 So just I want to say we are all together to get back this place and I want to make a community here a nice community with the nice people with an attrition or with an attrition anymore okay and without the criminal activity no criminal activity to be a nice and secure place here for people like me and people are courageous so we are in this point here because few months ago I said to these people here I said look we must to keep this place clean we must to keep this place without the criminal activity we must to keep this place to keep each other to respect each other but I want to tell you honest something okay these people here they can be criminal they can be drug addict they can be alcoholic they can be anything but they never touch it my stuff never I have no evidence these people they steal if they do into the store or somewhere just for food they do this just to survivor to simple survivor because the city the city is doing nothing to help these people to find out like a house you know what I mean like a affordable house but I want to be clear I want to be clear it's okay I want to be clear this place which I love this is my house the 19 of this month when they will show up here wherever cops bulldogs are everything I will stay here to protect my place but if they ever say the cops say okay so you know you must to leave if you know we are going to enforce you okay I respect the rules I will leave but I will be back here with the legal issue who touch my place I will be here because I know my rights I am a human being like all these people here and we are we not deserve to be in the middle of nowhere just because you decide you decide to give us five days time to live five days they are nothing totally nothing at least they give us opportunity to 30 days they give it to me 45 days and thing like that but my goal is to stay here and to build a nice community if if I can if I can if these people here agree with me with they agree with me and they follow me if you know I say okay so you know you must to go I will live if the cop start to show up again here and to repeat the similar situation the similar trash the similar shit again I will say okay I say honest to people I have no criminal record I have my freedom my full freedom because actually when you get the criminal record you have enough your full freedom you agree with me no way in my countries like that you have enough full freedom as I saw these people here tonight they are going to make a protest they are going to make a protest for me it's a kind with a disagree because we were supposed to meet each other here the 19 in the morning to make a protest here when they will come without violence weapon violence weapon you agree with me and fire screaming yelling I am a gangster totally against that but I want to make it clear something okay I want to make it clear something okay so I want to make it clear if an example they arrest some people or two peoples they they are not supposed to make it something in general you know what I mean to say everybody's criminals okay even me even me if they say that but if they say that to challenge them I show them I have a criminal record I am an ace people I try to do something better for this place I have a determination to start to buy tomorrow morning if they give me a chance I have a determination to start tomorrow morning if they give me a chance no check no money just free because I wish to help people to keep the displays here and to let the people in freedom but always to follow the rules to be respectful with to the law you understand what I mean with to the law everything I am an advocate for this place to stay open however I do believe it needs to be cleaned up a little with the garbage with the drug activity with the stealing I've been the victim of the stealing I have had money most importantly but my home got destroyed I'm stuck in that tiny little tent crawling around on the ground with barely any belongings because my money my items that I came with were stolen and I don't think people should do that and I think there should be a noise curfew whatever that's called I my brain's foggy on that but from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. no noisy motors yet to be quiet turn your lights down just don't be disruptive to people trying to sleep between 10 p.m. and 6 a.m. because those are quiet hours that's it quiet hours and I am an advocate for this place to stay open because unfortunately I ended up here because of the housing shortage and I need to be here but I need to be here with better conditions I can't be in that tiny tent crawling out I have broken ribs I have pain in my back that thing's killing me sleeping on the ground it's agony I need a better structure gardening shed with a bed in it a trailer with a bed in it like not having to go to you know plumbing water not having the electricity not having to go outside in the middle of the night because I have to go to the bathroom stuff like that I think that that could improve in that aspect especially with winter coming no one wants to go outside in their winter boots at 12 a.m. just to go to the bathroom to walk through that that coldness and so that could improve for the winter getting people like into better buildings and but right now right now I I I do not agree with that structure I'm staying in now it is too small I'm crawling around the filthy dirty ground it's it's not right for my disability and the noise and everything that in the drug activity and people stealing from me is wreaking havoc with my mental health and I'm just asking for a better building or a trailer or something like a gardening shed or just something with a bed in it and and more of the things I need for daily activities comfortably done indoors and I really don't have a problem with this place staying open as long as everybody cleans up their act and you know there isn't so much drug activity and and stealing and and and just just we live as a community and respect each other it's kind of where we all have gathered um started a life um or tried to at least it's uh there's good and bad but we all seem to get along for the most part and make the best of what we have um it's really too bad it's coming to an end or potentially coming to an end