Street SpiritJ U S T I C E N E W S & H O M E L E S S B L U E S I N T H E B A Y A R E A

VVoolluummee 1199,, NNoo.. 44 AApprriill 22001133 $$11..0000

AA ppuubblliiccaattiioonn ooff tthhee AAmmeerriiccaann FFrriieennddss SSeerrvviiccee CCoommmmiitttteeee

by Carol Denney�“A person earning California�’s mini-

mum wage of $8.00 must work approxi-mately 130 hours a week to feasibly afforda two-bedroom rental.�” �— Kim Tran, EastBay Express, March 20, 20138

It�’s safe to say that 95 percent of theBay Area goes to sleep every nightwith the secure knowledge that easily

between 100 to 1,000 people are asleepnearby, behind dumpsters and under bush-es within a five-to-ten-mile radius.

�“Berkeley ... has the widest gap betweenrich and poor in the Bay Area, according torecently released data from the CensusBureau,�” reported Aaron Glantz in the NewYork Times on Nov. 19, 2011.

It�’s also safe to say that, by now, manyBay Area residents have realized thatevery trip to the grocery store and theBART station will necessitate walkingpast between two and twenty people withoutstretched hands, shadowed by at leasttwice that number in severe, specific, andimmediate need.

This isn�’t the full picture. This is justtheir picture, the picture that colors theirneighborhood, their day, their sense ofcommunity and fairness, and whether ornot the world is a good place to be.

It�’s safe to say most of them have hit thebreaking point and can no longer imaginethat handing out dollars and dimes repre-sents any kind of solution to poverty. It�’ssafe to say that most of them recognize thata radical change in housing policy is not

just a civic, but also a moral obligation. Yet, none of these people were protest-

ing the policy of building housing specifi-cally for the out-of-town Prada/Lexuscrowd in front of the opening of BerkeleyCentral�’s new luxury apartments on

Thursday, March 21, 2013. They evident-ly don�’t believe homelessness can happento them, or that squandering scarce squarefootage on pied-a-terre techies plays anyrole in the housing crisis.

On the same day that Berkeley Central

held its ribbon-cutting ceremony for theseluxury apartments, the San FranciscoChronicle ran a cover story about the 264homeless families hoping for shelter inSan Francisco. The East Bay Express and

Berkeley Celebrates Luxury Housing for the Elite

by Terry Messman

Just as several unexpected and mas-sive nonviolent uprisings have dealtserious blows to brutal regimesaround the globe, several scholars

and researchers have dealt equally seriousblows to generations of military analystsand national-security studies.

In a pioneering effort to systematicallycompare success rates of violent and non-violent social-change movements, EricaChenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, authorsof Why Civil Resistance Works: TheStrategic Logic of Nonviolent Conflict,researched 323 social-change campaignsfrom 1900 to 2006. Their electrifyingfinding was that campaigns of nonviolentresistance are nearly twice as likely tosucceed as violent uprisings.

Their innovative research may haveproven astonishing in the circles of interna-tional security studies and military analysts,but it was solid confirmation of the lifelongresearch into nonviolent resistance carriedout by Stephen Zunes, an author andProfessor of Politics and InternationalStudies at the University of San Francisco.

Zunes approaches the study of nonvio-lent movements with the dedication of ascholar, and with the commitment of alongtime activist for social change.

For the past 18 years, he has taughtcourses on nonviolent resistance, conflict

resolution, U.S. foreign policy, and thepolitics of the Middle East at theUniversity of San Francisco.

His activism has even deeper roots,extending all the way back to Vietnam-eraanti-war protests and environmental cam-paigns when he was very young, thenleading on to nonviolent activism in hisuniversity days as an organizer in the anti-apartheid movement that demandeddivestment from South Africa and an endto the apartheid regime. His commitmenthas carried on into the present day withhis participation last year in severalprotests and marches with the Occupymovement in Oakland and San Francisco.

Zunes recently wrote that nonviolentaction �“is the most powerful political toolavailable to challenge oppression.�”

That rather remarkable assertion seemsto fly in the face of conventional wisdom,which holds that nonviolent movementsare nearly powerless when facing thetechnological firepower of military dicta-torships willing to massacre unarmed pro-testers simply to hold onto power.

In his recent article, �“Weapons of MassDemocracy,�” Zunes stated his case per-suasively. He wrote, �“It was not the leftistguerrillas of the New People�’s Army whobrought down the U.S.-backed Marcosdictatorship in the Philippines. It was nunspraying the rosary in front of the regime�’s

tanks, and the millions of others whobrought greater Manila to a standstill.�”

Nonviolent movements have toppleddictators of all political persuasions fromall over the globe, in Mali, Serbia, Poland,Bolivia, the Philippines, East Germany,Latin America, and Africa.

During the largely nonviolent uprisingsof the Arab Spring, it became clear thatawareness of the previously unexploredpower of nonviolence to overthrow tyran-nical governments has spread far beyond

the inner circles of academics and policyanalysts and is now giving new hope �—and new revolutionary strategies �— topeople all over the world.

The power of nonviolent movements toovercome a military regime seems to turnall conventional wisdom about power andsecurity on its head. Instead of powerderiving from the guns and tanks and jetbombers and missiles of the military,power derives from the people.

Writer Carol Denney's effort to illustrate that luxury apartments don't meet the housing needs of anyone except the wealthywas upsetting to Berkeley Central apartment staff, who threatened her and the photographer (Urban Strider) with the police.

See Luxury Apartments in Berkeley page 12

A Power That Can Overthrow Dictatorships

USF Professor Stephen Zunes addresses a rally on the power of nonviolent resistance.

See The Power of Nonviolence page 6

April 2013ST R E E T SP I R I T2

by Dan McMullan

Ameeting was held last week toexamine the woes of TelegraphAvenue in Berkeley. This was only

the latest meeting of about 20 I�’ve attendedthrough the years, so you will have toexcuse many of us, on all sides of the issue,for not proclaiming a new dawn.

I voiced the same concern I havevoiced over and over again for manyyears, namely, that heavy-handed perse-cution by the City of Berkeley and thepolice �— at the behest of Real EstateMoguls �— are ruining a vibrant political,intellectual and music scene that once wasfabled on Telegraph Avenue.

A scene that once attracted visitorsfrom around the world is now a dim,faded shadow that is threatened in a waynot seen and understood since the rescu-ing of the California Condor in the 1970s.

One of these last �“Telegraph Condors�”is Bob Meister. I have known TelegraphAvenue Street Vendor Bob for nearly 25years. I have watched him raise a family,and have seen him help homeless peopleregain a sense of their self-worth andrestart their lives.

And I took lessons from Bob thathelped me end my own homelessness,raise two children and start a new day inmy own life.

I also watched a couple of monthsback while eight UC Berkeley policearrested Bob. By the way they were act-ing, I thought he might have been caughtin some desperate act, so I was shocked tofind out it was for his hemp cookies thatwe often liken to eating a bowl ofBerkeley Bowl Hemp Granola.

But UC officials see this as a way tocrush the last vestiges of that TelegraphSpirit and they�’re not letting this opportuni-ty slip by. He�’s been hit with a boatload offelonies, their refusal to recognize a med-ical cannabis card (on a later home visitthey made) and no plea deals whatsoever.

After witnessing this travesty, I wenthome and turned on the TV to the Germannews channel DW. In this crazy, upside-down America, now we have to go toEurope to find out about America.

It was the one-year anniversary of thedeath of Steve Jobs and there was a spe-cial called Apple: �“It�’s got to be cool.�”The program speculated that it might havebeen the Berkeley counterculture thatJobs experienced while attendingBerkeley (including a cookie or two?) thatenhanced his education and influenced hisunconventional thinking, and that led to aworld-shaking revolution in technology.

When the TV program showed a sceneof Berkeley�’s Telegraph Avenue to makethis point, it was Bob Meister and hisfamous Telegraph vending table thatcame on the screen.

I was floored. Precisely what I�’ve beensaying for 20 years was writ large in aGerman documentary on the very day ofBob�’s arrest. Yet, Bob was now facingfour felonies for possession of a cookie.

His hearing was set for March 13 at 9a.m. at Oakland�’s Fallon Street court-house before Judge Panetta (yes, CIAdirector Leon Panetta�’s daughter-in-law).

