Nashville Homeless Power Project

HOMELESS MEMORIAL

On December 15th, 2007, the Power Project organized the 17th Annual Homeless Memorial in Nashville, Tennessee. Every year we lose our friends, our family members to illness, violence on the streets, and if killing a homeless person was considered a hate crime, to hate crimes of those who consider us less than human.

We gather our brothers and sisters and remember those that we have lost and we invite members from the metro council, the police, the homeless advocacy community and we ask that we all join together and make known lives that mattered to us. We also come together because of this memorial so that as we mourn together, we grow together and can unite to change the systemic failures that kill us. We die younger than most because of a political failure to address the root causes of homelessness- the lack of housing, lack of a living wage, lack of an adequate health care safety net. We gather so that our friends and family on the streets are not lost completely in vain but with the hope that enough us that have the power to change the system (that is all of us), are moved to work together to do so.

Last year, one of the deaths that stood in the memory of most was that murder of Tara Cole, a 32 year old African American woman suffering from severe Bi-Polar disorder. The day before she was killed there had been dozens of homeless people sleeping on the Riverfront. The Police came and did one of their usual sweeps and told all present that if they didn't leave they would be arrested. Everyone left and just a few returned late that night when they could find no other place to go. Tara Cole was one of those homeless individuals and was alone sleeping on the peer when two young white men decided to dump her in the river as a prank. Another homeless man jumped in the river to try to save her but was not able to reach her in time. Everyone knew that Ms. Cole's body was under the Ingram Barge but the city refuse to look there for 14 days at which point her body was unrecognizable to her family who was found through research done by the Nashville Homeless Power Project.

Tara was just one of over 50 documented individuals lost on the streets. This year, again, there have been many more. One such individual was Branch Madill. A Vietnam Veteran who had a heart condition, Emphezema and other conditions related to poisoning from Agent Orange. Branch had a caseworker at the VA and a volunteer caseworker from the Nashville Homeless Power Project and even though he was in his late 60s, could not find a place for him and his wife Cherita to live. Branch died of a heart attack while sleeping on a bench at the Deadrick Bus Stop late one night. Would he have lived longer and in less pain if he had a place to call home? We know he would have died with the comfort that he and his wife deserved.

This was the 6th Homeless Memorial organized by the Nashville Homeless Power Project. The first 11 were initiated by the National Council for Health Care for the Homeless. Formerly homeless man, Ray Klimely, decided to co-lead this project who then received support from the Campus for Human Development and the National Council for Health Care for the Homeless to make it happen every year. In 2002, Mr. Klimely's wife was dying and he asked the Nashville Homeless Power Project to help organize it. The Homeless Memorial happens throughout the country and publicized at the national level by the National Council and the National Coalition for the Homeless.