William Burnett (Interview 2)

Lewis: [00:00:01] So, we’re talking about the origin story of the Potter’s Field Campaign, and we were at the moment where you’re talking about this—it grew out of the Civil Rights Campaign.
 
Burnett: Because the Civil Rights Campaign was Picture the Homeless’s original campaign, and obviously, Lewis [Haggins, Jr.] was one of the co-founders, so it would be.
 
Burnett: [00:00:19] Oh! No, we were talking about my white privilege.
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmmm.
 
Burnett: Now I remember. [Laughs] Because I’m a white person, even as homeless… And I was younger then. Remember, I was in my early thirties when I first got involved in Picture the Homeless, so I was fairly young. So, I was able to pass as not homeless, and I was able to get away with a lot of things that other homeless people, especially people of color, can’t get away with. So, the issues that the Civil Rights Campaign was dealing with were never issues I needed—I had to deal with.
 
Burnett: [00:01:01] And of course, our model at Picture the Homeless is that we lead around our own issues. I felt that it would be inappropriate for me to be involved in the Civil Rights Campaign because they weren’t my issues. Doesn’t mean I didn’t empathize with them, as you know, I always showed up in support, but I wasn’t going to lead around issues that I wasn’t dealing with.
 
Burnett: [00:01:28] But, some of the strong leaders at that time, and we’ve named them already—Leroy [Parker], Jean [Rice], Rogers, and Charlie [Charles Heck], strong leaders of that campaign, were people who knew Lewis very closely and they cared very much about the fact that… Once Picture the Homeless learned that Lewis died, members wanted to go to Hart Island to mourn his loss and discovered they couldn’t, because at the time Potter’s Field—Hart Island, was and still is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Correction, and there’s history behind that, too. I’ll explain that in a second.
 
Burnett: [00:02:14] But those leaders who knew Lewis very closely couldn’t get onto the island, and it was really painful for them. And, so… I was getting very emotional conversations with them, but also very religious, because—yeah, all four of—all three of those people—all four, were pretty religious people—different faiths... I think Rogers’s Catholic, Charlie’s a Baptist, Leroy was a Muslim. So, they’re different faiths, but they were very religious and very spiritually conscious, and they knew I was a Catholic, and so they were bringing to me the emotional arguments to get involved, and they were bringing to me the religious arguments.
 
Lewis: [00:03:01] What kinds of things were people saying? What were those arguments?
 
Burnett: Well, they all centered around human dignity. And, I think Rogers was actually the most moving to me, because he wasn’t only talking about the dignity of the deceased person—Lewis, but he was talking about the dignity of the people who’d lost somebody.
 
Lewis: Mmmm.
 
Burnett: [00:03:26] And so, I saw the empathy and the—not the empathy, the empathy would be on my side, but I saw the emotion from these people, but Rogers is the one who framed it to me as, “Don’t forget the dignity of the people who lost somebody.” And so he was able to… I guess Rogers was the more philosophical of the bunch. And so, in that process, they got me involved, and I don't know why, but somehow once I got involved, I got really involved.
 
Lewis: [00:04:07] How was the dignity of the people that lost someone, impacted? If you could, describe that.
 
Burnett: Well, you got to remember… If—you know, for example… I’ve lost grandparents... I haven’t lost a parent yet, and I’ve lost other family members. When somebody close to you dies, you’re missing them!
 
Lewis: Yeah.
 
Burnett: And I think—I think in terms of the homeless community, we’ve got to remember that it is a community in some ways. I mean, people know each other. And we talk about… They keep talking about clusters of homeless people on the street. These are people who know and interact with each other—and in many cases, each other are the only people they’re interacting with.
 
Burnett: [00:05:05] And as human persons, we want to interact with somebody. We’re social creatures. And so, when somebody you have a relationship with—any kind of relationship with, passes away, you’re going to feel a loss. You know, just like if I had a spouse and my spouse passed away, I would feel a loss. And to me, now that I think about it, it’s one of the things that people who’ve never experienced homelessness don’t get—is that homeless people are just as human as people who are not homeless, and have relationships just like people who are not homeless.
 
Burnett: [00:05:51] And so the idea that—when Lewis passed away, the people that Lewis was battling in the trenches with, developed a relationship with, could not go to the island to have closure. That was pretty… What’s the word? I can’t think of a word for that, but it’s—they had a loss, and they deserved the right to have closure.
 
Lewis: [00:06:25] Mohammed [Singha] and Joey [Kemp]… There’s a photo that we have of the original Potter’s Field Campaign folks, and they would talk about… They didn’t know Lewis, but they would talk about the fact that when—they were in shelter, and somebody in the bed next to them would die, someone that they had built a friendship with, and the—
 
Burnett: They would just disappear.
 
Lewis: There would be no information. They would disappear. And the—their belongings would be put into a plastic bag, and thrown away, and that that was dehumanizing for them to witness that. And when they would ask questions, they wouldn’t get any answers.
 
Burnett: [00:07:11] Hmmm… Well, I’m glad you brought that up because, early on—I don’t want to jump ahead, but early on, during my involvement in the Potter's Field Campaign, we had this… We spoke—who was it? Rogers and I spoke at this gathering of faith leaders from around the world. It was an interfaith gathering.
 