I was planning to attend myself, and Iasked anyone who cares about their free-dom and the freedom of others to join me.

DDT is everywhere and our condorsare dying. But there is still hope whilegood people stop and look and let themknow we are watching.

COOKIE CAPER IN COURT

I haven�’t been to court in awhile, so Ihad put away the memory of the horror ofit all. And missing for me was that dreadin the pit of your stomach that comeswhen you know your life is in the handsof people that make a living chewing uplives into human wreckage.

Fortunately, I get up really early in themorning with my boys for school, so itwasn�’t a problem to make it to the courthearing that morning. But as I stood onthe BART platform, I couldn�’t help think-ing, as I looked around at the peoplegoing to work, that they at least have areasonable expectation of where they aregoing.

But when the system gets you, yourfuture is a cipher, the crystal ball murky.To say the least.

By 9 a.m., I had been bomb-checkedand was inside Department 11 of theFallon Street Courthouse, sitting in mywheelchair, with Telegraph Bob sittingnervously nearby.

This is a court reserved for the bigcrimes, so me and Bob being here wasway out of place. We watched the meatgrinder do its magic of turning people intonumbers for nearly two hours, whenBob�’s attorney, James Rodriquez, pokedhis head through the door at the back, and

motioned Bob outside. I followed them, but kept my distance

for a while to let them talk a little. Then Iintroduced myself. Bob�’s attorney was agood man and knew his law. He was flab-bergasted by the lunacy of the case. He saidthat all the letters that we could get to himon behalf of Bob would certainly help.

For the first time, Bob got to go overthe police report. I was disgusted. Thephotos were out of some future farcemovie, with an actual picture of two sidesof a five-dollar bill in one. And Bob�’s lit-tle cards that he uses to keep track of thecolorful patches he has sold as a vendoron Telegraph, and must regularly replace,was portrayed as a drug dealer�’s list.

Two female cops were pictured inBob�’s house with baking supplies piled onthe table, and they had the smiles of asmarmy, successful deer hunter proudlypointing out their kill. The two male copsposing with Bob�’s life savings were evenmore pathetic.

This is what billions of dollars in lawenforcement gets us? Home invasions ofthe only person left on Telegraph that avisitor can take a photo with?

As I pointed out, Bob was recently fea-tured in a televised special on the one-year anniversary of the death of SteveJobs, as the program depicted theBerkeley spirit as what influenced Jobs to

be such a free-thinking innovator. So why is Telegraph sinking? Start

with a police force that has no direction,working with another police farce that hadtwo years of its �“real drugs�” likeMethedrine, Heroin and Ecstasy stolenfrom its drug locker and sold back to kidson the Berkeley streets!

But we are asked to forget all that andlook the other way while they cook agood, hard-working man, who addstremendous value to his community.

Not me, and I hope ... Not you.

Taking Down Telegraph Avenue�’s Last HippieA hemp cookie turns into amalicious prosecution forlong-time counterculturetourist attraction Bob Meister.

Support Bob MeisterShow up at Bob Meister�’s next court

hearing at 1225 Fallon Street, Dept. 11,on Thursday, April 18, at 9 a.m.

Please send your letters on BobMeister�’s behalf to his attorney:

James Rodriguez, 1401 LakesideDrive Suite 400, Oakland, CA 94612

You might also write on his behalf tothe judge and the district attorney:

Judge Carrie McIntyre Panetta, Dept.11, 1225 Fallon St., Oakland, CA 94612General Court Phone: (510) 891-6000

Alameda County District Attorney,1225 Fallon St., Oakland, CA 94612Phone: (510) 272-6222E-mail: askrcd-da@acgov.org

by Dan McMullan

On Sunday, March 31, on thelast day of Zachary CruzPedestrian Safety Month inBerkeley, a small group of

Berkeley residents met under rainy skies,to point out a dangerous fact.

Our progressive little city �— the onethat often preaches how it should be doneto the entire country and, yes, even theentire world �— is the most dangerous lit-tle city of its size to be a pedestrian, inthe entire state of California.

Recently, I was hit in a crosswalk by avehicle while in my wheelchair. The firstpolice officer�’s response was pretty damnshocking. And offensive.

Fortunately, we have a department thatis willing to take a deeper, better look andcity officials who, for all their crazy poli-ticking, know a serious issue when itcrops up. So the case is now being rein-vestigated.

But the bigger issue that was shakenout of my head in that accident is that youcan take every precaution, cover all theangles, and if the other guy is not looking

out for you, you still might find yourselfwaking up face down on the asphalt, likeI did, thinking you are taking your lastbreaths.

Or worse, you could have a day namedafter your child.

Our group of pedestrians met at theBerkeley BART and took a walk in the

downtown area, crossing streets legallyand very visibly to remind drivers that weare out there, and our lives are in yourhands.

Thank you to all who participated inthe Memorial and Walk and thank you,Berkeleyans, who watch out for us everyday.

A Disabled Pedestrian�’s Plea for Safety

Bob Meister sits at his vendor table on Telegraph Avenue, as he has done nearly every day for 20 years. Dan McMullan photo

A group of Berkeleyans gather to walk for safety for pedestrians(and pedestrian dogs) during Pedestrian Safety Month in Berkeley.

Dan McMullanphoto

April 2013 ST R E E T SP I R I T 3

Donate or Subscribe to Street Spirit!Street Spirit is published by the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC). Homeless vendors receive 50 papers a day, keep allproceeds from sales of the paper and educate the community about social justice issues. Please donate or subscribe to Street Spirit !

! I enclose $25 for one year's subscription.! I enclose a donation of ! $100 ! $50 ! $ 25

Name: __________________________________________________________Address: ________________________________________________________City: ________________________________ State:______ Zip: ___________

Send Donations to: AFSC65 Ninth Street,San Francisco, CA 94103

April 2013

by T.J. Johnston

San Francisco may soon be tryingmore cases against its indigent resi-dents for sitting or sleeping on side-

walks and other so-called �“quality of life�”offenses, said a public defender whopleaded out a client for sitting on a milkcrate on a Tenderloin sidewalk.

Gary Williams, a 52-year-old homelessresident, accepted a three-year probationsentence and a stay-away order from twoblocks in the Tenderloin district for illegallodging, or sleeping outside. He alreadyserved 30 days in the county jail beforethe plea bargain on February 4.

Andrea Lindsay, his lawyer from thePublic Defender�’s office, said Williamscould have fought the charges and won,but the judge reminded him that he facedthree years of jail time for sleeping andadditional charges of public nuisance,obstructing the sidewalk and violating anexisting probation. Williams would alsohave been barred from the entire neigh-borhood, host to a myriad of homelessservice organizations.

�“He was scared, unfortunately andunderstandably, so he agreed to the proba-tion,�” Lindsay said.

Charges like those brought againstWilliams are increasingly common city-wide, according to data from the SanFrancisco Human Services Agency, thedepartment that oversees homeless ser-vices. The number of such citations ofhomeless people jumped sharply in thelast two years: Illegal lodging chargesincreased from 85 to 219; maintaining apublic nuisance, from 134 to 240; andobstructing a sidewalk, from 317 to 677.

Elizabeth Hilton, an attorney in thePublic Defender�’s misdemeanor unit, isalready predicting more cases in the courts.

�“Although we have not yet experi-

enced an increase in quality-of-life offens-es in misdemeanor court, this increase incitations may be a sign we will,�” she said.

Overall figures from the SFHSA alsoshow that police issued more citations toindigents in the last year after a three-yeardecline. Since 2006, local law enforce-ment has written 45,855 tickets for viola-tions of more than 30 state and localcodes. Street people have been ticketed

almost double the previous year�’s amountin 2012, when the number of citationsrose to 5,179 from 2,821 in 2011.

District Attorney George Gascónannounced recently that his office willcrack down specifically on homeless peo-ple who fail to answer to previous cita-tions. Gascón told the San FranciscoChamber of Commerce at a February 19forum that his office is making examples

of 69 people �— who were labeled as�“chronic inebriates�” �— with multiple cita-tions after a state appeals court ruled thatattempts to charge them with contemptwere unconstitutional.

