We were born out of asserting our right to live, which was met with arrests.
We are using art to protect our ability to protest and exist.
Because merely protesting and existing is met with violence and trauma.
They try to silence us with repeated unnecessary violence, jail, loss, anxiety, depression and trauma.
They inspired us to be more subversive.
Its time for a new tactic.
Now they have to deal with our most powerful weapon:
Art.
what happened was…
It was November 2019
We been done with the foul and wicked effects that gentrification done to our people. Shit was bad enuf before gentrification – neglected communities, miseducating schools, racists murdering police. And then there were no legal jobs, so illegal jobs were common. Which had its own set of issues, especially if you were caught by the system.
But here came gentrification with a whole new set of problems. The main one being the New Bugie Oakland – with overpriced cups of coffee, bike lanes, beer gardens, luxury housing and tech jobs – aint for us. Which means we had to go, leave, disappear.
This explosion of unhoused folks is the rotting fruit of gentrification in Oakland (and across the country). Mayor Libby Shithead Schafft and everyone in that CIty Hall building who fucks with her are the reasons we got friends, family and co-workers living curbside. Sure it started with the 2000 Mayor Jerry Brown, but under Schafft the housing game became a shitshow. The Town is getting the Schaffted.
And lets talk about the boldface lies that Mayor Lyin’ Libby and her Anti-Homeless Encampment Management Team feed the media. Don’t ever believe that the villans of Gothem care about us. They don’t. They care about the people who have money. Even if they don’t live here yet.
Homeless has always been present in Oakland, and through out the country. But this is different. There was a systematic erasure of multiple generations and neighborhoods. Access to permanent housing is not longer a reality in this working class town turned gentry playground. Thousands of us are living the reality that the only was we could stay in The Town is if we moved into vehicles, moved onto the streets, couch-surfed, or squatted in empty buildings.
Berkeley was no different. San Francisco. San Jose. It’s happening all over the Bay Area. It’s happening all over the county.
We wanted to make sure the politricksters and the gentrifuckers got a clear picture that we were not going to be erased with their bulldozers and police terror, try as they might.
We wanted to make sure that the general public unaware of the war on the unhoused.
We wanted for folks to understand we are all one paycheck, one medical set back, one illegal eviction, one crisis away from being unhoused.
We wanted to make sure the housed residents learned that they were being lied to with slick sound-bytes Libby the Shaffster was pulling off press releases from The Village wrote! Double speak at its finest.
We wanted to make sure the people of Oakland and anyone else who would listen knew that Shady Libby and her administration were causing deaths and mental illness due to their encampment eviction practices.
We wanted to tell our truth, give voice to the countless civll rights and human rights abuses unhoused Oaklanders (and unhoused Berkleyites) endure day after day.
And we wanted to do it in the most public way possible with the greatest amount of success.
So on November 24, 2019 when City Hall closed down for the ThanksTaking holidaze The Village, The East Oakland Collective and First They Came for The Homeless took over Oscar Grant Plaza and created The Housing Justice Village on City Hall’s lawn.
The Housing Justice Village was organized to provide a safe place for unhoused residents who have been traumatized, harmed, set-back and left to freeze to death on the streets after their emergency homes were destroyed or towed by The City of Oakland. Together with residents from other encampments across Oakland, Beverly and San Francisco; housed allies; and non-profit supporters and the inter-faith community we created the Housing Justice Village as a protest camp to counter The City’s lies and demand an end to the cruel and inhumane anti-homeless practices.
“So much misinformation and outright lies is being fed to the public and media by the Mayor and her Encampment Management Team. We intend to set the record straight with the Housing Justice Village,” said The Village in Oakland’s founder and interim executive director Needa Bee. “People will see and hear first hand that are deep discrepencies between what The Mayor and her team claim and what is actually happening in the streets. We also want to create space to give our folks the opportunity for some healing after all the trauma and brutality we have all endured.”
“Two years ago City Council passed a resolution for the Mayor and Administration to identify at least two parcels of public land in each district to be used for community led approaches to this homeless state of emergency. That was ignored,” said Ayat Jalal, member of The Village in Oakland’s Leadership Council and co-founder of First They Came For The Homeless. “The City needs to end all evictions, all tows and demolishions and instead use those millions of dollars to upgrade the quality of life at curbside communities until permanent deeply affordable housing is available for us. We intend to maintain and grow the Housing Justice Village until all our demands are turned into policies that are implemeted and enforced.”
Over the past two years, the City of Oakland has spent millions of dollars on so called solutions to homelessness. But during that time Oakland’s unhoused population has more than doubled. We intended to maintain and grow the Housing Justice Village until all our demands are turned into policies that are implemeted and enforced.
Besides creating a sanctuary for unhoused folks impacted by the cities eviction practices and a protest camp to voice our demands, we also created a hub of services to support unhoused and housed folks in need.
Services and programming at the Housing Justice Village included:
- meal distribution for Oakland’s hungry
- legal support to assist unhoused residents file civil rights lawsuits against The Mayor and her Encampment Management Team
- discussions on Oakland community-based SOLUTIONS to ending homelessness in Oakland and applying the UN mandates.
- healing spaces for curbside residents who have been traumatized by The City
- skill sharing for unhoused folks including adverse possession trainings, harm reduction trainings, meditation workshops, anger management workshops and leadership development
- nightly movie nights featuring films on landless people’s struggles
In the early hours on the morning of November 25th, 2019, Mayor Libby Schaaf ordered 60 police and a dozen Department of Public Works employees to arrest 22 housed and unhoused protestors, and destroy our protest camp.
Protestors both housed and unhoused 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 protest camp were also swept up in the arrests and spent the night in Santa Rita Jail.
Since then all charges have been dropped. Here is a video of the press conference the arrestees held after we were released. The artists that were part of the Housing Justice Village regrouped and created the Cardboard & Concrete Collective.