The hurricane disaster/flooding of New Orleans and the
bungled slow response of the Bush administration in the FEMA rescue efforts was
definitely a subject among street people and the very low income in Berkeley and
Oakland. There is concern that if the Hayward fault went, that poor colored
people’s plight might be dealt with the same slowness of response as people are
dying. There would be no advance warning and once again it is the more well to
do who’ll be much better prepared to deal with the consequences though certainly
those living on side of hills may be particularly vulnerable to having their
houses collapse downwards.
The failed Berkeley Measure M brought up that there are a
number of houses in the flats that have overhangs that are poorly braced for an
earthquake. Discussions of the need for the more advantaged to see to it there
is water and other supplies set aside for those who have no housing to store
such provisions. If the Bay bridge and the BART tunnel which haven’t been
rebuilt go out there could be major chaos.
Will the Feds respond with sharpshooters quick to shoot
“looters” getting necessary provisions for survival when it is clear the
government will be slow to respond to their survival needs post-the Big One?
Also discussed was the disparity between the African American perception that
the slow federal response to the plight of poor blacks in New Orleans reflected
the racism of American society versus the general white perception that no such
problem existed. It did seem that the first comments from the Bush
administration focusing on looting and the media images of such showed a framing
of the issue in ways that would accentuate racist perceptions.
The lack of buses to get people out of New Orleans when
many of the poor there had no cars or money for gasoline showed an insensitivity
to the needs of the poor. The situation brought discussions of how both the
situation brought out the need for government to take a role in helping people
but also talk of how relying on the government to help and not taking a more
do-it yourself approach to prepare for emergency can be lethal or foolish. I
have heard more talk about the need to break through the culture of dependency
that lead to false hopes of the government coming to the rescue. Some preferred
to see it as an issue of class disparity.
There was also talk of how we would be seeing and indeed
now are seeing folks from New Orleans coming to our shelters and going also to
the top of the Section 8 voucher list displacing those with mental disabilities
and others in need who have been waiting for years for those vouchers, the fact
local homeless are living in horrible situations on the streets for years
comparable to what the poor of New Orleans now are faced with without needed
assistance getting into housing. Why is the social compassion lacking for that
situation while for the survivors for New Orleans it is quite evident.
Some expressed hope that maybe the disaster in New Orleans
will finally expose to the American people the fallacy of relying on the free
market to address the needs of society but more seemed to feel a sense of
despair that nothing will really change. The Senate hearings on the confirmation
of John Roberts to be chief of the Supreme Court and the feeling that the
situation of New Orleans will be used to increase the power of Homeland
Security/enforcement powers of the state to the detriment of the poor which the
shifting of the judiciary to being more receptive to the police powers of the
State.
The incoming implementation of the Homeless Information
Management Systems (HMIS) with the newspeak of protecting privacy of homeless
clients as it allows Homeland Security through HUD to gather more information
more effectively on the homeless along with Attorney General Gonzalez's comment
that terrorists may hide themselves among the homeless helped engender a
deepened sense of despair and hopelessness even as some hope that perhaps with
the falling low popularity of the policies of the Bush and Gov. Schwarzenegger
maybe change for the better may be coming. Generally it does not seem the
homeless share the hopes of change that many of the domiciled antiwar
progressive left are expressing in the aftermath of Cindy Sheehan’s stand in
Crawford and new polls showing 62% of the American people feel the war on Iraq
is a mistake and in the aftermath of New Orleans where even Fox commentators
were lambasting the Bush administration for its inept.
The UC-City of Berkeley
Deal: End of Affordable Housing in Berkeley?
Another subject of street conversation has been the
negative impact on what little prospect that the presently homeless will ever
find housing ever again in Berkeley that the Downtown Berkeley plan of
development collaboration between the University of California and the city of
Berkeley will have as whatever affordable housing that is built in Berkeley will
get sucked up with the housing needs of students and the development push of the
University.
The earlier hopes around the election of a mayor committed
to the development of affordable housing and talk by the mayor of a Housing
First focus on housing the homeless are now looking like false hopes. With only
$250,000 budgeted directly to the city of Berkeley and $11 million going to the
county of Alameda under the Mental Health Services Act(Prop. 63) it seems that
whatever prospects of housing of the homeless locally will go elsewhere in the
county.
This comes with a building push once again of
gentrification fueled by the successful and future planned efforts of BASTA to
defund city government or sell off property funds from which in the last few
years helped prevent proposed cuts in homeless services. The closing of
convenience liquor stores in south Berkeley is making it even harder for the
public transit dependent poor to shop locally for their needs. The articles in
the Daily Planet have generated discussion of this issue on the streets
particularly those who spend time in south Berkeley.
