A parade of dump trucks carried away what remained of the camp where people were living behind the Amtrak station in East Lawrence throughout the day Wednesday, including memorials for camp residents who had died.
The City of Lawrence Homeless Response Team gave Amtrak residents two months’ notice that the camp was closing. But, as many people in houses would likely not start moving months before they’re evicted, many of the camp residents wanted to stay there until the day they had to leave.
Many camp residents had anticipated that the full cleanup of the camp would start at 8 a.m. Tuesday, which was the day the city had told them they’d have to leave. The city had cleared a major campsite previously on the closure date.
Instead, the Amtrak cleanup started around 5:45 a.m. Wednesday, police said.
Mark Keplinger, 48, said he had lived at “Tent City,” the former North Lawrence camp, but moved into housing before the Pallet shelter village opened. He said he got evicted from his apartment because of visitors, and by that time, Pallet had filled up.
He said he’s been working to find housing again for a few months, living at the Amtrak camp in the meantime.
“We don’t really know exactly what was going on, because no one from the city came down and told us anything except that the people from Bert Nash would be by,” Keplinger said of what he knew on Tuesday.
Lawrence police woke him up Wednesday morning and brought him out of his tent, he said.
“We didn’t really know until this morning it was really, really a thing that was going to roll,” he said. “But we do know that Bert Nash was helping us move very nicely to another place that has no running water and has no services, as far as we know.”
The Lawrence Times was not allowed to join a police tour of the camp early Wednesday, nor was a reporter allowed to walk through on her own. The Times reporter on scene asked police and city workers multiple times if she could document the camp, even with an escort. She was not allowed into the trees, even before the machinery arrived and a barrier was put in place.
City workers began to bring in equipment to clear the camp around 9 a.m. By 2 p.m., entrances into the camp between the trees gaped as front loaders and skid loaders took turns shoveling loads into dump trucks.
A resident named Clover, 21, lived at the Amtrak camp for about a month. He said Tuesday that he intended to stay at the camp until someone made him leave.
He was arrested Wednesday morning on suspicion of trespassing after he got back into the camp once cleanup had begun.
He said he got on the roof of the structure that previous resident Dustin Boldt had built at the camp.
“I wanted to protect it, because the first night that I stayed here, Dustin had let me stay underneath his roof,” he said.
Clover was arrested and quickly released on a $500 signature bond.
Two memorials for residents who had died were intact Tuesday — one for Vincent Walker, 39, who was shot and killed downtown in March, and one for Rashaad Sullivan, 41, who died from complications of diabetes, also in March.
Reporters were unable to enter the trees to see if Walker’s memorial remained Wednesday afternoon but saw Sullivan’s memorial as it was crushed on a dump truck.
Drone photos of the camp Wednesday evening made it appear highly unlikely that Walker’s memorial was still intact.
A Native American Amtrak resident realized she had left behind an eagle feather given to her by her grandmother during the early morning upheaval. Eagle feathers hold deep spiritual and cultural significance in many Native American traditions and legally may only be handled by citizens of federally recognized tribes.
Distressed by the loss of the feather and the loss of her home, the resident pleaded with city workers and police to allow her to return to her camp to retrieve the feather but was denied reentry.
A city worker asked the resident for directions to her camp and attempted to find the feather for her but was unsuccessful.
Asked Tuesday about the procedure if people’s belongings are still at the camp when cleanup began, Assistant City Manager Brandon McGuire reiterated that the city had offered for more than two months to help people relocate or store their belongings.
“Any belongings of personal significance, such as government issued identification, valuables, etc. will be collected and saved for people to reclaim,” he said. “We have provided individual bins to organize these materials.”
Keplinger seemed to have doubts about how effective the camp cleanup would be.
“If you want to bring a horde to Mass Street, then the best thing you can do is shut a tent down,” he said.
Getting displaced — multiple times, for some people — has felt dehumanizing.
“I’ve been out here two years, and you still can’t even fathom the amount of layers, I feel like, that goes into being out here, and into why people stay out here,” said Bailea, a former resident of the Amtrak camp.
Bailea said she’s stayed at other camps, but Amtrak was always a place where she could get away and get her mind right about situations.
“We literally lost our home. I guess that’s the one place that I knew that I could go to and feel at home, and knew I’d have, for all intents and purposes, family there,” she said. “For the most part none of us are related, but it feels like we’re so tightly knit, it’s like a family.”
She said all families are quirky and different in their own ways — and the people she lives with are no different.
“We choose to be outside in the woods together. We support each other,” she said.
She, like 20-some other residents of the camp, did not leave unsheltered homelessness this week when the city closed the camp. She’s moved to a different camp, and she’s still adjusting, but being around the people she’s already lived around before brings her peace of mind, she said.
There’s a spigot at the Amtrak camp, but there’s no water source at the new camp, which is going to create challenges.
Boldt, who is currently staying at the Pallet shelter village but still visited the Amtrak camp often, said he wished people would not jump so quickly to being critical.
“Do you know where they slept last night? Do you know how cold it got?” he said. “Do you know how many times they’ve been back and forth across Lawrence? Do you know how many people, their loved ones, who they’ve seen get ushered from their spot forcefully?”
He said most people have relatives — “a son, a daughter, a brother, a sister. It very well could be one of those people out here. It’s all different, it’s not that big a deal, until it affects you directly.”
Boldt said he watched some of the police Wednesday morning, and it seemed to get harder for some of them to stand their ground because “obviously, it tugs on a few heartstrings” to clear people out of the camp and witness their grief in that moment.
“There better be a bunch of people in the city that are sleep-deprived this week, because if you ain’t losing sleep, then you ain’t human,” he said.
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Mackenzie Clark (she/her), reporter/founder of The Lawrence Times, can be reached at mclark@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
Molly Adams (she/her), photojournalist and news operations coordinator for The Lawrence Times, can be reached at molly@lawrencekstimes.com. Check out more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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Molly Adams / Lawrence TimesCity of Lawrence clears Amtrak camp; former residents look for path forward
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
