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Add an EventCandlelight Tent Vigil Protesting Homeless Sweeps
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We will gather at City Hall at 7pm, Friday Sept. 7th
We will hold a circle and share some thoughts before we slowly walk together through town carrying candles and lofting tents above our heads. We'll traverse Pacific Ave, then visit the river levee and then back to City Hall.
We expect to have dixie cup hooded candles but please bring flashlights and tents if you have them.
This is the first step in a new multi-tiered campaign to address the city's criminalization of outside night sleep.
We welcome you to join us.
The City of Santa Cruz has been using the SCPD & the City Parks Dept. to attack homeless camps.
We are in the 7th week of this campaign that has seen more than 300 citations given, more than 100 camps destroyed and personal belongings trashed and more than 150 arrests.
While the Homeless Services Center has closed the Paul Lee Loft shelter the City has offered no other solutions to people who are survival camping in the woods, river levee and downtown.
It is illegal to sleep outside in Santa Cruz btwn 11pm - 8am and it is illegal to lay under a blanket... EVEN IF ONE IS AWAKE!!
Where are these folks supposed to sleep safely and legally?
This situation refuses basic human rights and dignity and in many cases, is patently against the law.
I guess it's all academic, since no one does anything anyway, as most people in this town, state, and country have their heads up their asses.
"First, our analysis ... suggests that if development assistance is not appropriately funded relative to the size, geography, and needs of (a community in the) targeted regions, it is liable to act as a double-edged sword by precipitating a revolution..." ~~Kim Cragin, Peter Chalk; Terrorism and Development - RAND Corp, 2003, http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1630.html
Let me start by stating ALL "industry standard" studies used by American cities in the development and implementation of their homeless policies conclusively illustrate that disenfranchising, demonizing and criminalizing their houseless citizens
A> DOES NOT alleviate the perceived or actual problems and
B> it cost A LOT of taxpayers money to implement those ineffectual policies.(1)
That tax money is funneled along with the dysfunctional policing policies to local law enforcement agencies which become overtly politicized against a portion of their community causing the officer-on-the-street to be even less effective in their community policing tasks as they become overwhelmed enforcing nuisance ordinances against a specific sector of the city's residents. Enforcement of these ordinances also occurs at the expense of availability of the police and their resources to the community at large within existing budgets.
(and lest I beg the point about disenfranchisement; According to a recent census of the houseless in Santa Cruz, most were employed and housed locally before they became houseless and therefore are a part of the community.)
Further, these city-created 'laws' are often unconstitutional at face and selectively enforced in order to avoid legal challenges by irate victims of these ordinances created by city officials with minimal knowledge of criminal law even as these ordinances and related 'sweeps' hamper the ability of the police to interact with and serve more socially legitimate functions within the community of homeless, which would be very distrustful of the police due previous experience with the intrinsically selective nature of city-created nuisance law enforcement.
Typically the end result of the disenfranchisement, demonization, and criminalization of the houseless solely favors the interests of commercial property owners and developers ... and police agencies(2), public and private, whose budgets and manpower are increased, even in times of economic troubles, again at the expense of the community at large.
All this for policies that do not work
All this for policies that cost taxpayers dollars.
What part of "Fiduciary Malfeasance" with taxpayer's money doesn't Santa Cruz city's elected officials and management understand when they spend their citizens money on policies repeatedly proven ineffective and counterproductive?
What part of "Your city is absolutely wasting tax revenues on policies PROVEN not functional" don't the taxpayers of Santa Cruz understand?
Footnotes:
1. Street People and the Contested Realm of Public Space, Randall Amster
http://books.google.com/books/about/Street_people_and_the_contested_realms_o.html?id=JnVHAAAAMAAJ
2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xDiEghBf1Ec (Exposition on Nuisance Laws and society)
So where's the rage? All we get are toothless symbolic protests on a day when no one is even at city hall?
(Fridays are "furlough" days)Let's just call the alternative #809Center
Lets show up on a day when SOMEONE IS ACTUALLY THERE (The vigil day; Friday, is a 'furlough' days... a nice non-confrontational symbolic nothing will result because no one of any importance is available) and SWARM THE CitY MANAGER'S OFFICE.
Take him hostage.
Barricade ourselves with food and supplies.
Force a confrontation with the police. The sloppier and more 'violent' the better.
It ends up on the state and national news wires.
How about headlines like this:
Homeless Mob In California Takes City Manager Hostage
Someone somewhere in the US is going to say...
WTF?
The answer is a federal lawsuit demanding the DOJ take charge of lawmaking in regard to the homeless in Santa Cruz because the city, county, and state, are apparently not capable of mitigating violations of homeless people's rights to be treated like human beings.
