Advocates for Homeless Will Stop Protest at Capitol

Demonstrators dramatizing the plight of the homeless will end their vigil at a statue on the Capitol grounds, the protest leader said Saturday after escorting House Speaker Jim Wright (D-Tex.) on a tour of a shelter for the homeless.

Mitch Snyder, head of the Community for Creative Non-Violence, had said Thursday that he wanted to continue his six-week-old vigil--which violates Capitol regulations on protests--until Congress had passed a $500-million aid-to-the-homeless bill. But on Saturday he said that would not be necessary.

“We came looking for sensitivity, concern and compassion,” Snyder told reporters. “The sense we have is that he (Wright) is seriously committed to doing something to help the homeless.”

Snyder and others have been camped at the East Front of the Capitol since Thanksgiving next to their sculpture, which depicts a homeless couple and child in a Nativity scene with the trademark shopping cart of a street person in the background.

Wright, elected Speaker on Tuesday, met Friday night with Snyder and agreed to tour his advocacy group’s controversial shelter, which is being renovated with $6.5 million that Congress approved in July.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” Wright said. “It’s been resolved in a friendly and cooperative way--not a confrontational way.”

Snyder took Wright on a private tour of what the Texan called the “grossly overcrowded” older section of the shelter, a block-long building, which was once occupied by the Securities and Exchange Commission, that shelters 850 people each night.