For three years, the LAPD, City Council, City Attorney, and Mayor Villaraigosa have waged a $115 million war against poor and predominantly Black people in downtown Los Angeles. After 27,000 arrests , SCI has cost downtown residents our basic human rights. Casting aside empirical evidence that clearly illustrated the depth of damage to people’s lives; the waste of precious and shrinking resources that could be better utilized to create housing opportunities which cost a fraction of what is being spent; and the creation of a perpetual class of homeless people are all costs that the Mayor continues to willingly pay in his quest for a gentrified downtown Los Angeles. (more…)
Archive for the ‘Organizing’ Category
Stand up for human rights on 9/28 & 9/29: demand the end of Safer Cities Initiative
Thursday, September 17th, 2009
After 15 more arrests, homeless campsite still not resolved
Sunday, September 13th, 2009
Sacramento police arrested 15 more homeless people Saturday at a vacant lot just north of downtown. The campers were released the same day, and some soon returned to the lot that is morphing from a campground into a battleground.
Saturday’s arrests followed at least a half-dozen such raids where police have cited and rousted from 15 to 35 people who have occupied the lot at 1221 C St. since a local attorney opened the site to the homeless on Aug. 21.
Police say the campers are violating an ordinance that prohibits urban camping for longer than 24 hours. The homeless campers say they want a legal “safe ground” with basic services such as garbage pickup and portable toilets. (more…)
Opportunity for whom?
Wednesday, August 19th, 2009
At some point in history, people will look back on this country’s responses to homelessness during the ‘80s, ‘90s, and early 2000s, and most assuredly will wonder, “What the hell were these people thinking?”
The notion that local governments can protect downtown business interests from having to witness the realities of poverty by simply criminalizing the presence of poor people harkens back to the days of Jim Crow, Anti-Okie laws, and almshouses.
But from Portland’s Sit-Lie law to Berkeley’s Public Commons for Everyone to LA’s Safer City Initiative to San Francisco’s, business-directed, but voter-opposed, homeless court, we are seeing a resurgence of the premise that public space is the purview of the business community, and that the only people that have any right to that space are those seen as potential customers or condo tenants. (more…)
Stop punishing people with the sit-lie ordinance
Monday, August 10th, 2009
Outlawing homelessness won’t make it go away; we need more affordable housing
With shelters full and an adequate number of affordable housing units not yet built, we need to stop punishing people dealing with homelessness for human survival activities like sleeping, sitting or lying down outside.
For years now, local efforts across the country to deal with growing homeless populations often start with innocuous-sounding language about the “quality of life” of the housed and business sectors of the community. Or perhaps they are billed as an effort to ensure that communities don’t become a “magnet for the homeless” or, as in Portland, that there is “street access for everyone.” (more…)
Wasteland to No Land
Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
The “Wasteland” is a large chunk of undeveloped land south and along the American River, east of Highway 160 and close to downtown Sacramento. This is where Oprah Winfrey’s Lisa Ling found and made known to the world over 200 homeless people living in tents. Many had lived there since evicted by city and railroad police from the last “tent city” on Bannon Street December of 2007 (See Homeward Street Journal Volume 12.1). The Wasteland, un-affectionately termed by campers because of the harsh, open landscape that is muddy in the winter and sweltering in the summer, was the last recourse for people to go to pitch their tents after being harassed, cited or told to move there by police or parkway rangers. The campers found a longer term refuge there, long enough to start to form friendships, bonds sometimes closer than mere neighbors. Here many campers boasted that they didn’t need locked doors to protect their belongings because everyone pretty much looked out for each other. Some found enough stability to maintain a job, which would have been harder if they had stayed in the shelter, because of the shelter hours and lack of storage for their belongings during the day. Though there was no formal organization as a whole, campers tended to cluster their tents into affinity groups, and since the area of the Wasteland is about 20 acres, there was no overcrowding or need to encroach on each other’s self-determined space. This Wasteland, though home to the homeless, was later deemed “unsuitable for habitation” and most would be evicted with nowhere else to go. (more…)