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Hi.
My name’s John.
I teach in the Writing Program.
And - despite the pic on this
slide - I don’t usually look like a
Disney villain. . . .

But, like you, I spent 2020+ mostly
cooped up at home, tethered to my
laptop and phone, slowly going stir
crazy as I oscillated between infinitely
many Zoom meetings and a
neverending doomscroll. So
occasionally, in the downtime, I
sought to divert myself with silly
photo apps, like ToonMe and Voilà.
I don’t know if I succeeded. (In not
going crazy, that is.)

It could have been worse,
though.
A lot worse.

• Because being without a home is way,
way worse than being locked down inside
one.

And there were – and are – a
lot of people in Denver and
nationwide who were forced to
survive the pandemic while
unhoused.
Who were unhoused before
the pandemic started.
Who remain unhoused still –
and whose numbers are
growing – even now that the
pandemic seems to be abating.

The relationship between rate of
homelessness rate and the rate at
which a city gentrifies is, to put it
mildly, not accidental.

Nor is the relationship between
housing injustice and other forms
of injustice.

This is something I think about a lot.
For eight years, I was the faculty
director of DU’s Social Justice Living
& Learning Community.
And it was more than 10 years ago
that I co-founded the DU Community
Writing Center. It’s like the Writing
Center on campus, except that we
set up in some of the shelters
downtown.

But we couldn’t teach in the shelters in 2020; social
distancing requirements wouldn’t allow it.
That was the worst part of the pandemic for me.

However, thanks to some real smart
and forward-thinking friends in the
nonprofit world, I was able to
continue working (if not teaching) in
the homeless community during the
pandemic, by volunteering at a Safe
Outdoor Space. Perhaps you’ve seen
them around town: Safe Outdoor
Spaces are the city-sanctioned
encampments, built by the Colorado
Village Collaborative and others, so
that some of our unhoused
neighbors could have a place to
shelter during this godawful
pandemic year.

There were two sites, both in Cap Hill: one
in the parking lot beside the Denver
Community Church, with room for 40
women, men, and families; and another
beside the First Baptist Church, with room
for 30 women and trans folx. Each Space
has heated tents, bathrooms, showers, and
electricity. Residents received a COVID test
each morning, and again any time they left
and returned to the camp.
During the months the sites were open,
there were ZERO incidences of the virus.

Most residents of the DCC site came from an ad hoc
camp across the street, one of many that sprang up in
Cap Hill and by the capitol during lockdown.

The Colorado Village Collaborative, who created these
Spaces, is the same group that founded the Women’s
Village at Clara Brown Commons, a tiny homes community
that opened earlier this year in the Cole neighborhood,
and also Beloved Community Village, the tiny homes
community that opened in Globeville in 2017.

Taking photos isn't allowed inside
the Safe Open Spaces, but even from
outside the DCC camp you can see
the Wells-Fargo “cash box” building
on the horizon; once inside, you can
see the twin steeples of the
Cathedral of the Immaculate
Conception, too. From the SOS sister
site at 14th and Grant, you can see
the Capitol dome.

Those views are no accident. It took a lot of
searching and false starts and squabbles with NIMBY
neighbors to settle on these locations, finally. But
from the ground you can’t NOT see the stark
contrast between these little tent villages and the
towering spires of church, state, and market looming
above them.
That is, the camps are themselves a protest against
the necessity of their own existence.

The idea for Beloved Community Village grew out of a tiny homes community
that Denver Homeless Out Loud built in Sustainability Park in 2015 — only to
see it dismantled by the city, then rebuilt by DHOL, then dismantled again. That
community was called Resurrection Village, harkening back to Resurrection
City, the tent camp that MLK’s Poor People’s campaign built in DC in 1968.
Many of the DHOL activists were involved in the Denver Catholic Worker
House, founded in Five Points only a few years after the Poor People’s
Campaign, inspired by the Catholic Worker house founded by Dorothy Day on
New York’s Lower East Side during the Great Depression.

The Denver Catholic Worker House burned down in 2016.
But it’s since re-formed only a few blocks from its original
location.
All of which is to say that this impoverished, ephemeral,
transient community has, in fact, a long, deep, and very
rich history.

Oh, shoot. I was supposed to be introducing me, but I got distracted.
So: I’m taking this course as I try to design a community-engaged WRIT class that takes
place half in the field and half online. Space and time are real challenges when you teach
community-engaged writing courses. How do you fit in time in the field AND classroom
time AND time for writing when students are also trekking back and forth from classroom
to field site to dorm?
One possibility: Eliminate classroom time. Instead, divide the time between teaching on-
site and teaching asynchronously online.
This is one among several bursts of inspiration and/or bouts of stir craziness I had during
lockdown. And it requires that I finally — finally! — figure out Canvas.

�ݺ�ߣ

Tiedemann intro2

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