Edward H. Campbell On Church Street

Corrected after e-mail from Mr. Campbell and a phone call. I try to be as accurate as possible, so I apologize for any misunderstandings.

Yesterday he asked me to e-mail him a photo I shot on Church St with his begging sign. Don’t usually include words with my images. Jay Maisel says that people will read the words before looking at the images. This is not to be confused with putting an image on a printed page which, according to my graphic design professors, is the first thing people will look at. Anyway, the images should speak for themselves. Not sure in Mr. Campbell’s case.

He says he came here from Missoula Montana. Who comes to Burlington to street sit from Montana? Said the police took his computer and gave it to a homeless person after he used a common four letter word which they deemed a profanity. He corroborates this with hearsay from another homeless person.

Unclear how he made his way here, how long it took, or how he became a “houseless” person. He says he took the Southern route from Montana, travelling through a number of states, including New York where he talked to a rabbi in Monsey about Middle East policy. Yesterday, he worried that his mail wasn’t being forwarded.

He looks too clean for the street; he is too well composed and well dressed.”Did you know that the National Coalition for the Homeless says that violence against the homeless is the leading hate crime in the United States?” I knew that, though I am not comfortable with this hate crime designation; I think that the problem is far worse than mere hate.

He has acted as a defender of people on the street, though it is unclear if he will do so here. He has watched the rise of violence and harassment against people on the street. In one incident that he recorded, he watched a “beggar” being harassed and tried to defend him. Some here claim that violence against them is on the rise, so his eyes and voice will most likely be heard if he stays around.

While Burlingtonians may not be happy with the people who sit on the street, the social services here, I am told, are far better than many other unnamed places. Funny how many complain about how much of our tax dollars go to services and others say not enough. Err, it isn’t funny. Ed broke off our conversation, saying he had to go get food, because he was hungry. I replied, “that should not be a problem here in Burlington.” “It is, if you don’t go to the churches,” he said.

I told him about my project collecting deodorant for JUMP. “You should collect anti-perspirant. Your feet sweat from wearing several pairs of socks. I know street people who had their feet amputated.” “Anti-perspirants are on the sign I posted, I told him. He had been in Seattle where he couldn’t get a job reporting for a homeless newspaper, RealChange, after delivering and reporting for them. “They gave the jobs to the young guys who looked like them.” “Its no different in the middle class world,” I said. “Easier to deal with people who are more like them.” He thinks the word came directly from Bill Gates about whom to hire. “Unlikely,” I said. “He doesn’t do details.” Who knows?

He’d like to get a job as a reporter for a newspaper. Tough dream, in light of how the papers be laying off reporters and trying to come to grips with the internet.

Ed carried a copy of Imperial Hubris that had underlinings and carefully inscribed page notes for the first third; oddly, it was an anonymous edition which means he got the first one, two before Michael Sheuer admitted writing it. “The next incident will be here, here in the USA. The CIA had the best intel in Afghanistan. They knew everything. Why didn’t they get Osama? They didn’t want to.” Maybe. He met the author in Missoula. The author believes the 9/11 Commission was a cover-up. Yeh, so what else is new. I still haven’t been comfortable with the Warren Commission’s findings.

We disagreed on who posed threats and where they would come from. He knew about Che, though, when we spoke about attacking the smaller places in the dark of night and retreating, he didn’t connect VT to the green mountains. He could be right and I might be dreaming.

He also calls himself a correspondent for the Teheran News, displaying articles from the paper on his website. He says he was forced to quit when an FBI informant tried to kill him. You can check it out on his web-site. Burlington doesn’t seem to be a place where this rag would have much traction, especially in light of the less than overwhelming readership of the BFP.

So, when he gave me his wired addresses, I checked them out and some of the content. It is unusual for a street person, at least one on the streets of Burlington to blog. And he translates Latin!

Author: duckshots

Lapsed lawyer. Reader. Photographer. Jewish. Strongly attached to loving, caring, wife-Sharon. Working at remaining relevant. Hoping that my body and mind outlive my dreams. Maybe something I blog will make some sense. View all posts by duckshots