From Campaign Meetings to Workshops and Trainings

Andres Perez with PTH Housing campaign, Vacant Property March and sleep-out kick off through City Council Speaker Christine Quinn’s district. August 24, 2010

Andres Perez (August 7, 2019) why a building would sit there dilapidated like that, or sit there boarded up for years, with no one living in there when in the meantime, where I’m growing up, there’s a whole bunch of us living in a two bedroom apartment all cluttered up and that’s how most families were living there in the neighborhood.

When I was young, we really didn’t understand about abandoned buildings and what that was about, but we knew that they were burning down buildings. We always thought that they were burning them down purposely to get the insurance money or they would try to move tenants out so they can get higher rent and stuff.

I didn’t know so much about it until I became a part of Picture the Homeless and as soon as I got to Picture the Homeless, I said, “That’s why!” I said, “No, I’ve got to get in here and do something about this. We’re going to have to get together and count these buildings, and check these lots out, and do what we have to do, and convince the city to do something about it, because this is crazy.”

You’ve got all these buildings that could be uploaded, cleaned out, renovated, and fixed for someone to live in. It bothers me a lot to see people living in these conditions. I’ve seen so much people in really bad conditions, and they ain’t got to live out in the cold climate weather, on dirty streets, and they’ve got buildings there that could be renovated for them to live in. *

Ryan Hickey (May 22, 2019)

Even newer folks who came in when we were talking about vacant property, I mean, there were so many times when people in the housing meeting, a new person in the housing meeting was like, “Oh yeah! Vacant property. I always wonder why they don’t do something about that, because that’s an issue.”

That’s a really important organizing moment—issue identification for people and tying that to a solution, and doing political education around like, “Okay, so there’s vacant property. Why isn’t it counted? Why aren’t landlords held accountable? Why isn’t the city held accountable?” Like, asking all these questions to kind of slowly politicize and radicalize the issue and our membership was really good at doing that with newer membership as well. *

William Burnett

First of all we had to be trained by Manhattan Neighborhood Network and because Picture the Homeless was an organization in Manhattan, we were able to do that. We all sat together in front of the computer and watched all the raw footage and had to make decisions about what footage to pull in, how to clip it together and produce a final product that tells a story, so that it wasn’t just raw footage being played out for everybody. Charlie was very forceful about how the story was being told, so… He would let you know, “This footage, no! That footage, no.” *

Sue Lob (October 22, 2019)

I think Picture the Homeless after that started training members to kind of create your own media so that you could control the narrative. And that was really a huge lesson for me about like thinking about both doing our own media but also like how do we make sure that the message that we want gets out.

James Tracy (December 2, 2018)

People who are attracted to Picture the Homeless tend to have a kernel of it just in their personality, like outgoing, inquisitive, wanting to be connected with others in a project, but also it’s because Picture the Homeless encourages that and helps people develop those good instincts and does political education and makes connections. Which is pretty unique because so much homelessness and housing stuff tends to be so hyper-focused on the neighborhood, right?

People are encouraged to think about connections, instead of these little boxes of policy or neighborhood or their rights, or bad-copbad-landlord type of stuff. But just actually thinking about why homelessness exists, why does it exist almost all over the globe, with some exceptions, of course. And trusting that its members can develop their intellectual capacities farther than they may have even expected.

James Doctor (March 5, 2020)

Picture the Homeless taught everybody like—first breathe, and hear what the person’s saying, and then respond, and listen. You don’t have to agree with them, but if you listen to them, at least you understand them, so you know how to better deal with them, and y’all can come to a better solution toward the problem and stuff. But you’re not going to get there if everybody’s just running off, loud mouthing, and ain’t nobody listening to one another. That is one of the things that Picture the Homeless taught me. Don’t forget the unity, because there’s no little me, no big I’s, and stuff, it’s we, and together as a whole is how we’re going to get it accomplished. Unless we sit down and talk to each other, we don’t know what the problem is, or how to fix the problem.

Kay Samuels (December 6, 2019)

It’s one thing to go to meetings and everybody complaining. And it’s like, “Well, we could try to do this. We could try to do that.”

