The Village

By Tracy Lee

“This country preaches a love and commitment to Democracy. But government officials and staff send government workers to come and demolish our houses and curbside communities. “Democracy!”, Officials cry.

But decisions hit us like the bombs the United States uses to destroy homes and communities in other countries. Pretending to care and be “heros” to refugees outside this country. Now they done created economic refugee camps in our own backyard. Democracy for some, inhumanity for many.

Literally it’s no democracy at all to the curbside community. City officials not showing our people compassion and human kindness worries me. Immigrants come to America for opportunity. But if you’re poor or struggling or had some bad luck or make mistakes or sick, then you get no opportunities. How can we all ride on the phrase “We the people”? “We the people” from Our Declaration of Independence means one nation, one community, one land, with one solution. Everyone comes as one. No matter if you are young,old, fat or skinny, housed or unhoused to assist one another. No matter what.

City officials need to act like public servants with humanity, not greedy developers and shady land grabbers. The city officials need to realize “Those Homeless” are humans too. Humans who need a step up, not a strike down. Pieces of public land for curbside communities to find sanctuary instead of being sold for condos is a new beginning of a solid solution. So that We the most vulnerable of The People can have a chance for Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

By Needa Bee

Two years ago, a grassroots advocacy group called The Village sprang to life to fight for the rights of unhoused people in Oakland. Co-Founder Needa Bee tells the story of the history of the group, and where it’s going next.

In January 2016, me and my daughter started feeding our unhoused neighbors in the streets. Little did we know that simple sharing would evolve into a crew of 70 people called Feed The People. Who knew that Feed The People would transform into a movement called The Village, which fights to decriminalize homelessness, builds emergency shelters, asserts that housing is a human right, and joins the call for another model of urban development that does not displace lifelong residents of The Town. 

Little did my daughter and I know that we soon would be homeless too, victims of an illegal eviction and unable to afford housing in The New Oakland.

But we are not the only ones. For the past year, every first of the month there is an exodus of Oakland natives and pre-gentrification working class and poor residents who lose their housing and leave Oakland. Some of us like myself choose to stay, survive and thrive without a stable home or shelter, and fight for The Town that is disappearing in front of our eyes. 

This is how The Village got its start. But our eviction from Marcus Garvey Park February 2, 2017 created a powerful movement that affected change on many levels. We educated unhoused folks about their rights, and pushed housed folks to show up as allies. We sparked the creation of the Homeless Advocacy Working Group. We pushed the city to finally address the housing crisis with a plan and a budget. We got the city to reinstate a shelter crisis in Oakland, and got City Council to pass a comprehensive resolution to build immediate emergency and permanent housing. 

We got the council to identify a minimum of two public parcels from all seven districts in Oakland as sites for The Village and other community organizations to create community led solutions to the crisis. The City Council unanimously passed a resolution for the Administration to lease The Village a parcel of public land for $1 a year to build a pilot program of a community based response to this crisis. We obtained a plot of land where unhoused people set up tents and built a community.

It all sounds amazing. But what happened in practice? 

The shelter crisis declaration is about to be up for reinstatement and zero units of permanent housing have been built. Mayor Schaaf’s $8.6 million “Emergency Fund for Homeless Services” released the end of 2018 includes zero units of permanent housing. In fact over the next five to seven years, more than 50,000 units of market rate and above market rate housing are scheduled to be built in Oakland. During the same timeframe, a little more than 1,000 units of “affordable” units are being built, and less than 300 units of housing that will be 30 percent below the market rate are scheduled to be built. On January 31, the community we built was ravaged by the city and the encampment was bulldozed.

As for the City Council’s comprehensive resolution—the city administration ignored it and spent thousands of the city’s homeless fund and millions of private dollars on an idea not even in the City Council’s plan: the Tuff Sheds. A toxic, ill-planned, repressive experiment that does not use best dignified practices for the crisis, or for progress forward. Meanwhile, the solutions to the crisis practiced by unhoused folks—resourcefulness, ingenuity, and mutual support—are criminalized, ignored, and even destroyed.

