From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: NEWS:Anger at Chicago Activist's Death
Date: 18 Dec 92 20:46:55 GMT
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>

Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit


ANGER OVER CHICAGO ACTIVIST'S SHOOTING DEATH

By L. Paulsen
Chicago

Friends of African American housing activist Dwayne Snyder
gathered in Daley Plaza here Dec. 12 to remember his life and
demand an inquiry into his death.

Snyder, 34, died the morning of Nov. 25. Chicago police found him
unconscious on a downtown sidewalk and left him there for at
least two hours before an ambulance arrived to take him to Cook
County Hospital. The emergency-room team there tried for an hour
to save his life.

Snyder, who had been homeless until late 1990, carried an
identification card from an emergency shelter. His roommate
Calvin Gatewood declared, "They thought he was homeless, and the
only thing on the minds of the police and paramedics was `just
another bum'."

For the last three years of his life, Snyder worked tirelessly to
fight homelessness in Chicago. He was active with the group
Homeless on the Move for Equality, and later he and Gatewood
co-founded the People's Campaign for Jobs, Housing and Food.

Gatewood has written that Snyder "helped organize rallies and
demonstrations by the homeless for housing and assistance. When
the owners of Presidential Towers [a high-rise apartment complex
built with HUD money] refused to provide units for poor and
homeless families, Dwayne made sure that buses were made
available to bring shelter residents to the protest
demonstrations.

In October 1991, a group called "the Mad Housers" began building
comfortable prefabricated huts for the homeless, heedless of
legal technicalities like permits and property lines. When the
city threatened to tear the huts down, Snyder--who was then
living in one--helped organize resistance.

He, Gatewood and Peter Byrd negotiated a settlement that enabled
the hut dwellers to move into vacant public housing units. Nearly
200 formerly homeless people have been housed under this
agreement.

The People's Campaign is made up of former hut residents
struggling to rehabilitate their current housing units--which by
all accounts were at first considerably worse to live in than
huts. "Even after leaving the huts and getting a full-time job,"
Gatewood wrote, "Dwayne would almost daily go to Grand Park and
Lower Wacker Drive to visit people still on the streets. Often he
would bring them food and other necessities."

On the night of his death Snyder met with friends to organize a
Thanksgiving dinner for the homeless.

The details of his death are still unclear. Police, paramedics
and the medical examiner have apparently all been instructed not
to talk with anyone or even release Snyder's belongings to his
family.

Cops admit they found Snyder about 5 a.m. Marks on his face
suggest he was assaulted at some point. But his friends wonder
how he could have lain unnoticed on the street for long, since it
is heavily patrolled and the restaurant where Snyder ate that
night closes at 2 a.m.

Snyder's friends also want a report on the paramedics who
erroneously reported Snyder dead on the scene. "Hypothermia--the
effect of cold--shuts down all your systems," Gatewood told the
crowd Dec. 12. "You will not get a pulse. That's why they have to
be transported immediately to an emergency room."

The People's Campaign has written Mayor Daley demanding an
independent inquiry into Snyder's death. So far there has been no
response. If there is none by Dec. 14, the campaign will "meet
with Dwayne's family and discuss what to do--and then they [the
police] will wish they never heard of us."

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; email: ww%nyxfer@igc.apc.org; "workers"
on PeaceNet; on Internet: "workers@mcimail.com".)


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