As we approach our 10th Anniversary, we recall that Picture the Homeless was co-founded by the inspirational Lewis Haggins Jr., born in 1955. 

Lewis, who passed away in December 2003, was buried as a John Doe in Potter's Field, Hart Island in February 2004. In 2005, Picture the Homeless and our faith allies held the first memorial service at Potter's Field. Three years ago this week, on October 27, 2006, Lewis was properly laid to rest by his family in New Jersey.

Here, PTH member and our former faith community organizer, William Burnett, reflects on our Potter's Field campaign.  Over the weekend, I had an opportunity to revisit Picture the Homeless' Potter's Field Campaign, as we approach PTH's10th Anniversary Gala next month. The campaign enjoyed numerous successes, though a number of goals have yet to be achieved. What stood out for me -- as I was reviewing archived email correspondences from the period in which I actively worked on that campaign, to ensure I accurately recalled details and dates -- was how very potent the emotions that drove that campaign still are. The longer I perused the archived emails, the harder it was to keep myself from losing my composure.

The opportunity to join veteran leaders of Picture the Homeless in organizing the Potter's Field Campaign was an incredible honor, an experience I think I will never have an opportunity to repeat. All the campaigns at Picture the Homeless are of great value, drawing from questions involving fundamental human rights -- rights to adequate housing and food, freedom from government oppression, fair economic opportunity, and a safety net when that opportunity is unavailable. But the primary question at the heart of the Potter's Field Campaign -- what we, in this campaign, were demanding from the government and citizens of New York City -- involved directly the meaning of human life. How do we as a community define human personhood? And what dignity and honor do we owe people who die in New York City?

It's not that the other campaigns at Picture the Homeless aren't also asking how we define human personhood and dignity. They certainly are. It's just that the Potter's Field Campaign was uniquely situated to avoid all the distracting social arguments the other campaigns have to confront. The Potter's Field Campaign, for example, didn't have to confront the speculators' claim that our demands were in opposition to their alleged economic and property rights. Nor did we have to confront the notion that hiding away the poor, either in jails or in shelters/concentrations camps, is necessary to improve the quality of life for other citizens. We just wanted to know who deserves a decent burial and to, and who deserves the opportunity to mourn the loss of those close to them.

The whole history of Potter's Field in New York reflects a history of callous disregard for human dignity on the part of the city. It is astonishing that way of handling the deceased had gone on for as long as it had. Potter's Field is located on Hart Island in the Long Island Sound, off City Island in the Bronx. Hart Island, itself, has an impressive history. It was a training camp for Union soldiers during the Civil War, a P.O.W. camp during World War II. During the Cold War, it housed Project Nike nuclear missile silos. During much of its history, though, the two constants about Hart Island were that it was the site of one of New York City's prisons and... Potter's Field Prisoners from Riker's Island provide the burial labor for Potter's Field. The history of prisoners providing that labor goes back to the nineteenth century, when the city office overseeing social welfare or benevolence and the office overseeing the prisons were one-and-the-same. They wanted cheap labor to bury the poor. Using free labor from the prisons was considered to be an efficient and economical way to go, since they already had access to exploit that labor.

Today, separate offices oversee social welfare and the prisons -- but Hart Island, having itself been a prison site, remains under the jurisdiction of the Department of Corrections. And the Department's prisoners continue to provide the labor for burying deceased poor, anonymous and unclaimed persons.Even though they no longer maintained a prison there, the Department of Corrections had retained a prison-like approach to governing access to Hart Island. The members and leaders of Picture the Homeless discovered that painfully, when one of our organization's co-founders, Lewis Haggins Jr., passed away in December 2003. Lewis's identity had been lost while he was in the hospital, and so he laid as in the city morgue for months before being transferred to Hart Island for burial. When the NYPD's missing persons squad finally identified Lewis and notified his parents, Picture the Homeless members, who had struggled side-by-side with Lewis in the trenches for social justice, attempted to arrange to visit Hart Island for closure.

The Department of Corrections' stringent guidelines would not permit anyone to visit, however, who could not present a burial license from the health department and demonstrate familial relations. Adding to the pain, members of Picture the Homeless were at a loss to understand why the city had taken so long to discover Lewis's identity, making it necessary to bury Lewis in Potter's Field in the first place. So began the Potter's Field Campaign. The Potter's Field Campaign has made some achievements, fairly significant ones. There are now regular memorial services on Hart Island six times a year, and homeless people are free to go to Hart Island to participate in these memorials.

Successful conversations have also taken place with the NYPD's missing persons squad about more efficient and useful methods of identifying homeless people who die on the streets of New York City, using records from the Department of Homeless Services and from the Human Resources Administration. The Potter's Field Campaign's achievements were not material gains, by any stretch of the word -- but they were potent moral gains. We forced city government, key media outlets, the faith community and other citizens in New York City to examine how we collectively define human personhood and dignity. Internally, those gains helped to develop a moral framework for examining other rights intrinsic to human dignity -- housing, food, economic opportunity, and freedom from arbitrary government oppression. Work on the Potter's Field Campaign had proven emotionally exhausting for me, driving me for a time to burnout -- but the efforts I had an opportunity to participate in with my sisters and brothers at Picture the Homeless had also proven exceptionally rewarding.

In hindsight, my choice to share the work of Picture the Homeless' leadership in that campaign was absolutely the right one. October 27, 2009 as I write this, we mark the third anniversary of Lewis Haggins Jr. having been removed from Hart Island and put to proper rest by his family -- I am moved to acknowledge that Lewis's legacy lives on in the leadership of Picture the Homeless. And his sisters and brothers in the movement for social justice for homeless New Yorkers, together with Lewis's family, know that Lewis is in peace.