Homeless Americans Elect to Join the Political System

BOSTON —  For “years and years,” when people told him to vote, Anthony Addison retorted that he had no faith in the political system. After all, what had it done for him, a homeless Vietnam veteran who said he was too disabled to work?

But on Thursday, as Addison, 59, joined nearly 200 other homeless people here to register as first-time voters, he declared: “This is the first step to becoming part of the system. I can stay in my shell, or I can come out and take part in the process.”

That was exactly what four residents of New England’s largest homeless shelter, the Pine Street Inn, had in mind last winter when they started signing people up to vote.

After visiting shelters around Boston sporadically for months, the four men decided to take their effort national, and they kicked off their campaign with a one-day drive around the country.

On Thursday, volunteers registered homeless and low-income people at 48 locations in 17 states, including California.

Katie Fisher, a field organizer in Washington for the National Low Income Housing Coalition, said the campaign signed up close to 1,000 voters on Thursday alone.

In Boston, in a tent on the grounds of the international headquarters of the Christian Science Church, 170 homeless people signed up to vote. A similar effort in Worcester, Mass., an hour west of Boston, recorded 130 new voters; in New York, the number was 110.

“The whole reason we are doing this voter registration is to empower people to act on their own behalf,” said Fred Atkinson, a former computer consultant who became homeless after a series of personal tragedies. “If we truly want to bridge the gap between homeless and mainstream society, we have to do it by voting.”

The 23,000 homeless people in Massachusetts could fill an entire town, Atkinson said.

“And those are just the ones we can count,” he said. “There are others who live in their station wagons, in tents, in cemeteries. They’re out there.”

Many homeless people feel so disenfranchised that they question the value of voting, Atkinson added.

Most believe they are ineligible to register because they lack a permanent address.

But Atkinson and his three friends from a homeless shelter on Long Island, in Boston Harbor, discovered that registration forms in Massachusetts included an area in which a prospective voter could draw the location where he or she resided.

“If you reside in the middle of the Boston Common, you can indicate that,” he said.

Registering to vote for the first time, Rosemarie Hunter, 38, wrote down the Long Island homeless shelter as her address.

Hunter, homeless since March, said she registered Republican and planned to vote for President Bush.

“You don’t have the right to complain if you don’t register and you don’t vote,” she said.

Charles Caben, a resident of the Long Island shelter for five years, said he wanted to vote because elected officials had not made affordable housing a priority.

Caben said he registered as an independent: “To heck with the parties.”

The Boston voter drive had a festive atmosphere, with free ice cream and red, white and blue balloons.

Tom Magliozzi, co-host with his brother, Ray, of the radio show “Car Talk,” served as master of ceremonies.

Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino stopped by to address the gathering.

Magliozzi said he once slept in his office for a year, “so I have been close to homeless, I guess.”

Menino reminded the new voters, “Voting is the one tool we have -- and every single vote counts.

“One vote [in each] precinct elected John Fitzgerald Kennedy president of the United States. And I have a friend who lost his seat in the state Legislature by nine votes -- you better believe he thinks those nine voters mattered.”

Atkinson said the registration process alone helps the homeless feel connected with mainstream society.

“It sends a clear and defining message: Here I am, a homeless person, and I can participate in democracy,” he said.

Some new voters are so elated that they run up to him to show off the registration confirmation letter from the state, Atkinson said.

“I tell them to calm down,” he said. “Now you’ve got to vote.”