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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE |Oakland’s Housed & Unhoused To Reclaim Dr. King’s Radical Legacy, Message & Call For Moral Responsibility | Emergency Guerilla Housing To Be Built for Unsheltered Over MLK Weekend

January 16, 2020 by Jonathan Leave a Comment

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Oakland’s Housed & Unhoused To Reclaim Dr. King’s Radical Legacy, Message & Call For Moral Responsibility

Emergency Guerilla Housing To Be Built for Unsheltered Over MLK Weekend


Guerrilla Housing & Facilities Emergency Build

On E12th St. between 14th & 16th Ave behind Burger King

January 18 & 19, 2020

10 am – 5 pm 

Press contact: Needa Bee 510-355-7010

Photo opportunity

Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/1526542027493950/


January 16, 2019

Oakland, CA –  Over the MLK weekend, community members will be answering the call of The Village to construct emergency shelter and facilities for the unsheltered community behind the E12th Burger King.  The Village is one of Oakland’s leading unhoused service and advocacy movements.

Calling themselves “The Right To Exist Curbside Community”, residents living on the median behind Burger King believe the City’s approaches to it’s unhoused residents are not solutions.

“The city constantly violates constitutional law, human rights law and their own policies through their eviction and cleaning practices. They destroy and throw out our properties including IDs, work uniforms, medication, family photos, laptops, tents – our entire lives. They bulldoze our homes and tow the vehicles we live in, while leaving us on the side of the road,”  reads a statement crafted by residents of the curbside community.

“The City’s practices causes us deep depression and trauma, setbacks and knocks us off the one foot we are  standing on. At times The City’s demolitions of unhoused residents homes and the towing of vehicles our people live in has resulted in death.”

Right To Exist Curbside Community residents assert that until the city comes up with an actual solution to permanently house the city’s housing refugees, they will work with The Village to upgrade their encampment by building more solid homes, a community kitchen, a solar shower and a bicycle powered washing machine.

This community falls victim to illegal dumping. To deter this problem, two raised garden beds will also be created.

“We are here today because we are tired. We are tired of paying more for less. We are tired of living in rat-infested slums.” – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. 

Before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was organizing poor people across race, religious and geographic lines to fight for their civil and human rights. This weekend Oakland residents both housed and unhoused will align with King’s vision and dream by supporting, mobilizing, and organizing the city’s most vulnerable, most impoverished and most neglected neighbors.

“Though this country has reformed and edited Dr. King’s story to be one of passivity, he was not a passive man. He was a radical, militant and peaceful man who used nonviolent direct action to address the systemic inequalities in this nation,” said Needa Bee founder and organizer of The Village. “We are hoping what we have always hoped since we started building villages in January 2017 – that other housed and unhoused neighbors would be inspired to unite and work together thru direct action to address the immediate needs of our people living curbside with humane, dignified, grassroots led approaches. We join the efforts to reclaim and embrace his radical legacy this weekend.”

Through his Poor People’s Campaign, Dr. King spoke of the poverty, lack of affordable housing and homelessness that was found across the United States and the world. Not much has changed since Dr. King called for the nation’s poor to rise up and unite. In fact things have gotten dramatically worse. The inequalities, the disparities, the violence, the poverty, the homelessness has actually deepened. In Oakland alone, homelessness has doubled over the past two years even though an unprecedented $44 million has been set aside in the City’s budget for homeless solutions, and millions of private dollars have gone to build the Mayor’s infamous and ineffective Tuff Shed program.

Almost 2/3 of the peoples of the world go to bed hungry at night. Many have no houses or beds to sleep in.  Their only beds are the sidewalks of the cities and the dusty roads of the villages.”

  • Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

This past June 2019, homeless advocates were able to persuade city council to include $600,000 a year in The City budget to support self-governed & community supported encampments like Right To Exist. The funds are supposed to upgrade curbside communities throughout Oakland. Right To Exist hopes to be able to have some of these funds applied to their encampment for portapotty services, trash services, clean drinking water and solar power.

Last week Governor Gavin Newsom decided to release State land for the creation of temporary homeless shelters. The Village hopes that they will be able to use those lands to build the model of temporary homeless shelters it has been building since January 2017. 

