A Seattle advocate tired of our homeless debate. He blames ‘performative moralism’ | Opinion
Tim Harris had enough. It wasn’t worth it anymore. It no longer made sense, even if change meant risking his identity.
A longtime activist focused on issues of poverty and homelessness, Harris is a pioneer in the national and international “street paper” movement. He got his start in alt-journalism 30 years ago in Boston when he founded Spare Change, a weekly paper modeled after New York’s Street News. Both papers were designed to be bought and sold by local unhoused individuals as an alternative to panhandling and, editorially, to help push homelessness-related issues to the forefront.
In 1994, Harris relocated to Seattle, where he founded Real Change, an award-winning street publication that utilizes the same model. After departing the paper in 2020, Harris has worked to develop a sustainable model to support a regional, statewide street outlet in a digital age, based out of Tacoma, known as Dignity City.
Harris has also served on the board of the International Network of Street Papers and as chair of the North American equivalent, which is fitting given his stature in the movement.
In the world of homeless advocacy, Harris is a heavyweight. There’s no doubt.
That’s what makes his recent decision to divorce himself from the street paper movement so jarring.
Earlier this month, Harris publicly resigned from his board posts and announced his intention to shut down Dignity City, a project that once filled him with excitement.
The reason?
In recent years, Harris has essentially been “canceled,” he told me last week, only halfway in jest. At least in his mind, the increasingly rigid tenets of contemporary homeless advocacy — including support of what he describes as broad decriminalization and the reactionary acceptance of dangerous, illegal behavior — left him by the wayside, he suggested in all seriousness.
Regardless of your politics, it raises several questions:
If Tim Harris doesn’t feel like he has a place in the ongoing homelessness debate, what does that tell us about the current state of our dialogue?
If a guy who’s been fighting for Seattle’s unhoused population for three decades feels like social justice advocacy culture is consumed by a toxic and militant brand of self-righteous equity, is that hard reality talking — or the ranting of a man’s ego?
Is Harris just another liberal hellraiser who turned square, conservative and fragile with age?
I doubt it.
I suspect it’s much more complicated than that.
‘Strategic withdrawal’
In a letter published on his Dignity City website earlier this month, Harris described his decision to abandon his prominent position in the street paper movement as a “strategic withdrawal.”
In a practical sense, Harris’ words hit like a Wild West gunfighter going out in a blaze of glory.
In his Dec. 6 announcement, Harris made his harsh critiques of contemporary homeless advocacy — and his reasons for leaving the world of street papers — abundantly clear, accomplishing the task double-middle-finger style, true to established style and form.
“A period of personal discernment has brought clarity that the obstacles to further service to the street paper movement outweigh the incentives. … As a now 63-year-old white male, I have been out of progressive fashion for around a decade and have wearied of fighting that,” Harris explained in his wide-ranging resignation missive.
“An obsession for ‘racial equity’ led to a banishment of class from the discussion and the political targeting of myself, and a generational preference for radically horizontal structure led to disdain for whatever vision I had left to offer,” Harris added, describing his departure from Real Change and his growing dissatisfaction with the state of organized homeless advocacy work.
“It was clearly time for me to go,” he wrote.
Truth, of course, is subjective — a fact Harris acknowledged in his resignation letter.
There aren’t just two sides to every story; there are many. And for every aging white guy who feels like they’ve been unjustly maligned and sidelined because their long-held views are now out-of-step, there are at least three historically marginalized voices who view the evolution of our politics and civic discourse as a positive, for good reason.
That’s the thing about change: it’s like a pendulum.
The same goes for contemporary debates about free speech and contrary voices being silenced, which sacrifice the big-picture view for instant analysis and outrage.
For decades, people of color and other oppressed and often preyed-upon voices had no seat at the table, and systems of power actively oppressed them through policy decisions and sometimes plain murder.
It’s hard to get too bent out of shape about an over-correction — or the sensitivities of people accustomed to privileges and platforms others have been denied, even if the backlash they receive sometimes feels disproportionate, unfair and heavy-handed — when you consider that what matters is where the big silver ball lands.
