Street Update - Stories and news from the homeless community.

From the Streets November 2004
As reported by Michael Diehl of the BOSS Berkeley/Civil Rights Community Organizer

Article 1: Berkeley Says BASTA to the Homeless

Berkeley Says BASTA to the Homeless

It was election time. Police were out harassing in and near People’s Park-once again. I was getting frantic calls from Julia one of the homeless organizers reduced to sleeping on the easement on Bowditch Street on the east end of People's Park once again.

On Thursday 1pm I went to People’s Park still in shock at the overly bad news from election night for a meeting called already the Berkeley Homeless Union to discuss ways to deal with the recent problems the homeless were having with the police and the University of California staff. I decided to join the already ongoing action on Bowditch Street after hearing what was going on. She hadn’t wanted to call it a protest. It became a protest action now. I would join the sleep out. It seemed better than staying home and being depressed over the election results.

National Homelessness Week was fast approaching. The Berkeley Homeless Union had been talking about some kind of direct action for it but had thoughts of connecting it to a rally before a city council meeting which had decided would be Nov. 16^th which actually was not the right week for National Homelessness Week so this protest was timely. In the month of September the homeless were getting chased from one spot to another so by mid-October a group of them decided to hold their ground sleeping on the easement of Bowditch Street keeping the sidewalk clear, with monitors to keep the peace and deal with problems.

The group had approached Telegraph merchants and neighbors for their idea to be able to get the right to set up tents in the east end of the park which they were getting support for. They were having major issues with the UC People’s park staff and UC police taking their stuff. One of their people a man named Earl who was a veteran of the original 1969 struggle to set up People’s Park came to the People’s Park Advisory Board to complain about this.

On October 2^nd Lydia Gans photographer for Street Spirit and volunteer with Food not Bombs, Jill Dunner (formerly homeless Section 8 housing activist) and me had organized a voter education/registration event in People’s park to discuss the ballot initiatives. It seems given that just my involvement putting up flyers for this event got people hopeful I was going to help organize a Berkeley Homeless Union action. Yukon Hannibal and I had in fact recently come and talked to people in People’s Park to see what interest there was in doing such an action since we hadn’t done one in awhile.  We did find that some of the homeless in People’s Park were interested in doing this.

On Sat. October 9^th the following Saturday I heard Jill and Lydia were going to do some voter outreach in People’s Park so I came to see if they were there. Glenda Rubin of the UC Public Relations Dept. approached with Devin W. head of the UC People’s Park staff and asked if I was organizing a riot in People’s Park. Me? No, hadn’t heard anything about it but I said a little miffed if people were trying to start the revolution without me all in good humor.

They said there had been a Daily Cal article about it which later turned out to not be true. A Daily Cal reporter by name of Mark had slept out on Bowditch Street three nights and there had been talk of a sit down protest against the taking of people’s stuff. The Daily Cal editors I guess did not find the story newsworthy. Anyways it seems that my voter education flyer considering my previous notoriety for direct action to protest police harassment had helped inspired others to start organize which I have to say as a community organizer is exactly what inspires me.

So I went by at night and saw what I heard was true-people were sleeping out on Bowditch and there seemed some order to it. The second time I hung out and got to meet Julia, Maryland, Sparks and other people involved in organizing this group. Later I met with Julia and we talked more at length about the idea of a legal encampment in People’s Park. It seemed we were pretty much on the same page on our ideas on this. She had been involved in earlier People Park struggles, had many ideas very much in tune with the original People’s Park user-development concepts of people doing stuff for themselves.

At one point she had tried to get some clothing out of the Free Box and was told she couldn’t by some of the problematic crack smokers who take the best stuff to sell. She whistled and soon about a dozen of her people backed her up which is the way I feel this problem should be confronted. We both shared feelings of despair over the me first selfish negative energy that was making People’s Park not really feel like People’s Park any more. I have been dispirited because much of the Leftist activists have moved their focus away from People’s Park showing up only for the annual Anniversary party and showing more concern for the poor in other countries than the poor right here at home.

On Thursday, November 4^th at 12:50 pm, a female UCPD officer and the city Public Works had taken more people’s stuff, ignored their calls not to and the Public Works worker said he was just going to treat the stuff as trash and throw it out rather than hold it for 90 days. I left a message on the Public Works message machine saying they would held accountable for whatever items were lost, billed for them and left them my cell phone number. They never returned the call. The next morning I talked to the same officer and she later told Julia they wouldn’t take people’s stuff that day Friday if she could be assured that things would be kept clean for Saturday, November 6^th for the UC Bears-Oregon Ducks game. That evening around 9:30 pm a woman Berkeley police officer came by and said we had to get everybody up at 4 am on the account that the street sweeper would come by then…and every night at 4 am. She said maybe we could move into the park a bit at that point but didn’t know what UC would do.

