Taking a Stand

Anthony Williams (January 3, 2018)

I didn’t realize this until later, but he [Lewis Haggins] actually wanted me close to him, and he had a vision that I knew nothing about. I didn’t know who this guy was, or what his angle was except that, once I got into Bellevue, he come to me and say, “Hey, Ant, how you doing? I was out and about, and I was looking at some articles. I found this article about CHARAS, a Community Center.”

But even before that, he would come to my room, every night, and say, “Want to go down to the radio station and do an interview at WBAI?” So, I kept telling him, “No, no, no.” We’re still were in the same outpatient program, B.R.C., so I would run into him there, and he would say the same thing to me again, “Anthony, you want to come to WBAI?” And I was like, “Ah… I don't know.” He goes, “This is the last time. This is it. This is final. It’s either you’re coming with me to the radio station, or this is it. It’s your last shot. This is it.”

Anthony Williams (January 3, 2018)

What happened was, the Warrant Squad came in, made him get out of bed, rousted him up, slammed him up against the wall. I mean, they really roughed him up. And Lou watched it, and came over to my room, like three in the morning, “We got to do something about this. They just beat up a homeless guy, that was sleeping right across from me.” I said, “But that’s nothing new.” He goes, “No! No. They… We got to do something about this, Anthony.”

“So, what are we going to do? I mean, this is what they do! This is the shelter. This is the norm. If the Warrant Squad comes in, and wake you up out of bed, and if you attempt to resist or whatever, then you get an ass whooping, and that’s what you get, because you’re homeless. You get what you deserve, right? An ass whooping.”

“No. No! No. It’s just wrong. I watched them beat this guy up, with no clothes on, just in his underwear, okay? No. We got to do something, Anthony.” And so, I was like, “I don't know what we could do. What?!” You know what I mean? Like, what? And so, that’s when I decided to go with him to WBAI.

I said, “Okay, Lou, I’ll come with you.” He goes, “You got to get up, three in the morning, and walk down to Wall Street.” I said, “Okay! I’ll be up at three. I’ll be up at three.” And sure enough, I got up at three and we left Bellevue and headed south towards Wall Street, from Thirtieth Street, no money, no food, no nothing, just going to a radio station, and early in the morning.

Finding Allies

Carlos Chino Garcia (August 21, 2018)

When I first met them, especially Lewis, I had respect because I saw him coming to meetings. And when you’re a brother that’s down-and-out, and you want to develop yourself and clean yourself up, it shows that you’re serious. I’ve dealt with a lot of groups throughout the city and the country with a lot of people that basically have an idea, and you have to encourage them quickly to become serious with that idea. So, it doesn’t go away from their thoughts, you know?

Basically, that’s the advantage that I felt, and it wasn’t just me. It was Tony and Armando and we wanted to give them that spirit, “Go ahead, go for it. You got an idea, go for it.” And not only you’ve got an idea, you’ve got an idea that is necessary! It’s not an idea like “Hey, Hey” just any idea. Because, at that time, there wasn’t a group. They were advocates.

I sincerely felt that they were sincere about that idea, and it’s an idea that didn’t exist in the city, of homeless people forming their own advocacy group. It didn’t exist that I know of you know. Then seeing Lewis coming day after day to the AA meetings and basically trying to clean himself, I felt that he needed something to put time into, and that was it. I don’t think we knew of a group, of any other group that was doing that. *

Dave Powell (March 13, 2023)

It's just great to be with those guys and just watching them work and just watching them think like literally figure it out from scratch. It's not that they didn't have supporters, or they didn't have people that knew what they were about to do was important. But they come with any institution that was like, "Oh yeah! Great idea. Let us know what you need."

They had to build that shit. They built that shit brick by brick, absolutely and totally, you know? And with genuine curiosity about, what is the best way to get there, of thinking it through strategically. I remember just the weight of those conversations.