In October 2017, the city granted our group a parcel of land to build a community, on E12th Street and 23rd Avenue, sometimes known as The Village, or Two Three Hunid Tent City Village. But our community was quickly compromised. Without talking to us, Assistant City Administrator Joe DeVries instructed police to herd 6 encampments from five neighborhood onto the parcel. Many residents of the E12th Street encampment had historic and current tensions with these new residents, and should not have been forced to live with each other. Throughout the year, we also heard reports of police picking up individual unhoused folks, taking them to the E12th Street parcel, and threatening them with arrest if they attempted to leave.

The result was disastrous. The level of violence, harm, trauma, and pain caused was out of control. Murders, rapes, robberies, and assaults were common. Neighborhood predators preyed on the women and elderly on the parcel. The land was overpopulated with people living on top of each other which created the conditions for dozens of fires. HIV and a medicine resistant strain of gonorrhea reached epidemic levels. Add to that inadequate and inconsistent trash and sanitation services for the 80-100 people that eventually called E12 their home. The vision we were intending to manifest was never allowed to take seed there. But we continued to advocate for the residents in city hall, be first responders to fires & fights, did trash pick up, coordinated a meal and produce delivery.

At the end of the day, we learned that the E12th Street parcel wasn’t even the city’s to give. It belonged to Caltrans, which didn’t know the city offered us the land. They had plans to use it as a staging area for a bridge construction project area that is supposed to take ten years to complete. So in November 2018, Caltrans reclaimed their land, and the residents of the parcel were displaced. 

In the midst of all this, the City Council urged the administration for a new plot of land to house a third of the E12th residents who wanted to move forward with the original plan for The Village. We also advocated for the folks who wanted have their own plot of land to start their own village or tent city. We advocated for a father to be reunited with his child in Colorado. 

In Fall of 2018, The Administration selected a small plot on Miller Avenue. They decided everyone else was going into Tuff Sheds or The Streets. 

While we got ready to build somewhere safe for the E12th residents, we also cleaned up illegal dumping on a city-owned parcel in Deep East Oakland that had been vacant for at least a decade. We created a clean and sober encampment for women with families and a community resource center for the surrounding neighborhood. We called this beautiful community the Housing and Dignity Village.

On December 6th 2018, The City destroyed Housing and Dignity Village. A majority of these residents are still living on the streets or couchsurfing. As for the two who are housed: one is living in a substandard basement, another is currently in rehab.

A week later, the city took away the Miller Avenue site to turn into a Tuff Shed site. A month later, they began the two week process of destroying the encampment they created on the E12th site. Less than half of these residents have been moved into the Miller Avenue Tuff Shed site. The other half moved back to the areas they were originally evicted from before they were herded to the E12th parcel.

2019 has seen an upswing in encampment evictions. We still don’t have land. Nonprofits and interfaith organizations are being blocked from building on their own land. The criminalization of vehicle dwelling has increased. Destroying personal property happens every month at every encampment eviction.

But homeless people are some of the most resilient, resourceful folks you may ever meet. The City of Oakland spends thousands of dollars to destroy people’s makeshift homes and shuffle people around. A week, or two or three, the people come back and rebuild. 

As for The Village, we currently have a call of action to our housed allies—to build emergency tiny homes on public land to house an unhoused neighbor near you. Let’s get this public land for temporary and permanent homes for The Town before The City sells it to The New Oakland. If that’s too bold for you, build at the encampments that already exist, or build in your backyard or your parking lot. Holler at us to get more info and support in your endeavours. We have blueprints and volunteers to share. 

And we are busy making plans for the future. Our building committee has designed mobile tiny homes since dozens of evictions are still planned for the future. We are working with advocacy groups all over Oakland on policy changes at the City and State levels. Legislation to decriminalize homelessness; enforce and ease the ability to build at least 2,000 temporary and permanent units of housing for the unhoused. We are getting ready to establish new encampments, squat on abandoned private lands, and work in partnership with private landowners to build on their parcels. We are also in an active Civil Rights lawsuit against the City of Oakland, Mayor Schaaf, and Asst. Joe DeVries. 

But the only way we can win—or even call a truce—in this escalating battle of The Town vs. The New Oakland is if we ring the bell and stop the fight. Literally stop developing and housing The New Oakland and start building apartments, tiny homes, and condos for The Town at working class prices. Shift the paradigm. Build for The Town that’s been here and pause building for people not yet here. It the only way we can stop the housing affordability crisis and the homeless state of emergency it has birthed.

