Monthly Archives: April 2018

A Sensible Place to Stand

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The people seem resigned and uninterested in their eviction from the Joe Rodota Trail, which starts as early as tomorrow at 2:30. The life in community is infinitely better than being scattered, and they will squeeze every hour from it they can. I’m curious how the police will handle that attitude. I’m sure the paddywagon and the sheer breadth of agencies involved in yesterday’s raid in south Santa Rosa were supposed to impress. Yet I don’t know anyone on the trail who has moved anything away, excepting only a few sneaks who have been at it a little. If we’d've harangued and banged on a can all up and down the trail, I don’t think it would’ve made a difference.

However, I have heard many talking and asking about where to go. 25 years of looking at homelessness, the questions still floor me: that a day from now can be so unknown, with worldly goods, relationships, and health turned into matters of chance. I tell them this week that I don’t know any place to go; that we may not have any trucks, depending on how many people show up and contribute to help. 

If situations escalate, our officials may behave so erroneously that one must drape bodies across things, and impede their police’s intent. We part ways respectfully with their police management then, in view of our difference in interests, and meet as enemies who know and respect one another.  We can keep communicating about some aspects of it, if safety or risk is involved.

The philosopher and social scientist Michael Nagler teaches that the point in a conflict when one engages in civil disobedience is a personal thing, but we can often recognize together how the madness has continued too long to stand aside. The first part of that lesson, the personal nature of the decision, has resonated with me for weeks. I’ve taken a tide that lapped at my feet a scant hour ago. I am moved to act, and to urge others to. 

The second part of Michael’s lesson is that we can see our way to being moved often at roughly the same time, and act together seemingly all at once. We’re not talking about a great many of us gained to the fight, per se; having 12 instead of 6 opens up all kinds of avenues in many situations. We can see our way together to an act of defense in these cruel evictions. When volunteers become close to our friends, and learn of their lives, we feel together with them the human costs of bad ideas reigning supreme in encampment policy. We can easily link arms with our sons and daughters and aunties, and find a sensible place to stand.

Evicting Homeless Disabled People- Yesterday and Tomorrow

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Sonoma County’s Sheriff’s Office came in strong at an old encampment yesterday. It had doubled in size after our eviction at Last Chance village. The eviction occurred after I believe every single soul who had just moved to the encampment had left, and did their best to remove their things responsibly.
The deputies knew they had left- had cruised the site early that morning. Even so, the event was worth a paddywagon, I believe six deputy cruisers eventually, a CHP, and a ranger of some sort. Later, a fire truck and an ambulance,
It was getting warm by then. I thought they might’ve let a few bicycle snack vendors know, to get them popsicles and pork rinds. A little media-sized parade, in garish, loud colors. I wasn’t on site, but I understand and can see from the video that it was a claim-the-territory tour, a false eviction (so far), a murky arrest, and an arguably predictable injury.
The old-timers on that site had kindly allowed the newcomers to try their hand there, knowing it might yield a raid.That kind allowance was made five days ago.
The Sheriff should plan and allocate that common ambulance to the site of evictions in advance, now that it’s been called for with about half the major evictions. Get it out there– no mistakes. Then, as you do Sonoma County budgeting this summer, remember the pictures we’ll show you, remember how much it cost to keep those boots on the ground, that helo in the air, your managers juggling agencies and vehicles and ancillary services at your behest. Note and financially evaluate how easy it was to re-prioritize that helo, and those boots, and those suddenly-needed services to that site, all well above patrol and normal labor and standby needs for real emergencies.
One law enforcement person was explicit in his intention to take advantage of the scattering by questioning people in the areas of the evictions. Eight or more of the Last Chance alumni have been arrested so far, out of the perhaps 70 there at the end of the encampment.
Heartless and expensive, with no respect for human dignity. Sonoma County treats its dogs better than this. The county’s lawyers churn, and despair of justifying this fool of a Sheriff’s Office, young men on a romp. Mark Essick, as the head of Sheriff Operations, is responsible for yesterday’s eviction. He is currently favored to win the Sheriff’s election.
We hope that cost will teach the county what mercy should. I hope they learn the lesson over the coming month, so budgeting season is fruitful. County staff should prepare the coming year’s homelessness budget by listing the fully allocated expense of each anticipated event like this. Assume a dose of known unknowns, and unknown unknowns, mostly in law, health, and emergency-related expenses, and add them. Add the environmental costs of fecal and urine and garbage pollution in random waterways and byways in Sonoma County, and the medical costs associated with unnecessary poor sanitation. Finally, add the unknown costspeople being chained to and across things.
The accountants will neglect the social costs to disparate neighborhoods, as usual; neglect the distraction and embarrassment of leadership. Mostly, they will neglect the untellable cost the Sheriff’s Office creates in the lives of my friends, their families, and their charities. My friends are bandied about like betting sticks. All of them had a challenge to live acceptably in Last Chance village– now, their lives are a nightmare. Some of my friends have been evicted two more times after the Last Chance eviction a week ago. Some have been arrested, to my knowledge on bullshit or minor charges.  These are people who have families, friends, things, hobbies, trash, and bathroom needs. Their lives press in from all sides. Close as I am to see it, their pain and the effects of that pain in their lives is a clear and deep cost to them and those who love them.
Accountants may neglect that cost; we cannot, and neither may our elected officials. The stories are pathetic or worse. The man who missed a shelter bed, who didn’t have two dollars to charge his phone on a neighbor’s gas charger, so he couldn’t find out if he’d been left a message that he had a bed (he had; he missed it.) The woman who throws herself between fighting friends, knowing that neither will hit a woman. The man who struggles to lurch his small family from squat to squat while working– too proud to accept help, then forced to accept help, then leaving things behind. The former counselors, the PTSD, the surges of community anxiety that flows over into their lives, the lives of their marriages. The elderly, mentally ill, or the anxious, who can’t get simple attentions or basic shelter, but can be corked off on occasional ambulance rides during a personal mayhem, initiated for them by government action.
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Now, the campground on the Joe Rodota Trail immediately behind Last Chance is bigger than Last Chance was at the end. It’s a worse nightmare in about seventy ways, though people are being remarkably clean. No bathrooms offered by public health or anyone else, public or private, for all those people, going on a week. An eviction notice has gone up, and they intend to come in after Friday at 2:30 PM. Yesterday, there were 42 tents, probably about 80 people there. They took months to plan and negotiate the Last Chance eviction; this bigger eviction was ordered two days ago, and it starts tomorrow.
Stop this madness.