Camp Runamuck is a homeless encampment of about 80 people under Route 195 in Providence. The name may suggest “Lord of the Flies,” but the reality is much different:
bq. The chief emerges from his tent to face the leaden morning light. It had been a rare, rough night in his homeless Brigadoon: a boozy brawl, the wielding of a knife taped to a stick. But the community handled it, he says with pride, his day’s first cigar already aglow….Because the two men in the fight had violated the community’s written compact, they were escorted off the camp, away from the protection of an abandoned overpass. One was told we’ll discuss this in the morning; the other was voted off the island, his knife tossed into the river, his tent taken down.
bq. …The community also established a five-member leadership council and a compact that read in part: “No one person shall be greater than the will of the whole.” It is now late afternoon in late July, a month after nearly everyone signed that compact.
Here is the story.
[Hat tip to Steven Kelts.]