By Needa Bee

Short-term charity toward unsheltered people always swells during the holidays, but what I really want for Christmas is to see Oakland’s “anti-homeless” ordinances repealed. 

Weeks ago I was one of thirteen unsheltered women and children evicted from an encampment we’d built on the corner of Edes and Elmhurst avenues. Now with the Christmas holiday a few weeks away our families are trying to find safe, warm, places to sleep. It didn’t have to be this way.

A group of unsheltered women and allies worked hard to turn an empty lot into a clean, sober and women-led encampment where we could safely sleep, eat and provide some stability for our children. We named the encampment the Housing and Dignity Village. We provided meals, medical services, free winter clothing, and a community garden for everyone in the neighborhood. We were supported by residents in the neighborhood, the East Oakland Collective, the Village, the Ron Dellums Institute for Social Justice, the Ella Baker Center, Omni Commons, and other advocates for the human rights of curbside communities.

City officials could have worked with us to find a safe, orderly way to relocate our community. Instead they chose to forcibly remove us using over thirty Oakland police officers and city crew members. As crews threw our belongings into a truck and destroyed our  shelters while the large police presence kept protestors away, I had to wonder how much money the city was wasting on this effort. They put a band-aid on a wound that continues to gush blood, all for the sake of “law” and “order” and for profit developments. 

Modern anti-homeless laws are the cousins of Jim Crow laws, created to control and punish the people who exist on the edge of society. These ordinances include “sitting or lying in the streets,” “obstructing pedestrians,” “sleeping on benches.” They are specifically designed to target anyone who has no option but to live outside. They are ineffective, costly, inhumane, and — according to a recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling — unconstitutional to enforce if the city does not provide adequate shelter.

Unless the city shifts its focus toward long-term solutions and away from criminalization, Oaklanders like me will continue to be punished for trying to survive when there are no other viable options available. And if you wonder about how limited my choices are, let me paint you a picture:

On any given night in Oakland there are more than two thousand people in need of shelter, but only 350 emergency shelter beds available. For women like me there are even fewer options. Many of the places that provide beds do not accept children and will not allow occupants to leave at night even if you work a graveyard shift.

Gordon Walker, director of Utah’s Division of Community and Housing estimated that criminalizing Utah’s unsheltered cost about $20,000 per person in state services, jail time and police costs. By adopting the Housing First program, where the priority is to place people in permanent housing instead of locking them up or sweeping them away, Utah saved millions and dramatically improved the number of unsheltered people in the state. 

But it will take years for Oakland to shift away from its current money-driven development. City officials can start heading in the right direction right now by repealing the city’s “anti-homeless” laws.

By Needa Bee

On the crisp and sunny Sunday morning of November 24th, unhoused leaders & activists, and housed allies and advocates created a protest camp in front of City’s Hall in the historic protest plaza known as Frank Ogawa or Oscar Grant, or as famed author Jack London once called it – The Commons.

The protest camp was set up to demonstrate against The City’s inhumane and cruel treatment of Oakland’s unsheltered communities. The activists agreed to leave once their 9 demands were implemented into City policy and enforced.

Rather than meeting with the protest camp to discuss their concerns and answer burning questions like “How did you spend $30 million towards homeless prevention and solutions from 2017 – 19? And how did homelessness double during that same time?”, the Mayor decided to destroy the encampment, and arrest and jail 22 housed and unhoused protestors. Arrestees were given citations for camping in a public park past 10 pm. In addition, they were arrested on various criminal charges including resisting arrest, obstructing an officer and obstructing justice. Bystanders who were not part of the direct action were also swept up in the arrests and spent the night in Santa Rita Jail.

Homelessness is not a crime. But the bureaucrats and their system are criminal. While protestors assembled,  Oakland’s Czar of Homelessness Joe De Vries submitted a proposal to increase criminalization of curbside dwellers. Amongst other things, his pilot program would give Oakland Police Department the authority to cite our people for sleeping on the sidewalks and parks.

While the Mayor and her agent push for the escalation of their already cruel and unusual torture and murder of the unhoused with inceased criminalization of sleeping curbside, ther is no plan to build deeply afforable housing in site. 

In this crisis of homelessness we face, there are many fronts to fight. Not just to alleviate the lack of access to the basic human right of housing, but to eradicate the very existence of homelessness from our society.

