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Below are news articles, press statements, slide shows, and op/ed pieces written by Word On The Curb correspondents.
In Loving Memory
Nov 2, 2023
This altar is in honor of the Women of E12th Street Curbside Communities who died while waiting for the billion dollar homeless non-profit industrial complex to provide them with the ultimate form of violence prevention: housing.
Our homeless neighbors are some of the most resilient, independent, fiercest, smartest, compassionate, powerhouses you will ever meet in your life.
They are survivors who live in constant crisis everyday. And they get shit done. Many are parents, grandparents, workers, survivors. They hold down several jobs and/or hussles. They are resourceful and the masters of recycle, reuse, reimagine.
E12th Street in East Oakland is home to dozens of curbside communities for at least 30 blocks. The largest and longest standing of these communities is between 14th Ave and 17th Ave. In recent months, incidents of violence and tragedy have increased in this community. This is a stark reminder of the urgent need for actions to be taken immediately. Rather than support the residents with their basic needs of food, shelter, sanitation and safety, for the past seven years the City of Oakland has constantly bulldozed (more than 100 evictions in total) their shanty town and thrown away their property. After each eviction, the residents – all once housed in Funktown or the Dubbs – come right back and rebuilt their community of shanties and vehicles. Sometimes, residents are offered temporary housing during evictions at a hotel room, a shelter bed, a tuff shed. But they are exited back out into the streets and make their way back to their curbside home – E12th Street.
The City’s actions have not only left the curbside community of E12th Street traumatized & unhoused, but have made them open targets of violence – including homicide.
“Our community was first evicted in October 2017 and we were moved by the City of Oakland to E12th & 22nd to live at The Village’s tiny house community. We were told we would not be evicted from there. But we came back to our current location because the city bulldozed the tiny house village, evicted us from the e12th and 22nd Ave Village, and literally told us to go back to e12th between 14th and 17th. In fact, Department of Public Works trucks were used to help us move back and forth from 22nd Ave to 14th Ave,” said Hung Le, an unhoused senior citizen who is a father figure to many on E12th. “I do not understand why since 2017 the city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to “evict” or “deep clean” our community. Over and over again. The City’s practices have caused us so much trauma, set backs, loss of money, loss of property, anxiety, depression, and other mental and physical health issues, instead of leaving us alone until you can do right by us. Meanwhile, people are being murdered out here.”
Until two years ago, Alameda County did not track the mortality rates within the unhoused community. The City of Oakland still does not track the deaths of unhoused residents. When an unhoused person dies in the hospital they are recorded as “housed at the time of death” – even if their death occurred during a one time visit to the emergency room. Among the unhoused in Oakland, lack of proper medical care and medical neglect for everything from COPD to diabetes is the main cause of death for folks living on the streets. Extreme weather conditions, overdose, and arson are other causes of death in unhoused communities.
For the residents of E12th homicide is the leading cause of death for men and women. Out of the dozens of murders and brutalities E12th residents are constantly plagued with, only one made the headlines. None of their homicides were investigated. Their stories serve as a call to arms for the government, communities, and individuals to come together and make a collective effort to improve the lives of homeless individuals and provide at least the women under attack with the support they require. These murdered men and women were literal blood sacrifices to gentrification.
Unhoused women face very real dangers, especially living on e12th. Many unhoused women ended up unhoused because they were fleeing domestic violence. Once on the street, many end up in toxic relationships, needing a man for “protection”. Women living on the streets face kidnapping, rape, and trafficking at an alarming frequency, with the numbers of occurrences for each homeless woman being much higher than housed women. Those who fight back many times face unspeakable torture and death for defending themselves.
E12th Street community and it’s advocates have been in constant communication with the City – asking for a cease in evictions, asking for portapotties and clean water, asking for an end to the illegal dumping plaguing their community, asking for help out of the streets and back into society and housing. But the most consistent ask from members of this community is for the City to protect the residents from violent predators, many of whom are housed.
“We have had a relationship with the residents of this community since 2016,” said Village Executive Director Needa Bee. “Ourselves and the residents have asked the city for protection and support when it comes to rapes, robberies, kidnapping, and murders. Instead we have witnessed OPD park on the street and do nothing but watch when violence in any and all forms visits the residents. Truth of the matter is, housing the residents of E12th in permanent supported housing is the only true way to protect them from predators. Housing is violence prevention for this community.”
The Village in Oakland understands the concerns surrounding the ongoing issues faced by homeless individuals, and the urgent need for proper funding and support. It is disheartening to witness the continued suffering of many individuals despite the availability of resources that according to two recent City of Oakland audits have been mismanaged and not used towards ending homelessness. In fact during the past 5 years the City of Oakland has received an unprecedented amount of funding for homeless interventions in the billions of dollars. Yet homelessness has almost tripled during that time.
We strongly advocate for continuous audits and accountability to ensure that funds allocated for addressing homelessness are utilized properly and reach those in need. By implementing transparent measures, we can guarantee that the resources are directed towards meaningful initiatives that make a tangible difference in the lives of homeless individuals. We stand with the residents of E12th in their demands that the harassment of non-stop evictions, tows and throwing away of their property ceases and the City of Oakland find permanent supported housing for the residents. If the City just did the right thing, we can empower these individuals to regain stability and reintegrate into society. In the meantime, we urge the city to protect the lives of the residents of E12th Street, including providing self-defense classes for women.
“If you cannot improve our situation and place us in long-term transitional housing that leads to permanent supportive housing that meets the needs of our community – including mental health issues (including chemical dependency and addiction) – then please stop wasting the public’s money and harming us so deeply until you can help us. We are tired of being treated like animals, left to die, and constantly harassed and traumatized. We are tired of being left out here to be raped, kidnapped, traficed and killed,” reads a statement to the city by over fifty E12th Street residents.
We build this altar in the hopes these women (and men) of E12th did not have to die in vain. That their lives of survival and their violent deaths spur the community to step up and demand the city end the kidnapping, rapes, tortures and murders with permanent housing immediately. All these deaths could have been prevented if folks had adequate permanent housing. Housing is a health and wellness issue. Housing is violence prevention. Housing prevents death.
We Out Here!
October 14, 2023
Outdoor Art Exhibit
The Village in Oakland is proud to present, We Out Here, an exhibition curated by the Cardboard & Concrete Artists Collective.
The intention of We Out Here is to spotlight the skills and imaginations of displaced communities. Poor and unhoused people are facing evictions and increased criminalization in the midst of a global pandemic, a nationwide housing crisis and looming evictions, which further jeopardize the livelihood, stability, and future of the most vulnerable residents.
Unhoused residents are some of your most marginalized neighbors. We experience multiple layers of oppression, violence and trauma day in and day out. We are also some of the most resilient and resourceful folks on the planet.
The exhibit hopes to highlight the humanity of unhoused people. We are living and navigating thru an apocalypse right now. Our life-altering disaster already came. Due to this society’s capitalistic values of profits over rights, property over life, privilege over survival, entitlement over suffering – many are unable to see the humanity of those on the streets. Many don’t realize they are literally a paycheck, traumatic experience, or eviction away from being unhoused.
We believe that thru art we can not only offer you a glimpse of our lives on the streets, but a mirror too. We are just like you. The only difference is we have become economic and racial refugees of an urban development agenda rooted in our displacement. We believe that thru art we can offer you our shared humanity, trials, dreams, fears, experience and resilience.
We hope you will explore your own intimacy of heart, mind, and imaginations, which gives all of us who have ever struggled the inner strength and encouragement needed to push forward each day. We have faith in the ability of our artistic offerings to aid in our communities’ rebalancing. There is still a way for our nation’s most marginalized, terrorized, criminalized, and negelcted to come alive, to survive, and fight back: through the Arts.
Opioid Settlement Recommendation To Alameda County
October 2, 2023
To: Alameda County Behavioral Health
From: The Village in Oakland, staff & volunteers
Re: Recommendations on how to use the Opioid Settlement Funds
Greetings Alameda County Behavioral Health,
I am writing on behalf of myself and my team at The Village in Oakland. Since 2016, we have been providing direct services, support, education, recreational activities, media literacy and advocacy to Oakland’s curbside residents.
We are writing to recommend that the County consider using the funds to fill the deep vacancy that exists for unhoused residents and housed poor and working class residents who have zero options or access to mental health services and facilites. As you know, this complete void in mental health services and facilities for the poor and working class was created under the Reagan Administration in the 1980s. The defunding and closing down of these services and facilities for more than 40 years has had devastating effect on low income and working class folks who struggle with mental health , and their families.
I would like to point your attention to the informal settlements on E12th between 14th Ave and 42nd Ave in East Oakland. Their experiences and mental health needs are reflective of the rest of Oakland’s unhoused or housed poor, low-income and working class residents.
The residents there struggle with a multitude of mental health issues. Some are addicted to or dependant on narcotics. For these folks, there are several hard reduction programs both off site and mobile who provide the residents with harm reduction supplies.
However, there are many residents in these numerous E12th street communities who want to kick their drug addictions and dependency but do not have the support or environment to do so.
First of all, the county’s only detox center – Cherry Hill – many times does not have the capacity to accept clients as they are in full capacity. I can’t tell you how many times i have had someone tell me they are ready to quit, only to call or drive the person to Cherry Hill to be turned away because there is no room. When someone is ready to quit, we must have the infrastructure, facilities and support in place to help them at the moment. Because tomorrow, their addiction or dependency may have won over their desire to be chemical free. We recommend that the County use the funds to open more detox centers.
Secondly, once someone does get into Cherry Hill, where do they do after detox? For upper working class, middle class, and upper class addicts, their families may have the resources to pay for their to go into a private recovery and rehab program. For poor, low-income and working class families there is nowhere to go. Folks are left up to their own devices to figure out how to beat their addiction and dependency which is almost impossible to do. We recommend that the County use the funds to open free and low cost public recovery and rehab programs for the unhoused, and for the housed poor, low-income and working class residents.
We know that addiction and dependency created deeper mental health issues, and that being unhoused also furthers folks’ mental health crisis. We recommend that the County use the funds to attach mental health facilities, programs and services to the unhoused and the poor, low-income and working class housed residents that address other forms of mental healthy including PTSD, anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, manic depression, and other mental health issues that are common in our communities. These programs should be culturally relevant (Afro Centric, Indigenous Centric), and come from a holistic approach that uses not only Western Medicine, but Chinese Traditional Medicine, Acupuncture, Ayurvedic Medicines, Native American Red Path practices, the works and practices around addiction from former Black Panther Dr. Mutulu Shakur, and the groundbreaking treatments including microdoses of Psilocybin which have been shown to not only end addiction amongst meth users, but also repair the nuerological damage done to the brain by meth.
The County receiving this funding is in a very important place that can meet the needs of populations who have been denied mental health services and treatments for more than 4 decades. Investing in detox facilities, and recovery and rehab facilities with wrap around mental health services for the unhoused and the housed poor, low-income, and working class residents is not only desperately needed, it will have rippling effects across families, neighborhoods, cities, and the entire county. It is Alameda County’s opportunity to shine a path to the rest of the county as to what must be done. Any investment in these collective areas will impact the greater mental health and healing for us all collectively.
Sincerely,
Anita De Asis Miralle
Executive Director
Village in Oakland
Letter From The Village to the City of Oakland Planning Department
September 12, 2023
Greetings Community & Economic Development Committee,
My name is Needa Bee. I’m the Executive Director of The Village in Oakland. I have been unhoused in Oakland since 2018 living in Rvs, hotels & abandoned homes. Myself and a team of 8 unhoused Village Outreach workers have been engaging unhoused Oakland residents with getting involved in the Oakland General Plan 2045 thru the Deeply Rooted Partnership
Thank you for incorporating 39 EJ and Safety recommendations from Deeply Rooted in the City’s EJ & Safety element.
In this era of dedication to equity, it is so crucial to be informed and led by city residents and constituents who have been historically neglected in policies and plans. We are thankful that unhoused folks have been offered the opportunity to help shape the future of a city that has violently and tramatically displaced us with 22 years of gentrification. But if those voices are ignored when invited to the table, then the invitation is a token.
Over and over again the top, indeed almost unanimous, environmental justice concern of unhoused residents of Oakland was zero access to clean water. Today and everyday thousands of Oakland residents do not have access to clean water to drink, cook or bath in. The United Nations has declared water a basic human right needed for people to survive and live. In 2018 the Alameda County Board of Supervisors declared water a basic human right of all humans.
But that same understanding and urgency does not seem to exist within these ivory towers of city hall.
The two policy recommendations to provide clean water to unhoused people in Goal #2 and in EJ 2.1 were ignored and need to be incorporated.
The city – specifically through the Homeless Services Dept – must do better to acknowledge, address and meet this need by working with EBMUD. EBMUD that has developed a program thru the hard work of unhoused leader Derick Soo to specifically to meet the desperate water needs of Unhoused Oakland residents, and to work with the County of Alameda to use EBMUD’s opportunity to make sure all unhoused residents of Oakland have this very basic human need and right met.
