California settler towns wage a war on our houseless bodies; we fight back!
by Tiny @povertyskola, daughter of Dee, mama of Tiburcio
Swept and swept and swept away
How much disappearing can u do to us
Before our lives and destroyed bodies don’t make it to another day
I can’t say
Clearing and cleaning, towing, killing and disappearing
But guess what? We aren’t going away
Humans housed or unhoused are here to stay
We live, we breathe, we have viable solutions and dreams
We are poets and consumers – taxpayers and voters
We are fighting and writing
We are building and crying
And so here’s an invitation of love in the face
Of all of your poltrickster hate
To listen to us
To hear – NOT CLEAR –
To listen to our dreams, NOT perpetrate more tows and sweeps
A love letter to Sheng, Karen, London and Jesse and Gavin too
We are right here, on that park bench, in that tent on the street corner
Your system, Krapitalism, built us, evicted us, placed us outside – right beside you.
– Excerpt from “Clearing – a love letter” by tiny .
“F#$%K Berkeley, full of so-called progressives, but they’re just as racist and classist as any of these cities!” My mama held her head in her hands while she screamed this out to the poLice and their tow trucks scraping and lurching our home (car) away into the distance. We had been pulled over for driving while poor in Berkeley (expired registration, broken taillight, hooptie). Within minutes I was arrested, thrown against the wall and our car-home was seized while my houseless, disabled mama was left on Haste and Telegraph with no support person or wheelchair. These violent memories clutter my head all the time. Me and mama were houseless in Berkeley, Oakland, LA and San Francisco, all of them operating under the English colonial law that deems poor people criminal for being poor and in this 21st century have created specific demands for our disappearance from so-called public lands all across California.
In occupied Huchiun, a new land reclamation move has erupted and it’s called ‘Where Do We Go’
All of my deep trauma memories of childhood and adult homelessness, evictions and sweeps came back to me in force while I stood at the edge of the newly established Where Do We Go houseless ComeUnity at Eighth and Bancroft in West Berkeley.
Whether it’s so-called Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco or LA now or in the late ‘90s, my mama was right. There is a mythos about the alleged progressiveness of these California settler towns, but like all of occupied Turtle Island and the world, their policies towards the poorest residents of their towns are broken and violent and dangerous.
“My medicine was stolen, my walker was crushed, my dog was taken, all in Berkeley! But before that I was staying on MLK and West Grand, where they stole my tent and my clothes,” said Alvin, a 64-year-old RooflessRadio reporter huddled near a recylcling can in downtown Berkeley. “And no,” he added, “I was given no referrals for housing in either place, just a shelter that wouldn’t let me bring my dog.”
Since the Grant Pass Vs Johnson ruling every houseless person in so-called California has been brutally swept, displaced and removed. On MLK and West Grand in occupied Huchiun, aka Oakland, where many of POOR Magazine’s RoofLessRadio reporters were peacefully trying to sleep, the mayor of Oakland who claimed her own experience with homelessness to get elected, launched a vicious “clearing” campaign of her own, followed by a citywide mandate to sweep every single houseless person who dares to sleep in occupied Huchiun. Her order and Newsom’s order are also unCONstitutional as POOR Magazine reporter and poverty skola Jeremy Miller was able to prove.
In Occupied Yelamu aka San Francisco as reported and WeSearched extensively by POOR Magazine RoofLESs reporters, houseless, disabled, elders, families and folks across occupied Yelamu have been harassed, bullied, arrested, interrogated, intimidated and removed by London Breed’s administration and given bus tickets to nowhere.
In occupied Tovaangar aka LA Mayor Karen Bass has created a poltrickster “solution” that incarcerates houseless people in “jail-like” motel rooms or locks us up in “detention-like” centers, where if the system doesn’t get us, our own minds struggling with depression and trauma will. Isolation kills as me and my houseless mama often repeated, and that truth is one of the inspirations for the healing, housing Comeunity that is Homefulness. Meanwhile, the “Housing Authority” of LA aka HACLA harasses and evicts houseless mamas and uncles from their own reclaimed homes in another liberation solution movement calling themselves Reclaiming Our Homes.
In Fresno, Antioch and beyond, new and increasingly violent anti-houseless peoples measures are being implemented as I write, all with the goals of disappearing our houseless bodies from this occupied land.
Resisting the disappearing – Refusing to go
On Sept. 28, 2024, a “protest encampment” was launched outside “Old Berkeley City Hall” by the organization known as Where Do We Go with help from the Berkeley Homeless Union and the Berkeley Outreach Coalition. Housed and unhoused community members of Berkeley came together in solidarity to demand an end to the inhumane policies that have been recently enacted against unhoused residents of Berkeley.
The comeUnity at Bancroft was one of two new commUnities that were launched when Berkeley poltricksters threatened the Old City Hall site with yet another violent sweep as they are constantly doing to our houseless bodies.
Whether it’s the violent clear-cutting, sweeps and displacement of Peoples Park or the refusal to approve a ceasefire resolution for Palestine or the endless anti-poor people votes like clearing the Berkeley Marina of RVs and the recent vote by Berkeley City Council to “clear” two thirds of Berkeley’s Houseless ComeUnities as demanded by poltrickster Newsom following the Grants Pass versus Johnson anti-houseless people ruling, Berkeley operates with a veneer of performative progressive acts, but ultimately their moves and decisions are rooted in a fascist, krapitalist framework, which somehow even feels more evil because of the alleged civic consciousness of settler occupied Huchiun .
