Shaun Lin

Lewis: [00:00:09] Good afternoon. I’m Lynn Lewis interviewing Shawn Lin, on October 11th, 2019, here in East Harlem for the Picture the Homeless Oral History Project. Hi, Shaun.

Lin: [00:00:15] Hi, Lynn. Thank you for hosting me here.

Lewis: Thank you for coming, and we’ll just jump right in. Can you talk about where you’re from?

Lin: [00:00:27] Sure. I grew up in Southern California, and I grew up the child of immigrants  from Taiwan. I moved to New York in 2006 to go to law school. I dropped out of law school after a year, and in my time in law school was actually my first time meeting a community organizer. I had gone down on a service trip to New Orleans and was interviewing people who were living in FEMA trailers about the amount of aid that they had received from the federal government, from FEMA and from their insurance companies, and we were just supposed to compile this information.

Lin: [00:01:10] And I remember interviewing a bunch of folks who were living in a trailer park—who were about to be evicted from their FEMA trailers—and feeling very helpless, feeling like the structures of the law that had existed had allowed them to receive the tiny pittance of aid that they had received after losing their homes… And not just their homes, but like, the important things in a home that matter, family pictures, records, things like that, and feeling like—the reason why I thought I was going to law school to like help people with some knowledge of the law was insufficient and meeting an organizer and being like, “Oh, there are ways that we can expand upon like, what is… Like, what is legal doesn’t always mean what is right. And there are ways that we can push back on what is “legal” and made the decision to drop out of law school and be an organizer there and then…. Yeah. I can talk more about Picture the Homeless later, but I know that you got questions for that. [Laughs]

Lewis: What do you… Is there anything that you can identify or a story you could share about your early life that made you interested in the law and interested in those kinds of questions?

Lin: [00:02:33] I wasn’t raised to be political. I am the firstborn son in the United States. So, my parents really invested in my education and really wanted me to be a successful businessperson. It wasn’t until I was in college that I really began to meet people who had interests that were beyond developing their own professional lives in college. I took a class when I was in college, where a professor encouraged us to go to our first—to go to a protest. This was 2003 when George Bush was ramping up the movement to go to war in Iraq, and I went to my first protest there. And I think along the way, I’ve always kind of felt like my political consciousness was something I had to struggle against my parents in order to like, you know, really… I really had to like struggle in order to assert my consciousness.

Lin: [00:03:42] My interest in the law… I’m not sure why I thought that being a lawyer would be the avenue towards changing the world, and I think that my year in law school disabused me of the notion that being a lawyer would substantially change the world in the way that I wanted it to. But for some reason, I thought—you know, being a lawyer meant that I would put myself in a position of power to do the important things that need to be done. That was before I went to law school. And I’m not sure what gave me that. I think that there was something about… There’s something about… You know, I think my folks didn’t understand the ways that the law worked. So, I think there’s something about this thought that someone with a particular degree would have the power to navigate the system in ways that was foreign to my parents—if that makes sense.

Lewis: [00:04:45] And you have brothers and sisters?

Lin: [00:04:30] I do. I have an older brother who was born in Taiwan, and a younger sister. But like I said, my parents invested in my education in ways that they didn’t invest in theirs, so it was always really challenging. Like, my parents sent me to private school but sent my brother and sister to public school because they couldn’t afford to send all of us to private school, which is great in terms of some things... I mean, I had access to a really great education, but it also, you know, brought up a lot of tensions between my siblings and I.

Lewis: And so, you chose to go to law school where? You came to New York to go to law school?

Lin: [00:05:30] Right. I went to Brooklyn Law School for a year.

Lewis: [00:05:36] And then—after New Orleans what was the… What was the organization that you went down to New Orleans with?

Lin: [00:05:44] It was a student organization. I think it was called the—I want to say the Student Hurricane Network, that may be, I think it was the Student Hurricane Network. It was a group of law students, not just from Brooklyn Law School. I think there was also students from like Fordham Law School and Cardozo, who were also out there with us, doing these surveys.

Lewis: And you came across other folks that were organizing—organizers?

Lin: [00:06:11] Yeah. I don’t remember the name of the organization, but I met an organizer who was like… I sat in on the meeting where he was meeting with the folks who are on the verge of being evicted. And they were planning an action to maintain their ability to stay in that trailer park for a little bit. If we were able to stay in New Orleans longer, I would have really liked to be able to support that organizing work, but we were just there for the week of spring break, to do surveys.

Lewis: Could you describe a meeting where you saw that organizer being an organizer for folks that don’t necessarily—aren’t able really to picture that in their mind or, what an organizer does, or what about it was so powerful that it impacted you that way?

Lin: [00:07:04] Yeah. I think that when we were going around and knocking on the doors of people who were living in the trailers, they had just recently received these eviction notices. A lot of them were  immigrants, and English wasn’t necessarily their first language… And the initial feeling that I got in speaking to these folks were that they had been pushed around a lot and that this was just another of a cycle of them being pushed around and had it not been for getting in contact with this organizer, who I wish I could remember their name, that they, I think, had just submitted… That they were, you know, already thinking about where they would go or how they would follow those eviction orders.

Lin: [00:08:01] And in that meeting, the organizer really, I think—put some hope in people… That they could come together and fight back against something that wasn’t right and that wasn’t fair—and that they could do it together. You know, that individually, it would be challenging to push back against the legal structures or the police, but that if they came together and they got some attention and were able to put their stories out there and like, collectively organize, that they would be able to stay housed in their FEMA trailers, which wasn’t necessarily a great thing. The FEMA trailers were often in really bad conditions, but at least they were not being pushed out.

Lewis: [00:09:00] So, you returned to New York after your experience in New Orleans. You were still in law school?

Lin: [00:8:37] I was still in law school. This would probably be around March or April, so the second semester of law school. I finished out the semester and decided I wanted to do something else. I really wanted to figure out how I could gain the skills to be an organizer and do that work. I think… What happened was I initially was working, doing I think one of the hardest jobs in New York. So, like, initially, when I dropped out of law school, I worked for—one of those people that holds clipboards and asked you to make donations on the street. This organization, I’m not even sure if they’re around anymore, but we were—doing that. We were raising money for a large NGO called Children International, which asked people to sponsor poor kids in third world countries.

Lin: [00:10:07] It wasn’t necessarily the type of social change that I wanted to do, but I thought that I was moving towards the direction of, doing social justice work. I do feel grateful for that experience because I think that one of the hardest things in doing organizing work is doing street outreach and talking to strangers and having conversations that people were not prepared to have in that moment or in a public setting—and having to build up like some thick skin about people not wanting to talk to you or worse, you know, people being rude, people being mean. And so, I think that that experience, I often describe that as the worst job I’ve ever had, but I think it was really important to have that job, or not to have that job, but to have those experiences.

