2002: CIVIL RIGHTS FREEDOM SUMMER and Participatory Action Research Project

Picture the Homeless members, staff and volunteers interviewed 503 homeless New Yorkers over the summer of 2002 throughout the borough of Manhattan to document police harassment and to ask homeless folks “what they wanted.” Survey questions were developed by the civil rights committee members, trainings were held on survey techniques, and there were weekly collective analysis of surveys.

Charley Heck: I was arrested one time, and I went before the judge, and IrefusedtoaccepttheACD. So back and forth, between talking with the attorney and going before the judge and refusing the judge’s offer and going back and talking to the attorney again… I went back and forth in front of the judge about three or four times until the judge finally says, “Take him to the psychiatric ward in Bellevue Hospital.”

After two weeks in Bellevue Hospital, the doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with me, so they had to release me. That was another incident. So now, I talked about two incidents with the police, but there must be several dozens of times that I had altercations with the police.

Lynn Lewis: After we did our own survey project, echoing Paul Boden, we really increased our membership. That's when Bruce [Little] and all them started coming to the meetings. We really would have like twenty, twenty-five people in the membership meetings and it would be chaotic, you know? We'd have people in the meetings who didn’t even know really what the mission was, and it was a way, hopefully, for them togetit . But there was no guarantee. Sometimes people would be exhausted. Sometimes, people would be kind of falling asleep.