If the city does nor incorporate these recommendations, the city is sending a clear message that it will continue to ignore and violate the human rights of its unhoused residents, and that the city is refusing to use an equity lens when it comes to creating a future oakland that meets the basic needs of its most vulnerable and traumatized demographic.
Why was these policies not integrated into Goal #2 and the EJ plan? How can this be ignored, overlooked and denied when at this moment, literally thousands of unhoused people in Oakland – who are predominately Black – have stated no access to clean water is their main environmental justice concern? To ignore that hundreds of people have participated in this process and spoken up saying themselves and thousands of others do not have access to clean water is literally contributing and ensuring a slow and painful death. And looking at this thru a lens of equity, it is genocide.
Please make sure the unhoused residents of Oakland have access to clean drinking water.
Sincerely,
Needa Bee
E12th Street Curbside Community Letter to the City of Oakland
To: Mayor Sheng Thao, City Council President Nikki Fortunata Bas, City Council Members, Administrator Latonda Simmons, and Department of Homeless Services.
CC: The Village, HAWG, CURYJ, HOME Cohort, Jeweled Legacy Cohort, Oakland Women’s Center, Homeless Action Center, National Lawyers Guild, The East Oakland Collective, Landless People’s Alliance, Love & Justice In The Streets, Punks With Lunches, City Of Oakland Homeless Commission
From Mr. Hung Le & The Unhoused Residents of E12th between 14th & 17th Avenues
August 24, 2023
I hope this letter finds you well. I myself have been better.
I am still recovering from an illegal operation that the city’s Encampment Management Team did July 6, 2023. Without any notice of items needing to be removed nor an eviction notice, just a notice for a routine clean up, DPW, Operation Dignity, OPD and the CIty’s Homeless Service Department arrived at 8am and began harassing those of us that live on e12th between 14th & 18th Ave. Personally, my cars were threatened with towing. And the city threw away so much of my property against my wishes, including my water tank that provided 50 gallons of clean drinking water to our community, my food, pots and pans.
Just a few days before over the weekend myself and a couple of the residents on e12th cleaned TONS of trash off 17th ave and e12th using our own hands, our own vehicles and our money. To have the city then show up after we did their job of cleaning illegal dumping, and rather than acknowledge all the work we did, come and take our property and treat it like trash when we need it to survive is not right. I am attaching a list of the property that was taken from us even after we told the city to not touch our belongings. I am also attaching a list of the names and signatures of all the residents currently living at our community and whether their shelter, and/or their vehicles, and or their personal property was taken by the City of Oakland.
I am still recovering from the prior city “clean up” in June 2023, when my hearing aid was thrown out. I am a senior citizen and I have hearing loss for most of my life. Getting a replacement has not yet been able to happen, and not being able to hear is impacting my life in negative ways.
i am writing because i do not understand why since 2017 the city has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to “evict” or “deep clean” our community. over and over again.The City’s practices have caused us so much trauma, set backs, loss of money, loss of property, anxiety, depression, and other mental and physical health issues, instead of leaving us alone until you can’t do right by us. The City does not follow it’s policies, and does not follow the direction of the U.S. Supreme Court when it comes to the constitutional rights of unhoused residents, and violates the human rights of unhoused residents too.
If you cannot improve our situation and place us in long-term transitional housing that leads to permanent supportive housing that meets the needs of our community – including mental health issues (including chemical dependency and addiction) – then please stop wasting the public’s money and harming us so deeply until you can help us. We are tired of being treated like animals, left to die, and constantly harrassed and traumatized.
Upgrade our current conditions, don’t evict us or trash our belongings under false claims. Help us out of homelessness, don’t harm us and drive us deeper into homelessness. Until you can really help us out of homelessness, support our immediate basic human needs now in the location we are currently at. We are humans. We need clean drinking water, porta potties and hand washing stations. There are currently 60 people living in this community. There is another dozen or so who are so mentally unstable they do not have an actual designated place they call home and are not able to take care of themselves. These folks sleep wherever they can find a place to lay down at the end of the day. Also many more folks are starting to join our community as of recently as the moratorium eviction has been lifted, and as business have downsized or closed down completely resulting in many people losing their jobs and then loosing their housing. You have spent hundreds of thousands destroying our already vulnerable lives, moving us from one block to another, in and out of tuff sheds and hotel rooms. Stop this madness, especially as our communities and other unhoused communities continue to grow in this latest wave of homelessness that is hitting Oakland.
Our community is living in our current location because the city evicted us from the e12th and 22rd Ave Village and literally told us to go back to e12th between 14th and 17th (where many of us were evicted from in 2018 and then directed to move on to the parcel of land to join the Village in Oakland). In fact, Department of Public Works trucks were used to help us move back to where we are now during the 2018 eviction and bulldozing of the village on 22nd ave.
This location works for us in this crisis that we all hope and pray is temporary. It is a very wide, one way street with ample parking for vehicle dwellers and room on the island for self-made homes. Vehicle traffic is low except during commuter hours from 6-8am and 4-6 pm.
All of us who live in this community were at one point housed in this community before we ended up unhoused because we could no longer afford rent. Our families, our friends, our networks, and places of worship and business are here. That is why our community has been here for more than 14 years. That is why after every eviction, we rebuild. Where do we go, Oakland?
On the part of e12th that we live on, most storefronts and buildings are empty. The businesses on the blocks we live on do not have entrances on e12th, but on the Solano alley way, 16th Ave or 17th Ave. So none of us are blocking businesses. Also, many of us, myself included are long time friends of the business owners and the one church on our blocks. We have agreements and arrangements with them and work with them. They understand the struggle we are facing. When the city came and illegally took our property this past July 6, we were told they came because the business owners were complaining about us.
Please stop wasting money to knock us down when we are struggling to stand. Stop these evictions, stop stealing our property that we need to survive. Use the money instead to take care of our basic needs: water, sanitation, and adequate long term supportive transitional housing and deeply affordable permanent supportive housing.
Please see the attached pages for the signatures of all the residents on e12th between 14th and 17th Avenues who are sending you this letter, as well as which of these residents had their shelters, and/or vehicles, and/or personal property taken and destroyed by the City of Oakland.
Struggling to Survive,
Hung Le and the residents of E12th Street
What Displacement Really Is
June 30, 2023
By Ayat Jalal
The idea of displacement and the harm it causes to families and individuals was created out of a very old custom of our colonizer to divide and conquer. Since the family structure is the core of
our strength as humans and a mode of growth for each individual, the reducing of the family has
Been the goal of the government from the beginning of every nation and tribe’s interaction with the colonizers we now call “OUR” government.
Through the introduction of money becoming our only means of providing for our families, it seems that we are forced to go along with whatever is forced on us in society. Rather it be a man no longer allowed to go out and build a home because the government now says all land is theirs, or us having to send our children away to school half the day to be programmed/assimilated to
What the system says we must know in order to be civilized/accepted by society. Or worse, our children being sent to kill and die at war, doing to others what has been done to us. My own family has many military members, and I respect them for it, but thats my acception of a programming that
Takes advantage of us humans having pride in whatever our family is doing. Just as there are generational gang members and drug dealers. We all tend to love whatever our Elders or family
Members are into. We are grown into decadence even, as humans we are very trainable, to be acclimated into our environment. The displacement of our minds starts in the home, our minds are set to naturally aide our family or the society we are in. Now we naturally grow our minds to aid society’s growth and upkeep mentally and physically, even though it is the unnatural colonization of all families and tribes that is taking place. We are definitely not evolving as people or as a species, but here we are aiding in our own demise.
We have for generations bought into this ridiculous notion that no one can exist without permission of society, yet humans make up society and we are trained to not let other humans be humans, we only accept the citizen which is an idea of what humans need to be not what we are as a species. The Natives to America, Black Natives and those we disrespectfully call “Indians” needed none of what we now force our children to accept as a norm and told to grow into acceptingly. When the truth is, we can all remember being young and knowing there’s a better way and our parents just aren’t thinking, “just going along” and “forcing us to do the same”.
Sad thing is that there is no growth in family or advancement of ourselves, just the promoting of this dissident mode of being. A mode of being that we all know was created to keep any of us from ever owning anything, a way made up by a white power structure, invented by rapists, murderers, enslavers and land thieves that came with disseases and called everyone else dirty or savage. As a people, whites are still projecting, teaching us to look down on one another for things that are really their make up of character. And just as we say there’s no good cop, or because police being arrested does not happen, I say there are not really any good white people since no whites step in to check each other, just benefit after the displacement of “others” takes place. Even those who are gay have fought and won their rights, with many people of color backing them knowing what its like to be outcasted, yet here we are still, being treated lower than even animals as it has been since the first whites came with their diseases and guns, to kill, steal and rob. Yet do we all not speak of America being the greatest nation, claiming to be one with our own displacement and that of others.
This is because we have been beaten into a de-evolved state, outcast by racism and war for so long that we refuse to allow a better thought to survive in our minds. Saying to ourselves, “no need in making things worse”, well that’s displacement in action, that’s “the echo of the whip”, our knowing the whip can and will turn on us. We freeze and just watch when we see the beating and destruction of others, frozen by “the echo of the whip”. We convince one another that there is something wrong with going against our own oppression and that of others. This is a displacement of our humanity. This is what lies at the heart of the continued climb in homelessness, we are displaced from ourselves and each other’s free will to live, i.e. humanity.
Some say wait on God. Some believe that we are on the winning side, or that it could be worse. Well, when we look around all we see is the accelerated decay of humanity for the advancement of society. The further displacement of all people from our families and a healthy humane way of being. We join gangs and armies or leave home to “make it”. At one time we all pitched in as children and when we became adults, helped to pay the mortgage or rent. Out of brokenness and being trained to be ignorant or to hate who we are taught to consider the “Indians” who wanted to live off the land as savages. We even bought into the lie that those in Alkebulan(Africa) have no running water or electricity and because of this, was also unfortunate and savage. Yet here we sit colonized happily asleep, being fed lead and fluoride filled water and chemicals that kill us in all medicines, “having to do something strange for a piece of change”, lying to ourselves and to our children that it’s all good. No it’s not, and this idea of buying into the fact that we are better off, is the power our oppression has over us. It was said by Steve Biko, that “the most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressed is the minds of the oppressed”.
I look at those who come from Mexico and live five or ten people deep in one apartment or house and applaud them. They work and can live together like healthy strong minded humans only can. They are able to focus on a goal without sabotaging or pulling each other down. They are able to stack-up funds to buy or build a home with family, they form a community. We Blacks and other melanated people who have been fooled into thinking we can hate each other or who we are, have still yet to be successful, and have the nerve to blame everyone but the system of society that is oppressively ruling us. This is of no help to any of us. It does not, this only helps the white power structure to stay in charge. This is the goal and vice of displacement, to keep divided those who are targeted to be oppressed. Now we blame each other, refuse to listen to our parents and family members talking sense, wanting to outdo each other, no matter the cost. This idea of, “what am I gonna do is displacement, it’s the brokenness that causes isolation and refusal of our collective strength. We look for quick fixes in pointing fingers or from fed images on tv and phones, wanting to live something other than the lives we are responsible for in the unity of family. This displacement is the catalyst for homelessness. No matter how good it looks on tik-tok or facebook ads, that’s not life and we are slowly dying while entertaining our oppressors with a mirrored brokenness. Hurt people hurting people. That is displacement. To be removed from one’s path, legacy, history or family, which leads to never having or feeling you have a home. Sad thing is we now do this to ourselves and convince each other to remain broken, just as Willie Lynch suggested so long ago, to keep a slave a slave forever. We now physically hold back and mentally program ourselves and each other to not fight or struggle together. This homelessness is but the “echo of the whip”-Yahyo. We are terrified to stand up, most of us. When I look at the state of humanity as a place in time where it is still no better than slavery times. The whoopings are more mental, but we still die and families are still pulled apart. No, it’s no better. Just like Malcolm X paraphrased the mind-state of the house nigger, “anywhere is better than here”, in this dismal state of displacement from ourselves and our God given humanity.
Showers For All!
June 7, 2023
For the past several years, a few non profits that provided shower services to unhoused folks emerged across the bay area. And as is the trend of the non-profit industrial complex, they all got fully funded cuz they were “hot new trends”, until a new hot new funding trend emerges and all funding gets cut to the old trend.
All of their other programming including direct services and consulting/training services have been discontinued.
Never forget that when J Edgar Hoover created the COINTELPRO counter intelligence program, the first plan of the program was for the “u.s. needs to fund it’s own internal enemies”. The non profit industrial complex does just that. Funds the impactful, life changing, basic needs meeting services for a handful of years. Get these programs dependant on funding, only to yank funding and dismantle the support and services within a few years. This leaves the marginalized community in further trauma, turmoil and disarray.
This is why self-sufficiency and and self determination is so important.
Oh well, it’s back to taking showers at public pools and bird baths at mc Donald’s and Starbucks coffee bathrooms for unhoused folks across the bay area.
The End of Wood Street
May 5, 2023
There is so much to be said about Wood Street. Oakland’s World Famous Curbside Community, shanty town, favella.