honestly this place has been here forever and what I think it's all the news castings that have been on it like since the first time this was in the news we started seeing an increase in cars driving by taking pictures and staring at us and throwing rocks at us and just all kinds of stuff um has happened since it really came to light that this was here to the general public before then there weren't a whole lot of problems I mean I'm sure the bad ones that you know steal stuff had police interactions here but other than that I mean it wasn't really that well known about um and then all the news media or the attention from the news gathered everybody and it's just been downhill from there and I mean they say some guy was showing a gun that's yeah he had a BB gun that looks like an AR-15 but he didn't point it at anyone he didn't he wasn't trying to scare people he it's just it's ridiculous like I was out there for the whole thing and I'll be testifying for him along with all of the other camp parts of the camp that witnessed that um it's uh it's too bad we could definitely do a lot to make it a little more appealing I guess you could say uh or less of an eyesore I battle with that every day trying to keep my area clean and some days you get it some days you don't as far as the criminal part I mean wherever you go there's criminals there's I mean you go to an apartment complex there's going to be criminals there that you know I don't know we're all just humans ideally if if I had it my way um it would be just tell us what we need to do to fit in I guess you I'm sure cleanliness is part of it um how can we make this work it's there was no resolution offered it was just hey you have five days to get out I mean and she stated the mayor had stated that this place has only been here since April this place has been here over a decade I hear of people coming and going from here 10 years 15 years ago granted now it's more populated there's a way it could work and I I definitely agree with a lot of the mayor's points but the way it's being handled isn't isn't fair to us I mean I have I have a lot of stuff I I'm a business owner and I I have a lot of stuff and nowhere to bring it um yeah it's kind of abrupt and I mean on top of that five days two two or three of those days have been complete rain like what what do we do there are the people without a vehicle um how are they supposed to use those days in a way that works for them I mean it's not doesn't seem very fair I mean and granted we don't rent the place but general renters writes you at least get what 30 or 90 days or something notice I mean and I'm not saying that's how it should be because we don't rent here we just kind of stay here but there's got to be some kind of happy medium if we do have to leave that makes it so we're not losing everything so everything we've worked on isn't for nothing I have a camper down here um and that's I've had to rebuild it from the inside while living in it it's still not done and now to have to leave takes my focus away from winterizing it I mean I'm I'm screwed to say the least I don't even have good tires on it that'll hold that'll hold air I mean and it's not a matter of finding the tires because I can get tires it's a matter of the time to put them on when I'm trying to take care of all of this seriously to a lot of people has become a sanctuary more than just a homeless encampment I've never had a city official or anyone from the city other than law enforcement come talk to me and it's always been to ask who did what where is this who stole that it's never been to tell me their their problem with us like I understand yes it's trashed right now it's not everybody though and I I have been persuading people to help clean up it's just with everything going on yeah a lot of people have gotten to a depressed stage because this is this is their home this is their last resort and now the city is taking away their home I can't say that all people here don't have another place to go but I know a good sum of a lot of people here don't there's elderly here who I've watched last year nearly break a hip trying to get up out of her tent because she doesn't have a retirement fund she doesn't have family anymore because so on and so forth and I've seen a lot of good people here get crushed by I don't even know how to say it the slander that we get just for being homeless Sears Lane is willing to cooperate and I've talked to everybody including some who may not agree but to an extent they do they don't want to lose this place they've built lives here they've built again their homes here there people here are willing to cooperate as long as we're able to be heard and understood not a lot of us had a choice to be here recently here there was a drug raid and one person out of that raid was arrested criminal activity I can't speak for everybody because I know there are some here who are completely guilty I'm not going to name names it's not everybody there are people here who are just trying to live everyday lives like the next person Sears Lane will work together I know they will because we've grown to know each other we're each other's neighbors we are right next to each other all up in each other's business all the time no matter what we can hear a whisper 30 feet away sometimes even with the generators again I can't say everybody will cooperate due to their own reason but I know most people here there's only probably two people here that won't cooperate but everybody does want this place to stay because a lot of us really don't have anywhere else to go there's really no reason to slander us there's no reason to put us down we are not pigs we are not all criminals we just unfortunate things happen to us and that happens to everybody some more than others some less than others some react in different ways this is just where we ended up and I'm pretty happy to be here because I had I was never able to really call a place home and this is the first place I've actually wanted to stay and be a part of I moved into Sears Lane Camp six years ago spent most of that year living in the camp I've been involved with the camp ever since since I was on the steering committee of the Chittenden County Homeless Alliance I got very involved and integrated