PORTLAND CITY HALL HOMELESS ENCAMPMENT

“I have nine children with nine different women,” said Richard Cox, 56, who also said he is a former Army Ranger and has been homeless for a year. He, along with Aaron Porter, 24, were assigned to me as trained press liaisons for the homeless encampment at Portland City Hall on Congress Street. Aaron told me he has been homeless for eight years but both men preferred to call themselves “unhoused.”

Press liasons Richard Cox and Aaron Porter

They were attached to me last Friday after I took some pictures near the medical tent and asked questions of the volunteers there. One got on a walkie-talkie and pretty soon Richard and Aaron showed up. We went around the corner on a side street so my digital audio device didn’t pick up traffic noise or screaming obscenities from “residents” like the two women near us were delivering with incredibly-loud voices. 

Gray stains on pavement are dried urine

The “unhoused” encampment has grown on the steps of Portland City Hall and on the sidewalks in front of and beside the impressive stone edifice for almost two weeks. It would be more accurate to describe the building as a formerly-impressive edifice as it’s now covered with stains of dried urine, tents, trash,  sleeping bags, canopies, and people sleeping or walking around. How much more the encampment grows may be determined by a Portland City Council meeting scheduled for Monday, August 3rd.

Aaron and Richard told me no one is working in the building since Covid and are instead working from home. However, the Portland Press Herald reported that City Hall closed for business the previous Monday because staff felt unsafe. Walking around the encampment, I was reminded of what's happening at the other Portland on the west coast and in Seattle where leftists took over whole city blocks.

A large, prominent, professionally-printed sign on the sidewalk declared: “Our Demands,” which included: “DEFUND THE POLICE” and “EXTEND EVICTION FREEZE.” Another sign said: “HOMELESS LIVES MATTER.” That called to mind the Black Lives Matters protests there few weeks ago accompanied by violence and looting. Protesters included organizers like African refugees Hamdia Ahmed and Abdul Ali. Later, someone named Abdikareem Hasan was arrested for firing several shots into the nearby Portland Police Station parking garage.

Abdikareem Hassan

Leaving Richard and Aaron and walking carefully up the steps of City Hall, I squeezed between tents and sleeping bags, some with crashed-out people in them. There was dried urine all the way to the top and I couldn’t avoid stepping in it. I pitied people in tents on the lower steps and on the sidewalk as the urine would, of course, flow down to them, especially when it rained. I was glad not to see, or step in, any excrement, however.

Urine stains on City Hall steps

In one kiosk, I saw a list of people to whom donated tents, sleeping bags, soap, XL women’s diapers, kids’ clothes, and many other donated items had been given. There were written directions conspicuously posted explaining when to administer Narcan for those who overdose. 

“Housed” people were arriving regularly to drop off items that were requested on still another list. Everything visible, except for the people, was donated from the outside. This was clearly kept going by others who wanted political visibility.

Press liaisons Richard and Aaron wore walkie-talkies on their belts and were periodically called to quell disturbances. A Paddy Wagon with blue lights flashing on the next block took people to the police station or to the Cumberland County Jail where I had been volunteering for four years until the pandemic closed it to employees and inmates only.

Preble Street Resource Center

Also closed down by government overreaction to the virus was the nearby Preble Street Resource Center. It had provided all the services to the homeless now being delivered at the City Hall encampment and more. That seems a foolish decision considering that those camping at City Hall and in Deering Oaks Park aren’t socially distancing and few wear masks. There were also toilets at Preble Street. Paradoxically, it seems the “unhoused” at the encampment don’t have to live in donated tents because city officials have said homeless shelters at Oxford Street and at the Portland Expo are operating at only half capacity.

Portland Police Chief Frank Clark reported that shots were fired at the encampment on Saturday. The whole thing seems a political stunt to this writer and US News said it's organized by something called the “Maine People’s Housing Coalition,” I did several searches for it and only came up with a Facebook page. Links from there led me to national, leftist sites with LGBT, socialist, and communist links. The Portland Press Herald, however, has not dug into the “Maine People’s Housing Coalition” or its affiliates.