Before the City was shamed into doing SOMETHING about homelessness in Oakland, before the City publicly started to talk about homelessness, there was Wood Street. It was a sanctuary that 40 people called home. The mover-shaker visionary of the group was Mavin Carter Griffith. She had plans and sketches for her solutions and the out the box off the grid solutions to the housing crisis and nomadic life on the curb. That was in 2016.
SInce then Mavin put Wood Street on the city’s radar through her work in the Homeless Advocacy Working Group – she was part of the groups monthly meetings with Former Mayor LIbby Schaft, she was outspoken and present at CIty Council and Life Enrichment Committee meetings, presenting the vision that folks at Wood Street wanted.
The city’s response: to make promises to the Wood Street community only to break them. To take Mavin and her community’s ideas, but leave out Mavin and her community.
The most impactful response: to evict dozens of informal settlements across Oakland and tell the displaced unhoused to move to wood street.
In less than a year Wood Street went from being a tightly knit community of 40 people with a vision to a community of 300 un-unified folks, and a beacon for 100s more floaters . with nowhere to stay grounded, and dozens of predators looking to exploit unhoused residents living in the cuts of Oakland.
Despite it all and through it all, the residents of Wood Street figured it out. figured out how to stand up and fight back.
For the past two years the city of Oakland has been AGGRESSIVELY and RELENTLESSLY attempting to evict the massive shanty town that they created.
And after two years of a long and tiring fight with odds stacked up against the unhoused, Wood Street Oakland’s biggest favela is officially closed.
According to testimonies and documentation from legal observers, the last three weeks of non-stop evictions were carried out in illegal, unconstitutional and unnecessarily traumatic and harmful ways. business as usual on a grand scale.
As you read the reports from the city patting themselves on the back for a job well done and the affordable housing they will build down the line to house all the wood street residents – remember to not believe the hype. any of it.
The erase and shuffle game key to gentrification. The transitional housing spots the city speaks of are not connected to exit strategies into permanent housing. The city has spent millions of dollars into transitional beds and tuff sheds that are inadequate for SO many basic reasons: no water, no kitchens/food, no stability, no security, mismanagement, abuse, prison like conditions. And 90% of the time they exit folks back into the streets, to start the cycle all over again and push people DEEPER into homelessness and trauma.
The city can and must do better. Permanent housing is the ONLY solution to homelessness. Upgrade the encampments don’t evict until that permanent housing for the victims of gentrification is made available.
Death By Extreme Weather in Oakland, California
March 30, 2023
There is no reason why anyone should have to endure living in the streets in extreme weather – rain, flooding, heat, freezing temperatures or fires.
We already KNOW there are thousands on the streets. We already KNOW when weather is going to be extreme. Government and non profits already KNOW what facilities are empty and can be used for extreme.weather housing.
Proper planning prevents poor performance.
But very little thought is given to the disposables of our community. A whole.lot of thought is given how to make a career off those millions coming in tho.
I look forward to a community where homeless is not a world in our vocabulary. Having traveled to countries in the world, there are places that may be poor in dollars but rich in morals and wealthy in spirit and the word homeless does not exist in their languages. Because their minds and hearts will not allow for such a condition to exist.
Stay human. That is the call. Stay human.
When Feeding The Hungry Becomes A Crime
March 29, 2023
Comrades in Florida feeding the hungry are under attack. In fact poor and unhoused folks in general are under attack in Florida.
The most recent to feel the pressures of the gentry is Food Not Bombs West Palm Beach. They have been threatened with citations, fines and possible jail time if they continue to share food with the hungry.
Starting April 1, the city of West Palm Beach has declared it will begin enforcing their new anti-poverty ordinance. And The folks at FNB West Palm Beach intend to continue to #FeedThePeople.
This appears to be happening in many cities across Florida where gentrification is recolonizing. The gentry dont want to see the poor, and the pro gentry city officials are happy to oblige. Sharing food with the hungry isn’t the only angle the elite and their politicians are attacking our people. Old Jim Crow Laws are being resurrected as well – no panhandling, criminalizing people who do not own property, no vagrancy, no loitering. And considering a vast majority of unhoused folks are Black and Black Natives in Florida, we have to see this as nothing short of Jim Crowe. This is happening across the U.S. as our #WordOnTheCurb team has been documenting for the past few months.
But people are fighting back!
very recently, @Food Not Bombs Forth Lauderdale challenged the food sharing ban passed in their city and the courts overturned the anti poverty ordinance as unconstitutional.
Also recently, unhoused folks in Lake Worth challenged an anti-panhandling law and won that too.
These food sharing bans are all over the country, including here in Oakland, Ca. When we started our Feed The People – Oakland program in 2016 we were well aware that there exists an food sharing ban in here, that comes with a $1600 fine. We did it anyway cuz bad laws are meant to be broken. For a few months our kru was harassed by the cops, but we kept at it and blasted this shameful law and police on social media. And encouraged others groups to defy the bad law too. Many did. And eventually the harassment of our kru stopped and today there are SO MANY groups that feed the hungry and the unhoused in Oakland.
Keep on fighting. We have a right to exist. We are humans. And we are doing the best we can to live in a society that was set up to keep us down, push us out into the margins, control us, and kill us.
But we still here. And we will be here forever. And one day this wicked system will fall.
In the meantime, we will keep taking care of each other, keep maintaining our greatness, and keep fighting for our basic needs and rights, and keep build the world that waiting to be (re)born.
Salute to the folks in Florida who are doing the right thing, the HUMAN thing.
Stay tuned. We will get more info on how folks can support from afar, as well as the outcome of this attack on the poor and the righteous stand against the wealthy.
It’s happening across the country. The recolonization of Black and Brown communities. If we don’t stand up and fight back, who will? And why will become of us?
#WordOnTheCurb #GoesOnTheRoad
Deeply Rooted Oakland: The Flatland’s Opportunity to Shape the Future of Oakland
Feb 22, 2023
Deeply Rooted Oakland is a partnership of 13 grassroots non-profits that are working together to make sure the creation of this housing element and the overall general plan of Oakland involves community members. The Village is a proud member of this historic partnership. the community informed 30 of the policies in the General Plan and we are advocating for 16 additional policies to be amended in, including housing reparations for Black Oaklanders who have been displaced from their housing during this traumatic and oppressive era of gentrification.
This new housing element plan will completely change the current direction that Oakland’s development has been taking for the past 23 years. The plan goes into effect in 2025 and spans thru 2045. We have three more years of work creating several other elements in the plan including transportation, public space, park and rec, safety AND making sure the city implements the plan properly. #HousingForAll #HousingIsAHumanRight
GENERAL PLAN UPDATE
Housing Element Approved by State of California & City Council
Paves Way for 26,251 New Units to Be Built By 2031
Oakland’s Housing Element Approved by the State!
On Friday, February 17, the California Department of Housing and Community Development deemed the City’s adopted 2023-2031 Housing Element in full compliance with state regulations! The Housing Element, which presents the City’s strategy and commitment to meeting its housing needs for the next 8 years, was adopted by the Oakland City Council on January 31.The full compliance letter is available for review here: https://www.oaklandca.gov/…/2023-2031-adopted-housing…
The 2023-2031 Housing Element was updated through an extensive and inclusive community outreach process that included a deliberate effort to reach Oakland’s most impacted residents, including: Working class communities, Communities of color, Unhoused communities, People with disabilities, Seniors, people who were Formerly incarcerated, Youth, and Communities experiencing environmental injustices. The Housing Element outlines the strategies and policies to address Oakland’s demand for more affordable homes, affirmatively further fair housing, and to promote inclusive, vibrant communities for all Oaklanders.
What’s Next?
The General Plan team is working to develop a draft set of zoning code amendments to implement the actions in the Housing Element. The plan is to publish these draft zoning changes for public review mid-March.
Thank you to everyone who has been a part of this process to shape the future of housing in Oakland. We appreciate your partnership and hope you will stay connected and participate in future community engagement opportunities, both in the implementation of the Housing Element and beyond!
Questions?
Please visit the General Plan Update website to sign up for updates about the General Plan and reminders about upcoming events. Please contact Lakshmi Rajagopalan at generalplan@oaklandca.gov with any questions or comments.
The Planning & Building Department oversees the regulations for the City’s growth and development. Through reviewing project plans, enforcing local ordinances, developing neighborhood plans, and responding to public concerns, we work to create a built environment that supports the health and welfare of all Oaklanders.
As you may or may not know, the Village in Oakland has been a proud member of the Deeply Rooted Oakland collaborative. This collaborative led by Just CIties, East Side Arts Alliance and Urban Strategy Council is a body of 13 grassroots non-profits in Oakland who have been hired by the city of oakland as the community consultants to help inform the 2045 Oakland General Plan.
what the General Plan? it is essentially the blueprint for the city of oakland. it is the path for the city to follow for things like housing, environmental justice, transportation, public owned space, parks, etc.
the last time the general plan was fully workied on was in the late 90s, and that blueprint began implementation in 2000. and we see that in terms of housing and development that blueprint had nothing to do with development the flatlands of oakland for our families and communities.
thru the deeply rooted collaborative, our task is to engage the communities we serve in this process – and we are focusing on communities that are historicallly and currently left out of decison making and policy creating processes like this: formerlly incarcerated, unhoused, poor and low income, BIPOC, migrant/refugee, disabled, youth, seniors. we will be engaged in this work for the next three years focusing on different elements of the plan.
since November 2021, our collaborative have been engaging with more than 2,000 members of the communities we serve to gather info, visions, needs and wants of our people to inform the housing and environmental justice elements of the 2045 General Plan. through our collective efforts on the ground we have been able to bring the voices and needs of our people to the decision making tables by creating 45 housing and homeless policies for Oakland’s 2045 General Plan.
The amazing news: the city of oakland’s community and economic development department adopted 30 of those policies in the draft plan for the housing element of the city’s general plan of 2045.
the past two weeks we have been advocating city council members, the new mayor, and members of the community and economic development committee (different that the department) to adopt this draft plan AND amend it to add the 16 policies created by Deeply Rooted that were not incorporated into the draft plan.
Im including the draft plan for the housing element below. its a historical, radical document. it includes so many things that The Village in Oakland #feedthepeople has fought for for the past six years, as well as some radical policies never spoken of before – like reparations for Black Oaklanders who have lost their housing due to gentrificaiton. this draft policy is framed with a racial and economic equity lens, and if passed with completely change the city’s trajectory of the past 22 years of gentrification and development for profit for wealthy/white folks who dont live here. the fact we got this far and got so much of our peoples ideas, needs and wants into this draft policy speaks to the power of our community when we come together as a united front.
this is a milestone in our fight for housing for all/housing is a human right. here is the plan for you to read: https://www.oaklandca.gov/topics/oakland-general-plan-2045-housing-element?utm_campaign=General%20Plan&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=242277369&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_Wa44NApkTK153oPdQ6Dc0pbIGq1sT46ejzxhxLOPOhMtFHYQVS49BT6qmAHl7e9dVt3AStNRT-lBqg1X-Nc900lsigQ&utm_content=242277369&utm_source=hs_email#city-releases-2023-2031-housing-element-public-hearing-draft
this is a victory, but the fight for this is not over. i invite all of you to attend tomorrow’s city council to approve this plan into permanent policy tomorrow!
1/31 1:30-6pm City Council Meeting (Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84073440618)
please raise your hand to speak at public comment at the beginning of the meeting to get on the speakers list. you will have two minutes to speak on the plan.
1) introduce yourself and how gentrification has impacted you and your community
2) share why Oakland needs this housing element to be the blueprint of our future
3) share which Deeply Rooted Housing Justice policy recommendations you are passionate about (in city meetings i have been saying that im passionate about the policy in its entirety because this is the equity rooted plan we need to get out of this homeless state of emergency and affordable housing crisis)
if and when this plan passes, the next fight we will face it to get it implemented. and then work on several other areas of the general plan. this is a journey we will be working on for the next four years to make sure the city of Oakland is an equitable, healthy, and inclusive future.
its been an honor to do this work with the rest of the Deeply Rooted partner organizations and towards ending the displacement of our people and homelessness in Oakland once and for all. and i hope to see yall tomorrow at the city council meeting to get this draft plan turned into THE PLAN!
Shout out to the Deeply Rooted Partners: Just Cities, Urban Strategies Council, EastSide Arts Alliance, Black Arts Movement Business District CDC, Black Cultural Zone, Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ), House/Full of Black Women, Lao Family Community Development, Inc, Malonga Arts Residents Association, Oakland Asian Cultural Center, The Unity Council, The Village, and West Oakland Environmental Indicators Project.
to find out more about Deeply Rooted Oakland check our website:
https://www.deeplyrooted510.org/who-we-are
Setting The Story Straight About Florida’s Black Seminoles
By Ayat Bryant
The truth is a precious resource that a mind must be supplied with. Without the truth there is no growth of intelligence, no strengthening of the heart, and freedom is an impossibility. We have all been fed a toxic idea of ourselves and forced to view our fellow humans thru the eyes of people who invaded our lands, raped our mothers and enslaved our children. This being a cold truth, there’s nothing that is more dangerous than boldly believing in a colonized mind.