Lewis: [00:10:56] And so, when you dropped out of law school, could you share what the conversations were like with your parents then?

Lin: Yeah. At this point, my father had passed away from cancer about a year before I dropped out of law school. And he—he held a lot of pride in the fact that I was going to go to law school and going to be a lawyer. I think for both of my parents, it was some sort of validation for them, you know, coming into this country as immigrants with relatively little, although I think that they had more class privilege than a lot of immigrants. So, it was—hard. I think my mom felt like I betrayed my—like a promise to my dad, didn’t understand why I was turning away from, you know, personal security, right? Being a lawyer meaning potentially having a job that pays well, that we don’t have to worry about money, in the long term. So, turning away from that. Turning away from like, the… There’s a particular like, kind of privilege that it evokes. I think that there’s a particular type of pride that my parents were able to, like, tell their friends, “Oh, my son is in law school”, that they really had to… That they really felt like I was betraying or letting go of. And yeah, they didn’t understand. And they were angry with me and disappointed in me.

Lin: [00:12:40] And I think that that’s still a process [laughs] that—still comes up even now, years later… I think that there are moments that my mom understands. When we have conversations about the nature of poverty in this country, and the nature of inequality in this country, that she understands why it’s important to work on stuff like that. But I do think that she is still, probably feeling disappointed that I chose this path… I think a lot of it—I mean part of it; is I think their own… You know, I think parents like to feel good about talking about their kids to their friends. And I think that the work that I was doing was not legible to her friends, you know? But I think she understands a little bit more now.

Lewis: [00:13:39] Where do you think you got the inspiration to be able to, kind of, make that kind of break from what you were maybe raised to be into what you decided for yourself that you needed to be?

Lin: I’m not sure… I think as a younger person I just felt like there was so much wrong with the world, and it all felt very disconnected, you know. I had gone to protest the war in Iraq when I was in college and had volunteered at a homeless organization in downtown L.A. Doing like—they were doing needle exchange. And I didn’t really make the connections between war and homelessness, and… You know, I grew up in L.A., so, you know, racial tensions have always been very prevalent and formative in the way that I see the world and I wasn’t able to draw the connection. So, growing up, I always felt like there’s so much shit wrong with the world. And it was hard for me to understand how they were all connected, except that the world was fucked up. And I think it was really coming into consciousness through doing organizing work that helped me to kind of draw the connections between wars abroad and lack of funding for housing here. But it took a while, and it wasn’t obvious. I think that in some parallel universe, there’s some version of me that’s a lawyer that isn’t thinking about this stuff, you know? [Laughs] I don’t know. Yeah. I don’t know if there was a particular moment, but I think I just wanted to be, I wanted to do something that mattered. My own personal comfort is not important to me. I think doing something important is important to me.

Lewis: And so, there was a professor that inspired you to go to a protest. Were there, as you started to kind of branch out and—look around in New York at maybe how to become an organizer, are there some initial groups that you recall, that you became aware of?

Lin: [00:16:15] Yeah. So, when I first started learning to be an organizer, I was placed through a organizing fellowship at CAAAV [Committee Against Anti-Asian Violence]. It was a four-month fellowship where we were getting trained on some of the very basic skills of how to do organizing work. You know, base building, political education, campaign development—and then kind of shadowing CAAAV organizers as they were doing the work. So, I learned a lot from—specifically—Helena [Wong] was the organizer in Chinatown. Chhaya [Chhoum] was the organizer in the Bronx. And Sung-E [Bai] was the executive director at the time. And I learned a lot from those three women… In terms of not just how to do organizing work, but how to conceptualize the world that we live in. And it was actually at that time that I first went to a Picture the Homeless organized action. This was probably in 2008 or 2009, probably 2008—the vacant lot takeover on 110th? Was it 110th, 116th?

Lewis: 115.

Lin: [00:17:33] Yeah, 115th. And that was like the wildest and craziest thing I had participated in, I think. I remember meeting up at Union Square because it was very like, shadowy—like where this action was [smiles], what was actually happening. I remember meeting up at Union Square and folks had already identified, “Those people following us. They’re definitely cops.” And then, getting to the action. I think I went because I thought that there was going to be… I knew that there was going to be some important organizing work happening. I didn’t know necessarily what to expect. And that action challenged me in ways that I didn’t know I was going to be challenged that day. And what I mean by that is that I knew that there was going to be a direct action, and that it was going to be a civil disobedience, and that laws would be broken, quote, unquote. What I didn’t expect was to really be challenged on the relationship between like, real estate and land and speculation and homelessness.

Lin: [00:18:54] I think it must have been either Rob or Jean at that action saying something about… What role does land play? Does land play… Should land serve a social good in terms of housing people, in terms of giving people a safe space? Or should it serve the role of real estate, and be treated as a commodity? And I think the action of breaking into private property and trespassing on private property and then thinking about what is private property, what is this thing that we’re upholding that we—that others would kind of clutch their pearls at, you know—that cutting the locks, going into a vacant lot. And then really thinking through what is land? What is our relationship with land and what is its value? Is its value making money for somebody, or is its value in providing shelter, space, homes for somebody? That I think really like fundamentally kind of made me think about capitalism in a different way.

Lin: [01:19:59] And I don’t even know if that was necessarily the… I’m sure that was the goal of the action. But part of the goal of the action it was just… For homeless folks really to be able to talk about the lack of affordable housing in New York City, right? Yeah, it was—that was—I think, in a lot of ways because I had worked as an organizer for CAAAV and then a different organization, but I think from that moment on, I always looked at Picture the Homeless as an organization that was willing to kind of push the envelope in terms of what type of organizing was happening, willing to break the law if it felt it was necessary to do so, and also forcing people into… Like pushing consciousness, you know? Like forcing us to think about the political issues of homelessness, not just like we need shelters for homeless folks, but like we need to think about, how we think about land in the city. And that was really powerful to me. And so, I was all always reaching out Picture the Homeless organizers in terms of—how to plan actions that kind of got to the root of the problem a little bit more.

Lewis: Could you picture the action in your mind and describe it?

Lin: [00:21:22] Sure. I—we—got up to… So, the action was on 115th Street. And it was a vacant lot with a fence in front of it that had already—the fence had been opened. Inside, there was a number of tents that were set up and some of the tents had food for people. In some of the tents, there was some organizing stuff happening that I wasn’t on the inside of. I was just a Picture the Homeless fan at the time. And there were moments where members were kind of speaking about what was happening in the land, and about…

Lin: [00:22:08] I think this must have been related to… So, this was a lot that I think was owned by Chase Bank, that had sat vacant for an extended period of time. I don’t know exactly how long. And I think that a lot of the speak-outs were around the fact that banks were warehousing vacant lots and vacant properties and sitting on them and waiting for speculators to come in so that they could sell them and make a profit off of it—and would talk about this, alongside the crisis of homelessness in the city. That there is a huge lack of affordable housing in the city and that is the reason why there is so much homelessness in the city.

