On the one year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Grant Pass decision, community groups in Kentucky premiere a show exposing the billionaire behind making homelessness a crime

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A year ago, the Supreme Court sided with the city of Grants Pass in a decision that made public camping illegal, even when homeless communities lack alternative shelter. To mark this anniversary, a new national group, Punch Up along with Kentucky-based Madison County Tenants Union is premiering the pilot episode of the Dishonor Show: The Dishonor of Making Homelessness A Crime. Dishonor Host Scott Davis, “Welcome to Dishonor, where we honor the strength, grit, dignity, and pain of poor and working people and we uncover the dishonor of billionaires and multimillionaires that use their money and power to keep the rest of us down.” The show focuses on the story of a leader in the Kentucky homeless community,Trey Mitchell, “ I’ve slept on the street. I’ve slept on the ground. Instead of making this an illegal thing, why don’t we build more homeless shelters?”

On Sunday, June 29th the show will premiere at The Event Space in Berea Kentucky and event organizers have called and texted over 2000 local residents to attend the screening. Doors will open at 12:30pm, a free meal will be served at 1pm, followed by the premiere and discussion at 2pm. The event is free, but organizers will be passing the hat to ask for donations in support of emergency shelter funds for the homeless community in Berea. Michael Harrington, a community leader with the Madison County Tenants Union explains: “there has been a wall-to-wall housing and shelter crisis in Madison County and this brutal law says if you ain’t got a place to be inside because you’re poor, well, where you need to be is behind bars.” 

Kent Gilbert, pastor of Union Church in Berea hopes that the show will raise more questions about Joe Lonsdale and Cicero, “Why would anybody make this a multi million dollar effort? Because that’s what they spend, Cicero spends millions of dollars to lobby legislators to just punish people who are down on their luck.”

Dishonor is a production of Punch Up, a new national organization dedicated to building a home where poor and working white men from across the country join in the work for freedom and justice for all. More information about Punch Up and the Dishonor Show at punch-up.org