Word on the Curb

By Needa Bee

I just got home from working last Wednesday- (i have been living in my vehicle in District 3 for three years in the same spot) – to find out four vehicles that were used as homes/businesses/livelihoods/services to the unhoused were stolen by the city of Oakland. 

Our vehicle and three other vehicles people live and work out of were stolen today because they did not have current registration.

Several housed folks on the same block had their vehicles tagged for not having current registration.

Unhoused folks were never tagged. Housed folks were

Unhoused folks were never given notice.. housed folks were

Unhoused folks were never offered adequate shelter.

There is a moritorium still in place for vehicles people live in to not be towed.

The city claims it never tows people’s cars they live in. Couldn’t  be farther from the truth.

Since Wednesday I have been in advocacy with members of HAWG, just cities and Nikki Fortunato bas office to get the administration to waive all fees. 

We got all fees waived. This is the fourth time I have witnessed the city do this when they have towed peoples homes.

This morning we went to opd at 8am, got all the paperwork we needed.

Village folks went to the tow yard today to get our truck (which houses the village Administrative offices and cardboard and concrete studios). Because the city only waived till yesterday they charged us $189 for today.

But they DESTROYED our truck. They removed the steering wheel and the steering column. All the property in the truck is DESTROYED. 

Our perfectly working box truck no longer works. Our art is destroyed. We don’t know the status of the other property yet. All this over an illegal operation that traumatized several unhoused residents. And continues to traumatizes us.

And there’s more!!

Media came to cover what is going on. The tow company locked the gate, but locked one of the journalist inside the yard!!!!

And me, joyous and one of our high school interns were doing feed the people when we got the call from Muki Benkler  and Ayat Bryant-Jalal Yahyo Bryant of the FUCKERY.

we had hot BBQ chicken dinners from Lena’s soul food Cafe courtesy community kitchens. They were going to 94th and e 14th, e12 btwn 15th and 42nd, 45th and mlk, 30th and mlk, driver’s plaza, here there. Folks depend on these meals. Now the meals are cold.

We are documenting everything. 

Im working with Lia Azul Salaverry from Nikki Fortunato Bas office to get the four folks who lived in abandoned vehicles immediate supportive transitional housing.

By Needa Bee

During the Covid 19 Pandemic and the shutdown, we saw the best of humanity emerge as people mobilized to take care of each other during this crisis, rather than wait on the slow moving, bureaucracy heavy government to act. 

“Mutual aid” became an action word amongst many—predominantly anarchist circles—and dozens of groups sprung up to provide food and direct support to unhoused Oaklanders in the very visible informal settlements. 

What is mutual aid? In practice it is nothing new: the unpaid and intentional, reciprocal exchange of resources and services for mutual benefit of all. Simply put, it’s people in a community taking care of each other. And in a political context it means taking care of each other because the government has either failed to do so ro refuses to do so. It is a value and practice as old as the human desire to survive. It is also the basic fundamental value and practice towards self-determination for oppressed and marginalized communities. 

Mutual-aid groups are generally member led and organized, and open to any and all to join. They often claim to have non-hierarchical, non-bureaucratic structures, and use consensus-based decision making—all indigenous concepts and practices. 

Mutual aid is very different from charity. Mutual aid is folks giving what they can and getting what they need from their own community. It’s a reciprocal give and take that allows a community to practice self-determination and interdependence. Charity is when people from outside the community in need give, but there is no reciprocal give and take. This dynamic of people from the outside offering charity creates lots of problematic dynamics, including lack of cultural and historical understanding of the community in need; romanticizing oppression; and “othering” the community in need. Charity does not have a reciprocal exchange of material resources. It is a one way exchange of funds or supplies that creates feel good emotions for the givers, while not supporting self-determination and interdependence amongst the community receiving. Charity empowers the givers and makes the receivers dependent.