Lin: [00:22:49] There was a homeless fashion show that I remember happening. And I thought that that was really radical too because I think that part of what makes Picture the Homeless such a powerful organization is that it’s not, you know, experts who have studied policy or talking about homelessness. It was homeless folks themselves representing themselves. And I thought that the homeless fashion show was really—a way to… I hate the word humanize, but to like—have folks be able to recognize the humanity of the people doing this work.

Lin: [00:23:30] What else was there? It got broken up after a couple hours. I think that the police had kind of rolled in and said that they were going to make arrests… And I think that there was a moment where some people who could not be arrested moved out of the site and then some people decided that they—that it was important to hold the space and to force the police to make the arrests, because that helped to escalate the contradictions. And I always respected the principles from which Picture the Homeless organized. It was very courageous, willing to take risks, but not just foolhardy risks. It was risks to raise consciousness. It was risks to force conversation.

Lewis: So, you kept in touch with Picture the Homeless organizers?

Lin: [00:24:25] I did, mainly Brandon at that time, I think… I had worked at a different organization where I was doing youth organizing work and we had been planning to, folks were interested in doing some sort of civil disobedience—action but were very nervous to do it because none of us had done that before. None of us had planned an action where anybody was arrested before. And so, I remember Brandon came and did a civil disobedience training for us. And then, in addition to doing the training, also made himself available on the day of the action to check in with folks. Because part of it is, like, “Oh, we can be trained to do this, but in the actual day, it’s scary, you know? It’s scary to do—to plan actions in which our members, our people that we feel responsible for their safety, and not knowing exactly what’s going to happen is really scary. I really appreciated both the expertise that Picture the Homeless staff like Brandon offered at the time, but also like, the level of care too. So, it’s not just, “I’m coming in to tell you how to do it, but also, how can I support you all in doing this work?” Yeah. It was Brandon and Joe, that I think that were really—made themselves very available in helping us to do that.

Lewis: [00:26:02] And so, what year did you start working at Picture the Homeless?

Lin: 2012.

Lewis: What was it that moved you to apply to work at Picture of Homeless?

Lin: I had admired Picture the Homeless as an organization for a couple years by the time I applied to work there. And I was working with a different organization—and really wanted to do work around policing and police violence at the time. In 2012 was—Mike Bloomberg was the mayor of New York. The race and class disparity of things like Stop and Frisk was becoming very prevalent. Ramarley Graham had been killed by the cops in the Bronx, and to no accountability. And it felt to me like there was a real urgent need to organize around the violence that NYPD was perpetrating in New York. And I had gotten to know you, Lynn, I think in some of those meetings where we were kind of beginning to talk about how do we as people who work at different organizations across the city kind of confront this issue of policing.

Lin: [00:27:34] And so, I was really excited to have an opportunity to apply to be the civil rights organizer at Picture the Homeless because it was an organization I really looked up to and I felt like I had a lot to learn from. It was work that I felt like was really vital and important…. And yeah, it was really a learning process for me. I often think that I might have gained [laughs] more from my time at Picture the Homeless, than Picture the Homeless gained from my time there just because of how much of an education I got in—so many things, both from the work and also from the members.

Lewis: [00:28:17] So, what was the interview process like? You applied. You wrote a letter.

Lin: Yeah. I wrote a letter I think, [laughs] maybe oversharing about how much I admired the organization. I think what was really awesome about the Picture the Homeless interview, which was very different from my experiences interviewing anywhere else, was that I was interviewed by—it was a couple of rounds. It was maybe two rounds of interviews. But both times, it was not just with Picture the Homeless staff, but also members that were there. I think that—the members would pose particular kind of scenarios and want me to kind of think through with them how I would respond to those scenarios. And I was really impressed by the voice that members had in making a decision about who they wanted to be their organizer, but also the types of scenarios that were posed were very nuanced, you know? There wasn’t like simple answers to those scenarios. And I think that they really—wanted to see—how I might respond under, how I would communicate with people under particular circumstances, or how, what I would make of particular situations. And I was really impressed by kind of nuanced challenges that a staff member would have to be prepared to face.

Lewis: Do you remember any of the scenarios?

Lin: [00:30:02] I think there was one around a… I want to say it was around, “If you are in a meeting and a member were to become aggressive towards you or another member, how do you respond to that situation?” And I think that was a question that I felt a little stumped by, which is probably why I remember it years later. [Laughs] But… And I think I probably tried to say something about trying to, like hear both sides and not make any assumptions about people. I think that now reflecting back on my time at Picture the Homeless, I think that a lot of times when things happen in the office that are—that they grow from things happening elsewhere.

Lin: [00:31:08] Let me try to be more clear about that… That someone may be not showing up in the most positive way in a space might be because they have a whole bunch of other things happening in their lives that we don’t see—and having to be able to be present for all those things because the members of Picture the Homeless… Have a lot of shit that they got to deal with, family things, housing things, police things, employment things—that there’s a lot of stress that are put on people and to not judge, or to not leap to judgment based on a particular outburst but to try to be understanding of the entire context of what’s happening. I thought was the crux of what that question was asking that I answered probably pretty clumsily. But that’s, you know, a lot of the work in the organization was navigating that stuff too.

Lewis: When you worked at Picture the Homeless, could you describe—do you remember any impressions—or could you describe impressions of when you first… Of the space when you came to the interview, what the office was like? If you remember, who was there?

Lin: [00:32:34] The Picture of Homeless office was on Morris Avenue in the Bronx. It’s a blue house and the office is on, for the most part, most of the office is on the second floor of the house. I got to the interview a little bit early, trying to make a good impression. And there was  people in the back office, your office, Lynn, I think already preparing or maybe having another meeting. And in the front of the office, there’s a computer lab with a row of computers against the wall. I think I sat there and as I was waiting for the interview; little Andre was hanging out around there. So, I was just kind of chatting with him. He was probably ten or eleven years old at the time.
 
Lin: [00:33:28] And so, as I think back on that moment, I think about how the office itself was a safe space for folks. That sometimes people will come to the office for organizing things, but oftentimes people would come to the office because that’s their living room, that’s where they see their friends and catch up. It really is like a—it was a community space; it was a movement space for homeless folks in the city.

Lin: [00:34:03] What else do I remember about the office? There’s a lot of great artwork that hangs up in the office, that was hanging up in the office from past Picture the Homeless actions, old banners, old posters, old protest signs, you know, kind of speaking to a lot of the history of the organization.

Lewis: [00:34:26] And so, you were hired, and you followed Brandon King as the civil rights organizer. And what issues were you working on as a civil rights organizer?

