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Winifred, or Winnie as he's known on the streets. Sixty-years-old and a native of Camden, Winnie spent two years in Vietnam as a Marines. He was never shot there, but he's been shot and stabbed here. Winnie's been homeless for over a decade. I told him about Shinseki's statement that veteran homelessness will be eradicated by 2015, which made Winnie shake his head in disgust, "Shit, man, there are more panhandlers than ever, and younger ones too. I've seen kids as young as fourteen panhandling. We talked quite a bit about Camden, and also Kensington, "You know that Kensington Strangler? I used to buy drugs from that dude. And the four women he killed, I knew them all. They were also his customers. They'd do tricks to pay for their habit, and they bought it from this guy."

Winnie talked about whites fleeing Camden even before the riots. The new suburbs and integration motivated them to do this. Blacks couldn't easily move to the suburbs, of course, even if they had the means. Developers wouldn't sell to them. With industries gone, and downtown losing business to the suburban malls, Camden has become a well-known shit hole. "With the economy so fucked up," I said, "I'm afraid Camden will get even worse."

"How?! How can Camden get any worse? You'll have to bomb it to make it any worse!"

Winnie talked about 14-year-old Camden drug dealers making thousands of bucks a day, and how all the cops were in on this drug trade, "Hell, even the mayor was selling drugs. That Milan guy. He just got out, I think."

The last time Winnie got a decent place to sleep was inside a tent at the Occupy camp, nearly a year ago.




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