There are quite a few historic examples of mutual aid groups in the United States that were formed out of necessity by oppressed and marginalized groups with limited to no access to services and support. For example, in 1787, the Free African Society was formed to provide aid to newly freed blacks, so that the African American community could “independently advance their own education, employment, entrepreneurship, enterprises, and estate across fields, disciplines, and industries. The vision is to see Philadelphia’s Black African diaspora’s history, heritage, culture, and tradition made healthy and whole,” the group’s website says.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, immigrants from various ethnicities and counties formed mutual aid societies to serve as support nets for their newly migrated communities. These mutual aid groups offered financial support to members experiencing illness and unemployment, emotional support during crisis, and social and cultural support in their new and very forgeign home.The largest of these organizations included the Italian-American mutual aid societies called Societa di Mutuo Soccorso and Mexican-American organizations called Sociedades Mutualistas.

In 1969, the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense created the Free Breakfast for Children program to serve families in Oakland, California. By the end of the year, the program provided hot meals to more than 20,000 children in 19 cities. Other survival programs emerged over the next years, including clothing distribution, free medical clinics, political and economic education, self-defense and first aid training, transportation to prisons for families of incarcerated folks, an emergency-response ambulance program, drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and testing for sickle-cell disease. These programs were led and organized by members of Black communities for their communities. 

In the 1970s, the Young Lords, an organization devoted to neighborhood empowerment and self-determination of Puerto Ricans in the United States emerged in the streets of Chicago and New York. They were inspired by the Black Panthers to create several community programs, including free breakfast for children, the Emeterio Betances free health clinic, free dental clinic, community testing for tuberculosis and lead-poisoning, a community day care center, free clothing drives, and a “Garbage Offensive” to clean up garbage in Puerto Rican neighborhoods neglected by city sanitation.

Ironic that indigenous people around the world have lived by these values and practices for thousands of years, and oppressed, exploited, and marginalized communities HAVE to take care of each other to survive and eventually thrive. Yet like most things created by People of The Sun (the melanated), what we create or do isn’t always given a name or a label.

Back to the present day. Prior to the pandemic, there were a handful of these volunteer mutual aid efforts in Oakland, created by long-time residents. These groups have existed for the past six-plus years, such as The East Oakland Collective and The Village in Oakland—of which I am a co-founder of and the current interim executive director. These grassroots organizations have been working in the trenches of informal settlements day in and day out with little resources. 

For both The Village in Oakland and The East Oakland Collective, the past 20 years of gentrification and the homeless state of emergency created by Oakland’s racist and classist development model has had traumatic impacts. Our leadership and members have watched our neighborhoods, our communities, and our families be displaced, erased, and criminalized through the process of gentrification, and either be forced to move out of Oakland or end up living in the streets. The Village in Oakland is led by currently and formerly unhoused Black, Indigenous, and Filipina Oakland residents who have been the victims of the displacement that is the foundation of the gentrification development model. The Village only exists because the government does not meet the most basic needs of food, shelter, clothing, water, sanitation, and sately of its most marginalized residents. The Village also faces lots of barriers and pushback from the government for our political ideology, holding politicians to the fire, and our direct action tactics. 

Unlike these efforts that were created by longtime Oakland residents who are the most impacted by gentrification, displacement, and homelessness, many of these self-labeled mutual aid anarchists waving anti-authoritain anti-establishment banners, who have emerged to provide aid to houseless communities since the start of the pandemic, come across as middle class children of the gentry who just recently arrived in Oakland and the Bay Area. 

They are the folks who chant “Who’s streets? Our streets!” during police brutality protests while those of us from marginalized communities cringe at the twilight zone-esque protest marching past us. They are folks who moved here in the past 10 years or less who are squatting in houses to fight gentrification by housing themselves in squats. They say they are against gentrification while they pay rents people from Oakland can’t afford. These are the folks who seem to never have met a Black or Native American person in their life, never had metal detectors in their high schools, never were on welfare or stood in free food lines, never had to rely on hand-me-downs or thrift store sales because they had to—yet claim “they” are “we.”

