A sweep, an arrest, a war zone of gentrification and a hostile chair in Midtown

A Sweep

After getting “good press” from a television channel, and how their focus was on outreach, Sparks Police carried out a sweep of a big encampment at Gateway Park this week. A spokesman backtracked from that television interview, saying he was misunderstood, and that the “cleanup” was planned all along. Most people who had been living and sleeping there just moved to a nearby location in Reno. Police and city officials patted themselves on the back for placing a few people into transitional housing or recovery programs. Why couldn’t they do that and help people clean up their areas, without uprooting and displacing an entire community of people lacking the means to afford stable shelter during an ongoing pandemic?

An Arrest

Initially, police and city officials said there had been no arrests made, but it turns out Mel we interviewed the afternoon before the sweep, spent the night after the sweep incarcerated for allegedly resisting a public officer. Advocates helped her get back on track after her release, while This is Reno is trying to get body cam footage of the moment she was arrested. Will police release all the body cam footage, or just the part that paints their actions in a more favorable light?

Mel told us she’s had trauma with previous shelter experiences. Did the police doing outreach there know this about her? Many people are confused as to why people resist shelters. Have they themselves tried sleeping in one? Do they like being forced to wake up at a certain time, and only being able to have a small amount of possessions, while being checked in in a similar way to how inmates are handled? That system might work for some, but not for all. What about low barrier safe camping? People we’ve interviewed have said they would pay a couple of dollars per day/night if these were established.

A War Zone of Gentrification

The destruction of local motels, the first and last resort out of homelessness for some continues, as part of the Jacobs Entertainment massive buyout of downtown properties. On some days it makes downtown areas look like a war zone. Then, we have more dirt lots, some neon lighting, and oddly placed and sized sculptures.

A Hostile Chair

We got a lot of interesting comments across our social media channels including above on our Instagram about more strangely sized and positioned art, this time in Midtown. Even it seems the artists chimed in. “Hostile architecture” is a term meaning cold architecture, which kind of looks like what city commuting areas used to have … i.e. comfortable public use chairs or benches for example, but in this case is totally unusable art, in the way of public space, which also excludes people who have nowhere else than the public space to be. We believe in public space. Do you? That’s why we do street photography, to document those still using public space, as it slowly disappears all around us.

Our Podcast this Week and a Farewell Note this Friday

Our episode this week is with Easoe a graffiti artist honoring a legend of the public art form who recently passed away. He has interesting views on the lines between using public space and criminality as well as interactions with police when you’re a graffiti artist. Street art is sometimes hijacked, in what can insidiously lead to artwashing, whereby street style artists are commissioned for work, and then priced out of their own neighborhoods because the work they were paid for is now on display and helping in increasing prices.

If you like this newsletter, don’t hesitate to let your friends know about it. It’s free and we think it’s good food for thought as Reno keeps going through changes and new identities. Also mark your calendars if you can for the evening of April 13th when we will have a Community Conversation with different advocates and politicians looking at solutions we could implement for the benefit of our community, because it’s never too late to push for change you believe in.