[A makeshift memorial for Donna Harris on Avenue A earlier this month]
Village Voice reporter Emily Mathis attended the memorial for Donna Harris Saturday night at Maryhouse on East Third Street.
Harris, a homeless resident of Avenue A/Tompkins Square Park these past five years, died on March 2. She was 52. The Voice reported that Harris, an addict who was mentally unstable, died in Harlem as-of-yet-unknown causes.
In total, some 50 people stopped by the Maryhouse to pay their respects, including family members.
Her daughter, Grace Harris, said her mother's drugs of choice were Oxycontin and, she suspects in later years, heroin. The younger Harris had been estranged from her mother for about a year.
Also from the article
[H]er death has clearly hit a nerve, symbolizing not just the plight of the city's homeless population, but also the real estate restructuring — and consequential class restructuring — of the East Village. "You have these buildings where families used to pay $500, now single people are paying $5,000," [Maryhouse worker Felton] Davis said.
"There have been a few cynical comments, people who were like, 'please, what is this,'" he continues. "I think that people that are moving into this neighborhood, and paying top dollar — it irks them that there are people leftover from when this was working class families and poor people. And they have to walk by them in the park. And people are dirty, and they're coming here to eat. There's a class of the super-rich that are bothered by that. They think that anything that isn't spiffy is affecting property values."
Read the whole article here.
Previously on EV Grieve:
RIP Donna Harris
About the memorial for Donna Harris Saturday at Maryhouse
