There were street theater, skits, music, and parades.  Most importantly, we sent a clear message that — even though we know how to have fun on April Fools Day — we’ll never consent to laws that treat people like criminals because they don’t have a place to call home. Nor will we accept the pitiful level of federal funding for low-income housing that’s at the root of the problem.

As communities across the country look to WRAP to take leadership on these issues, I’m turning to you to help us raise $15,000 by June 15. I’m asking you to consider a gift of $100 – or as much as you can afford – at this time of great need and opportunity.

Your generosity will make it possible for WRAP to:

• Set up brief bank on the laws, court cases, findings, decisions and legislation being used against homeless people so pro bono lawyers can effectively fight them in court.
• Develop an organizer toolkit to train activists and policy makers on how to fight criminalization policies.
• Implement a media campaign to expose the human rights abuses against homeless and poor people and pressure leaders to dismantle discriminatory laws.

Let’s end the criminalization of homelessness now and make housing a human right once and for all. Please make a secure donation today so WRAP has the resources to lead this movement for dignity and social justice.

Thank you!

When we are able to pull together 17 communities and unite behind one banner of justice for all, when we are able to express ourselves with art, music, song, dance, spoken word, direct action, documented experiences and of course 100’s and 100’s of people — then we are able to use words such as COMMUNITY, OUR BROTHERS AND SISTERS, and WE, use them with integrity and accountability. We are entitled to be treated with dignity and respect.

The banner of justice for all people is so powerful because it is broad enough to include us all. It is not just about homeless people nor is it just about cops in New Orleans shooting young black kids. It is not just about poor families losing access to homeless services and public housing nor is it just about immigrants being indefinitely detained while their families are torn apart. No.  Social justice for all means just that… All of us!!

On April 1, speaker after speaker in Springfield, MA spoke passionately about losing their homes and ending up out in the street, while in Portland, OR, people already living in the street spoke out about Business Improvement Districts controlling what was once public space with their own private security force.  In Los Angeles, CA, a parade marched through Skid Row exposing the faces of the people whose corruption and greed is gentrifying the neighborhood, and in Fresno, CA, one theme of the day was the right for people to live safely and together in encampments, free of police harassment and Public Works bulldozers.

You might think these are all separate issues, but they are not.  In a truly just society, public space is a “common space,” created for all people to enjoy; public safety means officers ensure we are all safe and protected from harm; public housing means that people are assured “decent, safe and sanitary dwellings,” as was written in the Housing Act of 1937; and public health means that LA County Jail will no longer be this nation’s largest residential mental health facility and nobody (regardless of where they may have been born) will be denied treatment.

But we do not currently live in a just society.  We live in a society where obscene greed is confused with good business, where our governments – democrat/ republican /federal/ state/ county or local  – have fallen into the profit mantra: that in order for a public benefit or service to be of any value, there must be a profit being made by somebody in the process of providing it. The profit incentive as the sole incentive that can quantify excellence or validate that something is worthwhile has erased any sense of inherent benefits for all people. There is a beauty in our National Parks that cannot be measured by a calculator alone.

It is (or ought to be) freaking scary to realize we are living in a period of American history when so many of our supposed public servants in government are not only NOT striving to ensure all of us have access to quality education, medical care, housing, parks and jobs.  Too many of our public servants seem to believe these things are not even the responsibility of government!

Here’s a good example:  in 1998, the 1937 housing act mentioned above was rewritten to say “the Federal Government cannot through its direct action alone provide housing of every American, or even a majority of its citizens.”  Quite a difference!!

More and more people from all walks of life are starting to ask “What the fuck? What happened?”

Why wouldn’t our government want the people being governed to be educated, healthy, well housed and able to freely be in nature? Is it wrong to think that government should want these things for all people?   Why is it that in order for a system to be considered valuable there has to be a for-profit system built into it?  In the past, we have had public schools and universities, public housing, public parks, public spaces, even when no private company was making a profit off the provision of these vital services.

Is it wrong to assume that a home can only be a home if a banker is getting a cut? That only doctors who have to answer to an HMO care if they cut off the wrong limb?  Does everything we need to survive have to be a commodity?  And if it does have to be a commodity, what do we do when so much of the finite amount of money available is gobbled up into the bank accounts of so few?

That’s where we are now.  Neighborhoods are fast becoming Business Improvement Districts, public housing is fast becoming a thing of the past, treatment is what you get in jail and too many of our schools and parks are public/private partnerships.