Burnett: [00:07:36] And [long pause] and I feel badly about this, because this monk, whose spiritual writings I’ve read, and is part of my own spiritual formation… I can’t remember his name and that’s why I feel badly, but he was there. He’s a Catholic monk. And what I’m going to do is, I’m going to re-gather his name and give that to you. I feel horrible that [pause] I just woke up a couple of hours ago. I can’t remember things, and I’m getting old. So I feel badly that I can’t remember his name, but he was there. And I can’t believe I lectured him, because I read his writings on spirituality. He’s a Cistercian monk. But, the Dalai Lama was also there and somewhere we have video footage—because it was recorded on video. We have video footage of me getting a hug from the Dalai Lama. [Smiles]
 
Burnett: [00:08:37] But anyway… So Rogers and I were there, and it was Rogers who pointed out that homeless people are pushed out of society while they’re living… We’re talking about homeless people in New York, pushed… But that would be true [laughs] for homeless people pretty much everywhere. But New York matters for this point, and it was Rogers who made it. Homeless people are pushed out of society while they’re living and then when they’re dead, they’re put on an island that nobody can see. And so they’re pushed out of society when they’re dead too. And that’s a pretty touching point.
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm…. In mass graves.
 
Burnett: In mass graves. I’m not so concerned about the mass graves anymore, and that is Rogers’s point, it’s not mine.
 
Lewis: [00:09:28] Yeah, there were… I think there were several things that were really an affront to different members.
 
Burnett: Mm-Hmmmm.
 
Lewis: And so, the goal of the Potter's Field Campaign, what was that—or what were they?
 
Burnett: I’m not going to do it. I’m tempted to quote Charlie. [Laughs]
 
Lewis: Quote Charlie!
 
Burnett: No, I’m not going to do it. Let Charlie quote Charlie.
 
Lewis: Okay.
 
Burnett: [Laughs] You’re going to interview him, right?
 
Lewis: Yeah, I want to.
 
Burnett: Let Charlie quote Charlie, [laughs] but I was about to quote him.
 
Burnett: [00:10:08] But no... We had a few goals, actually. We wanted—well, the Department of Correction had a thing where if you wanted to go onto Hart Island, to have closure, you had to establish that you were a family member of the person, and you had to establish that the person was actually on the island, and you got that through certain documentation, like for in—Department of Health had to have a burial license for somebody to be on the island... You know, obviously, you need the person’s birth certificate, and you need your own information to establish a relationship with… So you had to establish you were a family member and that the person was actually on the island, and then they would let you onto the island—via appointment, to go have closure.
 
Burnett: [00:11:07] But, members of Picture the Homeless couldn’t establish anything—yet still needed closure. So one of our goals was for us to gain access. First of all, folks wanted to gain access to have closure for Lewis, but we wanted to expand it... Let folks have access to people who were close to them. But we also wanted to open it up more broadly, so that people can have access to the island.
 
Burnett: [00:11:42] Of course folks want the island transferred away from jurisdiction of Department of Correction—want to know who’s on the island. And there were a few more goals, but it was pretty essential. As Charlie would say, [smiles] I’m still going to go to Charlie, “We don’t want the island to be the prison of the dead.”
 
Lewis: [00:12:09] It’s hard to not remember Charlie’s words, [smiles]
 
Burnett: I know, Charlie’s a colorful figure
 
Lewis: thinking of this.
 
Burnett: I’m hoping you’re going to interview [laughs] him.
 
Lewis: It’s one of my goals, is to interview Charlie.
 
Burnett: That would probably be the most dynamic interview you make.
 
Lewis: Mmmm… They’re all pretty beautiful, including yours.
 
Lewis: [00:12:29] So, what was the process? You came into a campaign that was kind of emerging, right?
 
Burnett: But I was pushed into it, so it’s not like one that I wanted.
 
Lewis: You were pushed into it… You were pulled into it...
 
Burnett: You’re pulled into it, [smiles] whatever the word is.

Lewis: [00:12:45] What was “it” at the time? Was it… Were there meetings? How many folks were going, what was it like?
 
Burnett: I honestly—I don’t know. I know that the original folks were part of the Civil Rights Committee. And I don't know whether it was a conversation going on the Civil Rights Committee, or whether they were having a different meeting… I think at some point there was a different meeting emerging?
 
Lewis: [00:13:13] There was a different meeting at some point, because we couldn’t—it was a lot of work, and we needed to… It needed its own space.
 
Burnett: All right. So a different meeting emerged, and by the time I got involved, I was in the different meeting and my real involvement while we were in the meeting—and I think I said this in our last interview… I had said, “How we deposed of our deceased is a pastoral question. So where the fuck are the pastors?” And that kind of was like the linchpin for my involvement with the Potter’s Field campaign. Let’s find the pastors.
 
Lewis: [00:13:57] Okay. So how did we do that?
 
Burnett: We got on the phone! [Laughs] We found out—actually… There were a few connections that actually facilitated this. [Pause] I obviously had a connection with the Franciscans, so I started with them. And one of the connections—one of my connections with the Franciscans, was on the Upper West Side—so I pulled him in. And, there was a Jesuit priest who was also on the Upper West Side and there was—what was called the… Can’t remember what it’s called, but it’s some Upper West Side congregations for—something… But it had to do with housing and homelessness, and it was these congregations on the Upper West Side. So the Franciscan that I was able to connect with had—was part of that. He connected with the Jesuit. The Jesuit was connected with Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing.
 
