‘Sarah’ is Korean, short and stocky, ready for the fight. Her cropped dark-grey hair offsets a finely weathered face, skin light-toned. Her round eyes widen as she leans forward into her speech, emphasizing every point. There will be a revolUTION! Her thin lips set grimly, then stretch into a generous smile. We had a briefer, more issues-based conversation.
Sarah’s parents emigrated from Korea in their mid-adulthood. They settled into Austin shortly, and here Sarah was born and raised.
It wasn’t a smooth childhood. As a preteen she was taken into the Child Protective Services. The Texas branch of this federal agency is infamous for its lack of organization, she said.
Once she graduated high school, she was admitted to St. Edward’s University and took rigorous courses in writing over the next few years. She dropped out due to financial factors and began working as a paralegal.
“I won cases, I was good.” For example: “Affirmative action died. They were taking care of it on their own. Not the Asian. Not the black. Not the gay, not the lesbian, not the single mother, not anything in that fringe, outside that general reality—they lost their jobs. Lost work.” She helped fight those cases, nursing a spark to a flame for social justice.
Then, during this period of work, she met a man. They moved to San Francisco together for about five years, but never married, although she bore their daughter in 1999. They never married, but they acted like it.
It was something about that fourth year, she said, when different expectations had piled up, undiscussed, to the breaking point. They ended the relationship. She moved back to Austin, devastated, infant daughter in tow.
Raising a child as a single mother is not an easy task. Living precariously in an apartment complex, she juggled legal work with the costs and time-commitments of raising a daughter.
In a cruel addition, national recessions hit them hard at the same time.
“We went through three recessions. The third one snowballed and threw us out into the streets.”
It was during the Great Recession of around 2007-2009 that started their financial decline. she could no longer both pay rent and buy such necessities as food. Mother and daughter were on the streets by 2011. Soon the CPS came, and the mother was alone on the streets by 2012.
Homelessness, she stated, is dangerous, is degrading.
First the drugs: “They took away the K2, the Kush—all the crack came back. And they got an even better version of crack, called ‘clack.’”
Then the rape: “Rape out here is so bad. I cannot stay out here. Now that crack is back, I cannot stay out here. I definitely will be killed.”
***
Her best friend was being raped, and she’d had enough of passivity. She went to the police.
Then she paid for it. The rapists sent a man to beat her.
“For one fight. the one time I went to the police. I can’t come to the police out here because they’ll kill me.”
She lost her front teeth, her pride, and her faith in the system.
“That’s what the justice system did for me. Can’t even go to the law. That tooth, that was my pride and joy.”
She blamed that incident on the then-police chief, notorious for having little sympathy for the homeless.
“Murderer. Murderer running our police department. He should have been protecting the homeless, not dealing against the homeless. Rode us shit for the past 10 years.”
Now, things are a little different.
“We rejoice because the new police chief—he knows. He’s from Austin High—he knows what he’s doing. He’s doing it quietly, but he’s doing it.”
She anticipates improvement. Because if anything, she never again wants to see a woman punished for justice. Whether that looks like protection of the law, a tighter eye for injustice, or generally working to improve the homelessness condition.
Because: “This right here?” She pointed at her empty gums. “$950 with Medicaid. That’s what it cost for me to go to the police to save his ass from getting killed.”
***
Today, she’s found her causes. Largely because of her new Christian faith, she said, she’s burning for the end of homelessness—not just for herself, but also for those around her.
The Austin City Council had come out with two dozen rules, she said. “No sitting, no spitting, no solicitation, no asking for cigarettes. Cutting out the public bathrooms—now we got the CDC here and we got Zika here.”
So her first cause is the decriminalization of homelessness.
“We need to end homelessness. Arresting homeless people in 2017 is still not the answer.”
In fact, to combat it: “We’re forming a political party out here.”
“We’re on the streets, but there’s still God here. We have a ministry. Because it takes just one light to shine in the darkness. Whether it’s from an Asian woman, or from an American man.”
Her second cause is personal. She and other women, an alliance—they want their children back.
“We’re asking for 7,000 children out here. We want our kids back. Whores and prostitutes and mothers that got their kids ripped out during the recession and we don’t know what to do.”
For her: “I made it to the safe sleep line. I made it to the end of this recession. I’m bouncing. I’m waiting for my daughter to come back.”
Her daughter will be a senior at Austin High School in the 2017-2018 school year. Sarah finally obtained a housing voucher for the two of them, and she’s looking forward to negotiating towards a normal life.
“This housing voucher,” she said: “It reaches my life to 100. It reaches her life to 100.”
Meanwhile, she continues serving her community.
“I’m living it. I’m devoted to it. I’m a 1st generation Texan. It’s my duty. And I establish my birthright for my daughter. She gets to live because I lived.”
As work, she carries the bodies of her homeless dead.
“I became an ATX pallbearer. There’s 30 women out here that are not here… it’s the death on the vagrancy issue. Not even murder, rape, abduction. Vagrancy. It’s still increasing in deaths. It’s still killing my native locals. I’m bearing them out there.”
And she looks to her future. She eventually wants to go back to school, finish her degree, and continue using her experience with the law to impact homelessness in Austin.
“I’m going to UT to do criminal law. We gotta do some justice here. We’ve got to get some the heat off of this.”
After all: “I’m a writer. That’s my natural gift. My spiritual gift? Diligence.” And if her generation can’t help solve homelessness: “Y’all are going to see it if we don’t fix it. And it’s gonna be four times worse.”
The one brightest spot in her experiences has been, she said, Mission Possible—and its Church Under the Bridge.
“I didn’t have this Sunday, I don’t know what I would have out here. Without this Spirit dwelling, I don’t know what I would have.”
Reflections on ‘Sarah’ →