(Host) A homeless man camped on the Brattleboro Town Common in solidarity with the Occupy Wall Street movement, has asked a local church for sanctuary.
The church once stood on the Common, and among the many questions the protest has raised is who owns the space now.
VPR’s Susan Keese has more.
(Keese) Brattleboro has seen weekly Saturday demonstrations in support of the Occupy Wall Street movement. People from all walks of life have gathered at a downtown intersection with signs calling for an end to corporate greed and political corruption.
But what’s happening a block north on the Town Common is quieter: a row of small colored tents lined up at the very back edge of the property.
(Gilbert) "I think we’re at six tents now.
Tony Gilbert, the founder of the Occupy Brattleboro encampment, has been here since October 7th. He’s still the only full-time resident.
(Gilbert) "Last night I think it was just four of us. It was myself and one other man and two women staying here… and we’ve been having four or five people a lot of nights."
(Keese) On this frosty morning Gilbert, who is homeless, wears a wool cap pulled over his ears. He says he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, but left to scout out a place to spend the winter.
(Gilbert) "I just happened to be here looking for work when Occupy Wall Street happened and I felt I had to take some action."
(Keese) Gilbert has a business degree from Michigan. He went to law school but didn’t graduate.
He’d been on the Common for a week before a Brattleboro police officer told him that he had to leave. Instead, Gilbert made an appointment with the Town Manager and Police Chief.
He cited a Supreme Court ruling against vagrancy laws. He raised the issue of free speech.
(Gilbert) "That I was obviously protesting in support of Occupy Wall Street and against the increasing divide between rich and poor in America caused by the political and monetary disenfranchisement of the vast majority of Americans"
(Keese) He also mentioned something he’s been told, about a longstanding debate as to whether the Brattleboro Common had ever been legally transferred from the Center Congregational Church, its original owner.
The allegation has sparked a flurry of research, in the church and town.
It was John Wilmerding, a local man, who told Gilbert about the idea of sanctuary. Wilmerding had watched the sanctuary movement of the 1980s, when U.S. churches offered sanctuary to political refugees from Guatemala.
(Wilmerding) "And I think we have such an emergency now because of the large numbers of jobless and homeless people in this country. And I think that’s a direct result of the corporate and government abuses that the Occupy movement is protesting."
(Keese) Wilmerding brought Gilbert to a meeting at the church, and suggested that the Church might offer sanctuary to Gilbert and his fellow protestors.
Carra McFadden, the minister at the church, says Gilbert has jumped from issue to issue. She doesn’t doubt that he is passionate about Occupy Wall Street.
(McFadden) "As many people are. It is raising consciousness in a way that is exciting and it’s timely and important. But there’s a bit of confusion in Brattleboro where… you’ve got all these people looking into the deed and saying where are we at? …. So there’s some confusion as to what his message is, to the church and to the town."
(Kesse) McFadden says the church hopes to clear up some of that confusion by voting Sunday on whether to issue a quit claim deed establishing once and for all that the common belongs to the town.
For VPR News. I’m Susan Keese.