Street Update - Stories and news from the homeless community.

From the Streets May 2005
As reported by Michael Diehl of the BOSS Berkeley/Civil Rights Community Organizer

Article 1: In Memoriam | Article 2: Police Harassment Up | Article 3: Budgetary Uncertainties | Article 4: Freeing Elizabeth’s Van/Dogs

In Memoriam (More Homeless Deaths)

I learned that my friend Richard Moore a homeless Vietnam vet of Cuban extract died of  a heart attack in late April. In 1969, he had himself discharged to People’s Park and joined the antiwar countercultural resistance. He had recovered from a previous heart attack the end of last year but still it was a bit of shock that I had to get reconfirmed several times before I really accepted that he is indeed no longer with us. He had been involved with the Catholic Workers as a cook. He also helped with cooking at the big April 24^th, 2001 rally in front of the Berkeley city council at which the city council passed the Homeless Human and Civil Rights Resolution and also took the canned and other food that Food not Bombs delivered to the 11-day Civic Center sleep out protest back in Nov. 2003. He had been an important political ally in the struggle for the rights of the homeless.

This month Sunday May 14^th there was finally the memorial service for Maria King at St. Joseph’s the Worker Catholic church. I had talked at length on the phone with her brother Richard who had talked to many of Berkeley’s homeless in hope of finding the killer the police had not picked up who was still loose in the community. He had also been angry at a remark that Mayor Tom Bates had made about homeless services and wondered if he should mention this in an article on Maria King he was getting in the San Francisco Chronicle that came out on May 14^th but decided after talking to Kriss Worthington and myself that the mayor had tempered his desire to support the city manager’s proposed cuts to homeless services even if the quote from Danny McMullan from our lunch with the mayor in March I was able to confirm.

The mayor had said then there would be cuts in homeless services and the responsibility for the homeless lay with higher levels of government, Berkeley was taking on more than its fair share of the burden. There was a certain amount of street speculation since Maria King was talking out against some guys who were prostituting younger homeless women that she might have been targeted for that. Anyways by the end of the month the man was taken in by the police making women on the street feel a little safer perhaps.

Vivien a black woman who died in her van she lived in on Shattuck from an overdose at the end of March was also a continued focus of discussion on the streets of feeling a bit shell shocked by the continued high mortality the street community continues to face. Another homeless man in Oakland was brutally killed near the old Sears building where Mayor Jerry Brown lives (Telegraph and 27^th) this month.

Police Harassment Up

There continued to be an increase in reports of police harassment of the homeless where they sleep—around the downtown Shattuck corridor, around Telegraph/People’s Park, of black street youth in south Berkeley between Adeline and Sacramento, of those living in vehicles out by the Marina.

Budgetary Uncertainties

At the Multi-Agency Services Center(MASC) Robert Long announced at a community meeting(May 5^th) that he and boona cheema the director of B.O.S.S. had met with the mayor who told them he would restore the funding rather than cut the funding for MASC 20% as proposed by the city manager and supported by the Homeless Commission. The Berkeley City Council and the Homeless Commission had been struck by the big turnout of homeless community agencies at the April 26^th hearing at which many could not even get into the council chambers. At the Homeless Commission meeting they voted to restore the funding they had wanted to cut from the Homeplate Youth Drop-In Center now that Y.E.A.H. had taken over the operation from the Ecumenical Chaplaincy for the Homeless(which ironically got a big half million cash grant) but did not support restoring the proposed 20% cuts to the BOSS programs at Harrison St. and MASC.

Freeing Elizabeth’s Van/Dogs

The Berkeley City Council voted to remove several of the fees preventing Elizabeth Gill from getting her van and her two dogs that had been taken back in Feb. in exchange for some community services and accepting help getting housing. They could not wave the $1000 fee from Hustead’s Towing but Andrea Pritchard from Copwatch and Dona Spring from the city council were raising funds from the community to get this covered.

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