We were sitting on the raised flowerbed along the southern perimeter
of Liberty Plaza, chatting while we finished our meals. The din of the
general assembly meeting could be heard in the background and Harris
was telling me about the punk band he’d been in during the ’80s when
three men came over and interrupted. “This is the guy I was telling you
about, who the police told to come here.” Bob, an old timer who I’ve seen
around at a number of marches and OWS events, had been talking with
us earlier about being homeless in New York. Now he was back with
these two men, one of them apparently from “legal.” They were all eager
to hear Harris’s story about how he’d been sleeping uptown when two
police officers woke him up, told him that there had been a complaint,
and suggested that he “go down to Zuccotti”:
Bob: Hey, Harris, tell them about what happened with the police.
Harris: Well, I’ve been sleeping in the same place for the last ten years
and I have never been bothered by any “complaints.” But these two police
officers come over and wake me up . . . They made sure that I got up
to leave, but I didn’t come down here. I just went to another one of my
spots.
Harris talked about how he knew everyone in the neighborhood and has
never caused any trouble, and how it seemed impossible that someone
would all of a sudden raise a complaint. The man from legal then interjected: “So, then it’s confirmed. The police are actually doing this.” There
was a pause and then he looked directly at Harris and said sternly: “Go back uptown".

It took a moment to register that this was an act of banishment. The
silence was broken by Bob, supplicating awkwardly, “But wait, no, Harris
is actually a good guy. Like I was saying . . .” But Harris was quick with a
response that dissolved the tension. “I’m not sleeping here.” He went on
to talk about how he had been distributing chocolate throughout the day.
Having momentarily placated his adversary, he continued, “The problem
with these other homeless people who are coming down here is that they
are not contributing.”
Now reconciled, the conversation turned to why “contributing” should
be the basic criteria for whether the homeless should be allowed to stay.
The legal attaché waxed political about how freeloaders were bad for the
movement, but that homeless who are willing to contribute could be an
asset. Then the two men asked Harris if he would make a proposal to
the general assembly summing up their conversation. Harris declined,
but they persuaded him to dictate a message that they could read on his
behalf. I was appointed scribe and wrote down his declaration:
If you are not contributing to the movement, then why are you
here? If you do not go on marches, why are you here? This
is a society of people who have come together to protest. If
you are not protesting, why are you here? This is not a place
for free food or free cigarettes. If you live in New York,
go home. If you are homeless in New York, there are plenty
of places to be homeless. Go there. Feel free to visit, maybe
even eat some free food, occasionally. But don’t stay here.
Don’t cause trouble. This society gives us enough trouble.
This encounter conveys the challenges that lie ahead in relations between
the Occupy Movement and chronically homeless, who have been present
since its inception. Based on our observations, it appears that the general
exclusion of the homeless from public life has already begun to take root
in the Occupy Movement as a way of establishing legitimate occupation movement as vagrant and lawless, putting pressure on municipal authorities to crack down. Indeed, the largest risk seems to lie in this politics
of representation, through which municipal governments might convert
the question of occupation from a political right of protest to a question
of “public health and safety”—the classic premise used against homeless
encampments for decades.
Reframing the Homeless Question
Through these representations of the homeless, both in the media and
at times within the movement itself, the homeless question has become
framed as an informal calculus of the costs and benefits of including or
excluding the most brutally impoverished. At this critical moment in the
progress of the movement, the homeless question has become a question
of exclusion, legitimacy, and belonging.
There are a series of problems involved in conflating the right to camp
with a responsibility to contribute. First, the question of “contribution”
and demanding proof of support for the cause is discriminatory; it is a
burden faced only by those who “appear homeless.” Those who can pass
for “real protesters” in their dress, disposition, and discussion are considered assets in their mere presence and rarely questioned. Second, it is
important to remember that many of the occupy camps have co-opted
public spaces that had long been occupied by the homeless, and in some
cases have even displaced these populations. In some cases, the protests
have even inadvertently drawn violence towards these rough sleepers.

One homeless woman we spoke to in Oakland, who had been sleeping
around Oscar Grant Plaza long before the occupation, complained of
being tear-gassed and robbed in the wake of a protest. Third, the dichotomy of “contributing” and “freeloader” mirrors the more general divisive distinctions between the deserving and undeserving poor.