Those on probation will automaticallyget tried in criminal court, said KatherineWeinstein Miller, Gascón�’s policy direc-tor. Because neighborhood courts andother diversion programs are only avail-able for low-level, nonviolent offenderswithout probation, defendants who don�’tfall into this group have no other option.

�“Even if the crime is neighborhood-court eligible, the criminal is not,�” Millersaid. Spokesperson Stephanie Ong Stillmanadded that the office evaluates each inci-dent �“considering the totality of the circum-stances�” on a case-by-case basis.

But advocates for the homeless com-munity said this represents a push to crim-inalize homelessness. Elisa Della-Piana,director of the Neighborhood JusticeClinic in Berkeley, said Williams�’ casesounded heavy-handed.

�“A tired homeless man faced up tothree years in prison for dozing off on amilk crate,�” she said. �“Prison. For sleep-ing while sitting up �— an act that anyonewho has ever been on a plane ride canattest is torture in and of itself.�”

She said increased penalties againsthomeless people compound the effects ofdeep cuts in affordable housing and otherpoverty-abatement programs starting inthe 1980s.

�“Perhaps people are becoming used tothe idea that it could be a crime just to bein a public place and look homeless,�” shesaid. �“I think it tears at the fabric of ourcommunities to embrace selectiveenforcement in this way.�”

Strict enforcement of quality-of-lifeviolations goes against the recommenda-tions of the U.S. Interagency Council onHomelessness made in a report last year,asking for a lighter legal touch and diver-sion to affordable housing and supportiveprograms.

�“I think all of us in San Franciscoagree there�’s a homelessness problem,�”Lindsay said. �“But the criminal courts arenot the place to address it.�”

Trials and Tribulations of Homeless Folks in S.F. Courts�“A tired homeless manfaced up to three years inprison for dozing off on amilk crate. Prison! Forsleeping while sitting up...�”

Slumped in exhaustion, a homeless man falls asleep sitting up. Robert Terrell photo

�“Perhaps people are becoming used to the idea that itcould be a crime just to be in a public place and lookhomeless. I think it tears at the fabric of our communitiesto embrace selective enforcement in this way.�”

�— Elisa Della-Piana, Neighborhood Justice Clinic

by the National Law Center onHomelessness and Poverty

After years of legal advocacy by theNational Law Center onHomelessness and Poverty, a fed-

eral court has ruled that the U.S. govern-ment is not meeting its obligations underTitle V of the McKinney-Vento Act.

Under Title V, the federal governmentis obligated to offer homeless serviceproviders unused government property for

free before trying to sell it. However, the court found that many

federal agencies �“appear to be hidingpotentially eligible properties from theTitle V process�” �— and that this wide-spread form of land banking is illegal.

This ruling is a critical win for home-less service providers, who have usedTitle V properties to provide affordablehousing, shelter, food, and job training tomore than two million people experienc-ing homelessness each year.

With homelessness growing in recentyears �— more than one million homelessstudents are now enrolled in the country�’spublic schools �— the program is morecrucial than ever. The Law Center willsoon release a report outlining Title V�’ssuccesses and offering recommendationsfor how it could be made an even moreeffective resource.

In June 2011, the Obama administra-tion brought a motion to vacate a long-standing injunction governing how it runsTitle V on the grounds that it has an�“unassailable record�” of compliance withthe law. The government provided no evi-dence of their alleged compliance, howev-er, and in his ruling, Chief JudgeLamberth of the U.S. District Court forthe District of Columbia said it was �“baf-fling�” that the administration thought thecourt would accept its claim of compli-ance on nothing other than its own say-so.

As a result of this litigation, not onlywas the injunction on the government notset aside, but the Law Center was alsoable to enlarge the injunction�’s require-ments to include a mandate on the govern-ment to improve their training, monitor-ing, and reporting of properties while theorder is in place.

The Law Center is grateful to Covington& Burling, who argued in court on ourbehalf, for their tireless efforts to protectTitle V and hold the Obama administrationaccountable to the law.

Street SpiritStreet Spirit is published by AmericanFriends Service Committee. The ven-dor program is run by J.C. Orton.Editor, Layout: Terry MessmanWeb designer: Ariel Messman-RuckerContributors: Claire J. Baker, JackBragen, Alex Darocy, Carol Denney,Maureen Hartmann, David Hartsough,Art Hazelwood, Sally Hindman, T.J.Johnston, Dong Lin, Dan McMullan,National Law Center, Sue Ellen Pector,Tiffany Sankary, Robert L. Terrell,George WynnAll works copyrighted by the authors.The views expressed in Street Spirit arti-cles are those of the individual authors,not necessarily those of the AFSC.Street Spirit welcomes submissions ofarticles, artwork, poems and photos. Contact: Terry MessmanStreet Spirit, 65 Ninth Street,San Francisco, CA 94103E-mail: spirit@afsc.orgWeb: http://www.thestreetspirit.org

Court Victory for Homeless Advocates Seeking Vacant Federal PropertyWith homelessness growing inrecent years �— more than onemillion homeless students arenow enrolled in the country�’spublic schools �— the programis more crucial than ever.

April 2013ST R E E T SP I R I T4

by David Hartsough

As April 15 approaches thisyear, make no mistake: Thetax money that many of us willbe sending to the U.S. govern-

ment pays for drones that are killing inno-cent civilians, for �“better�” nuclearweapons that could put an end to humanlife on our planet, for building and operat-ing more than 760 military bases in morethan 130 countries all over the world.

We are asked by our government togive moral and financial support to cuttingfederal spending for our children�’s schools,Head Start programs, job training, housingfor poor and homeless people, environ-mental protection and cleanup, programsfor the elderly, and medical care for all sothat this same government can spend 50percent of our tax dollars on wars andother military expenditures.

My wife Jan and I have been war taxresisters since the war in Vietnam. Wecannot in good conscience pay for killingpeople in other parts of the world.

Does it make sense to work every dayfor peace and justice and then contributeone day�’s pay each week for war and war-making? In order to wage wars, govern-ments need young men and women will-ing to fight and kill, and they need the restof us to pay our taxes to cover the cost ofsoldiers, bombs, guns, ammunition,planes and aircraft carriers. The cost ofjust the wars being fought now is in thetrillions of dollars.

Increasingly, we are able to recognizethat most wars are based on lies aboutweapons of mass destruction in Iraq, theGulf of Tonkin in Vietnam, and now al-Qaeda behind every bush and in everycountry our government wants to attack.

As our government uses drones thatkill thousands of innocent people, we cre-ate ever more enemies, thus assuring thatwe will have wars to fight in perpetuity.

The war against communism used tobe the rationale for all our military expen-ditures. Now it is the war on terror. Butthe problem is that all war is terrorism. Itjust depends which end of the gun orbomb you are on. One person�’s freedomfighter is another person�’s terrorist.

At what point do we the people refuseto cooperate with these immoral, illegaland senseless wars? The government can-not fight these wars without our tax dol-lars and our moral support. And I bet thatif the Pentagon sent people out door todoor to ask us to contribute to its wars,aircraft carriers, drones and new fighterjets, most of us would not contribute.

Some people argue that the InternalRevenue Service is so powerful that itwill get the money anyway from our pay-checks or bank accounts, so what gooddoes it do to refuse to pay the 50 percentof our taxes that go for war?

My response is that if the Pentagon hasto take the money we were planning to con-tribute to schools and organizations work-ing for peace and justice, at least we aren�’tpaying for the wars voluntarily. And if mil-lions of us refused to pay our war taxes, thegovernment would have a real crisis on itshands. It would be forced to listen.

When President Nixon�’s chief of staffAlexander Haig looked out the White

House window and saw more than200,000 anti-war demonstrators marchingby, he said, �“Let them march all they wantto as long as they pay their taxes.�”

If our country put even 10 percent of themoney we presently spend on wars and mil-itary expenditures into building a worldwhere every person has shelter, enough toeat, an opportunity for education and accessto medical care, we could be the most lovedcountry in the world �— and the mostsecure. But perhaps even more pressing isthe question of whether we can in con-science continue to pay for the killing ofother human beings and perpetuate the warsystem for all the world�’s children.

The choice is ours. Hopefully many ofus will join the increasing number of peo-ple who are refusing to pay the portion oftaxes that pay for war and are redirectingtheir refused taxes to funding human andenvironmental needs.

