Yesterday Mayor Kasim Reed claimed that Occupy Atlanta has cost the city $30,000 dollars. While we have no idea how he came up with that figure, we do know that we have not asked for the porta potties or the excessive police presence and we would prefer not to have them.
The Mayor’s statement highlights the crisis of priorities in Atlanta and around the country. This city has spent millions on making public spaces inaccessible to the homeless, rather than using those resources to build the infrastructure to support people without homes. The resources are there, where’s the priority? The fact is our city would rather relegate the homeless to the darkest cracks of Atlanta than deal with the problem. To add insult to injury the city has been involved in a sustained campaign to defund and close the largest homeless shelter in the southeast, the Task Force for the Homeless, which is also the only shelter that is both free and turns NO ONE away.
Since Occupy Atlanta took the park we’ve created space for the homeless to be with us. We provide 800 meals a day, blankets, clean clothing, and medical supplies to the homeless. Many of the homeless have joined our committees, volunteered to help cook food, or plugged in some other way. They are treated with dignity and are recognized for their valuable contributions to our movements. We have also had our share of struggles working with the mentally unstable and PTSD suffering veterans who are with us, but we take on those struggles as we think a good community should.
We are here to help Atlanta, and the work has already begun. Instead of complaining about small expenditures that you wasted on services we don’t want, perhaps you should roll up your sleeves and spend that money on real issues of social concern.
Our 11am press conference today(10/21) addressed the Mayors statements directly, we also outlined plans to march to the intersection of Peachtree and Trinity to shine a light on one of the dark corners of the city where the homeless are hidden in plain sight.
