F@ck Your FEMA Camps - We wont go

YES, THEY ARE COMING FOR THE HOMELESS
by Keith McHenry, co-founder of Food Not Bombs

Billionaire Joe Lonsdale, cofounder of CIA contractor Palantir initiates campaign to intern the homeless

A confluence of horrific policies are converging that threaten the freedom of America”s homeless. California Governor Newsom and big city mayors across the Western United States are demanding the "right" to drive the homeless from view and have pushed for the Supreme Court to remove the Martin v. Boise restrictions on criminalizing the unhoused. The case Johnson v Grants Pass based on the Martin ruling will be heard on Monday, April 22, 2024 at the US Supreme Court in Washington DC.

The effort before the US Supreme Court along with California Prop 1, the CIA linked Cicero Institute’s legislative campaign and just introduced California Senate Bill 1011 ban on public camping are among the measures lining up to force the homeless into mental facilities or internment camps.

In 2016 the CIA linked billionaire, Joe Lonsdale started the Cicero Institute which is spearheading a nationwide effort to criminalize the homeless. He also co-founded the CIA data-mining company Palantir with PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley vulture capitalists. Peter Thiel got his start with the CIA's law firm Sullivan and Cromwell launching a career in deep state manipulation of our society. According to journalist Whitney Webb “Palantir's first backer was the Central Intelligence Agency's venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, but the company steadily grew and in 2015 was valued at $20 billion.”

Palantir currently serves as a contractor to all 17 of the U.S. intelligence agencies, as well as many other U.S. federal agencies including the Pentagon.

After Palantir, Joe Lonsdale founded and remains as Chairman of both Addepar, which has over $4 trillion USD on its wealth management technology platform, and OpenGov, which provides software for over 2,000 municipalities and state agencies.

Joe Lonsdale’s The Cicero Institute provides legislative templates to states and cities.

His website on homelessness starts, “States should ban unauthorized street camping.”

“Street camps are dangerous to the public and the vulnerable homeless alike. They are often hotbeds of violence, especially against women and children —especially those who are homeless themselves.

The public widely supports enforcing ordinances against dangerous street camps and moving individuals into emergency shelters.”

He goes on to write, “States should amend civil commitment laws to make it easier to help those who cannot help themselves — and keep them out of prison.” adding, “Many street homeless suffer from chronic and untreated mental illness. For those that are a public nuisance or a danger to themselves or others, there must be a third option besides prison and abandonment.”

So far the Cicero Institute, has placed ten bills in at least eight states including Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Texas became the first state to pass such a law in 2021, and Tennessee and Missouri followed in 2022.

Cynthia Griffith wrote about Wisconsin’s Assembly Bill 689 and Senate Bill 669 on the Invisible People website, “Concentration camps and secret committees, out-of-state lobbyists, and flat-out lies — as unbelievable and terrifying as it sounds, this is a glimpse into what’s happening behind closed doors in 2024 Wisconsin.”

And it gets even worse. “Kentucky GOP’s New Bill Decriminalizes Use of Deadly Force Against the Unhoused” writes Zane McNeill for the January 17, 2024 edition of Truthout.

“Republican lawmakers in Kentucky introduced a bill last Tuesday that would criminalize homeless encampments and expand the state’s Stand Your Ground law to allow property owners to confront unhoused people with a gun. The bill, dubbed the “Safer Kentucky Act,” already has received more than 45 Republican co-sponsors and the Kentucky State Fraternal Order of Police has committed to testify in support of the legislation when it has a committee hearing."

Another dire measure is California Proposition 1, Behavioral Health Services Program and Bond Measure (March 2024) that would fund a $6.4 billion bond to drastically expand the state’s mental health and substance abuse treatment infrastructure. A majority of the money, $4.4 billion, would be used to build 10,000 in-patient and residential treatment beds across the state. The Cicero Institute says “states should amend civil commitment laws to make it easier to help those who cannot help themselves.”

I have lost homeless friends to the mental health system who were perfectly happy with their independence, were not a danger to themselves or others and didn’t use drugs. In two cases they were just free spirited “hippies” until someone in Santa Cruz County government decided to haul them off to the mental hospital where their health failed. In one case she died a few days after being released because she stopped taking their mind numbing psych drugs. Another lost nearly 100 pounds in less than half a year and his life’s work of jewelry, drums and his spiritual website were trashed along with the working van he lived in.

Then there is California Senate Bill 1011 introduced by Senate GOP leader Brian Jones of San Diego and Democratic Sen. Catherine Blakespear of Encinitas. Modeled after San Diego's cruel "Unsafe Camping Ordinance," Senate Bill 1011 would prohibit encampments within 500 feet of schools, open spaces and major transit stops. It also bans camping on sidewalks if shelter space is available; requires cities or counties to give an unhoused person 72-hour notice before clearing an encampment; and mandates "enforcement personnel" to provide information about homeless shelters in the area.

If the US Supreme Court strikes down the Ninth Circuit ruling that homeless persons cannot be punished for sleeping outside on public property in the absence of adequate alternatives it could set the stage for interning our homeless neighbors and friends.

This is of particular concern since the number of people becoming homeless is already on the increase and is sure to explode as economic conditions worsen. Pressure to “do something about all the people living on the streets” could provide the political justification from the forced removal of the those living outside. Housing and Urban Development reported an 11% increase in the number of unhoused Americans in 2023 from the year before. According to a new report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies claims that housing is unaffordable for half of all American renters.

Rather than spending the $95 billion being allocated to the waging of wars it could have been redirected to humane solutions to our failed economy but just as those in power view Palestinians as “human animals” they also view the homeless as less than human. If they can exterminate 15,000 children in less than four months as the world looks on in horror there is really nothing these monsters are not capable of doing to any of us.

If you are in California join the rally and civil disobedience on the west side of the State Capitol Building on Saturday, March 16, 2024 at noon to 2 at 10th Street between N and L Streets in Sacramento.

There is also a rally planned for Monday, April 22, 2024 outside the US Supreme Court.

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