Amongst anarchists and white leftist circles, Peter Kropotkin, a 20th century Russian anarchist and outspoken academic from the Russian aristocracy (gentry), is credited for popularizing the term “mutual aid.” In his essay collection, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution, he asserts that cooperation and collectivity, not competition and individual progress, was the essential value behind the evolution and longevity of the human race. Many of us from indigenous and/or colonized, oppressed, and exploited communities already value and practice these ideas. But most Europeans and European Americans were embracing an entirely opposite belief system popularized by Darwin. While our communities were taking care of each other, the non-melinated-world upheld survival of the fittest, competition, and domination as the answer to humanity’s survival on earth. 

So while indigenous communities and other oppressed and marginalized groups have been living with the values of mutual aid, here come the white people, the wealthy, the privileged, the gentry with an ah- ha moment! Folks who grew up in the Amerikkka that values rugged individualism, pull yourself from your own boot straps, separate from your first taste of mutual aid—your family—and leave home at 18 years old, these folkshave thought of something totally “new,” and necessary, and HUMAN!!!!! Mutual aid is being treated like a “new paradigm of being” they have “discovered” during the crisis of the pandemic, which rocked their comfort and their luxuries, making  life feel suddenly difficult, fragile, erratic, and unexpected. 

I want to raise a question: are these new groups that have multiplied across Oakland to serve the unhoused during the pandemic truly “mutual aid” organizations? Based on the history and formation of mutual aid organizations and societies, I want to argue they are not mutual aid, but actually, charity organizations. Over the past year, we of The Village In Oakland have witnessed, learned, and experienced first hand how some of these gentry charity organizations move thru our community, many times in ways that lead to more harm than good.

In this era of Black Lives Matter, an important truth has been amplified: that Black voices and Black leaders need to be listened to and uplifted. For many of these newcomers to The Town, their impressions, information, and beliefs about Black folks have been gained thru racist stereotypes, anti-Blackness, and white supremist education. Due to the guilt, their fear of their own internalized white supremacy, their inability to relate to Black folks, their inability to deal with real street shit, and their inability to understand the traumas BIPOC folks and poor folks experience, newcomers run the risk of failing to appropriately navigate all the different ways that trauma shows up. All of this can create enabling or harmful behavior, and fuel mental and emotional traumas.  

Not being part of the communities they are sharing resources with also creates an “us and them” dynamic, and rather than encouraging unhoused folks to self-organize, advocate, and push for self-determination, it magnifies a culture that poor people are already ingrained in that we desperately need to break away from: dependency and the welfare mindset.

Another phenomenon we learned of within these charity groups within the anarchist community is not only can they afford residential housing and brick and mortar store fronts, for the most part, they do not extend access to these spaces to the people they offer charity to or the existing community based organizations that are struggling to do the work. They easily access spaces and share them amongst their anarchist cliques and circles. On the rare occasions that organizations like the Village in Oakland or unhoused folks are granted access to these spaces, our bodies are policed, we endure micro aggressions and flat out racist behavior that is left unchecked and protected, our resources are stolen, our social capital is pimped for legitimacy, and almost every time our access to these spaces are eventually denied or blocked.

So how can these well intentioned gentry in denial rectify this situation? It’s very simple: rather than create their own charity organizations misnamed as mutual aid groups, they can join and support the existing efforts led by Oaklanders who are most impacted by gentrification and the homeless crisis. They can and should donate their time, their skills, their resources to the BIPOC, low-income leaders who were here before gentrification and who are still here fighting against displacement, poverty, and erasure. They should follow our leadership. 

Folks who came to Oakland after gentrification started need to couple volunteering with actual community grounded mutual aid organizations with challenging white supremacy workshops and dedicating to a lifelong path of decolonization. They need to sit back, and learn about the culture and ways of Oaklanders, not so they can fit in but so they can better serve in Oakland-rooted organizations.

And if they really want to be down, newcomers who want to fight against gentrification can sign over their lease or sublease to an unhoused household who cannot qualify for a lease. In a truly militant and revolutionary and paradigm shifting act, they can work to educate their own families and move out of gentrifying neighborhoods, with the objective of decolonizing their people and freeing up resources. They can send these resources back  to mutual aid groups and other grassroots organizations that are still here, still doing the work, still struggling against displacement, injustice, and erasure.

