Please take a stand with the following social justice groups for affordable housing and civil rights on January 20, 2010! To endorse and get involved click here. For more information on the action and our demands click here.
Action Organizers
Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency
Coalition on Homelessness, San Francisco
Los Angeles Community Action Network
Sisters Of The Road
Street Roots
Street Spirit (more…)
When Barack Obama took office one year ago, he pledged to devote at least $50 billion to combat homelessness by creating jobs and distributing federal money to affordable housing programs nationwide.
One year into Obama’s presidency, Sisters of the Road, Street Roots, Community Alliance of Tenants and hundreds of housing activists from about a dozen other Portland organizations plan to highlight what they say has been the president’s broken promise.
Timed to the Jan. 20 anniversary of Obama’s inauguration, they’re planning to travel in vans for a mega-protest planned in San Francisco at the federal building. (more…)
The Bakersfield Museum of Art is hosting the exhibition Hobos to Street People from December 10, 2009 to February 21, 2010. It is an important and a rare thing for museums to address issues of poverty. Here we are in the worst recession since the Depression, and the majority of museums (at least in the San Francisco Bay Area) are doing fashion shows. If art is to have any connection to society, it must demonstrate that connection in exhibitions like this. For the issue of homelessness this is particularly true because the primary reaction to homelessness, is to pretend it doesn’t exist, or to make it disappear by criminalizing it. And here a museum is holding it up and saying, look this is a serious issue that needs to be understood and effectively addressed. (more…)
Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. - Barack Obama
Where’s our change?
January 20, 2010 marks the one-year anniversary of the Obama Administration. He came to power through a powerful grassroots campaign movement. That movement – driven by hope and change – has foundered on business-as-usual politics in DC.
We do know that change can come quick, just look at the +700 billion in taxpayers’ dollars that bailed out Wall Street. What did those most in need get? $1.5 billion in Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-housing funds! (more…)
PRESS CONFERENCE AND RALLY
December 31st, 2009, New Year’s Eve
7:00 PM Board of Supervisors
1221 Oak Street, Oakland, in the Plaza
The General Assistance (GA) population includes the disabled, veterans, seniors, victims of domestic violence, transition age youth and women. Before November, 2009 the GA loan was at most $336.
The county has slashed the GA grant:
· up to $84 if a recipient lives with a roommate and
· $40 unless the person receives Medi-Cal.
· Up to $231 unless the landlord signs the W9 or
· Up to $231 if the recipient’s rent is over the GA grant.
After January 2010, GA recipients can only get aide 3 months out of 12 months if Social Service deems the recipient employable. There are no plans in place to how “employability” will be determined. (more…)