Street Roots • Oct. 5-11, 2018
O p in io n
Debates on fairness must include everyone
r. Christine Blasey Ford captured
As we grapple with the ongoing #MeToo
the attention of people across the
conversation, I continue to think about all
nation with her strength as she
the people on the streets who contend with
educated the country about trauma and sexual violence at higher rates than housed
memory and courage. Like so many of you
people, and who, with a lack of housing
- gathered around
security, continue to be unsafe. Justice is
televisions in hair
often fleeting because cases are more
salons and living
difficult to pursue when people don’t have
rooms and day
addresses for follow-up.
shelters - many
Their experiences must be connected to
DESK
memories have
this national conversation.
By Kaia Sand
resurfaced for me.
Part of the calculation that people have
Despite the
to contend with as part of their daily
wholeness of each of
decisions around survival is - which places
us as human beings -
are safe? Which shelter must they avoid?
our ambitions, our experiences - there
How do they survive the street? Is it worth
have been too many times when women
enduring an abusive partner if it shields
were simply there for the pleasure or anger them from another abuse?
or violence of some men who felt entitled
A number of our active vendors are
to our sexuality - that abhorrent
women. There are ways they take care of
“uproarious laughter” that Ford described
each other. Recently, one woman did not
of assailants “having fun at
feel safe in the shelter where
my expense,” Ford said of
she was staying, and she did
Brett Kavanaugh and his
It Is difficult as a
not feel safe outside - which
friend Mark Judge.
passerby to read the had been her only option that
One memory that
week. So another woman
circumstances
sin-prised me, because I
found her a tent in her camp.
around
the
small
hadn’t remembered it in so
From their descriptions, it is
encampments that
long, was a time in high
a self-governed, off-the-grid
school when a boy made a
crop up around the space, strong with rules;
cartoon of me that the
maintained with security
city, but It Is
school newspaper
Important to realize from its participants. I
published. Perhaps this
recently visited one such
that sometimes
memory resurfaced
emergent camp, and the
people
organize
because I now work at a
unhoused folks showed me *
with what tools they how they patched the fence
newspaper, and certainly it
is because I scoured the
to protect each other from
have to take care
predators, winnowing access
yearbook entries of
of each other.
to one opening, which they
Kavanaugh and read all the
shared the responsibility of
coded references that
patrolling 24 hours a day.
degraded women -
It is difficult as a passerby to read the
references cast in. the prose equivalent of
circumstances around the small
that uproarious laughter.
encampments that crop up around the city,
I remember how I did not speak up to
but it is important to realize that sometimes
say how much I despised that cartoon of
people organize with what tools they have
me - a sexualized depiction, with a caption
to take care of each other. In some
that read something like “boys, don’t touch
encampments, this is what is happening.
this” - because I would be seen as uptight,
These Kavanaugh hearings open up a
without a sense of humor. These were the
big, national conversation, and so many of
same years when, on the other side of that
us feel rage and emotion - itself a form of
objectifying coin, my dear friend’s name
knowledge. What do we do with this kind of
was transformed by hissing classmates into
knowledge? We watch all of this play out in
one that involved the word “slu t” This was
the nation’s capital, and fight for the
the late 1980s, a few years later than
integrity of th e justice system at its highest
Kavanaugh’s high school years, and it was
levels.
all the air we breathed.
The threat that decisions around fairness
It is the air we continue to breathe.
are, in fact, nothing about fairness is deeply
What an extraordinary national
destabilizing. As we move this conversation
conversation we are immersed in, and what
forward, it’s important for all of us to
love and compassion we need to extend to
remember that for people in our society
each other - to all of us.
who are at the extreme end of poverty,
Our streets are filled with unhoused
women, men, non-binary folks - people who many of whom who have suffered sexual
violence, it just never has been fair.
have experienced sexual trauma, and who
have sexual violence perpetrated on them.
D
K a ia S a n d is the
executive director o f
Street Roots. You can
reach her at
kaia@streetroots.org.
Follow her on
Twitter @ m kaiasand
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