After some discussion and exasperation at this Catch 22, we decided to sweep our side of Bowditch Street ourselves so the street sweeper did it anyways it was clearly meant to be harassment. I remember 10 years ago when the Green Machine used to clean Telegraph 3 times daily and spray people with toxic chemicals to clean up the homeless problem back then. At 4 am what came instead was the UC police instead just to see if we were stupid enough to fall for the BPD woman’s suggestion.

On the Saturday morning of the game a Berkeley police sergeant was seen putting paper bags over meters on Dwight. He said this was to discourage people from parking near where we were. He said if we did get arrested since he was the sergeant in charge of the jail he’d let us right back out. Friday evening a graduate psychology student-Kim-studying over in San Francisco interested in the mentally ill homeless noticed my sign “I Have a Dream of Sleeping in My Own Bed” and started asking me questions. I told her that I didn’t really like the term “mentally ill” given my past association with the Network against Psychiatric Assault but if she really wanted to get an understanding of her subject she had come to the right place. It would be a chance to see the negative scary image many people have is mostly wrong, that most people labeled “mentally ill homeless” are people I find on the whole rather loveable people. I think bourgeois middle class people caught in the hyperdrive of the modern work world are in many ways crazy in their own way, not grounded, not present in the world.

She came back with her sleeping bag and did hang out and talk to people and start to see what the world looks like to those of us on the street. She did ask one of the participants what she does to keep from being bored. She later came and checked out both the Berkeley Homeless and Mental Health Commissions. I really like it when people who are housed join us in sleeping out. Even doing it one night seems very educational, whether that person is a student, a mayor, a Woman in Black or fellow activist.

Saturday after the game a Cal football player came down and brought a big bowl of pasta salad left over from the festivities. Go Bears! Many people like Jon L. of Food not Bombs also brought food over. Every time we do a peace camp we get to see that many people in Berkeley do care, are warm hearted to those in need.

Saturday night was a challenge trying to control the excessive drinking, the drug taking trying to get people to party somewhere else since the point of what we were doing was to sleep. At every peace camp to reduce the negative behavior and attention from the police and neighbors I wind up doing a lot of harm reduction work. It is particularly a problem with the street youth but isn’t limited to them. Last year we had a resurgence of crack cocaine in part because it was being out of other areas and in part many UC students are into a get a weekend party rock. This year as a direct result of our country’s overthrow of the Taliban in Afghanistan our streets are being flooded with cheap heroin and there are needles everywhere. I’ve been fighting hard for years to get a detox center for the poor somewhere in Alameda County but compared with the level of addiction and rampant abuse of alcohol and drugs to self medicate away the misery of being down and out on the streets of Berkeley and Oakland and I’m sure elsewhere it seems like a drop in the bucket.

The idea that Tom Gorham of Options Recovery had that providing storage lockers somehow constitutes “enabling” and will make being on the streets some kind of picnic strikes many of us as both insulting and ridiculous. Indeed I would argue that it is very reality of feeling violated by having one’s stuff taken, having no blanket or safe place to sleep that leads many a poor soul to self medicate away their rage and sense of powerlessness. The reality is all that was needed to stop homelessness was for everybody out on the streets to “hit bottom” homelessness would have been solved long ago. It does not acknowledge that many people who have been homeless do moderate their usage, get really repulsed by all the nonsense they see and get their act together and get off the streets and having a safe place to put their papers and other stuff would help them to do it. Not every homeless person is an addict.

Sunday evening everybody slept. Monday morning Berkeley police officer Rafferty and UCPD Manchester showed up. He sat on the police car and seemed to be studying the law. He went past Julia and told her to get her stuff out of the easement and then slipped quickly into the park past me. Noticing that Sgt. Jones had driven around I walked over to the People’s Park office where Rafferty, Jones and Manchester were talking to Devin. I explained that according to our legal counsel Osha Neumann the law about stuff obstructing traffic only applied to the sidewalk and the street itself which the easement was neither and clearly not obstructing either foot or vehicular traffic.