“We have been using empty public lands to create temporary shelter for our unhoused neighbors, but our efforts have been criminalized and sabotaged by the mayor and her encampment management team,” said Needa Bee founder and organizer with The Village. “We intend to continue to build emergency temporary shelters for our people living curbside as long as this affordability crisis and the homeless state of emergency it created exists. We hope we can be a model of what community led approaches, co-governed curbside communities, and autonomous curbside communities should look like. 

 

####

Anita De Asis Miralle
aka Needa Bee aka The Lumpia Lady
Program Director, Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute
Co-Founder and Lead Organizer of Feed The People & The Village
Mentor of Young Oakland
Founder of 510Day
Chef & Owner of The Lumpia Lady & The Lumpia Shack
 
check out these links to learn more about the work of Feed the People & The Village:
 
www.thevillageinoakland.org
 
Feed The People
 
check out the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute Website to learn more about our work:
 
http://www.mclihumanrights.org
 
check out 510Day:
 
3rd annual – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvMIoQ3vIrE&feature=share
4th annual –  https://www.instagram.com/p/Bxck8CchgNP/

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Nationally, evictions from public housing have sur Nationally, evictions from public housing have surged since late 2021, when the federal government lifted an eviction moratorium put in place to protect renters during the pandemic, according to Peter Hepburn, associate director of Princeton University’s Eviction Lab.  https://conta.cc/3WJco9B
WRAP members and allies always tell us the vital i WRAP members and allies always tell us the vital importance of feeling connected to each other- sharing stories from our own communities, learning from past campaigns, and having artwork that we can share (and wear!) that affirms the life-saving message that we are in this together - we are not alone! 
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Join the Coalition On Homelessness San Francisco T Join the Coalition On Homelessness San Francisco Thursday May 11 at 12 noon steps of City Hall
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We are thrilled to announce that yesterday the fin We are thrilled to announce that yesterday the final two Aloft residents, Juilo and Alberto who we asked for the community’s support in advocating for, got a commitment from the State for housing vouchers and the City agreed to bridge them in a hotel like everyone else!! This means that NO Aloft resident was kicked to the shelters or streets due to the closure!! This is a huge testament to what is possible when everyone comes together toward a housing goal and puts their resources toward housing! 
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Instagram post 17977559687207330 Instagram post 17977559687207330
Of course, in a time when the poor people are demo Of course, in a time when the poor people are demonized for being poor and homeless people are increasingly seen more as something to fear rather than human beings, it’s unfortunately not all that surprising.
https://conta.cc/3HxZpkV
https://conta.cc/3HwGcQq
We are thrilled to announce that yesterday the fin We are thrilled to announce that yesterday the final two Aloft residents, Juilo and Alberto who we asked for the community’s support in advocating for, got a commitment from the State for housing vouchers and the City agreed to bridge them in a hotel like everyone else!! This means that NO Aloft resident was kicked to the shelters or streets due to the closure!! This is a huge testament to what is possible when everyone comes together toward a housing goal and puts their resources toward housing! 
https://conta.cc/3HsVsOn
Unhoused people are most often prosecuted for "cri Unhoused people are most often prosecuted for "crimes of survival," like sitting, lying down, or sleeping in public space. In order to protect people from discriminatory enforcement of laws that were created deny people their right to exist where they happen to live The Right To Rest Act was created in 2015 and is still being fought for today!!!! 
The Right 2 Rest Act did not meet the threshold to be voted out of committee this term, but this informational hearing will ensure legislators know this bill is necessary to protect our human rights to public space! 
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Join us to discuss the specifics of the Right to R Join us to discuss the specifics of the Right to Rest Act, HB3501:  What it is, why we need it and how we make it happen in Oregon.  https://conta.cc/3ZOeMvA
WRAP Round Up & Job Announcement. Hello amazing en WRAP Round Up & Job Announcement.
Hello amazing endorsers and coalition members! First off, thank you for all of your enduring support for the Right to Rest Act. This legislative session is confusing and convoluted, and your faith in the positive impact of this bill makes the struggle worth it. 

We face numerous obstacles such as a delayed bill number and committee assignment, as well as losing a couple co-sponsors from 2021. However, Rep. Chaichi (Chief Sponsor) and Rep. Pham (Co-Sponsor) continue to move this bill forward and advocate on our behalf. 
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And the hits (sweeps) just keep on coming!!!

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Nationally, evictions from public housing have surged since late 2021, when the federal government lifted an eviction moratorium put in plac...
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