Is Portland, Maine being plagued by the same leftist forces now ruining the other Portland on the west coast? It would seem so.

Addictive Recidivism

Cumberland County Jail

Everyone in prison was once in a jail; that’s how the system works. Someone is arrested and arraigned, then is either bailed or left in jail until trial. If found guilty, they may go back to jail if the sentence is short — less than a year, say — or to another correctional facility if it’s longer. The longest sentences are served in state prison, or federal prison as the case may be.

In the Cumberland County jail where I volunteer once a week, I’m assigned to a pod with a capacity of 85. It’s usually full but not always. The inmates wear either orange or blue depending on their level. Blue designates trusty status, which is earned. Trusties can work in the kitchen, the library, or around the grounds either raking or shoveling snow depending on the season. Work reduces their sentences according to a formula.

Those wearing orange in my assigned pod are awaiting trusty status. If they abide by the rules for a designated period they get their blue outfits, but they can also lose them by mouthing off to a corrections officer or some other violation. If it’s severe enough, they’re moved to a more restrictive pod to start all over again. Be careful not to “lose the blues” as inmates put it.

Chaplain Jeff McIlwain workin with female inmates

There are women in the jail but I don’t work with them. Sometimes I see individuals or groups of women in the corridors dressed in blue or orange and escorted by a corrections officer (CO). Once in a while, I recognize a former student, either male or female. If he or she looks away I don’t say anything. If they maintain eye contact, I’ll greet them. I’ve never conversed with a female inmate though because the opportunity never arises.

Every Thursday afternoon I arrive at the jail, empty my pockets into a locker, go through the metal detector, don my badge, sign in, and wait for 3:30 when I walk through the first of many sally ports and corridors to my assigned pod. All movements are monitored at all times by cameras wired to banks of monitors in a central location. Heavy steel doors unlock ahead of me with a metallic clang and lock again as they close behind me with another clang. You can never forget where you are or who is in charge — and it’s not you.

Each week there is about a 20% turnover on my oval-shaped, two-tier pod. I’ll report to the control center in the middle where there’s almost always a different corrections officer on duty. Sometimes it’s a woman in charge of 85 guys. On Thursdays and Sundays inmates can shave and razors are distributed while inmates are in their cells. Sometimes that cuts into the hour I have for Bible study because I have to wait for the CO to collect all the razors, one cell at a time. Then cells are unlocked and inmates flood the common area where they play cards, make phone calls, do pull-ups, or just walk around.

After my arrival, the CO announces Bible study in the small classroom and anywhere from three to twenty stroll in. Usually, about two or three are repeats from previous weeks, but sometimes they’re all first-timers. That makes it hard to plan a lesson. Some will come in with little knowledge of what the Bible is beyond that it’s some kind of holy book. Others will have studied the Bible for decades and know more than I do. Usually the latter are from the south and are often black. 

I never ask why they’re in jail but they often tell me. Once I had only two guys, one white and covered with tattoos, the other black and strong-looking. Both were addicts in their late thirties and had been incarcerated since sixteen on drug charges. They knew each other at the Maine State Prison and were together again at the Cumberland County Jail awaiting trial on drug charges. The black man knew his Bible very well. His mother taught him, he said.

They were afraid of being released and going back on drugs. Both wanted to get clean but were critical of rehab programs. Neither knew how to turn on a computer or use a cell phone and needed to learn those skills and others. “We’ve been away so long we’re out of touch,” said one as the other nodded. Rehab has to teach us those things and whatever else has changed out there. Then we need a transition house or we’re likely to use again, they said. Both were easy to like.

At least 75% of inmates I’ve encountered over three and a half years were addicted to drugs or alcohol. Many were in and out of jail or prison for most of their adult lives. Many had co-occurring mental illness of some kind as well.