Particularly because it never comes to rest.
Entrenched tribalism
Still, the reality of Harris’ saga — even when you account for differing perspectives and the possibility he’s being melodramatic — points to a broader story and maybe even a warning to heed.
Ignoring the messy human elements of his 2020 departure from Real Change — an exit he described as less than amicable — the scorching critique of current-day homeless advocacy offered by the longtime radical will likely resonate with average readers who have stood by and watched our civic dialogue devolve in recent years.
Across political divides and spectrums, the strict militant tribalism Harris describes is more than familiar — it’s entrenched.
On the far right, it’s highlighted constantly, identified in abundance at Trump MAGA rallies, Biden impeachment inquiries and — locally — hard-line efforts to punish and prosecute the unhoused and people suffering from addiction, sometimes out of sheer malice and resentment.
On the left?
It’s an affliction that’s just as common, and one too many refuse to recognize, argues Harris, whose historically progressive views have recently run contrary to the prevailing homeless advocacy dogma of the day.
What does he mean?
Harris still thinks thoughtless encampment sweeps are callous, cruel and unproductive, but that doesn’t mean he supports the anything-goes approach increasingly potrayed as the only alternative.
He believes in the decriminalization of homelessness but also that laws that protect health and public safety should be enforced.
He supports the fight for social justice and racial equity, he told me, and is adamant that a lack of available housing is the root cause of homelessness.
He’s also unwilling to stand in lockstep with DEI efforts that prioritize what he describes as “performative moralism” over results or arguments that suggest the worsening drug epidemic has no significant bearing on the growing number of people living unhoused.
Not because it hurts his feelings to be dismissed or criticized, Harris assured.
After spending decades in the trenches, he’s convinced it inflicts more harm than good.
“I think that within the homeless advocacy movement, there are many potential allies who care deeply about homeless folks and their hearts are breaking about what they see on the street, but when homeless advocates tell them drugs are not the problem and that the crime that comes along with drugs is overblown … it feels like gaslighting and it undermines credibility,” said Harris, who was once celebrated for his ability to work alongside law enforcement and the Seattle business community to find solutions.
“The intransigence and judgmentalism and extremism on the left is profoundly alienating to potential allies,” Harris added.
“We’re really good at seeing the tribalism and the flaws of the right-wing movement, but really lousy at seeing our own tribalism, and the flaws that come along with that.”
An outsider once again
Before resorting to knee-jerk reactions, it’s worth considering the source of the criticism.
A decade ago, Harris was crowned a political “genius” by The Stranger, Seattle’s hard-left alt-press paper. In college, he majored in communism, he reminded me.
Harris’ accomplishments include helping to defeat contentious and aggressive panhandling legislation favored by politicians and local law enforcement, successfully pressuring elected leaders to open more shelter beds and regularly spearheading campaigns that ultimately led to across-the-board increases in funding for homeless services providers.
Today, of course, he’s found himself on the outside looking in.
In the face of all of it, Harris was upbeat when we spoke last week, even chipper, in his trademark dour way.
Harris recently fell in love, he said, and while he’s officially leaving the street paper movement he once championed, he has no plans to abandon the larger fight.
For roughly two years Harris has regularly attended meetings of the Tacoma-Pierce County Coalition to End Homelessness, which he plans to continue until he moves back to Seattle, he said.
Most of all, Harris believes he’s best positioned to be an outside agitator.
It’s a role he knows well, and one he’s successfully played many times before, even if the way he now describes the task ahead sounds decidedly conventional.
“I’ve decided that I can be more effective as a critic in shaping the street paper movement than I am as a muzzled insider,” Harris said. “The left in general has become a lot more binary and a lot more black and white. There is a lot less room to disagree, and people have become much more fearful about saying what their opinions are. They’re focused on agreeing with the orthodoxy to avoid conflict. It’s an extremely urgent problem, and one we need to address.”
“I don’t know that I would describe myself as a moderate, but I would describe myself as a problem solver,” Harris added.
“I’m somebody who’s interested in working with people to reach a middle ground.”
This story was originally published December 20, 2023 at 5:00 AM.