The implementation of rules that prevent a person from
buying a single malt liquor requiring the purchase of six-packs seems clearly
directed at the homeless. This is being pushed by the Alcohol Policy Network.
Private sector fundraising for the needs of the poor are getting directed now
towards New Orleans.
People’s Park: Rebuilding the
Free Box - (The Drug War and Gentrification)
People’s Park activists have been meeting since last month
to move to rebuild the Free Box. This is partially in response to rising call
from the homeless community to have the Free Box rebuilt since for all the
problems attached to the box it did supply the real need the homeless have for
clothes. I was not involved in these initial meetings but I have noticed more of
a consensus among the homeless to want the Free Box to be rebuilt where back in
April there was more of a split in the homeless community as many had a lot of
anger around those who took the best clothes and used violence and threats to
intimidate other homeless people.
I have recently got remarks from homeless people about
feeling let down by me for not making the Free Box rebuilding happen earlier.
There was a feeling of growing happiness when they saw activists including
myself actually come out and start trying to physically rebuild the box. The
reality is that despite the expressed feeling from the UC People’s Park &
Recreation staff and the Telegraph Area Association that by not having the Free
Box in People’s Park things would become more peaceful in People’s Park with
reduced drug dealing has not panned out. Instead the only people who now get the
free clothes that still come to People’s Park are those who sell them and much
of the clothes is thrown by the UC Park & Recreation staff.
The drug dealing problem, the attendant problems of
violence and theft and the turf pushing out of other homeless people from
People’s Park has actually gotten worse. Some of those who previously sold
clothes and backed their threats with violence around the Free Box were
arrested. However a newer younger gang banger element of dealers and thieves
have moved in and there is a very organized drug gang that brags about their
control successful turf seizure of People’s Park. I have since early August been
coming back more to People’s Park and observing this.
I keep an uneasy peace with this crew that is both black
and white by copwatching and telling them I don’t support the drug war. I also
tell them I don’t like the ripping people off and the dealing of hard drugs. I
talked to the UC Park & Rec about the need to let there be boxes around People’s
Park where people can put their dirty needles from shooting up heroin and
amphetamines. They seemed unaware of the heroin epidemic we are seeing not just
in People’s Park but all over town until I pointed it out to them and how the
lack of such boxes put them, myself and the children who might use the recently
repainted playgrounds at risk.
A lot of these issues lend themselves to a sharpening
racial divide among the homeless in the park around false and stereotypical
concepts based on preference of drug use like all black homeless are
“crackheads” and all white street youth are speed tweakers when the reality I
have observed is drug use does not really follow along these stereotypical
racial lines, just the perceptions. Marijuana and alcohol still remain the
predominantly drugs of preference despite the prevalence of other hard drugs.
I have been critical of the activist community for not
being more involved in the Park and for turning a blind eye to the problem of
hard drugs in the park(crack use still is also very prevalent there). I do feel
that the answer is for more community involvement particularly from the activist
community to upraise the energy in the park feeling once again the drug war
efforts of the UC police has proven to be counterproductive.
So on Sat. Sept. 17th I joined the efforts to
rebuild the Free Box in the face of active opposition of the University and the
local neighborhood association. On that date I arrived to find about nine
activists with linked arms protecting the digging tools and the ground of the
Free Box from efforts of the UC police to stop their efforts to rebuild. There
was a tense standoff. It seemed that UC went to try to get more reinforcements
to make arrests. We made a call out to get more activists to show up. UC police
were tied up with a campus football game. It seems Irene Haggerty of the UC
public relations office that oversees People’s Park overruled the police desire
to make arrests. They got no more reinforcements.
We got 35 activists to People’s Park with calls out to
Berkeley Liberation Radio 104.1 FM. I called KPFA and got it on the evening
news. With this sort of back up some of the activists started the physical work
of removing bricks, digging 4 holes, putting in steel posts and laying in
concrete. The UC police threatened any of us with arrest that physically helped
with the work of rebuilding the Free Box. At this point myself and many others
purposely on police video joined in to show solidarity and as a result no
arrests were made and the posts were put in the ground with concrete poured into
the holes. The UC police supervisor called the removal of bricks “vandalism”,
the digging tools “weapons” and Terri Compost’s efforts to talk to the Park &
Rec office “harassing”. I told her this loaded “newspeak” misuse of language
served only to escalate the situation and that as a “peace officer” it is her
job to help de-escalate tensions.