PTH’s First Office Space

Anthony Williams (January 3, 2018)

So he went in the church [Judson Memorial Church] and talked to Peter Laarman. And he came back out, and said, “Anthony! They want to meet with us. The reverend wants to meet with you.” I was like, “Hell no, I don’t want to meet with him.” He goes, “Anthony, come on Ant. I need you to come and talk to him. We need you to talk to him. I need you to talk to the Rev, to Reverend Peter Laarman. He wants to hear what we have to say. So, we should at least let him hear us out. Okay?”

So, after the twenty-four-hour action that we did, Peter said, “We have an office downstairs, it’s full of stuff. If we can clean that out, we can give you an office.” And I’m like, “Really?” He goes, “Yeah, we just need to clean it out.”

They supported us with a phone. We had a phone. Then we got a computer… Then, site visits was coming to see what we do. You know, you can’t show people something that’s not there! Right? It has to be there for you to show them, for them to do it, and the only way to get what you need is by showing them that you have something unique, and you have something that’s worthwhile for them to come and support, and we had that. We had all of that. We had every bit of it.

It was amazing. It was different. I was a little worried. I was scared. I had fears of are we going to be successful? How are we going to do this? You’re experiencing it as you go. We just moved in and then we started. Right? And then, it flourished. No plan. We didn’t plan it. I didn’t plan it.

There was no plan, but we got an office, and you stayed with me. You helped me to stay on top of Peter because I think he was getting a lot of flak from his board. I didn’t see the flak that he was getting, but he knew what we had was something, when he met with me and Lewis that day.

And I think he even said, “This is amazing to me. Long as I’ve been here, in this church, and looking out the window and seeing homeless people… “This is the first time I… ” And he saw something. And he said, “Let me get them guys an office.” Who would give two homeless dudes an office, or offer them an office? Why?! Because you pictured something in them. You saw something in them, right?

*

Charley Heck (December 12, 2018)

Picture the Homeless was started at the end of 1999 by two men, Anthony Williams, and Lewis Haggins. Both men were homeless and stayed inside the Bellevue Men’s Shelter in Midtown, New York City. At that time, as a result of the poorly managed and inept bureaucracy, the two homeless men in the shelter believed that their rights as American citizens were increasingly and more intensely deprived. Living in the most spartan and most austere conditions did to weaken or less diminish their resolve to express their human right to be treated fairly. Thus, Picture the Homeless was born.

Lynn Lewis (January 25, 2018)

The difference with you and Lewis is that you all had created an organization. You weren’t going to go there, chained to a service provider… There's still that power dynamic where, “We're going to go to this meeting, but we're not really equals because after the meeting, I need to give you a bed. Like, you need me in a way that I don’t need you, per se. And people are intimidated. That's why you need a separate organization of homeless folks, where folks can determine their own interests. It doesn't have to be in conflict with service providers, but people need to represent their own interests and understand how the system works.

*

Paul Boden (December 4, 2018)

There was this real for me, sense of wanting to see Picture the Homeless kick fucking ass and feeling like this is fucking cool. Because it’s still my hometown, you know? I was really energized about the people that came out and this absolute belief system that they were going to do it. There was never a question in my mind that these guys weren’t going to do the shit.

That was the same experience I had when I first met Denver Homeless Out Loud folks. It was very clear there was a fucking plan afoot. They didn’t know exactly what the plan was but there was a plan to do this shit. And so, it was just exciting! I think the more we can share… They’ll end up doing whatever the fuck they want. But to be able to actually talk to a group of people with the same belief systems and talk about the freedom of just start stirring some shit. Like, you’ll figure it out. If you listen to people, you’ll figure it out. But just start doing something! Don’t just have meetings to talk about doing something.

Marcus Moore (January 11, 2018)

Risk is starting to be the new hope, and so if you’re not taking risks these days, then you’re almost in a situation where you just I don’t know how to put this. You’re going to deteriorate, or you’re just going to die! And so, I’ve learned how to take risks, manage my risk. I know that there’s going to be a lot of risk-taking. If I’m not going to take the risk, then I don’t know if I’ll be able to advance if I don’t take a risk. So, I’ve learned how to take risks.

