Content warning: this article includes mentions of addition and mental health struggles.
Back in January, I wrote a bit about the unhoused friends I made while handing out tents and sleeping bags before a big storm that was coming to my state.
Three weeks ago, I got a text message from one of them that cops had raided their camp and taken everything they didn’t have on their backs.
They lost their tents, sleeping bags, clothes, food, and more… two days before another big storm was set to hit our state!
Behavior like this—by the people who are supposed to “serve and protect” the public—gets people killed.
But this isn’t an article about the immediate effects of those actions. I was able to replace their tents and sleeping bags that day. It doesn’t replace everything they lost, but at least they had shelter and warmth.
But the trickle-down effects of this over-policing are so much worse.
When I was handing out sleeping bags back in January, one of my friends, Mike, asked me if I had any gloves. I didn’t, but I put together a bunch of pairs we don’t wear any more, drove back down there the next week, and handed them out to folks.
Mike gave me a big hug and told me…
You give me hope.
But a week after cops raided his camp, I got another text: everyone was gone. The guy I was texting with, Ron, was the only one left.
Mike relapsed hard.
He and Ron were inseparable, and it was really clear that having each other made surviving on the street a lot easier. But now he was on a bender, and Ron was alone.
Their other friend, Manny, got arrested for stealing copper.
I’m not saying they’re blameless, but I am saying they were pushed.
Unhoused folks live on the edge of survival every day.
You don’t know where your next meal will come from. You have little respite from the cold and elements. You have to walk everywhere.
You don’t have regular access to a bathroom or shower or hygiene products or clean clothes. Anything you don’t carry with you can be stolen, but you can only carry so much.
When you have to fight for every single fucking scrap of humanity you have, and then cops come along and steal it all to just… what? Trash it?
I can’t imagine how much that breaks a person.
So no, Mike shouldn’t have started using again. Manny shouldn’t stolen copper to scrap for cash.
But when you have nothing, and then in a blink you have even less? I can understand why it happened, and I don’t think they’re entirely to blame.
This is the trickle-down effect of systems that seek to punish the poor through violence rather than lift them up.