UNHAPPY MARCHERS CAUSE FUROR

TEMPERS FLARE, FISTS FLY AT D.C. SHELTER

Tempers flared and punches were thrown yesterday at the entrance to the Housing Now! office when a group of marchers from New York tried to push their way inside, according to D.C. police and some of the dozen combatants.

No one was arrested, but one woman was taken from the scene at Second and C streets NW to Capitol Hill Hospital. Several witnesses said she was punched in the stomach during the melee. She was listed in stable condition yesterday.

The scuffle broke out when the New Yorkers went to the Housing Now! headquarters in the basement of the shelter run by Mitch Snyder and demanded to meet with him.

"A bunch of people wouldn't let us in, so we gave them the bum's rush," said New Yorker Warren Lockett, 23. "They grabbed us and we retaliated."

Lockett, who said he is not homeless, said the New Yorkers who had walked to Washington to participate in today's march for affordable housing were angry because they believed they were left out of the planning for the event and had not been treated well since their arrival Thursday.

He and others were particularly upset because they had been turned away from the Rayburn House Office Building at noon although they had been promised a free meal.

In an interview, the cafeteria manager for the Rayburn building, John Logue, said the doors were routinely locked to the public between 11:45 a.m. and 1:15 p.m., the time the New Yorkers came to the building. Logue said that by 4 p.m. yesterday, they had fed 600 to 700 homeless people "a full hot meal with an entree, two vegetables and bread."

Snyder said the disturbance resulted from "pain and anger."

"These people went through a tremendous amount to get here," he said. "There is a lot of confusion and it is a volcanic situation. We promised those who walked here from New York shelter and food and we will supply it."

Snyder said the marchers camped on the basement floor of the shelter Thursday night and ate a dinner of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

The accommodations upset New Yorker Alberto Mazario, 27.

"We walked 250 miles to get here," he said. "And they give us a basement floor and a peanut butter sandwich. While all those other people {regular residents of the shelter} who didn't do anything got a mattress and a chicken dinner."

Mazario said some of his group wanted to return to New York and not take part in today's march. Snyder said he believed differences would be forgotten by the time the marchers get to the Mall today.

Articles appear as they were originally printed in The Washington Post and may not include subsequent corrections.