It has been said that a person’s true strength shows when they have been pushed to the brink and still refuse to roll over and submit. That’s us.  That’s all of us.  Seventeen communities dancing, chanting, taking direct action and working together is how the “I” becomes the “WE,” and social justice for us all becomes more than a slogan.

For people scraping by on $2 a day, public housing, Section 8, and other HUD rental assistance programs are lifelines, very thin lifelines. For hundreds of thousands of households, these programs make the difference between having a home and being homeless. And yet both Congress and the White House are now proposing significantly raising rents in these programs.

As of April 2012, tenants pay a minimum of $25 to $50 a month. The increases proposed in Rep. Biggert’s (R-IL) ironically named “Affordable Housing and Self-Sufficiency Improvement Act” would raise the minimum to $69.45; the increase proposed in the President’s 2013 budget would raise it to $75. For families with children who live on less than $250 a month and food stamps, such increases could mean as much as a 200 percent rise in rent. Families would have to make excruciating choices between shelter, food, and medicine.

Both Rep. Biggert and the White House argue that raising rents will increase revenues, lower the overall costs of the programs, and allow more people to receive assistance. These claims are specious at best. At worst, what they reveal is a political establishment far removed from or indifferent to the daily sufferings of those left behind by the new economic order.

According to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the proposed hikes could expose nearly 500,000 households — which include 700,000 children and 40,000 elderly or disabled people — to extreme hardship and even homelessness.

Adding insult to injury, the Obama administration’s 2013 budget request for public housing, Housing Choice vouchers, and Section 8 project-based rental assistance is $1.7 billion below the grossly underfunded spending bill of 2012. The automatic cuts to discretionary programs authorized by the Budget Control Act beginning in January 2013 will tighten the noose even more. Newly rising rents and continuing deep cuts signal that the nation’s most affordable housing is in peril at a time when millions of people can least afford it.

Congress is beginning its budget resolution process for 2013, one that could include the President’s proposal to cut HUD’s 3 major housing assistance programs and to raise minimum rents. Housing advocates are calling on members of the Senate appropriations subcommittee that oversees HUD to reject the president’s proposal and to renew the housing assistance programs at 2012 levels instead. Advocates are also calling on legislators to give housing authorities discretion to not raise rent on their most vulnerable tenants and to increase hardship exemptions.

This is the very least we should do. But let’s not lose track of the bigger picture as we get dragged from one crisis to the next. It is not poor people who are responsible for the country’s fiscal woes; it is Washington, D.C. and Wall Street. And yet it is poor people who are being targeted to suffer the most.

Over the last several decades, Republicans and Democrats alike have dismantled affordable housing programs, deregulated housing finance, and passed legislation enabling the privatization of public housing. These policies are part of a larger political agenda that ensures benefits flow to the top 10 percent while people at the bottom, especially people of color, immigrants, and the un-housed, are left with private charity, workfare programs, and the criminal justice system.

We can’t put our hope in politicians and organizations that attempt to smooth out the edges of terrible legislation while people lose their homes and programs are gutted. In communities across the country, groups are joining hands to build a movement for the human right to housing. We’ve all seen what can happen when a community defends a homeless encampment because no other shelter exists, keeps a family from losing their home through illegal foreclosure practices, and stops an SRO building from being turned into luxury condominiums or a public housing development from being bulldozed. The organizers behind these victories are beginning to connect their local housing struggles to one another. They are also doing the difficult work of organizing across issues by linking housing to education, health care, dignified work, immigrant rights, and economic security. Together we will reclaim our communities from the greed and willful neglect emanating from the nation’s capitol and create a society based on social justice.

Image Credits: Jos Sances, Eric Drooker, and Los Angeles Community Action Network

The broken-windows theory holds that one poor person in a neighborhood (or, using Wilson’s words, “a single drunk or a single vagrant”) is like a first unrepaired broken window. If the window is not immediately fixed, if the vagrant is not immediately removed, it is a signal that no one cares, disorder will flourish, and the community will go to hell in a handbasket.

For this theory to make sense, you first have to step far far away from thinking of people, or at least poor people, as human beings. You need to objectify them. You need to see them as dusty broken windows in a vacant building.

Wilson himself admits that his reasoning here seems unjust on the individual level, but goes on to argue that not dealing with a single drunk or vagrant who hasn’t even harmed anybody may lead to “a score of drunks or a hundred vagrants” who could destroy an entire community or downtown business district. That is why we now have Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) with police enforcement to keep that neighborhood flourishing and poor unsightly people out of it.