One front is the legal and policy battles we need to engage in to stop making homelessness a crime. And rather than question the people fallen victim to a society that allows homelessness to exist, we should be questioning the criminal nature of such a society. And change bad laws that uphold that society.

One such way we go about doing this is getting rid of anti-homeless laws that criminalize people who are surviving in a system designed for a few to succeed while the many suffer.

Modern anti-homeless laws are the cousins of Jim Crow laws, created to control and punish the people who exist on the edge of society.  When we consider nearly 80% of Oakland’s unhoused are Black, this comparison is even clearer. These anti- homeless ordinances include “sitting or lying in the streets,” “obstructing pedestrians,” “sleeping on benches”, “using an open flame.” They are specifically designed to target anyone who has no option but to live outside. They are ineffective, costly, inhumane, and — according to a recent Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling and a Supreme Court response — unconstitutional to enforce if the city does not provide adequate shelter.

Unless the city shifts its focus toward long-term solutions and away from criminalization, Oaklanders like me will continue to be punished for trying to survive when there are no other viable options available. And if you wonder about how limited my choices are, let me paint you a picture:

On any given night in Oakland there are more than two thousand (Alameda County 2017 point in count), six thousand (Feed The People 2016 intake data), or nine thousand (Alameda County Health Care For The Homeless 2015 report) people in need of shelter. But only 350 emergency shelter beds available. For women like me, there are even fewer options. Many of the places that provide beds do not accept children, pets, families and will not allow occupants to leave at night even if you work a graveyard shift.

Gordon Walker, director of Utah’s Division of Community and Housing estimated that criminalizing Utah’s unsheltered cost about $20,000 per person in state services, jail time and police costs. By adopting the Housing First program, where the priority is to place people in permanent housing instead of locking them up or sweeping them away, Utah saved millions and dramatically improved the number of unsheltered people in the state. 

But it will take years for Oakland to shift away from its current money-driven development. City officials can start heading in the right direction right now by repealing the city’s “anti-homeless” laws while building permanent housing.

By Needa Bee

Yesterday we figured out where our important belongings were. We regrouped. Rested. Worked on a statement in response to the traumatic eviction and lying devils. Enjoyed Life. Brushed the rubble from our shoulders and laughed at the devil’s.

Where are we? Two of us are crashing at temporary spots. One of us is in a basement. One of us is in a tent. The rest of us are living in vehicles on the street. But I bet if you asked the city and staff who lied about giving us shelter and lied about not destroying our property they couldn’t tell you where we are or how we are doing. Cuz there has been non follow up to our whereabouts and safety since they destroyed everything and kicked us literally to the curb. But they would probably lie about that too. 

For now, our home base is the street outside of the gates where the housing and dignity village. We are a community, a family, a unit. The bonds we have created are like the frame and rafters of a home. They cant crush and destroy that.

Last night a reporter was looking for a sob story. He asked me “how is everyone doing”. I said “we are strong and resilient”. He didn’t like my answer. I didn’t give him tears. The lying devils probably don’t like that either.

The first time Libby and her administration bulldozed the promise land village in West Oakland in 2017 they only made us stronger. They awoke a movement. Clearly the devil don’t learn from her mistakes.

We are already regrouping. We are already multiplying. We will be coming back. From 100 different angles.

There are at least 14,000 unhoused in Libby’s oakland. And we have support from our housed neighbors all the way to the federal government.

We aint done. We aint dismantled. We aint silenced. We aint stopping.

Oakland, CA – On December 6, without warning, Mayor Libby Schaaf and her administration violently evicted the 13 residents of the Housing and Dignity Village (HDV), a service hub at S Elmhurst Avenue and Edes Avenue in Deep East Oakland. Over 20 Oakland Police officers were present to lead residents away in handcuffs, as Public Works employees worked overtime to destroy everything on site. On Thursday, Shady Schaaf and her administration showed the people of Oakland that they are liars, that you cannot trust a word they say, that they have absolutely no problem sanctioning violence against unhoused Black and Brown families, and that they truly do not have any respect for or give a fuck about the people of Oakland.