Burnett: [00:15:16] And so, those were some networks. Some of it I controlled, some of it I didn’t have to—because I knew people who knew people… Who apparently knew the right people, because Interfaith Assembly then was able to invoke some other congregations—interfaith, not just Catholic, or Christian. And so, some of it was able to come to me, and I don’t think we’ve ever talked about that part. So, there is the part where I was organizing myself, but there’s the other part where other people were also organizing allies, and they were able to bring things to me.
 
Lewis: [00:15:53] Mm-Hmmm. Yep. And we formed—the faith allies formed Interfaith Friends
 
Burnett: Interfaith Friends of Potter’s Field.
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Burnett: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Lewis: So, you had connections, different members of the Potter's Field Campaign were motivated by their own faith traditions
 
Burnett: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Lewis: and so had their own connections.
 
Burnett: That’s true.
 
Lewis: And…
 
Burnett: And so, we were all able to pull those in,  and we were able to establish a relationship with Union Theological Seminary, their Potter’s Field initiative.
 
Lewis: [00:16:25] So, do you remember some of the names of some of those faith leaders that early on, got involved?
 
Burnett: Amy Gopp.
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm, from Union.
 
Burnett: Definitely from Union Theological Seminary... Mark Feinberg
 
Lewis: Rabbi [Michael] Feinberg?
 
Burnett: Rabbi. Mm-Hmmm. There was Mike [Michael] Tyson. That was the Franciscan, not the boxer.
 
Lewis: [Franciscan Friars] Holy Name?
 
Burnett: He was with Holy Name, yeah… Father Mark, the Jesuit.
 
Lewis: Hallinan?
 
Burnett: Hallinan, thank you, Mark Hallinan. He was the Jesuit that got Interfaith Assembly involved… I can’t remember all the names. I mean, it was,
 
Lewis: Reverend Kooperkamp.
 
Burnett: Reverend Earl Kooperkamp
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Burnett: yeah.
 
Lewis: From Saint Mary’s… Reverend [Elizabeth G.] Liz Maxwell.
 
Burnett: Oh, don’t let Liz know I forgot about her.
 
Lewis: Well, it’s a conversation.
 
Burnett: Yeah, and she’s a sweetheart.
 
Lewis: [Father] Clyde [Kuemmerle].
 
Burnett: Yeah, Clyde was involved, I had to think about that for a second.
 
Lewis: So they were both at Holy Apostles, still.
 
Burnett: Liz and Clyde were. Clyde was the volunteer coordinator for Holy Apostles Soup Kitchen. Liz was an associate pastor there.
 
Lewis: So, were you…
 
Burnett: The Imam from the prison! Remember, we had… I can’t think of what his name is.
 
Lewis: Umar [Abdul-Jalil].
 
Burnett: Omar?
 
Lewis: Umar, I believe.
 
Burnett: He was a Muslim chaplain at Rikers.
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm. He came later, and he went with us on a trip.
 
Burnett: He did.
 
Lewis: [00:18:11] So, were there… What was the role of staff in the Potter's Field Campaign—because it became its own campaign. So who was involved, in… There were members...
 
Burnett: Well Sam was involved. You were involved a little bit, but you were—like, wanting members to lead it, because you were busy with Civil Rights. I became—originally, the organizer and I—so I was… Became the Potter’s Field organizer, but we intentionally transferred my title, because organizer would imply that I’m organizing members and I really wasn’t doing that. Members were organizing themselves.  
 
Burnett: [00:19:10] I was busy organizing faith allies, so I went from being… And we wanted to expand the faith component, so I went from being the Potter’s Field organizer to being faith outreach coordinator. And I think that’s important to mention. There’s a difference between an organizer and an outreach coordinator, and that’s a deeper history how that transformed… But my issue was that I was doing so much outreach work. I mean, Potter’s Field—I didn’t really have to organize around, but I had to do the outreach work and so it was important to make sure that the title I was using was correct.
 
Burnett: [00:19:53] But I think—as far as I recall, pretty much all the staff members were involved, and all the leaders were recalled. And I also wanted… It’s also important to point out because we have a very powerful film that’s still available on YouTube called Journey Towards Dignity. And… You, Sam, Charlie, Rogers, and I—I think, were all involved in editing that. However, the event predates my involvement in the Potter's Field Campaign. It was something… And that event was—you guys went to City Island, to attempt to get on the ferry to Hart Island.
 
Lewis: [00:20:47] On Ascension Day, because it was already a trip.
 
Burnett: Right, because the Catholic Church actually has a trip on Ascension Thursday that’s sanctioned by the Department of Correction for folks to be on, to have Ascension Mass, in honor of the dead. So you attempted to get on the ferry for that, and you didn’t make it—but you made a powerful film, but I wasn’t involved in that. That predates my involvement with the Potter's Field Campaign, but I was part of editing the video, so I’m happy to have been in that part.
 
Lewis: [00:21:23] How—how did all those folks…How were folks involved in the editing? Like, what was that process?
 
Burnett: Well, first of all we had to be trained by Manhattan Neighborhood Network and because Picture the Homeless was an organization in Manhattan, we were able to do that. But… We all sat together [smiles] in front of the computer and watched all the raw footage and had to make decisions about what footage to pull in, how to clip it together and produce a final product that tells a story, so that it wasn’t just raw footage being played out for everybody. It was a footage that told a story. Charlie—who I’m hoping you’re going to talk to, was very forceful about how the story was being told, so… He would let you know, “This footage, no! That footage, no.”
 