Each curbside community needs to learn to come together, unite, and decide for ourselves what we need and want to get us out of the situation we find ourselves in. And when these gentry come to our communities with handouts, we need to tell them exactly what support actually looks like. We should give them lists of what kind of provisions we need. We should give them marching orders for what doors need to be unlocked and busted open, what resources need to be freed up, what government offices need to be protested and held accountable. We should ask them to put their bodies on the line and defend our communities when the bulldozes come to demolish us and throw away our belongings. 

We don’t need charity. We don’t need folks who have never walked in our shoes to act like they are in the same boat as us. We don’t need folks who are momentarily rebelling against their class and/or race. We need folks who dedicate their lives to flex their privilege to dismantle the very system that granted and upholds their privilege. We need accomplices against poverty and displacement and injustice, but we need them to be honest and authentic about who they are to themselves and to us.

By Needa Bee

Like all U.S. cities, the CIty of Oakland’s approach to homelessness and the unhoused is rooted in the false belief that encampment evictions are inevitable. At best, governments have the audacity to promise a kinder, gentler method of evicting unhoused people from the encampment communities where they live. 

Why pay attention to us now? In the City of Oakland, elected officials have passed a punitive new policy for “managing” curbside communities, and they are starting to put this policy to use. That means there are more encampment evictions—and thus more curbside human rights and civil rights violations—happening than ever before. The only real guard against this abuse of rights is public pressure. We must shift all eyes onto these inhumane policies in order to protect our unhoused family and enact widespread policy change.

The City of Oakland’s skippy doo da day friendly eviction approach looks like this: the city promises to give people adequate notice of evictions, outreach for services and support, placement in adequate shelter, and bagging, tagging, and storage of any personal property that they cannot store once their curbside home is evicted. The reality is that this happens once in a blue moon—when an eviction is highly publicized and there are media, lawyers, legal observers, homeless advocates, and community members present. Basically when they are forced to be held accountable to what they say they do. But most evictions fly under the public’s radar. What usually happens is the exact opposite of what the city has publicly promised.

For years, the Oakland mayor and her administration, and her agents in the Department of Public Works and Oakland Police Department do whatever they feel like doing, while saying their approach is led with compassion and dignity. Hundreds of testimonies collected from unhoused folks for civil rights lawsuits tell stories of lives that have been brutalized, and civil and human rights violated by the city’s practices. And the recent audit on the City of Oakland’s Encampment Management Team showed that not only does the mayor and her administration not have any sort of comprehensive plan or budget for their approach to this growing crisis, but millions have been mismanaged or are simply unaccounted for. 

And now we have this new Encampment Management Policy that was voted into place in November 2020. This policy solidifies, justifies, and institutionalizes the premise that unhoused people are criminal, unwanted, and to be shuffled around. It is framed so that evictions of curbside communities are inevitable. It outright bans unhoused folks from living in certain parts of Oakland. It also claims that adequate notice will happen, that no unhoused person will be evicted from their curbside residence until adequate shelter is provided, and that property will be bagged and tagged—that is, that the city will store an unhoused person’s possessions in a municipal facility for 90 days where folks can come to pick them up.

This new policy also makes it illegal for unhoused communities to exist on parcels of Oakland public land. After a month of studying the maps released by the city, I realized that none of the “low sensitivity” areas, aka the areas where folks are allowed to live, are on land that is “owned” by the city. The Encampment Management Policy map Oakland City Council unanimously voted on last fall only “allows” unhoused settlements to exist on federal, state, or private land. This move literally washes the City of Oakland’s hands clean of dealing with unhoused communities and relegates the act of eviction to CalTrans, the Federal Government or the Alameda County Courthouse and Sheriff’s Department. 

Due to public pressure by advocates, unhoused leaders, public health workers, legal professionals, and the city auditor, the new Encampment Management Policy was sent back to a city council committee to make amendments to it. Until those amendments were made, the council said that the policy would not be enforced. 