Thursday’s violent eviction of HDV followed a blocked eviction on December 5. For four hours, residents refused to move because in truth there was no adequate housing available for us.  Folks from all over Oakland stood between us and the police. The people of oakland made it clear that they did not support this eviction, and their presence prevented police and members of the Department of Public Works from entering. Candice Elder of the East Oakland Collective and Margaretta Lin of the Dellums Institute for Social Justice negotiated an alternative to eviction. After four hours in the rain, in front of a crowd of dozens, City representatives, member of Councilmember Larry Reid’s office, and the Department of Human Services told HDV residents, advocates, lawyers and brookfield neighbors that HDV residents would not be evicted until all the residents, advocates and legal team could sit down to a roundtable discussion with the city about a viable solution.

The City of Oakland’s statement to the press, released shortly after officials left HDV on Wednesday, is full of lies. It claims that officials never agreed to pause evictions; that they did not agree to a roundtable meeting; that 15 residents were offered housing, and all residents accepted; and that the City would not throw away belongings. In reality, only 13 people lived at HDV, and the City’s incorrect number reflects the level of effort they put in to actually do what they told the federal judge they would do. In truth, seven residents were not offered adequate housing. The remaining six were offered housing only after City officials and staff scrambled during that 4 hour negotiation period to “override” the shelter system and remove other unsheltered brothers and sister from waiting lists and shelter beds to accommodate HDV residents. This was told to our legal time and our advocates.

24 hours after agreeing to sit at a roundtable with us, city employees swarmed HDV in a surprise raid. The agreed-upon meeting never happened. None of us were offered shelter, our belonging were tossed and broken.

At the time of the eviction, most residents were off-site at work or handling business, the children were at school. During the eviction our children were in limbo uncertain of what was going to happen and where they would go that night or the next. As for the four residents on site who were ambushed: One resident was working on a visual arts piece for the City of Berkeley Arts Commission, one resident was getting dressed to go to work, one resident was fixing the village generator station, one resident was resting. We were not allowed to pack. We were not given time to pack. Coverage by independent journalists, corporate media and social media streams shows residents’ belongings were trashed.

To this day none of us have received phone calls from the administration, larry reids office or human services to see our status. They do not know where we are and they have no indication of the consequences of their lies and violent eviction on our safety and stability. We and all other unsheltered oaklanders are not their concern – as long as we are out of sight they are happy. As long as we are not doing for ourselves and the neighborhoods they neglect they are happy.

Yesterday one of us called a shelter were were told would provide us with housing. When the mama identified herself as a member of the hdv she was informed that the shelter worker is not allowed to talk about anything related to HDV and hung up on her. She and her children as do all of us remain on the streets. 

We have asked several times why are we being evicted? Why does joe devries insist we are criminals and our attempts to assert our need and right for sanctuary is illegal? We are clean and sober, we are highly organized, we are the only encampment expliciting serving women and their families. We are the only encampment providing services and resources to our housed and unhoused neighbors. Why us? Our questions were met with silence. The other encampments on public land are left alone at best, at worse they are neglected – even when they are in deep crisis, even when they are riddled with criminal behavior and violence. So why us?

We are certain it is because when we speak we are not only speaking for ourselves but for the at least 9,000 other unsheltered brothers and sisters in oakland. We were evicted in an attempt to silence us. We are also certain we were evicted as confirmed from community members joe has spoken to “punish” us for attempting to provide ourselves with sanctuary. How dare we seek shelter and safety from the streets. Who the fuck do we think we are to think we deserve basic human needs and rights? We are human beings, some of oakland’s most vulnerable, but also most resilient.

Apparently nate miley from alameda county board of Supes understands this.and came to HDV to see what we were doing and offer his support. Alameda county District Attorney nancy o’malley understands and supports us and has agreed to not prosecute any of us if were were arrested. Assemblyman rob bonta understands this and also came to visit the HDV and offer his support. Senator Nancy Skinner supports us. Senator Barbara lee supports us too. All these elected officials called shifty schafft to tell her to not evict. And she would not listen, but rather continued the logic to criminalize us and lie about us. Why did not a single one of you come to visit the housing and dignity village?

We know libby is a bully and a liar who has not a care for Oaklands Black and Brown families, despite her diversity media stunts and lip service. We hope that you city council take the higher moral ground and make decisions based on justice, integrity, equity, compassion and truth. We hope your fear of libby damaging your political careers will not deafen you to the moral outrage our violent eviction and destruction of our home has sparked across the bay area. The bay is pissed. Who do you stand with? A lying bully selling the town off the town or the people of oakland and beyond who are demanding you tap into your humanity?

