The lie of ‘equity considerations’ in Oakland attack on the unhoused

“If we park it here, they will probably call the police. And we will lose our only home.” 

My son and I were driving around San Francisco aimlessly. We had just lost our home to a violent eviction, and although some friends said we could sleep on their couch we knew it wouldn’t be long before we might need the car to sleep in again.

But the car was a “hooptie” and had a broken taillight and expired registration—and in San Francisco that has always meant a possible tow. In this case a tow of our only home.

Now, because of Mayor Daniel Lurie’s RV Ban in SF and Council Member Ken Houston’s anti-houseless proposal in Oakland, these violent and life-threatening tows are guaranteed. 

Inspired by the fascist statements about houseless communities by the current inhabitant the White Peoples House, a multitude of new anti-houseless measure have popped up across the US. These are adding to the already thick arsenal of anti-houseless laws that sweep our houseless bodies and tow or throw away our homes across this stolen land every day.

From Oakland to Fresno to San Bernadino, from Oregon to San Francisco, all of the new measures are cloaked in 19th century settler codes like exclusion zones and buffer zones (Oregon and Washington) encampment abatement plans and the RV ban in San Francisco, and a state-wide bill in California AB 630 that would increase the towing and destruction of RVs used as housing. 

Above all these are acts of violence against our bodies.

Locally in Occupied Huchiun (Oakland) the violence being proposed is a 2025 re-mix of the Encampment Management Plan, which amped up the violence of sweeps in October of 2020 and then became even more abusive and constant once the Supreme Court’s Grant Pass ruling in 2024 ruling determined that houseless peoples had no protection under the 8th Amendment of the Constitution, enabling cities to sweep and tow and destroy with arrogance, with the threat of arrest and millions of dollars spent on multiple police and sheriff agencies at every sweep. Which, of course, if it needs to be said, could be redirected to an actual solution, housing.

This ruling led to POOR Magazine, Wood Street Commons, Where Do We Go Berkeley, Homeless in Fresno, Aetna street solidarity and Stop the Sweeps Seattle to name a few,  to launch a state-wide land liberation move demanding hoarded and vacant so-called public and private land be given to houseless communities so we could build solutions like Homefulness and Wood Street Commons Academy.  

In Oakland the new evil proposed by fake-friendly Council Member Houston is a re-packaging of the original  Encampment Management Plan of 2020 as the Encampment Abatement Team (and yes the acronym is EAT(?)

It promises to tow RVs without even giving the requisite 72 hours notice to people who are about to be swept, arrest houseless people for being houseless, and in general wreak even more havoc on the most vulnerable, majority elder, disabled and Black Oakland residents  

But what is even more disturbing to me is this evil, violent killing bill uses conscious language and research done by povertyskolaz and allies at Black Solutions Lab, Care 4 Community, POOR Magazine and Wood Street Commons, to name a few. 

It uses terms like “equity considerations” and acknowledges that Black populations are most impacted by homelessness while in the same breath planning to violently erase, arrest and disappear those same Black populations.

The final kicker in terms of their poltrickster spin of this violence is the constant use of the word “safe.” The code word “safe” is thrown around constantly when talking about houseless people’s bodies and lives. Not our safety, of course, but the safety (or perceived lack thereof) of the so-called public, which never includes the unhoused public, but is always only referring to housed people who have to “see” our houseless bodies in their landscape and are bothered by our mere presence. 

Which also makes no sense to me. You are housed. Be thankful for your connections and sanity and organizational privilege that enables you to stay and pay on the ongoing Capitalist hamster wheel so you can afford the lie of rent. We aren’t hurting you by the mere presence of our existence. Economic inequality caused homelessness, and until and unless this system stops profiting off of mama Earth and our poverty as an industry, it will continue to perpetrate this violence on our lives whenever possible. 

“When I was swept from Wood Street, I lost contact with my health provider. I was already struggling with health issues living outside, this put my health even more at risk,” said Leajay Harper, an organizer with Wood Street Commons who was formerly houseless on Wood Street and is now Homeful at Homefulness, a homeless peoples solution to homelessness that currently houses 25 youth, adults, and elders in rent-free forever, healing housing in Deep East Oakland. 

With the advent of this violence, some will die. It’s already happening. From the violent sweep of East 12th street we lost a Black elder, J.T, a leader, a caregiver of other houseless elders whose vehicle home and all of his belongings were towed away so he was left on the street with nothing. From the violent sweep at Sycamore Street, we lost another houseless Black sister, Sycamore Charlotte, aka Charlotte Rene Anderson, a warrior leader of that community who lost everything in that violent sweep and as we always say, sweeps kill us all. 

“I’m disabled and I lost all of my things including my walker and medicine,” said a disabled elder to one of the DPW workers throwing and bulldozing his belongings in front of him in Oakland. “I will never recover from this,” he looked down and shook his head. 

Please activate to liberate. Please come to the Oakland City Council Hearing on this on Monday, Sept 15th at 9am and speak up about this and/or please contact the Oakland city Councilmembers and tell them to vote NO on the Encampment Abatement Policy. Contact POOR Magazine to get a copy of a draft letter to sign on at poormag@gmail.com. Come to the panel “Politricks, Hate and Resistance,” a panel by houseless/formerly houseless povertyskolaz on how to resist the violence of sweeping humans like they are trash; benefit screening of the trailer Crushing Wheelchairs on Thursday, Sept 25th at East Side Arts Alliance at 2277 International Bl Oakland.