Today we read many histories. We view them in video and documentary film. These words and images that so many of us use to gather an idea of ourselves and the world around us were not meant for our progression of our lives, the honoring of our ancestors, nor for the teaching of our children. Education as with all things upon this land now known as America has been colonized and manipulated for the purpose of our colonizer.
Our truths are within us. It is of ancient practice for all cultures to give an oratory history. From the hieroglyphs of Kmit to the many symbols in the land of America still being told to us what they represent and mean by a people who did not write them. Even when it comes to us Blacks speaking of a motherland, we do not talk of Alkebulan, we speak of Africa, just as we were programmed to do so. Without knowing it we have disrespected our ancestors, made ourselves fools and failed in teaching our young. Many know not of a man named Africanus who was not a Black man but a Roman man. Yet, even people of Alkebulan still to this day who are proud to never have been enslaved, are proud to call themselves African(‘)s, with their own tongue, stating to be property of Afrikanas.
I can only assume this just as we here in America are forced by our own ignorance to call ourselves things that we’ve been named.
Not every Native from America is a red man, nor am I a Black man. But I am a Native of the land called America, who is not even Black. I’m brown in appearance and a descendant of a Moorish bloodline that identifies as a Black Seminole who have to now prove my people to be the original Maroons of Florida in order to have a conversation with my fellow colonized Sisters and Brothers. This is what colonization has done. In fact, this is why those who were once called Indians who now call themselves Red Tribes and Native Americans.
In Florida, consider themselves Seminoles – even though this was a term given to Blacks. And the ignorance goes deeper with the separation of people in FLorida. They too allow themselves to be told who they are, and who i am to them because a white man sought to enslave every Black person and was aided by so many Red Tribes, who are themselves colonized and killed and made to kill their own Red brothers and sisters. What happened to the elders telling the stories? Where did we give up our power of speech to another? And why do we still speak such brokenness to our youth?
The second seminole war was called a negro war – and was only called a Seminole War when it was over. And now those who allied the maroons, freedman, and runaway slaves – who were the majority – of the warriors who fought in that same Negro War, now are only considered as slaves of the native tribe now called “Seminole” and claim our win in what is now called the Seminole Wars. but this is what happens when the ancestors are not honored and were told how to look at one another. Allowing the colonizer to tell us who we are and teach our children to be as ignorant as they want us to be.
Think A Better Thought, Or Admit 2B A House N@#&a!
By Ayat Jalal Bryant
For #WordOnTheCurb
As a people, we must no longer walk head down, jumping with both feet into our own dissonance.
The streets are filled with unhoused folks those who once had professions and college degrees. Because we have allowed the mode of corporate rule to invade the same cities we made great, and sell it to the highest bidding newcomers.
I’ve watched as our schools are closed down, and our children harassed and called lazy because they have nothing to do. We watch as grocery stores near us close and those that replace them raise prices beyond our means of purchase.
We have no leaders and no stars that have the heart to really help. Where are those who are willing to come forward and risk the fame that, “we the people”, gave to them? They are non-existent. Instead, our celebrities sell America to the world, and other nations follow our lead, because every n!&&@ is a star.
WE ARE NOT N!&&@$. We’re a national treasure for the power structure of America. Yet we refuse to take hold of the power we possess as beings. We would rather buy Jordan’s, while our children throw their lives away to the streets for quick money because, “that’s all they want us to do”.
Black people have invented nearly 70% of gadgets, developed – everything from traffic lights to designing Washington DC’s layout. Yet we still call ourselves what another thought of us as. We fill arenas with fans and are the reason stadiums are packed around the world. To watch us get down. Yet we as a people have nothing. We build for an oppressive government, we work for racist bosses (volunteer slavery) knowing we will be counted last and still called on first. We fill the streets with our bodies, our children shot down by police, and we internally are glad it wasn’t us. We sit at home and in the streets hoping another will give us a chance.
What have we done for us lately? Where is there a leader among us who will stand and say, “stop helping our colonizer (our former enslaver) kill us off and sell America as great off the blood and sweat of our people.
When I first became homeless it was a deep awakening to hear people say, “they not gonna let us do that” when I said “let’s build a village, or “let’s go move into that abandoned building and get out this rain”. I was told I was crazy. When I asked, “why don’t we go take a plot of land”, “let’s go out and start over, since none of us wanna do this” (work for our oppressor). or “let’s hustle up a business by getting small gigs, since we all got some type of skills”. I was told, ” no body gonna let a Black man just get up like that.”
It reminded me of what Malcolm X said: “If you go to the house n!&&@ and say ‘let’s escape (move), let’s separate and go somewhere else’, the house n!&&@ would say ‘man you crazy’, ‘where we gonna go’, ‘what we gonna do’, ‘where else is there to go”‘? And here we are in 2023 with the streets filled with house n!&&@$.
The white man’s jail, aided by sell outs who invest in them, are filled with the strength or our Nation, who won’t think a better thought of themselves than, “white man not gonna let us do nothing but what he wants us to do”, and those who were mad enough to say fuck it are stuck on, “I need this printed money”.
The most terrible thing oppression and slavery did to us was, “take away our desire to do for ourselves. We have the ability, but fear has taken our desire to do for ourselves”- Isa Bryant
We claim to be the strong, the powerful. Quick to beat on each other, kill each other, and teach our young the same ignorance to prove it. That’s retardation not strength and power. We have given up on our selves in these streets, in the churches, and in rented houses and apartments, waiting on the next man/wombedman to die.
The world still follows Black people’s lead. Unfortunately we now lead the world into the house of our slave masters to dance, sweat and bleed for his idea of society. Every nation of color can show their Ancient structures and their “darker Ancestors” standing in power. Yet, we all now kneel and cower awaiting the next order, what will we be told next. Every invention, “I hope it gets accepted”.
We all need to think a better thought. It’s been too long for even a fool to not be admitting to themselves, we gonna have to do this ourselves. Not ask and not wait. But to do.” We make these cities great yet we sit and allow ourselves to be pushed out. Why? because the Matlab change (by design), and we say “oh, we gotta catch up”, “we need education and training to be a better slave”. No house n!&&@, we need to think a better though, and if necessary move and build our own.
The crazy thing about this reparations talk going around is that when we all boycott America – taxes and rent included – to get it, once again Blacks will take care of the rest of humanity. Like we do when they “allow” people in America. Don’t “they” send immigrants to the ghettos to build from the ground up? And don’t we accept all with open arms, whites too?
“They allow” others into this country to go straight to the top long as they stay away from doing business and associating with Blacks. This new mode of supersonic even asks Latin People – whom are still treated like crap – “Are you Latin White, or Latin Black?” And we sit and watch it, while our Meztizo sisters and brothers just take off their heritage in hopes of becoming a better house n!&&@ – anything other than being oppressed and scared like Blacks.
We must think a better though of ourselves. We must stand up, and refuse this dissonance that breeds death. If not ALL future generations will suffer the same and/or worst.
For #WordOnTheCurb,
This is Ayat Jalal Bryant
Walking The Path of Plants
By Joyous De Asis Miralle
For Soul Food Shack/Word On The Curb
One of the very first moments that I wanted to learn and understand our plant community, and that we are surrounded by medicine was when I was about 6 years old.
As a baby, I was born with blocked tear ducts. My mother works with plant medicine, and used eyebright and chamomile in washes and warm compresses to clear my tear ducts. But when I turned 6, I developed a huge stye in my eye for almost a year. It was so big it blocked my vision. My mom used her treatments on me, but the stye only went away temporarily and eventually those medicines stopped working at all and the stye continued to grow.
So she took me to several western doctors and they could not figure it out either.
One day, as we were leaving yet another western doctor, we were stopped on the street by an old Rasta who gave my mom instructions on how to use aloe vera to rid me of the stye forever. We found some aloe vera on our walk home, cut a bit of the leaf and went home and followed the Rasta’s instructions. Within minutes the stye was permanently gone. I’m 21 years old now and it has never come back .
From then on I have been feeding my love, interest, and curiosity for plant medicine.
We are surrounded by medicine from the plant community. Even many of the plants classified as “weeds” are some of the most powerful medicines we can find. The modern day pharmaceutical industry literally mimics the plants that give us medicine. The problem with that is that the artificial drugs made by pharmaceuticals are not as powerful as the plants they are trying to copy cat, and they also come with side effects – many of them dangerous- that the plant medicines do not have. Especially if you know how much dosage your supposed to take
Once these pharmaceutical companies study and experiment on a medicinal plant, and figure out how to replicate it, they get a patent on the plant so that indigenous healers who have used the plants for centuries or healers who are trying to keep ancient medicines alive can no longer use the plants. When you really think about it, it’s wrong on so many levels. When you think about the timme before collinaation and if you wanna go there christianity. There were empyeres far beyond the spiritual and economice sence. Like the most famous population the egiptans. But it wamt just them, our ancestors were in a time of balance were they knew who they were and were they stood. And beuse of this they new there surrounding the medicane of the earth and the knowledge of the stars. If you compare there time and ours we have back peddled. I am from america so i only see what has been bullet on top of othher fammilys, and the remmnice of there descendants. But i believe that the only way to get ourself and surrounding is to reteach our self the balance of life. Only than can we truly understand what magik we have infornt of us and be able to use it. Not thru western medicane not fam not money not how much is yours. But thru compassion and understanding. Which is hard to do in a society who wants to have something based off the movies purge.
Creator gave us these plants, and no one should be able to keep them from us. And using these plants are part of people’s cultures. No one should be denied their ancient ways. Western medicine is driven by money, and keeping people sick keeps the money coming in. Plant medicine is based on a deep relationship to keep wellness, health and balance not just in humans but in the plant world.
I have learned so much on the first steps on my journey. Down the line when I have more knowledge I would love to write a small book. I think everyone should know how to be there own doctor and take care of them selves – physically, spiritually, mentally and everything in between. There is no time better than the present to embrace mother Earth and her wanders
I am still new on my journey but feel like I have learned so much already, I have been able to watch the seed I plant sprout. Making my own medicine to share with the people who are most impacted I feel a sense of hope and purpose, and I believe if I am doing something there has to be a group of people who feel the same. It’s an honor to help the community get to learn about our plant family who have been here for more generations than us. And possibly thru my medicine they will want to help my neighbor.
Think A Better Thought
By Ayat Jalal
The idea of displacement and the harm it causes to families and individuals was created out of a very old custom of our colonizer to divide and conquer. Since the family structure is the core of
our strength as humans and a mode of growth for each individual, the reducing of the family has
Been the goal of the government from the beginning of every nation and tribe’s interaction with the colonizers we now call “OUR” government.
Through the introduction of money becoming our only means of providing for our families, it seems that we are forced to go along with whatever is forced on us in society. Rather it be a man no longer allowed to go out and build a home because the government now says all land is theirs, or us having to send our children away to school half the day to be programmed/assimilated to
What the system says we must know in order to be civilized/accepted by society. Or worse, our children being sent to kill and die at war, doing to others what has been done to us. My own family has many military members, and I respect them for it, but thats my acception of a programming that
Takes advantage of us humans having pride in whatever our family is doing. Just as there are generational gang members and drug dealers. We all tend to love whatever our Elders or family
Members are into. We are grown into decadence even, as humans we are very trainable, to be acclimated into our environment. The displacement of our minds starts in the home, our minds are set to naturally aide our family or the society we are in. Now we naturally grow our minds to aid society’s growth and upkeep mentally and physically, even though it is the unnatural colonization of all families and tribes that is taking place. We are definitely not evolving as people or as a species, but here we are aiding in our own demise.
We have for generations bought into this ridiculous notion that no one can exist without permission of society, yet humans make up society and we are trained to not let other humans be humans, we only accept the citizen which is an idea of what humans need to be not what we are as a species. The Natives to America, Black Natives and those we disrespectfully call “Indians” needed none of what we now force our children to accept as a norm and told to grow into acceptingly. When the truth is, we can all remember being young and knowing there’s a better way and our parents just aren’t thinking, “just going along” and “forcing us to do the same”.
Sad thing is that there is no growth in family or advancement of ourselves, just the promoting of this dissident mode of being. A mode of being that we all know was created to keep any of us from ever owning anything, a way made up by a white power structure, invented by rapists, murderers, enslavers and land thieves that came with disseases and called everyone else dirty or savage. As a people, whites are still projecting, teaching us to look down on one another for things that are really their make up of character. And just as we say there’s no good cop, or because police being arrested does not happen, I say there are not really any good white people since no whites step in to check each other, just benefit after the displacement of “others” takes place. Even those who are gay have fought and won their rights, with many people of color backing them knowing what its like to be outcasted, yet here we are still, being treated lower than even animals as it has been since the first whites came with their diseases and guns, to kill, steal and rob. Yet do we all not speak of America being the greatest nation, claiming to be one with our own displacement and that of others.
