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Gather around children, it’s story time. [Hi, Sweetpea (the cat).]

Okay, story time.

So I grew up in a small town in Indiana called Bloomington. And in 1968, I believe, there was a firebombing of a Black-owned bookstore. And after the firebombing, the original owners of the bookstore dedicated the lot where their store had been to become “People's Park.” And they worked with the city to designate the lot as a park that was for the people, by the people, of the people, and wrote it into the deed or agreement to ensure that the People's Park would be open to all people.

So, fast forward to my childhood. I grew up during a period of time in Indiana where we were seeing waves of both the meth epidemic and the opioid epidemic. We were also seeing the economic downfall of so much of rural and small town America. We were also seeing nationwide and worldwide wealth inequality get worse. We were also seeing housing crises get worse. I mean, it was everything all at once.

And so homelessness in the area skyrocketed. Not only that, but because Bloomington was a university town and hypothetically had more resources, more social organizations, things like that, small towns elsewhere in Indiana would buy people on the street bus tickets and send them to Bloomington. Rather than face their own people who are hurting and suffering within their own communities, they would to send them to Bloomington. But even the resources that we had in Bloomington got overwhelmed, because when the entire state sends people, it wasn't actually a solution.

Anyway, unsurprisingly, because People's Park was open to everybody, there were lots of people who lived in People's Park. This wasn't the only place where homelessness was occurring, where there were tents, where there were people living, but People's Park became kind of a focus point. And it also became symbolic because around People's Park there was a bunch of gentrification happening in this university town. People's Park was very close by to the university. And so as we're seeing all of these compounding social crises and homelessness on the rise in Bloomington, People's Park became this area where the state (as in like the city government and the cops, just the government in general) really started to be aggressive about social cleansing. It was sort of like, “we can't have these two things so close to each other,” right? “We can't have this big push at gentrification happening right next to this really high concentration of people hurting in these particular ways.”

This was all over town. Encampments started to get swept and the aggression and violence increased, which doesn't solve anything. But the more that people were pushed from place to place in town and kicked out of People's Park, people would get shunted into the woods. But this is where things really turned dark and violent. Because once people were invisibilized in the woods, that's where violence against homeless people really could kick off. And that people could get away with it. And there's been a series of homeless encampments deep in the woods being set on fire.

My understanding is that there's a variety of people who have done this. Some off-duty cops and also just some right-wing vigilante types. [Bye, Sweet Pea (the cat).] Yeah, uh pouring accelerant on homeless encampments and setting them on fire in the woods.

And as this started to happen, it meant that people understood: once the homeless encampments get successfully broken up in town, the alternative in the woods is so much worse. And so much darker. And people aren't gonna make it out alive. So people increased their defense of homeless encampments in town, resisting sweeps, resisting having the encampments dismantled.

And there was a showdown at People's Park - I remember - in 2017, right before I moved away. Where again, people understood this was sort of like the last line of defense. And a prison guard plowed his car through the people who had gathered at People's Park to try to defend it from a sweep. Yeah. He plowed his car through the crowd. He missed me by about that much and took the person right next to me. Thankfully no one was killed.

I have told these stories to people in my life in Chicago. People have kind of been surprised and shocked. Not about the whole story, because this happens in Chicago too. Encampments get broken up, homeless people get pushed around all the time. It’s the element of…once you push people into the woods, they become truly invisible. And that this is just a regular thing: that people get pushed into the woods and then set. on. fire. And also people have been really shocked, like, “why hasn't any news covered this? I’m shocked that i've never heard about this!”

I’m not shocked. There's so much happening in rural America and small town America that no one is paying attention to. And I didn't even have proof. I didn't even have a news story to point to, to show people in my life in Chicago that this was a real thing, that i wasn't making this up.

Until just now. There was a story that was published that was about yet another encampment set on fire on December 18th, 2024. And it had pictures. And I want you all to see this. Please look at this. I've never been able to show people pictures before. But this is what it is. Please just look. I don't know what else to say or to ask. I'm not sure there even is an ask, this is a much bigger thing than all of us. But please look. Because you can. Please look. And thank you for listening.

Photo credits: Jeremy Hogan/The Bloomingtonian

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