Chat Transcript: Homeless Advocate Ted Hayes
Aug. 15, 2000 -- As the Democratic National Committee convenes this week in Los Angeles to nominate Al Gore for president, a different sort of convention will be gathering nearby. The Los Angeles National Homeless Convention has invited thousands of homeless activists from around the country to participate in a counter-convention designed to bring national attention to issues like poverty, homelessness and housing.
The convention is the brainchild of organizer Ted Hayes, homeless advocate and senior director of Dome Village. Last night, when a protest outside the Staples Center turned ugly, Hayes was struck in the chest with a beanbag fired by police. He was taken by ambulance to nearby California Hospital Medical Center, where he was hospitalized overnight.
What role do protests and alternative conventions play in the political process? How can they achieve their goal of raising awareness and compassion without their cause being undermined by violence? Ted Hayes, homeless advocate and senior director of Dome Village, joined us today in a chat.
Moderator at 8:02pm ET
Welcome, Ted Hayes.
Ted Hayes at 8:03pm ET
I would like to state that the National Homeless Convention is not a protest, but it is a city-sanctioned official convention. It's a demonstration of solutions. That's what the National Homeless Convention is.
Moderator at 8:03pm ET
You were hospitalized last night after being present when a protest turned violent. What exactly happened?
Ted Hayes at 8:03pm ET
I'm not sure where it all started, but I do know that I was shot by law enforcement in the chest. I was the first to be shot, and then shortly after that, other people were also shot and hit with plastic bullets and pellets and so forth.
Moderator at 8:04pm ET
What's your impression of the way the police handled the situation?
Ted Hayes at 8:07pm ET
The fact that I was shot, and the way things were handled after I was shot, show some pretty out-of-control attitudes. But it actually started off with the vandals and the so-called anarchists, whose philosophy and strategy is to provoke law enforcement to leave their disciplined lines and react and do things that are ugly, such as use tear gas, rubber bullets, bean bags, batons, et cetera. That is their intent.
I'm learning from these so-called demonstrators and anarchists that it is not their intention to correct America, but basically to destroy this country. They are not getting the message of corporate greed to America, but rather are taking pleasure in the fact that they are having demonstrations and that they are shutting down traffic; that they are getting on the news, and the sound bites, and the photo ops, and the shots of the police arresting them.
And if you listen, you'll hear them shouting, "Woo woo woo," you know...you'll never hear exactly what it is that the corporations are doing to the poor people of the world, to the environment of the earth. But what you see is this melee, and they are taking great pleasure in that.
Moderator at 8:07pm ET
Were any homeless people among those injured last night?
Ted Hayes at 8:07pm ET
Yes, there was a lady here from Rhode Island, she's a homeless advocate here...a couple of volunteers...I don't think any of the other homeless people were hurt.
Moderator at 8:07pm ET
Will you be back on the streets tonight?
Ted Hayes at 8:11pm ET
We will be on the streets tonight again, walking into the convention center area with our all-night vigil walk. However, we have spoken with the police authorities today, and we have agreed with them that if there is melee — bottle-throwing, et cetera — that we will not come into the area and create more confusion.
However, we can't get many homeless people to come out to these things. They're frightened, some have warrants, some are too busy looking for something to eat and a place to sleep.
Where the homeless did get hurt en masse last night was that our vigil was designed to go into the convention center area and present our message. We are calling for an executive order from the president to put an immediate end to the criminalization of the homeless, the street-dwelling homeless in particular. We call this status-class cleansing, like ethnic cleansing. We are calling for a national plan to end homelessness in this country within a 10-year period.
It's a domestic Marshall Plan. For those not familiar with the Marshall Plan: At the end of WWII, in 1947, the secretary of state, George Marshall, under Harry Truman, created a plan with the Allies to eradicate poverty and homelessness and create housing, employment and revitalize that society of Europe. And they did it within a 10-year period.
Now, that was a lot of effort. We have nowhere near that problem in America, and if we could do that in Europe for a war, surely we can do that for our homeless situation.
SB at 8:12pm ET
Why did you pick the site of the Democratic National Convention to have your counter-convention? It seems to me that the site of the Republican National Convention in Philadelphia would have been better, since Republicans are notoriously known for their distaste of expensive social programs that help the homeless, etc. Aren't you biting the hand that feeds you?
Ted Hayes at 8:14pm ET
No. Also, what are they feeding us? I am not, we are not singling out the Democrats. It just so happens, however, that the Democrats chose to have their party two and a half blocks away from the Dome Village in downtown L.A., where I live and reside with homeless people. When the spotlight comes to the Democratic convention, it is our belief that out of the peripheral vision of the media, they would see Dome Village and the National Homeless Convention, and would focus in on that.
You have to understand that we are not a protest group. We are not protesting the Democratic Party. We are a city-sanctioned convention, seeking solutions. We got hurt last night en masse because the so-called anarchists and the vandals robbed us of our freedom of speech by their carrying on. They knew that we were next.
