"Abraham told her father she had to hang up. "We're clearing all this up today," she remembers the officer said. The next hour was overwhelming and anger-inducing. As the officers trashed the tents and belongings of her neighbors, Abraham hurriedly sifted through the contents of her life. Between her clothes, mattress, dresser, table, and camping chairs, she debated what she should take. Her boyfriend was at work at the time, so she'd have to carry it by herself-where to, she didn't know."
"Until Aug. 15, Abraham had been living with her boyfriend in a tent along Washington Circle in downtown D.C. It was close to many of the social programs she visited daily, and she liked the community nearby. It felt like the kind of place where if she didn't return to her tent for a couple of days, her neighbors would go looking for her."
"Now, a month and a half after police cleared Abraham's encampment, the couple is living deep in the woods in a remote corner of the District. Abraham is a two-hour bus ride from the programs she frequents, and even further from the neighbors she'd grown to rely on. "It's not [just] the social services, it's not the charitable organization, it's us together," Abraham said. "Now we're in four different quadrants, when we used to be neighbors.""
Meghann Abraham was on the phone with her father when D.C. police arrived and began clearing tents. Officers trashed tents and residents' belongings while people hurriedly salvaged what they could. Abraham and her boyfriend, previously living near Washington Circle close to social programs and supportive neighbors, were forced to relocate into remote woods, leaving easier access to services behind. The encampment's dispersal scattered people across multiple quadrants of the city, fracturing community ties and mutual support. Local enforcement actions were part of a broader law enforcement surge that labeled people without housing a public scourge and justified intensified policing.
Read at Slate Magazine
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