We want the streets clean again
We want the sidewalks clean again
Clean like when?
Like the Jim Crow south clean
Like Rafah & Khan Yunis clean
Like Derik Chauvin clean
Like we are not people when we live outside clean
Kill houseless people with bulldozers from Huchiun to Palestine clean
Like ethnic cleansing clean..?
How clean do the streets have to be
So clean we can’t be seen
So clean there isn’t one houseless person that can ever even be
How clean must it be?
Like a shiny metal countertop at StarBUx
How long must I wash?
Do I need lye and bleach and a colonial cross
Can I sit – can I hide- can I make myself so small there is nothing left of me inside just so I don’t hurt your eyes when u walk by
Just so the streets stay clean of my dirty life
MAKE OHLONE PARK CLEAN AGAIN
SWEEP THE PARK
NO CAMPING IN OHLONE PARK
Florescent green paper signs with large black lettering sat calmly in their laps. Grey wisps of hair brushed against their placid cheeks. One after the other, shoulder to shoulder, mostly white housed settlers of occupied Huchiun, Ohlone, Lisjan Land, aka North Berkeley, held signs and lined up at a “community” meeting to make statements demanding the City of Berkeley “do something about the homeless problem.”
They used the hygienic metaphors of “cleaning” and “sweeping” which are 21st century codes used to describe removal, erasure, and the complete eradication of houseless bodies from supposedly public spaces and in this case, referring to a public park in North Berkeley named Ohlone Park.
Me and fellow houseless and formerly houseless poverty skolaz at POOR Magazine attended two of these supposedly community meetings held by the oddly named FOOP (friends of Ohlone Park), which I believe should be re-named EOAPP (Enemies Of All the Poor in the Park) or SUOPWTC (Settlers Using Ohlone People Without Their Consent). I say supposedly community, because although the main agenda of the meeting was about the houseless community of Ohlone Park, there were no houseless residents in the two meetings we attended.
The meetings and the FOOP have existed for a while, and the oddly named “Ohlone Park” itself has a somewhat revolutionary Herstory tied to People’s Park resistance back in the 1970s.
Now the park, as with most of Berkeley, which is best known recently for being one of the US cities that refused to call for a Ceasefire in Gaza over the last year and a half, has moved to decidedly bougie uses and includes a thriving dog park where mostly expensive dog breeds frolic in a gated area, two play areas for children, many beautiful Mama Trees, acres of green grass and most recently, a very clean, well-maintained houseless ComeUnity.
When me and my mama Dee were sleeping on the streets of Berkeley, Oakland, and San Francisco, we would always be afraid of that park, not because of our fellow houseless comeUnity members only a few hidden in corners of the park at the time, but because the minute we would sit down on any of the few benches or stop our broke-down car, nearby when we were lucky enough to still be sleeping in our hooptie, we would immediately get hateful stares, odd questions about what we were doing there from random passerbys, and police calls and drivebys telling us we “needed to move along.
“The recent Supreme Court decision that gives local governments more power to relocate people who are currently camping illegally in public spaces has been hampered by limited local resources.”
—excerpt of a letter from FOOP, Friends Of Ohlone Park, to the City of Berkeley citing the Grants Pass v Johnson Supreme court ruling to force the City of Berkeley to remove the peaceful houseless community
The Ohlone Park houseless comeUnity (I don’t use the word encampment as that word has its roots in the military industrial complex) came to life months ago, after the Grants Pass ruling that essentially stated that houseless peoples were no longer protected by the Eighth Amendment of the Constitution, therefore that our houseless bodies were no longer considered human. Period
Following the ruling, there was a huge push by Gov. Gavin Newsom to order “sweeps” of our houseless bodies from every settler town and city in California and then a demand from the City of Berkeley to remove (read:erase) two-thirds of the houseless population in Berkeley from its streets, which was then followed by a resistance movement of houseless peoples and comrades from Where Do We Go Berkeley to create new comeUnities across Berkeley as soon as their previous comeUnities were destroyed by non-stop sweeps across the City.
By not enforcing the law prohibiting camping in public parks, the city has effectively allowed part of Ohlone Park to become an encampment preventing full and open use of the park by all its citizens and user groups.
—From the FOOP to the City of Berkeley
After barely a couple weeks of the ComeUnity being in Ohlone Park, there began a string of letters to the City of Berkeley demanding “they take care” of the blight, “clean” the park, and other code words used when housed people talk about us without us houseless residents.
“They were coming up to the people humbly sleeping in their tents and saying hateful things, and threats and actual anti-poor people slurs against the houseless residents,” said Andrea Henson, former WDWG staff attorney and one of the leaders of the Where Do We Go resistance at the time.
“The hate has been non-stop, and yet they never made an attempt to speak to us or include us in their meetings or “strategies” because it was all about getting us out of the park,” said Ian Cordova, organizer with Where Do We Go Berkeley
POOR Magazine received an anonymous tip from an indigenous/First Nations elder, who was disgusted by the attack on humble houseless peoples just trying to sleep and forwarded us the letters. Myself and other houseless comrades from POOR Magazine showed up to see what was up.
The first meeting was strange and sad. Allegedly progressive Berkeley residents, highly-educated, mostly white (but not all), people who will throw down for global poverty struggles, against war and genocide everywhere else, but in their own “neighborhood” or as the saying goes, “backyard” they refuse to see it, believe it, or hear it. Or even worse, they demand the same violent erasure, ethnic cleansing, policing, harassment, racist and classist, removal of comeUnity, of residents that they lead protests against across Mama Earth.
“The bathrooms will be locked at 5pm every day, the police will ensure that,” said a presenter on restructuring plans at the meeting.
To which I stood up and responded, “then how will the houseless residents use the bathroom?”
One after the other, the FOOP members called for the removal of houseless people from “their park” so it could be “safe” for the community.
This referral by the FOOP members to this supposedly public park as “theirs” was odd to me, as how was the houseless community not considered part of the community and why didn’t they deserve to “feel safe in the park too”?
Why weren’t the houseless park residents invited to this meeting, considering it was supposedly for the “community?
“In a place that we have always called home since time immemorial, we were the first to be swept from our homes, into prisons we were forced to build, (Missions), into forced labor, and then off the land. What has this society learned over the last few hundred years? History is repeating itself in all the bad ways, continually creating harm and trauma on those who are the most marginalized. When will humans find their moral compass? When will they realize that each of us needs all of us?”
—‑Corrina Gould, Tribal Elder, Prayer-Bringer and Co-founder of Sogorea Te Land Trust.
Corrina Gould, who is one of our family elders council members at Homefulness, who we asked permission and spiritual guidance from before we even began to build the homeless peoples solution to homelessness we call Homefulness in deep East Huchiun, teaches all the time that the concept of homelessness didn’t exist in the time of her ancestors.
“We hope to have a dialogue—to help Berkeley residents understand that everyone, housed or unhoused deserves dignity, safety and place in our city.” The Berkeley Homeless Union, a humble group of houseless and formerly houseless Berkeley residents, held a beautiful gathering at the park last Saturday to try to foster dialogue between housed and houseless residents of the park.
“How are we different just cause we don’t have four walls?” asked Marcus a park resident who we spoke with at the party.
As we left the humble and peaceful gathering I was shaking my head thinking, Yes, Berkeley: Housed or unhoused, don’t we all deserve to feel safe in public?
