
Second, if I had left a bunch of garbage bags on the street unattended I wouldn’t be suprised in the least if they weren’t there when I returned. Especially based on the description of the items, I would have assumed it was trash too. Especially since MPD and Mall Maintenance have many times come across discarded belongings from someone who skipped town. These people didn’t think to let people in the area know? The officers said they asked around and none of the other people in the area knew anything about the items. Needing help or not, there is a thing called common sense, and not leaving your stuff on the street unattended falls within that.
You guys go ahead and keep using your “right to free speech,” just stop being so upset when those of us who truely understand the nature of this problem don’t listen to you.
1. There are limits to shelter days, people can run out of that service or try to save
2. Is it normal for the police to spend their time cleaning the parks? I guess now I know why there aren’t extra police resources for the Meadowood neighborhood.
Dear Employed Downtown, First, the women’s shelter holds a lottery every night to see who gets one of the 30 beds…the rest sleep outside. There is no conduct or substance abuse issue involved- its a planning, budget and space issue. At risk youth are camping all over the city in the woods or wherever they can because they can only get 2 weeks of emergency shelter and being outside is safer for them than being at home or in the men’s shelter- again a huge, gaping service hole that has nothing to do with the person’s behavior. I can go on…. Second, we have video footage of the people digging through the garbage truck to see if any of their possesions were salvagable amidst the slime and chicken bones and there is no evidence of liquor bottles or broken glass anywhere-or garbage bags filled with personal items- that is a mischarictarization of what was thrown out. They left them in the open because when they hide them they get stolen and when they take them into places with them they get either kicked out or treated differently and they can’t take them to work. Also, those things were used the night before because they all had slept on the street and used the sleeping bags and blankets that were in there. I just want to point out that you do not truely understand the nature of this problem, and your view of it from the outside is askew.
That and the fact that you voted against more police.