US agents clear homeless camp of tents and people in heart of Washington
Security agents and sanitary personnel on Wednesday cleared out a longstanding encampment of homeless people in a leafy Washington plaza just steps from the White House.
As downtown office workers looked on, the agents pulled down makeshift tents and dumped homeless campers' personal belongings into garbage trucks at McPherson Square.
"The (National) Park Police showed up at about six o'clockish or so," Daniel Kingery, a 61-year-old man living in the park, told AFP.
Dozens of tents had filled the makeshift camp in a plaza two blocks from both the White House and the US Treasury, and six blocks from the World Bank.
The homeless camp had come to represent a yawning social divide in a national capital known for its power and wealth.
Kingery, barefoot and with a flowing white beard, said he was the first to pitch camp in McPherson Square about three years ago, and saw it fill up with residents as other homeless camps in the city were evacuated.
Authorities announced in November they would clear the camp by April but decided to move up the evacuation, warning the campers weeks in advance that they would need to move to homeless shelters.
The speedier evacuation was "out of concern for health and safety and given that the growth of the encampment was impeding" delivery of social services, the National Park Service, which oversees many green spaces in Washington, said in a statement.
Kingery told AFP he did not want to go to a homeless shelter, "which I hear are more violent than this park has ever been."
Homeless advocates, like Amanda Misiko Andere, chief executive of Funders Together to End Homelessness, told AFP that she "saw a lot of people scared and worried about where they were going to go, not knowing where they were going to go."
Andere said Americans should "be ashamed" that the federal government under President Joe Biden, headquartered in the same city, couldn't manage "closing down an encampment in a humane way."
Like many large US cities, Washington under Democratic Mayor Muriel Bowser has struggled to provide housing solutions for a burgeoning homeless population, estimated to be at 5,000 people in 2021.
(Source: AFP)
Russian court orders Google to pay staggering fine of $20 decillion
US police arrest pro-Palestine protesters for 'occupying' Minnesota University building
Over 200 pro-Palestinian protesters arrested outside New York Stock Exchange
Nov. 16: ‘Axis of Resistance’ operations against Israeli occupation
Yemen stages drone strike against Eilat in fresh anti-Israeli operation
Hezbollah conducts successful operations against five major Israeli bases in Haifa
Israel aware of consequences of attacking Iran’s nuclear sites: FM
Iran says it hit record daily gas production in South Pars
Iran’s envoy to Iraq: Israel root cause of insecurity in West Asia
1.2 million Palestinians left without clean water in south Gaza
VIDEO | Allameh Tabataba’i remembered as pioneer of Iran’s philosophy, culture
PressTV NEWSLETTER
now
This makes it easy to access the Press TV website