This is because we have been beaten into a de-evolved state, outcast by racism and war for so long that we refuse to allow a better thought to survive in our minds. Saying to ourselves, “no need in making things worse”, well that’s displacement in action, that’s “the echo of the whip”, our knowing the whip can and will turn on us. We freeze and just watch when we see the beating and destruction of others, frozen by “the echo of the whip”. We convince one another that there is something wrong with going against our own oppression and that of others. This is a displacement of our humanity. This is what lies at the heart of the continued climb in homelessness, we are displaced from ourselves and each other’s free will to live, i.e. humanity.
Some say wait on God. Some believe that we are on the winning side, or that it could be worse. Well, when we look around all we see is the accelerated decay of humanity for the advancement of society. The further displacement of all people from our families and a healthy humane way of being. We join gangs and armies or leave home to “make it”. At one time we all pitched in as children and when we became adults, helped to pay the mortgage or rent. Out of brokenness and being trained to be ignorant or to hate who we are taught to consider the “Indians” who wanted to live off the land as savages. We even bought into the lie that those in Alkebulan(Africa) have no running water or electricity and because of this, was also unfortunate and savage. Yet here we sit colonized happily asleep, being fed lead and fluoride filled water and chemicals that kill us in all medicines, “having to do something strange for a piece of change”, lying to ourselves and to our children that it’s all good. No it’s not, and this idea of buying into the fact that we are better off, is the power our oppression has over us. It was said by Steve Biko, that “the most powerful weapon in the hands of the oppressed is the minds of the oppressed”.
I look at those who come from Mexico and live five or ten people deep in one apartment or house and applaud them. They work and can live together like healthy strong minded humans only can. They are able to focus on a goal without sabotaging or pulling each other down. They are able to stack-up funds to buy or build a home with family, they form a community. We Blacks and other melanated people who have been fooled into thinking we can hate each other or who we are, have still yet to be successful, and have the nerve to blame everyone but the system of society that is oppressively ruling us. This is of no help to any of us. It does not, this only helps the white power structure to stay in charge. This is the goal and vice of displacement, to keep divided those who are targeted to be oppressed. Now we blame each other, refuse to listen to our parents and family members talking sense, wanting to outdo each other, no matter the cost. This idea of, “what am I gonna do is displacement, it’s the brokenness that causes isolation and refusal of our collective strength. We look for quick fixes in pointing fingers or from fed images on tv and phones, wanting to live something other than the lives we are responsible for in the unity of family. This displacement is the catalyst for homelessness. No matter how good it looks on tik-tok or facebook ads, that’s not life and we are slowly dying while entertaining our oppressors with a mirrored brokenness. Hurt people hurting people. That is displacement. To be removed from one’s path, legacy, history or family, which leads to never having or feeling you have a home. Sad thing is we now do this to ourselves and convince each other to remain broken, just as Willie Lynch suggested so long ago, to keep a slave a slave forever. We now physically hold back and mentally program ourselves and each other to not fight or struggle together. This homelessness is but the “echo of the whip”-Yahyo. We are terrified to stand up, most of us. When I look at the state of humanity as a place in time where it is still no better than slavery times. The whoopings are more mental, but we still die and families are still pulled apart. No, it’s no better. Just like Malcolm X paraphrased the mind-state of the house nigger, “anywhere is better than here”, in this dismal state of displacement from ourselves and our God given humanity.
Working With Plant Medicine
This is Joyous. I’m the Program Coordinator for the Village In Oakland’s Soul Food Shack Mobile Apothecary Program, and I’m one of the correspondnets of the Village’s Word On The Curb program. I’m currently reporting from West Palm Beach, Florida.
As someone who works with plant medicine, I am amazed by the abundance of plants here. I just want to talk about the beautiful plans and herbs that live in this part of the United States. They’re so many different kinds of native plants to this land. But also common plants that I’ve seen growing up in California, such as aloe vera.
When I was younger I had a stye on my eye. It was so large it got in the way of my vision. My mother who works with plant medicine tried eyebright and chamomile compresses, but they didnt work. She took me to Western doctors, but they had not idea what to do. One day after leaving yet another doctor, I was walking down the street with my mother, and an old Rasta told her to use aloe vera. He told her to cut the aloe vera leaf in half and place the skin side on the fire so the gelly inside was exposed. We did just that. And my stye went away and never came back.
Like many other plants, the aloe vera plant has many healing properties. Aloe vera is very well known throughout many cultures and places on Earth and it is part of a family called Asphodelaceae. It has great cooling and healing powers and is an antibacterial that can give relief from sunburns, burns, blisters, and wounds. Because it is a great source of vitamin e, this plant can also be used for healing acne, itchy rashes, preventing scars from forming, and making scars disappear. You simply place it on the skin.
Aloe vera is also an anti-inflammatory, meaning it makes swelling go away. That why it made my stye disappear in a matter of minutes. People with any kind of swelling can use it too for conditions that cause inflammation like multiple sclerosis, canker sores, and sprains. Taken orally it can also help with constipation and lower blood sugar levels. But if you take too much aloe vera orally there are side effects, including diareah. If eaten one gram a day, kidney failure is possible.
Make sure to wash thurly before consuming. There is a aloe plant called Soap aloe that grows thru Florida, it can substitute soap. It’s very interesting plant. They have beautiful flowers that when squeezed, a soap like substance comes out that’s antibacterial.
And that just the beginning of my report on the beautiful healing plants of Florida
Loosing For Others
By Ayat Jalal
When I became a teenager, it began to bother me how my people were towards each other. We were too busy to live and grow in knowledge because we were preoccupied with worrying about being a sucker, or trying to be what someone else thought was “hard”. Nevermind these thoughts are broken thoughts by those who are more concerned with what other people think, and not their life and one’s own decisions.
My peers seemed to be more focused on status of who liked them or how people looked at them. Then one day my brothers and I were talking about how stupid it was to be selling dope to anyone, especially our own people. We talked about how you would think we would be getting together by now to figure things out for ourselves as Black people, instead of waiting for a new law to tell us what else to do.
Our mother, who was listening to us and nodding her head occasionally, looked up and said something that changed my life. She said, “You know y’all dad used to say something and I think y’all need to hear this”. We all stopped and looked over and asked her what our father said. She told us, “Your dad used to always say that the worst thing that slavery and oppression did to Black people wasn’t that it took away our ability to do for ourselves. He’d say, ‘No one can ever take that away. But what slavery did take away is Black People’s desire to do for themselves’ ”.
And that’s just it. We wait for who’s gonna come tell us what to do next –
“What’s gonna be the adjustment on them food stamps this month?”
“Gonna have to make do from here on, their closing up the stores.”
“They’re closing another school so our children won’t get an education, how we gonna ever get ahead?”
“I wish one of them fools in office will finally take a look at our community and do something.”
I grew up hearing this, and figured people just aren’t into politics like that. Maybe doing for self is just for some, but not all. Now I know that’s bu!!$#!^. But it took me hearing my father’s words to understand.
I had always thought surely we’re strong, I grew up seeing us on TV doing it, in the ring, on the basketball courts, dominating. I’d seen us singing on TV, break dancing in the newspapers. I was always filled with pride when I would learn about the first Black anyone who did anything. Yet, this was always in an employed state, not ownership or production. At the time it didn’t register that someone else is getting 80% to 90% of the proceeds from something only we can do good enough to make it irresistible. This is when I was younger.
As I grew older, I opened my eyes and looked around and realized that everything we did, was taken from us. That everywhere we make great, was taken and profited by others, as is happening with Oakland and many cities in America right now. It’s nothing for us to make something out of nothing. Why have we yet to just go off and do it for ourselves and keep it for ourselves and PROTECT it for ourselves?
We used to go out and make villages, that grew into towns, that grew into cities. From West Palm Beach to Tulsa to Rosewood to Oakland we made our own townships and cities from nothing. And we thrived. We weren’t allowed to keep our own thriving and vibrant ways of life and continue our natural state of humanity because our greatness and freedom threatened the white man’s American dream. We stopped because they used deliberate violence against us, because of an orchestrated plan to keep up down – whether it was white mobs, turning red Natives against Black Natives, racist slave-catchers (later called police), promoting and forcing us to war against other invading whites, forced integration, heroin, crack, poverty (classism), meth, defunding (after taking resources), and pure inhuman acts of barbarism and savagery by whites.
There is a plan and purpose within this white supremist nation that is well over played. We keep admitting this plan and purpose, but not speaking of it in a real and constructive way: this mode of society was not made for anyone but our colonizers.
For thousands of years, we grew out our families, villages, cities, nations and even Empires that are still standing today, structurally. We were far more advanced in technology and in morality. However with the onset of whiteness and European colonization and now decolonization of the world, when it comes to the evolution of things. All white aligning peoples of the world are advancing in all sciences by harvesting, manipulating and turning our every mind’s thoughts, a heart’s spark of light, or piece of Ancestral infinity into a source of money for whites to manipulate us by. With money having been invented by white people, who had no true self-wealth to share or add to humanity. Nothing to strengthen their people except through murdering, raping, enslaving and oppressing others. Why do we not return to doing for ourselves? What will it take to reject our oppressor’s flawed way of being? What will it take for us to return to our natural state of greatness and humanity?
The current state of the world is dismall for all, except for the small minority who seem to do well with this mode of operation. We are all oppressed by a European mode of being, and those who they’ve infected with greed and racism (white aligned nations and leaders mostly). Yet every nation of color and every homeless person (whites included) accepts and maintains this immoral status quo, despite knowing our Ancestors colonization and our recolonization is to our demise. The majority of people of the world go on walking into a slow death, thankful for some entertainment, some cash in the pocket, some designer outfits, some zoom-zooms -n- wam-wams, and other small comforts along the way. We accept this slow death, knowing it will be visited upon every generation to come, watching that death, with silent frustration and apathetic acceptance.
Ask yourself this? Why not Let Go! Why not just go off and build a village, start a town? When Malcolm X said “A house nigga will ask ‘what you mean leave?’, ‘where you know better than here’, ‘where we gonna go?’ ‘You crazy!’ – he was dead on the target. We are still breathing and alive out here on the streets. Yet we exist as the walking dead. I see us in tents, making it work but doing as little as possible for ourselves. Although we still hold up and sell America to other nations by not standing up.
I see all kinds of people on the streets – sharp folks, those who had jobs, some with degrees. Some of us even know how to fix cars, computers, build houses, and HVAC. Yet just because the label of homelessness stops another from believing in us, we refuse to take a gamble and stand up for ourselves. How many have watched as police beat and kick us around, gun us down, and are glad it wasn’t them…this time. That we are even glad to escape, “this time”, is an indication of a great failure to desire to do for one’s self and to live. And it screams, “I’m broken”!!! Why not admit to ourselves who/what broke us, and begin to remedy our people and the world, in truth.
We sit out here on the sidewalks saying no one cares. But we don’t care about ourselves! When many people were getting staph infections in SF or when it’s raining or freezing cold, I’ve said to my fellow unhoused folks – let’s fight this thing, let’s make a village, let’s go take a building. I was told, “you crazy, they not gonna let us”. I’ve witnessed my people drag their things in the rain up the street to huddle somewhere till the storm passes or sleep in the pouring rain rather than say “no I’m freezing, I’ll die out here” and fight for something better. We just accept that no one cares.
No project or plan or goal or dream can be accomplished if we ourselves are saying to ourselves and each other, “it won’t or can’t happen for us, they won’t let us”. People who speak this way are guilty of talking or for our people, and the entire human species who are losing all morality under the oppression of recolonization.
I hope we all understand that we have to have a conversation with ourselves about caring about ourselves. That our individual life matters because we make up a powerful people who have been convinced to be weak by barbaric slavers and the raping of our wombedmen, Elders and children. That conversation needs to happen before we can have the internal conversation about what to do with one’s life. Caring about oneself is more important than just riding out your existence, “just doin it”. To have no desire to advance in your ability to live your life, is evidence of a deeply entrenched oppression. For us to not demand and create peace, safety and comfort is truly a low state of being and a result of our internalized oppression we have accepted. Truth is, by not standing up and thinking our way out and fighting for future generations to live in peace, we program our young and all nations to bow down. The world follows Blacks, we have started most trends and crazes that make other people want to come to America. I say to all who want to come here, be white in your own land or fight there for a new way of life. Don’t come to the feet of your oppressor, no matter how bad your country may have become. Stand and think a better thought for all future generations.
I see some OG’s – who would be and should be Elders – perfect a sad face for a hand-out, rather than to build and inspire the younger generations with what they know. I see OGs miss the opportunity of teaching younger generations the possibilities of what has gotta happen, and instead follow what idiots in charge say. There are countless of these lost opportunities, times to collectively circle up, to not allow whites ways of living, to continue doing the same to us or others.
We say we’re worried for our lives. But no – “we are all cowards waiting on the next man to die.”
We know deep down that nothing can stop this wicked system but us. Yet we sit and pray or numb ourselves in blind hope that we can dodge this world when it comes for us, knowing it’s coming. Just waiting.