To me, Picture the Homeless was more like, “We’re going to teach you how to look at these things, how to analyze them, and from that process, how to approach solving them, along with the political component that comes with that.” Because that’s what people don’t know. And that’s what organizing is about, learning how to organize. At Picture the Homeless, you have people who are little pockets of organizers. That’s important because, they could go to Timbuktu, and they would know how to organize. So, I think Picture the Homeless did a better job of teaching people how to organize, how to analyze a situation, how to determine who it is that you need to go and approach about addressing a problem so you’re not just in the street screaming. It helps you slow your mind down because you can be so angry you’re missing things, so that you start to say to yourself, “I got to learn how to organize.”

Jean Rice (October 13, 2017)

Picture the Homeless provided the space, the leadership, and the technology to mount a campaign. I don't know if we would ever achieve that without an organization like Picture the Homeless. Through that campaign, I truly learned that those who society at large might call, “the least amongst us” the marginalized, the criminalized… We don't have to be apathetic. We've got power, if we just use it. Picture the Homeless taught me that. I said, if we got that much power over this issue, we can use that power in other issues. That was a learning experience.

Ryan Hickey (April 25, 2019)

Other challenges, sometimes people said some really fucked up shit to me, about me. Some people were like really anti-Semitic, or some people were really sexist or homophobic and I think we actually like did a decent job of not ignoring those differences during housing campaign meetings. Because sometimes housing campaign meetings were just like, “We’re going to talk about the campaigns.” But sometimes they morphed into like, “We need to take some time to do like political education because in the meantime, for the next HOA class, there’s not enough time to like address this.” And so we—really like, if somebody said something homophobic or, you know—whatever—took some space in that meeting to be like, “Okay. Let’s examine this. Right? So, why— why are we like this? Like what does this do to us as a collective group that’s trying to like form solidarity around this one issue? Like, who is that serving?” Who is this division serving, sort of thing?”

It was just like, “We’re in this together. Like if we have divisions, we’re going to fail. We’re just going to fail and that’s what the Podolsky’s of the world want us to do. They want to like say—all these undocumented people… Like they’re taking our jobs. or whatever…” Like blah, blah, blah. *

Ryan Hickey (April 25, 2019)

Sometimes leaders were protective of the roles that they served and there wasn’t enough mobility within the leadership realm, where people were like, “No, that’s my job. I want to do that.” And so we countered that by having political education trainings and HOA was a really huge part of that.

Sometimes we’d just be like, “Listen, if you want to talk to press you have to come to an HOA thing on press, or whatever.” And if I thought a member would be really good at that, I made sure that member was there. Even if it was just that one person, because sometimes that happened. And then, if that happened, then making a direct connection to the next housing meeting. Being like, “Listen, I want to give it up bigtime for this person who came to this HOA training, did an amazing job and I want this person to be the next press spokesperson” Everybody’s like, “Oh! Like, cool.” Marcus always was just like, “Yeah! Like that’s amazing!” He always tried to build people up and making it like a big thing— because it is a big thing for somebody to be like, “We all think you’re ready to do this. Do it.”

So making an intentional line between training based on curricula that membership has like perfected over the years and being like, “Yo, big ups to this person who took a risk, is going outside of their comfort zone, and we’re going to help you shine in this moment.” And making sure that a lot of members were forming a support network and being like, “We all need to support this person. Let’s do it.” I didn’t really put that together in the beginning but as I got going in the organizing world, you realize the importance of that and then it becomes just your everyday thing.

Shaun Lin (October 11, 2019)

There would be particular skills that we would need to work on in order to best engage with the CPR work. So, some of it was things like public speaking, right? So, if we were to have an action coming up and want to encourage newer members to speak at the press conference so we’re not always relying on the same members talking, the Homeless Organizing Academy might organize a series of public speaking trainings. And part of it is public speaking, but the first part of it is even just like, “How do I take my story and write it out in a way that communicates my the end message that I want?

