Berkeley, CA – A protest by the advocacy group, Where Do We Go, held at the MLK Civic Center Park on Saturday, condemned the passage of the Encampment Policy Resolution Item 37 on the Berkeley City Council’s September 10 2024 agenda which provides authority to sweep approximately 2/3 of all homeless individuals’ camps in Berkeley.
Where Do We Go (“WDWG”) and other homeless advocacy groups have stated that Encampment Management Policies like those in Berkeley and Oakland, as well as the governor’s recent executive order, are harmful and counterproductive ways to address homelessness.
“There is nowhere left to go, there is not enough services for everyone, the [Berkeley] city manager’s office has acknowledged this. Our backs are against the wall, they are threatening everyone with arrest if they don’t leave their homes.” Says WDWG President Ian Cordova Morales, “We would much rather be expending our energy offering housing but there just isn’t any.”
Where Do We Go said this protest hopes to address the alarming arrests of social workers, advocates, and journalists at a sweep in Oakland on the 23rd and MLK last week.
The group called it a “misuse” of “safe worker zone” ordinances to prevent social workers and advocates from accessing their clients in moments of crisis.
The group said these tactics chill freedom of speech, restrict our right to freely assemble, and impede the free exchange of ideas and observations of the press. “Everyone wants a home and that requires an abundance of affordable housing that does not exist,” said Civil Rights Attorney and WDWG Executive Director Andrea Henson.
“A movement has started where we stand up against the tyranny of political parties that want to exclude and punish those experiencing homelessness to benefit their campaigns.”
She added, “Across the Bay Area and California things are changing and the voices of those who are being discriminated against and segregated because of poverty and their allies are rising. Pay attention because the people will not tolerate this deplorable and targeted persecution. No one should be criminalized because they cannot afford to pay their rent.”
Gordon Gilmore, Chair of the Berkeley Outreach Coalition and Officer of the Berkeley Homeless Union added, “With nowhere to go when their homes are discarded, folks who are forced to exist in public space by the draconian private property system of the Bay Area effectively become criminalized for doing so by the language of the Encampment Policy Resolution.”
He continued, “While an amendment may have been made to take out explicit language of ‘citation and arrest’, the resolution continues to state that it will refer to state and federal law. With the SCOTUS ruling on the federal level, which negated the recognition of 8th Amendment rights violations in regard to disposing of someone’s shelter, won in the Martin v Boise 2018 ruling, and Newsom’s executive order on the state level, which leverages this disregard of constitutional rights violations to empower agents of the state to take ‘reasonable’ (by whose reason?), ‘policy-driven’ actions to resolve encampments in an effort to ‘end homelessness’, they’re retaining the meaning of ‘citation and arrest’ implicitly.”
Gilmore said, “Berkeley should stand by its progressive history and provide the care that unhoused and advocates have been asking for, such as ADA accessibility and mental health outreach when connecting folks with services, instead of capitulating to enforcement.”
Among the demands:
- Stop criminalizing individuals who cannot afford to pay their rent
- Provide detailed accountability and oversight of the massive government spending on homeless programs that do not produce results
- Provide affordable housing, assistance, and resources for individuals who cannot afford to pay their rent
- Provide ADA accessible housing and temporary shelter for those who have disabilities
- End the discrimination and segregation of individuals experiencing homelessness and poverty
- And STOP THE SWEEPS!
