Nelson, Jerry Oral History Interview

JJ: Okay, so tell me a little bit about your experience.

JN: Yeah, I was downtown at Terminal Tower, and I was standing in the doorway. And a police officer came to me, and he said, “we don’t want you homeless people standing around here.”

JJ: Right.

JN: And at the time, I wasn’t homeless. But I just got off work. I was kind of dirty. And I said something to him. He told me, “we don’t want your kind of people around here.” So I took that kind of offensive because of, you know, I wasn’t — I mean, even if I was homeless he shouldn’t have. I see other people standing all around the place, you know, dressed better than I was and everything. And he [took it to himself?] and, you know, I took it kind of offensive because — he said, “we don’t want your kind of people.” And I said, “I’m no different from anybody else.” So, it wasn’t really — he didn’t put his hands on me or anything like that but after they were like picking people out just because of your demeanor, you know. And I didn’t think it was right, you know. That’s about as far as I’m going to go with it.