Afterwards she became a lot easier to deal with. On Sunday
activists reconvened and laid down a concrete foundation for the box. While I
was doing my Berkeley Liberation Radio show on 104.1 FM(“The Liberation of the
Wretched”) I got calls from Michael Delacouer and Steve Brady to urge others to
come to People’s Park to give more support since the number was done to ten. My
efforts got five more people down there. When I went down there the work for the
day was done and most of the activists were gone.
I talked to local city councilman Kriss Worthington about
the situation. We talked about the local neighborhood association that had a
faction that was pushing a fairly reactionary agenda against both the homeless
in People’s Park but also the students living in the area (first successfully
closing down the Chateau for partying and friendliness to the homeless/Food not
Bombs and then pressuring another student house for partying). He said they have
been outreaching successfully to students against People’s Park, the
demonization of the homeless there around issues of drugs and crime even as they
close student housing around demonizing students as out of control alcohol
abusers. He felt it was important for us to engage students and neighbors.
With the shift of student government away from the
progressives to a more conservative student government this made reaching to
students more difficult than it was a few years ago. I expressed frustration
with the inability to engage the neighbors in dialogue unlike with the Telegraph
Area Association where feelers have been put me to about joining the TAA board
(by Bill Reiss). He like Devin Woolridge of the People’s Park UC Park & Rec
office urged me to take the TAA up on it, noting that when he Kriss and Winston
Burton from BOSS were on the board they were able to counter misinformation from
the more conservative reactionary anti-homeless forces on the TAA that are now
reasserting themselves there in the post-Kathy Berger period.
I also talked to Glenda Rubin from the UC Public Relations
office about once again the need to revive the People’s Park Advisory Board as a
place to mediate conflicts in the community between the University, the
neighbors, the merchants, the People’s Park activists and the homeless among
other stakeholders (the local churches and social services providers) and my
continuing frustration with the inability to get the issue of revising the
onerous People’s Park rules. I have worked hard to get detox, mental health
services, storage and shelter available to the homeless in the park but have had
to deal at how slow getting implementation of these services is which I prefer
to simply sending the homeless to Santa Rita, criminalizing behavior without
addressing the social root causes of poverty.
Even though I share a lot of the concerns about hard drugs,
alcohol abuse and crime in People’s Park that the neighbors feel unlike a number
of the Friends of People’s Park who want to not really see the existing problem
I feel strongly that time has shown removing the Free Box does not resolve the
problem. The drug problem has worsened and the only ones getting the clothes are
the very ones selling the clothes. What is clearly needed is for greater
activist and community involvement to bring positive energy/activities such as
the building of the Free Box to counter the vacuum that allows things to
degenerate into negative despair that feeds into crime and drug abuse. Once
again the supposed solution of greater police enforcement the drug war approach
has not made the situation better but only made it worse.
In fact much of the present situation has been intensified
by greater police drug war enforcement in Oakland.
Before leaving People’s Park Sunday we (Terri Compost and
myself) heard a homeless woman screaming the N word. I suggested we go and check
out what was going on. Terri said the woman was a prime candidate from a one-way
ticket out of People’s Park. I had been talking about that other cities(the
mental health/criminal justice systems) sometimes give people one-way to
Berkeley’s “open ward” and yet they won’t help us fund Berkeley Mental
Health/our homeless services.
I went up to the woman who was white and said that shouting
that word in People’s Park was inviting negative and possibly violent reactions
directed towards her. She got mad. Who was I to bring this ups. I said I was one
of People’s Park’s “o.g. s”. She said she hadn’t seen me around in the past six
months when a group of (white) homeless were trying to organize. I said yes
recently I hadn’t been as involved but I was coming back just trying to find out
what was going on. She said the black “crackheads” had pushed all but her and
the Hate Man out of People’s Park. She calmed down when I explained that for me
to know what is going on I have to talk to people and I have been checking into
the situation she is talking about. I understood why she felt angry but still
all the more reason to urge for her own safety then to be more cautious in her
use of language.
On Wednesday morning between 4 am (when a homeless person
noted the steel posts were still there) and 8 am the University came and took
out the steel posts. Wednesday afternoon we had a meeting of activists from the
Friends of People’s Park meet. We had planned to re-gather Sunday to finish
building the steel box but obviously that wasn’t happening. Many creative ideas
were put out. The revised plan was to build something on the ground maybe out of
brick or wood nothing expensive given that the University would take it out
again but keep rebuilding. It was felt we should take advantage of the big
anti-war demonstration in San Francisco on Saturday and the “How Berkeley Can
You Be” parade and general flyering (revising Terri’s flyer to address the UC
action) to get out the word of Sunday’s regrouping and maybe try to get more
media focus to the situation.