Building on the Strength of Homeless Folks

Charley Heck (December 12, 2018)

I was not doing just simply nothing… Like waiting for the world to come to me, like the world owed me something that I was now doing myself. I was doing something.

For people that have never been forced to live on the street the uninitiated… They really don’t have a conception of the life of a homeless person. And for them to devise all these programs and charities is helpful to a degree, but it doesn’t satisfy the sense of accomplishment. It doesn’t really give a person a sense of accomplishment of doing something, and that’s what I feel is vastly insufficient in helping people on the street.

DeBoRah Dickerson (October 27, 2017)

So, I was in the shelter, and I wanted to see what I could do, and I wanted to have an activity and get involved with people because I've been involved with social justice a long time, as a teenager. That's what we did in in Crown Heights, in our community.

I was working and I was also in the shelter, and I was really looking for something to do. Being in the shelter it's always good to have a support. I say, a group, to know that you're not in this by yourself, especially if you're experiencing homelessness.

Anthony Williams (January 22, 2018)

So, to get a homeless person, in my opinion, if you get them doing something that they could see that’s making a difference for them, then they will stay! Because they see things changing. They see them having an opportunity to say what they need to say, without any type of repression or told they cannot speak that way or talk that way. And once they’re given a space to really talk about who they are and how they got there and what put them there.

Nikita Price (2017.12.02)

I've learned this from homeless people, and from Picture the Homeless you make do with what you got. Homeless people don't have a lot. Picture the Homeless doesn't have a lot. But what we do have, we make it work.

William Burnett (November 16, 2017)

Eventually I became homeless myself and had a reason to move from journalist mode to member mode. One of the things that I learned, was how homeless people related to each other. I had already seen when, not even homeless but just poor and you have nowhere to turn and you really need some help, it's usually another poor person who'll be the one to respond.

And so, there was that sense of empathy. But there was also this sense of resourcefulness among the members, so that if one person didn't have a resource, another person did, and so it really gave a strong sense of an authentic community. Where other folks talk about community, here I was watching people live it out, in a space, New York City, where you didn't expect people to have that sense of community spirit. Here the poorest of the poor were exhibiting that community spirit.

Anthony Williams (January 3, 2018)

But I survived! People are surviving. People are making it. We are helping people do this. We are showing them that they could do this. We could show them that they have power! Most important thing is homeless people have power. They don’t need to be empowered. Kill that language, right?

Nikita Price (December 2, 2017)

I went by Picture the Homeless one day and I was introduced around, and I saw that there were other folks like myself. Some folks were in shelter and most of the folks were living on the street. So, I said, “Well, if they can do it, I can do it.”

So, how am I going to fit myself into this picture and survive and exist? I knew that in order to do that, I was going to have to be coming back and finding out how best to do that. And I've always been good with that. If you want to know how to do something, you go to where it's being done, and you deal with the people that are doing it. So, I did! And I kept going back to Picture the Homeless and finding out how to navigate the system.

They Said We Couldn’t, But We Did

Tyletha Samuels (April 19, 2019)

It’s so many places that you can do outreach, because homeless is just everywhere on the train, in front of a bus, in front of a shelter. I’ve been to shelters, done trainings in shelters, done public speaking to tell people about Picture the Homeless, met people in the shelters, to try and get them to come to Picture the Homeless.

Lynn Lewis (January 25, 2018)

I would hear from you and Lewis, and you and Lewis were out there talking to homeless people. I mean you guys were like on fire. You're going to [W]BAI. You're putting calls out. But, where were people supposed to meet? How could homeless people find you? It's not the same as door knocking, but people generally are in the same area. They eat at the same soup kitchen. You know where to find them. Like, “Oh, this one always goes to Holy Apostles [Soup Kitchen] for lunch, I can go find him there. Oh, this guy picks up cans all night around Penn Station, I can find him.”

When you're organizing homeless folks, it's definitely much more complicated than everybody's in one building and you’re gonna knock on their doors. We needed to be very consistent and have the meetings at the same time, on the same day because we are giving out flyers saying we have membership meetings Wednesday nights at six o'clock. So we had to be there. Because it's not like other kinds of organizing where you set a meeting date and then you call everybody.

