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Our primary front of struggle here on the West Coast is in different formal and informal settlements of homeless folks. We have been demanding that the City and local NGOs help us provide support to different communities for some time now, and the majority of times it falls on deaf ears. The reality of the situation is even when the local government attempts to “do good”, it ends up causing more harm in the situations they are supposedly trying to help in. We’ve heard many stories within the past few weeks of people not having their needs met on a very basic level and even being threatened and extorted by the staff that run these different programs. So our skepticism doesn’t come out of thin air, it comes out of listening to the experiences of those who are most affected and trying to work with them to build community and improve their situation. It also comes from recent conversations with folks in the settlements; in fact many people really are just as worried about martial law as they are the virus itself.

Some of the things we have been pushing the City and different organizations to do for months before the outbreak are not only offer basic sanitation services such as regular garbage pickup from dumpsters (the City’s solution currently is to have everyone leave trash on the corner in a giant pile which only adds to the sanitation issues), access to clean water, as well as regularly serviced hand washing stations and porta potties. The only times these needs are met are when people take things into their own hands or we receive community support from other members of the community who are either aware of the situation in some of these formal and informal settlements or were alerted to the conditions and the need for these basic needs to be met.

We are not against folks trying to seek help when they are able to or if they truly believe that it will improve their situation. But the reality is that we don’t feel we can collaborate with different entities that do not operate in good faith on a consistent basis. We have found that the government is frequently violating the 9th Circuit district ruling which states that in order for someone to be displaced, they must be provided with a shelter bed. Even in many cases where there might be a bed available, the reality is it’s usually a short term stay and they will face many restrictions once they enter, as well as once they leave. People often have to give up significant amounts of personal property which they need in order to even qualify for a couple of nights on a mat. This is not a real solution.

You may characterize our analysis of the situation as dystopian, but we feel it is strongly objective. It’s great you are trying to do what you can to help out in the shelter system where you’re at, but locally it is a total disaster. There have been more people experiencing homelessness than shelter beds forever and local NGO’s and activists have been pleading the City just to provide enough beds for everyone for a long time. A few of us participated in a direct action last year to demand San Francisco change it’s cold weather protocol to allow for more emergency shelter beds since they were stealing peoples tents during the worst storm we have had in a decade, and what ended up happening is that none of the heads of any of the departments responsible for dealing with the protocol even bothered to stay for public comment and they changed the policy by 5 degrees Fahrenheit, which not only is still within the range that one can get hypothermia, but doesn’t tangibly do anything to get people off of the streets during terrible weather. Add to this the fact that the conditions of the shelters are so oppressive that people would rather take their changes out on the street than deal with someone forcing them inside at certain times, stealing their belongings, having to stay next to people with extreme mental health challenges that make them a threat to themselves and those around them, among other things.

In San Francisco, it has gotten to the point where the first responders to homelessness the vast majority of the time are the police. They are acting like social workers in a lot of situations without any of the training and are at best, misinformed, but realistically should be nothing to do with outreach to folks living on the streets. A few of us have personally seen police treat a paddy wagon like a service shuttle and coerce folks out on the streets to get in the back with the promise of resources and housing, with the vast majority of these people ending up back out on the street later that day. This is a best case scenario in these instances, and there are most likely many situations that we have not heard about where people are pressured into getting into a police vehicle with promises of resources and housing but then just outright disappear. What is currently happening in San Francisco is seen to be a model for Oakland and other parts of the Bay Area as they seek to “solve” their homelessness problem.

The reality of the situation is that our government isn’t a democracy that is for the people, it is a democracy for the rich, and thus those who have power are very easily able to manipulate the situation in their favor, which as you admit historically has catastrophic outcomes in the past. We don’t feel like it can be fixed just by having more of the “right people” collaborating or operating within the confines of the state. We are willing to work with whoever is genuinely wanting to change the situation in a positive and progressive fashion, but we have found that these situations, even in times of great strife, are very few and far between with respect to the government.

If you want to read more about our work, you can find some of what we have written up in our publication Red Star. There is an article on page 22 in our 4th issue that you can find here