OPINION: Bookstore owner deserves support, not disdain

Columnist Jeff Tucker had fun skewering Gillam Kerley, owner of Quirky Used Books & More ("Bookstore owner is a public nuisance,” Jan. 4 Sunday Journal). My guess from his tone is that Tucker has never sat for coffee with Gil, or patronized his store with the sense of wonder the store elicits, much less walked the streets where people camp, or sat with campers on the curb to hear their stories.

If he had, Tucker might have seen human beings beyond the “kooky owner,” or the stereotypical menaces “setting fires, publicly urinating and defecating on properties, and vandalizing storefronts.”

I met Gil 10 years ago while volunteering with an organization serving women on the streets, mostly victims of sex trafficking. Quietly behind the scenes, Gil provided financial and moral support, business guidance and building space. His focus always was to help the most needy. He tapped into hidden skills of people on the streets, offering them paid odd jobs where he could.

I had no idea Gil’s professional background. I knew him through his quiet and kind action.

When Gil began rehabbing the building that would house Quirky Books, he let our group sort and store donations at the site. He hired one of us who needed work to organize the books he was collecting, and a man living on the streets to do odd jobs.

The first time I walked into Quirky Books after it opened, I gasped at the beauty of the remodel, its light, its color, its welcome. Quirky not only is a bookstore. It is a community space that welcomes groups for meetings, social gatherings, craft projects and more. It’s a lovely space to spend an afternoon.

Quirky welcomed everyone, including unsheltered people already moving through and camping on sidewalks, under bushes and in vacant lots in this neighborhood right off Central. All were welcome to lounge in the easy chairs at the back of the store, to get a drink of water, and to use the public bathrooms.

The numbers of unsheltered people has increased in Albuquerque, outpacing the city’s efforts to provide shelter. At the same time, the city launched aggressive displacements of camps. In response, Gil opened the back of the Quirky parking lot to a small number of campers being displaced night after night.

Gil’s action was an act of mercy, and a political statement. As Tucker quotes Gil saying to KOAT-TV after a recent fire in the camp, “It is important to help people in need until the city takes responsibility of the issue and addresses it.”

This stance may seem "ludicrous" to Tucker, but I say, do the math. With the city offering 1,000 shelter beds at best for 5,000-plus unhoused people, where are people supposed to go? Just recently the Journal quoted Mayer Tim Keller saying, “We simply have to have a variety of options for people to go besides the sidewalk, parks and abandoned buildings; that means dozens of safe outdoor spaces, pallets, casitas, Boxabls ... and everything in between.”

It makes a nice quote. But until these options overcome stiff resistance and become reality, a humanitarian like Gillam Kerley deserves, if not our support, at the very least our ears and a big dose of respect for standing up to power on the side of the little guy.

Tucker’s column does a great disservice to Gil, to the unsheltered in our community and  to members of the public public who build their understanding of controversial and thorny issues on fair, informed coverage, not snarky, cruel disdain.

A court has ordered the encampment at Quirky Books to move. The order does nothing to relieve the harms claimed by neighbors and nearby businesses. It simply moves the issues down the block. Gil’s response to the ruling, “I am saddened that we will no longer be able to shelter our unhoused neighbors,” could be a community lament — and a challenge.

Amy Malick volunteers to help unsheltered members of the community. She has volunteered with A Light in the Night and AsUR New Mexico, which serves women on the streets.