Bloomington Homeless March In Protest Of Jaywalking Tickets

A group of homeless people and homeless supporters marched on the offices of Bloomington’s daily newspaper Tuesday after a run-in with Bloomington Police last week.

Starting from Bloomington’s Shalom Community Center, the group marched in hopes of making the community aware they feel they have been victimized.

Shalom Community Center Executive Director Forrest Gilmore says the marchers feel they’re being unfairly targeted by the police and the media.

“An action occurred last week where several officers came to the center and began ticketing people for crossing the street,” Gilmore says. “In all, they ticketed seven individuals, and it became quite a controversy—like they were being specifically targeted for something as simple as crossing the street and that they were being targeted because they were homeless.”

Following a 20-minute march south, the group assembled outside the Herald-Times newspaper to protest. March organizer Travis Combs says he feels the paper’s coverage has been uneven regarding the homeless.

“The Herald-Times has been doing articles on the homeless for years. There have been good ones,” he says. “Not all of them have been bad.”

Herald-Times editor Bob Zaltsberg says the paper, ‘has a long history of support for programs for people who are homeless’ and that previous stories were not meant to target the homeless, but to highlight activities in the community.