Press Advisory – for Immediate Release Simultaneous Protests in 14 Cities Respond to SCOTUS Anti-Homeless Case

Press Advisory – for Immediate Release

April 18, 2024

Press contacts: 

• Paul Boden –  WRAP (415) 430-7358; pboden@wraphome.org
• Adam Smith – LACAN (213) 863-4039 adams@cangress.org
• Terese Howard – HAND  (701) 484-2634; info@housekeysactionnetwork.com

“We Will Not Disappear”: 

Simultaneous Protests in 14 Cities Respond to SCOTUS Anti-Homeless Case

Homeless-led groups organized through the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) are staging rallies, marches, protests, art demos, performances, and teach-ins on April 22, in fourteen cities and counting. The groups are challenging the appeal of SCOTUS case Johnson v. Grants Pass. 

Actions are taking place in the following cities: San Francisco (Bay Area), CA; Los Angeles, CA; Sacramento, CA; Portland, OR; Medford, OR; Missoula, MT; Seattle, WA; Denver, CO (https://wraphome.org/targeted-banished-displace-swept/).

The City of Grants Pass, Oregon has a law making it illegal to sleep on public property, punishable by fine and arrest. The Ninth Circuit Court previously found such laws unconstitutional under the Eighth Amendment, because they allow police to arrest and cite unhoused people for camping who have no other option. On April 22, 2024 the US Supreme Court will decide whether to uphold this ruling or dilute the 8th Amendment protections. 

“Criminalizing poverty and homelessness not only fails to address systemic causes of mass homelessness, it also exacerbates the underlying structures of oppression that continue to plague our society.” –Paul Boden, Western Regional Advocacy Project

“Anti-camping ordinances result in citations, arrests, and forced displacement for the inescapably human act of taking up space. These ordinances cause essential belongings, including items necessary to basic human survival, to be confiscated and destroyed. And they severely curtail people’s ability to pursue economic and housing security.” –Terese Howard of House Keys Action Network, Denver 

“On the day when the Supreme Court will consider further eroding the rights of unhoused people across the United States the City of Oakland, California will be carrying out another inhumane, costly, and ineffective encampment sweep. No matter what the Supreme Court decides, unhoused people and allies will continue to organize to protect the most vulnerable members of our communities and to uplift housing as a human right.” –Talya Husbands-Hankin, Love and Justice in the Streets, Oakland

“Criminalization does nothing more than make access to housing and services harder.” –Adam Smith, Los Angeles Community Action Network

A broad coalition of anti-poverty, anti-imperialist, and racial justice organizations will speak to the importance of protecting the human rights of unhoused people across the country.

Their main message is that it is cruel and unusual punishment to criminalize unhoused people for sleeping, sitting, eating, and conducting other life-sustaining activities in public when actual HOUSING is not available. The right for anyone to exist in public space should be a Human Right all people possess. We need to enforce the 8th amendment, not dilute it!!

About the Western Regional Advocacy Project:

The Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded in 2005 by local social justice organizations across the West Coast to expose and eliminate the root causes of homelessness and poverty, empower communities to demand protection of civil and human rights and advocate for restoring federal funding for affordable housing. A coalition of nine member organizations in five states, WRAP is led by people with life experience living unhoused, representing the diversity of lived experiences for what is a growing human rights crisis in every community in the United States.

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