So, it’s like, public speaking is also thinking about our stories, how do our stories connect to the issue that we’re working on… And then how do I practice doing this in a way—because public speaking is very scary to people. So, like how do I practice in a way where I can show up powerfully, on the day of? So, Homeless Organizing Academy—I know that there was a regular writing class, right? There was stuff around public speaking. I know that there was regular computer classes. Computer literacy was really important for folks. So, it would kind of just provide tools and analysis for folks to be able to engage with the campaign work powerfully.

But it wasn’t necessarily… I don’t even think necessarily the end goal was participation in the campaigns. I think writing in itself is a skill you know, or you using the computer in itself is a skill that helps people to find employment or other opportunities outside of the Picture the Homeless work that they were doing that I see Homeless Organizing Academy was supportive of that. It was like PTH members personal development, so that they can engage with campaign work, but also so that they can engage with other things too.

Willie Baptist (November 26, 2018)

Yes, you have leaders that have natural leadership qualities, but they don’t have the training to know they know why personally they’re homeless. They don’t know the system or the political and economic system that produced homelessness. And so, their story is a story largely of the effects, but not of the cause.

And so, if you’re going to have leaders, you have to have a political education process to connect their story with all of the stories.

From Organizer Trainees to the Homeless Organizing Academy

Rob Robinson (May 7, 2018)

It was probably for me, the first time that I really understood you build power by coming together. You can go as a small, little group, but what would you accomplish? Let's go with an organization that might have already figured out a process and understand how to do this.

DeBoRah Dickerson (February 13, 2020)

It was challenging. I’ve been in training programs—I’ve been in trainings… That was out of my comfort zone. I didn’t know— there was so many things that I did not know. I didn’t know anything about outreach. Learning how to speak to public officials, learning how to speak to the press, writing out blogs… What negotiation was about, how to negotiate, getting members to be involved… Because you can do things, but if you don’t get people involved, you’re not doing anything. You have to know how to get involved, and you have to listen to what people are saying, and homeless people go through a whole lot of stuff.

I remember one-time Sam; he took me out. We went out and we went to the post office. I didn’t know they had a postal office for homeless people, back then. And I’m like, “You’ve got to be kidding.” And he said, “We got to go there, it’s the first of the month and we’re going to go on the other side, and this is where we’re going to pass out flyers.” Afterwards, it just came a breeze. And we was passing out our information, taking down people’s names, you know? And it just became a lot of fun. I love the outreach, you know, and we had a chart of places where we were going to go and do our outreach, so that was important.

Marcus Moore (November 13, 2017)

One of my favorite instructors was this brother, he's an artist, by the name of Not4Profit. I used to plan my days and my weeks to be at this writing class. I would spend so much time at Picture the Homeless, nine to five, like it was my job, and I got a chance to be in a lot of little workshops and classes. And so, through literature and arts, I have been able to come up with another way of fighting oppression.

*

Nikita Price (December 2, 2017)

At the time I did not understand what the difference was between being a leader and being an organizer. Even though folks within Picture the Homeless you and Tyletha [Samules], and a few other people, probably identified that I had some qualities in which I could do that. I think mostly because of my personality.

And then once I got over the fact that you know, if you step out of your comfort zone, you can still be you. And being as basic in my articulation as possible, I did have a way of being able to make folks be comfortable with me and make folks be uncomfortable with me, which is a trait that you need!

And I think once it was identified, and then I was told what the program would look like, and this would be something that you could then take once this is over with, this could be a career for you. But I think what was not told to me at the time, was that being an organizer is grinding. It's tedious. There are good parts to it, but they’re also a lot of downside to it also.

So, you have to be able to get in there and weigh your victories with your defeats and your—your settling. You have to do all of that. So, you have to be willing to do that. You're not always going to win. You're not always going to lose!

Sometimes you're just going to have to swallow a bitter pill and then hopefully on the other side you'll come out and you'll be able to say, maybe revisit, a situation that didn't come out exactly like you wanted it to.

So, then I basically had to ask myself, “Can you do this?” And I said, “Yea, I can do this. I can do this.” So, I said, “Yeah, okay, I can get into that.” I just saw that as an opportunity to push Picture the Homeless's mission, which I had fully embraced at the time. And so yeah, I was fully committed to that, and it went well.

