From Facebook Lives to Community Events
On site of a recent sweep of a Sparks encampment, Michael Carson was up early, arriving before police, broadcasting on his live Facebook feed, and rallying other advocates to help those being uprooted. He’s also helped organize river cleanups through social media.
Carson wants to leave the earth a better place to future generations. He believes the environment, racial justice, poverty and houselessness are all issues on the same boat. He has challenged himself to try and help connect community members working towards improving all of these issues into a cohesive network and web of social change.
“By weaving all of these organizations, I’m hoping to create a really strong foundation and legacy for the next generation to build off of,” he said in a recent conversation with Our Town Reno along the Truckee river. Carson has been gaining momentum in the community as a catalyst for change.
Carson was approached by Beverly and Autumn Harry, two local Indigenous activists working to protect the environment. They wanted to begin a community clean up along the Truckee River. “They liked what I was doing and wanted to incorporate that into a river cleanup project,” Carson said. He went out scouted for areas that had a lot of trash near the low water level. These areas were targeted first to clean up before the river starts rising from snowmelt and spring runoff.
“It started out with, hey let’s go connect with these communities and bring them some food,” explained Carson “to us building relationships with them.” This outreach happened over a few weeks and resulted with the people camping along the river in helping with the clean up.
To date there have been two cleanups with almost 150 volunteers and nearly 30 tons of garbage collected. Carson talked about how much of the trash in and around the river was a result of a previous encampment sweep conducted by the city of Sparks. “They gave them 30 minutes to pack up all their belongings then bulldozed whatever was left,” he explained “into large piles and left them.”
From George Floyd to the Mutual Aid Network Movement
After George Floyd’s murder last year, Carson says he began a self-audit into his inherent and implicit biases. By identifying his power and privilege, he says he realized he can work to offset this imbalance.
Mutual aid is defined as a voluntary and reciprocal trading of resources and services benefiting both parties involved. On his Facebook, Carson recently wrote: “Mutual Aid is the radical act of caring for each other while working to change the world.”
Carson looked toward three educators, Caress Fitch, Terra Anderson and Christina Cleveland for more on what mutual aid looks like. They all suggested he reach out to organizations who are helping people with less privilege and resources and offer his time, energy and abilities.
“Finding organizations who are already on the frontlines working with the people who have less of that power, less of that privilege and less resources,” he explained “and showing up and saying ‘How can I help?’ while simultaneously using whatever platform I have to share with these organizations.”
Carson also converted his garage and porch into a community food pantry. Over the past year, he has learned not just how his own implicitly was part of the problem, but how he could refocus his privilege and help our neighbors in need. He said his personal audit has resulted in “striving to uncenter myself and really put the focus on the organizations that are already doing this work.”
A recent post on Carson’s Facebook page.
“If they’re starving and they’re cold, they can’t even get out of their tent to go find that help.”
Carson sees the struggle unfolding here in Reno as more of a problem orbiting trauma. With rent and home prices reaching unaffordable levels, and income levels stagnant, more and more people are forced out onto the streets. This is a form of trauma, that can lead to drug use and mental health deterioration.
“It’s hard to say what exactly the problem is, but what I am faced with and what I see as a root [problem] more than anything is people not being able to get the resources they need to heal their trauma,” he said. Because food insecurity is also a major factor working against people without housing, Carson now focuses his efforts on helping people stay nourished and stay warm.
Carson echoed many community members in that the police going into homeless camps and evicting them is not solving underlying factors. These evictions often happen early in the morning, when temperatures are below freezing and with little involvement from community advocates and volunteers. “If they are worried about it being clean, there are volunteers in the community that are willing to show up and help clean,” he said.
“Sweeping the camps and having people leave behind truckloads of belongings and then relocate to a camp that they think is more safe,” explained Carson “seems to be really problematic.” Carson has followed up with people who were recently forced out of Gateway park and learned that they were not eligible for what little space was available in the shelters nor wanted to relocate to another camp under the Wells Avenue overpass. He said people who are working on sobriety fear that camp would threaten their efforts at getting sober.
Carson believes the people farthest away from the problem are not addressing the issue, “the city, the police are showing up at these camps saying ‘hey we have a solution, pack up your stuff and leave,’ and that’s not working.”
What needs to be happening, Carson explained, is a collective decision making process with the people in these camps. Through this active involvement of people experiencing houselessness, community advocates, and the city, Carson feels a clear solution will arise.
“Radical transparency from the city and the police will help us as a community find solutions a lot quicker,” he said. “What I want everyone to do is to examine their power, their privilege, and their resources, and then find people who have less then them and go help those people.”