Officer Rafferty gave me the number a certain Sgt. in charge of the beat and Captain Hamilton. I called both of them. The Sergeant liked that I was trying to deal with this whole issue on a community level where all impacted parties-the neighbors, the merchants, the University, the homeless themselves, social service providers, the City, etc.- could work out a better answer. At one o’clock I set up a meeting with Captain Hamilton in People’s Park where Osha Neumann, our lawyer from Community Defense Inc. and Tirien Steinbach, the lawyer heading up the Suitcase Clinic, also joined us as did some of the folks that had their stuff taken by the City. He explained he was going on vacation tomorrow but would tell the beat officers to hold off a couple of days so we would have time to negotiate with other community elements basically. With a storm clearly moving in it was my hope that the emergency storm shelter would open soon and give people refuge.

A few hours later, UC officer Sean Aranas started checking, cataloguing people’s stuff in the east end of the park. Two people got ticket for having cots in the park in violation of the People’s Park rules. When someone photographed me giving the peace sign he wanted his picture taken-giving the peace sign, then flexing his muscles. One of our women commented on what a ham he was being. Maybe he missed the inference but it was one of the few light interactions with the police. Later he told us to stop having our “conferences” on the street. Freedom of assembly anyone?

Monday evening, one of the more mentally unstable members who being way too much tweaked went off the deep end, swinging around a stick in the street. Dancer suggested we just keep him from crossing a line to rejoin us since it was better for us to let the police to deal with him with a 5150. Sure enough a Berkeley officer did show, knew the man well and I commended the officer on a job well done, mentioning that I am on the Berkeley Mental Health Commission. The EMT folks brought him to John George Psychiatric Pavilion. The rest of us settled into what we hoped would be a peaceful night.

It was not to be. Around 1:30 pm, four UC police showed up. They intended to take in this man in wheelchair who had a bandaged face covering a deep bloody cancerous wound that was eating into the stem base of his brain. He had been sleeping on this concrete area just within the park. He had a special unfortunately merely verbal disposition from a UC official to sleep there on the account of sleeping on the easement would result in his wound getting infected. This is a man who shouldn’t be out on the streets, had his medication ripped off and was in quite a bit of pain. To the UC officers it clearly looked like he was trespassing. Officer Vu was trying to pull the man out of his wheelchair whereupon he went into some kind of muscle seizure. I expressed concern he was having a seizure but then he came too and explained his situation but the officer wouldn’t listen, kept trying to pull out of the chair which was exactly the wrong thing to do. Another officer after I said I was with Copwatch told me to go across the street. I stepped back but told him that I had the legal right to observe and asking me to cross the street violated that right. He had been reluctant to let me identify himself as legally required to do.

Meanwhile the man in the wheelchair shouted my name and said officer Vu whispered in his ear, “Stop playing games”, or he the officer would play games with him. The UC woman officer seemed uncomfortable with the whole situation especially when I drew the sign of the Cross by way of banishing demonic energy. They called the Berkeley Fire Department who realizing the man in the wheelchair was no longer in immediate medical crisis decided to just leave him there with no place to sleep now. I had tried to get different city employees to help get this man off the street.

At 4:00 am Berkeley officer Marble showed up with three UC police officers. Unfortunately one young woman was already being arrested by the time I was awake and up due to a warrant check. The officers suggested I wake people up and warn people who got warrants to clear out. I explained the agreement we had made with Captain Hamilton, about the legalities. Officer Marble said he had gotten an e-mail from Captain Hamilton commending him for the work they were doing, to go and “clear “them out”.

People were telling me this is the officer that Monday 8:00 am had rolled up in his police car outside the Trinity Methodist Church during breakfast and told Julia to stop the protest and made a threat of bad consequences. Another homeless woman had told me of being threatened by him at another point. I wanted to get a good look at this officer. Anyways following the advice of Dancer with no legal observers backing me up despite several attempts to get that kind of support I decided to move my cart. I wanted people to march on Civic Center but instead the protest dispersed into the night.

A man got arrested, had 5 warrants it seems in as many counties. Tired and nervous I had put my Slingshot organizer back into my pocket and then reached for it again to write a further note which made one of the UC officers tell me to go across the street. Realizing my mistake, my basic Copwatch 101 training to keep hands out of one’s pockets visible, I held my left hand up in the air with my Slingshot organizer, my pen in my right as I told him this and told him I was not going across the street it was my legal right to observe. I did think of Amadou Diallo getting shot 41 times reaching for his wallet by NYC police. Then we finished clearing out and I sat with others talking until dawn. At 7 pm Lorenzo and I went into the park to the stage with our carts and set up signs there. He plugged his little TV. into the stage power. We watched the weather forecast about the storm coming in which they were now saying tomorrow morning but it was plenty grey and overcast. I told people pray for some moisture this morning so the St. Marks storm shelter would finally open just in time. It did and the storm came in that Tuesday night.