My wife and I engage in war tax resis-tance by simply deducting 50 percent ofthe taxes we owe and depositing it in thePeople�’s Life Fund. The fund keeps themoney in case the IRS seizes our bankaccount or paycheck and will return it tous so we have the funds to replenish whatthe IRS has taken.

Interest on the money in the People�’sLife Fund is contributed to peace and jus-

tice organizations and programs address-ing the needs of people in our communi-ties. That way, as long as the IRS leavesus alone, the funds we refuse to pay go tothe places we would like to see it go. TheIRS may add penalties and interest onwhat we owe, but for me that is a smallprice to pay for refusing to voluntarilypay for wars and the American empire.

Some day, we hope to see a specialfund set up by the government itself forthose who cannot in good conscienceallow their money to be used for war,such as the one that the NationalCampaign for a Peace Tax Fund has out-lined. In the meantime, there are moreresources about tax resistance availablethrough the National War Tax ResistanceCoordinating Committee.

If your conscience so directs you,refuse to pay $1, $10, $100 or 50 percentof the taxes you owe, and send letters toyour elected representatives and yourlocal newspaper explaining why you aredoing so. For the 50 percent of our taxesthat my wife and I do pay, we make out acheck to the Department of Health andHuman Services instead of to the IRS andsend it along with our 1040 form. We askthe IRS to allocate all the funds we pay to

programs for health, education and humanservices.

For acts like this to become truly pow-erful, however, we need to make war taxresistance a mass movement. We need toreach out to all people who want to helpbuild a more peaceful and just world, peo-ple who don�’t believe in killing other peo-ple, people who are hurting because of themassive cuts in programs aimed at meet-ing human needs while the military getsthe lion�’s share, and people who are tiredof living in the center of an empire thatinflicts death and destruction on thosewho stand in the way.

If all or even many of the people whofeel this way were to refuse to pay the warand military portion of their taxes, wewould have a mass movement thatcouldn�’t be stopped.

David Hartsough is a co-founder ofNonviolent Peaceforce, the director ofPeaceworkers, and a member of the SanFrancisco Friends Meeting.

What if They Gave a War and Nobody Paid? At what point do we the peo-ple refuse to cooperate withthese immoral, illegal andsenseless wars? The govern-ment cannot fight these warswithout our tax dollars andour moral support.

Military spending leads to wars of aggression, and consumes tax dollars needed to fund human needs. Photo by David Hartsough

Reworking Americaby Sue Ellen PectorIf we, the unemployed,were organizedoh, the power in our numbers!Reworking America,her unemployed,no longer alone,sing justice.

American Health Careby Sue Ellen PectorIn big, strong Americait is ludicrous, nay obscenethat humans sufferfor want of medical care.To milk her people for premiums,America lets the oncemiddle-class become paupers,lets paupers die.

"A Little Dinner"(for advocate Maureen Hartmann)by Claire J. BakerI'm hungry. And I'm gritty.Every nite ain't got no dinnernor breakfast nook in this Rich City.Hungry! Yeah, my grammar's gritty.Check my sign: Need Food, Not Pity.Passersby, I'm not a sinner!Hunger/hungry. Staying gritty.All I need's a little dinner.

Woman Recyclerby Maureen HartmannShe leaves homewith cart full of cans,and black plastic bags,cans bulging in them.She trundles it through the streetsto the recycling center,maneuvering monthlyup to twenty thousand cansthrough the city,just to provideboard and room for herself.She and those whosee her in the streetsmay feel she is squalid,part of the rubble.She can and does,hold her head high,because she knows sheis tending Mother Earth.

Mothers of Japan,Fukushima ActivistsOn International Women�’s Dayby Maureen HartmannThey feel power as mothers,protesting radioactivitythat is affecting their reproductivityby abnormal births.They�’ve had their fill of U.S. wealth�’sstretching of tentacles through Japanese nuclear-energy industry.As mothers they push to stop dangerous dumping of uranium waste in children�’s playgrounds.

April 2013 ST R E E T SP I R I T 5

by Alex Darocy

More than two years after origi-nally being cited for illegallodging on the morning of

August 10, 2010, during the Peacecampdemonstrations held to protest the sleep-ing ban that criminalizes homelessness inSanta Cruz, Linda Lemaster�’s trial beganon Nov. 6, 2012. After three days of lis-tening to testimony, a jury found herguilty of lodging during Peacecamp, andon Dec. 6, 2012, Lemaster was sentencedto community service and probation byJudge Rebecca Connolly.

In an interview conducted in the after-math of her trial, Lemaster said she nowbelieves that the police cited her forunlawful lodging in order to break up apolitical protest by utilizing a law-enforcement strategy that is anti-homelessand has �“a homeland security agenda.�”

�“I don�’t think that trial had much, ifanything, to do with justice,�” Lemastersaid. �“I think it was a political trial.�”

�“One of my goals is to get rid of thislaw,�” Lemaster said, referring to the statelaw against unlawful lodging, CaliforniaPenal Code 647(e). The law is mostlyused as a move-along law for homelesspeople in San Diego, San Francisco andSanta Monica, according to Lemaster.

�“The law seems to be used entirelyagainst homeless people and demonstra-tors right now in California,�” she said.�“We haven�’t been able to find anotherrecent example of its use.�”

She plans to appeal the conviction,saying, �“The appeal is more of a chance tofocus on the law, rather than me.�”

Linda Lemaster had been a social andpolitical advocate for the homeless and anactivist in Santa Cruz County for morethan 30 years when she was issued a cita-tion for �“unlawful lodging�” during thePeacecamp demonstrations.

Originally held to protest the sleepingban in the City of Santa Cruz (MunicipalCode Section 6.36.010), which makes itillegal to sleep outside during the hours of11 p.m. to 8:30 a.m. in the city,Peacecamp was initiated at the Santa CruzCounty Courthouse by a group of localhomelessness activists on July 4, 2010.

Community members gathered at thecourthouse during the evenings and eitherslept or protested there to make a strongstatement against the criminalization ofhomelessness locally. The action quicklygrew and began to include a large numberof homeless community members lookingfor a safe place to be at night.

Lemaster, founder of the organizationHousing Now! in Santa Cruz, attendedPeacecamp to make contact with bothhomeless people and other advocates.

�“I use Housing Now! in Santa Cruz asa vessel to stay in touch with how home-less people feel about stuff,�” she said.

�“Sometimes I�’m warning homelesspeople how to be discreet at night, or thisis where the services are. It takes differentforms, but because it is ongoing, I think ofit as a medium to help me to know when,and how, we can do more. I feel like it ismy job through Housing Now! in SantaCruz to inform other people ... to let peo-ple know, �‘Look, this isn�’t right, you can�’teven have a blanket.�’�”

At Peacecamp, she found the one-on-one contact with homeless people andadvocates she was looking for. �“I�’ve goneto a lot of demonstrations,�” Lemaster said.�“That�’s what is consistent �— no matterwhere I have been, no matter whether it isa few people or it�’s a hundred people �—there are people who never get to expressthemselves.�”

Eventually, she became part of a sup-port network at the camp and attempted tostay up all night on the evening of August9, 2010, trying to help a sick friend whowouldn�’t leave the Peacecamp.

Over the course of that evening, herfriend noticed it was sprinkling and cov-ered Lemaster with a blanket. She laydown on the concrete outside of the court-house, and may have fallen asleep. Whendeputies arrived early that morning as partof their enforcement campaign againstPeacecamp, Lemaster fit their descriptionof who to target for a lodging citation, andcited her at 4 a.m. that morning.

Later, according to the district attor-ney, this incident was one of the majorpieces of evidence used in court to showthat she was �“unlawfully lodging.�”

The definition of lodging that was usedcan be applied, according to the Californiapenal code, to both public and privateplaces, and in the case of Lemaster�’s trial,was worded specifically as follows:

�“To lodge means to occupy a placetemporarily, or to permanently or tem-porarily settle or to live in a place. It may,but does not have to include, sleeping, thelaying down of bedding, the storing ofpersonal belongings, or carrying on cook-ing activities. Lodging means more thanmerely falling asleep, but less than mov-ing in permanently.�”

Lemaster felt that the process of arriv-ing at the legal definition of lodging to beused in her trial was not fair. �“To me itwas very frustrating,�” she said. She feelsthat the definition of lodging that deputieswere using when they cited people atPeacecamp in 2010 was vastly differentfrom the legal definition arrived at for thepurposes of her trial in late 2012.