It was decided to build a small Free Box we could march
through Sunday’s parade which I helped carry shouting “Free clothes for the
People, or no clothes at all” pointing back to the naked Xplicit Player
contingent immediately following us. Terri Compost handed out flyers along the
parade route.
I went back to People’s Park later after doing my show on
BLR 104.1 FM. There was a couple of wooden boxes placed in which the following
morning as was reported in the Daily Planet were taken by the UC staff. I talked
to Matt from the Planet and filled him in on the background he used in his
article on the Free Box. On Friday the Daily Cal the UC student paper reported
on the Free Box situation. On Saturday (Oct. 1st) there was a small
meeting of us activists. As people had heard the information second hand I
reported to them that I had talked to Edith Hahlberg-Monk formerly of the
Homeless Commission the morning of the parade and she had told me she had talked
a couple of times to Mayor Tom Bates’ office, specifically his PR man Cisco de
Vries about the Free Box situation.
Cisco told her that the mayor had talked to the University
about the situation. The University official(Irene Heggarty perhaps or someone
higher up) told the mayor that they would let us(the Friends of People’s Park)
put the Free Box back in with conditions. Steve Brady and Arthur particularly
wanted me to talk to the mayor’s office about this especially given Irene
Heggarty’s remarks in the Daily Cal about specifically and categorically banning
the rebuilding of the Free Box.
There was talk about reviving the People’s Park Council
that Terri and I started at the start of the year and talk about Kriss
Worthington’s idea about setting about a town meeting. It was felt we needed to
revive the council first and not to be quick to spearhead an effort to set up a
general town meeting even though that was felt would be good but should come
also from the urging of other community stakeholders such as the city and the
TAA.
It was felt that a town meeting should deal with larger
community issues than just the Free Box like poverty, housing, land use and
transportation. Kriss noted to me the neighbors were also organizing against
RapidTransit AC bus service along Telegraph that we both have involved in
advocating for. I mentioned Mario’s or the Lutheran on College and Haste as two
good sites for such a town hall meeting.
Terri Compost has been talking to the neighborhood
association particularly the man who two elections ago ran against Kriss
Worthington for his city council seat. We both agreed that the issue of the
“secret” UC-city Downtown Plan deal was an area we could break down the us vs.
them barrier between the association and the Friends of People’s Park. On this
issue of the Free Box Bob Mills who was formerly was with our BOSS COT team has
helped me by being present when I could not be.
He is now working to revive the dormant East Bay Homeless
Union--expanding on the Berkeley Homeless Union-- with involvement in ally work
towards rallies with East Bay Housing Organizations and Just Cause Oakland to
get affordable housing set asides including for those on Section 8 at the
housing development of west Oakland (around the army base) and Ninth to Oak. We
both feel strongly that the problems such as those suffered by the homeless in
People’s Park must be seen in the larger context that includes Oakland and not
just Berkeley.
The reality is clearly reflected that many of those who are
part of the Friends of People’s Park live in Berkeley any more but now live in
north Oakland. Michael Delacouer one of the key founders of People’s Park feels
that one of the key issues is gentrification and the attempt of the government
to rid itself of the radical anti-war leftist right to assembly and use People’s
Park as a forum for that. As Steve Brady noted if only a small portion of those
he spoke to at the Leftist Lounge about the Free Box People’s Park situation
actually came out we wouldn’t be a situation of how to keep a sustained
resistance going to the efforts of UC to stop us from rebuilding the Free Box.
Bob Mills was active in the Homeless Union movement back in the 1980s and also
with Mitch Snyder who brought focus to the problem of homelessness to
Washington, D.C. back when Reagan was President.
Last time he was homeless he was the one pushed for the
Bushville peace camp out 11-day take over of Martin Luther King Jr. Park back in
Nov. 1992 and is actively trying to reach out to peace and other leftist
activists to join us in some similar action this fall. We also went to the
Leftist Lounge in west Oakland at the Old Spaghetti Factory on Friday Sept. 30th
and are working together to set up joint benefits for the Street Spirit (in
serious financial trouble) and Berkeley Liberation Radio (which is a good link
to the younger activists-many who have been or are still street youth-who
identify more with the struggle against the WTO in Seattle, the war on Iraq,
punk and hip hop more than fading dreams of the 1960s antiwar hippie activists
whom BLR also engages. This has been demonstrated in this struggle around the
Free Box).
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