It was a busy day on Capitol Hill. Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy was asking members of the House and Senate for increased allocations to help them fight the war against Russia; the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection was preparing to release its 845-page report to the public; and dozens of intrepid activists were marking National Homeless Persons’ Remembrance Day on December 21 with an enormous art installation on the Capitol lawn.
The installation included nearly 1,200 blankets laid out side-by-side near the Reflecting Pool, all of them handmade by volunteers from across the country. “We are putting the blankets in front of the most powerful building in the world,” founder of the Homeless Blanket Memorial Project, Pat LaMarche, tells The Progressive. “It won’t end homelessness, but the people inside the Capitol have immense power and they could create affordable housing and end poverty if they had the will to do so.”
Courtesy Diane Nilan
Volunteers prepare to spread 1,179 handmade blankets in front of the Reflecting Pool on the lawn of the U.S. Capitol on December 21.
LaMarche began the project in 2021 as a local effort in her hometown of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. That year, on Remembrance Day—held annually on the shortest day of the year to mourn those who’ve died on the streets because of a lack of shelter—219 donated blankets were placed in front of Carlisle’s First Evangelical Lutheran Church and then distributed to unhoused people in the community.
The idea has since snowballed into a nationwide effort. “Since its inception the goal has been two-fold,” LaMarche says. “On one hand, advocates and activists are working to end homelessness. On the other hand, we’re working to mitigate suffering. A blanket that is handmade by a stranger can mean a lot to someone who has nothing.”
Reverend Matthew Best, a Lutheran pastor from Carlisle who has worked with LaMarche since the project began, is now its co-coordinator. “We are the wealthiest nation in the history of the world and we have folks literally camped out in tents on sidewalks a few blocks from the U.S. Capitol,” he says. “Homelessness is not abstract. It’s about people who have names, stories, and lives. That’s what these blankets are about…The people who made these blankets and quilts probably can’t afford to provide a home for someone, but this small gesture, even a simple crocheted afghan, can make the person who gets it know that they matter and are seen.”
Ann LaLiberte traveled to the event from Westbrook, Maine, with sixty quilts made by her neighbors in the Pine Tree State. “People made such gorgeous quilts to give to people they don’t know,” she says. “That message is as important as the actual quilt, that someone cared enough to give a perfect stranger something of beauty.”
Similarly, members of The Gazebo Quilt Guild of Huntley, Illinois, made forty quilts for the project. Margaret, a volunteer who asked that her last name not be used, tells The Progressive that each quilt reflects both talent and hours of planning and labor. “Most Guild members are of retirement age and this labor of love gives us something to do for other people. We’ve also made quilts for veterans since our founding in the early 2000s.”
Rita Sullivan brought twenty blankets to the U.S. Capitol from Naperville, Illinois, and told The Progressive that she volunteers there with Public Action to Deliver Shelter [PADS]. The program gives homeless people a place to sleep, shower, and eat a hot meal. “The shelter requires people to be out of the building from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m.,” she explains. “We give people a bag lunch before they leave, but during the cold months they have to go wherever they can to find warmth, usually the train station or the public library.”
Naperville is far from anomalous; shelters around the country have similarly limited open-door policies. What’s more, unhoused people are at risk of prolonged exposure to wet and cold weather, and illnesses like influenza and COVID-19 can spread quickly in crowded shelter spaces.
This makes the provision of the blankets particularly important.
Longtime advocate Diane Nilan, founder of HEAR US, Inc (whose motto is “Giving Voice and Visibility to Homeless Children and Youth”), calls homelessness a preventable tragedy and says that the crisis is a direct result of low wages and a severe shortage of affordable housing throughout the country.
Nilan, a former shelter director, estimates that homelessness impacts about seven million U.S. residents and includes individuals and families who are living on the streets, as well as those who are in temporary shelters, or staying in motels, storage units, cars, campgrounds, or are doubled-up with family or friends.
The Homeless Blanket Project, she says, is “absolutely audacious” because it highlights the fact that “homelessness impacts a broad spectrum of people who suffer from a broad spectrum of problems. People have donated baby blankets, made blankets with fabrics that are covered in cartoon characters for elementary-school-aged kids, and made larger quilts for teens and adults.”
“I began observing Homeless Remembrance Day in the 1990s but this year’s Blanket Project is particularly meaningful to me,” Nilan adds. “I appreciate the symbolism of taking time out on the longest [night] of the year to remember people who struggle every single day to make ends meet. Today, as we remember the dead, we also remember the people who are living without permanent homes. We came to D.C. with handmade tokens of love and creativity to make sure that Congress is reminded that this is totally unacceptable.”
At the conclusion of Homeless Persons’ Remembrance Day, the blankets that were displayed at the Capitol were given to Friendship Place, a D.C.-area provider of services to unhoused people. The group will distribute them to individuals and families in need.