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.