But that didn’t stop the mayor, her administration, and her agents from executing their new policy. This new policy began to be enforced at the beginning of 2021, removing communities off Oakland’s public land in the midst of a pandemic that has not ended, while the CDC’s moratorium on evictions of curbside communities is still in place. To date, there have been more evictions of unhoused settlements in the past seven months than there were during the same timeframe of any previous year, according to the “homeless encampment cleanup schedule” that is posted every two weeks on the city’s website. And there is only one known settlement that received all the harm reduction promises from the city – Union Point in March 2020. This was a highly publicized eviction for a community that had faced eviction and the threat of eviction for more than a year. And the only reason they received all the amenities the city has proclaimed is its standard operating practice is because that community united, stood as an organized body, and demanded the city make good on its promises. We of the Village in Oakland have been urging curbside communities to come together like a fist when the city or state comes with evictions. Union Point understood the power in unity. 

Moving forward, it’s gonna take curbside communities uniting against their oppressors to make the government follow its own policies. It’s gonna take increased organizing and defense led by unhoused folks, supported by advocates and housed community members, backed up by more lawsuits. It’s gonna take the Oakland CIty Council to stand up to Mayor Libby Schaff and her administration to enforce compassion. 

If the city of Oakland really was compassionate, dignified, and humane in their approach to curbside communities, they would not use evictions. They would allow people to shelter in place through the pandemic of homelessness, and make sure our people had adequate sanitation services, access to food and clean drinking water, and other support services on site. If the City of Oakland really cared about the people who are being displaced by its agenda of gentrification, it would not have mismanaged, wasted or disappeared hundreds of millions of dollars as the audit showed. They instead would have spent this money building permanent housing rather than the arsenal of temporary transitional shelters that hundreds of unhoused Oaklanders have cycled in and out of for the past four years. If the City of Oakland really wanted to end homelessness, it would put a moratorium on the agenda of gentrification and use public resources to ensure there is permanent adequate housing for all. Enough of the condos and outdoor dining parklets and luxury apartments for the rich. We need housing now. And if the city had the political will to be public servants that walked the talk of equity, we would have it now. 

By Joyous De Asis

Intergenerational Community Members Fight Against BBQ Beckys, Jogger Joes and Knife  Wielding MAGA Men With Grills, Music & the Electric Slide.

On Friday May 10th, 2019, Oakland residents will come out to celebrate the fourth annual “#510Day” at Lake Merritt – a grassroots community event dedicated to the celebration of Oakland’s history and culture in the face of the rapidly growing housing crisis and the pressures of gentrification that are pushing long-term residents out of the area.

Lake Merritt is a public park with a long history of BBQs, cruising, large festive gatherings and family parties. But over the past several years, newcomers to Oakland have been increasingly responding to the culture here in hostile, dangerous and potentially deadly ways. Days before last years #510Day celebration, the infamous “BBQBetty” incident happened. A few weeks later, #JoggerJoe physically assaulted a young Black unsheltered man in a racially motivated attack. The incident ended with #JoggerJoe throwing the young man’s shelter and personal property into the Lake.

Just this past month, born and raised Oaklander Dontae Moore was the target of a hate crime at the lake while he was jogging. Last week, a man showed up at the lake wielding a knife and wearing a MAGA hat, raising alarm and fear amongst shocked spectators and people he was provoking. As the Bay Area housing crisis and the pressures of gentrification have increased, Lake Merritt has become a place of heated debate. 

“BBQ Betty, Jogger Joe, Machette MAGA basically drive home our point: that gentrification has created a hostile and dangerous environment for Black and Brown folks,” said 510Day co-founder Anita De Asis Miralle, known by most as Needa Bee. “But despite the mass displacement, despite the desire of white newcomers to erase our communities – We Are Still Here. We aren’t going anywhere. And it’s not a crime for us to kick it.” 

Four years ago, “510 Day” was founded by a group of long-term Oakland residents and activists who felt that Black and Brown Oakland residents were being targeted by ordinances that limited local residents’ access to Lake Merritt. Ordinances such as a ban on amplified music and BBQing with permits, the requiring of permits for groups larger than 12, and the unequal enforcement of these new restrictions were seen as racially biased policies that disproportionately targeted long-term residents of color as the city’s demographics were shifting. 

