This guy Joe Walsh, a Vietnam veteran, has been at city council every week for the last month protesting the city’s new “sidewalk management plan” which Walsh and 568 people on Facebook think is just an unconstitutional rehash of the old Sit/Lie ordinance.
Here’s the thing about Walsh: Every week he’s shown up in a different, homemade anti-Sit Lie shirt. Last week’s had stick-on letters reading “Sit Lie Shame” and this week’s is a stencil. “I’m trying to assemble a whole wardrobe,” he jokes.
Walsh’s main beef with the new sidewalk rules is that the law leans on the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to justify clearing people out of a six to eight foot wide swath of sidewalk. But Walsh, who wheels around an oxygen tank with him and is supposed to be using a cane, says the council chambers itself is causes trouble for people with disabilities. There is no designated place for people in wheelchairs or with mobility issues to sit up front at the council hearings—when Walsh took a seat in front at the May 26 council meeting, he was asked to get up and move to the back so council could do a photoshoot with the Rose Festival Princesses and some people in unitards. “I flipped my top over that,” he says. Though Walsh vented his complaints to a city hall staffer last week after testifying about the problems to city council, he also filed an ADA complaint with the Department of Justice.
Meanwhile, Walsh has company out at the weekly protest: Roberto Lovato, a fellow member of the Oregon Progressive party who has a reversible sign ready for any protest!
Protesting is what you do I guess when you have nothing else to do. Like actually help people or something silly like that.
@D I think Joe Walsh would say he’s helping the people affected by the sit-lie ordinance by representing their opinions in city council.
My point is anyone in such a desperate situation that they must lie in the street needs more immediate help than a stranger showing a home made T shirt to the city council.
And when he gets just as upset about being asked to move out of the way of photoshoot, it seems like he just likes getting mad. “Dammit everyone, pay attention to ME!”
@D: What does your point have to do with Joe Walsh? Should we just ignore the systemic causes of homelessness and only treat the symptoms? No. Try and think these things through next time.
@D — Joe (and Roberto) both do a lot more than this article mentions, and it’s pretty obvious this article is not offered as a “complete profile” of the charitable, political, or leisure past-times of either person. And Joe, for one, is hardly a stranger to many people experiencing homelessness in Portland, and in my experience, anyway, he has a pretty good grasp of their needs, immediate and otherwise.
I’m less sure that you do.
So a city ordinance is a “systemic cause” of homelessness?
Thinking through to the logical conclusion of your reasoning (“system”-caused homelessness) leads to the only solution being the government holding mentally ill and substance addicted people against their will, which is illegal.
And I in no way am criticizing any good work they do for people on the street. Just saying it helps more than protesting.
I guess the Rocky Mountain Way royalties have dried up.
I’m off to Walsh’s Etsy page!
I still see plenty of people sitting on the sidewalk. Now they’re just a bit more over the side. Doesn’t seem like the greatest injustice in the world to me.