On Saturday my friend, Chloe Noble, and her Homeless Youth Pride Walk companion, Jill Hardman, traveled through Salt Lake City on their way to San Francisco to raise awareness about LGBQT homeless youth.
From KSTU:
and from the Salt Lake Tribune:
Homeless youth deterrent, big time.
After speaking to Jude, one of the organizers (the same Jude who spoke to my employers back in the day about being trans-friendly and who also helped me with my 3rd injection!), it turned out that Dell Schanze - better known as Super Dell - made death threats, so the SLC police were around to make sure that everything went down safely.
Not having Super Dell pilot a motorized paraglider into the Pride Center was a good thing but, unfortunately, the presence of police were a huge repellent for terrified homeless youth.
About 30 minutes later, I noticed youth popping up here and there. And then some, who were homeless, spoke and thanked everyone for providing them an audience to express themselves to. As I was leaving, a few of those homeless youth were actually interacting with two of the officers, seemingly feeling safe given the circumstances and having an actual discussion. Not an every day thing to witness. Hope it happens more often. This homeless youth walk seems to be having a really positive, insightful impact, so it just might!
and from the Salt Lake Tribune:
2 women go the extra (thousand) milesIt was a really neat event, particularly in regards to a certain social dynamic that occurred. When I first got there, there were no apparent homeless youth there. But there were a handful of Salt Lake City police officers hovering about.
Salt Lake pair trekking across the nation to raise awareness homeless LGBT youths.
It could be an abandoned building or a boarded-up subway terminal, a church courtyard or a covered porch.
All that matters to Chloe Noble is that it's a safe, dry place to sleep at night.
Noble and her best friend, Jill Hardman, are walking across the nation, living on the street, to raise awareness of an alarmingly large segment of the homeless population: lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youths. Read More >
Homeless youth deterrent, big time.
After speaking to Jude, one of the organizers (the same Jude who spoke to my employers back in the day about being trans-friendly and who also helped me with my 3rd injection!), it turned out that Dell Schanze - better known as Super Dell - made death threats, so the SLC police were around to make sure that everything went down safely. Not having Super Dell pilot a motorized paraglider into the Pride Center was a good thing but, unfortunately, the presence of police were a huge repellent for terrified homeless youth.
About 30 minutes later, I noticed youth popping up here and there. And then some, who were homeless, spoke and thanked everyone for providing them an audience to express themselves to. As I was leaving, a few of those homeless youth were actually interacting with two of the officers, seemingly feeling safe given the circumstances and having an actual discussion. Not an every day thing to witness. Hope it happens more often. This homeless youth walk seems to be having a really positive, insightful impact, so it just might!
Hey there.. I am not sure if you are aware but Lynn and I used to be very active with homeless youth. It is even more depressing in Utah where laws ignore the problem in favor of the illusion of happy families which are often terrible abusive situations for some of these kids. Anyway ran across this on my reader and had to comment. Email me if you want more info or to solicit help k? Thanks M.
ReplyDeleteOMG You are moderating comments! Sore spot with me. Love ya :-)
ReplyDeleteUm, did they ARREST Dell? Because death threats are, shall we say, ILLEGAL?
ReplyDeleteBlake: I do want more info! I'll send you an e-mail post haste! In regards to the moderating, I was getting some really weird ones or spam ones for a bit there - or some (like from family) that would be better kept anonymous. I post them all, always, minus the spam. :]
ReplyDeleteKestryl: Hopefully? Or maybe they've had to make a legal exception for him since he probably makes about a hundred death threats a day.
ReplyDeleteHey Everyone! This is Chloe Noble. Thanks Mel, for doing this article. I thought it was awesome too, that SLCPD played it cool at the Shine. At other Shines in other cities the cops actually ran the homeless youth off - BEFORE THEIR SHINE! We had to go find the youth and convince them again that the Shine was really for them. There are a lot of barriers in society keeping these youth separate from humanity. But Utah is a GOOD place to test out new programs and then implement them nationwide. So thats the next step. If you wanna get on board, please email me. noble.echo@gmail.com Thanks for your support! : )
ReplyDeleteChloe: Thank YOU. :]
ReplyDelete