Lin: [00:34:42] So, Picture the Homeless had—kind of internal civil rights organizing work that it had already been doing. A lot of it was around being present at shelters, at soup kitchens, doing Know Your Rights trainings for folks, passing out Know Your Rights information. And I think Picture the Homeless had also began to engage in a city-wide… Communities United for Police Reform—organizing at around the time that I came on to staff. So, part of it was specific Picture the Homeless Civil Rights Committee organizing work and then the other part of it was like, citywide police reform campaign work. And I think my role as a civil rights organizer was to handle those two prongs, to do the outreach and base building work, and then also to kind of handle those two prongs to do the outreach and base building work and also to represent the organization in these coalition spaces.

Lewis: Could you talk about what CPR is?

Lin: [00:35:52] Sure… So, Communities United for Police Reform was a coalition of grassroots nonprofit organizations, who had to some degree worked on policing issues—in their own silos or in their own places around the city. And I think that it was the first time that groups had come together on that type of scale to push a citywide agenda on police reform. There was a pretty ambitious policy agenda that the campaign was pushing. And so, part of that policy campaign was around pushing four pieces of city legislation that folks wanted to get passed—around profiling, around consent to search, I can’t remember all four bills right now, and the Inspector General. Anyways, it was pushing for both city and state legislation that addressed police violence in New York City.

Lin: [00:37:13] Picture the Homeless sat on, as the chair of the policy working group with New York Civil Liberties Union, and that was a lot of work. And then, Picture the Homeless was also part of the community empowerment working group, which was really about on the ground, doing trainings, doing cop watch related actions. And we were a small organization, with a small staff, with not a huge budget, and did a whole bunch of work, I think, much bigger than I think our actual footprint was [laughs] in the years that I was there doing the police reform stuff.

Lewis: What were the challenges, as the civil rights organizer at Picture the Homeless, navigating what people were dealing with on a daily basis and then being part of this citywide coalition with lots of meetings and conference calls?

Lin: [00:38:16] I think that oftentimes when it comes to things like policy, that there is a particular language that’s used that is hard for members of an organization like Picture the Homeless to engage on that level—like, just a lot of legalese in terms of the particular words that are used in the piece of legislation that we’re pushing for. That doesn’t really allow for—that doesn’t make it easy for grassroots participation, in that space. And I also think that the campaign particularly—it always felt like it was on emergency mode, too. And so, there was always stuff that needed to happen.

Lin: [00:39:06] And I think that there was a challenge in terms of just how to balance both making sure that the citywide stuff was moving in a way that would ensure ultimate success while doing the work on the ground too. Not just even like outreach and trainings, but that, you know… I remember a couple of times in which we would have members who would be prepared to speak at a press conference, and then something would happen, and then they wouldn’t be able to show up that day, you know. Something would happen where they had to worry about their own housing, or they had, you know… Like, so it was—sometimes it was a challenge to both be present for folks in terms of their daily lives and then be pushing this kind of really ambitious policy at the time. What other challenges? There’s so many.

Lin: [00:40:08] I think that what was really important about Picture the Homeless’ participation in that space was around… So, I remember the one bill that really resonated with folks was around the profiling bill, which initially started as a racial profiling bill if I remember correctly, right? And Picture the Homeless fought really hard to have language around profiling of homelessness or perception of homelessness included in that to protect people from—I forget exactly what the legal term was—but that that inclusion of that language was really important. And if it wasn’t for Picture the Homeless’ participation in CPR, I don’t think that that language would have even been obvious to people that was important.

Lewis: It ended up being prohibiting profiling based on housing status, because also public housing residents were getting profiled

Lin: Right.

Lewis: because of where they lived, not what they were doing.

Lin: Right.

Lewis: [00:41:20] You were there when the Community Safety Act—which was these two bills—passed

Lin: Right.

Lewis: and before it passed, there was a whole bunch of actions. What was the vibe like—preparing for that and trying to defend that and being there the night, it passed?

Lin: [00:41:42] I don’t think that we thought that it was going to pass until it actually did, [laughs] which is why we were there at two o’clock in the morning when the city council finally voted on it. And you know, I think now in 2019 discourse around—the ways that police enact racism is much more apparent. I think in 2012 that that wasn’t necessarily clear to people. And so, I don’t think that there was much political will, prior to our organizing to make things like this happen.

Lin: [00:42:20] The challenges? I remember—very meticulously having spreadsheets of who the city council members were, which ones we thought were solidly going to support our work, which ones we knew were solidly against our work, and then the ones in the middle having to do a lot of meetings with them, or also, even if not meetings with them, outreach in their districts to give them political coverage for their support. I remember… Having to make sure that, we wanted to make sure that there was homeless members speaking at each of these actions that Communities united for Police Reform was planning, because we wanted to make sure that the work that homeless members of Picture the Homeless had put into the organizing work was not made invisible.

Lin: [00:43:23] And man, it felt like—it’s hard to remember why, but it just felt like, just high stress all the time with that organizing work. It’s hard to remember like what the stresses were now. I’m sure it was like, “Oh, this council member said this. What does that mean?” Or whatever. But I can’t even remember it anymore.

Lewis: [00:43:50] It was an overwhelming time, but it was actually the first time that Picture the Homeless had been really engaged in passing legislation. You know, a lot of the strategy was around shaming and exposing what the city wasn’t doing. And while Picture the Homeless had solutions like ending property warehousing, and Intro 48 and this kind of legislative agenda, we had never gotten that far with it. So being part of CPR was like being part of like a university of how to pass legislation, for our members. So, I think you were caught up in those contradictions. What were the weekly meetings like, the civil rights meetings that you had?

Lin: [00:44:54] They were generally attended by, I would say between ten and twenty-five members, every Tuesday afternoon. And I think oftentimes it would, we would be talking about… So related to Communities united for Police Reform, it would be updates on what was happening with the campaign work, seeking input from members in terms of particular next steps that they thought were important, in terms of how to support the campaign. Then there was other things that happened too, in civil rights like, while we were doing the CPR work, there was actions taken by the NYPD that particularly like targeted homeless folks, or particularly targeted shelters, or targeted people sleeping on the train that were not related to the broader citywide work, but that we also needed to prioritize. So, it was oftentimes also planning actions—direct actions to address those things too.

Lewis: Do you have an example?

Lin: [00:46:21] Yeah. I have a couple. There was an instance where a homeless person was held at Rikers and held in an inhumanely hot cell and died. And Picture the Homeless members wanted to do some action that brought attention to the fact that this happened to a homeless person, on Rikers Island. And we made a bunch of coffins out of—maybe not as bunch—maybe just one. I think we made a coffin out of foam board and brought it down to One Police Plaza and really talked about the criminalization of homelessness—and that being what led to this this man’s death. The homeless man’s name was Jerome Murdoughs, so that was one thing.