�“Four days in a row,�” she recalled, �“thejudge changed her mind out of hearing ofthe jury about what that would mean.�”

Furthermore, whenever the district attor-ney came in and said he didn�’t like part ofthe definition of illegal lodging they wereworking on, Lemaster said that the judge�“accommodated him every time.�”

Even after the trial had begun, the dis-trict attorney wanted to change the defini-

tion once again, she recalled. �“How canyou prepare on either side for your trial, ifevery day it�’s a different meaning?�”Lemaster asked.

Whether she fell asleep or not on themorning of August 10 at Peacecamp maynot have been the primary reason the jurysided against her, according to two jurorswho stayed to discuss their motivationsafter the verdict was read.

�“The jury foreman said that they allfelt that the lodging law would have per-tained to anyone once the policemanmade his first warning to go, and so theyhad no choice but to find me guilty,�”Lemaster said. She added, �“the other guy,not the foreman, said, like two to threeminutes passed and you were still therelike you wanted to talk to him.�”

Lemaster explained, �“I tried to talk tohim [the sheriff�’s deputy] when they camearound ticketing people, which is whatmade it look like I wasn�’t going to leaveto some jurors �— that I stood while peo-ple scrambled, so I wasn�’t afraid enough.�”

She said the law seemed so vague and�“soggy�” as to be incomprehensible to ordi-nary people. �“Not moving fast enoughmakes you lodging, and someone else whois scrambling for cover isn�’t lodging,�” shesaid, adding that the slippery, ever-chang-ing definition of lodging �“is another goodreason that it should be exposed�” and elim-inated from the law books.

Lemaster said that the jury also appar-ently felt that using the lodging law wasjustified in breaking up a political protest.She also charged that the judge in her trialrefused to treat Peacecamp as a nonvio-lent demonstration, but rather as a publicsafety issue.

�“The inclination of Judge RebeccaConnolly was to not acknowledge thedemonstration, but look at it as a publichealth and safety issue,�” Lemaster said.�“But, as my attorney, JohnathanGettleman, pointed out, if it was a healthand safety or public safety issue, there�’san appropriate department of the countygovernment to deal with that, and theydidn�’t even think to call them.

�“You just can�’t have a law that is bothlandlord-tenant law, pushing-homeless-around law, a status crime, a public safetycode, and whatever use you want to put itto.... It�’s too broad in general.�”

Ultimately, she said she was targetedfor lodging because she didn�’t leave thescene when deputies arrived. �“Because Ididn�’t scurry in fear when the deputieswalked up, I must be guilty of lodging.�”

She sees the possibility of appealingher case as a method of challenging thestate�’s lodging law, but adds thatPeacecamp�’s original goal of challengingthe sleeping ban of the City of Santa Cruzis still the main issue on her mind.

Over the course of the three decadesLemaster has been involved in homelessissues, she has done everything from feed-ing people through Food Not Bombs, toworking for the county in various officialcapacities to help the homeless communi-ty. She has participated in a number ofdemonstrations, and has chaired govern-mental bodies concerning homelessnessand violence against women. She also hasfirst hand experience: Lemaster has beenhomeless herself.

She recalls an early success in herendeavors to help those without a fixedaddress, when she fought for the rights ofhomeless people to vote.

�“Even though it had already been liti-gated, the county wasn�’t letting them reg-ister to vote,�” Lemaster said. �“This was inthe very late �‘70s or maybe 1980 and ittook an attorney I was working for takingthem to court.�” The attorney successfullyargued in court that even if homeless peo-ple were staying �“on a heater grate on thesidewalk,�” as long as they were willing todescribe where that was, and apply to be avalid voter, they were entitled to vote.

Lemaster also helped motivate countyofficials to establish a location where wel-fare recipients in Watsonville could cashtheir checks. There was a time when thoseliving in the southern part of Santa CruzCounty would have to travel all the wayto Santa Cruz to cash their benefitschecks. After Lemaster paid a personalvisit to county officials, a solution wasfound within two weeks.

The manner in which the authoritiesdealt with Peacecamp was different,Lemaster noticed. �“What I think is mostdifferent now,�” she said, �“is there is a setof, I don�’t know if they are beliefs, poli-cies, or a driving philosophy, but it seemsto me that there is a homeland securityagenda that has changed how governmentresponds to some situations.�”

Lemaster said that more governmentalagencies should have been involved in thedecision-making process regardingPeacecamp, but none appeared to take aninterest in getting involved.

�“Now there were people (going) throughPeacecamp, there was someone from theSPCA, someone who used to be a county

Activist Linda Lemaster Convicted of Illegal Lodging

Linda Lemaster speaks to supporters at the Santa Cruz courthouse before her sentencing for illegal lodging. Alex Darocy photo

See Linda Lemaster Is Convicted page 11

�“Is Santa Cruz County stillunder the Constitution thatwe think of as the lead legaldocument of our land,where people �— even if theyhappen to be homeless �—have certain civil rights?�”

�— Santa Cruz activist Linda Lemaster

April 2013ST R E E T SP I R I T6

If the common people withdraw theircooperation and resist the powers that bewith determination and resourcefulnessand courage, they have shown repeatedlyin history that �“people power�” can makeeven the most powerful regime fail.

That means that �“the power of the peo-ple�” is not merely an outdated sloganfrom the 1960s. �“People power�” becamethe inspiring name of the brave movementin the Philippines that overthrew one ofthe bloodiest dictators in history,Ferdinand Marcos.

Nonviolent movements succeed, notnecessarily through the moral �“conver-sion�” of people at the top of society, butmore by removing the cooperation of themasses of ordinary citizens �— the com-mon people who turn out to be essential toa government�’s very survival.

In �“Weapons of Mass Democracy,�”Zunes explained how this dynamic worksin a nonviolent insurrection. �“When mil-lions of people defy official orders byengaging in illegal demonstrations, goingout on strike, violating curfews, refusingto pay taxes, and otherwise refusing torecognize the legitimacy of the state, thestate no longer has power.�”

Many times in the past few decades, anall-powerful dictator or military regimehas been vanquished almost overnight bya nonviolent movement that seeminglyemerged out of nowhere �— or so itappears. But that is because the main-stream media often only shows up at thevery last climactic moment in a confronta-tion that may have been taking shape foryears, or decades.

In his book, Nonviolent SocialMovements, A Geographical Perspective,Zunes and his co-authors offer highlyinsightful case studies that analyze hownonviolent movements actually have arisenin the Middle East, North Africa, thePhilippines, Thailand, East Germany,Poland, Nigeria, Burma and Latin America.

In many of these countries, a large andunexpected movement seems to have suc-ceeded in wresting power from a dictator inan astonishingly short period. But, uponfurther investigation, the uprising in ques-tion was often prepared over a period ofmany years with patient, nearly invisibleforms of community organizing, nonvio-lent trainings, union organizing, workerscooperatives, student mobilizations, andmany other forms of �“people power.�”

The uprising in the Philippines remainsa very instructive example. Many peopleremember that hundreds of thousands ofnonviolent and unarmed demonstratorssurrounded reformist military officerswho had withdrawn support from the dic-tatorial Marcos regime.

The successful overthrow of FerdinandMarcos in February 1986 was seeminglyaccomplished in a matter of weeks by adramatic outburst of yellow-clad protest-ers chanting �“People Power.�” Marcos, apowerful dictator supported by the UnitedStates, began by arrogantly stealing anelection from Cory Aquino, and orderedhis troops to massacre nonviolent protest-ers of his despotic rule.

In short order, a nonviolent rebellionby hundreds of thousands of protesterssucceeded in overthrowing Marcos, andthe dictator fled into permanent exile.

That is how the world remembers anamazingly quick victory over a dictator.Yet, in his book, Nonviolent SocialMovements, Zunes conducts a morethoughtful and careful analysis of eventsleading up to the ouster of Marcos in achapter entitled, �“The Origins of PeoplePower in the Philippines.�”

The real story is far more complicated�— and even more inspiring.