...and you know. I won't 'take a ticket' in a stupid symbolic act like the one planned on the seventh (setting up a tent is a ticket-getter at city hall) simply because IT ACCOMPLISHES LESS THAN NOTHING. It's simply a 'pressure relief' mechanism for middle class housed people who for some reason are romantically co-dependent with the 'less fortunate'.
But I WOULD be willing to risk a potentially violent confrontation with the police and city officials... Get sloppily arrested... perhaps even gassed or beaten.
Because at least there's SOME CHANCE that it would not be in vain.
The stage has already been set... The following is EXACTLY what they're doing to the Houseless of Santa Cruz, as noted by a human rights lawyer in this brief about the government's impingement on public space for protests."...troubling, and less often discussed, is the sustained use of state power to deter peaceful protesters through over-policing, a zero tolerance approach to minor violations of city ordinances and the imposition of a shifting battery of unspecified "rules." http://jurist.org/sidebar/2012/08/emi-maclean-nypd-occupy.php
It doesn't take a mob, it takes a PUSH, and candle light vigils with or without a tent at city hall again, accomplish nothing.
Here's how inaction works.
I saw an article awhile back stating the dems in congress were attempting to add $61 million dollars to the continuing resolution on the federal budget (going on 5 years since a real one) to repair cracks in the Capitol dome (with the fresco of G Washington achieving godhood) so I was suggesting around town that maybe we should just let the fucking thing all fall in and congress would meet on the Capitol steps where we could all throw rotten vegetables and rocks at them.
I did not meet ONE PERSON of any political stripe who thought that was a bad idea.
But when I suggest something like this, the same fucking people will NOT be for it.
Intangibles are sooooo much more convenient that the tangible suggestion that we jack our LOCAL AND AVAILABLE 1% pandering politicians up
Just so you know... a well known local street performer and I were discussing this and he said... In regard to OccupySantaCruz and HUFF's 'involvement' with the houseless of Santa Cruz:
"These people just don't seem to understand how badly they've alienated the people they want to 'organize'"
I second that and add... One thing Huff and OSC don't understand... We're REALLY REALLY good at spotting scams shams fakes and opportunists. It's a survival skill... and the organizational ranks of those two orgs are littered with them.
One look at the state of Green Parties globally is illustrative of why.
Do you also believe the SEIU is different from the AFL-CIO or Teamsters (with whom the SEIU is affiliated) in any significant way?
The economic system and the ecosystem are already killing humans off under the current regime, capitalism. Not just the worst off, not just those who are in the deepest need, not just the angry or passive victims of police repression, not just the houseless, but NEARLY EVERYONE needs to wake up to the reality of the fact that life as we know it in the industrialized world OUGHT TO END. And then we need to find the will and courage to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. The sooner, the better. We need to create new non-capitalist, non-ecosystem destroying systems of material relations, as well as caring, non-dignity destroying social relations.
No, the Green Parties are not organized and effective. There full of the same type of behavior you are critical of in HUFF or Occupy. But, the fact of the matter is that the militants aren't organized or effective either. The militant action you desire cannot get off the ground. I see that you are trying to organize it yourself with "World Can't Wait." That doesn't seem to have caught on, has it? And yelling at or insulting the immobile masses does not mobilize them, as far as we've seen, has it?
Don't alienate your potential allies, brother. That's the advice I have been handing out lately, but we're all too wrapped up in our own narcissism to listen. (And it is true that I am the most in need of my own advice.) A diversity of tactics is necessary, but power struggles within our movement are a mistake, in my opinion. I wish to get to a sense of "power with" instead of "power over" (I'm quoting Starhawk). Until 99% of us are able to grapple with that, we will continue to be marginal and fail to change the systems that are killing and oppressing us.
Peace and Solidarity to all my friends.
I wouldn't expect too many homeless people would show up.
Did Neil Frank (OccupySC's anti-homeless troll) plan this?
Meanwhile, the police have chased the houseless away from the front of Starbucks, so they moved up to Peets and vicinity wherer they are being further harassed. ANd FWIW the sanitizing of the sidewalk in front of Starbucks was not by request of the manager, but by city agency (police) fiat... So don't blame big bad Starbucks. The local employees are quite kind to the (behaviorally maintained and not so maintained) houseless.
Folks can still get in on the organizing, ask for or offer transportation to San Francisco next weekend (where there will be a legal campground for folks to stay) or on Monday, September 17, when the bulk of direct actions are planned. Come to the Sunday (Post Office, 2 PM) or Wednesday GA (Courthouse steps, 6PM) to connect, or go to the Occupy Santa Cruz website. http://www.occupysantacruz.org
The General Assembly for Occupy Santa Cruz is open to all. Anyone can offer a topic for discussion and action planning, although reasonable time limits are generally put in place by the group.
The next Occupy Santa Cruz General Assembly will be held Sunday, September 9, at 2 PM at the downtown Post Office steps.
Hope to see you there, brother.
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