UPTOWN — Activists for the homeless hit the streets last weekend, staking out spots and setting up camp just west of Lake Shore Drive in Uptown for an event they dubbed "Tent City," which aimed to bring to light the issues the neighborhood's displaced residents deal with when the rest of the area goes inside for the night.
Those issues include the city using everything at its disposal to remove the homeless from their resting spots, according to one man who's been homeless for about five years.
“It’s the police and the Park District working together,” the man told WBBM. “They come through here with cruisers, with dump trucks, garbage trucks, loud speakers, spotlights. They wait until everybody’s asleep at two or three in the morning.”
From 11 a.m. Saturday to 11 a.m. Sunday, activists brought tents, sleeping bags and shopping carts and gathered just west of the Lake Shore Drive viaduct on Montrose Avenue for a sleepover protest showing "solidarity with the homeless."
During the protest, they vocalized opposition of what they consider "false justifications" to remove homeless from the viaducts and parks, along with an agenda "of making Uptown a less diverse, less affordable and less inclusive place to live," the group said in their news release.
"For many weeks, homeless tent encampments ... have been cleared out and harassed by the city. Many homeless individuals find themselves routinely woken up abruptly in the middle of the night, with flashlights in their faces, surrounded by law enforcement officers and are forcibly told to vacate from the public area," said Ryne Poelker, one of the protest's organizers. "Other individuals who feed and clothe the homeless have even faced routine systematic harassment, intimidation and threats of arrests perpetuated by law enforcement officials."
Around 8:30 p.m. Saturday, about 50 of the protesters were able to see what Uptown's homeless experience every night in a confrontation between activist Andy Thayer and officers. The clash was caught on camera and posted to Facebook shortly after.
Confrontation with the cops at Wilson & LSD, round 1 to the protesters.
Posted by Andy Thayer on Saturday, August 29, 2015
Thayer, an Uptown resident of 30 years, said the officers attempted to end the protest, by telling them they were no longer allowed to be on Park District property.
"It really had a chilling effect on the protest," said Thayer, a member of the Gay Liberation Network who has been vocal on free speech issues. "But we came prepared knowing the law."
The video shows an officer telling protesters they would be arrested for being in the park after hours and Thayer explaining the protest was not taking place on park district property.
"This is a public right-of-way. This is not parks department property," Thayer said to the officer in the video. "I'm sure you know that in the State of Illinois every public road way has got a public right-of-way, typically defined as the edge of the sidewalk to the street, so we're going to be exercising our first amendment right to peacefully protest, allow people to go by here, but we're not going to be on park's department property."
While the event was about highlighting gentrification and homeless issues, it was also "about re-establishing the right to protest in this town," Thayer said.
Police did not return calls seeking comment.
Carol Boyd, founder of Humble Hearts Organization, cooks about 50-75 meals for the homeless and drops the food off daily. Uptown has been on her Monday-Wednesday-Friday route for about five years and she has been hearing an increase in complaints ever since officers began clearing the homeless from the viaducts for concerts at the beach, she said.
"It went from hurting me to angering me. I'm tired of it. And I needed to stand up for my friends who were being bullied," Boyd said.
Boyd's anger inspired the protest, but her displaced friends weren't confident it would have any effect, she said.
"They didn't think anything was going to come of this," she said. "I didn't know what the outcome was going to be. This was my first protest so I was a little scared, a little nervous and a little excited all at once. I didn't know if CPD was going to arrest me because I wasn't going to leave my protest. I came out here to fight and I wasn't leaving."
Watch a full video recap of the weekend here:
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