What I noticed first was the peacefulness.
It was that hot time of the day on Sunday, pre-dusk, when I stopped to check on the C3PO camp villages on Southeast Water Avenue. Viral videos had surfaced spreading lies alleging that these camps are “antifa breeding grounds,” saying, “This is where they house the rioters.” The truth is that these camps were planned in March and launched in April — well before protests around George Floyd’s killing began in late May — to provide a place for unhoused people to shelter-in-place during the COVID-19 pandemic.
It was actually two viral videos that caused my alarm. The first, as of press time, garnered more than 280,000 views on YouTube. Then another, into which a right-wing vlogger had edited conspiracies, grabbed 610,000 more views.
On Friday, JOIN – a housing services provider under contract with the city of Portland and Multnomah County’s Joint Office of Homeless Services to staff the camps – released a statement with the Joint Office.
“Recently, video, social media posts and opinion articles have mischaracterized our three COVID-19 emergency outdoor shelters. These shelters opened in April, after weeks of urgent planning prompted by the pandemic. They offered badly needed places to stay, and food and hygiene options, for scores of neighbors who didn’t have a place to call home at a time when our community was under a strict stay-at-home order.”
There were people milling on each corner outside the camp when I arrived, keeping watch, should anyone make good on the threats they launched in the comment streams of the video posts. So far, fortunately, no one had, although multiple people showed up, filming the camps.
I had just planned to walk the perimeter, but a friend who lives in the camp heard my voice and invited me in.
I walked past the privacy screen that runs the length of the chain-link fence, evoking water and sky; artist Dana Louis titled it “Ripple Effect.” Large white peace symbols were affixed to the chain link. And inside the fence, wind gusted over the parking lot, jostling blue-tarped tents and canopies, corners pinned down with sandbags.
We had a beautiful visit among plants my friend cared for — a pink hibiscus plant, a hanging plant with red geraniums and what looked like a banana tree. There was creativity and life everywhere — something I have noticed in other camp villages, too. It’s the combination of autonomy and community that works so well for some people. A little space of one’s own combined with responsibility and connection to others.
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But today there was fear. People who survived the streets finally found some security, some stability, in these camps. They pitched in with collective chores and served on a weekly council. Now, though, they were the focus of the sharp gaze of malice.
As I think of some of the people I know at the camps, it seems particularly cruel that they suffer this new threat. One woman suffered much violence sleeping on the bare ground of the waterfront when I first met her in February. The past five months, she’s lived in these camps. She brought wild flowers wrapped in butcher paper into Street Roots to celebrate the safety she found in a C3PO camp.
I know a man who remarkably manages his mental illness as best he can with medication while on the streets. But he tells me, he has so much more mental calm now that he has a steady place to return, day after day without fear of attack.
Without fear of attack.
That is why this focus on these camps near the Hawthorne Bridge is particularly insidious. These videos present an extreme case, but demonization of unhoused people consistently gets in the way of the important work of surviving.
It is important to counter the reckless lies launched in the videos with facts and stories. Street Roots was part of the grassroots coalition that began planning these camps in March, early in the pandemic when services rapidly receded — no libraries or day spaces and few services were available. This was a public health response: People needed safe places to shelter in place, hygiene support such as sinks and toilets, the ability to physically distance and safety from violence.
The name C3PO is an acronym for Creating Conscious Communities with People Outside, but it is also playful, extending the Star Wars theme of the safe-sleep space called R2DToo, an acronym for Right 2 Dream Too.
In the two Southeast Water Avenue camps targeted in the video, priority is given to people who are trans, gender non-conforming and queer, as well as priority for folks who are Black, Indigenous and other people of color — populations disproportionately impacted by homelessness and underserved in responses.
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The camps have been run as a village model. People who live there, help run them and govern them in weekly councils. Some unhoused people staff them, earning badly needed wages from JOIN. And many supporters pitch in, running weekly budget meetings, ferrying over supplies, and more.
This is what the C3PO camp villages are. If you hear these conspiracy theories, contest them. Again and again, this is what we must do: Counter the lies with facts, and counter dehumanization with stories.