Zunes reveals that the foundation ofpeople power in the Philippines was builtwith years of systematic training sessionsin the methods of nonviolent resistance.

Then, in 1984, two years before theoverthrow of Marcos, opposition leadersin the Philippines stepped up the extent ofnonviolent training sessions dramatically,and also launched a series of smallerrebellions �— general strikes, boycotts,nonviolent demonstrations, marches, mas-sive rallies, and other forms of protest.

All through the latter half of 1984 andthe entire year of 1985, these smalleractions built the base for people power.Major urban areas were paralyzed by thestrikes of workers, walkouts by profes-sionals, student boycotts, and hugedemonstrations that temporarily shutdown several cities and stopped majorindustries in their tracks.

These actions simultaneously built upthe organizing capacity of grass-roots citi-zens, raised the consciousness of the gen-eral public about the abuses of the Marcosregime, and also gave those involvedgreater confidence that they could con-front such a powerful dictatorship.

These protest actions across the coun-try nearly amounted to a people�’s univer-sity in the art of nonviolent insurrection.

Just a few examples from Zunes�’ care-ful analysis may cast light on how grass-roots activists in the Philippines actuallybuilt up people power, step by step.

In December 1984, thousands ofFilipinos took over the streets in Bataan,and shut down 80 percent of the trans-portation in the whole province.

In February 1985, trade unions inMindanao held a one-day general strikethat brought factories to a standstill. Theunion activists had mobilized an astound-ing 140,000 workers in 187 unions.

Building on this momentum, in May1985, a massive �“people�’s strike�” para-lyzed two-thirds of Mindanao island, asacknowledged even by the Philippines�’military leaders. At the same time, tens ofthousands of people held marches,demonstrations and erected barricades.

In June 18-20, 1985, a people�’s strikeof 10,000 people rallied against the gov-ernment�’s nuclear power industry. Asimultaneous strike by transport workersshut down bus lines leading to Manila andhalted transportation in 9 of 11 majortowns in the province. Also, classes were

suspended due to a massive student boy-cott, and thousands of workers organizedtheir own general strike. For nearly threedays, a well-organized, nonviolent move-ment paralyzed business as usual in theentire province and built up a powerfulanti-nuclear campaign.

In the same period, activists with theInternational Fellowship of Reconciliationbegan holding systematic nonviolenttrainings for Catholic and Protestantchurch leaders and members, impartinglessons in strategic nonviolent actionscapable of resisting a dictatorship.

Zunes writes: �“An estimated 1,500people took part in these seminars, manylasting three full days, including peoplewho would become major figures in theFebruary 1986 uprising.�”

All these sustained training sessions,people�’s strikes, and massive organizingefforts were crucial in building the move-ment of people power that eventuallyforced Marcos into exile in 1986.

Zunes has shown how this legacy ofnonviolent training is now being spreadaround the globe. He writes that peopleare learning how to resist oppression andforeign occupation in far-flung regions ofthe world, from the �“Western Sahara toWest Papua to the West Bank.�”

Stephen Zunes was raised by parentsactive in the peace movement. His fatherwas an Episcopal priest and his parentswere involved with many Quaker peacegroups in challenging U.S. militarism.

He grew up in a Christian milieu wherethere was a strong sense of individualcommitment to peace and social justice.

He then attended Quaker schools and laterworked with a number of Quaker peacegroups, including the Friends PeaceCommittee and the American FriendsService Committee.

Yet, his scholarly research, writing andteaching about the history of nonviolentmovements was sparked, in part, by hisrealization that the strategies and tactics ofnonviolent resistance not only had valuefor principled pacifists, but also could beutilized as a pragmatic �— and highlyeffective �— approach to social change bypeople from all walks of life, no mattertheir ideology or belief system.

In an interview with Street Spirit, Zunessaid, �“In terms of nonviolence, I realizedone can�’t build a movement just by callingon people to embrace pacifism. But if peo-ple recognize the utilitarian advantages ofnonviolent action, that would help build thekind of movement that could create realchange. So, academically, I got very inter-ested in studying the phenomenon ofstrategic nonviolent actions.�”

Zunes earned a B.A. from OberlinCollege, an M.A. from Temple Universityand a Ph.D. from Cornell University. Heteaches politics at USF, is associate editorof Peace Review, and chair of the academicadvisory committee for the InternationalCenter on Nonviolent Conflict. He has trav-eled extensively in the Middle East, and isthe author of Tinderbox, U.S. Middle EastPolicy and the Roots of Terrorism.

In his interview, Zunes offered a multi-tude of vivid, rapid-fire insights about hownonviolent movements around the worldwere built, and how they can overcome.

The Power ofNonviolence

Unarmed citizens confront tanks and troops in this statue commemorating the People Power revolution in the Philippines.

from page 1

A statue near the entrance to Camp Aquinaldo in Manila pays tribute to the courageof hundreds of thousands of people in the People Power revolution in the Philippines.

April 2013 ST R E E T SP I R I T 7

Interview by Terry MessmanStreet Spirit: In your book,

Nonviolent Social Movements: AGeographical Perspective, you and yourco-authors described how nonviolentmovements all over the world have under-mined powerful systems of oppressionthrough the mass withdrawal of coopera-tion. How can such a seemingly passiveact as non-cooperation overcome a mili-tary dictatorship?

Stephen Zunes: Well, basically, forthe state to operate, it needs people tocarry out its orders �— ranging from thesecurity forces, to government bureau-crats, to sympathetic people in the mediaand academics, and to many other peoplethat may, in normal times, do the duty ofthe state, but can be convinced to be onthe side of the people.

This is striking. I was in Bolivia a fewyears ago where they have had a long his-tory of nonviolent resistance against right-wing dictatorships and neo-liberalism andall sorts of injustices. And it was amazingwhen I talked to everyone from illiteratepeasants, to intellectuals, to people in thegovernment, to urban workers �— they�’ll alltell you that the most powerful person inBolivia is not the president or any electedofficials, but the head of the trade unionfederation. Why? Because the unions canshut down the entire country.

So if there�’s a general strike or otherforms of mass resistance, it doesn�’t matterif the government may occupy various gov-ernment offices, and have a monopoly ofweapons, or, in some cases, a monopoly ofmedia. If people refuse to obey their orders,then they don�’t have any power.

Spirit: Yet a military regime still has thepower to slaughter its nonviolent oppo-nents, and throughout history, many havedone just that. Even if a movement canerode support for an unjust regime, doesn�’tit still have the power of violent repression?

Zunes: Well, the people in power �—the elites �— have this remarkably naiveview of their own power. They assumethat people love them and they have abunch of yes men around them, and this iswhy they have a tendency to overreach.

I�’ll just give you an example from thePhilippines. The dictator Ferdinand Marcostried to steal the presidential election in1986 by claiming that he won, when theopposition candidate, Cory Aquino, wasthe clear winner. Marcos was getting pre-pared for his inauguration, but at the sametime, a massive rally was held to inaugu-rate Cory Aquino. And the question waswhich person would be recognized as thelegitimate president �— and it was veryclear that it was Cory Aquino.

What�’s interesting about the Philippinesis that the people didn�’t have to stormMalacañang Palace to overthrow Marcos.Instead, Marcos found out that MalacañangPalace was now the only part of thePhilippines he still had any control over.

So we keep hearing stories saying, �“Oh,nonviolence wouldn�’t work in countrieslike Libya and Syria because these dictatorsare so brutal and they order their troops tokill innocent nonviolent protesters.�”

But Marcos ordered his troops to mur-der nonviolent protesters in thePhilippines. Erich Honecker, the lastCommunist leader of East Germany,ordered his troops to massacre nonviolentprotesters. Repeatedly in history, we�’veseen dictators ordering troops to massacreunarmed protesters. Recently, Ben Ali inTunisia ordered his troops to massacreprotesters. But the military said, �“No,we�’re not going to do this.�”

So it�’s not a matter of how ruthless adictator is. It comes down to whether thesoldiers and others are willing to obeyillegitimate orders.

Spirit: Does your research show thatnonviolent movements historically are moreeffective than armed movements in erodingpublic support for unjust regimes?