Smelling Christmas

More than a dozen Christmas carolers were gathered in the lobby of the Cumberland County Jail as I was leaving last week after conducting a Bible study. No one may go beyond the lobby without first passing through a metal detector and the Reverend Jeff McIlwain, the jail’s chaplain, was shepherding them through. All appeared to be about my age and were emptying their pockets of keys, coins, cell phones, and taking off belts with metal buckles. All were in good spirits.

Christmas carolers used to be a common this time of year and I have fond memories of joining with them and singing around my neighborhood every year. I don’t remember who organized it but we had little booklets with lyrics and notes for all the traditional, faith-based carols like “The First Noel”; “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” and many others. We’d stand in the snow outside each house and sing two or three before moving on to the next house where owners would appear in the window, smiling. We did the same thing in Lovell when the local UCC Church organized it. Houses are much scattered in Lovell and we were carted around on a hay-filled trailer pulled along slowly by a pickup truck.

I would be a good singer if it weren’t for my voice, and I mercifully allowed others to drown me out as we trekked around the neighborhood. It put me in the Christmas spirit and I was reminded at the jail how much I missed it. These days, however, it's mostly smells that bring Christmas memories back to me and balsam is one of them. My wife has been snipping branches from fir trees near our home, after which our grandchildren have been cutting the needles off with scissors and sewing them into little pillows. 

The smell of oil-based paint also reminds me of Christmas. That is probably unique to me but possibly shared by my surviving siblings because one year my mother and father decided to put the Christmas tree in our basement. Their idea was to watch us come down the stairs and look at our faces when we first saw our presents under the tree. That way they wouldn’t have to get up before dawn the way we kids always did. They put the basement off limits to all eight of us on Christmas morning until we had gone to Christmas mass and eaten breakfast. For weeks before the big day, my father spruced it up down there by painting the concrete walls and floor. The smell of oil-based paint is getting about as scarce as Christmas caroling these days, but when I occasionally get a whiff of it that Christmas memory still comes flooding back.

The smell of melting plastic does the same thing and here’s why: My mother disappointed us all one year when she brought home a box containing a reusable Christmas tree. It wasn’t even green; it was silvery. It had a central pole into which holes had been drilled and it was propped up on a stand. Into the holes, we inserted “branches” of graduated lengths — long ones around the bottom and progressively shorter ones going around up to the top. Branches were painted silver and adorned with tinsel. Beneath the tree and shining upward was an electric light focused through a rotating, four-colored wheel so the tree would change from red to green to blue to I-forget-what-color. After someone inserted a bulb with a higher wattage, the rotating plastic lenses slowly melted, hence the smell.

I never thought it would happen but I gradually came to like that tree. I even preferred it to the real, balsam-fir trees most people had. On my paper route, I’d see traditional Christmas trees in every picture window of every house on Boisvert and Euclid Roads in our town of Tewksbury, Massachusetts. Returning home in the dark of late afternoon in time for supper, I admired the changing colors on the silver-tinseled branches of that fake tree in our picture window. And, it was easier to take down after New Year’s Day when everyone in the neighborhood took down their trees.

Many dragged their old trees down to the sand pit at the end of Euclid Road where we kids often played. During winters when there wasn’t enough snow on the nearby sledding hill we sometimes played hide-and-seek down there. My favorite hiding place was under a pile of those dried-up and discarded Christmas trees. No one could ever find me as I lay there enjoying the sweet fragrance of dried balsam. The needles smell different when they’re dry and that distinct smell — still pleasant — continues to remind me of good times playing with friends in that old sand pit.

Going To The County Jail

After the last remote-control lock on the last steel door opens with a loud, metallic clang, I walk into B-1, the two-tiered, oval-shaped “pod”  at the Cumberland Country Jail in which I’ve been running a weekly Bible study for two-and-a-half years. The eighty-five inmates there are dressed in orange or blue. Some are in their teens. Some look to be in their sixties or seventies, but it’s hard to guess ages of men who live hard lives. Smoking, drinking, fighting, poor nutrition, repeated physical and/or emotional traumas age them prematurely.

