8/3/2019 Press Release - 'DC Community Members Take Over Franklin School In Solidarity With Occupy Movement'

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8/3/2019 Press Release - 'DC Community Members Take Over Franklin School In Solidarity With Occupy Movement'

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STATEMENT FROM FREE FRANKLIN!

On November 19 th , a group working to Free Franklin occupied the vacant Franklin School building at 13 th and K St inNW Washington, DC. Inspired by and participating in the Occupy/Liberate/De-colonize movements taking root acrossthe country, we are a group of organizers, activists, and DC community members involved in local struggles aroundaffordable housing, homelessness, and many other movements. The occupation of Franklin School is an action insolidarity with this movement and a call for justice from the 99% here in DC!

The Franklin School building, owned by the city, has been vacant since late September 2008 when the DC governmentclosed the homeless shelter that was housed there right before the beginning of hypothermia season. Despite promises thatall of the residents would be given permanent housing, the majority wound up in other over-crowded shelters away fromdowntown, far from physical and mental health care and other needed services, or were put out onto the street. Threeyears later the city continues to break its promises to house and shelter DC residents, under-funding housing and shelterprograms, including cutting $3 million from services for DC's 6,500 homeless individuals and $20 million for affordablehousing last year alone. The DC government refuses to ensure the most basic human right to housing for everyone in ourcommunity.

The closure of Franklin Shelter was not an isolated incident; it is part of a wave of austerity measures andstructural adjustment policies that are mirrored all over the U.S. and globally, the policies of capitalism pushed bythe 1 %. Structural adjustment locally and nationally has removed land, plants, buildings, and other community resourcesfrom the hands of the people into corporate control. The U.S. government spends trillions of dollars to perpetuateimperialist wars and occupations overseas, and to unjustly imprison millions of people, criminalizing the activities ofimmigrants and people of color, in a ballooning prison system. Then, the federal and local governments push austeritymeasures that most impact poor and working class people by slashing funding for basic services for our communities. Thecrisis of homelessness in DC is part of a larger crisis of affordable housing, with years of rampant gentrificationdisplacing low-income people of color from their homes and from the city, and the foreclosure crisis caused by unchecked banks who continue to rake in record profits while more and more families lose their homes.

Our government has failed to address this crisis, so we are taking action to do it ourselves. The Occupy movement decriesthe corporate control of our government, which includes corporate control of services like housing, education, andhealthcare through ever increasing privatization, creating a system where basic human needs are seen only as potential foprofit, denied to those who can't afford the price. But now, communities are fighting back! By occupying public spaces,de-comodifying land, redistributing resources, and practicing direct democracy, we can provide for each other and ourcommunities, and begin to build the more just world that we envision.

The Franklin building is a public building that belongs to the people of DC and must be put to use for the benefit of thecommunity to meet the greatest community need. It is not surplus, and the people of DC will not allow the government togive it away or sell it to private developers to tum it into a boutique hotel! DC residents are denied statehood and budgetautonomy, a disenfranchisement fueled by racism, and are acutely aware of the importance of having control over ourown resources. Therefore, we demand Franklin be put to more productive use and a genuinely participatory process forDC communities to determine what is most needed. We can't forget that the building first became a homeless shelterthanks to an occupation carried out in 2002 by a community group actively taking control of public property to put it touse for the public good!

We invite DC community members who have a stake in and are interested in the future ofthe Franklin building to cometo a public meeting on Monday, November 21 St, at 6:30 PM, at Asbury United Methodist Church(11th and K St NW) to talk about community needs and your vision for the future of the Franklin building . I t could bere-opened as a homeless shelter or drop-in site (there was previously a proposal made by former residents to do sweatequity to fix it up), an adult education center, a public school, a free health clinic, a community center, street legal clinic,etc. Bring your ideas and vision for how to develop this space under community control, and in collaboration withgrowing movements for social and economic justice in DC and beyond!

We call on other members of the Occupy movement, in Washington, DC and around the world, to join us in reclaimingunused spaces. We will not allow a few people to determine the use of our community property. We demand a trulyparticipatory process and we will model the future we believe is possible.

8/3/2019 Press Release - 'DC Community Members Take Over Franklin School In Solidarity With Occupy Movement'

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BRIEF HISTORY OF THE FRANKLIN BUILDING

Since September of 2008 the Franklin building has been shuttered with no real prospect of beingmade available for community use. However, the building has a long history of housing servicesfor the public.

The Franklin building started as the Franklin School in 1869. Its fourteen classrooms served as amodel for the city's new public school system. It also housed the offices of the Superintendentand the Board of Trustees, as well as the first high school and first Normal School for whitestudents.

The exterior of Franklin was restored in 1992. It was placed on the National Register of HistoricPlaces and has been designated as a National Historic Landmark.

In August 2002, when the building had been boarded up for 20 years, a coalition for thehomeless called Mayday DC occupied the Franklin School to advocate for its opening as an

emergency hypothermia shelter. This effort was successful, and the School was opened as ashelter. The shelter was extended through the spring and early summer due to the desperate needby the homeless in Ward 2. The city then closed the Franklin School entirely and intended to sellit to private condominium developers, leaving more than 160 people with no shelter or housingat all.

In July 2003, Mayday DC, T.R.LB.E., and the Gray Panthers of Metropolitan Washington againoccupied the building to oppose the sale and promote community use of the building. As a resultof the direct actions, Mayor Anthony Williams announced that the Franklin School would againbe used as an emergency hypothermia shelter with 160 beds for families.

On September 16,2008, the D.C. Council passed emergency legislation requiring the Mayor tocertify to the Council that no fewer than 300 men had been placed into housing before theclosure of Franklin Shelter could take place. Until that happened, the Council mandated thatFranklin continue its operations as a 300 person shelter. The legislation also required to providethe Council "with a report on any proposed closing of the Franklin Shelter that includes adescription of the current capacity, current availability, and location of replacement shelterspace, and the ability to seasonally increase capacity to reduce incidences of hypothermia amongthe homeless population prior to closing the Franklin Shelter. "

During this period, the DC Council also unanimously agreed that adequate shelter capacity is apriority for D.C. and expressed a growing mistrust of the Administration's lack of transparency

in implementing its Housing First program and closing the last low-barrier downtown shelter.

In spite of all this, Mayor Adrian Fenty moved rapidly to close Franklin Shelter ahead ofschedule, ignoring the requirements of the City Council's emergency legislation and leaving over100 former residents with nowhere to go. Since then, the building has sat fallow.