Ed Mannon, a 30-year resident of Santa Barbara’s streets and once a mainstay of the homeless rights community, died last Monday after crashing on his bike in “a freak, random accident,” said his attorney Robert Landheer. Mannon had bought the bike just hours before the crash and never woke up from his injuries. Had he lived, he would have turned 63 this week.
In person, Mannon was frequently loud, blustery, and relentlessly profane, carpet-bombing his conversations with multiple F-bombs. But lurking behind Mannon’s ever obstreperous and always outspoken façade was an acute intelligence and perceptive student of the political scene. While Mannon’s closest friends conceded he was often a nuisance, they saw him more as a fiercely independent soul whose spirit could not be confined by standard guidelines. “He was honest, loyal, and protective,” said Nancy McCradie, a longtime homeless advocate who met Mannon when she first hit the streets in 1980. “And that’s kind of rare.”
When homeless activism really took off in Santa Barbara during the mid-1980s, Mannon was at its epicenter. He was a fixture at the Legal Defense Center, which led the charge to secure for homeless people the right to register to vote even though they had no “fixed domicile,” as election law then required.