Rob Robinson (May 7, 2018)

I believe I was with Sam and Jean one day and somebody is telling us a story, and Sam goes to him, "Well, are you angry about it?" And then, "Hell, yeah…?" "So, what do you want to do about it?" And hearing that methodology. I had never done organizing with people, but I said, "Yeah, it makes sense. If they're angry about it then you come up here and talk about it and let's see what we can do together." Because you can stay off mad over there, and it ain’t going to do anything right? You're just over there mad, right? But if twenty people came to an office and got mad, and figured out a process to take their anger channel it to something positive, then that's going to make change, right?

That whole process was a learning experience for me. I had never done organizing. It's a place where, I got a foundation of how to organize. Then I went to that organizing trainee training, and I think that really helped me. It also helped me to understand that this problem is bigger than us and people need to be connected. This is not the only place where this is happening. *

Rob Robinson (November 23, 2018)

So you organize by using what you learned, on how to do a oneon-one, “So, here’s a way to take what you’re angry about. Tell your story to somebody, and help them make social change because if you and ten other people do the same thing, trends start to develop. Out of trends we start to find out there’s a problem. When we find out there’s a problem, we work towards a solution.”

So, you put on your organizer’s hat. It was some of the foundational training that I got to be able to do that. I had never done that type of work before, but it was an opportunity that was sort of pushed at me, and I’m not angry about it. I was able to learn. And I think that organizing academy helped me a lot in that aspect, alright? You’ve heard of one-on-ones before, but how do you make it happen? It’s easy to talk about it, but what does it look like? What are the eight steps or ten steps, whatever it is? You know, and I suddenly had that toolset in my back pocket and able to do that.

DeBoRah Dickerson (February 13, 2020)

If you’re going to get in involved in any kind of organization, or group, or community, you need to have some information, so that you can carry this information to other people if they want to join. and I find that important, in organizing and being a part of Picture the Homeless. It’s getting information and having research. Researching the people that you’re talking about or having a conversation and having that dialogue. Because if you don’t know anything about them, then you can’t have a conversation or dialogue with them. And that’s one thing that Picture the Homeless has taught me and if we have to do a direct action, or protests, or rally, then we know what we’re talking about, because we’ve done the research.

Maria Walles (December 2, 2022)

I had the opportunity to work doing an internship. It was like six months plus of doing outreach. I was an outreach worker. I was working with Shaun, Nikita, and Ryan. They trained us for a couple of weeks.

We would try to get members, get people out to Picture the Homeless. We went to shelters. I remember even going to Wards Island! We were going on Wards island, and did a lot of outreach. We went to HRA. We went to the courts, criminal court, and family court. There was times we had to separate, and I did both! I was lucky to get some people from housing court. I think one time we went to Harlem, and we all got together, and we spent the whole day out in Harlem trying to get new members to come to the office in the Bronx. And it was a lot, but we did it!

Willie Baptist (November 19, 2018)

Realizing that political education is not disconnected from the actual protests and organizing, that in fact, the protests become a school in political education. I mean, your involvement in protests and struggles brings questions into your mind as to why protest? Who you’re up against? Why are you up against that? Why the injustice that you’re protesting against? What’s the cause of it? These are questions that can’t be answered just by experience alone, but experience combined with education. And particularly political education because we’re dealing with a political system that upholds an economy, that thrives off of poverty and homelessness.

Marcus Moore (November 13, 2017)

There is so much that I learned at Picture the Homeless. From learning my audience, to talking about community land trusts. I gave some workshops at Picture the Homeless, myself! I was able to teach some classes and learn some things from Picture the Homeless. I got a chance to learn how to lobby in Albany. I got a chance to learn some things about the organization, when it was founded, who our founders are, you know… And I got a chance to talk in public about some of the work that we’re doing at Picture the Homeless. Kind of like help people to understand the stereotypes when it comes to challenging homeless people. That it's really just a stereotype, it's not really what's going on.

