Transcript

Selena Kilmoyer: One of the pieces that was so challenging for me as a person of faith, “How can I reconcile the fact that I am giving just bits and pieces of assistance to people who are living in unheated tents in the state of Washington while I spend time with them?” And then I get in my car and I go home to a warm house. Or to members of faith communities who were good enough to host, but still kept their boundary on what was their property and their building and forbade the homeless inside other than designated times. That troubles me. It will always trouble me as a person of faith.

[Music begins playing in the background.]

Mindy Chambers: Welcome to Community Roots, a community oral history project based in Olympia, Washington about how people come together to make change and create new possibilities for themselves and their neighbors. I’m Mindy Chambers. I have lived in Olympia since 1989 and for many years I’ve worked with dozens of others to bring about practical and lasting changes to a system that puts housing out of reach for a growing number of people.

Today’s story is part of our series about the origins of Camp Quixote, a tent city that emerged in downtown Olympia, Washington in February 2007. It was the first visible, self-governing tent city in Olympia, a short chapter in a much longer and unfinished story about our community’s relationship with our neighbors experiencing homelessness. We were interested in how the tent city first took root and the alliances and community learning at the center of this story.

[Music ends playing in the background.]

Today we hear from Selena Kilmoyer. Selena was a member of the Olympia Unitarian Universalist congregation when it decided to be the location for Camp Quixote when city officials were unwilling to allow the camp to continue downtown. Her roots in advocacy stretch back decades. The congregation, and other organizers, including camp residents, drew on her past experience with local efforts to shelter the unhoused as they moved forward. Selena belonged to the Catholic Worker Movement, which celebrates the words of its founder, Dorothy Day, who said, “God meant things to be much easier than we have made them.” Here’s Selena.

Selena: I think it came out of a very intellectual place. Student advocates had done too much studying and decided they needed to make something practical out of all that they were learning. And so their hearts were in the right place. I want to say that upfront. But the folks that currently wanted to dream this dream, thought they could really be more effective, get more attention, if they could do this downtown, in the heart of downtown Olympia. And that was either smart or incredibly dumb [laughs], however you look at it. But that's what they were determined to do. 

And they began by spending designated amounts of time at the old Bread and Roses Advocacy Center on Fourth Avenue, and talking about and discerning and discussing and studying and sharing. And more and more of the homeless folks were being invited to participate in these conversations. And that was good because their voices needed to be heard.

They had the lived experience. Most of the advocates didn't know how to survive even overnight, one night. The homeless folks started to speak up, and it wasn't just complaining. It was, “We need to do something, and if we're the only one to do it, then let's do it.” And that was something new. That was something very new. And that was really very valuable, I think.

[Music begins playing in the background.]

I was witnessing from a very negative stance quite honestly, because prior to Camp Quixote a group of very enthusiastic advocates had rented a building off of Pacific Avenue up on Devoe Street. And they dreamed a dream as well. And they were going to do something, likewise, get a group of the houseless, homeless people, out of the woods primarily and into a building. Indoors. And it was all talk but there was no follow through. And so I came to these meetings about the camp because I did not want Bread and Roses to end up being responsible for the dream if others who were doing the dreaming walked away.

[Music ends playing in the background.]

It came very quickly. It happened very quickly. A lot of people were very enthusiastic when they drove through town. A lot of people gave donations of all sorts. There was a sense of aliveness and solidarity and community, and it was a good thing. And then, of course, the city officials started pushing back and saying, “You can't stay here. You got to leave.” And that happened very quickly. And the conversations happened very quickly. The folks that were involved with the camp at the time were getting more and more stressed. The city manager Steve Hall was getting more and more stressed. He invited me to a cup of tea downtown and a meeting with Art Vaeni one day.

Now Arthur Vaeni was the Unitarian Universalist Minister up on the west side. And he was a beautiful deep listener. And he made everyone feel as though he or she were important. And so he could listen to a group of clergy argue and find the goodness in all the voices. He could likewise sit in city council meetings and hear wisdom and defuse the criticism. And so he was in a great place to be part of this conversation. I think it was timely.