Zunes: Very, very much so. Violentmovements tend to get people to rally insupport of the authorities, because vio-lence turns people off. Now, it depends onthe context. In some countries, the thresh-old is lethal force. In other countries, likethe United States, even minor propertydamage can turn people off. But the factis, you�’ve got to think about what tacticsyou can use that are going to �“grow�” themovement. What kind of tactics are goingto get people to see us as more legitimatethan our opponents? It comes down tothinking strategically.

Spirit: Recent studies have shown thatnonviolent uprisings can facilitate farbroader popular participation in a move-ment. Have you found that to be the case?

Zunes: Yes. Armed struggle tradition-ally has been the province of young, able-bodied men who have access to weapons.Nonviolent struggles can involve every-body, pretty much. One of the key vari-ables in determining the success of amovement is the level of participation.

Many people who are willing and able toengage in nonviolent protest are not willingand able to engage in armed struggle. Whilecertainly nonviolent protesters can get shotand killed, historically they�’re far less likelyto do so than if they�’re being violent. Sothat is also something that makes peoplemore likely to participate.

The state pretty much has the advantageat every turn when it comes to the tools ofviolence, like guns. Where the state is mostvulnerable is this idea of withdrawing coop-eration. Nonviolent struggle is the ultimateasymmetrical warfare.

Spirit: What do you mean by asymmet-rical warfare?

Zunes: It�’s like jiu-jitsu or like akido,in that you can use the weight of the state,the force of the state, against it. That�’swhy some of the martial arts teach thatwhen someone much bigger and strongeris attacking you, you don�’t attack them inthe same way. You use their own forceand energy in such a way that you can dis-arm them. That�’s exactly how nonviolenttactics work. Instead of going up againstthe state where they�’re strongest, you sim-ply change the rules. You use the tacticsthat give you the advantage.

The other thing is that maybe youdon�’t always want to focus on massivestreet demonstrations. This is particularlyimportant if it is a situation where theregime can get away with killing peoplein large numbers. In that case, maybe youneed to use tactics such as a generalstrike, stay-at-home actions, or boycotts�— things that can weaken the state that

people can get involved in without asmuch personal risk.

It�’s just like in a guerilla movement �—you don�’t have a frontal assault on thecapital first thing. A guerilla movementdoes low-risk, hit-and-run operations,builds the base in peripheral areas andgradually builds up from there.

Similarly, in a nonviolent struggle, youcan�’t expect to suddenly have hundreds ofthousands of people in the streets that canforce a regime to fall. It may seem thatway sometimes, because often the newsmedia doesn�’t get to a country until it getsto that point. What we saw in Egypt, whatwe saw in Serbia, what we saw in thePhilippines, what we saw in Poland, whatwe�’ve seen in other cases of successfulunarmed insurrections, was the culmina-tion of many years of struggle.

Spirit: In her book, Why CivilResistance Works, Erica Chenowethfound that when nonviolent movementsare successful, they tend to create moredemocratic societies, with a greater com-mitment to human rights, than armeduprisings do. Do her findings resonatewith your research?

Zunes: Oh, very much so. Again, it�’spretty logical when you think about it,because armed struggles traditionally arecharacterized by martial values, the ethosof an elite vanguard, a clear military hier-archy, and using force to get your way.That kind of model is one that tends tolead towards authoritarianism, whereguerilla fighters take on the same kind ofleadership style once they assume the reinsof government.

By contrast, a successful nonviolentmovement requires building diverse coali-tions throughout civil society. Thatrequires compromise. It requires a morepluralistic model in terms of organization-al development as you build this coalitionand bring people in and decide on yourstrategy and tactics. That can serve as thebasis for more democratic institutions.

So instead of the message that powercomes through the barrel of a gun, whichencourages a more authoritarian model, wehave the message of nonviolent move-ments, which encourage building alliancesand getting as many people as possibleinvolved in the process of change.

Spirit: So rather than power comingfrom the barrel of a gun in the form ofmilitary power, power comes from thepeople �— people power.

Zunes: Exactly.Spirit: You have written extensively

about the conflicts in the Middle East.What would you say were the key factorsthat enabled the nonviolent uprisings inTunisia and Egypt to grow so quickly andspread so widely?

Zunes: I think a key was that people

were pretty clear that they did not acceptthis view that the fate of the Middle Eastwas simply between al-Qaeda and otherreactionary Islamic forces on one extreme,and the United States and the neoconserv-ative push for U.S. empire and domina-tion, on the other.

They realized that, as opposed to whatal-Qaeda said, they could overthrow theseU.S.-backed dictatorships nonviolently,and, unlike what the United States said,they could do it themselves, and theydidn�’t need foreign interference to do it.

Even though the transition to democra-cy in Tunisia and Egypt has been a bitrockier than some people had hoped, thefact is that you have this new generationthat has been empowered, and now recog-nizes that they are the masters of theirown fate. The traditional kind of fatalisticview was that their corrupt leaders or theforeign imperialist powers would foreverimpact what happens on the so-calledArab street. Instead, the Arab street hasshown its ability to impact what happensto foreign powers.

It�’s amazing, in the cases of Tunisia andEgypt, how the United States was defend-ing those regimes in the early days of theserebellions, and as the movement grew, theU.S. called for reforms within the regime.And as the movement grew more, the U.S.started talking about the transition todemocracy, and finally as the pro-democra-cy forces threw out the dictators, the U.S.ended up praising the movement.

Spirit: It seemed almost unbelievablethat so many people could find thecourage to confront such heavily armedregimes in Egypt and Tunisia. How doyou think the common people found suchan extraordinary level of courage?

Zunes: First of all, I think it showedhow the vast majority of people in thesecountries did not consider those U.S.-backed dictatorships as legitimate. I thinkthey realized that they could not work forreform within the system, but at the sametime, that armed struggle was unworkable.

And they recognized that if you couldget a certain critical mass of people out onthe streets who were willing to defy thecurfews and defy orders to disperse, itwould demonstrate the impotence of aregime that people used to be just totallyscared of and intimidated by.

So people were empowered by seeingthose who were willing to face down thetanks and confront them with their barehands and show that they�’re not afraid.And when you did have those kinds ofnumbers, it was virtually impossible foreven a well-armed government, even onewith the support of the world�’s oneremaining superpower, to stop them.

Spirit: Courage seems to become con-

The Street Spirit Interview with Stephen Zunes

A mural commemorating 30 years of the Solidarity movement in Poland. Priest Jerzy Popieluszko is shown in the foreground.

See Interview with Stephen Zunes page 8

April 2013ST R E E T SP I R I T8

tagious at key moments in a movement. Isthe courage of the people an importantcomponent of nonviolent struggle?

Zunes: Yes, very much so. In someways, this was a continuation of what wehad seen from the Philippines toCzechoslovakia, and from Chile to Serbia.There have been scores of these kinds ofuprisings. In fact, I was one of the fewpeople who did predict that Egypt wouldlikely have this kind of uprising because Ihad seen in Egypt over the previous years,a dramatic growth of civil society and agrowth of nonviolent organizing by peo-ple who had a real interest in the power ofstrategic nonviolent action.

And while this is not news to me, Ithink it is news for a lot of people thatArabs and Muslims don�’t like living underdictatorships any more than Christians inthe West do. The form a democracy maytake will inevitably vary according to acountry�’s unique history and culture, butthe desire for freedom is universal. Thedesire for social justice is universal. Andthe recognition that strategic nonviolentaction is the most effective way of movingin that direction is becoming increasinglyuniversal as well.

Spirit: There were so many hopesengendered around the world by the ArabSpring. In its aftermath, how successfuldo you think these rebellions were intransforming these nations?

Zunes: Egypt�’s situation is complex inthat the younger and more politically pro-gressive and more secular elements thatled the revolution against EgyptianPresident Hosni Mubarak did not have thekind of experience and resources thatsome of the more conservative religiousopponents of the old regime had.

So those elements, working in collu-sion at times with elements of the mili-tary, have succeeded in consolidatingsome degree of political power and con-tinue to engage in human rights abuses.And the commitment of the MuslimBrotherhood to a more democratic futureis certainly questionable.

However, the fact is that despite all theproblems, there�’s a lot more freedom thanthere was under Mubarak �— more free-dom both in terms of organizing and interms of the media. And, more important-ly, people have been empowered. Peopleare not afraid to go out in the streets andconfront those in authority.