Rogers (January 18, 2018)

There were disparate voices, but I didn’t see enough people being organized into one voice until I was reading some of what Picture the Homeless, some of what Anthony and Lewis had done and were saying. Because that was the coming together of united voices against the gentrification, against the profiteering, against the elite landowners and, if you want to call it, the municipal land barons. That was part of what was being done by Picture the Homeless in many ways better than anyone else was doing it. So, I said. “This is something I see, I understand, and I agree with.” That’s what would have drawn me to Picture the Homeless, to their meetings, and then eventually to 116th Street.

Sam J. Miller (November 30, 2017)

There's this narrative a lot of people had that they don't have any more, that people are unorganizable, or that they're dealing with so much shit that they can't focus on… They have to deal with their personal stuff before they can make change around the systemic issues they're facing. It's true that people carry a lot with them, and are in a crisis, even if it's a crisis that been going on for years, right? That they’re in a shitty situation that absolutely nobody gives a shit about. And so, being able to sort of help them, and love them, and get them to see that this is not about the terrible mistakes they've made. This is about what is wrong with us as people, that this is what this is the situation that we're in.

I just remember being so excited most of the time and talking to my friends, many of whom are social workers or who are working on the same issues but in a much less transformative, social justice context and how burnt out they were and how miserable they were. I felt so lucky because they’d be like, “I met this person who blah blah blah blah, and oh my God it was awful.” And the, I was like, “I met this person and blah blah blah blah, and it was awful, and I was like, let’s get those motherfuckers!” Right? And so, instead of helping people accommodate and navigate and understand and function within a fucked-up system, like really helping people fix a fucked-up system.

James Tracy (December 2, 2018)

I do not value the assertion that it’s because homeless people can’t, or are so unstable that they can’t organize permanent organizations. I think that they instability that they point to is real, right? It’s a real challenge. It’s a real barrier, but it’s not impossible to overcome and I think Picture the Homeless shows that.

DeBoRah Dickerson (October 27, 2017)

We were counting vacant buildings and properties. We had a meeting one night, and I got so fired up and mad. I remember there was one block it was nothing but commercial buildings on the bottom and apartment buildings on the top. And I said, “Oh my God. Those could be homes for people! They don't have to stay in the freaking shelter.”

Rogers

And that was just the beginning of a little seed that has blossomed and I'm like, wow… And we went out. They said, we couldn't do it. But you know, I'm going to get to some of my faith. If Jesus took two fishes and a loaf of bread and fed a multitude, well we took some vacant buildings and we counted all these vacant buildings in all five boroughs, and they said we couldn't do it. We didn't have a lot of people, but we had committed people… And this is what I'm talking about is commitment. When you believe in something you're committed and you have faith and trust in God, you can do anything.

Ryan Hickey (May 22, 2019)

I know when Picture the Homeless was founded people told you, “It can’t be done…” Whatever, whatever.

But you proved that it can be done very successfully, and our members prove that homeless people aren’t anything like what we’ve been fed our entire lives.

When people talk about the bottom-up organizing in terms of like socioeconomic status and marginalization, homeless people are quite damn near the bottom. And of course there are intersections between LGTBQ runaway youth who are homeless, and trans folks who are homeless and there are all these intersections of oppression, but a lot of the times what they have in common is that they’re homeless.

*

Jean Rice (November 10, 2017)

When State legislators are the target of your action, when they are the ones, the objects of your demand… Going to Albany if you’re in New York City, you have to get on a bus by six a.m. in order to get to Albany at the beginning of the Albany legislative day. You have to schedule audiences with these targeted State legislators in advance. And it's hard when you're part of a homeless led, homeless directed group, to plan that far ahead. To make sure that when you are given a slot, you fulfill it.

Only members of Picture the Homeless know how hard it has been to gain access to the policy makers. And some of the excuses, when we first started to try to get access was, “Well, we talk for you because you're a homeless group, we never know where you are bah-bah-bah-bah-bah.” So, in order in keeping with our motto, “Don't Talk About Us, Talk To Us!”, we have to make sure that when we're given access that we are present at the designated time, at the designated place, with the designated message, in order to have a shot at gaining the designated objective.