Lin: [00:47:31] There was a moment in which the NYPD had—this was during when it was really cold in the wintertime, which is the time when there’s most often homeless folks who sleep on the train. The NYPD began to announce that they were going to run sweeps to either arrest or, at least take people off the train. It seemed like they were going to be arresting them or forcing them into shelters, on the MTA. So, we organized a bunch of cop watch at the end of train lines that we thought would be over policed, and then also passing out information about what people’s legal rights are on the trains… And then also did a bunch of media stuff too that kind of publicly brought attention to the fact that the police were doing this in ways that I think—they ended up calling off that, right, that they ended up not arresting people off the train.

Lin: [00:48:31] And then the last one I can think of was, the cops had done raids in these shelters, these homeless shelters in the Upper West Side, where they were going in and checking the names of people who were staying in the shelter against their own list of people who had open warrants, which was making it very unsafe, because then people began to fear whether or not they could go into a shelter or whether or not the shelter would just turn their information over to the police. So, we ran a couple of actions around that, that I think stopped the police from entering those shelters and continuing to do that.

Lin: [00:49:11] So, and I think in all actions it was both the specific incident of what happened, but Picture the Homeless members do a really great job of historicizing what’s happening. So, it’s not just, “We don’t want police to be over policing the subway at night, but that this is part of a larger issue related to Broken Windows policing, related to the criminalization of poverty and homelessness, in ways that I think really resonated with folks.

Lewis: What were some of the organizations that you worked most closely with as a civil rights organizer?

Lin: [00:49:49] We worked really closely with Justice Committee and Bronx Defenders in the Bronx, like uptown and in the Bronx around some of our policing stuff. We always had really great ally support from a couple organizations. CAAAV is I think one of those organizations that would come out and support Picture the Homeless actions. CAAAV members were definitely present during those late night, cop watch type patrols on the trains, and I think city-wide there was a—back then there was a much more active network of people doing cop watch related to People’s Justice, and that they were really active in coming out to support Picture the Homeless stuff. There was also organizations that I think were left of Communities united for Police Reform but that maybe were critical of the citywide campaign, but that still had a lot of respect for Picture the Homeless work. So that they would come out and support our work, even if they didn’t necessarily love CPR work.

Lewis: You know, I remember having to talk to some folks and say, “but we are part of CPR”.

Lin: Yeah.

Lewis: [00:51:08] Do you have a favorite story about your time at Picture the Homeless, something that you know when you think back on it, makes you feel really good and makes you smile?

Lin: [00:51:20] I really loved the mural that we painted in Harlem. I love that because it was such a learning process for all of us. So, that started with members of Picture the Homeless just kind of studying together. We had begun to read The New Jim Crow with each other and begun to talk about the issues that PTH members were organizing around, around policing and civil rights in the context of what Michelle Alexander was writing about in The New Jim Crow. And those conversations eventually led to a lot of visioning for what a mural could look like in Central Harlem. I think what I really appreciated about that was just the process, and the dialogue and us all very seriously taking our own political education to envision this mural happening. So, it wasn’t so much even how much fun it was to paint the mural. It was fun to paint the mural, but I think what I most fondly remember is the—the study sessions, the visioning sessions, just the input that Picture the Homeless members had in shaping what we ultimately painted on that wall.

Lewis: And you organized some sessions with Sophia Dawson, the artist, yeah?

Lin: Right.

Lewis: What were those like?

Lin: [00:53:00] So, Sophia was the lead artist of the mural project, the Know Your Rights mural, and is an amazingly talented artist. I had known Sophia through her portraits of political prisoners. And I think that what I really appreciated with working with her was that she didn’t come in with a particular project already set. She was really there to listen to what members of Picture… We did the mural project—it was members of Picture the Homeless and members of People’s Justice, kind of working together. Sophia didn’t come in with, “I’m going to paint this mural, here’s how y’all can help me paint the mural.” I think she was really committed to, “I’m interested in working through this community education process with you, sitting through reading with you, talking about what images come up, what we want to say about policing, what we want to say about homelessness, what we think is important for people passing by this wall to take in.” And just really working through slowly what the process of this mural could look like at the end.

And so, there was… I think that it’s never like one person has an idea of what the thing will look like and that’s what everybody agrees on, right? There was definitely a lot of back-and-forth negotiations in terms of folks wanted to have this type of imagery in there or this type of messaging in there. And I think that—one, Picture the Homeless members came with a lot of ideas, a lot of images, but were also really committed to it being a collective process, meaning that they didn’t insist on what they said being in there, being like the final product. That they were willing to negotiate and compromise. And so, it was really a community building process.

Lin: [00:55:15] And Sophia, I think—you know, I think of her as a super talented artist, so I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to let go of creative control over a project like that, you know, and to trust that through these dialogues, through these conversations that we would come up with something together. So, I really respect her ability to do that, to let go of creative control, trust the process, listen to what people are saying that they want to see included, and then work to kind of sew all these things together into this really rich image that came together then. And she was great at that, she was. The mural is… I’ve seen it in two rap videos in the past month, a Gang Star video and a Rhapsody video that [laughs] just recently, they’re still using it as backdrops of their music videos.

Lin: [00:56:16] But it was also… So, there’s a bunch of Know Your Rights material on—information on the mural. And there was a cop watch team in Harlem that was meeting down the street. So, the mural was not only like, “We’re getting together to talk and study and then put up an end product of a mural.” But it was also—a meeting place and an opportunity to continue to have conversation with folks. You know, even while we were painting the mural, Picture the Homeless members were super active in painting the mural. And also, some members would come and have no interest in painting and just want to talk to people as they’re passing by. So, it became a way to just talk to community members about what was happening, too. So, yeah, it was a really… I  don’t know, Sophia was really great. The PTH members, I think, really showed up in really powerful ways, both putting in input, putting paint on the wall, and then also just talking to people while we were spending those couple weeks painting.

Lewis: What members stand out in your mind as folks that participated in the painting of the mural?

Lin: [00:57:26] So, you know, Jean was very active in the study and the conversations but didn’t really necessarily feel like painting was his contribution to it. But he was very present in that project even if he didn’t ever put a paintbrush on the wall. Marcus was very active. Ms. Henry was very active. Ryan Gibbs was very active... Althea was always there. I don’t think that she was really that interested in painting so much as just kind of being supportive of what was happening… Felipe was there a fair amount... I need to roll by the wall to see who else’s names are up there, but those are the names that stand out right now. I know Ryan did a whole lot of painting. Ms. Henry was there very regularly. I think Ms. Henry went to the church across the street too.

Lewis: Abyssinia, that’s her church.

Lin: Yeah.

Lewis: [00:58:59] You mentioned political education and Picture the Homeless also had the Homeless Organizing Academy. How did the Homeless Organizing Academy interface with the civil rights work?

