“Damn. I don’t know if the cops are gonna show,” says Ed Frey, looking left to right down Center Street and pulling his tattered blue sleeping bag snug. It’s midnight at Peace Camp 2010 and the 70-year-old activist lawyer is on the steps of City Hall with a dozen homeless people and supporters for Day 44 of an ongoing protest against Santa Cruz’s ban on camping within city limits. Perched in a polyester foldout chair, dressed in wrinkled khaki pants, a straw hat and the same faded orange sweater he had on 10 days earlier when he was arrested for sleeping outside the Santa Cruz County building, Frey fits in with his flock of rebels and malcontents, though many of them barely know him in spite of the fact that he organized Peace Camp 2010.
It’s beginning to look like he won’t get arrested tonight, and he looks disappointed. With his finances bottoming out, however, he admits that avoiding jail this time may be a blessing, as he’ll have a chance to work a job that actually pays.
“I got a call today from an interested client,” he says. “He really needs to be represented in court and I’d hate to have to say, ‘Sorry, can’t do it. I got arrested for sleeping in public and violating the camping ban. Again.’”
The fact that Frey, a bar-certified, Berkeley-educated criminal attorney is at the public nexus of town in willful disobedience of the law is no surprise, given his history. This is a man who brags about selling marijuana from his law office and once nailing 18 pot plants to the doors of Mendocino County Sheriff Tom Jondahl and District Attorney Duncan James’ houses (a claim James neither confirms or denies). His mantra on any issue he takes up is to put it “right in the face” of law enforcement and community members. He’s campaigned and lost elections for U.S. Congress and Santa Cruz County District Attorney on platforms like the abolition of all international borders and legalization of drugs, and he’ll mount any soapbox available to espouse his principal legislative goal of forcing all elected officials to participate in a monthly unscripted debate with a member of the public or their proxy.
“Imagine,” he opines. “The good it would do to have Arianna Huffington debate on your behalf or Rush Limbaugh. Think if politicians could move away from sound bites and speeches and start a real dialogue.”
Around town, more than a few people who know him say he’s crazy. Others conclude that he’s just a passionate ideologue. James, the now-former Mendocino D.A, remembers him as being “like a mosquito that just bothers you more if you give it attention.” Santa Cruz City Attorney John Barisone, who recently squared off in court with Frey over local transient Robert Facer’s camping ban citation and homeless advocate Becky Johnson’s disturbing the peace violation (Barisone prevailed in both cases) goes as far as to say Frey puts his own political agenda over his client’s legal needs.
“He is very argumentative, and that doesn’t help him out,” says Barisone. “With Facer he got in argument with judge, not necessarily a good tactic. He also put his client on witness stand when he didn’t need to. Facer was charged with two violations of camping ordinance. He wasn’t required to testify, (Frey) called Facer who basically admitted to violating the law and I didn’t even have to ask him any questions, I was able to cite his direct testimony.”
In many ways Frey is just other weirdo in a city that sells weird by the bushel. But his particular brand is both organized and influential, and for the last 52 days it’s been a part of every local taxpayer’s life as highly paid police conduct nightly surveillance, erect gas powered floodlights and write tickets with the knowledge that each one will likely be dragged out in court.
None of this bothers Frey, however, as he points out that homeless rights are never very popular and that “it takes someone like me” to stand up for them. But as a practicing lawyer, some still question whether he’s standing up for his client’s rights or his own ego.
“People say I’m using people to further my agenda,” he said hours before in the inclines of the county law library. “But it’s in the public’s own good!”
No Sleep For The Weary
Back at Peace Camp, the protesters are trying to liven up the party with music. A jittery man named “Dreamcatcher” is playing a five stringed guitar while Frey and Co. clink spoons together to the rhythm. Hand-rolled cigarettes are passed around, and every 10 minutes or so an SCPD squad car rolls by slowly. Earlier in the day, Frey’s phone rang with infamous homeless advocate Robert Norse on the line. Christopher Doyon, the gaunt de facto leader of the onsite activities at the protest, was quitting. After trying and failing to get Doyon to stay, Frey had decided it was high time he got arrested.
“I think it has to be done,” he’d said cockily. “Someone has to prove the point that it shouldn’t be a crime to fall asleep. The leadership around here is corrupt. Someone needs to shake these people up.”
Along with Congressman Sam Farr, and Mayor Mike Rotkin, Vice-Mayor Ryan Coonerty is one of the main people Frey says needs “shaking.” As the sleeping ban protest was just starting, he challenged Coonerty to a public debate, then ridiculed him when he didn’t respond. Coonerty says Frey was just looking for attention.
“I got a fax from him challenging me to a debate,” says Coonerty. “I responded publicly that I don’t think its necessary for me to be a part of every publicity stunt in Santa Cruz. In the latest case, I think homelessness is a very serious issue and I work with social service providers and others to try and address this. I don’t think that endless protesting is the right way to go about it. But he certainly has the right.”
Frey, in many ways, is part of the classic fabric of Santa Cruz’s old guard of radical progressives: liberal, passionate, prone to spouting conspiracy theories. His camping protest is unlikely to change the city’s homeless laws and has already led to dozens of citations for a group of people with little means to pay them. With a wife of 27 years and a combined 10 children between them, his family life is strained because of his obsessive focus on homeless rights and willingness to do it free of charge. And if he were ever actually elected to Congress, his radical policies would have little to no chance of passing.
And yet a Santa Cruz without its Ed Freys, Robert Norses and Becky Johnsons might not be the same city residents have come to know. And despite his age, Frey himself says he isn’t going anywhere.
“My underwater yoga therapy keeps me going strong,” he says. “We intend to keep on until we have the right to sleep. And I have no plans to retire. My services now seem more crucial than ever.”