It's like drinking from a pool of clear water, and once you've had your fill, you muddy it for the next group coming along. That's what happened to us last night. That hurt our cause, big-time. We have always been saying, when the elephants fight, the grass gets bruised. We were bruised by the behavior of that other group.
Moderator at 8:15pm ET
There were concerns that the police might try to "sweep" the homeless away from the convention area. Have there been any problems with the LAPD?
Ted Hayes at 8:15pm ET
No. Nothing of any major consequence. They were true to their word, as far as I could tell. There has been some pressure, definitely, but as far as the encampments go, where the homeless loiter and hang out, we have seen no such activity. Tipper Gore expressed concern about this expressly to me, as have mayor and the police. So far, they've been good to their word.
Moderator at 8:16pm ET
Mr. Hayes, how many activists have arrived to participate in the counter-convention?
Ted Hayes at 8:17pm ET
It's mainly local advocates and activists — less than 100. It's not a big event.
What I have come to realize more poignantly because of this event is that homeless advocates and activists don't have the bucks to be running around the country to conventions, especially homeless people. So what we have here now is a hodgepodge of some local advocates and activists, some from out of state, some homeless people, and volunteers.
Moderator at 8:17pm ET
Does your convention have a platform similar to the GOP and the DNC?
Ted Hayes at 8:20pm ET
No. Our number one candidate, so to speak, for the White House is our National Homeless Plan. We nickname it Homie Homeless. What we're doing here is building strategies as our platform planks to get President Clinton to acknowledge our requests and demands and enact an executive order. So we don't have, like, the party floor, debates, the caucuses — it is nothing like that at all.
This is basically people coming together around that one basic idea, and pushing for the executive order. We discuss all the elements of homelessness — veterans (our convention is dedicated to veterans), women with children, families, men with children, the mentally ill, the drug-addicted, the disabled. Whatever homeless issue you can think of, we covered it in our national plan.
Moderator at 8:20pm ET
Will help for the homeless come from the major parties, or will help come from a third party?
Ted Hayes at 8:22pm ET
I don't have confidence in the third party, either — the Greens or the Reforms. When you look at their platforms, there's hardly any mention of homelessness. Only of late did Ralph Nader even mention the word homelessness. Homelessness is off the scale of all the political parties — in fact, it's even off the scale of the so-called protestors and demonstrators as well.
This is why our movement is so militant about our position, because nobody seems to care. I have to say, however, that the media has been doing a fairly good job of contacting and reaching us, and not only that, but putting out our message. People throughout America are actually hearing this idea of a national plan to stop criminalizing the homeless, which is a threat to the Constitution and all our freedoms.
R. W. Mann at 8:22pm ET
Has life for homeless people improved under Bill Clinton? If so, how?
Ted Hayes at 8:24pm ET
Certain aspects of homelessness have improved, yes. But the vast majority of homelessness has gotten worse, in numbers and in complexities, because people are remaining homeless longer, and the longer a person remains homeless, the farther away from the mainstream they get.
This president crows about low unemployment, but the reason for the low unemployment is that most people on our level have given up looking for work and going to the unemployment office. Therefore, those statistics do not show. I'll tell you where they are showing up: in the homeless ranks, in our skid rows and so forth, in prisons, in cemeteries.
We say, for example, free Mumia. We say innocent people on death row are dying, and black men are disproportionately represented on death row. However, there are more people dying on skid row than on death row.
Moderator at 8:25pm ET
Homelessness is not a new problem, but why is America still unable to provide housing for all its citizens?
Ted Hayes at 8:27pm ET
Homelessness is not a housing issue. Homelessness is a vagrancy of the soul and of the mind, in that ever since the world has been, there have been homeless peoples. These are peoples who have been pushed outside of society's norms, into various dimensions or areas of degradation. They've always believed that anyone who fails is not worthy of respect. Thereby, they are insulated from the realities and cannot find realistic alternatives to the problem.
So it's what's going on in America. It's just simply, the rich are getting richer, the poor are getting poorer, and the middle class are getting transformed into tax slaves, paying taxes for the rich corporations and for the poor and the homeless, the bureaucracy, the military, even foreign aid.
However, I believe, especially given America's history, if the American people knew how to participate in correcting this crisis without sinking themselves, they would do it. That is why we have the National Homeless Convention, and the call for a national homeless plan, because we believe that if the American public could be shown what to do, they would do it. I have hope.
Moderator at 8:28pm ET
Ted, what do you hope this convention will achieve this week?
Ted Hayes at 8:29pm ET
We hope that we will move even closer to getting this president, Bill Clinton, to enact an executive order to stop the criminalization process and set forward the idea for a national plan. Second, we hope that your readers and other people — particularly the middle class and young people — will hear us and act upon what you hear when you're educated by us.
Thirdly, we hope that the international community and the poor around the world will learn that we exist, and will have hope until the day that we eradicate the travesties that are involved in poverty, globally.
Moderator at 8:30pm ET
For a complete list of convention chats and transcripts click here now. Thank you for joining us.