Lin: [00:59:00] So, I remember that there was… Like there would be particular skills that we would need to work on in order to best engage with the CPR work. So, some of it was things like—public speaking, right? So, if we were to have an action coming up and want to encourage newer members to speak at the press conference so we’re not always relying on the same members talking, the Homeless Organizing Academy might organize a series of public speaking trainings. And public speaking is—part of it is public speaking, but the first part of it is even just like, “How do I take my story and write it out in a way that communicates my—the end message that I want?

So, it’s like, public speaking is also thinking about our stories, how do our stories connect to the issue that we’re working on… And then how do I practice doing this in a way—because public speaking is very scary to people. So, like how do I practice in a way where I can show up powerfully, on the day of? So, Homeless Organizing Academy—I know that there was a regular writing class, right? There was stuff around public speaking. The other stuff was around… I know that there was regular computer classes. Computer literacy was really important for folks. So, it would kind of just provide tools and analysis for folks to be able to engage with the campaign work powerfully.

Lin: [01:00:45] But it wasn’t necessarily… I don’t even think necessarily the end goal was participation in the campaigns. I think writing in itself is a skill you know, or you using the computer in itself is a skill that helps people to find employment or other opportunities outside of the Picture the Homeless work that they were doing that I see Homeless Organizing Academy was supportive of that. It was like PTH members personal development, so that they can engage with campaign work, but also so that they can engage with other things too.

Lewis: Who are the other staff that work that Picture the Homeless while you were there?

Lin: [01:01:24] When I had started, Adrian was the housing organizer. Marie LaPort was the lead organizer. Sam was the director of communications—I might be messing up his title. Sam was the person that we would often like ask questions to [laughs] directly if not bothering you, Lynn. And Anika was office manager. And then, people were participating in the Homeless Organizing Academy including, I know Nikita was teaching some classes. I think Rogers was teaching classes, Not4Prophet was teaching classes…. Veronica was maybe teaching classes back then. And then, Adrian transitioned out as housing organizer. Marie transitioned out as lead organizer in my time there and Ryan joined the staff about a year after I did, the timing might not be right but then, Ryan was the housing organizer. And I think Sam began to take over some of the responsibilities that Marie had too, as lead organizer, and Hilda came on as office manager.

Lewis: [01:02:47] If you were to be able to go back in time, what are some things that would have supported you maybe more in your role as an organizer at Picture the Homeless? What would have been able to help sustain you, like in whatever ways would have been helpful to you?

Lin: [01:03:15] Right… I think—I’m not really sure what the answer is. I think that I remember feeling very stretched by the campaign work and—having to balance the campaign work with doing the outreach and doing—running the weekly meetings and all this stuff. I don’t have a great answer for that because I think that, mostly when I reflect back on our time at Picture the Homeless, it’s like we did so much work with the limited resources that we had—both like—financial resources, but also like just our own time and capacity. And so, I’m not sure how that work could have been allocated differently, but I think that I was not alone in just doing the work of a lot of different people. You know, I think that everybody was doing that. We did it because we cared about the organization. We did it because we cared about the members. We did it because we cared about homeless people in New York.

Lin: [01:04:33] So, I think… There’s just this larger kind of culture of like, you know, I think…  That work is so important that we are not taking… That needing a little bit of time to take care of ourselves almost feels selfish. And I’m just trying to—I’m not really sure what would help in terms of creating that balance, but I often felt like it would be selfish of me to ask for a little bit of time off because I was feeling exhausted—because I have the privilege of feeling exhausted on my couch in a home, where folks are still in the precarious situations that they’re in. You know, how dare I be tired when there’s so much other work that needs to be done? So, I’m not really sure. I mean, I wish that… I don’t know. I just wish that it was easier for everybody. [Laughs] You know? Yeah, I don’t have a great answer, unfortunately. Sorry.

Lewis: [01:05:42] Members would push us sometimes to… One member particularly I remember yelling at staff, I don’t know. I don’t remember if you were there, saying, we should “All sleep on a train one night a week.”

Lin: GKM [Genghis Khalil Muhammed]?

Lewis: Yeah. Sometimes feeling that members didn’t always see the work, the amount of hours that staff were putting in, and then also the kind of shame or guilt that—I’m sure we didn’t see all of the difficulties that they had to deal with.

Lin: Right.

Lewis: We only heard

Lin: Right.

Lewis: about them... And so, it was not—it wasn’t easy.

Lin: [01:06:31] Yeah. It’s true. And the members are also very like—I think also very selfless and overcommitted too, that they would also pick up a lot of work, too. Yeah, I think it was just—there’s just so much, it’s just a lot of shit to fight homelessness and fight policing in New York City with the small army that we have.

Lin: [01:07:00] Like, I remember being at a protest after Kimani Gray was killed in East Harlem [Flatbush]. And it was hot. Tempers were really hot. Kimani Gray was fourteen or fifteen years old when he was killed by the cops. And community members were throwing bottles and rocks at the cops, as we were marching down in East Flatbush. And one of those flying objects hit a Picture the Homeless member in the face. And, I honestly think he had a concussion. And that member refused to get in an ambulance, because all he was thinking about was not his own woozy head, he was thinking about what the optics would look like if a member was leaving that protest in an ambulance because they would just talk about the violent protesters. So, we ended up walking him over to the hospital. And like, but just the fact that this member was potentially concussed, was definitely bleeding from his face, couldn’t see out of one of his eyes, and all he could think about was, “No… That this protest—we’re not going to let the news media cover this protest as a bunch of unruly protesters. That we need to keep the focus on.” You know.

Lewis: [01:08:20] I remember you called me, and said… You were in a lot of emotional pain and turmoil. The action was very intense. There had been a bunch of police killings that happened. There was another one. I can’t remember the name of the person that happened, right around the same time as Kimani Gray was killed. And the member was not admitted to the hospital, and I think it was at night.

Lin: Yeah.

Lewis: And you called me, and you sounded—you know—like you didn’t want to just put him on a train.

Lin: Yeah.

Lewis: and we talked through what to do.
Lin: Yeah.

Lewis: You ended up inviting him to go home with you

Lin: Yeah.

Lewis: so, he could get a night’s sleep.

Lin: Yeah.

Lewis: What was that like?

Lin: [1:09:22] [Exhales] I just really… I just really didn’t want something bad to happen to him. I wasn’t sure, he didn’t tell me why he was so resistant towards going to the hospital and I didn’t want to push him on that, but I just didn’t want him to be picked up by a cop for sleeping on the train after, like—or I don’t know if he had some outstanding situation with the criminal punishment system, that like—so I just felt very protective of him. He was a newer member, who was younger, and I think really enthusiastic about the organizing work, but I think sometimes a little bit naïve about—things and just wanted to protect him. But it was also tough because it’s like, yeah, it was just a tough situation.

Lewis: So, he spent the night with you?