There are now over 1500 BIDs throughout the United States and Canada and their number is growing.

And we are right back to Jim Crow Laws, Sundown Laws, Ugly Laws and Anti-Okie Laws, local laws that profess to “uphold the locally accepted obligations of civility.” Such laws have always been used by people in power against those on the outside. In other words, today’s Business Improvement Districts and broken-windows policing are, at their core, a reincarnation of various phases of American history none of us is proud of.

Central to the argument is the need to adhere to “locally accepted obligations of civility.” But who is setting these “locally accepted obligations of civility?” Where is our “human civility?”

We have gone from the days where people could be told “you can’t sit at this lunch counter” to “you can’t sit on this sidewalk,” from “don’t let the sun set on you here” to “this public park closes at dusk” and from “you’re on the wrong side of the tracks” to “it is illegal to hang out” on this street or corner.

Of course a tired shopper can sit on the sidewalk to rest between stores and the people that lined up for two days waiting to get the new iPod can loiter and none of them will ever be ticketed, moved on, or arrested. These are the civilized people; they are consumers. They are us.

The people these laws are enforced against are not us. They are them. And their mere presence makes us uncomfortable, so therefore they are not civil and need to be replaced with someone more like those of us who set the locally accepted obligations of civility.

Jim Crow Laws, Sundown Laws, Ugly Laws, Anti-Okie Laws, and Broken Windows Laws, its all the same old wine — just in a new bottle.

I guess history really does repeat itself and that’s sad.

Image Credits: Los Angeles Community Action Network and Western Regional Advocacy Project

We need to raise $10,000 to make sure “No Fooling Day” is a success and builds energy for this important campaign. Please donate $50 or whatever you can afford today and forward this appeal to your friends, colleagues, and comrades to help us reach this goal. We can’t do it without you!

Action Materials:

“No Fooling Day” Call to Action

Palm Sunday Call to Action

April 1st National Civil Rights Outreach Fact Sheet

Media Advisory

National Flyer

Participating Communities

Berkeley, CA Contact: Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency – Janny Castillo (510) 649-1930

Charleston, WV Contact: Direct Action Welfare Group – Evelyn Dortch or Chicago Hough (304) 590-8050

Chattanooga, TN Contact: CHANGER – Landon Howard (423) 667-1967

Fresno, CA Contact: Free United Homeless Coalition – Al Williams (559) 647-7165

Los Angeles, CA Contact: Los Angeles Community Action Network – General Dogon (213) 228-0024

Nashville, TN Contact: Homeless Advocates in Nashville – Lindsey Krinks (615) 497-0447

New Orleans, LA Contact: Mayday New Orleans – Sam Jackson 504-223-0098

New York, NY Contact: Picture the Homeless – Lynn Lewis (646) 314-6423

Philadelphia, PA Contact: PPEHRC – Cheri Honkala (267) 344-6318

Port Charlotte, Fl Contact: Charlotte County Homeless Coalition ­ Kelly Hunter (941) 627-4313 x 111

Portland, OR Contact: Sisters Of The Road/ Street Roots/ Right 2 Survive – Chani Geigle-Teller (503) 222-5694

Regina, Canada Contact: Queen City Tenants Association – Garson Hunter (306) 585-5643

Sacramento CA Contact: Sacramento Homeless Organizing Committee – Paula Lomazzi (916) 442-2156

San Francisco, CA Contact: Coalition on Homelessness – Ken Dotson (415) 346-3740

San Jose, CA Contact: Community Homeless Alliance Ministries – Sandy Perry (408) 691-6153

Springfield, MA Contact: Arise for Social Justice – Michaelann Bewsee   (413) 734-4948

Tampa, FL Contact: Refuge – Bruce Wright  (727) 278-1547

National and Local Action  Endorsers

Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP)
USA/Canada Alliance of Inhabitants (USACAI)
Take Back the Land (TBTL)
Social Welfare Action Alliance (SWAA)
National Health Care for the Homeless Council (NHCHC)
National Economic and Social Rights Initiative (NESRI)
Campaign to Restore National Housing Rights (CRHNR)
Poor Peoples Economic Human Rights Campaign (PPEHRC)
Organizing for Occupation (O4O)
#OccupySF
Occupy Nashville
Causa Justa: Just Cause (CJJC)
Homes Not Jails
Brass Liberation Orchestra (BLO)
American Friends Service Committee, Pacific Mountain Region
National Alliance of HUD Tenants (NAHT)
Victoria Street Newz, Victoria Canada
Vancouver Island Public Interest Research Group (VIPIRG)
SF Living Wage Coalition
St. Mary’s Center
Street Spirit
Safe Ground
Loaves & Fishes
Poor Magazine/Poor News Network
Housing Rights Committee
Hospitality House
Great Tortilla Conspiracy
Community Housing Partnership
Berkeley Cop Watch

