An Open Letter To The Homeless of the World
By: Sage Lewis
Tags: Homeless, Homelessness

My name is Sage.

For the last 3 years I have dedicated my life to defending the rights of the homeless.

We are most well known for a tent village we created in Akron Ohio.

We certainly weren’t the first tent village. But we very well might have been the most well documented.

We were covered in The New York Times.

We have a documentary in the The Greater Cleveland Urban Film Festival.

We wrote a book on some of the people in our village.

And we were extensively covered in every major magazine, newspaper, tv station and radio station in Northeast Ohio.

I believe the interest in our village wasn’t so much that we were a bunch of tents sheltering homeless people.

I believe the interest in the project was that our village was on a secluded piece of private land that I owned and was a community that was self-governed by homeless people.

These were people who had lost everything but had the audacity to make a place of their own on private land with the resources they could afford with the help of private citizens.

We officially opened on January 7, 2017 when a trail was put through a years-long standing camp. Those people were forced off that land. That’s when people first began coming to the land and building I owned.

After 2 years of incredibly hard work and a coming together of people in ways that maybe were never accomplished before, we then were officially closed by the city on January 5, 2019. 2 years later, almost to the day. In the dead of winter. Every city organization voted for our closure: Zoning, Planning, the Continuum of Care, City Council. The mayor himself wrote his second op-ed he ever wrote on how terrible our facility was.

Today we are focusing on our day center which has free laundry, showers, computers, wifi, clothing and food. We are now creating makerspaces. We are screen printing t-shirts. And we have a homeless-run consignment store. More makerspaces are on the way.

As far as sheltering people: We now are doing what most people are doing. We’re hiding in abandoned houses and buildings. We’re putting tents in the woods. And, of course, we are being kicked off of these properties. Over and over and over again.

We are also suing the city over our right to be able to shelter people that have nowhere else to go.

I spend every day working with the people who have fallen through the cracks of a broken system.

You have been lead to believe that your homelessness is the cause of your failures. That you have made poor choices and therefore are suffering the consequences of your actions.

You know better than anyone that that’s not the full story.

You are the product of a system that has baked in complete and total hopelessness. You have no path forward other than subsidized housing and shelters that come with endless rules and requirements and regulations. One wrong step on your part and they will throw you back out on the street and convince you it was your fault for yet again being a complete failure.

They have created an inverted prison system where you are supposed to beg to get in and be ashamed if you are thrown out.

They have stripped you of your dignity and your humanity. They run you like cattle through a series of endless stanchions, walls, barriers and mazes.

I tell you this to let you know that I stand with you. I believe it is not you that have failed society. But it is society that has failed you. Because you don’t vote you don’t matter. It’s easy for them to throw you a rotten piece of meat and claim that they have done all they could to help you.

I also tell you this to set the table for what I’m about to tell you next.

YOU NEED TO GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER.

You have drunk the Cool-Aid. You live in squalor because they have convinced you that you are worse than animals. You let them fuck with you because you believe your addictions are solely your fault and not the product of a system where there is no possible way you can afford to live without sucking off their tit.

Right now the Yellow Vest Protesters are throwing rocks and burning down buildings on the streets of Paris because of rising fuel prices and the high cost of living.

Yet you fight among yourselves, you steal from other homeless people and you inject yourselves with dirty drugs and needles while the government sits back and ignores you as you starve to death and freeze to death on their streets.

They are playing you and you are willing participants.

You are not animals. You are human-fucking-beings. It is time you start acting like it.

No one will treat you with dignity and respect if you don’t treat yourself with dignity and respect first.

Your camps are your camps. Until the police force you off that land it is yours. Take control of it.

Don’t let even a single cigarette butt hit the ground. If your neighbor throws a cigarette butt on the ground make that person clean up ALL the cigarette butts. Don’t let them back in the camp until they do.

Ask supporters for trash bags. Put every single wrapper and scrap in a trash bag. Ask a supporter to take your trash home and throw it away for you.