Lin: [01:10:40] I think so. I think he spent the night on my couch that night. But he also like—he seemed to not want to impose himself, you know. He was very, like that was the way he carried himself. He didn’t want to owe anybody anything or impose. I think he spent the night on my couch, but he definitely like, he could have stayed there longer if he wanted to, but he made it very clear that he didn’t want to, you know.

Lewis: [01:11:09] I remember after we got off the phone, I mean, I thought it was a really beautiful—it came from a beautiful place, that you didn’t want to just let him go. We were talking a little bit about—I don’t think we used the word boundaries, but I think in some organizing spaces there’s more separation, there’s organizers and members and members don’t necessarily go home and hang out with staff

Lin: Yeah

Lewis: and we would do that sometimes, and…. How did being able to go home and have a couch to lay on, how did—when you’re working and in some ways pushing folks who don’t have that, to engage more deeply in organizing and fighting for their rights. What kind of…You know, how did that impact you as a person?

Lin: [01:12:20] I… I don’t think that I… How would I say this?... I recognize that I come from— that I’ve been able to access a lot of privilege that members of Picture the Homeless don’t have, you know? That I, like I mentioned earlier, that I went to private schools, and have a college education, and am not treated as—you know, when I’m walking down the street, I don’t feel targeted by the police in the ways that the homeless members of PTH might or that if I’m sitting on the train, people aren’t moving away from me. And so, it was really important, and I think that this is, maybe this is another challenge in the work too, is that a lot of the work at Picture the Homeless, I think is just holding space for people. Sometimes like not even necessarily that people want your input, but they just want someone to listen.

Lin: [01:13:47] And so, I really tried to prioritize holding space for folks, in their personal lives. That I would be available as an ear to listen if folks ever wanted. I really tried to be intentional about doing that, in addition to the organizing work, just because I felt like it was really important to do that…. Yeah. It’s I think, the original question that you raised, it’s hard. It’s hard to balance that. And it’s not even really a privilege. I was working at Picture the Homeless, but I wasn’t making a ton of money. I wasn’t getting rich [laughs] off of the work that we were doing, you know. But you know, I tried to share what I could and tried to make myself as—share both like in terms of what resources I had, what time I had, what emotional space I had, with folks, and it was hard. The other side of that was that I was in a partnership with somebody at the time, and I think that the amount of work that I was doing at Picture the Homeless really had its toll on my own life outside of Picture of Homeless, you know. So, yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard to like, to be present for everybody and think about, you know—there’s just not enough time and space [smiles] for everything to happen.

Lewis: Do you have memories, or can you share any memories of some fun times at Picture the Homeless?

Lin: [1:15:32] Picture the Homeless members have great times at—like, they really enjoy themselves at events. So, I think like the Picture the Homeless galas, like watching people just eat and drink and dance, and really… I don’t know. I think that the PTH galas were really fun, like the Dancegiving events were really fun. For me, I think I still treated it as like a work event. I don’t think I ever drink very much at a Picture the Homeless gala, [smiles] but it was because I felt like I needed to be there as a staff member. But it was really awesome for me to see Darlene on the dance floor at two o’clock in the morning, or Marcus, it was like often like Marcus and Darlene. [Laughs] Maybe others too, but just cutting the rug.

Lin: [01:16:29] So, I really enjoy seeing people enjoying each other’s company because that’s community. We don’t just come to these meetings with each other or go to these actions with each other. Like, we really care about each other and celebrate with each other in other ways. That was really cool. The Picture the Homeless retreats when we were out of this space too, just like having late night conversations with people. It was really nice to get to know folks outside of the context of who they are in a meeting.

Lin: [01:17:04] I remember… So, I used to have folks meditate before our civil rights meetings. [Smiles] And I remember at some point Marcus took that over. And that was really moving to me because it’s not just like… At first, I just felt like I was some weirdo having them do some weirdo stuff. But then, it was—folks found it to be helpful and then also found it to be important to where they wanted to lead it themselves. Yeah, that meant a lot to watch Marcus lead us, guide us through sitting meditations in our meetings, like that just kind of became his role.

Lewis: Are there some other examples of members that took on certain roles and would lead those things?

Lin: [1:17:57] So, Marcus and Maria [Walles] both took on roles of being trained to do Know Your Rights stuff. So, they would be very regular at Holy Apostles and other places that we would do outreach and do Know Your Rights trainings with folks, there. Marcus would also tell me that he would just be with his friends at different spaces, and he’d be kind of like, having those conversations with folks. This is outside of the Picture the Homeless space, so he really embodied that work.

Jean, I kind of see as the—both like our North Star in terms of a political analysis, but also like our historian. He would always, kind of bring—make sure that folks remembered to like, “We have to read the mission during our meetings, and we really have to always be sure that we are acting in accordance to the mission of Picture the Homeless.”

Donald [Sherman] was doing a lot of outreach with us. We were going to different shelters in Brooklyn and doing outreach, and he was a pretty new member at the time, and he had stepped up in a lot of ways and had been very powerful in those spaces… And had done really great outreach stuff. I think that—I can’t remember specifically who he brought on, but he brought on some new folks into the organization, maybe Stan, maybe I’m misremembering… Who else? Even before Marcus and Maria were doing the Know Your Rights stuff, Alethia, and Sara, I think had also stepped up and done a lot of that work... I’m sure more names will come up if I think about this longer.

Lin: [01:20:07] Yeah, Marcus is such a remarkable person. I’m just like… He’s just always like, so—I don’t know if he had done some Theater of the Oppressed stuff, but he was always thinking through how to—because I would have an agenda for a training and Marcus would be like, “Oh, we should do it this way instead.” So, he was always kind of thinking about ways that we can make our stuff more interactive, less in our heads and more in our bodies. And so, I see him now doing his theater stuff and really amazed by his own growth. He was also like, writing a book at the time. I think it was a handbook on how to do, I might be misremembering. He was writing some sort of handbook on how to do—how to homestead.

Lewis: Yeah, he wrote it. I don’t know if he feels like it was finished. I think in all of his different moving around, he… I remember him asking if we had copies. Brenda Stokely actually said that she had a copy of it, and he was trying to track that down. He’s been making videos of himself, and he has props and he’s still active with Theatre of the Oppressed.

Lin: Yeah, that’s great.

Lewis: He is remarkable.

Lin: [01:21:34] Yeah. Jean used to always like, Jean always called me little brother and treated me like a little brother and was always schooling me on things, like, “You got to read this, you have to learn about this.” Terry v. Ohio is almost like a joke at this point, but make sure you know the legal histories of the things that we’re fighting on because we can’t just talk about it. We have to really be able to point to the legislation. So, Jean was always making sure that we did stuff like that.

Lin: [01:22:01] You know, members would always come in with, “Oh, I was at this action, and I saw this flyer. This is something that Civil Rights Committee should be thinking about or talking about too.” And that came from Althea, that came from Maria, came from Kendall, from Jean—because they are often in other movement spaces that Picture the Homeless isn’t in institutionally, but they would make sure that we brought that stuff in too.

