Denver Homeless Vigil Excerpts - with commentary

December 20, 2011

Excerpts and commentary from Denver's Homeless Persons' Memorial Vigil (sponsored by Colorado Coalition for the Homeless). The commentary is about homeless people, Occupy Denver, and Mayor Hancock's speech.

Technical difficulties (followed by background info about the night): in the dark, focus wasn't working well and image stabilisation wasn't working at all. It was difficult to find a good spot to film from (and I often needed to dodge heads). It's also difficult to hold a burning candle while filming, hot wax got on my hand and I kept needing to shift to avoid more of the same. My right arm was very shaky (I have bursitis & tendonitis in my shoulder, and I was sick). While editing I brightened the image as much as I could without completely washing it out.

There has been a lot of talk about "eradicating homelessness" in Denver of late. Our City Council moved to make sleeping on the 16th St Mall illegal. It is even considered unsightly for homeless people to converge in the triangle across from the Denver Rescue Mission. The sightly pondered solution? Paving and fencing off the triangle. This is but of small sampling of the efforts to "eradicate homelessness".

Not long before this night, Occupy Denver received another warning that encumbrances would be removed. What was "encumbering" the area at the time? Homeless people sleeping under tarps, on the sidewalk. This was not met with happy reactions. Repurposed wooden structures, some holiday-themed, were built in response. This lasted for a few days.

One night before this video was made, Occupy Denver and the many homeless people who live alongside them were evicted. Everything was removed. There is a picture of a homeless schizophrenic woman, who never does anything worse than tell people God is angry (in this case, she made the mistake of telling the police), being hit with a bally club. That's not the extent of it, but it's bad enough.

While I was giving out hot coffee a few hours before the vigil, I was very upset to see homeless people who had so recently begun to look happier and more energised sitting on park benches looking far worse than depressed. It's an image I haven't been able to forget.

Some were also upset, understandably, and I heard impromptu attempts at a plan - a response to outrage over the hypocrisy of Mayor Hancock speaking at the homeless vigil so shortly after this happened.

I decided I had better go get my camcorder, so I was a little late to the vigil. There was a large crowd, and I couldn't spot familiar faces until the crowd dispersed. This video mostly serves as a "sound document" of what happened, because too many accounts have misrepresented it as the homeless vigil being completely disrupted. No, Mayor Hancock's speech was... and for plenty of valid reasons.

What I could hear of the outburst was mostly a chant of "shame".

We've had a dose of what happens when homeless people feel like they are building a home and community (albeit an outside one), and then get it taken away. Forget "rudeness" for a moment, and try to consider how they feel. What they experienced was far worse than "rude".

(And, yes, I do know I have an apostrophe in the wrong spot in the closing credits.)

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• Homeless
• vigil
• homelessness
• Occupy
• Denver
• occupydenver
• mayor
• Hancock
• protest
• Colorado
• politics
• CPAOD

[gamecockseven]

Free speech for some, but not for all? You can spin it however you like, but it was a disgusting display. Perhaps Westboro Baptist Church is hiring.

[madamecp]

@gamecockseven BTW, my comments aren't "spinning". They are an expression of feeling "angry", "depressed", and "frustrated". For all of YOUR claiming free speech, you seem to have a lot of issues with someone expressing their emotions via text.

[madamecp]

@gamecockseven Sure, and I have the right to wish Occupy Denver had taken this on and done something coordinated with it. Don't we all have our complaints.

[gamecockseven]

@madamecp Everyone has the right to speak. Just like Westboro Baptist has the right to protest at funerals and vigils. And I have the right to be disgusted and end my support for Occupy Denver.

[baghwanb]

@gamecockseven It was a situation where the mayor was being called out for his hypocrisy. Obviously many people are upset about his decision (or at least compliance) to evict the previous day and felt the need to point this discrepancy out as he starts to portray himself as a "true friend of the homeless". We can all see the event for ourselves. Everybody eventually said what they wanted to say.

[madamecp]

@gamecockseven Actually, there were even a few signs (quite silent ones) that insinuated Hancock behaved like a murderer. I took pictures of the signs and will post them with my collections of sign pictures. You appear to be making up claims that I haven't made.

[madamecp]

@gamecockseven People were obviously chanting, and there was one bullhorn. But the mayor could equally obviously speak over it & did. The only thing really stopping him was his own hesitation. You can hear him perfectly clearly when he gives his speech. What you seem to be implying is that he has the right to speak, & others don't have the right to speak out against it. The poor politicians, they don't have any outlet for speech compared to small groups of dissenters in a crowd.

[gamecockseven]

@madamecp Right. No one interrupted the mayor. No one continued to yell when John Parvensky returned to the podium. No one had an electronic bull horn or called anyone a murderer. Your version of events diverge from reality. No wonder you're so bothered by the accurate media reports of what happened.

[derube1]

The only disruption seems to be during the mayor's speech. Having a soft spot for Denver I've followed events fairly well lately and can say that IMHO the mayor's hypocrisy received exactly the response it deserved.

[baghwanb]

Yes, it was crass. But if was focused on just one part of the event to point out the hypocrisy as it was occurring. The remainder was treated respectfully by all I personally saw.

[madamecp]

@gamecockseven No one was prevented from speaking. Obviously a sound system can easily drown out a small number of voices in the crowd. If not, politicians would have a difficult time ever speaking much of anywhere.