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Friend,
Walk through downtown Athens, Georgia, on any given day and you may hear the sound of drumsticks — sometimes heavy, sometimes sharp, sometimes warm — beating in complex rhythm against upturned 5-gallon buckets.
The drumsticks are wielded by a man named Jerry. The buckets they strike serve as drums. But to Jerry they hold memories of the rainwater his grandfather used to catch in buckets very much like them, receptacles in which Jerry first found rhythm as a young boy.
Jerry is a musician. He is a father, a brother, a son. He is a man with a rich and complicated story. But he is also a man defined by this society not for all those parts of himself but for just one thing: He has for much of his life experienced homelessness. And for that, Jerry has repeatedly been cited, arrested and banned from public spaces.
In towns and cities across the U.S., men and women like Jerry are beset upon by public policy and a criminal legal system that has been weaponized against them. Bans on sleeping, camping or panhandling in public spaces, passed in increasing numbers by state and local governments, are criminalizing people with no place to shelter, instead of addressing them with comprehension and compassion.
A new report released by the Southern Poverty Law Center draws attention to this inequity.
The report, Sheltering Injustice: A Call for Georgia to Stop Criminalizing People Experiencing Homelessness, is focused on Georgia. There, a state law went into effect in 2023 requiring the enforcement of bans on public camping. But lawmakers passed the legislation with no study of the immediate impact it will have on people experiencing homelessness.
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In solidarity,
Your friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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