*

Jean Rice (October 6, 2017)

We cannot depend on our adversaries to educate us to the point where we can liberate ourselves. So, we have to develop a formula, and a curricula, and a culture and an atmosphere, where we can truly educate ourselves, and move our brain past indoctrination to education. And then we can be in the vanguard of a movement that will succeed in making America live up to its original credo.

Arvernetta Henry (September 28, 2017)

We had an opportunity to learn how to write letters to politicians. How to run a campaign and work it to the advantage that it would reflect the needs of the people, not the politician and to focus on how to write a policy. Sam Miller taught us how to do the ins and outs of writing policies and get the attention of the politicians and the lawmakers and how they played a very important part of the political circle. We learned how to be activists. Because that's what we were, because we was going against the grain. So, we learned how to fight back. How to write chants. How to stand up to the government and say we're human beings. We're not a piece of meat that you can shuffle from place to place. We're not your commodity! We don't believe that you have the right to keep us out of these vacant houses and we learned how to go around and search for vacant property, how to log property and to research property and find out who was the landlord. Who owns this property? Why this property has been vacant so long?

Marcus Moore (January 11, 2018)

I’ve just been seeing how I’ve been able to use my training, being part of different organizations, to be able to research and be part of what’s happening out here as far as social justice work to be able to help me, to be able to just inquire and ask questions, than opposed to just getting it secondhand.

And so, I guess what I’m trying to say is that I have to get off my butt and do something. I have to go and figure out and ask questions, than opposed to just sitting there and just waiting for my adversary to define or put a label on me, and then tell me or tell themselves, what they’re going to do with me.

Marcus Moore (January 11, 2018)

I think the lessons that being learned while you’re struggling are able to enrich your spirit. I think that’s a beautiful thing. You know, there are so many phrases, “Without no struggle, there’s no progress.” There’s a lot of things to be learned when you’re struggling, I think. It’s just not like, just struggle and be oppressed at the same time. No, you’re struggling, but you can actually see yourself learning some things, some things you might not want to do that, next time. You might want to come a different way.

But you wouldn’t know these things if you wasn’t constantly progressing and learning, and at the same time and enduring until the end, with the struggle, you know. So, it’s interesting, I think.

Some Lessons Learned

Sam J. Miller (November 30, 2017)

Leroy [Parker] was so good at outreach and Leroy was so—talk about no bullshit! He was really good at cutting through all that. No one could talk to Leroy and not be impressed by his power and his gravity. We did a lot of outreach together, and I learned a lot about how to talk to folks.

And of course, there were things that he could say to other homeless people that I couldn't say, right? Because he was in this situation and he could be like, “Get off your fucking ass.” I couldn't say that to people, or at least not in those precise words. But, you know there were things that he did that I couldn't emulate, but a lot of things he did that I could. Like his spotting when someone was being evasive or trying really hard not to do anything, and being able to call them out on it, but also his welcomingness and the way he treated folks and the way he praised them. So, Leroy was a big teacher.

Ryan Hickey (April 25, 2019)

Organizers have their role, but we take leadership from homeless folks because they know the issues better than we do and will always know it and their experience is really, really important and valued in that work and I think we’ve accomplished a lot. Sometimes we don’t need those organizers to do some things because members just know how to do it and they can do it and they should do it. They should be seen doing it and homeless people should see other homeless people leading the charge for revolutionary change.

Anika Paris (August 15, 2019)

I think about things that happened at PTH or like conversations that I only had because of PTH just in terms of my understanding of the world and organizing and movements. I remember learning about the Shackdwellers and the MST in Brazil. I remember there was somebody from the Shackdwellers who came through the office [S’bu Zikode] and it was just a really chill conversation, just a bunch of people around the table talking. I remember he said, “You know they give us these rights, but you can’t afford your rights.” And I’ve like repeated that so many times, that was really revelatory for me.

