Breaking Camp, Tent City Residents Head Home

The last tents came down in front of Massachusetts Hall on Wednesday, where two lingering activists had elected to spend Tuesday night even though the sit-in by the Progressive Student Labor Movement (PSLM) had already ended.

Just days after PSLM first occupied Mass. Hall, tents sprang up in the Yard in support of a “living wage.” The population of the tent city peaked the first weekend of the protest, then fell as the protest wore on. But, even without occupants, tents kept appearing until the count neared 90 earlier this week.

Then, on Tuesday afternoon, the sit-in ended as members of PSLM left Mass. Hall claiming victory and vowing to keep up the fight for a living wage. Within a matter of hours, all but two of the tents had been taken down and unclaimed gear had been stowed in a basement closet in nearby Matthews Hall.

All that was left were patches of yellowed grass where the tents had been and a heap of trash, including the torn-down facade of “Tent City Hall,” where notices had been posted for the camp-out community. Parked outside Mass. Hall was a truck from the A.M.-P.M. Cleaning Corporation. Vacuums whirred inside the building.

It all happened a little suddenly for Samaria (who preferred not to use her last name), who left in the morning and came back at night to find the tent city had been dismantled. She said she was “not satisfied” with the agreement that PSLM and the University reached and was not ready to leave the tent city.

“There wasn’t any kind of closure,” she says. “What if people wanted to exchange numbers?”

By Wednesday, even Samaria was gone. So was the trash pile. Armed with rakes and shovels, landscape crews were preparing to spray green “hydro mulch” on the patches of dead grass.

Though it came and left without fanfare, one squatter, Alex Rae, says he believes the tent city was more than just a display of support.

“It’s a concrete show of solidarity,” he says, sitting on the back fender of a car stuffed with blankets and sleeping bags after the tents have come down. “It’s here. It’s big. You can’t deny it.”

The inhabitants of the tent city, many sharing Rae’s sense of solidarity, regularly held meetings and events together. Last Sunday afternoon, the campers held a barbecue. On Monday morning, they held an instruction session with an organizer from the Ruckus Society, which trains activists in non-violent civil disobedience.

In recent days, emergency plans had been discussed in case police arrived to shut down the protest and round up the tent city occupants. That scenario never came to pass. In fact, the campers gave local police officers rounds of applause at several of their meetings.

“We were happy with the way they carried themselves,” says Prashant Inamti, who spent a week and a half in the tent city.

According to Inamti and other residents, the main disruptions came on the weekends when undergraduates returned from parties drunk. One man tried to urinate on two of the tents last weekend, they say. Another one stumbled and fell onto a tent, though the occupant was not injured.

“There were a lot of ridiculous, stupid incidents,” Rae says. “Basically, we had to keep security.”

Though the tent city attracted many people from outside Harvard, residents say they caused no trouble. Many were like Samaria, people who heard about the sit-in, happened to stop by, and then just decided to stay.

Samaria says she was in town to visit her father, who is ill, and joined the tent city because she thought it was interesting.

Though she says she grew to support the living wage cause over the past few days, Samaria says she was mainly interested in studying why the protest here remained so peaceful in contrast to movements thirty years ago.

The only other camper who stayed Tuesday night along with Samaria was Conan Buzby.

Buzby lives in Alaska but recently has been staying with a friend in Boston. He says he came to the tent city after his friend told him about it, but says he only later learned about the living wage cause.

“It was an excuse to come to the Yard,” he says. “A lot of people were playing frisbee, eating, smoking, hanging out. Then you learn what it’s all about.”

--Staff Writer Andrew S. Holbrook can be reached at holbr@fas.harvard.edu.