Lewis: So, we had a group of folks who felt very strongly about the issue, sitting around a computer, with,
 
Burnett: A Mac.
 
Lewis: a Mac—with, as I recall…
 
Burnett: By the way, I want Apple to, like confiscate—compensate us for that advertising.
 
Lewis: [00:22:34] Okay. [Laughs] And, as I—as I recall, it was mostly you, because you were much more proficient than I in the editing software… And—but we sat around as a group, and would say, “This is important. That’s not important. This is important.” And so collectively make the editing decisions.
 
Burnett: Right. Well, typically when you’re producing a video, you do a storyboard first, and you shoot the video around the storyboard… Which is not what happened in this process—so we were creating our storyboard as we were editing.
 
Lewis: [00:23:08] When you and others would engage or do the outreach to faith leaders, were there meetings… Were there letters… What—how did you engage? How did you move them?
 
Burnett: [Pause] Of course, some of us—some of them, we didn’t have to move, we had outside support.
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Burnett: But… We made phone calls, a lot of them. And remember the nuns I was reaching out to… Remember, I couldn’t reach them? Remember I said, “They’re going to find out how important I am.”
 
Lewis: [Laughs] Yes.
 
Burnett: And I finally got through to them. And I won’t name the nuns for posterity.
 
Lewis: [00:23:55] So it was a phone call, and then what would happen?
 
Burnett: It honestly wasn’t hard, because we were talking about the human, personal, pastoral aspect of responding to the deceased and the folks who’ve lost people. [Long pause] You know, at the time, we were very happy about some of our wins, but it wasn’t like some of our other campaigns. It’s not something we had to battle for, because faith leaders naturally respond to the pastoral questions, and so we used the pastoral questions as our hook to gain the allies. But, it did take a lot of phone calls.
 
Lewis: [00:24:44] And what was the involvement of Lewis’s family in this?
 
Burnett: In the campaign?
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Burnett: [Long pause] Well, I know they went to Hart Island with us during our first visit to remember Lewis.
 
Lewis: They went to at least one Department of Corrections meeting… Because I remember us joking afterwards that no one
 
Burnett: Oh!
 
Lewis: would be able to say no to Lewis’s mother and Charlie and [laughs] the rest.
 
Burnett: They went to the one that all the faith leaders went to… Us.
 
Lewis: [00:25:23] Yeah. So talk about that meeting.
 
Burnett: Well, once we had gotten all of our faith leaders lined up to support us, we had set up a meeting with the commissioner of the Department of Correction, and… Oh, I remember, they had arranged for us to meet in a small room, but we had come up with—arrived with several members of Picture the Homeless, and several of our faith leader allies.
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Burnett: And we had to delay the meeting because they realized there were too many people for that small room. So they transferred our meeting to a big conference room. So we’re all sitting there and we’re talking to them… And it wasn’t a difficult meeting because, as it turned out— the commissioner of the Department of Correction at the time was a Catholic, and we had a couple of Catholic priests with us. [Laughs]
 
Lewis: Do you remember his name?
 
Burnett: Which one?
 
Lewis: The commissioner of the Department of Corrections. We could look it up if you can’t.
 
Burnett: [Long pause] At the—Steven… I remember he got into trouble.
 
Lewis: [Laughs] That’s poetic.
 
Burnett: [00:26:43] And I have to correct myself. He was not the commissioner, he was the deputy commissioner
 
Lewis: Okay.
 
Burnett: involved for whatever the public affairs office is called—and that’s DOC’s office for managing access to Hart Island, so he was a deputy commissioner. He got in trouble because the commissioner got in trouble. But the deputy commissioner got in trouble because he was caught on the phone talking about how he might perjure himself in court talking about the commissioner... I don't know [laughs] if that needs to be for posterity, but that happened.
 
Burnett: [00:27:24] But… Anyway—so back to Potter’s Field. Lewis’s family was there... We had our faith leaders, one of whom was the Muslim chaplain at Rikers, so we had a faith leader who was associated with Department of Correction already, and we talked to them about why homeless people need access to the island
 
Burnett: [00:27:52] and we were negotiating. We wanted monthly access, and they gave us bimonthly access. And I think the strongest argument in the meeting from the faith community actually came from Earl Kooperkamp. And I can’t remember the argument he made, but he was really, really firm. I hope you get a chance to talk to him. Maybe his memory about what he actually said is stronger than mine, but I remember him being really firm.
 
Lewis: [00:28:22] Before the meeting… I remember, he—the faith leaders that went to that meeting and Lewis’s family, came to the Picture the Homeless office to prep, and a member asked, “Well what if they don’t listen to us and don’t let us go to Hart Island—don’t let us go to Potter’s Field?” And Reverend Kooperkamp just said, “Well, we won’t leave until they say yes! We’ll take over the office.” And so, that was when we first really got to know Reverend Kooperkamp. [Smiles]
 
Burnett: [Smiles] Yeah. He’d be a hard person to forget.
 
Lewis: [00:28:59] Yeah. He sure would... So, y’all went to that meeting, and these were members of the Potter's Field Campaign who were in shelter as well as street homeless
 
Burnett: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Lewis: and faith leaders
 
Burnett: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Lewis: and Lewis Haggins family.
 
Burnett: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Lewis: [00:29:18] And what did you all get out of that meeting?
 