I see our youth stealing and living a step away from death because it’s a gamble to “make it”. Where is the spirit that sent Malcolm X into a revolutionary stance? Where is that desire to do for self? What made Bobby Seale and Huey P Newton stop to think of a way out for their people? Why did we at The Village In Oakland and First They Came For The Homeless change laws and build houses for others, instead of laying-down and waiting for death on the sidewalk? It wasn’t our ability or knowledge that made this possible. It was a desire to do for ourselves and not wait on someone else to do it for us. It was not us being mad that no one would do it for us. It was a knowledge that our lives mattered and future generations need to be protected, by any means. Nevermind what to do or how. That comes after one admits, “no one is gonna do anything for me”, and wanna stop me from having a better life”, and “this is not humanity”. That comes after one realizes, ” we are not given a suggestion to live, only oppressed into obeying rules and illegal laws of children of enslavers and barbaric infidels seeking world domination still.
There are still people on the streets who are being asked to join a movement to assert our right to exist, our right to shelter, our rights as protected by the Constitution. Yet many still sit in the same place because they don’t want to be criminalized for standing up. They would rather sit and allow the police come remove us for being in tents or shanty towns. We are already treated like criminals and thrown around like trash Yet here we are sitting on the street because that’s what someone else wanted from us. How many of us are still selling dope because they know, “this all white folks gonna let us do”. Too damn many. And it stems from the brokenness that we have allowed. There are many who really can do better for themselves and strengthen others around them, but have yet to, because they have lost the desire to do for themselves. Not that they can’t, but they choose not to.
Do for yourselves. And you will see that you have the power to change your life. And by changing your own life you will make a ripple effect for others to change theirs. And make your Ancestors proud, stand with spirit, and walk for the benefit of all generations to come. Stop losing for others and start winning for ourselves.
Echo Of The Whip
By Ayat Jalal
Blackmen we must stand
For a child again
And as always
One of God’s intend
A wombedman
Be not worried
For a life within
Men trip,
The acceptance you give
At the echo of the whip!
The verbal guillotine
A voice saying
They won’t let you do that
What does that mean?
The admission of what
Echoes of the whip
Always forever scene
Thinking with your dick
Thats all youve been said to be
Gotta fight, sell dope
Fuck this bitch
Thas all thats allowed
You never hear it out loud
The echo of the whip
The strongest get beat
The leaders are to die
A weak mind vie
Might as well not do shit
Echo of the whip
Slipin into dissadence
Love of Mamon, money,
slave master’s invent
How many kill for it
Proovin you aint shit
It’s not about being hard
Is you giving up
Echo of the whip
How dare you stand
How dare you live
Think of better thought.
what gives
Shiiit!
Echo of the whip
and you wont hear it
But you’ll die slow
Beaten
by what’s not hidden
Scared to be better
Guns and land
Bibles and laws your given
How many are still off
Waring against unknown men
Killing for your killer
Hearing that whip
Damaged by what was
pushing to be accepted
Unloving males, waring,
Barbaric and hateful
Child like men
Doing what our oppressor did
Echo of the whip
Vibrating being all this shit
Men doing whats told
Being whats allowed
And swear we the shit
Ahead of the game
Lowest in the gutter
And lovin it
Just the echo of the whip
The allowance of your wombedmen
To be disrespected,
Raped, unable to aborted
Killed, and by you pimped
Echo of the whip
Still cut like the same
Deep like impressions
Decrepit confessions
How you came up in their game
How you say you a man
Stuck playing a game
You losing in by plan
Never wanting to stand
Echo of the whip
Fear of attack
Thoughts of extiction
Teachin kids that
House nigga shit
Or
You in the field picking
Ain’t no fight in em’
Admit
All for the money!
Ain’t about shit!
Cutn generational deep
Echo of the whip
If my brother know i got
Probably kill me for it
Every time you say “bitch”
“my nigga”,
” muthafucka”, all i hear
Is the echo of the whip.
The End of Wood Street
May 5, 2023
There is so much to be said about Wood Street. Oakland’s World Famous Curbside Community, shanty town, favella.
Before the City was shamed into doing SOMETHING about homelessness in Oakland, before the City publicly started to talk about homelessness, there was Wood Street. It was a sanctuary that 40 people called home. The mover-shaker visionary of the group was Mavin Carter Griffith. She had plans and sketches for her solutions and the out the box off the grid solutions to the housing crisis and nomadic life on the curb. That was in 2016.
SInce then Mavin put Wood Street on the city’s radar through her work in the Homeless Advocacy Working Group – she was part of the groups monthly meetings with Former Mayor LIbby Schaft, she was outspoken and present at CIty Council and Life Enrichment Committee meetings, presenting the vision that folks at Wood Street wanted.
The city’s response: to make promises to the Wood Street community only to break them. To take Mavin and her community’s ideas, but leave out Mavin and her community.
The most impactful response: to evict dozens of informal settlements across Oakland and tell the displaced unhoused to move to wood street.
In less than a year Wood Street went from being a tightly knit community of 40 people with a vision to a community of 300 un-unified folks, and a beacon for 100s more floaters . with nowhere to stay grounded, and dozens of predators looking to exploit unhoused residents living in the cuts of Oakland.
Despite it all and through it all, the residents of Wood Street figured it out. figured out how to stand up and fight back.
For the past two years the city of Oakland has been AGGRESSIVELY and RELENTLESSLY attempting to evict the massive shanty town that they created.
And after two years of a long and tiring fight with odds stacked up against the unhoused, Wood Street Oakland’s biggest favela is officially closed.
According to testimonies and documentation from legal observers, the last three weeks of non-stop evictions were carried out in illegal, unconstitutional and unnecessarily traumatic and harmful ways. business as usual on a grand scale.
As you read the reports from the city patting themselves on the back for a job well done and the affordable housing they will build down the line to house all the wood street residents – remember to not believe the hype. any of it.
The erase and shuffle game key to gentrification. The transitional housing spots the city speaks of are not connected to exit strategies into permanent housing. The city has spent millions of dollars into transitional beds and tuff sheds that are inadequate for SO many basic reasons: no water, no kitchens/food, no stability, no security, mismanagement, abuse, prison like conditions. And 90% of the time they exit folks back into the streets, to start the cycle all over again and push people DEEPER into homelessness and trauma.
The city can and must do better. Permanent housing is the ONLY solution to homelessness. Upgrade the encampments don’t evict until that permanent housing for the victims of gentrification is made available.
Union point on the rise
April 18, 2022
Listen in to this episode of Hard Knock Radio to hear Davey D Cook interviewing residents of Union Point On The Rise. This highly organized community was able to prevent the city of Oakland from evicting them, instead they were able get the city to house all the Black mothers and their children into permanent housing and to Shelter the rest of the community in a hotel for almost a year. During that time they have been in negotiations with the city, negotiations that got them the land, the tiny homes and other resources. In January 2022 they moved into their intervention located on e12 and 2nd ave.
A couple months into it, a very problematic unhoused man by the name of Nino Parker stirred up problems by claiming the community were white racists who were getting privileged treatments from the city. The result? The city and its agents is threatening to evict their community.(now the threat from the city attorney has escalated to huring the private attorney to charge them all with trespassing, ignore the years worth of negotiations, has been harassing and punishing them for rejecting what is happening (turned off their running water, locked their bathrooms, removed their security cameras which was followed with four of their tiny homes being g burned to the ground, and threatening the residents with bringing in a street gang to force ably remove them). Check out the interview.
Governor Demands Oakland and Other Cities Do Thier Damn Jobs
November 4, 2022
A couple months ago the village in oakland sent the governor the two recent audits of the city’s homeless interventions along with more than 100 testimonies of unhoused oaklanders who’s communities were destroyed, yet who were not offered an adequate alternative shelter and whose property was thrown out.or impounded by the city. we sent in dozens of testimonies of people who were in the city and city contracted interventions who had traumatic experiences in those interventions including being exited out back to the streets. We told the governor we have demanding the city’s homeless industrial complex to accountable, transparent and do better with the hundreds of millions, soon to be billions of dollars from the state.
I’m glad he listened to us. Im.frustrated other cities in California are also failing the unhoused people of California.
Here the gist of the entire quote I gave the reporter:
The two recent audits done on the city of Oakland homeless interventions showed blatant mismanagement, misuse and even corruption. The mayor and the city council have the power and the responsibility to impose consequences for what the audit revealed. They did nothing.
What the governor doing is responsible leadership. This is what a consequence looks like. This is the chance for the city leaders to exercise accountability, transparency and do better to end homelessness.
There is a big disconnect about what the city claims it does in and through their homeless interventions and what is happening in real life. The city has not used those funds towards ending homelessness. Those funds were used to pay staff and non profits to create a system of interventions that not only keeps people unhoused, and even drive our people deeper into homelessness. What the governor did was right on time.
The city of Oakland’s homeless administration and team needs to come up with a mission, with clear goals and objectives that they can live up to that are to scale to the crisis, and that include permanent deeply affordable housing, with strategies to reach those goals and objectives, with metrics to measure their success and challenges is reaching those goals and objectives, with evaluation and feedback processes for their clients, with an actual budget, with data collecting systems, and with follow up with their clients. According to the audits the city has none of these things in place. Basically the city and the non profits it works with are not doing their jobs, but people are getting rich off the money to end homelessness.
Living Rooms
Oct 20, 2022
since April 2021, our foundational Feed The People – Oakland program transformed from a food distro program that visits curbside communities to an block party production entity. The block parties are called Living Rooms and happen at parks, plazas, and abandoned lots across the city (we will be expanding to Berkeley this month!) We produce 2 Living Room Block Parties per month, and have done a total of 36 Living Room Block Parties since we started.
The Living Rooms provide resources, recreation and respite for housed and unhoused neighbors. They are spaces that housed and unhoused neighbors can get to know each other and talk about being better neighbors to each other. They are spaces that we can kick back and celebrate life despite the struggles any of us is facing.
At the Living Rooms we have:
– food, Djs, jam sessions, performances and open mics
– comunity mural making
– a free store
– political education
– opportunities for civic engagement and/or political activism
– herbal medicine sharing
– free art give aways
– organizations in the community providing info and resources including legal support, mental health support, COVID19 support.
Tho the Living Rooms are a project of the Feed The People program, this is a project where several of The Village in Oakland #feedthepeople programs and services come together in Volton formation: Soul Food Shack (mobile apothocary), Cardboard & Concrete Collective (unhoused artist collective), Deeply Rooted Oakland 2045 outreach team (educating about and gathering data for the city of Oakland’s 2045 General Plan), Street Smarts School (know your rights education program).
the outreach is neighborhood centric, not Oakland wide as we seek to foster and strengthen community within neighborhoods. To find out if A Living Room Block Party is coming to your hood, stay tuned or hit us up
Miralle vs. City of Oakland – Landmark lawsuit for unhoused constitutional rights, but the streets is where real power lies and where change will happen
Aug 10, 2022
In December 2018 I filed the first temporary restraining order,, preliminary injunction and civil rights lawsuit by an unhoused community against the city of Oakland and its agents.
The city did not want this case to go to court. So they settled.
To be clear, the plaintiffs were arguing that the city stop evictions altogether and build permanent housing to house anyone despite their income or lack of income. The settlement is a compromise reflecting the best we could achieve in a system that does not serve or protect our best interest in this specific lawsuit.
The wins we gain in the legal system are small. This lawsuit needs to be understood as part of a small tactic in a larger strategy of the fight for housing AND the right to exist AND the fight to protect our humanity. The real big work happens everyday showing up to support unhoused neighbors, unhoused communities organizing themselves, fighting to end gentrification and putting in place a development model that centers housing as a human right rather than a commodity, protecting and expanding tenants rights, pushing back and dismantling the police state, and ultimately burning this wicked system to the ground and embracing our own humanity.
The housing and dignity Village settlement came out of the first of many civil rights lawsuits filed against the city of Oakland by unhoused communities. Each lawsuit can and will chip away at the larger homeless industrial complex that has blown up in the midst of a housing affordability crisis in a homeless emergency. In fact now that this lawsuit is over myself and another plaintiff on this lawsuit are currently filing to challenge the city’s practice of illegally seizing and impounding vehicles people live in
The housing and dignity village settlement specifically focused on trying to halt the destruction of unhoused people’s personal properties. The news coverage says some of our property was destroyed. The truth is all property of all residents was destroyed including valuables that can never be replaced again. The settlement also sought to change policy around adequate notices, and no evictions during specific weather conditions. The settlement also placed all city’s homeless interventions under federal.oversight for the next year. The judge who presided over our settlement negotiations will be in charge of oversight.
Again the ultimate goal is no evictions and housing for all.
As for the $250,000 we plaintiffs will be receiving, a large chunk goes to compensate the two law firms that represented us in court. And some of us plaintiffs will be pooling our money together towards purchasing collective properties to house ourselves and other unhoused Oaklanders.
Shout out to all the folks to my fellow plaintiffs Ayat Bryant-Jalal, Yahyo Bryant, Jodii Le’Grand Everett, Kaleeo Acatar, Tina Arnold, Yanna Johnson for sticking it out for the past four years.
