“The thing I want people to know is that when I became homeless I didn’t become less, but more human than before,” WHEEL member Janice Connelly told Professor Laurie Mercier’s class Thursday.

“During low periods, I was able to stay with friends,” poet Anitra Freeman said. “But eventually, I ran out of couches.”

The women of WHEEL, the Women’s Housing, Equality and Enhancement League, are in town this week, reading from an anthology of poetry called “Beloved Community.”

On Thursday they spoke at Washington State University Vancouver, where they discussed — in not-so-pretty terms — the increasing reality of homelessness due to a stagnating economy. Floods last winter in the Centralia area also contributed to homelessness, they said. 

They’re part of the International Women in Black vigils, and they hold court outside Seattle City Hall when they learn that a homeless person died on the streets.
“If I didn’t have my sisters in WHEEL,” Freeman said, “I would be rolling out there in the fog. I would be dead.”

She said women stay homeless longer because they’re more likely to stay hidden. She told the story of a woman whose situation left her baffled.

“She was sleeping on a thin mat on concrete floor,” Freeman said. “She had two army blankets. Later I found out she was a 68-year-old woman with arthritis.”

The women have found strength in their words and their activism. Connelly said that most of their concerns have reached the highest levels of Seattle politics, resulting in change.

A student asked about “etiquette” for walking by a homeless person.

“First thing is you look them in the eye,” Connelly said.

“The worst part of being homeless is being invisible,” Freeman added.

WHEEL member Jessie Pedro took the discussion beyond street rules: “It’s not about how we look, or if we stink or are ripped up. It’s about being human. It’s not about etiquette.”

The student said she doesn’t generally make eye contact with people when she walks down the street, which prompted Connelly to sound off on the broader theme of home as an anchor of dignity and of self. She asked Freeman to read a passage by feminist Gloria Steinem, an endorsement of their anthology.

“Without a home, which is a symbol of the self, these women have created a self on paper,” Freeman read. “Read their miraculous poetry — and give them a home.”

Isolde Raftery can be reached at 360-735-4546 or isolde.raftery@columbian.com.