into the homeless services community and since I concluded my term with the alliance I have been interested in and active in defending the rights of people to have a home even when they don't pay rent and when they don't have a mortgage it's pretty plain that there are a lot of personalities and a lot of different ways of being in the world here there's a fair portion of people who are rent protesters so I don't want to pay money to a landlord to let them keep all the money and I'm I'm left broke um there's uh any number of folks here who just want to do their thing uh there are people here who are without any other place to go that they are aware of I mean you gotta you hunt around and you hunt around and you you don't see any place that seems viable and then you end up here I'm not going to say the city had to do this eviction thing to get to where the negotiation could open I don't think that's true but the city still has an opportunity to work with people here to build a community that is safe clean and internally regulated and it just has to decide that it's going to have a homeless camp and that it needs to create a framework for that community to thrive I mean as of up to this point in this moment in time it has acted as it under the terms of its understanding it this is trespassing and there is no way to be legal and that's wrong when when people need a place to live and they find find the unoccupied land and the land belongs to the city in the first place the job of the city the job of any community is to find a way for people to have a place to live and if this is where we find to live then we need to also figure out how to make it work so one of the complaints that the city has of course is that the housing is unsafe personally think that that's more of a rhetorical kind of objection a way of saying oh the housing is so unsafe it's not okay it's illegal well well if that's the problem help people build houses tiny houses um make small structures that can be insulated do it find the you you got all the arpa money right you could do it just do it build build good housing help the people to build the housing the people here who are perfectly capable of building housing yeah yeah just work it out make it happen it's a community and the people here are willing to do the work that's what people want an opportunity to take care of themselves to do the work to build their own home and not pay what money they have so somebody else could put it in their bank account sears lane has existed then probably most of you have been in this town it's been around since before i was born people have been living there this land is for people and the city taking it back abruptly right before winter is inhumane it is an act of violence it is an act of state sanctioned violence against the most member or most vulnerable members of our community and we need to come together and demand its stops it never should have happened and i'm going to try my damnedest to make sure they back out not even give people more time just stop all this fucking nonsense uh yeah so we're gonna have some people speak their minds residents of burlington we got some people from the camp that might want to speak i i can't you know guarantee any of that because they're vulnerable people and they will be targeted by the police for speaking out in their own defense and that's why we have to stand up and fight for people like that's what this shit's about it's coming together and protecting people when the state is trying to literally kill them i'm just here to give a little bit of the like sort of background context of like yeah the background context of like what is actually happening here today and what has happened over the past couple of weeks and why is this so fucked up so let me just get to the right part of my document um okay burlington is evicting our houseless comrades we need your support that's why you're here the city of burlington has given campers at sears lane in the south and five days noticed to leave or face legal consequences this comes directly after the city had put out a request seeking a non-profit to help manage the encampment in a way that would have allowed for some of the structures and people to remain in place instead of following through with that program as imperfect as it was the city conducted a raid on the camp a few days ago now because one person was arrested the entire camp has been threatened with legal action if they don't leave by the 19th at five p.m. we need to show up for our friends join us join the campers join burlington cob watch food not cops all the people who are here listen listen listen it's it's important that we show up for the houses community because on every okay you want the mic what's up what's going on relax can i say can i do my thing can i let keep it at the black person's week okay so um yeah it's just important because the child remember that on every given day we're more closer we're closer to being homeless than we are to being billionaires like let that be known like last summer and a couple of months ago like i was experiencing like houselessness like i was like what the fuck um it could happen to any of us like i'm a 21 year old college student uh and yeah so humble yourself and also come out tomorrow to like you know show up for a show up for your community and be there and i see some city counselors here and i'm glad y'all are here but it's like how can you how can you be a part of administration that literally is classic classes ableist like all these isms continuously like he is a perpetual fucker and i'm over it like he should have been voted out i'm sorry i'm so sorry like we're gonna go there we're gonna go there max tracy i'm so sorry the ugly bitch like that i'm so sorry but anyway um yeah like come out show up for your community because we all we got we are all we got we are each other's business that's all i gotta say thank you i'm steven marshal and i've been part of the series lane camp for about six years i first moved in there uh during about of homelessness um at the invitation of some of the residents there we were camping in the woods and the parking lot was empty and it was a beautiful beautiful place and i really i really have just can't tell you how emotional i