International Solidarity and Movement Building

DeBoRah Dickerson: Picture the Homeless has been like a core group for me. I have gotten opportunity to not only just talk in New York City, and other cities, and even going into certain countries.

I hadn’t been to Canada in years, and it was a caravan of us that went down to Canada, to a women’s conference. We had interpreters, and I was just sitting there, and I’m like, “I got to get up and say something.” And they were talking about homeless people, and I listened to a woman that was Mohawk, she was representing the Mohawk and the chief, and she was talking about how they were driven off, and then they had a group of people that were in Montreal, and the developers wanted to push them out. And my heart got so heavy.

And then there was someone from Africa, and I was like, “Wow.” And Cherokee women were talking about how they was pulled out of their homes and taken into this place and separated from their husbands. A lady talked about cigarette burns on her arm. And I’m like, “Oh my God.”

I said, “In New York, in the United States this is what’s happening.” And I talked about the homeless situation. I said, “We got to come together. I don’t care what part of the world, we got to come together. You know, they do it to you, they going to do it to me. So, we need to stand up and fight back, not just come at this meeting and just sit here like, ‘Oh, just because we’re getting away.’ But there are some really global and universal situations that we must come in agreement and solidarity. Because if you don’t make enough money, then they can push you out, you know. Or if you don’t look like them, they can push you out. Whatever.” And it just really, that really got to me.

Rob Robinson: We all have relationships around homeless work, and a dream would be to bring Hungary and Brazil and the U.S. together. You know, WRAP, Picture the Homeless, A Varos Mendike and the National Organization of Street… The first time that that happens on a phone call, I’d be jumping up and down, right? And I just see it building from there.