Sweep your camp. Daily.

If you are living on a sidewalk scrub it down.

Ask supporters for cleaning supplies like mops, brooms, scrub brushes and bleach. Lots of bleach.

Never EVER pee or defecate on the street. Throw anyone out of your camp that does so.

Ask a supporter to pay for a port a potty for your camp.

Arrange for your health department to give you Hepatitis A shots at your camp. It’s spreading like wildfire.

Ask your health department for hand washing stations. Ours gave us 2.

Never EVER let a single needle be seen on the street. Anyone who is caught not putting a needle in a sharps container needs to be thrown out.

Require that you have the right for tent searches. But a tent search always must include the owner of the tent. Be clear about what you are looking for. Be highly professional and respectful during these searches. Tent searches are usually for recovering stolen property and looking for items that are not allowed at your camp.

Keep your tents lined up and tidy.

Do not let extra junk pile up around tents.

Form a leadership council for your camp. Let the community members of the camp vote on the leaders.

Create a democracy. Let good standing members of your camp vote on changes.

Hold at least one mandatory meeting every week. All camp members must attend these meetings unless they are at work or working on self-care.

Create a written system of camp members. Keep a file on each member. Make being at your camp a privilege. Require people to work on things like addiction treatment and mental health treatment.

Make violence and stealing instant removable offenses. Kick anyone out of your camp that hurts another camp member or steals anyone else’s things.

If you have to kick someone out of your camp help them set up another camp better suited for people with their needs.

Stop yelling at each other. If a person is caught yelling around supporters and the general public throw them out.

Do not panhandle at your camp. People shouldn’t dread having to walk by your camp.

Be kind and courteous to other citizens of your community.

Keep as clean as you possibly can.

Ask supporters for hand sanitizer. Make everyone use it before eating a group meal.

Make your own rules as you see fit.

But don’t make it a prison. Only have as many rules as absolutely necessary.

Create a security detail. But don’t let your camp become a police state. Remove security members that become too dictatorial and begin overstepping their bounds.

Camp members should always have the right to vote on changing rules.

Be kind to the police. Try to make them your supporters. If they are your enemy it will be much harder to work.

Enacting these rules initially is going to be hard. You will need a strong leadership team to make these changes. Call the police and tell them what you are doing. Ask them to help you remove people that aren’t following your rules. They may or may not help you. But it will make it difficult for the offenders.

Be very black and white about the rules at first. Show camp members that you are serious about the rules. Things will get tightened up quickly. You may have to throw out most of your camp at first. But new members will want to come to your camp because it is safe and organized. You will become the place people want to live.

Things will constantly swing from good to bad and bad to good. Get strict on the rules as things start falling apart. Be more lax on the rules when things are going well. Never allow stealing and violence.

You have a right to not accept the limited, prison-like shelters and houses the government is forcing on you. You have the right to live the way in which your means can afford.

But if you act like mad, raging animals you will never be given any kind of validity by the larger society.

Once you start acting with dignity and respect you will gain more support by your local community. You then can start working together to begin enacting the changes you want to see in your city.

Start going to city council meetings. Meet your city council members. Register to vote. Vote!

Begin thinking about your demands. Here are the demands we have created for the homeless of our city: http://houselessmovement.org/akron/

You must remember that you are in the position you are in because you can’t afford rent and the available jobs don’t come close to covering living expenses.

You must remember that you can’t get a job because the system has made it so people like you are blackballed and forever barred from living a life of peace and quiet. Even though you paid your dues you are permanently marked as a felon or a sex offender or an arsonist or a meth manufacturer. The system will never let you back in. You must make your own way. Become an entrepreneur. It is the only job that has no background requirements and has no limit to how much money you can make.

It is the system that is a failure. You are not a failure.

You must remember who you. You must remember that you are a hard working, good person.

Stop crawling on the ground like an insect and STAND UP LIKE A HUMAN BEING.

You can join our community here if you’d like:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/houselessmovement/