Sam J Miller (November 30, 2017)

I had no real understanding of what homelessness was like and what the real issues were with homelessness. There's a level on which, when you start to pay attention to homelessness and you start to really understand it, it sort of turns your whole understanding of the world on its end. I think oftentimes people slot homelessness into a box in their mind, where it's not threatening and not scary and doesn't have anything to do with them. And so, when you start to really understand the issue and see how intimately it's connected to everything that happens in this city and in the country and how intimately it's connected to racism and the high cost of housing and so many issues that are important to lots of folks. It's kind of hard to not simultaneously really angry and really resolved to do something.

Ryan Hickey (April 15, 2019)

Our members knew how to do this stuff and they were teaching me how to do this stuff. But they just knew. I remember like going through a lot of those checklists in those housing meetings. Members are like, “Okay, so do we have this? Do we have this? Do we have this? Do we have this?” Like, holy shit, I barely need to be here. I’m facilitating the discussion, but you guys know what to do. I wasn’t learning that our homeless members were like the experts in this, but I was reminded of it every single day. There’s just so much expertise in that room and so much leadership in that room, where these people, if and when they do leave Picture the Homeless, they’re just going to do amazing things wherever they are because we collectively have built each other up in that way.

Jenny Akchin (June 5, 2019)

One thing that I do really credit Picture the Homeless with, that I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else, is a very healthy critique of vouchers and a very healthy critique of supportive housing. And I just really appreciate our members for always being really clear that you can’t depend on a voucher, that that’s not a reliable source of income for housing, and that without some sort of guarantee, that was going to leave people in the lurch, and leave people shafted. And I never would have had that level of critique without hearing it from our members and seeing it in our reports.

Ryan Hickey (May 22, 2019)

I’ve learned that you have to ask for the most radical thing. You should never limit yourself in terms of what you think you can get. Because what we need to do is challenge these whole facets of the American economy and American society. And I think our membership was pretty clear in not compromising where we didn’t need to compromise, or where we shouldn’t compromise.

Ryan Hickey (April 25, 2019)

I remember we formed a study group, a CLT study group. We didn’t learn about CLTs solely, we learned about all of this really boring ass complicated language that is used to put people in their place… Like to make people feel stupid. It’s a tool to oppress people and to marginalize them from other conversations. Like, these complicated financial terms, “equity”, whatever... And I remember, some members knew what this stuff meant but I would say like ninety, ninety-five percent… They could talk about CLTs, but when you pressed them on it they kind of got lost in the weeds.

And so we had this study group, and it was probably Kendall, I don’t remember—but it was like we should reach out to John Krinsky, who’s an educator. They could help us with the study group. That’s when Hillary got involved and Deshonay got involved, who helped form a curricula with some leaders about like what the goals of this study group would be, why it’s necessary, what we want to come out of it and stuff… And that was like a year or two. That was a long time. I forget how long the study group lasted.

And we developed a curricula based on brainstorming sessions. I was extracting themes that were coming out of housing meetings— where like a Kendall or an Arvernetta said a term, and I saw everybody’s face go like—blank. I was like, “Okay, we need to go more into that, but the housing meeting isn’t the place to do it, so we need a separate space to do it.” So, Deshonay and Hillary helped with the curricula, and we had weekly study groups where we were talking about community land trusts, really getting into the nuts and bolts, looking at case studies. We were reading reports. We were having reading groups.

And that’s where I really like latched on to popular education. I was like, “Oh my God. This stuff is so good, and I loved doing it and it’s so powerful and I see the results. We created a curricula and we educated ourselves based on the knowledge that we already had but we also looked at other resources, as well.

We tapped into those resources, and we started forming this common language around land trusts and mutual housing associations and like, home ownership and equity and like all this really complicated terminology that was used to like other homeless people in these conversations, in these policy questions.

And members really just shined. Oh my God. People were so jazzed about everything that we were doing. Whether it be games, whether it be quizzes. I remember we were having quizzes like every other week. And really we did so much. We had so many tactics in popular education where everybody’s learning ability was like catered to. I don’t like that term, but it was like we met everybody where they were at, and it was so cool and fun. And so we got really involved in the coalition work and we were building the Education Outreach Workgroup and that’s when we really started solidifying around like, we need a board game. I remember Arvernetta was like, “I want a board game because I love board games.”