What: Teach-in Gathering
When: 1-4pm April 22
Where Lake Merritt Amphitheater (btwn 12th St and 1st Ave)
“These sweeps, they kill us,” said Marco, 64, longtime houseless resident of Lake Merritt in Oakland which on April 7th 2025 experienced a violent sweep and eviction from their comeunity who lived under the bridge adjacent to the lake.
Initial findings from a survey of 223 unhoused community members 81% reported not being offered any services at all, 62% had all their belongs stolen and thrashed by authorities, 67% got no advance notice and 81% were still living in the streets afterwards – 68% with Stay Away orders from the neighborhood they were living in! As one person said “Its not the department of homelessness, it the department of gaslighting”
On year 2 of a Supreme Court anti-homeless ruling, houseless and formerly houseless residents and advocates from across the State will gather around Lake Merritt in Oakland to teach, speak and share resources, art and resistance to the ongoing myth that objectifies, dehumanizes and criminalizes houseless people for the sole act of being houseless.
From James Edward Oakley of Vallejo to Cornelius Taylor of Atlanta, both run over by bulldozers in sweeps in this last year, the sweeps and the violent and ongoing harassment and criminalization is killing us. Deaths of houseless people are up to 6 people a day in Los Angeles.
April 22nd known for the celebration of Earth Day, is also a day of mourning, when a case was brought before the US supreme court known as Grant Pass versus Johnson. Grants Pass V Johnson, which was finally ruled on in June of the same year codified what us houseless people always knew and have experienced for years, our human-ness is not valued, in fact we are treated with less respect than a discarded bottle or tin can.
“Ever since the ruling in 2024 the sweeps of our bodies and communities have increased to daily, hourly, randomly with no notice and everywhere across the nation, Literally millions of dollars are spent in police and sheriffs to accompany the city trash workers while service providers rarely if ever supply residents with viable housing solutions or places to go,” said Tiny Gray -García, formerly houseless co-founder of POORmagazine /Homefulness
“In SF alone during March 2025 police arrested 119 people for being unhoused, the highest such total of any month in the last 7 years. “Homelessness obviously doesn’t exist because we lack enough cops, it exists and continues to grow because our government has wiped out affordable housing funding and access to living wages and treatment. This police approach is brutal, ineffective to address the real issues related to homelessness and also completely asinine” according to Paul Boden with the Western Regional Advocacy Project
“They come out and pretend to say they are providing us with services, but they supply us with nothing, there are no services, there is no housing” said John, longtime houseless resident of Mosswood Park- slated for eviction and sweeps on Monday, April 21, 2025
Grants Pass ruling stated that Houseless residents of any city or town across the US, should not be afforded protection under the 8th amendment of the constitution.
“It’s important to keep our eye on the way public space is being policed and the way people are being corralled out of community. We can first see it at play in our unhoused communities, as we’re the most vulnerable to penalties related to not participating in the private property system of real estate. The repeal of the right recognition won, that being criminalized for being unsheltered when whatever shelter you’ve been able to create for yourself is taken away from you is cruel and unusual punishment, is a hardening of hearts against the harm inflicted on such vulnerable communities.
For years houseless people have struggled with sweeps. Millions of dollars in “homeless funding” has been spent on removing, evicting and destroying peoples outdoor communities and throwing away or stealing our necessary belongings. Funding that is theoretically given to cities and towns to support, house or help houseless people is used to remove us and harm
us.” Said Gordon Gilmore, Berkeley Homeless Union.
“Politricksters refuse to listen to houseless people when we present our own practicable, affordable and healing housing solutions like Homefulness and Wood Street Commons and instead resort to endangering our lives with violent sweeps and inhumane, uninhabitable, life-threatening so-called housing like the “cabins” in Oakland or the Inside Safe Program in Los Angeles,” concluded tiny gray-garcia, POOR Magazine/Homefulness.
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