The Violence of the Hick and the Dick

Hick & Cock seem bound on provoking violence in the city of Denver. Their answer of homeless shelters is like asking cattle to enter the feed yards. Like the old song of "signs, signs everywhere signs....do this, do that" describes what they offer. Most single men without proof of recent TB testing and ID won't be admitted to one of these fine shelters they so often tout. As many mental health professionals know, psychotic, delusional and veterans with PTSD and substance abuse issues aren't going to enter the shelters. What? You say put them in a psych unit. In the past five years over 2/3 of the inpatient psych beds in the region have been closed. The most galling is the unit at the state funded University Hospital. Psych units aren't the answer to the homeless problem. Jails aren't the answer even if the legal system now houses and treats the most mental health patients in the state. Veterans with hypervigilance and self medicating problems aren't viable candidates for the cattle call admittance to the overnight shelters. There are no wet shelters for the functional or peaceful addict or alcoholic. Denver Cares or Arapahoe Detox are nightmares and not meant as shelters. In the past many veterans created encampments along the S. Platte called names like Clintonville, Bushville and the sort. At least they had some shelter and had each other's backs. But gentrification by the returning yuppies from suburbia meant the blight of encampments had to go. LoDo's million dollar condos couldn't look out over shanty town encampments of the homeless unwilling to enter the lottery of the overnight bedding shelters. So the encampments moved south and north but cops and authorities harassed the bridge people, the encampments and the park dwellers with fines, arrests for public intoxication, public urination and other legal issues. They knew these homeless people could never pay the fines and would end up with failure to appears or serving time in city or county jails. Out of sight out of mind. The criminalization of being homeless and not wanting to jump all the hoops demanded in the city, state and federal supported shelters grows every day. Every year the snow comes and the weather gets deadly and still there are homeless people who refuse to enter the shelters. That alone is an indictment of these shelters meeting the needs of the wide range of homeless. And less we forget, there is a triage system in which families, battered women and single women take precedence over single men. Homeless shelters for veterans only don't exist even though a good 40% of all men over the age of 30 that are homeless are veterans. Veterans in a crowded shelter of homeless people can be a time bomb. One intrusion into a personal space can create a trigger leading to flashbacks and violence. But most veterans are weeded out anyway because so many are self medicating and homeless people don't get admitted to shelters if they're thought to be intoxicated or under the influence.


Hick and Cock would have you believe there's a room or place for all and there's no need for shanties, burn barrels or sleeping on steam grates downtown. And homeless people are so damned dirty and such a turnoff for the rich hotel dwellers from out of town or visiting the sites around Civic Center. What's laughable is Civic Center Park has long been known as a haven to make a drug score while cops looked on in boredom and disinterest. CCH has become tied up in all the politics as well as many of the shelters "approved" by the authorites. Too often these folks berate groups like Food Not Bombs for feeding the homeless with the premise it only encourages the homeless population to shun the "real shelters" and leaves too many on the streets.

A few years back I was developing a small federally granted house for the homeless and decided to do site visits of all the different shelters in the area. It soon became clear there was backbiting and infighting in spades between the different shelters. Directors would bad mouth each others' programs and tout their own. It didn't take long to figure out the chase for government and charity dollars was leading to this uncoordinated effort.

While Hick would like you all to know how he pushed for more housing for the homeless during his mayoral tenure, he fails to mention all the subsidized housing lost to gentrification. Housing formerly used by mental health centers for their clients. All the touted new housing wasn't even keeping up with the housing lost to gentrification. And then Hick decided a state of the art jail spending around a half billion dollars was necessary. A jail increasing bed capacity by 200 some beds.

Hick had a study done to see about jail diversion of populations with addiction and mental health problems done prior to the push for the new jail. The experts found for every one dollar spent in treatment 5-10 dollars of incarceration dollars could be saved. He ignored the study because the new jail made for some lucrative land deals and some political capital put out to the contractors bidding on the construction of the new jail.

Well, along came the Bush depression causing cuts in state and city budgets. And staffing a new jail with 200 more beds has become a problem. But keep in mind more and more homeless people are sent to jail following multiple arrests for petty misdemeanors they can't pay fines for and failure to appear charges because they either know they can't pay or they don't have an address to get their summons.

The new jail and all the jails in the metro area have become default homeless shelters. "It's a crime to be broke in America" was a rap done by Michael Franti and Spearhead a while back. And he wasn't wrong at all.

So, where does the provocation of violence come into play by Hick and Cock? They are in a full fledged battle against the occupy movement gaining traction in their city, their state. They see tents and burn barrels to warm people as crimes requiring full riot police participation. They see food served to the hungry as a threat to the state and city. They follow their corporate masters who want their corporate streets sanitized of the homeless and those willing to miss showers and comforts of home to make a huge political stand for economic equity, social justice and systemic change.

Every since the battle for Seattle at the WTO gathering every major police agency has trained for the confrontations of the poor and middle class seeking redress of their government. The feds have used terrorism as sledge hammer to dismantle the civil rights of all Americans. And a great majority of Americans have agreed to give up freedom for a false sense of security. They say they have nothing to hide and think those who object to the violations of the constitution must surely be hiding sedition and terrorism.

Hick and Cock and all their parallel flunkies around the nation see the Egyptian summer and the willingness of the oppressed to go toe to toe against overwhleming force and fear the rocks and bottles may be coming their way. And in a self fulfilling way that's what they seem to be provoking in their willingness to fight the homeless and their supporters from Occupy Denver.

Cock got roundly booed and called a fascist at a vigil for the homeless who died this past year. Some think it was disrespectful to those being mourned but maybe we should think about how many lives could have been saved had Hick and Cock done the right thing instead of continuing the battle against the homeless by criminalizing it as quickly as they can. Maybe it's time to let this city know the poor and homeless are humans deserving the same respect as the oil executive or campaign contributor.

A message to Hick and Cock. If you act like fascists expect a blowback of violence and civil disobedience to occur. And all your riot police can't put the fires of rage out like they did a few warming barrels last night. I don't say this to encourage violence but history demonstrates oppression leads to an eventual revolutionary change.

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