“Oakland is changing fast. This has always been a very diverse city, one of the most diverse cities in the world,” said Leo Mercer from Urban Peace Movement who is originally from North Oakland. “But now, many people whose families have been here for decades can’t afford to stay here anymore. The city is becoming less and less diverse. And we are seeing more and more instances where people, people of color, are getting the police called on them for just doing normal things like hanging out at the lake on a sunny afternoon. It’s not right. It’s not in the spirit of Oakland.” 

Knowing that fighting for the right to exist in Oakland has to go beyond taking up space in public places, the 510Day organizing committee created the We Still Here Platform. This 10 point program (a tribute to the Black Panther Party’s 10 Point Program) is an affirmative agenda based on the long neglected needs and basic human rights of Oakland’s long-term residents, especially residents of color. The We Still Here Platform is informed by current, ongoing organizing efforts happening on the ground and in the trenches folks can plug into.

This year’s event will continue the tradition of a youth led march from the 12th Street Amphitheater to the pillars on Lakeshore. The event will end with a community celebration at The Pillars on Lakeshore at El Embarcadero. Youth Radio DJs and legendary DJ Fuze of Digital Underground and Tupac Shakur fame will be providing the soundtrack for the politicized dance party. Folks born and raised in Oakland, long time working class residents, and allies of communities facing systemic displacement are invited to stand against gentrification and celebrate Oakland’s rich history and culture.

510Day will kickoff what organizers are calling the #WeStillHere Weekend

Friday May 10 –  510 Day at Lake Merritt 

Saturday May 11 – May Arts Festival at Lincoln Park 

Sunday May 12  – 1-year anniversary of the “Barbecue Becky” Incident at Lake Merritt

Photos and graphics available here and here

510Day Organizing Committee is: Young Oakland, Village in Oakland, Leon DNas Sykes, Jordan Warren, Urban Peace Movement, AYPAL, The East Oakland Collective, The Real Oakland, CURYJ.

By Tracy Lee

As the corona virus grows the numbers of homeless grows. still there is no resources or help is being provided by the  county.

it’s been critical to live on the streets without other solution on housing but now the number one killer virus does not discriminate against age, race or gender now it is a problem to the world not just America .The White House and Department of Housing and Urban Development have to this point not moved to deploy emergency funding to help the homeless or housing shelters. The bipartisan agreement that was approved by the House late Friday also did not include any measures aimed at the homeless, despite concerns raised by advocacy groups to congressional lawmakers. The measures announced by President Trump on Friday likewise did not include any specific provision for the homelessness it’s crazy how the world is slowly being extinct but Homeless still not come across their mind’s perhaps that is the solution how the government get rid of the Homeless problem. I check myself into the ER so I can get check out due to the covid-19 that the world is scared about and it was not a nice feeling even tho I know that the staff of ER had to take precautions it still made me felt like an out sider when every time they came into my room they had to wear mask and suits and then one of the nurse ask if I was Homeless I said no if I was to tell them the truth that I am Homeless I believe they would’ve treated me way different they probably would’ve  just left me hanging and release me without even checking on me so I can bring the virus back to the encampment with me and others can be sick when there was a HIV outbreak in curbside communities in the dubs no government officials did shit. When a strand of Gonorrhea that was resistant to Medicine broke out in curbside communities across Oakland no government officials gave a fuck. As illegal dumping and a complete lack of Sanitation management and support created open air trash piles across the city the government ignore it. When a typhoid fever scare hit the curb side communities of California our local officials spoke nothing of it. When people were forced to use the restroom in side the tent or in bags, buckets government refused to provide  public bathrooms like porta potties. When these conditions of people living in squalor created massive rat infestations across Oakland the government did nothing. Folks have been living on the streets with infectious diseases and open sores and open wounds and zero access to free Medical Care yet the government and medical industry does nothing majority’s of curbside tenants have questions and concerns about how do I interact with the encampments during this Corona epidemic?I tell em just to pray and try to stay inside the tents as much as possible and if they feel sick or have any symptoms to go to the emergency room and don’t tell the hospital they’re homeless I’m deeply concerned for my health and the health of everyone living /volunteering curbside for years. whatever health/sanitation measures and precautions that government agencies, nonprofits,the health industry and concerned citizens are finally taking now should have happened longtime ago. it shouldn’t have to be a national virus for the government to do something but whatever there doing still not enough. THESE ARE VIRUSES THAT JUST HAPPEN TO COME OUT EVERY ELECTION YEAR??!! SARS-2004 AVIAN-2008 SWINE-2010 MERS-2012 EBOLA-2014 ZIKA-2016 EBOLA-2018 CORONA-2020