Do you what to be part of it?
Contact us at: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

BIDs hire security teams (sometimes ironically called Ambassadors) that patrol public spaces, often augmented by off-duty cops in full uniform and with full police authority.

New City America is a major promoter of BIDs. Block by Block is a major supplier of security. Their names say it all: create new cities block by block.

Local governments, desperate to keep business happy, support these moves. If you are poor or homeless or disabled, a youth of color, or a street musician, you are no longer welcome in what used to be public space.

WRAP and our allies took the unprecedented step of going out into 13 cities and documenting poor peoples experiences with this policing and security command-and-control business plan. They reported an amazing level of oppression on their very existence. People are being arrested, cited or harassed NOT for mugging or stealing or assault. They are targeted for sleeping (78%), loitering (76%), and sitting on a sidewalk (75%).

Sleeping, standing and sitting: the new crime wave in this New City America. Urban removal is being carried out block by block by Block by Block.

BIDs are new symbols of the “bad old days” of racial and economic segregation. They came back under the radar, in the conference rooms of corporate America and the chambers of City Halls, but they are back.

Join us on April 1st to bring national awareness to this new form of segregation. In 14 cities, from Union Square in NYC to Union Square in SF, we will come together with street theater, music and dancing to create a national organizing campaign to rebuild new cities in America that respect and value us all, block by block.

“No Fooling Day” will also serve as the launch date for a national campaign to protect the basic civil and human rights of people without housing and to ultimately stop the inhumane and wasteful process of criminalization. Go to our Civil Rights Take Action Page for up-to-date information.

We need your help. We need to raise $10,000 before April 1st to make sure “No Fooling Day” is a success and builds energy for our civil rights campaign. Donations of all sizes are welcome to help us reach this goal. Please donate $50 or whatever you can afford today and forward this to your friends, colleagues, and comrades who can support WRAP in this important campaign. We can’t do it without you!

With your help, we’ll be able to do more outreach and recruitment, distribute action materials (talking points, artwork, fact sheets, and demands), implement our media strategy plan, and hold a national strategy meeting following the day of action to prioritize next steps.

WRAP and USA-Canada Alliance of Inhabitants are taking the lead in this human rights struggle! No other groups in the U.S. are building a grassroots organizing campaign to challenge the laws and practices that target people simply because they are poor and homeless. Your donation will ensure that we will continue to lead this movement for human dignity. Politicians will listen when we stand together to unequivocally say, “We will not allow people to be treated like criminals simply because they are poor!”

Over the last year, WRAP has put in place the foundation for a national civil rights campaign. We held a community congress to train 200 organizers, launched a legal defense work group made up of some of the most influential civil rights attorneys in the country, exposed the harsh and discriminatory tactics being used against homeless people in media outlets like The Huffington Post, built a base of 50 community groups, and interviewed over 700 homeless people in 13 cities on their daily experiences with the police, criminal justice system, and private security guards.

The findings of our research are an affront to fairness and decency: 80% of survey respondents reported being harassed, cited, or arrested for “quality of life” offenses such as congregating in public places, littering, storing belongings, and fulfilling the absolutely essential human need of sleeping. Only one in four of the respondents said they knew of a safe place to sleep at night.

Our research, outreach, organizing, and movement building require a tremendous amount of effort and resources. We need your financial support before April 1st to ensure that “No Fooling Day” and our subsequent civil rights campaign are successful. Please make a secure donation today and stand with WRAP for social justice and human rights!

Join us on Palm Sunday to defend the inherent dignity of all people, be they rich or poor. Community groups are holding simultaneous days of nonviolent action to uphold the human rights of all our brothers and sisters. We are gathering to bear witness to the devastating truth that tens of thousands of people are being persecuted simply for being poor and homeless. This inhumane wave of civil rights violations is trampling on the rights of the poorest and most destitute in cities all across North America.