[Music begins playing in the background.]

My very clear recollection is that there was a timeline. There was a definite timeline.

Arthur called his board of trustees together on a Thursday night. Arthur invited me to be part of that conversation, and so we met with three of the representatives from the camp. I think there was one homeless guy, and there were two of the advocates if I'm not mistaken.

The UU’s notoriously, and I say it with love, are brain throwers and brain users. They could ask really good questions and demanded really good answers. And so it was very taxing. But they got their questions answered. And so they agreed that they would take the camp. And so that was decided, between, let's say, 10 p.m. on Thursday night and the next morning the Olympia Police Department showed up en masse with the blazing emergency lights at pre-dawn at the camp in downtown Olympia, and basically encircled the campers who were there. A terrifying, terrifying experience. And so whoever had the jurisdiction - the right to - demanded that the camp be moved by 9 a.m. So from pre-dawn to 9 a.m. a lot of people hustled. I know that Phil Owen from Bread and Roses jumped in and he started organizing people who would have pickup trucks who literally would come before they went to work on this Friday morning to help move. And it was just helter-skelter.

[Music begins playing in the background.]

But by the grace of God, at the end of a very long day, it got moved. By midnight of that first night, they were all settled in.

I think it was an absolute gift. I really do. I think it was probably one of the most significant ways for people of faith to actually live out their faith that I've experienced here in Olympia.

[Music ends playing in the background.]

And the host tent became a critical part of that mutual growing and understanding – that breaking down of the barriers. Because there is definitely a barrier between the housed and the unhoused. And that became the place – the venue where the camp could really learn how to function as a community. And the host tent was set up first with volunteers to be manned, if you will, on shifts day and night. And so we had folks come from faith communities and sit at the table. During the day it was a place where they could interact. It was a place where the residents could vent, they could joke. They could just be people. It was a wonderful, wonderful thing. And it also kept communications open. It was the place where folks in the neighborhood who had doubts and concerns could come in and get to know people. It broke down so many of the myths, the fears, the apprehensions and so on and so forth. And that was also a place where some of the campers would have needs and the faith community members could help problem solve for dentists or doctors or whoever.

[Music begins playing in the background.]

And it was just a wonderful, wonderful lived experience. It was powerful. It was beautiful.

Wouldn't it be nice if we could sit here and say, “Absolutely! It made a huge difference and everything changed.” It helped at the time. It helped create a model that was viable and could be replicated. That was one of the gifts of Camp Quixote.

There are people in the community and faith communities who are still engaged in helping. But what I'm not seeing is I'm not seeing a burst of creativity.

[Music ends playing in the background.]

How to find solutions, and new-way solutions, and dare-to-try solutions. And I wish we had more of that energy.

[Music begins playing in the background.]

It taught me a great deal about how people in the community are empowered to help make changes in our community. And that was huge learning for me to be part of that process. And I think too it gave me a much deeper faith and trust in the power of a loving God. I'm a richer person because of that experience. I'm a more humble person. It grew me. It grew me up as a person.

[Music begins playing in the background.]

Meg Rosenberg: Community Roots is produced by Window Seat Media. This story was a collaboration between Selena Kilmoyer and Mindy Chambers. Mindy was one of our Community Roots cohort members. She brought this story idea to us and interviewed Selena and helped to edit this story. Elaine Vradenburgh did the audio editing for this story and Nick Rawson produced the music for this series. Funding for this series was provided by the Thurston County Heritage Grant program, the Marie Lamfrom Foundation, ArtsFund, the Community Foundation of South Puget Sound, and from community support from people like you. To learn more about Window Seat Media, hear more stories, or to make a donation to support this series, visit www.windowseatmedia.org. To learn more about Quixote Communities, the organization that grew from this tent city, and to support its work, go to www.quixotecommunities.org.

[Music ends playing in the background.]