We must therefore reframe the homeless question beyond the division into those “dissenting or seeking shelter” (as the New York Times
headline had it). Although some homeless people may be converted to
the goals of dissent, many will not or cannot, and the movement must
take special care not to instrumentalize this precarious group in the way
it seems the NYPD has. At the same time, opposing the survival goals of
the homeless and the political goals of the occupiers has led to discriminatory practices at OWS and elsewhere, such as those of the Zuccotti
kitchen staff who were recently embroiled in accusations of discrimination against those who appeared to be “professionally homeless.”
The “homeless problem” of OWS is not a problem of the movement,
but rather of the economic system at which it is aimed. It is a problem
that society ignores or treats through punishment and exclusion, but
the movement cannot afford to respond to it in this way. The “homeless
question” should be reframed as a question of how dissenters should
treat those seeking food and a safe place to sleep. Rather than supporting a politics of exclusion towards the homeless, some occupations have
explicitly taken up their cause. The kitchens at Occupy Oakland and
Occupy Philadelphia openly aim to feed the city’s homeless. In Atlanta,
protesters are working to save a shelter that is at risk of shutting down,
and in Austin the movement has mobilized to push for more affordable
housing and legalizing tent cities for the homeless.  These efforts point
to what new forms of solidarity and alliance could look like. Although
protesters and the homeless may differ in their use of occupied spaces,
the movement cannot afford to let this difference mask the more relevant question of why both groups have come to share the same ground.
 “Why Are You Here?”
The way Harris used the rhetorical question “Why are you here?” to
shame the “undeserving” resonates with the homeless question currently posed in both in the media and sadly within parts of the movement itself. It is important for the movement to take Harris’ question
seriously and articulate why it is that scores of homeless have flocked to
occupations for relief. Why are the homeless are at these occupations
rather than other public places? In our discussions with the homeless in
New York and Oakland it became apparent that they are simultaneously
being pushed by the punitive edge of the state, directed to the park by
the police, and pulled in by the failure of miserly welfare policies, preferring g to eat in an environment without the demeaning rituals of shelters
and soup kitchens.
Jane, an African-American woman in her forties who has only recently
become homeless, was staying at a shelter in Richmond until Occupy
Oakland set up camp in Frank Ogawa Plaza. Although she complains
about the colder weather, she prefers her outdoor campsite to the shelter
bed. “That shelter is dangerous, dirty, and the staff treats you like shit.
Here, I feel like I have a voice, and people treat you like a real person.
I can weather this cold for a bit of dignity.” Jim, a homeless man who
has lived on the streets for over a decade and is sympathetic but not contributing to the movement, has been spending more and more time
around Oakland’s encampment. “Cops and businesses give you a hard
time around this city, telling you to move on, its nice to have a space
where you don’t feel threatened.”
In this respect, many occupations are incubating a movement against
the punitive practices of banishment towards the chronically homeless.
These practices are also inherent in what’s left of our degrading welfare
provisions, which observe—with parsimonious strictness—distinctions
between the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor. At the same time, those
in the movement are understandably concerned that such a strategy
might overwhelm the camps’ capacities and, in becoming the primary
function of the site, obfuscate a cause whose goals are much broader.
As we move forward, grappling with both immediate and long-term
questions about the place of the homeless in this movement, it is essential that we remember the systemic and historical connections that bind
us together. That the history of capitalism is also the history of systemic
social and economic exclusion. And that today we are all at risk of becoming part of the relative surplus population.
Moments of expulsion and economic relegation have occurred in fits
and spurts throughout modern history, but they are most acute during
periods of general economic crisis. It is therefore to this logic of exclusion and crisis that we should look to in posing the question, “Why are
you here?” What is important is that the answer actually encompasses
both the homeless and the broader OWS movement—both have been brought into existence by economic relegation, crisis, and expulsion. We
must understand that a common logic underlies the mass foreclosures,
the expulsion of low and middle-income earners from their homes, the
emergence of an indebted and seemingly economically redundant generation of students, the growth of mass incarceration as a tool for containing impoverished populations, the widespread and growing homelessness of the past forty years, and the racial dynamics that play out
in these processes. It is no simple coincidence that street homelessness
reemerged in America at the same historical moment that the top 1 percent began its rapid ascent, in the early 1970s. It is only when we take
our common predicament seriously that we can answer the question of
why we are here. We each have our own story, but ultimately we have
arrived together at this juncture of precariousness, insecurity, and exclusion. This common predicament must become a source of solidarity and
a foundation for the difficult task of building a new politics of inclusion.