The last week has been terrible. I guess the mayor got what he wanted – sexual assaults, suicide, trauma, tickets and drama. People have gotten the message. Madison wants you to leave, but what if you are FROM Madison?
I don’t know where to begin to tell you stories that I have heard in the last 5 days. None of them good. A homeless woman washing her hands has to listen to city or county staff saying “Isn’t it nice with them gone” – how does she respond to that? A man tells me he’s just going to take the Madison Metro bus out away from downtown and sleep in a ditch. A woman tells me about being sexually assaulted after being turned away from shelter for being late. Friends and family console each other over the death of their friend – who committed suicide. I listen to my staff tell me about the person who died who helped us with the mailing just the day before. People don’t know where to put their belongings. A man looks at me with tears in my eyes and asks where he is supposed to sleep tonight. And people ticketed for – not moving their belongings, “open intoxicants” when the bottle wasn’t open and one went to jail for cleaning out her car in public space and arguing with police. I saw an officer who helped a man so drunk he couldn’t stand go sit on a bench – but didn’t take him to detox ( I helped move his stuff – I didn’t wear gloves like the officer did). I watched the Cathedral Parish Maintenance guy drive his truck in the grass just feet from where people were sleeping and intimidate homeless people, never actually asking them to leave, but post no trespassing signs all over their property. I went to find people’s stuff stashed on private property, I helped stash stuff on private property. I listened to people tell the police they can’t sleep on the benches (only legal place to sleep) around the square because the sprinklers come on at 3:30. I saw people set up to sleep for the night with officers driving by and no one saying anything until after its too late to get into shelter – leaving them to wander around the city at 10pm trying to figure out where to sleep. I scouted illegal places for people to sleep. Most of all of this happened in just 3 days – I tried to take Sunday off and Monday I ended up not feeling well (combination of no sleep and standing outside in the cold alot – it just saps my energy.)
My eyes have seen and my ears have heard more than I ever want to know. And its just the tip of the iceberg.
I’m not really able to post anything better than this because I don’t have the time to properly share the stories and its hard when you want to also protect confidentiality.
Here’s photos from Thursday night
There’s more, lots more, but no time to be the news and report the news. Best I can do is document for the future – and then likely not have time to get back to it!
I’ll leave you with this – we’ve gone from people having sex to sexual assault, from public urination to suicide, how is this helping?
Last week we had a death (Thursday) and also at least 1 (that we know about) Sexual Assault downtown of a homeless woman who was removed from the CCB to State Street to sleep. We are very concerned to know who else has been adversely effected by this and will probably find out more over the course of this week’s outreach.
We came up with this card which we plan to laminate and print on card stock and attach to pepper spray, loud personal alarms and flashlights that we will distribute as appropriate this week to women and youth sleeping outside. We have also asked our Rape Crisis Center outreach person to come out more frequently with us.
I was hoping to share this information and these cards with the HSC members to see if anyone has anything to change or add before we print and distribute. We would also like to invite any counselors or other agency workers who would like to come and do outreach with any of the teams to reach out and connect with me at this e-mail address and we will be happy to include them in our efforts.
We can accomplish so much more for good when we work together to protect these vulnerable people.
Thank you,
TamiTami Miller
Chairperson & Founding Member
Friends of the State Street Family
Website: www.friendsofthestatestreetfamily.org
E-mail: fssfhomelessoutreach@gmail.com
Outreach Line: 608-535-9394 (Voice to Text)
