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 this 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 & 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 of CLearing, a love letter by tiny .
“F#$%K Berkeley, full of so-called progressives, but they 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, aka Oakland, 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 houseless Community at 8th and Bancroft in West Berkeley.
Whether it’s Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, now or in the late 1990s, my mama was right. There is a mythos about the alleged progressiveness of these California settler towns, but like all occupied Turtle Island and the world, their policies towards its poorest residents are broken and violent and criminalizing and evil.
“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 recycling 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 houseless people in so-called California have been brutally swept, displaced and removed. On MLK and West Grand in occupied Huchiun, 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. Her order and Gov. Gavin 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 have been harassed, bullied, arrested, interrogated, intimidated, and removed by Mayor London Breed’s administration and given bus tickets to nowhere.
In Occupied Tovaangar, aka LA, Mayor Karen Bass has created a “solution” that incarcerates houseless people in “jail-like” motel rooms, or locked up “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 it’s one of the inspirations for the healing, housing community that is Homefulness. Meanwhile the “Housing Authority” of LA harasses and evicts houseless mamas and uncles from their own reclaimed homes in another liberation solution movement who call 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 September 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 of the inhumane policies that have been recently enacted against unhoused residents of Berkeley.
The community at Bancroft was one of two new communities that were launched when Berkeley 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 cease fire resolution for Palestine or the endless anti-poor people votes like clearing the Berkeley Marina of RV’s and the recent vote by Berkeley City Council to “clear” 2/3rds of Berkeley’s Houseless ComeUnities as demanded by Newsom following the Grants ruling, Berkeley operates with a veneer of performative progressive acts but ultimately their moves and decisions are rooted in a fascist framework, which is somehow even feels more evil because of the alleged civic consciousness.
“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.”
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. The insane point about these non-stop sweeps is we HAVE NOWHERE TO GO.
From Wood Street to Mission Street, the trash trucks, police/sheriff and Public Works Department crushers barrel down the streets, 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, or street-based communities like Aetna Street and Wood Street. We have viable solutions. And they are places to go. Safe, loving, community 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 its also a place where people are living,” said Ian Cordova Morales, president and advocate of Where Do We Go at a press conference on the launch day of the 4th and Bancroft protest. “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,” said 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, 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 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 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 liberation move email poormag@gmail.com. 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 & 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 one and 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’t 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 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.