Burnett: Well, we got bimonthly access to Hart Island. There was a limit we had to have... I don't remember what the limit was, but an x amount of people could go on the ferry every other month and they could only go through Picture the Homeless, because they hadn’t opened up Potter’s Field to the public at the time.
 
Burnett: [00:29:44] And so, outside of family members who can make arrangements to Hart Island, anybody else had to go through us, and we had to give them the names of the folks that were going ahead of time, so they could do a background check… And we did that bimonthly. Eventually, we got a chapel—or a chapel pavilion… [unclear] But…
 
Lewis: [00:30:14] How did the Potter's Field Campaign work—with the faith allies amplify or enhance our relationships with them?
 
Burnett: [Long pause] That’s a challenging question, because as I mentioned earlier, it’s easy to get faith allies, or faith leaders—to ally with you when you’re talking about pastoral, obviously pastoral questions. It’s not as easy when you’re talking about the justice questions. And it’s disappointing to me, as a Catholic, that it’s so hard to get faith leaders to be involved in the justice questions. But, getting involved in the obviously pastoral questions was certainly a foot in the door to begin a conversation around justice questions.
 
Burnett: [00:31:19] The reason I’m finding it challenging is because—faith leaders, when you’re talking about the poor, you’re talking about the homeless, they keep wanting to push towards the mercy or the charity question, and they’re forgetting the justice question part. And I can’t speak for all the faith communities… I’m going to quote the Jesuit, Father Mark Hallinan, who said, and I have him on video saying it—if anybody challenges me. He said, “In Catholic social doctrine, justice and charity are two sides of the same coin.” Quote-unquote, Mark Hallinan, SJ… And that’s true.
 
Burnett: And so, I think even within the Catholic community, I find that disturbing—that it’s a challenge to pull faith leaders into looking at the justice side a little more, firmly. And the same is true with interacting with other leaders of the faith community.
 
Burnett: [00:32:37] But, being able to establish relationships through the obviously pastoral question, is an opening. So, I don’t… That’s why I’m saying it’s a challenging question to answer, because I don't think we’ve successfully brought faith leaders on to really responding to the justice questions, the way they should. Doesn’t mean we haven’t brought—had some success, but not the success we should have.
 
Lewis: Yeah, and we deepened some relationships so we could have even conversations about some of those other things.
 
Burnett: Right. But I’m impatient. Let’s get this down.
 
Lewis: [00:33:18] Yeah. I want to ask about some of the other tactics that were used during the Potter's Field Campaign—because as you noted, unlike other campaigns… You know, we didn’t have demonstrations. We didn’t have this—we didn’t build that type of pressure. We had the faith leaders with us… We had Lewis’s family… We had… we did a lot of media work.
 
Burnett: We had that video! Right, and I think…
 
Lewis: So let’s talk about that. How did we use that?
 
Burnett: [00:34:17] [Long pause] I can’t say this for a fact. I can only tell you what I believe. That video came out… Well, this part I can say for a fact—that video had come out well before our meeting with the deputy commissioner, and I suspect the deputy commissioner saw that video before we even showed up in his office. So I think that was a useful tactic.
 
Lewis: [00:34:22] So we created our own media—which was the video, and we also had some major media placements in mainstream media.
 
Burnett: And Interfaith Assembly was kind of helpful with some of that, because remember… My connection—Mike Tyson, had Mark Hallinan’s connection, who had Interfaith Assembly’s connection, and Interfaith Assembly invited us to give a speech at their annual convocation, and media was there and so we did interviews with them, and word kind of came out of that. So part of it was our work and part of it was support from allies.
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm. We had a front-page cover of Newsweek—I mean, not Newsweek, the Long Island paper?
 
Burnett: Newsday?
 
Lewis: Newsday.
 
Burnett: Yeah, they picked up word from that radio interview we did at the overnight vigil for Interfaith Assembly at their convocation.
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm. In City Hall Park—
 
Burnett: Right.
 
Lewis: we slept out there. There was a major New York Times article.
 
Burnett: That came out a little later, but yeah.
 
Lewis: And the—the journalist was somebody who went—was a journalist student.
 
Burnett: She was a Columbia journalist, Columbia University journalism student who interviewed and did that article, and the New York Times picked it up. I wonder where she’s working now?
 
Lewis: I don't know. Be nice to track her down.
 
Burnett: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Lewis: [00:35:55] And so again, I think one of the themes that—that I’m hearing in this story of the Potter's Field Campaign are how you and other Picture the Homeless members, and staff, utilized your own networks, and connections that we already had, and found alignment between this issue and what we wanted—alignment with their values. Do you see that as how Picture the Homeless worked, or works—how organizing at Picture the Homeless works?
 
Burnett: [00:36:41] Well it does—it could be narrow though… Because when you’re talking about values, you’re also talking about empathy, and how people understand and relate to each other—which is why some of our justice questions are challenging. I mean, we have a lot of relationships with people in the social justice movement and I don't know how convincing we are to some people who are not involved in the social justice movement.
 
Burnett: [00:37:14] And so that raises some interesting challenges about… Do you confront, or do you try to draw out empathy, or a little mixture of both? But then… How do you do that? And I don't know if—not just Picture the Homeless, but any organization—can figure out that balance to any confident degree. And I don't know that we have to. We just have to try. I mean, I… see we’re raising questions now that I have to speculate, and I’m not going to pretend during this interview to have answers.
 