All the pods look like this

Some stand in pairs talking. Some are stripped to the waist doing chin-ups on cross bars. Some are seated at steel tables bolted to the concrete floor and playing cards. Some are just standing around looking scary with neck and face tattoos around primal, calculating eyes. One, sometimes two correctional officers (COs in jail parlance) are on duty. He or she sits at a desk in the middle of the oval with electronic controls to all cells and rooms on both tiers. I wait a minute for the CO to recognize me and remotely unlock the door to my classroom on the lower tier.

Inmates are screened upon arrival at the jail before being assigned to various pods depending on whether they’re detoxing, suicidal, aggressive, or determined to be cooperative at some level. Inmates in B-1 have usually been sentenced to less than a year, but some are awaiting trial with potentially long prison sentences if found guilty. After further evaluation on the pod, some are chosen to work, usually in the kitchen where they earn “good time” — which is time off their sentences. Those inmates are called trustees and given blue jumpsuits, but they can “lose the blues” for bad behavior and be transferred to another pod.

Sometimes the CO announces that a Bible study is beginning, sometimes not. Inmates trickle into the classroom — maybe five, maybe fifteen or twenty which is all that can fit in the small room with a table and attached stools bolted to the middle of the floor. They bring in their own brown, plastic chairs and set them up around the edges. I might see two, three, or more familiar faces from previous weeks, or it might be an entirely new group. 

Normally I’ll begin with a prepared lesson, but if it’s a new group I’ll repeat an introductory lesson. I tell them I’m a retired history teacher and not a Bible scholar. Some are familiar with the Bible while others know only that it’s some kind of holy book. I tell them it’s the revealed word of God for Christians divided into two parts. The Old Testament begins with creation and joins the historical record with the life of Abraham around 2000 BC. From there it proceeds to the birth of Jesus Christ 2018 years ago. The New Testament covers the life of Christ and the first generation of his disciples up to 80-100 AD.

Then I describe beliefs of Jews, Christians, and Muslims citing commonalities and differences, and offer a timeline for all three using a whiteboard. I’ll end by defining a Christian as someone who believes Jesus Christ is the Son of God who assumed human flesh and lived with us on earth for thirty-three years, was crucified by Romans, rose from the dead, and ascended into heaven promising to return someday. I entertain all questions during that lesson.

I’m always prepared with something to begin a class, but it may go anywhere depending on where they inmates want to take it — which I allow as long as it’s centered on something in the Bible or how it’s interpreted (or misinterpreted) here in the 21st century. It goes best when my role is limited to guiding a discussion. I never ask what anyone did but it often emerges. Many have done serious time. Some have been incarcerated for almost their entire adult lives and are awaiting sentencing for still another stretch.

Sometimes Muslims come in. They’re welcome to listen, ask questions, point out similarities and differences between Christianity and Islam, but not to proselytize. They’re free to hold a Koran study at some other time if they wish.

Over two-and-a-half years, I’ve listened as the toughest men reveal a soft side. When they do, others are more likely to as well. Some complete their sentences are released, then re-arrested. A few have shown up for the third time — usually addicts who relapse. Nearly all who come into the classroom are addicts of one kind or other. Some will say they needed another sentence to get clean and reoriented before trying again on the outside.

At 4:30, the CO appears outside the classroom door pointing at his watch. We all stand, shake hands, and stack up chairs before I head back to the lobby through a labyrinth of corridors separated by a succession of steel doors, each of which is remotely unlocked by another CO who is watching me through CCTV cameras.

Holy Week in Jail

It’s Holy Week, but how many Americans know anymore what that is? For Christians, it’s the final week of the Lenten Season, but this year it coincides with the Final Four, the end of March Madness. Perhaps the latter is more recognized than the former in today’s America.

