DIRECTOR’S DESK | ACLU of Oregon provided Know Your Rights training in response to concerns from unhoused people
Street Roots vendors were spaced around the office wearing masks, some jotting notes. They were participating in a Know Your Rights seminar conducted by ACLU of Oregon Interim Legal Director Kelly Simon and Paralegal Krystal Bosveld on May 20.
It was an unusual but necessary Know Your Rights training — conducted on a computer monitor via Zoom conferencing software. We’ve been focused on public health in this pandemic, including the necessity of people who are camping being able to shelter in place. But, we had to shift gears quickly to also deal with an increased police presence in Old Town and what that can mean to the stability and anxiety for people trying to survive.
The Know Your Rights seminar was three days after I received a panicked call from the Street Roots office on a Sunday morning. Some members of the Street Roots Coronavirus Action and Prevention Team were at the office sorting donations. They paused for a break outside, where police officers asked them to present ID. They were rattled.
I went down to the office. As a group of Street Roots vendors processed the experience, there were a lot of emotions. There was a common sense of being at a disadvantage in these encounters –– navigating society too often as an underclass, they felt misunderstood and distrusted.
One vendor said she felt vindicated when the officer ran an identification and no warrant showed up. She grappled with the stigmas of homelessness and the conflation of homelessness and crime, as did many others.
We discussed checking in with the ACLU of Oregon. That’s one of our go-to moves as a newspaper; faced with a challenge, we try to gather and disseminate accurate information. Recounting his encounter with the police, one vendor proudly described how he told the officer, “I work at a newspaper” after he described his knowledge about the sweeps moratorium during the pandemic.
“What’s everyone looking to walk away with that will empower you?” Bosveld asked to launch the Know Your Rights training. People began to recount what happened on May 17 as well as other experiences. They described an awareness that the volume of police had been turned up as people began talking about reopening Old Town.
As Bosveld and Simon discussed people’s rights in police encounters, they also pointed out that state law prohibits profiling based on status, which includes homelessness.
This is what we are keeping our eye on at Street Roots regarding identification checks.
For 20 years, Street Roots has worked on campaigns around the criminalization of homelessness. It’s why we fought for Portland Street Response. It would be ideal to have Portland Street Response up and running now, but it faces delays as city bureaus shifted into crisis mode during the pandemic. The now-complete contract negotiations with the fire union caused further delays.
Otherwise, everything is proceeding as before. City Council voted to carry the pilot budget over to the next year. While the pilot in Lents was previous scheduled to start this spring, it will likely launch later this year.
Clearly we could use Portland Street Response now, but what we have is a police response in a pandemic — when even more is at stake. And much gets muddy. While a city bureau is responsible for many of the camp sweeps, police also work in this capacity.
Each entity uses different terminology. It’s property abatement for the Portland Police Bureau, while it is more often referred to as a clean-up from the city's Homelessness/Urban Camping Impact Reduction Program. But at Street Roots, unhoused people most often describe the experience of having one’s camp property taken by someone in official capacity (as opposed to individual theft) as experiencing a sweep. So that’s how we refer to these actions at Street Roots.
And, when one official entity works within a moratorium and another doesn’t, it’s confusing. It’s muddy. That lack of clarity is dangerous in a pandemic. While the police enact these property abatements when there’s a suspicion of a crime, it’s not clear whether simply possessing a tent qualifies as a crime. And then we’re just going round-and-round. Unhoused people are still vulnerable to sweeps.
That’s why Street Roots vendors are making sure they know their rights. Knowledge is power.
I write this somberly, aware that knowledge of rights is not enough.
It’s not enough for black and Native Americans who lose their lives in the brutality of police violence, like George Floyd did under the crushing knee of a Minnesota police officer.
Knowledge is power, but too often it is not enough within a society cursed by racism, as well as class discrimination.
Director's Desk is written by Kaia Sand, the executive director of Street Roots. You can reach her at kaia@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @mkaiasand
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