Lewis: [00:38:07] One of the other goals was—and it took… It was a journey to get there—was Charlie and some of the other Picture the Homeless members wanted Lewis’s body removed.
 
Burnett: Was that a goal?
 
Lewis: Yes… Wanted Lewis’s body removed and at first, his—his family wasn’t sure that that’s what Lewis would have wanted. They thought that perhaps Lewis would’ve wanted to stay—remain in Potter’s Field with people that he had—you know, lived in solidarity with and been a part of, and there was a process where the family decided to take

Burnett: Remove him.
 
Lewis: Lewis’s body
 
Burnett: He was disinterred and transferred to a cemetery in New Jersey.
 
Lewis: And some of us went to the service.
 
Burnett: Yeah we did. Well—but keep in mind, we already had a service.
 
Lewis: [00:39:13] So talk about the service that we had for Lewis, which was somewhat historic from our understanding.
 
Burnett: We had two of them. The first service was actually a mass. [Pause] Trying to remember who presided over it. Was it Mark Hallinan or Mike Tyson?
 
Lewis: The one at Holy Apostles? Because we had one there, also.
 
Burnett: Liz—that’d be Liz Maxwell?
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Burnett: [00:39:39] Oh my God. I hope neither one of them—I hope none of them hear this because I can’t remember who presided over it. But there was a Catholic priest there, too—from the church on City Island, because there was another family there. [Long pause] That’s who presided over the mass. There was another family there who had lost somebody, and they wanted closure, and so the priest was there. We had some of our own clergy there, but this priest was already there to do a mass for this family, and we sat together with the family, and we did Lewis Haggins and that family member.
 
Burnett: [00:40:30] And I can't remember the priest’s name, but he was actually from—a priest from one of the African countries who was kind of like on loan to the Archdiocese of New York, and was operating out of the church—the Catholic church on City Island. He presided over the mass, and that was a touching thing.  
 
Burnett: [00:40:56] And I remember that that other family got to go lay some dirt from another graveyard onto this woman’s mother’s grave, and the dirt was from this woman’s daughter’s grave, so she’s like, taking dirt back and forth. She got to go to a gravesite. We didn’t get to do that, but… Yeah—so that was the mass on City Island.
 
Burnett: [00:41:25] And, I’m trying to remember… There’s this cross that we went to, and there’s a story behind the cross… And we’ll have to look it up, but there’s some big, historical thing.
 
Lewis: The inmates put it.
 
Burnett: The inmates planted that cross, right. Hart Island was under the jurisdiction of Department of Correction.
 
Lewis: And the inmates were doing the burials.
 
Burnett: Right, but historically, there was a time when inmates wanted themselves to make a cross, and they made a cross and put it there, and so that’s where we had the mass. It was touching, very touching. I do remember Sam left a rock, and he was talking about it being a Jewish tradition that you always put a rock on the grave.
 
Lewis: [00:42:17] What does—what does Potter’s Field look like? Could you describe, physically, what it looks like?
 
Burnett: Well, it looks like woods, with some decaying buildings. Remember, Hart Island used to be part of the New York City prison system, and so you had buildings on the island that were effectively jails. One building was the warden’s house, and you had buildings that were work centers, because they were trying to—that was their rehabilitation, was prisoners had to work. But, the buildings were all falling apart. Beyond those buildings, it’s mostly, you got woods… Obviously the graves are in—in flat areas… But it’s also really peaceful.  
 
Burnett: [00:43:17] When you get onto the island, it’s—it’s peaceful, until you feel the presence of the people that are there... It’s still peaceful, but you feel the presence of the people who are there.
 
Lewis: [Long pause] Yeah… There’s one-hundred-fifty adults in each mass grave, and one thousand babies in each mass grave…
 
Burnett: I think five-hundred babies.
 
Lewis: That’s what was always bandied about.
 
Burnett: Yeah.
 
Lewis: [00:43:57] You built—I would say we, but I think primarily through you—built a really powerful relationship with Thomas McCarthy, the historian.
 
Burnett: The Correction historian, yeah.
 
Lewis: Yeah.
 
Burnett: He’s a colorful character. [Laughs]
 
Lewis: He is, [smiles] and he created a whole page about Lewis Haggins and… As part of the Hart Island
 
Burnett: History.
 
Lewis: History.
 
Burnett: Well it’s not just Hart Island. He’s the Correction—history, New York City Correction history, so anything you want to know about the history of the Department of Correction, New York City, you go to his website. But yeah, he created an entire memorial page about Lewis Haggins on that site.
 
Lewis: [00:44:44] Mm-Hmmm… And then, out of—out of this work, other work grew, or was happening simultaneously—like Melinda Hunt.
 
Burnett: Yeah, well Melinda Hunt—she started… Well—she, she’s the director of the Hart Island Project, and it—that project… I mean, it originated as a documentary project, where she produced a documentary, a… Well first, a book and then a documentary. But then she did some other advocacy.
 
Burnett: [00:45:33] But she was originated, or her work originated originally out of observing a lot of babies dying, being stillbirth from drug-addicted mothers, back when crack was big. And she’s wondering… All these babies are being buried on Hart Island. So she started to look into people who lost somebody, and they needed to be able to find them, and her work went beyond that…

Burnett: [00:46:10] And she actually completed some of the demands that we were going after.

Lewis: Mm-Hmmm… Which were?
 