The City of Oakland’s Homeless Industrial Complex
February 16, 2022
Village Leadership Council produced this slide show to explain how The City Of Oakland’s approaches are grounded in systemic criminalization, anti-homeless and anti-Black bias and discrimination – despite what the politicians claim.
The Village in Oakland Down With The Poor People’s Campaign
March 2020
My name is Anita De Asis Miralle, aka Needa Bee. I am a single mother and the owner of a successful 30 year old food service business. I am a founder of The Village in Oakland and Health Hoodz and involved in Young Oakland, the Homeless Advocacy Working Group, and Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute. And since February 2018 my daughter and I have been unhoused due to an illegal eviction.
Let me repeat that–I am working. I am a community leader. And me and my daughter are homeless.
Before I became homeless, I was housing insecure. The lack of adequate and affordable housing in the new Oakland forced my daughter and I to live in an illegal basement unit covered in black mold that cost $1000 a month for five years. When we first became homeless in 2018, we squatted in abandoned properties until we were gifted a camper. We have been living in the camper ever since dodging harassment from the police and other predators. Between skyrocketing rental prices and ridiculous barriers to qualify for housing in Mayor Libby Schaafs’s new Oakland, we have not been able to find adequate, affordable or accessible housing.
Due to the development model called gentrification, we have seen an influx of wealth, construction and jobs flood Oakland like never before. But none of this is for us. In fact we are being denied basic needs, while the cost of living increases and the quality of life decreases.
What we do get? Blight laws that snatch family homes from Black families. Foreclosures fueled by predatory bank loans that rob working class families from their homes. Gang injunctions that profile our Black and Brown youth and restrain them from neighborhoods they were born and raised in. Illegal evictions from greedy landlords who want to rent their units for double and triple prices because they can. Displacement from The Town to other areas of the east bay or out of California altogether. Life curbside in a tent city, a shantytown, in a vehicle, in a doorway.
We are being criminalized, traumatized and harmed with the mayor, her administration, and most of city council’s approaches to this homeless state of emergency. Unprecedented millions have been earmarked towards solutions to and preventions for homelessness. But that money is not reaching the unhoused.
I want myself and my organization to work with the Poor People’s Campaign because it’s been long overdue for poor people and the working poor to unite across racial, religious and cultural differences and pick up the torch lit by Dr. King. When we unite as poor people, there are more of us than there are the morally bankrupt wealthy. United we have the potential to be force of deep and drastic change to be reckoned with. It will be an honor to march with poor and working class people across the United States as the good Reverend called us to do more than 50 years ago.
You Have Failed Me
By Ayat Jalal
You have failed me
By your mark
I’ve allowed things
In-becoming
You have failed me
And in another’s care
I have followed you
Into the wilds of dissidence
For the disadvantage
Of all descendants
Allowed the inhumane
Accepting what’s unethical
Counted as reasonable
By a forced logic of
Slavery unstopping
Bitter to the belly
Unsavory
Not avenging slavery
Crazy logic
Slavemasters greed
Proclaiming it had to be
you telling me
I need not be free
Do we consider
Acceptance of oppression
As an act of oppression
No!?
Yet we still accepting
And whip still echoing
Ask yourself
As I have I
Do we honor our life
Or perpetual strife
Liberty
in the pursuit of life
How does one
Take away that right
And preach/teach
its ok that it’s so
In god’s sight
No!
My sanity fails me
My heart
Asking me
Why follow
Ignorance and immaturity
Those who proclaim
Life is a game
Are the inhumane
From which
This hell came
Spiritually dead
The mental slave
Wars death and rape
We’re programmed to hate
Divided and conquered
Children told to fear
In a way
Strength taken away
Our wombed-men not safe
We fight for competition
Not allowed to cooperate
A place made to take
feeds a man shame
Convincing the kids
to misbehave
Slaves
Whos really sane
When these things
We allowed
Sell that dope and bow
Bend to your oppression
Schools closed down
Wombed-men raped
Kids shot down
With free will
Accepting it still
How can any man say
He respects himself
Or anybody else today
To: My Sanity
You have failed me!
Needa Bee Speech At Poor People’s Bay Area Mass Gathering
Need Bee • December 11, 2019
My name is Anita De Asis Miralle, aka Needa Bee. I am a single mother, the owner of a successful 30 year old food service business, an educator, mentor, organizer, activist and artist. Im a founder of The Village in Oakland, the mentor of Young Oakland, and founder of Health Hoodz. I am a steering committee member of the Homeless Advocacy Working Group, and the program director of Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute. And since February 2018 my daughter and i have been unhoused due to an illegal eviction.
Before i became homeless, i was housing insecure. I had given up my $750 a month rent controlled one bedroom apartment to move into a fraudulent non-profit development project that claims to be anti gentrification and anti eviction. When i spoke up on the lies and fraud i was sadly witnessing first hand, i was served an illegal eviction, my youth group was terrorized, my name was dragged in the mud and i was accused of being a federal agent.
I could not find adequate, affordable housing for me, my child and our pets. So i settled for a half of an illegal basement unit for $1,000 a month. The unit flooded and was covered in black mold but i would rather live there than have my daughter in the streets. After paying the landlady $1,000 a month for five years, she realized she could double the tent because there were people willing and desperate in the new oakland. She attempted to illegally evict me. I stood up for my rights while we looked for a new rental. But the housing market was worse than it had been 5 years prior. After a community mediation that did not go their way, my former landlady resorted to having people threaten my then 15 year old daughter with death and rape.
Fearing for her safety, we left the unit february 2018 and started squatting in abandoned properties until we were gifted a camper in october 2018. We have been living in the camper ever since dodging harassment from the police and other predators. Between skyrocketing rental prices and ridiculous barriers to qualify for housing in Mayor Libby Schaafs’s new Oakland, we have not been able to find adequate, affordable or accessible housing.
Due to the past 19 years of a development model called gentrification, we have seen an influx of wealth, construction and jobs flood The Town like never before. But none of this is for us. Due to a continually privatized public education system our children are not gaining the necessary skills and accreditation needed to gain employment in the new tech industry boom. Due to racism, our Black and Brown men are not being hired in the construction industry. Due to the ridiculous prices of skyrocketing rent and outrageous barriers to qualify for housing, The Town cannot afford housing. We are not benefiting from all this development and so called progress. In fact we are being denied basic needs, while the cost of living increases and the quality of life decreases.
The neglect our communities faced during the decades Oakland was characterized in the media as a place to be feared and avoided continues now that Oakland is a place where the rich flock. What we do get? Blight laws that snatch family homes from Black families. Foreclosures fueled by predatory bank loans that rob working class families from their homes. Gang injunctions that profile our Black and Brown youth and restrain them from neighborhoods they were born and raised in. Illegal evictions from greedy landlords who want to rent their units for double and triple prices because they can. Displacement from The Town to other areas of the east bay or out of california altogether. Life curbside in a tent city, a shantytown, in a vehicle, in a doorway.
The mayor, her administration, and most of city council are so deeply anti-homeless their policies and practices are criminal. They have violated our human rights and civil rights by not only denying us access to adequate housing, education and jobs; but we are being criminalized, traumatized and harmed with their approaches to this homeless state of emergency. Unprecedented millions have been earmarked towards solutions to and preventions for homelessness. But that money is not reaching the unhoused. Instead of helping us, we are being harmed. Instead of solving the problem, bureaucrats and nonprofits are getting rich off this humanitarian disaster. And no resources are going towards building permanent, deeply affordable housing. The city is not dedicated to solving the homeless crisis. They are dedicated to making the unsheltered invisible.
I want myself and my organization The Village to work with the Poor People’s Campaign because its been long overdue for poor people and the working poor to unite across racial, religious and cultural differences and pick up the torch lit by the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. when we unite as poor people, there are more of us than there are the morally bankrupt wealthy. United we have the potential to be a force of deep and drastic change to be reckoned with. It will be an honor to march with poor and working class people across the United States as the good Reverend called us to do more than 50 years ago.
International Women’s Day Speech
Need Bee March 2017
Our homeless neighbors are some of the most resilient, independent, fiercest, smartest, compassionate, powerhouses you will ever meet in your life.
They are survivors who live in constant crisis everyday. And they get shit done. Many are parents, grandparents, workers, survivors. They hold down several jobs and/or hussles. They are resourceful and the masters of recycle, reuse, reimagine.
You can’t keep them down despite the obstacles they face:
An estimated 16,000 people experience homelessness in the county. Data compiled in the Alameda Countywide Shelter and Services Survey, May 2004 Report (ACSSS) found that:
- A vast majority of Alameda County’s homeless people live in Oakland (people in the streets think it’s more)
- We estimate at least 6,000 people are homeless in Oakland. Of that number, only 12% live in curbside communties in tent cities and encampments. A majority live in card\s, RVs and other vehicles.
- Many of the homeless were previously incarcerated, hospitalized or in Foster Care.
- Suffer chronic health conditions such as TB, HIV/AIDS, diabetes and hypertension at a much higher rate than housed individuals; treatment is difficult without a stable environment
- Utilize public services (e.g. hospital emergency rooms. Mental health facilities, jails) more frequently
- Usually experience higher rates of violence and victimization
- Many are husslers and working class folks who hold down one or more streams of income. Many are born and raised in Oakland. But due to gentrification and the outrageous housing market, many cannot afford the human right of housing
- Most folks who are homeless are living on the streets, in parks, in vehicles, couch surfing in the neighbors the once had housing in
What are the experiences of homeless mothers?
- Over 85% of homeless families are headed by women – specifically, by single women with children – and domestic violence is a principal cause homelessness among single mother families.
- Homeless families are typically headed by a young mother with 2 to 3 children, who did not finish high school or is unemployed
- Over 92% of homeless mothers have experienced severe physical and/or sexual abuse during their lifetime
- 63% report that this abuse was perpetrated by an intimate partner
- 1 of every 4 homeless women is homeless because of violence committed against her
- Inadequate housing and shelter options, evictions, discrimination, poverty, and other factors contribute to the crisis of homelessness caused by family violence. Furthermore, many women remain in an abusive relationship because of these barriers
Domestic and sexual violence is the leading cause of homelessness for women and families, and 20–50% of all homeless women and children become homeless as a direct result of fleeing domestic violence.
Homeless women are far more likely to experience violence of all sorts compared with women who are not homeless because of a lack of personal security when living outdoors or in shelters
Domestic violence shelter providers are prohibited from reporting client information; therefore, estimates likely undercount the number of homeless women and families seeking shelter as a result of domestic violence.
What are the experiences of homeless children?
- Families make up 43% and children comprise 28% of the county’s homeless population.
- By age 12, 83% of homeless children had been exposed to at least one serious violent event
- Almost 25% have witnessed acts of violence within their families
- 15% have seen their father hit their mother
- 11% have seen their mother abused by a male partner
- Children who witness violence are more likely than those who have not to exhibit frequent aggressive and antisocial behavior, increased fearfulness, higher levels of depression and anxiety, and have a greater acceptance of violence as a means of resolving conflict
- Homeless children suffer more health problems than housed children: 38% of children in homeless shelters have asthma, middle ear infection prevalence is 50% higher than the national average, and over 60% of homeless children are under vaccinated (Redlener & Johnson, 1999)
- Nearly one-fifth of homeless children repeat a grade in school and 16% are enrolled in special education classes – rates 100% and 33% higher than housed children; much of this is largely due to their high mobility rate (Institute for Children and Poverty, 2001)
You cannot keep these women and children down. They get up everyday and do it again. Despite the crisis.
And yet the city of oakland the police and xenophobic gentrifuckers are determined to keep down, shuffle around, criminalize, terrorize, disrespect, steal from homeless women and homeless people in general.
The city of oakland declared a homeless state of emergency and said that we are in a housing crisis. Yet they have been too comfortable to realize the state of emergency themselves and have moving thru the mud with their responses to homelessness. We have a homeless crisis yet the homeless resident of this city continue to have their encampments destroyed by the city and police continue to treat the most vulnerable of our residents as criminals at a $10,000 per eviction price tag. We have a housing crisis caused by gentrification but gentrifiers don’t want to see the people they have displaced and use their race and class privilege and power to get the city to close down recycling centers and destroy encampments and shelters. We have a housing crisis though when we The Village aka the people of oakland created The Promise Land at marcus garvey park last in the end of this january 2017 – where we build homes for the unhoused, got 16 drug addict on the path of recovery and provided sanctuary from the streets for mostly elderly men and women – the city spent upwards of $75,000 to bulldoze homes, a donations distribution program, a community kitchen and a wellness center.
We have a woman who is the mayor of oakland. She likes to say she’s from the town but we have yet to see her act like shes from the town. Cuz the town takes care of each other. The town takes care of its homeless. Countless of individuals in oakland feed and clothe our most vulnerable on the streets of oakland. If libby was from the town she would have been ended this housinging crisis and taken care of the exploded homeless crisis instead of selling it to the highest bidder.