Devin W. came over and told us he was cutting off the electrical power and what’s the story about the shopping carts. He wanted me to tell Lorenzo to get his shopping cart out. I had tried for one year already to get the People’s Park rules revised. I had gotten the whole People’s Park Advisory Board to support the revision of the rules Debbie Moore and myself had worked out with Osha Neumann. The University had the gall to say despite much previous notice that the meeting we passed the motion wasn’t properly noticed. Then we couldn’t get it dealt with, the Board consistently failed to get quorum and this new term starting in October me and many other park supporters applied for the Board but since the University couldn’t get its people on the board and since we were gearing up to protest they decided to indefinitely suspend the meetings of the People’s Park Advisory Board.

The phone number Captain Hamilton gave us to call to get people’s stuff out of 2^nd and University is inoperative. It was said in the mainstream media that people weren’t concerned to pick up their stuff when many not just in People’s Park but folks at MASC don’t know how to. Despite Dr. Davida Coady’s of Options Recovery’s media offensive against the storage lockers 30 lockers will soon be opened at the Multi-Agency Service Center at 1931 Center Street under BOSS It is hardly an ideal situation with people having to check out their sleeping gear at 4 pm but since staff will monitor what goes into the lockers and will clear them out on a weekly basis the idea that lockers will fuel a drug dealing epidemic seems a bit exaggerated. There were no needles found in the Shattuck Self-Storage lockers that just got cleared out by Eva Ahmed who no longer will be the Homeless Outreach person. She’s going to grad school and will shift over to the Mobile Outreach Team. During this whole crisis and into the future her presence out on the streets has been and will be missed.

Back in July the Berkeley Police Review Commission voted after a public hearing on the police harassment of the homeless in Berkeley to recommend somewhere in at least one of Berkeley’s park the curfew law be lifted so the homeless can find somewhere legal to sleep. They also recommended as standard practice Berkeley police allow a homeless person a chance to move on rather than being cited right away. Most BPD do this but those who do not generate a lot of tickets.

The Y.E.A.H. shelter will open on Nov. 29^th. The Oakland army base winter shelter has opened under new management. The Berkeley voters voted down the tax measures proposed by Mayor Tom Bates to replace the needed funding Gov. Schwarzenegger grabbed to balance the state budget to prevent cuts in services during the period before Prop. 1A prevents the state from grabbing the money the city needs for essential services like homeless services. Ex-mayor Shirley Dean help lead the anti-tax BASTA and Budgetwatch campaigns that soundly defeated those local tax measures including Measure K funding that would have made the youth shelter year round. Homeless services in Berkeley are in great danger and already we are seeing homeless nonprofits going down. With President Bush’s attack on Section 8 housing, attacks on Medi-Cal and the likelihood of many more returning G.I. s will wind up living on the streets the future in the next few years overall looks rather grim with the likelihood of homelessness worsening rather than getting better.

In a way the city council’s campaign focus that soundly defeated Measure Q which would have decriminalized prostitution and Measure R that would have strengthened the access of patients to medical marijuana added fuel to the BASTA fire as Berkeley voters in a way replicated the “moral values” that Karl Rove cynically manipulated to assure George W. Bush’s “re-election”. 

In south Berkeley the Berkeley Drop-In Center became a hot campaign issue in which Laura Menard sought to demonize mentally distressed poor homeless people, many of them African Americans displaced in the very neighborhoods they grew up by the mostly white and certainly more middle-class folks who had moved in during a period of extensive gentrification in south and west Berkeley (and yes even deep into Oakland). She lost to Max Anderson whose wife is on the Drop-In Center board but her campaign helped fuel the BASTA and Budget Watch campaign spearheaded in part by ex-mayor Shirley Dean in her political re-emergence in Berkeley politics; campaign issue in which Laura Menard sought to demonize mentally distressed poor homeless people, many of them African Americans displaced in the very neighborhoods they grew up by the mostly white and certainly more middle-class folks who had moved in during a period of extensive gentrification in south and west Berkeley (and yes even deep into Oakland).

She lost to Max Anderson whose wife is on the Drop-In Center board but her campaign helped fuel the BASTA and Budget Watch campaign. As the newly elected soon to be city councilmember Solano Ave. based developer Laurie Capitelli explained to the Berkeley Chamber of Commerce during the campaign if you don’t want homeless people in front of your store you’d better be prepared to pay money for increased services. His opponent Barbara Gilbert came out and called for the elimination of homeless services in the downtown area.  

To respond to this article, write to adversary359@yahoo.com.

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