Shopping Cart Brigade Protests Police Shooting

Behold the shopping cart, the humble receptacle of convenience for your average supermarket customer.

But for a homeless person like Margaret Laverne Mitchell, the woman killed by an LAPD officer during a confrontation as she pushed her cart, the wiry, modern-day beast of burden is really a system of life support.

Pushing shopping carts for several miles across Los Angeles on Friday as their rallying symbol, a group of homeless people and advocates called on the government to adopt a national plan to take better care of the homeless in their midst.

“Homeless people, like Margaret Mitchell, are victims of a policy we call status cleansing,” said Ted Hayes, a homeless advocate and president of Justiceville/Homeless, USA, which organized the shopping cart brigade.

Police say that officers had stopped to question Mitchell about whether the shopping cart she was pushing had been stolen. They contend that the officer fired when she tried to attack him with a screwdriver.

Rather than blaming the officer, Hayes said, society should investigate the selective enforcement of laws against homeless people and the social service agencies failing them.

Criminalizing the actions of the homeless--such as taking shopping carts--is not a solution to a social crisis, participants said. They called on city, state and federal officials to find out why Mitchell, who was mentally ill, could not get help and had to live out of a shopping cart in the first place.

Shortly before noon, the fleet of 17 shopping carts moved out. From the steps of the federal courthouse, about 20 people--eight of whom were really homeless--either pushed or tagged along in a procession that snaked across town to the corner of 4th Street and La Brea Avenue, where Mitchell was killed.

Some carts were loaded with blankets and aluminum cans to symbolize a homeless person’s struggle, but others contained genuine personal belongings. Many carried American flags as a reminder that homeless people have inalienable civil rights. The vehicles had been collected from the Hancock Park neighborhood where Mitchell once hung out, organizers said.

As the protesters rolled by--sometimes in single file, sometimes in groups of two or three when the sidewalk was wide enough--drivers and pedestrians paused to watch.

“Look! Look! What’s happening?” Cecilia Castro said in Spanish from her jewelry sales and repair stand on Broadway, to her husband Juan, who was huddled over his work table.

Juan put aside a small blowtorch, turned and lifted his safety goggles.

The couple concluded that a movie was being filmed and went back to work.