We demand Libby, City officials and staff that broke their promise to us be held accountable for lying to us and the public. 

We demand Libby and the City cease all evictions and instead upgrade encampments. We believe California has more than enough wealth – much of it stolen from the Black, Indigenous, and Brown ancestors of people currently experiencing homelessness – to improve the quality of life of unhoused residents until permanent housing is available. We demand that special attention is paid to the UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing report and recommendations.

We demand a new parcel of land for Housing & Dignity Village to rebuild our Home. The trauma Libby and her administration have caused our children is undeniable and unforgivable. The disruption caused in our lives for no good reason is unconscionable. The use of workers to destroy our belongings and violate our human right to assert our right to housing when you the city have failed to do so is criminal. 

We demand that you not harm the residents of e12 and 23rd who have already been repeatedly traumatized by the administration and opd in an attempt to set the village up for failure. Do not engage in the mayor and the administration’s petty attempt to “punish” the village for the HDV.  do not revoke your original vote on the miller ave property.

The Trump administration is lying to the public, criminalizes the marginalized, destroys sanctuary, refuses to acknowledge the United Nations human rights reports. It’s horrific that in Oakland, California – the Home of progressive thinking and radical movements – the practices of the newly re-elected Mayor, who claims to be a #Resistance leader, mirror the facism of Trump.

The response from Candice Elder, Founder & Executive Director of The East Oakland Collective

The City of Oakland is running with the narrative that the 13 residents of Housing and Dignity Village (“HDV”) refused shelter, so they deserved eviction. Yes they did refuse the offer of temporary shelter beds. The 13 residents of HDV united together to 1) ensure all 13 would be offered shelter before anyone leaves, AND more importantly 2) refused shelter beds because the City was pushing OTHER unhoused people down the shelter bed list to accommodate HDV residents. 

Shelter beds would have been more temporary than the Housing and Dignity Village they were evicted from. They refused as some of the residents called shelter beds a “downgrade” to the safe, clean, sober and intentional community where they were safe. HDV was their preferred temporary home, and it was more like home. As of the day of the first eviction attempt on 12/5, the City of Oakland was still scrambling to find beds for some of the residents that had pets and minors. Also some of the shelter beds were offered outside of Oakland and that would not work for most of the residents.

The City of Oakland is doing everything to ignore the recommendations of the UN to upgrade informal settlements and stop evictions until adequate housing is provided. 

I believe the City also evicted this community faster than any other because a large piece of City owned property was reclaimed by the people, for the people. Reason why we need to have a public lands policy in place that not only includes deeply affordable housing but to allow use of public land to temporarily house the unhoused until there is more permanent solutions.

I am so proud of the residents of HDV. They continue to be examples of resilience and resistance. 

#tellthetruthOakland #homesforall #upgradenotevict

Response from Margaretta Lin, Executive Director of the Dellums Institute for Social Justice

Yesterday, I bore witness to a grave human rights atrocity. This did not occur in a Red State, but here in Oakland, California. Organized by The Village and The East Oakland Collective, unhoused women and children and their supporters took over blighted public land, cleaned up the trash, and began to build homes that were safe and dignified. As we all know, unhoused women and children are extremely vulnerable to great abuse and have very limited housing options. They said they chose the vacant public land at Clara and Edes because it had a fence so that they could be safe from violence and abuse. They set up a medical tent for doctors to provide services to the community. They provided food for the neighbors. They took care of one another so that mothers could work nights or go to school.

Some of the neighbors had legitimate concerns that needed to be addressed through problem solving mediation that Baba Arnold Perkins had volunteered to conduct. So why did no meeting between the City of Oakland, the unhoused residents, and the neighbors occur? Why were the unhoused advocates told by the City of Oakland on Wednesday when there were crowds of supporters and media that the eviction scheduled for Wednesday would not occur until there was a meeting, to only have OPD and Public Works show up the next day to demolish their homes and forcibly evict people? Why did my friends, Mayor Libby Schaaf and Councilmember Larry Reid support an action that the United Nations a month ago said violated international human rights and was “cruel and inhumane”?