It is a source of disgrace that the wealthiest nations on earth have abandoned the poor and homeless, and have subjected them to unjust repression, rather than offering compassion and mercy. The prophetic words of Isaiah warn national leaders against the inhumanity of enacting laws that injure the poor: “Woe to the legislators of infamous laws, to those who issue tyrannical decrees, who refuse justice to the unfortunate, and cheat the poor among my people of their rights, who make widows their prey and rob the orphan.” [Isaiah 10: 1-2]

Over the past year, WRAP and its West Coast grassroots members and allies have compiled and documented over 700 homeless people’s interactions with local police, private security guards, and the criminal justice system in thirteen cities.  All respondents participated in the surveys for the opportunity to speak “unfiltered” to the broader community about what is really happening on our nation’s streets to poor, disabled, and homeless community members.

What we found is astonishing:

78% of survey respondents reported being harassed, cited, or arrested due to “quality of life” offenses such as congregating in public places, littering, or storing belongings.  This includes fulfilling a basic and absolutely essential human need — sleeping.  A sad fact: only one in four of the respondents said they knew of a safe place to sleep at night.

Across North America, our interviews with homeless people reveals that cities have adopted a “zero-tolerance” approach to punishing the poorest of the poor for what are normally non-criminal activities and minor offenses. This approach, known as “Broken Windows” policing, is the very opposite of mercy and decency, for it treats homeless human beings as unwanted throwaways to be punished and driven out of sight.

We must not let “Broken Windows” policing, a harsh and oftentimes discriminatory tactic, continue. Just as we put an end to Anti-Okie laws and Jim Crow segregation, we must stop the current criminalization of people, merely because of their economic status.  The criminalization of the poor as evidenced by our survey is a sobering indicator of the repression that is spreading in our cities.

Join people of conscience on April 1st to bring light to this troubling trend and to help incubate an organizing campaign to stop the trend of criminalizing homeless and poor people. Whether it be speaking about the words of warning from Proverbs 30:14. “There are those whose teeth are swords, whose teeth are knives to devour the poor from off the earth, the needy from among mortals” or by joining in a local action in your community it is time for all of us to come together in peace, and for justice.

For more information about the April 1st day of action, please contact Paul Boden at WRAP at 415.621.2533 or This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Click here to download the flyer.

The Agenda includes a slide show to update you and your group on what has happened to the homeless, keynote speaker Paul Boden from the Western Region Advocacy Project (a homeless organizing group), a panel of currently homeless people will speak, and a call to action will be made.

We hope to leave the meeting with a strong coalition of stakeholders to immediately open warming shelters and safe, legal encampments until such time as we develop safe 24/7 emergency shelter, transitional shelter, and permanent housing options.

Please join us, send representatives, and consider actions that you are willing to engage in with the coalition.  Much is needed. Invite your friends.

Edie Jessup for the Coalition With the Homeless in Fresno County organizing committee,
559-225-1438

We began a bi-monthly street newspaper, Homeward Street Journal in 1997. Currently we distribute 11,000 papers bi-monthly, mostly in the Sacramento area through homeless and nearly homeless vendors.

In 2007 we instigated a class action lawsuit against the City and County of Sacramento for arresting and citing people for camping, and for the destruction of property. The judge disallowed the camping ordinance. We settled out of court through mediation with the County, awarding compensation to plaintiffs and claimants, with SHOC serving as claims administrator. Recently, after a Federal Court trial with the City, we won a partial settlement with a possibility of SHOC serving as claims administrator. We continue to collect incident reports and serve as contact for those that have had property destroyed.

We began a Homeless Leadership Project in 2007. We provide trainings, workshops and facilitate speaking engagements by homeless speakers. Homeless participants at the weekly meetings determine most of our activities. We also conduct focus groups and surveys. We are often called upon to recruit task force members and homeless representation. SHOC representatives speak at most city council meetings during open comment sessions, and represent at other meetings.

In 2008, Homeless Leadership members began Safe Ground Sacramento, that has become its own non-profit. We strive for legal places for people to live, and to form a self-governing community of sleeping cabins with a community center. SHOC is tasked with the leadership and organizing efforts.

Our work also includes holding workshops and roundtables, voter registration drives, river cleanup activities, marches, rallies, and outreach activities. We provide referrals to services and attorneys, and also provide the use of office equipment for people that are homeless. We work with our fiscal sponsor, Sacramento Housing Alliance, on affordable housing and regional equity, and work in collaboration with other groups on homelessness and social justice.