It’s a summer day in downtown Phoenix, and the sun is sweltering. The temperature climbs over 110 degrees, and the most vulnerable in the city, the homeless community, crowd under shade to protect from the heat.
This is a typical summer day in The Zone, an area in downtown Phoenix where the vast majority of people experiencing homelessness reside.
Poet and activist Austin Davis, 20, drives here every week. To prevent the spread of COVID-19 within the unsheltered community, Davis dons two face masks, a face shield and gloves. Then he goes from tent to tent and passes out hygiene kits, food and water to those who need it.
While the work is difficult, Davis said, it’s worth it.
“I did a delivery yesterday—I gave this woman some food and water, and she said that she loved me,” Davis said. “The most powerful moments for me doing this work is connecting with people like that and having these conversations and getting to know them.”
While Davis hasn’t always been an activist, he has been writing for as long as he can remember.
“I’ve been reading and writing pretty much my whole life,” Davis said.
Before his age reached double digits, Davis stapled together construction paper storybooks penned in markers and shared them with his friends and family.
“I think in 7th grade, I remember I took my first creative writing class,” Davis said. “My first poem that was ever published, I think I was a sophomore in high school. And it kinda just grew from there.”
When Davis first got involved with Arizona Jews for Justice, a Valley nonprofit, he was inspired by his previous work as a poet. Through his writing, he wanted to spread a message of hope to his readers. As an activist, Davis wanted to reach even more people through direct work in the community and on the streets.
“I think that it is my job to use my privileges and abilities to do whatever I can to try and make the world a better place,” said Davis. “My goal has always been to positively impact people and make a difference with my art and my outreach.”
He connected with Eddie Chavez Calderon, community organizer for AZ Jews for Justice, who introduced him to the organization’s mission—to foster social justice and positive change in the community. In the beginning of 2020, he landed an internship position with the organization.
“He jumped right in, taking everything on,” Calderon said. “I think he truly draws inspiration by what he writes and truly draws in from his poetry into his experiences, and he’s so good at really tying in what he’s feeling to what he’s doing.”
On one hot summer day in Phoenix, Calderon and Davis came up with the idea to deliver a large donation of cold seltzer waters to The Zone, a local area in downtown Phoenix known for its vast homeless population. It was Davis’s first time ever visiting The Zone.
“It really broke our hearts to see the amount of need that there was,” Calderon said.
Calderon and Davis kept going back to The Zone, eventually partnering with Let’s Be Better Humans, another non-profit outreach organization that brings activism to the streets. Together, they passed out food, water and hundreds of sanitary kits to the homeless community. But it still didn’t feel like it was enough.
“It felt like we barely scratched the surface,” Calderon said. “I’m pretty sure we helped like 200 people within the 45 minutes that we were there, but it felt like we barely got to anybody.”
The two got to brainstorming. They thought of The Mask Project, an AZ Jews for Justice project that mobilized low-income immigrant mothers to make masks for other vulnerable communities. They began to pass some leftover masks out to people in The Zone.
“As soon as COVID hit, we realized that people were going to be ill-equipped [without] the masks they needed,” said Rabbi Dr. Shmuly Yanklowitz, founder of AZ Jews for Justice. “And so we said, what would it look like to get masks to the most vulnerable populations around the country, particularly here in Arizona? And to get some women in poverty back to work?”
Now, Davis visits The Zone every week. So far, AZ Jews for Justice has passed out just shy of 1,000 hygiene kits to this vulnerable community since April. Davis’s goal is to expand the project even more.
“This is my first big project that I’ve ever helped lead,” Davis said. “This is the first thing I’ve ever really taken initiative on, so I want to do more. I want to grow this project, I want more people in the community to get involved.”
To answer his call, people can assist AZ Jews for Justice from the safety of your home, Yanklowitz said. The community is encouraged to donate masks, send supplies to the organization via online retailers and advocate with Phoenix City Council to support people experiencing homelessness.
“I really think the homeless population in our city will define the moral health of our community here,” Yanklowitz said. “In a crisis like this, how will we respond to the basic needs of the most vulnerable in our city?”
Austin Davis is a junior studying creative writing at ASU. He’s written The World Isn’t The Size Of Our Neighborhood Anymore and Celestial Night Light. You can view his work at https://austindavispoetry.weebly.com
Contact the author at mmulling@asu.edu.