“If you are unhoused, then your human existence in private and public spaces is unlawful. If you are not a property owner or a tenant, you are defined as a trespasser,” said Andrea Henson, executive director of Where Do We Go, “Every single day is one lived in fear of where you will end up next or if you will be harassed by a community that has made it clear that you are not welcome. Yet despite knowing that our most vulnerable citizens have no protection under the law, our government continues to segregate and discriminate against them. It is inhumane and wrong,” Henson concluded.
The beautiful warriors from Where Do We Go have pledged that for every encampment that is swept, they will establish an occupation encampment in the most visible public spaces they can find. They/We as houseless people refuse to be disappeared. This is a beautiful move because the insane point about these non-stop sweeps being conducted across occupied Turtle Island is we HAVE NOWHERE TO GO.
From Wood Street to Mission Street, the trash trucks, tow trucks, poLice, sheriff and Public Works crushers barrel down the streets of occupied Yelamu to Occupied Maidu, from Tovaangar to Huchiun moving us from pillar to post, with no plan, no housing, and never listening or acknowledging that us poor people have solutions, viable, powerful solutions like Homefulness and Reclaiming Our Homes and street based comeUnities like Aetna Street and Wood Street. We have viable solutions. And they are places to go. Safe, loving, comeUnity because when we have survived the multiple traumas of homelessness, abuse, poverty and more, we don’t just need a roof. As I always say, we need healing.
“This encampment is an act of protest, but it’s also a place where people are living,” said Ian Cordova Morales, president and advocate of Where Do We Go at a press conference they held on the launch day of the Fourth and Bancroft protest encampment. “Houseless and housed people staying here are protesting not only the governor’s clearing order but the clearing order by Berkeley City Council, who at first said they would reject the governor’s order and then went back on their own decision, ” concluded Morales.
I have had a lifelong struggle with staying housed and endless traumatic experiences with homelessness, poLice and eviction from LA to San Francisco, but after that terrifying day in Berkeley with my Mama I ended up doing three months in Santa Rita County Jail for the sole act of being houseless, the piled up fines and fees we received ,so high for the act of sleeping outside or in our car while poor, which is a crime according to the settler colonial lies, i mean, laws. that I could never get ahead of them. These fees and fines were given to me because we were too poor to afford what I call “the Lie of Rent, so of course, the irony is, how could I ever pay them?
These multiple traumas have led myself and other houseless povertyskolaz at POOR Magazine to educate, liberate and work alongside housed, conscious wealth-hoarders, with permission, prayer and guidance from First Nations relatives, to build the healing, housing solution to homelessness we call Homefulness. We are currently working with houseless relatives in Tovaangar and Yelamu to launch their own iterations of Homefulness, in all of these violent settler towns while we all collectively scream, demand, walk and reclaim Where Do We Go … and No We Are NOT going anywhere!
If you are interested in being involved in POOR Magazine’s upcoming land l land liberation move, email [email protected]. The next degentriFUKation/decolonization seminar offered for folks with race, class or formal education privilege to learn and unlearn the many lies of krapitalism and the liberation of Mama Earth, Homefulness and Poverty Scholarship will be Jan. 25 and 26 and you can find out more information or register here.
From Where Do We Go:
Our resistance will continue until the following is achieved:
First: The immediate cessation of encampment “sweeps” and the end of criminalization of homelessness. Any act of state violence against the poor is completely unacceptable and undermines all attempts to provide actual solutions.
Second: The emancipation of all vacant bank and state owned property so that it may be used for housing. It was reported in 2022 that there are approximately 1.2 million vacant properties in California. This means there are six vacant properties for every unhoused person in the state.
Third: A permanent moratorium on rental evictions for non-payment of rent. The only way to address the homelessness crisis is to prevent any more people from becoming homeless. The traumas associated with living on the streets often lead to permanent physical and mental health conditions making it far more difficult and expensive to navigate a person into housing.
Fourth: The complete overhaul and restructuring of the HUD coordinated entry and Section 8 housing processes. The current wait for permanent housing is anywhere between 1-10 years. Navigating homeless housing through coordinated entry is so difficult and inaccessible that despite their want for housing, many people will never be able to get close.
Fifth: The implementation of oversight for all non-profits receiving government funding for the purposes of homeless housing, shelters and services. At this moment there is little to no accountability for the behavior and spending habits of major non-profits. Current homeless shelter conditions in California are deplorable and dangerous. If a program can not maintain a person’s safety and dignity, it should have no right to public funding.
Sixth: An accessible and non-carceral approach to mental health care. The United States has completely failed to defund its police forces in favor of improving mental health care services. Instead, 5150 holds, medical incarceration, and forced conservatorships through Gavin Newsom’s care courts threaten to circumvent due process and other constitutional protections.
Seventh: Creation of laws that protect individuals who are experiencing homelessness or who are formerly homeless that are similar to tenant protections. When you are not a tenant or a property owner, your very existence is unlawful. That must change so that individuals who cannot afford to pay rent, who are forced into shelters or substandard living conditions, are not victimized by a system that uses poverty as a vehicle for profit.
Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia, aka “povertyskola,” is a poet and teacher and the formerly houseless, incarcerated daughter of Dee and mama of Tiburcio, author of “Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America” and many more and co-founder of Homefulness, a homeless people’s solution to homelessness. Reach her at www.lisatinygraygarcia.com or @povertyskola on Twitter/X.
