Chris Schneider Photos' photostream  

Students from Mendota, California perform folklorico dance for 5 de Mayo celebration.

A young woman participates in Aztec dance prior to the start of May 1, 2012 Immigrants' Rights March in Fresno, California.

Simple, wooden, hand painted memorial plaques pay tribute to deceased homeless men and women who lived on the streets of Fresno, California. The “Homeless Memorial Site” located under a freeway overpass has the appearance of a graveyard. On January 14th an other plaque was placed there in remembrance of Sharen Bobbitt, better known as “Big Sue.”

For twenty-seven years Sue, who suffered mental illness, was homeless. She said she was homeless by choice but worked every day with those who were homeless not by choice to find shelter, food and other necessities of basic survival. She was instrumental in starting the first shelter for homeless women decades ago.

Sue died on a sidewalk just outside a homeless shelter on December 28.She had just been released from a hospital, reportedly for pneumonia. Many other homeless slept on that same sidewalk in the freezing cold because the City of Fresno had recently destroyed their shelters and confiscated all their worldly possessions. There are not nearly as many shelter beds in Fresno as there are homeless persons. Sue was with them until the end.

Members of Sue's family, the homeless community and homeless advocates held a memorial for Sue on January 14 at the former site of one of the homeless encampments that the city had recently destroyed. In attendance at the memorial was a former Mayor of Fresno, Alan Autry who in 2006 began a campaign to destroy homeless encampments. (See: www.flickr.com/photos/cschneider56/sets/72157594490807067... ) He and the City were sued---and lost—for violating the constitutional rights of the homeless. Autry spoke of meeting Big Sue and learning so much more about the homeless in the city----and declared that he had made many big mistakes in addressing homelessness when he was mayor.

Now Fresno has a new mayor who apparently has not learned the lessons that the former mayor did. While the memorial service occurred at the underpass, city employees moved in and destroyed another homeless encampment just a few blocks away. Residents of the encampment say there had been no warning from the city.

Rest in peace Big Sue