Burnett: Well, one of them is… One of our demands about Hart Island, again—was to transfer jurisdiction from City Island—or from Department of Correction, to somewhere else, maybe Department of Parks. And she’s actually moving well ahead, to achieve that demand. So, I think it was beneficial that we were able to have that relationship with her, so that there’s work on one of our demands we don’t have to do, because she’s doing it.
 
Burnett: [00:46:49] I think the biggest success that she had was, she actually sued Department of Correction to force them to release the burial records of the people who were buried on Hart Island so that anybody looking for them can find them. And she produced an online database herself, and I think she got DOC—forced DOC to produce an online database, so that you can go online and look for folks who are buried on Hart Island. So that—you know, somebody became homeless, and you haven’t seen them, say a family member hasn’t seen them in decades… They’re homeless, and you suspect they’re dead… How do you find them? And she produced—or she got the database produced, to find them.
 
Lewis: [00:47:43] Do you recall… So that’s finding people once they’re there.
 
Burnett: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Lewis: There was another piece that we won to prevent people from going there. There were two things
 
Burnett: Well, I don't know that’s necessarily a won—a win. That’s finding people who can help out.
 
Lewis: Well, I think of it as a win because if we hadn’t pushed it, it wouldn’t have happened. And…
 
Burnett: Well, yeah it would’ve. Or, in some ways… The process you’re talking about already existed. So, we didn’t have to… That’s why I said, I don't know if I’d call it a win. There are processes that already happened, or able to happen, we just didn’t know about it. So we had to find it.

Lewis: [00:48:26] I’m thinking about the body identification in the morgue, because they were not running fingerprints on people as they should.
 
Burnett: Oh, that part. I thought you were talking about the communities—like the Catholic and the Muslim—Jewish communities that arrange burials.
 
Lewis: m-Hmmm... Well that’s one.
 
Burnett: So we’re talking about two different processes. Right… So we did… Well, we had a conversation with—and I can’t remember his name either, but the chief of the Missing Persons Department. I can't remember—was it Missing Persons, or was it the Warrant Squad?
 
Lewis: Someone from Missing
 
Burnett: I think it,
 
Lewis: Persons came to visit us, because they wanted to use us to find
 
Burnett: They did!
 
Lewis: people.
 
Burnett: They did, and we had to pushback on that. But…
 
Lewis: But Lewis would never have been buried there if they had run his fingerprints in the morgue.
 
Burnett: [00:49:22] Right—but this guy was the one who actually found him, because he had just been—he was a detective somewhere else, and he was transferred to...
 
Lewis: Cold cases.
 
Burnett: Well, Missing Persons—and when he showed up, this picture—or this file with a picture, was on his desk, and he recognized the picture because when he was a detective, he had arrested the person in the picture
 
Lewis: Lewis.
 
Burnett: for trespassing.
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmm. Because he was homeless.
 
Burnett: [00:49:59] By trespassing, he was homeless.
 
Lewis: Mm-Hmmmm.
 
Burnett: So, he had arrested Lewis for being—for trespassing. So when he saw the file with the picture on his desk, he knew who it was… And had he not seen that, we still wouldn’t have known where Lewis was, because in the hospital that he was taken to when he was—before he passed away—lost his ID. So he was treated as a missing person, and so we’re fortunate that he was able to recognize that he arrested somebody.
 
Burnett: [00:50:37] Kind of an odd way to [laughs] have your identity discovered after you pass away. But yeah, because he was with the Missing Persons Squad, he was looking for other people and he thought we would be a source for them to find those other people. But we—we needed him to help secure the process of identifying people, so that they could—folks could have closure.
 
Burnett: [00:51:11] And we did pushback on his ask, because we at Picture the Homeless don’t give out people’s identities.
 
Lewis: Or even know them, ourselves.
 
Burnett: I mean, we do know people, but we know what people want us to know.
 
Lewis: Yeah. Which may be their name, or not their name.
 
Burnett: I think I’m known pretty well, [laughs] but we know what people want us to know, and that’s fair game. That’s what we’re there for. We’re there to organize, and however we know people, we know them.
 
Lewis: [00:51:40] What do you think the Potter's Field Campaign—we talked about externally, some of the changes that were made… Internally, what do you think the campaign did for the organization?
 
Burnett: Well, part of that we’re going to get to in another conversation, because remember we’re going to revisit this organic community question, and I don’t want to go into detail about that now, because we had that saved.
 
Burnett: [00:52:06] But I think it helped, because—first of all, there was already an organic community. Obviously people were very emotional about their loss of Lewis… But like me, I had just met Lewis once before he passed away and somehow, I was drawn into this tight relationship with folks around the question of Lewis’s death. And I think because of the emotional nature of the campaign, some of the softer emotions and sense of connection from people that were otherwise hardened by very difficult lives, kind of came out, and people were able to like, really meld together in a tight way. It’s the biggest thing I see coming out of it, besides our wins.
 
Lewis: [00:53:08] In terms of Picture the Homeless being homeless led—and you had mentioned earlier that, you know—several members were involved, and all the staff… And at the time, the staff were Sam Miller, myself, and  
 
Burnett: Markus.
 
Lewis: He was an intern.
 
Burnett: He was an intern? Ah! But he was there, yeah... Oh, Tyletha.
 
Lewis: And Tyletha Samuels, so… This was the staff. Because it was a campaign that was really pushed for by members as something that the organization needed to do… Staff got—as you did… Staff got pulled into it, because we already had campaigns going on. Are there lessons in that for you? You are a Picture the Homeless board member, and have been for many years.
 
