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Last week I was privileged to return to my roots as a homeless organizer in Boston, Massachusetts to deliver what has become the annual Mitch Snyder Lecture at First Church Cambridge, a small shelter run by an activist named Jim Stewart. Jim was once a northeast area lieutenant for Snyder’s Community for Creative Nonviolence (CCNV), and their direct action-based grassroots organizing set a tone for homeless organizing across the nation.
Coordinated actions like the 1988 “Take off the Boards” abandoned housing takeovers, and the 300,000 strong Housing Now! March of 1989 set a militant tone for activism that was about targeting the federal government for its abandonment of the poor and their full-scale retreat from the housing arena. Snyder linked homelessness to broad issues of inequality, poverty, and military spending, and understood that homelessness was the visible tip of a much larger set of issues that affect us all.
My speech, which you can read at my personal blog, at www.apesmaslament.blogspot.com, draws those connections, and calls for a return to cross-class activism that links the self-interest of the increasingly squeezed middle class with those who are the most vulnerable to homelessness and worse.
The cherished illusion that somehow homelessness can be ended without addressing the growing poverty and inequality that places us all at risk needs to be confronted and abandoned. The new Real Change Organizing Project is working to create a new, more authentic approach to homelessness and poverty that builds leadership and activism for the long haul.
For information about how to get involved, please contact Rachael Myers at (206) 441-3247, x201, or email:
organizer@realchangenews.org. |