GOVERNMENT or COINCIDENCE? it’s sad that it had to take a virus for the government official to finally do something but still we don’t have enough etiquette housing for everyone and the law is everyone needs to be inside by 10:00pm so where do we go by law we can’t be on the streets but by no choice we will all become criminals or waiting to die Hopefully this concern action for the health and Public Safety in the encampments continue and hopefully our city officials cam come to an understanding that maybe we should care for our citizens and prevent harmful circumstances before it’s too late. because sudden concern is about actually valuing the humanity of those living curbside? How much of it is motivated by the panic? if we stay ready we don’t have to get ready.

By Ayat Jalal

I am Ayat Jalal, a 46 year old Black Seminole, son of Black Panthers.

Because of them I’ve been president of a nonprofit corporation, and have had two businesses. I am a father-of-six, a founding member of “First They Came For The Homeless”, member of The Village, carpenter, published poet, artist and organizer, who is currently couch surfing in Oakland. 

Homeless, like the victims of unfair housing practices introduced to Oakland when Jerry Brown became Mayor, that denied public housing to families who had a member who was a felon. I am part of the 70 percent homeless Black population in Oakland, unable to find peace between the rent hikes and camp closures. 

For the past 20 years, Blacks in Oakland have lost their homes to abatement laws and fines to the courts and bail bondsman. Generations and families that have only known Oakland as home, have lost the only anchor in the only communities they have known before Gentrification hit Oakland. 

However, gentrification is nothing new. It’s just a different name for the same colonial racism. The same systematic displacement and shaming of targeted populations. We minorities, who make up the majority of the population, have had our families and lives torn apart by unjust laws. Gang injunctions made our youth targets for wearing the same gear or same hats. Schools in Oakland are closed down and our children are harassed, cited and arrested by police. Given criminal charges. For not being in school. Our families lose strength and we’re made unwhole and broken. 

Our schools are still being closed, and housing blocked as an inhumane tactic of social and economic oppression of Oaklanders. And police are used like assassins, and pawns in this war to maintain poverty. 

Our schools are still being closed, while police receive new equipment to hunt us down in the street like prey.

Affordable housing continues to be denied, while private industry builds prisons and above market  rate housing. 

Oaklanders still want decent housing fit for the shelter of human beings. And if the government and landlords will not give decent housing to the Red, Black, and Brown communities, then as my parents and the other Panther taught us, housing and the land needs to be made into cooperatives so that our communities, with the people’s aid, can build and make decent housing for its people.

The Civil Rights struggle has helped inspire the fight for human rights almost everywhere in the world. Black people once led that struggle. The assasination of our leaders, the flooding of our streets with drugs, the lack of adequate jobs and education, the inaccessibility of adequate housing, the decimation of the Black economic base – all destroyed our communities. And its cost us decades of cultural and generational attacks on Red, Yellow, Brown and Black people. 

That struggle continues still. Still to this day, no matter the jury, no matter the administration, we’re not judged by peers nor given proper government representation. The struggle continues. The silencing of protestors, the crystal meth and heron epidemic currently flooding our communities, the closure of schools, the lack of access to jobs, the lack of adequate housing. Libby Shaft and Joe Devrey have repeated history. They have no compassion, nor the capacity to be humane. They have proven this in their actions during this emergency crisis on homelessness. The current administration don’t care about the culture or people of the Real Oakland – the Black, Red, Brown, working class and poor. And we need to do something about that. We insist The City Council turn the Village demands into policies that are implemented and enforced. We insist that the people of Oakland move forward forever. The government is obviously not for us or with us in this struggle.