Disaster At Tent City Over Labor Day Weekend

As most of you know, a number of us worked extremely hard to stop the closure of Tent City over the past few weeks. We succeeded in buying some time to correct some of the problems and were well underway with that effort when disaster struck this weekend. I had spent the weekend with a photographer from the Tennessean, interviewing individuals at the camp and shooting pictures for an upcoming article that is supposed to run in Friday's edition. On Saturday morning, we entered the camp and heard the following tale about the previous evening:

A party consisting of many folks in the front portion of the area got out of hand when, after some prolonged beer drinking, someone made a play for a woman whose boyfriend was in jail. A fight erupted and allegedly a man was stabbed at the camp.

Circumstances around the stabbing are conflicting and interestingly enough, the man was able to walk all the way to Riverfront park before he contacted police. Officers arrived at the camp in force and questioned party participants while searching for evidence. Although no blood was found at the location of the fight, subsequent investigations and visits to the camp eventually led to the confiscation of a knife from one of the members of the camp. The victim is currently at Vanderbilt Hospital hospitalized while being treated for stab wounds. I spoke with Lt. Swisher yesterday, who, along with Commander Huggins, visited the camp almost immediately after a reporter from the Tennessean and I had canvassed the camp speaking with residents on unrelated issues. They have decided that the camp will close and told camp residents they had until the end of September to vacate the area. More as it develops but frankly, I don't think we'll be able to save it this time and that is a shame, but the individuals responsible for the brouhaha knew the camp was hanging by a thread in the first place. Those of us who have been working with camp members have unequivocally stated that having police contact for anything at this point would be a very bad thing. To have even a report of a stabbing occur at the location would bring troubles none of us could ward off. The sad part of this is that there a still a number of individuals at the camp who have never resorted to violence and have lived quietly and peacefully for years at the location and who have worked damned hard over the past couple of weeks to clean and improve conditions at the camp. Furthermore, the party itself was thrown by a resident who had only been in the camp for three months, and the event was attended primarily by new residents at the camp. No one can say they weren't warned that improper and/or illegal behavior would not be tolerated any longer. One (or in this case, several) bad apple has indeed spoiled the whole bunch, ripping apart in one simple act the efforts of dozens of us who worked to save the camp in the first place..... ....