So what can we, who stand for justice for all peoples, do now? Friends in the local and national media like Anna Martin Ise Lyfe, Elizabeth Shogren, Darwin BondGraham, Ken Epstein can you do in-depth profile and investigative stories to help prevent this atrocity from occurring again? Anna Martin–I see an amazing This American Life story profiling the unhoused women’s resilience to rebuild their housing and community in the wake of the City’s demolition and eviction. 

Friends in policy research like John A. Powell Julie Nelson Michael McAfee Kalima Rose Eli Moore Joe Brooks can you work with us and boona cheema to craft the nation’s best Equity in Housing and Human Rights policy for Oakland electeds like Nikki Fortunato Bas Rebecca Kaplan Dan Kalb to champion so that our beloved community of Oakland ends these human rights violations?

Friends who are political leaders who had the benefit of being mentored by Ron Dellums like Barbara Lee, Rob Bonta, Keith Carson Nate Miley Ben Bartlett can you exercise your political capital with your friends in Oakland City Hall–ask them why they directed or allowed for this human rights atrocity to occur last night and on other nights?

Friends in activism–continue doing what you already do–showing up for the oppressed and discriminated against.

What happened last night can’t continue. It’s against everything that we say we stand for–human rights and decency. I believe that this is our Selma–a defining moment of our times. Thank you for your willingness to stand with people whose only crime is to not have housing.

Response from Frank Sosa, Community Member

So make no mistake about Oakland’s homeless encampment policy. Oakland has camps everywhere, so much so that they often are fire hazards and health hazards. Oakland seems to be just fine with that, but the minute a camp is politicized, organized, drug free, and safe for womyn and children, the city will shut you down with a quickness. Even if that camp has made the neighborhood they are in cleaner than it was before thus raising property values. Heaven forbid, houseless folks should be organized and look out for each other.

Response From The Village

We The Village, state firmly that housing is a human right and the 9,000 -14,000 unsheltered residents of oakland need to be the city’s number one priority to build immediate permanent housing and immediate dignified transitional housing.

We acknowledge that the city administration has either attempted to destroy what we attempt to do, criminalize what we do, co-opt and capitalize what we do, or worked with us in bad faith. In fact, while The City was getting ready to destroy Housing and Dignity Village, it released a request for funding asking non-profits to carry out the entire Village program design – which we submitted to The City in February 2017, April 2017 and again in September 2017.

The bulldozing and eviction of 16 residents from the Promise Land Village on Feb 2, 2017 has never been rectified and the residents continue to be homeless. 

The herding of rival gangs, folks in mental health crisis, and rival families since October 2017 to present day, to the E12 & 23rd Ave. Village, and the continued herding of unsheltered folks onto the land by OPD is a clear sabatouge to our vision and efforts. As are the city’s refusual to provide adequate trash pick up, and properly serviced portapoties. It also caused harm to our leadership, our volunteers, the individuals herded there and the surrounding neighborhood. These actions were criminal, harmful and dangerous and have yet to be rectified.

The Tuff Shed sites are nothing but an institutional mutation of the village program design and vision that barely scratches the surface of the crisis, wastes millions on dollars in money and resources while violating residents autonomy, dignity, safety. Its nothing more than a nicely packaged cosmetic attempt to shut down and shuffle around sprawling encampments. The only permanent housing people are offered are a bus ticket out of oakland

And the latest attack on the Village efforts: the violent eviction of the highly organized, clean and sober housing and dignity village – was a continuation of the attacks on our work and attempted criminalization of our leadership

And according to community leaders who have spoken to joe de vries taking away the Miller Ave site immediately after the bulldozed the housing and dignity village – a site  the city council voted to give us to open a harm reduction site – is nothing but a petty attempt to punish us for creating housing and dignity village, our unsheltered leadership asserting their constitutional right,  and reacting to this crisis as the emergency it is.

Unlike the  administration, we the village have spent two years talking with unhoused folks to design temporary emergency shelters and blueprints for villages. We have been able to create a solution that is a United Nations model for how to address this crisis at hand. 

Its a shame that the mayor and administration and city council will not work with us. It is as shame that the same time the city was getting ready to bulldoze us and take away the property the agreed to let us manage on miller avenue, they were also releasing a request for funding to funnel federal, state, county, city and private monies to non profits to fund a mutated version of our entire program design.