*

Arvernetta Henry (September 28, 2017)

It became something that was important and vital for history, that I can look back and say, “I was a part of this.” I was reminded of when I marched in DC with Dr. Martin Luther King, and how we fought for civil rights. It brought back good memories. I never thought that I would be doing this at an adult age, but I guess I've been an activist all my life, I just didn't realize it. *

Andres Perez (August 7, 2019)

I used to be a stressed-out person. I used to be very argumentative and all that. I learned how to be calmer and more cool, and collected, in a way. I’m more like a people person, you know, trying to talk to a person, and trying to bring them down to our level so we get to comfort and everything and let them know, we can do certain things without going through the stress and everything.

We can do this project together, and we don’t have to be going through making errors and mistakes. I try my best to be that person, and let the person who I’m dealing with, whoever and whatever work that we do, to let them know exactly, “This is worth it, it’s going to benefit all of us. If we don’t get together and try to do something about what we’ve got to do together, we’ll be fighting or whatever, arguing about it, we’re not going to get nothing done that way. If we get together and work this out, we’ll get the job done, and we’ll all be happy.”

Willie Baptist (November 19, 2018)

It’s not simple because there’s a certain internalized oppression and an internalized misconception even of yourself as a homeless person. That somehow, you’re a failure. That it’s something to be ashamed of, and that it’s not your place to be able to speak to these issues. So, you have to overcome a lot of that. I think we overcame that in our organizing of homeless folks, in the organizing.

As homeless folks begin to link up and work with each other, there’s a certain strength and a certain trust that develops that you’re not going to be played with, or the fact that you’re homeless is not going to be manipulated, make you think even worse about yourself. So you’re kind of quiet for a while. But in that organizing and the trust building… And you’re having to have them speak as they never have spoken before about their homelessness, something that they know, why they’re homeless. They know that. And so, it’s easier for them to talk about their own homelessness. So that’s the first step.

Charmel Lucas (November 21, 2022)

The housing meeting was very informative. First of all [learning] why we were there. Not speaking of Picture the Homeless, why we were in our situation. To me, that was very helpful because at the end of the day, it’s like, “Father God, how did we fail?” I mean, yeah, we smoke cigarettes, and we drink. But what did we do to become homeless, and treated… So, that stood out a lot! It's not our fault. That really stood out. And obviously, you know Al and I, we agree to disagree, but he felt comfortable enough to that yeah, it’s not our fault.

Frank Morales

I’m sure I just picked up somewhere along the line, that there was an action happening and I remember being struck by the fact that this was a homeless organization that was beyond service… You know, the offering meals and offering shelter. That it was an activist social justice-oriented group. and that was unique.

I think Picture the Homeless was a unique organization among even Coalition of the Homeless type groups, and others. I don’t put them down, I mean, these were folks who were benevolent people, they’re attempting to do what they think is the right thing, providing shelter, and all of that. But in any case, you know, going at the deeper issues, and organizing for themselves rather than some kind of top-down thing, or social welfare program, or something like that. It was impressive. So, I’m sure it probably was picking up on some action that was happening going, “Who are these people?” And just, you know because I was very interested in those issues and so, I just followed up and eventually made my way up to the Fordham Road house there.

The organization of Picture the Homeless in terms of the classes, and the organizer school, and all the rest… The administrative aspect I guess of it, was ingenious really and again, unique the way it was the way it functioned… But I think what was really most impressive to me was just the stick-to-itiveness that people had, you know just like staying with it… And mounting campaigns, and so forth. *

Willie Baptist (November 19, 2018)

I remember a meeting. I went there and didn’t know what to expect. I seen homeless folks trying to figure out what to do, planning about particular police brutality issues, all the different issues. I was very impressed with the fact that you had homeless folks, men, and women, who are there planning their next action based on, I think at that time it was dealing with police injustices that that they were trying to deal with at that stage. And you know, there was no doubt who was the leadership of that process.