“Let the press stay here,” shout activists in New York’s East Village. Police officers have just cordoned off the block with plastic tape because they want to clear three tents under scaffolding. Half a dozen homeless people had taken refuge in it. The blue tents are what are left of what residents dubbed “Anarchy Row.” Some photographers are pushed aside. A police officer says people have the right to be on the sidewalk but “without the tents”. It’s raining a little and activists are distributing protein bars and water bottles to the camp residents. One of them is Sinthia Vee, who yells, “We want to stay here, or we want real apartments, not shelters!” The tents didn’t bother anyone, says the red-haired woman, and they didn’t even block the sidewalk. The camp was only cleared hours later, as the media will report in the evening. Several residents and activists were arrested.
For days there have been protests against the “sweeps” in the East Village, with which Mayor Eric Adams, who has been in office since the beginning of the year, is dissolving homeless camps throughout the city. Adams initially announced that he would have two hundred such camps cleared within a few weeks. Meanwhile, the administration announced that almost three hundred of them had already been eliminated. “To sweep” means something like “sweep out”. The notices sent to those affected in advance state that their camps would be “cleaned”. The notes refer them to shelters for the homeless, separate contact points for men, women and families. It’s not the evictions that are “cruel,” Mayor Adams said at a recent press conference — letting people sleep on the streets is.
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