Burnett: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Lewis: That dynamic of members, a critical mass of members saying, “This is important. We need to do this.” And moving the organization into taking on a significant body of work… What are the lessons there for Picture the Homeless, or for folks doing organizing in general?
 
Burnett: [00:54:39] Well part of it… I think the biggest lesson for me is one about being authentic about what you’re calling “leader”, because we talk about, “we’re developing leaders” and every organization that organizes say they’re developing leaders. And, I see some organizations that organize, calling people leaders who are nothing more than mouths—or people with strong opinions, or people who can speak, but they’re effectively bodies that just communicate. And they’re not actually part of the process of figuring out what the problem is and how we’re going to solve it.
_ _
Lewis: Mmmm.
 
Burnett: [00:55:24] And there’s a lesson and example where the organizers didn’t even decide to take on a campaign. The people that organizers are calling leaders made that decision, and brought other leaders in, and compelled the staff in. So that’s a little more authentic leadership. So, we’re going to call people leaders? Let it come from the leaders. And I think that’s an important lesson, because I do see social justice groups out there with people calling themselves organizers, when all they are is people’s strong personalities that bring in bodies—with… Complaints, so the people who are being called leaders aren’t really authentically leading.

Lewis: [00:56:20] I recall… You know, when we heard about Lewis—Lewis’s brother, Brock, called me on the phone and told me, and that was the day we were going to the RNC [Republican National Convention], that big march, and Jean was going to speak. Jean spoke. I told Jean Rice, but I asked him not to say anything until I could tell Anthony Williams, our other cofounder who was there that day. And then I told Anthony, and then I let Jean know it was okay to mention it, so in his speech he gave—he mentioned Lewis Haggins passing
 
Lewis: [00:56:59] and… When we got back to the office, at the next Civil Rights meeting, Charlie was new, and Charlie was still street homeless. He wouldn’t even sit at the table with everyone, he would sit off to the side. He started yelling at us, saying, “What kind of organization are you? We have to go get Lewis. He’s our cofounder.” And he hadn’t met Lewis, but…  
 
Burnett: [00:57:32] But Charlie was working around the Potter’s Field question even before coming to Potter’s Field.
 
Lewis: Way before.
 
Burnett: I understand, way before.
 
Lewis: As a faith leader—himself, he’d gotten—prevented several people from being buried there... He knew, if you knew their faith tradition, some would claim your body… And Charlie also moved several people to create an ID card that said, “I am a Catholic,” or, “I am a Muslim.”
 
Burnett: Or as Charlie would say, “I am a Baptist!”
 
Lewis: So that they would be buried—because we needed evidence of their faith in order for that church to claim them.
 
Burnett: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Lewis: So there were a lot of ways, I think, in which the Potter's Field Campaign allowed members to have a say, in how they were to be buried.
 
Burnett: Yeah. But I really think that term I used, authentic leadership… If you’re going to call people leaders, then they need to be leaders.
 
Lewis: [00:58:45] One of the things that needed to happen—because you have leaders, and you have staff—and staff have keys.
 
Burnett: [Laughs] They do.
 
Lewis: Sometimes leaders get keys for different things… To open the office, or… But there came—there—we arrived at a moment, in order to seriously take that on, where staff had to change how—how we were doing things, because the Potter's Field Campaign needed to have its own meetings
 
Burnett: Mm-Hmmm.
 
Lewis: needed to have, you know—access to the phone, needed to have access to the computer to do research… And so, those were adjustments that staff had to make based on how important it was to leaders.
 
Burnett: Yep.
 
Lewis: And so there was that—that dialogue, kind of that—between leadership and staff that had, to a certain extent, control over the resources in terms of the office space itself.
 
Burnett: Yep. And we had to actually raise money, because at one point the Potter's Field Campaign was starting to walk all over our budget.
 
Lewis: [01:00:01] [Laughs] What are some of the elements—you know, if we break down the organization in terms of governance, board, staff, and leaders… What are some ways that a grassroots organization can remain authentic in terms of leadership? Like structurally, what kinds of things need to happen?
 
Burnett: Well, you need an organizing staff who have a good sense [smiles] of what actual leadership is. Part of it—the thing is at the board level too, because you can bring on board members who really don’t get it, and they can interfere. So… I’m asking—I’m trying to answer a very technical question… And I think that question needs some more thought, so I prefer not to answer it—at this moment… Because I don’t want to like, speculate, and try to give a class about something I don’t really have a solid answer to yet.
 
Lewis: [01:01:19] Are there other aspects of the Potter's Field Campaign that you think are important to note in this interview?
 
Burnett: [01:02:09] Well, obviously as a Catholic, and we’ve brought up some of these other issues thematically throughout this conversation, I think it’s important not to underestimate the value of spirituality in people’s lives, and how that spirituality informs their motivations, and even their consolations.
 
Burnett: [01:01:59] One thing about being involved in social justice work is, obviously there’s injustice—there’s very taxing, both emotionally and spiritually, and so people bring that strong—people who have a strong spiritual background or have any kind of spiritual background, that’s part of who they are and that’s what they bring to the table. And I would caution against underestimating that portion, or that part of people, and what value that part of people brings to their leadership within an organization.
 
Lewis: Okay. Well, I guess we’ll wrap up—wrap this up now, and thank you, William.
 
[END OF INTERVIEW]