Lewis: We had a long-standing history with the October 22nd Coalition.

Lin: Right.

Lewis: But while you worked Picture the Homeless, you also hosted a lot of the planning meetings and things for that. Could you talk about that?

Lin: [01:22:43] Right. October 22nd is the National Day of Protests Against Police Brutality. It’s been going on for at least twenty years now. And…. I think Picture the Homeless members took on a lot of leadership in organizing that stuff. Marcus, Kendall, and Jean, I think in particular would be regular at those meetings. It was really important to them to support the family members of people who were killed by police. So, yeah, in my time at Picture the Homeless, we would open up the office space for meetings if possible, to plan for the actions, but folks would also take on a lot of the work in coordinating the actual day’s actions.

Lin: [01:23:43] One of the things I remember was that before I had started, the action was often at Union Square, and it would march down towards City Hall or One Police Plaza. Picture the Homeless members really wanted for these actions to happen in the hood. They wanted it to happen in Harlem, or in the Bronx or somewhere where folks were at and that it just felt more grounded in the communities that it’s supposed to be raising the consciousness for. So—made sure that happened. I think one of the years I was at Picture the Homeless, the October 22nd stuff was spread out around the city, including actions on 161st Street in the Bronx, and having speak outs in the park on 161st, and then marching down towards The Hub on 3rd on 149th, where folks are getting off the trains when they’re coming home from work. But just really trying to be present about that this protest isn’t just a symbolic protest that’s happening somewhere downtown, but that it’s a protest that helps to bring consciousness about what’s happening into the neighborhoods where it’s most impacted.
 
That was really the reason why October 22nd was in the Bronx that year was because PTH members pushed for that to happen. So, part of it was Picture the Homeless just opening up office space for people to meet, but part of it was also Picture the Homeless members—as always—bringing in their analysis into a space and leaving a real impact on that space, and on that organizing.

Lewis: [01:25:15] Before we started the interview, you had mentioned the recent murders of homeless folks and also—another form of violence, of neighborhood folks not wanting a shelter open there, and even one woman saying she hoped it burned down. And so, you were mentioning that Picture the Homeless’ voice is very important. And so, could you just talk about that now that you’re not at Picture the Homeless as a staff person, and you’re just moving about the city and you’re in the social justice movement, but you’re a New Yorker?

Lin Yeah.

Lewis: What do you wish for in terms of Picture the Homeless’ visibility?

Lin: Right. Picture the Homeless’ slogan is Don’t Talk About Us, Talk With Us. So, last week, four homeless men were murdered in downtown Manhattan by a young man who seemed to have some mental health issues—who was homeless himself. In the second incident, it was a community meeting around a proposed opening of a new shelter in Queens, and a lot of really ugly, not in my backyard, anti-homeless rhetoric, including a woman who was saying that she hoped that the existing shelter would burn down to the ground—to huge audience applause—really hostile type space. And in these two moments—because right now Picture the Homeless is dealing with its own internal crisis, I just really wish that there was a way for homeless, that there was a platform for homeless folks to be able to insert their own voices into what’s happening here in the ways that it was when Picture the Homeless was functioning more regularly.

Lin: [01:27:41] So, for example—I saw in response to the four homeless men that were killed in Chinatown, politicians just generally talking about how terrible it is and this crisis of homelessness and what I didn’t hear was analysis of what is the root cause of homelessness and why folks are on the street in the first place, why this person with mental health issues was not able to receive the type of support that he needed before he reached this point. I just didn’t hear the type of, “Let’s get to the root cause of the issue” type of analysis that Picture the Homeless would have provided if it was able to in this moment.

Lin: [01:28:32] So, yeah. I mentioned to you before we started recording that it felt—I felt—really frustrated by on one side this like divestment from the real things that people need in the city to sustain themselves—affordable housing, access to transportation, funding for public education—a lack of that. And then, a real investment in the criminal punishment system, you know—the five hundred new cops to patrol fare beaters, fare evaders on the trains and this billions of dollars investment in jails in the city. And it felt really—they feel connected to me. On one side, we are divesting in the things that people need to sustain themselves and on the other side, we are investing in the criminalizing of those people in the ways that I’ve always looked up to Picture the Homeless’ political analysis and courageous organizing and willingness to take risks—smart risks, not just wildly [laughs] irresponsible risks.

Lewis: Usually smart. [Laughs]

Lin: [1:29:41] That, in this moment, I feel like that organizing work is vital and missing, you know? And in that absence, I see opportunistic politicians coming in and giving lip service to something while not really addressing the root of the issue in ways that I don’t think would have been acceptable to PTH members.

Lewis: [01:30:05] No. There were members at the vigil for the men that were murdered. I guess one of the elected officials that spoke talked about how important it was to have a home and that he himself has three homes—and they were very offended. They were so offended, and also mentioned that he’s not showing any leadership in Brooklyn where he’s an elected official and the gentrification of Brooklyn, and what has he done and then referencing his own abundance of homes. People were just so offended and felt—again betrayed.

As you think back on your time at Picture the Homeless, I know you mentioned earlier that you had learned a lot, and you mentioned some of the things that you had learned, but in kind of summing up, are there things that you want to make sure you mention or say?

Lin: [01:31:19] [Long Pause] I feel—I said this maybe earlier, but I feel really grateful towards Picture the Homeless, as an organization and the members of Picture the Homeless, in accepting me into this space—and really looking out for me. I don’t take it lightly that like Jean or Kendall call me little brother and are always looking out for providing educational opportunities for me, sharing whatever they’re reading with me. I think, you know, before I joined Picture the Homeless staff… Well, I would say that through my time with Picture the Homeless that I’ve really begun to have a clear understanding of the ways that racial capitalism have created the situation that we live in in New York in terms of both gentrification and homelessness. They are intricately connected and the ways that we police the spaces where homeless folks occupy to create—to protect property values and things like this. That organizing with homeless folks really informed my own analysis of what’s happening in the world that we live in.

Lin: [01:32:44] And the type of organizing work that Picture the Homeless members do like, like I said earlier about Brandon not just teaching us how to do a direct action, but also offering the care and support—on the day of and leading up to—that there’s like a way that PTH isn’t just doing the organizing but is caring for and supporting people in ways that I think that organizing needs to happen at large. It’s the radical action, but it’s also the radical ways that we take care of each other in the times in between actions that I really hold on to and I hope to bring into any organizing space that I’m in, any space that I’m in period.

Lewis: Okay. So, we’re going to wrap up. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. And I’m sure that the things that you brought to Picture the Homeless and the things that you learned there are showing up in your work with No New Jails, with your academic work. So, thank you, Shaun.

Lin: [01:27:08] Thank you, Lynn.

[END OF INTERVIEW]