It’s been nearly two years since I volunteered for a weekly Bible study at Cumberland County Jail (CCJ) in Portland, Maine and it’s a challenge. When I taught history I’d have the same students every day and planned lessons each building on the other. At the jail, I never know who will come through the door or how many. Maybe two or three will have attended before. Maybe none. Sometimes it’s a completely new group. Some enter carrying donated Bibles which are supplied free but most arrive empty-handed. 

Windham Correctional Facility

Most CCJ inmates are there less than a year either awaiting trial or already sentenced. Those who get longer stretches go to Windham Correctional Center or Maine State Prison in Warren. Inmates at every prison were in a jail first and given high recidivism, all correctional facilities have revolving doors.

An average Bible Study has eight or ten guys, some with much biblical knowledge, some with none, others in between. I always have a plan but it seldom unfolds as intended. How can I impart a sense of what Holy Week means to inmates who don’t know what Christianity is? Those with knowledge are eager to expand it. Others have no idea of what the Bible contains and for their sake I most offer a broad context.

I tell them the Bible has two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament. Last week I drew a timeline on a white board. Explaining that we don’t know when creation occurred, I began by writing:

Abraham — 2000 BC

Moses — 1500 BC

King David — 1000 BC.

Babylonian Exile — 500 BC

Jesus Christ — 0.

Muhammed — 600 AD.

Dates were approximate and the Bible doesn’t mention Muhammed, but most inmates have been exposed to Islam because it’s usually not their first experience behind bars. They’ve have done hard time in prisons where Islam has a significant presence and occasionally I’ll get Muslims from Somalia or converts.

After fixing the Bible in time, I fix it in space using a folder full of maps. Starting with a world map showing Maine and Israel highlighted in red, I then I hold up one of the Mediterranean Sea with Rome, Greece, and Israel highlighted. Then I’ll draw a crude map of the eastern Mediterranean across the Persian Gulf toward Iran on the white board. Often there are Iraq and Afghanistan veterans present who know the region. I trace Abraham’s migration from the Persian Gulf up through Syria and down to Israel. Then I trace Israel’s enslavement in Egypt, the exodus back to Israel under Moses, the rise of King David, the establishment of Jerusalem, Israel’s captivity in what’s now Iraq during the Babylonian exile, and finally back to Israel for the birth of Jesus.

If I ask how long ago Jesus lived there are lots of blank stares. “What year is this?” I say. “In the western world, we measure time from before Jesus and after Him because He was considered the most important figure in history and the Bible is divided the same way: The Old Testament is about events before Christ. The New Testament begins with His birth 2018 years ago. We get our seven-day week from the creation story in Genesis, the first book of the Old Testament.”

Wide eyes tell me most never realized this. Finally, I explain the four gospels which begin the New Testament, each of which ends with events of Holy Week — the Last Supper, Crucifixion, Resurrection — the crux of Christianity.

Questions are asked and answered. Then comes a review of original sin — Adam and Eve’s fall from grace in Genesis. Throughout the Old Testament Jews sacrificed lambs to atone for sin. The New Testament tells of Jesus Christ offering himself as the perfect sacrifice by His death on the cross, then rising from death. That’s why He’s called “The Lamb of God” — the final atonement.

This week I’ll offer a more detailed summary of Holy Week: Christ re-entered Jerusalem on Sunday. Thursday he held the Last Supper, was betrayed, put before Pontius Pilate, then beaten and scourged. On Friday he was crucified with two others. On the third day, Easter Sunday, he rose from the dead.

Recently a very young inmate with a cross crudely tattooed between his eyes came in early before anyone else. He asked me, “Is it ever too late to get into heaven?” I told him of the “good thief” crucified next to Jesus who said to Him, “Remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

“Today you will be with me in Paradise,” Jesus said.

“No,” I said. “It’s never too late.”