One thing we were clear about when we created The Village and built The Promise Land is that this government from the white house to city hall is ineffective, illegitimate and that we are ungovernable to them. That means it’s time to stop waiting on them to do something to help us and take matters in our own hands. Whether that means taking land to build homes and services, whether that means creating our own institution of public education. Whether that means creating our own health and wellness systems, whether that means creating our own alternatives to their policing system. It’s gonna be up to us to do this. This time of ineffective and illegitimate politicians who refuse to be the activist leaders we so desperately need right now is our call to come together in unity, govern ourselves, solve our own problems, and take control of our future. A future that puts women, indigenous peoples, Black folks, immigrants and all people who have historically and systematically oppressed – in the forefront.
The City’s Has A Chop Shop Under Contract to Tow Vehicles Unhoused People Live In!
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…
Continue Reading The City’s Has A Chop Shop Under Contract to Tow Vehicles Unhoused People Live In!
Don’t Call Charity Mutual Aid!
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…
Oakland’s New Encampment Management Policy Isn’t New At All
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…
Continue Reading Oakland’s New Encampment Management Policy Isn’t New At All
Oakland Residents to Hold 6th Annual “510 Day” Anti-Displacement Dance Party at Lake Merritt
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…
**GOVERNMENT** or ***COINCIDENCE***?
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…
The Impacts of Gentrification on Oakland’s Black Community
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…
Continue Reading The Impacts of Gentrification on Oakland’s Black Community
How Oakland Treats Unhoused Citizens
By Yanna Johnson My name is Yanna Johnson, I am a single mother, an entrepreneur, a longtime taxpayer and voter, born and raised in Oakland, who worked with and voted for Libby Schaaf. I survived the Encampment Management Team’s demolition of my emergency home while I was homeless. Mayor Libby Schaaf has been lying to the public regarding city actions against unhoused Oakland citizens. She “claims” to have taken a compassionate and humane approach. Her current actions have been ineffective: taxpayer and voter resources wasted on knocking down Oakland residents who need her help the most. Libby Schaaf destroyed a yurt the community built for me at the Housing & Dignity Village almost a year ago today. Now I am seeing her organizing to provide the same fate to my community. She has met unhoused residents attempts to create stability during this crisis with aggressive…
We must take matters into our own hands
By Tracy Lee “The blind can not lead the blind.” “Each one teach one.” “I can show you better than I can tell you”. Oakland is a city of so many races and cultures. Different, diverse, and from so many kinds of backgrounds. But one thing that unites us is the caring and loving people we are. No matter how hard the struggle may be, we always take care of each other. We all in the same boat – struggling to live. We take matters into our own hands to get thru life. “The blind can not lead the blind”. ”Each one teach one”. And my favorite – “I can show you better than i can tell you”. These are all phrases that we can say we heard or even used before in life. It’s usually when we want to express deeply how we feel…
Haiku
By Needa Bee “Victory” The devil is mad. everyday i rise bright, strong, Solid. Feelin’ myself. “Homefull” Houseless on the streets. But with love and unity We fam. We are Home. “Politricksters” Babylon leaders Rule with lies, harm those with less Get paid for their crimes
Bay Area Landless People’s Alliance Series
By Needa Bee As California’s homeless state of emergency continues to soar above the rest of the crisis that sweeps the United States, so do falsely claimed government controlled “solutions.” The state and the nation are turning their eyes to the Bay Area governments who are patting themselves on the back for their successful approaches, while the housing affordability crisis and homeless state of emergency continue to be some of the worse. Unfortunately the programs to prevent homelessness and the pathways to end homelessness many times do not result in a permanent roof over your head. Rather they are a revolving door (and sometimes a one way door) back to the streets. The next three issues, we will look at how different Bay Area Cities are addressing the affordable housing & homeless crisis. First city: Oakland Oakland: Working on Making Homeless People Disappear, While the…
Haiku
By Ayat Jalal Coffins are not carpeted There not for standing Linolium is useless As the imagined dreams, some believe they’ll be having The padding is for comfort to those left standing, Imagining death’s visions going over the width, Linoliums length and pattern hoping for a like padding. Maddening. How many comrades died for standing. For them do more than stand. Ancestral Spirits Have no care for carpets The padding useless as linolium in the streets. Where some are taking back land Because coffins are not carpeted We must do more than stand
City’s New Practice of Bulldozing Self-Built Homes & Towing Lived-In Vehicles Leaves More Than 300 On Streets To Freeze To Death
By Needa Bee New Cruel & Unusual Tactics on Oakland Curbside Communities Receives Anger, Frustration and Disbelief Since December of last year, Mayor Libby Schaaf’s “Encampment Management Team” launched a new approach to their homeless solution plan: demolish self-built homes at curbside communities, for “brick and mortar fire code & building code violations,” and tow and impound entire RV & camper communities. To date four self built home communities have been flattened, and at least four known vehicle dwelling communities have lost their homes on wheels. More than 300 people have had their homes demolished or towed by Department of Public Works. The City has labeled these actions as “clean and clears.” The residents were allowed to remain, but forced to temporarily move their belongings and downgrade to tents. The City offered no alternative shelters or provided tents to the residents who lost their shelter.…
Hypocracy
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…
The History of The Village
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…
Criminalizing the Unsheltered is Not the Solution to Oakland’s Housing Crisis
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…
Continue Reading Criminalizing the Unsheltered is Not the Solution to Oakland’s Housing Crisis
Oakland’s Unhoused Stand Up, Speak Out, Resist!
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…
Continue Reading Oakland’s Unhoused Stand Up, Speak Out, Resist!
The Day After The Housing And Dignity Village Eviction
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,…
Continue Reading The Day After The Housing And Dignity Village Eviction
Housing and Dignity Village Statement about the Violent Surprise Eviction
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…
Continue Reading Housing and Dignity Village Statement about the Violent Surprise Eviction
United Nation’s Releases Report Sighting Oakland and San Francisco As The World’s Worst Violators of Unhoused Folks’ Human Rights
By Needa Bee On October 19th, the United Nations Special Rapporteur to the Right to Adequate Housing, Lelani Farha, released her new report documenting the “global scandal” of homeless encampments. In January of 2017, Farha spent time in the San Francisco Bay Area and Southern California to meet with unhoused residents and housed advocates and described the conditions as “cruel and inhumane”. The only U.S. cities explicitly called out for violations in the UN’s report on global homelessness are San Francisco and Oakland. She states that while the existence of “informal settlements” are human rights violations due to local government’s lack of will to provide permanent housing to all residents, these encampments are also people’s assertion to their denied human right of housing. She declares curbside communities are acts of resilience, resourcefulness and ingenuity in the face of dire circumstances. Rather than criminalize or ignore…
The #HousingAndDignityVillage, A Hub for Service and Community, Formed in Deep East Oakland
By Ellie Brumbaum Grassroots Movement Continues to Claim Public Land To Provide Shelter and Services for Oakland’s Unhoused Women On the morning of Saturday, October 27, 2018, a coalition of Oakland community members took over a city-owned plot of land at Edes and Elmhurst in Deep East Oakland, on Chochenyo Ohlone land. They moved in a medical tent, an outdoor kitchen, supplies for a small community garden, and other services. They are declaring it a service hub for curbside communities and housed residents in the area, who have been deprived of basic services by the City of Oakland. It has been named Housing and Dignity Village, and is a clean and sober encampment for the unhoused cisgender and trans women of Oakland, their partners, and their children. As a Community Resource Center and Garden, the Housing and Dignity Village will be a service and community…
What The Town Needs In A Mayor & Other Public Officials
A Statement From The 510Day Organizing Committee. Oakland is our hometown. It is a city with an extraordinary past, a legacy of radical activism, and a rich, diverse culture all its own. It’s the land of the Ohlone people, the birthplace of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and Funk, the city where Bruce Lee once lived and where Cesar Chavez first started organizing. It was Tupac’s spiritual home and the home of Soulbeat, Festival at the Lake, the East Bay Dragons, Everett and Jones, Flints, Ricky Henderson, Marshawn Lynch, Gary Payton, Dru Down, Too $hort, and 3XKraxy. Oakland is a community where Black, White, Asian and Pacific Islander, Native American, and LatinX people have lived together for generations. Over the past several years Oakland has experienced a wave of gentrification and displacement characterized by skyrocketing housing prices and a rising cost of living.…
Continue Reading What The Town Needs In A Mayor & Other Public Officials
“The Village” Offered 1 Acre Of City Owned Land To Build Homes For Homeless
By Needa Bee City Forced To Adopt Safe Havens Due To Success Of Militant Grassroots Efforts Nine months after bulldozing The Village – a radical community effort to immediately provide shelters and services to Oakland’s homeless – the City Administration granted the movement a large parcel of land in East Oakland. “We are happy that we have the support of city council and staff in City Hall. We are thrilled that the City Administration finally saw the light, and instead of continuing to fight us, found inspiration in our vision and model and is fleshing out their plan called the Safe Haven,” said one of The Village’s lead organizers Needa Bee. “We are happy that the City did the right thing. It was a long, frustrating and slow winding road. But we are happy we have reached the goal: for the City to accept that…
Continue Reading “The Village” Offered 1 Acre Of City Owned Land To Build Homes For Homeless
Negative Sterotypes About The Homeless Make It Hard To Grasp Who Is Actually Unhoused
By Needa Bee Who is the “homeless demographic” and what stereotypes are attributed to this demographic? Who is currently unhoused and or experiencing homelessness? In the United States, we are living off an outdated stereotype that all homeless folks are mentally ill, drug addicts, or deserve to be homeless. The first two generalizations come from the 1980s when the war on drugs hit Black communities with the crack epidemic and when the mental health facilities that housed folks who could not take care of themselves were closed down. Both actions of the Ronald Regan administration and the impacts are still with us. The third stereotype stems from an imbedded belief in the U.S. society that criminalizes and neglects the poor, the people who do not “contribute” to our culture of capitalism, the victims of sick society that values money over life. In the milinium there…
To Assistant to the City Administrator, Joe Devries.
We are The Village, and we are searching for The Promised Land. We are not going to stop looking for it and building it – even though you have gone against the wishes of the people of oakland by destroying what we built. We are not going to stop despite the fact you are hostile and violent to our vision of humanity. We were told that this meeting was to be between The Village of the Promise Land and city of oakland officials. However, we were never invited. The residents of The Promise Land were not invited. The volunteers of The Promise Land were not invited. The homeless community members who used The Promise Land services were not invited. Therefore, we declare this meeting illegitimate. In addition, we have lost absolute faith in you Joe DeVries. You have proven yourself untrustworthy and incapable of the…
Continue Reading To Assistant to the City Administrator, Joe Devries.
It Takes A Village to Solve Our Homeless Crisis
By Needa Bee Our homeless neighbors are some of the most resilient, independent, fiercest, smartest, compassionate, powerhouses you will ever meet in your life. They are survivors who live in constant crisis everyday. And they get shit done. Many are parents, grandparents, workers, survivors. They hold down several jobs and/or hussles. They are resourceful and the masters of recycle, reuse, reimagine. You can’t keep them down despite the obstacles they face: An estimated 16,000 people experience homelessness in the county. Data compiled in the Alameda Countywide Shelter and Services Survey, May 2004 Report (ACSSS) found that: A vast majority of Alameda County’s homeless people live in Oakland (people in the streets think it’s more)We estimate at least 6,000 people are homeless in Oakland. Of that number, only 12% live in curbside communties in tent cities and encampments. A majority live in card\s, RVs and other…
Continue Reading It Takes A Village to Solve Our Homeless Crisis
Mayor And City Administrator Bulldoze Homes & Village of Services for Oakland’s Homeless Residents
By Asians For Black Lives Media Committee Hundreds of Oakland Residents Created An Encampment That Offered Safe & Dignified Space City of Oakland Did Not Provide At 8:30 AM on the morning of Thursday, February 2, 2017, at least 80 Oakland Police violently raided a village of homes and services for Oakland’s homeless residents which was then bulldozed by the Department of Public Works. The inhumane action went against the wishes of hundreds of Oakland residents who contributed to the creation of the sanctuary at 36th and Martin Luther King, Jr. Way, named “The Promise Land” by residents. Sixteen residents, half of them elderly, were displaced. An additional four guests who were seeking sanctuary for the night were also rudely awakened. Two of the evening guests who slept in The Promised Land open air living room, sought refuge because Cal Trans had destroyed their two…
The Strong and Successful History of Non-Violent Direct Action
By Joyous De Asis Non-Violent Direct Action (D.A.) is when a person or a group of people break a law peacefuly to be heard and seen, and to call out what is wrong in their community or with the government. Non-Violent Direct Action is a tactic used in a broader and longer struggle for justice. It is a tactic used when every other tactic has failed. It is a peopl’es last attempt to get justice for there community. People do D.A. when there govermrnt stops listening. D.A. almost always works when it is planned out and used in a bigger fight. For example. Black Lives Matter, used D.A to draw attention to police terror. Cesar Chavez used D.A. to organize farmworkers to be treated right and get better working conditions and pay. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr used D.A. to fight for people’s civil and…
Continue Reading The Strong and Successful History of Non-Violent Direct Action