get when i think about living there we had a campfire and we had a good time um we had our conflicts and issues too don't get me wrong but anyway so uh i've been an advocate for the uh homeless community in burlington and for the series lane camp for these six years when um at one point we had an eviction the camp was closed there were somebody in the camp who was dealing drugs and uh there were a few incidences with guns and the truth is that the people in the camp wanted it closed because they felt so unsafe with the people who were there so it was all cool the those folks uh ended up in a hotel or uh the folks who were causing the trouble and everybody else got into shelters the people who got into who were causing the trouble ended up in a hotel or an apartment or something and it all worked out the following year i i brought people back you know the neighborhood thought hey it's closed now great well it wasn't closed it was an it was an open space it was available for homeless folks and we were going to use it so thank you yes uh it's really important to me that series lane camp remains available for homeless people to occupy when they need to let me put it to you this way i'm going to jump way ahead in my in the arc of my story just to say this if this camp closes it will not be you we will not be able to use it again and for within memory you know projecting into the future how do you know people will have to have forgotten about this episode before the camp can be occupied again so what is that 10 20 30 40 50 years who knows probably they will develop it before it gets used again and it will be closed as a place for homeless people it is imperative that we keep this camp open so that people can live there thank you Stephen um you've always helped me since i moved in there me and my girlfriend moved in here a couple years ago we didn't have nowhere to go i lived in a tent with her um there was only two people on the property some several people moved across the fence and um you know they did their life we did ours we mine our business they minded ours i came home one day everything that owned was burned and destroyed because we wanted to mine our own business and i recuperated i got a job i bought a pop-up trailer more people moved in across the street that still currently live there they stole my pop-up trailer cut it through the fence and it's still there on that property um i have been wronged by several people there that still currently live there but i can't say names i would never um but my story is very prevalent down there and i still live right across the road now to protect the two businesses across the road um and there is a lot of good people in that camp and i've always been through there every day since that place started since i've been around i now harbour no ill will towards the people that did what they did i've recuperated i've really caught my losses i bought a new trailer you know i went to peach rv i keep investing keep investing and it's not nothing towards anybody i like my lifestyle like that too um it just because i have a bigger rv doesn't mean nothing um i still live off the grid um everything i had destroyed and and i watched all the criminal element all night long i never thought for a million years million years that i would end up there um i was stalked i have extenuating circumstances i've been trying to get on my feet for four years um i have a license in clinical social work and massage therapy and i was essentially chased out of my own home and i don't want to talk too much about that because what i'm more interested in is sort of what other people have experienced and i've done some interviewing um and talked to some folks and believe it or not a lot of the folks that are homeless these days don't even understand what happened um everyone's got their own story about how things went down and um people would be surprised you know there's a lot of judgment that that takes place and people are uninformed they don't realize that people who are homeless do have extenuating circumstances that need to be addressed and a lot of it involves things like mental illness which uh there seems to be a a bit of shame around and um things that need to be dispelled and people need to be advocated for appropriately um so i just want to say yeah and we don't know where we're going to be laying our head in a few days here and we really appreciate all your support and hopefully you will never have to have this experience that's my blessing for you my name is chrysanthemum i am a trans femme and uvm community activist and i think that this clearing of the camp follows in the history of a lot of uvm and burlington's history of settler violence and colonialism um because we are sitting here today on stolen avanaki land and even more broadly i think that us here as uvm students and i see a lot of uvm students here today uh we have a particular responsibility in this community to stand up for the people who are more vulnerable because not only is uvm a predominantly white and rich institution but the impact that it's having on the housing crisis in this city is insane you look at the condors and apartments on for rent on campus at the redstone apartments they are averaging around one thousand one hundred to one thousand and two hundred dollars a month for a single bedroom and rent how are people supposed to afford that and what impact is that having on our community as a whole and so do uvm students i just want to say that we have a responsibility to step up in the next couple of days i expect each and every one of you to go into your classes into your dorms into your group chats into your floor chats and tell everybody about what's going on and tell everybody about how they can participate in the solution because students in this city we heard all of the power to alter change we are the economic base of this city a uvm is the largest economic institution in this region and we just need to step up we really do we really need to step up big time and so i hope that i see all of you guys there at city council tomorrow evening i hope that all of you are reaching out to your friends about coming out on tuesday and we just have to be prepared to stand up for the vulnerable people in our community