I remember being in a café in Cairorecently and watching the TV news. TheTV news in Egypt used to always be thepresident giving a speech, or the presidentmeeting a visiting foreign dignitary �— andthat�’s what the news was. But this evening,the news was about a labor strike inAlexandria. It was about the relatives of themartyrs of the revolution having a vigil infront of the Interior Ministry. It was aboutthe revolution going on in Syria.

All the news was about ordinary peo-ple engaged in acts of resistance. I thinkthat, more than anything, shows howEgypt and the Middle East are changing.Who are the newsmakers? It�’s ordinarypeople who are struggling for change. It�’snot just the men in suits.

Spirit: That�’s a beautiful legacy. Thegrass-roots resistance during the ArabSpring reminded me of the earlier insur-rection in the Philippines, where �“peoplepower�” overthrew a dictatorship.

Zunes: When the U.S.-backed dictator,Ferdinand Marcos, brazenly stole an elec-tion in 1986, you had widespread protests,boycotts of crony industries associatedwith his regime, and dissent was brewing.

A couple of reformist military officerstried to stage a coup against Marcos, butthey were cut short and the small basenear the capital where they had set uptheir resistance was about to be overrunby elements of the military still loyal tothe dictator. At that point, hundreds ofthousands of people surrounded the baseand protected the reformist officers.

Despite orders by Marcos for the sol-diers to shoot their way in, they refused.You had nuns praying the rosary in front ofthe tanks. You had ordinary people givingflowers and treats to the soldiers, trying totalk to them and communicating with them,trying to get them on the side of the people.Eventually, it got to the point where therewas massive non-cooperation throughoutthe country, and it was clear that the gigwas up and Marcos had to flee.

This was during the Reagan adminis-tration, and the United States was initiallysupporting Marcos, but with the newsmedia showing the extent of the opposi-tion and their democratic, nonviolentnature, it became almost impossible forthe United States to get away with contin-uing their support for the dictatorship.

It was so inspiring to see that kind ofnonviolent resistance on people�’s TV setsat night. When people would see that kindof courage and nonviolence in the face ofrepression, it forced them to pick sidesand to choose the nonviolent, pro-democ-racy, pro-justice side.

Spirit: The People Power movement inthe Philippines was inspiring for peopleeverywhere in the world. Didn�’t it comenot long after Poland�’s Solidarity move-ment, another enormously powerful exam-ple of nonviolence in action?

Zunes: Poland was interesting becausethey were very smart strategically. InChina, in 1989, the pro-democracy stu-dents all amassed in the heart of Beijing,in the heart of the Communist Party�’spolitical power, and demanded the wholesystem be changed. And, of course, theywere massacred.

In Poland, by contrast, though they hadthat same kind of goal �— to bring downthe Communist system �— they werestrategic enough to start small. Theybegan by simply occupying the shipyardsin a port city and demanding recognitionof an independent trade union, along witha few specific concerns regarding the rein-statement of fired union activists.

But by having that, they could thengrow the movement. Solidarity startedgetting members not just from other ship-yards, but from factories, mines and work-places all over the country. They hadintellectuals, farmers, and even govern-ment workers signing on. They graduallyincreased their demands �— again, notcalling for the downfall of the whole sys-tem, but pushing for greater democracyand fairness and justice.

The original Solidarity strikes began inthe summer of 1980, and martial law wasdeclared a year and a half later, inDecember of 1981. By the time the gov-ernment cracked down, the movementwas strong enough that it could surviveunderground and eventually bring downthe entire system.

What they recognized was, just like inany other struggle, you can�’t expect tohave an immediate victory. You need toengage in a whole sequence of differenttactics. You need to have small victoriesto show you can win and get more peopleon your side. As you get stronger, you canstart demanding more. In other words,you�’ve got to think strategically. You�’vegot to think and plan for the long-term.The Polish Solidarity movement was par-ticularly effective in that way.

Spirit: Despite these historical exam-ples, many people still can�’t understandthat a nonviolent movement can over-throw a military dictatorship.

Zunes: In Bolivia in 1979, when therewas a coup by a general named NatuschBusch, the whole country went on strikeand 600,000 people massed in the Boliviancapital of La Paz, which was bigger thanthe total population of the city at the time.Trade union leaders and others walked intothe president�’s house, walked into hisoffice, and they asked him, �“What�’s yourprogram?�” He looked at them, and then helooked at the 600,000 people out in thestreets, and he said, �“Yours!�”

Well, to their credit, they didn�’t insistthat he adopt their program. They insistedthat he step down, and democratic govern-ment was restored.

I think that�’s illustrative of this veryimportant point: that if people refuse tocooperate, you don�’t have power. Thatdictatorship lasted less than two weeks.

Spirit: But it often doesn�’t go downthat quickly and without bloodshed. It ishard for some to even comprehend whyany people would continue on the path ofnonviolent resistance in countries whenthey are massacred by the military.

Zunes: Well, an interesting case actu-ally occurred in Mali. Until the militarycoup in March of last year, Mali had oneof the longest running democracies inWest Africa. Back in 1991, 20 yearsbefore the Arab Spring, they had a nonvi-olent uprising in Mali.

Even though the soldiers ended upgunning down literally hundreds of nonvi-olent protesters, people kept on cominguntil the military just threw down theirarms and refused to fire anymore. Thedictator, General Moussa Traoré, wasremoved from power and replaced with acivilian democratic government.

Now, what was interesting is that backthen in Mali, they of course didn�’t havethe Internet or Facebook, and a large partof the population at that time was illiter-ate. They spread the word using griots, thetraditional singing storytellers. They usedthese allegorical tales of resistance goingback for centuries.

It�’s an indication that you don�’t needmodern social media to organize. Whenpeople feel the need to communicate, theywill communicate. People can figure outhow to rely on their own unique culturaland historical resources to mobilize. And,despite severe repression, if people per-sist, they can win.

Spirit: Another dictator who was will-ing to use violent repression againstunarmed demonstrators was the Shah ofIran. His regime was heavily armed anddirectly supported by the U.S. govern-ment, so how did a nonviolent uprising bythe Iranian people ever turn the tide?

Zunes: There was a story I really likedin the uprising against the Shah of Iran.The Shah was a brutal, U.S.-backed dicta-tor, and he was kind of a megalomaniac.He put up statues of himself in almostevery town in the country. So it was popu-lar during this period for people to teardown the statues. So when soldiers wouldcome into a particular area, the first thingthey would do would be to surround thestatue to protect it.

There was this one Iranian town where,instead of attacking the soldiers and creat-ing a riot, the people came and talked tothe soldiers and shared their grievancesabout the Shah. They brought the soldiersfood, and they brought them blanketsbecause it got cold at night after the cur-few, and the soldiers had to stay out there.

They did this for a couple days andthen one morning, when people came outafter the lifting of the curfew at dawn,they found the soldiers gone and, beforethey had left, the soldiers themselves hadtorn down the statue!

Spirit: The soldiers themselves toredown the statue of the Shah? That�’s amaz-ing! What lesson do you draw from this?

Zunes: It�’s an illustration, I think, of

recognizing that even people in the securi-ty forces can be your allies, and they�’remore likely to be won over if you�’re non-violent to them than if you�’re trying toattack them.

Spirit: Do you think that peoplearound the world are becoming moreaware of the power of nonviolent resis-tance to overcome tyrannical regimes?

Zunes: Nepal is an interesting case,because in Nepal you had a long-running,armed struggle against the monarchy byMaoist guerrillas. They recognized thatthey could end up controlling some parts ofthe countryside, but they really did nothave the means of bringing down themonarchy. It had been around for hundredsof years and it had a strong military.

So what they decided to do was to laydown their arms and join in an alliancewith liberal democratic opponents of theregime. They ended up having a nonvio-lent revolution that overthrew the monar-chy. So, after hundreds of years, Nepal isnow a republic and able to have democrat-ic elections. It shows that even Maoistguerillas can recognize that nonviolentaction can actually be more powerful thanguerilla warfare.

Spirit: In the analysis of many people,it was the threat of prolonged armedstruggle by the African National Congress(ANC), along with the international boy-cotts, that enabled the people of SouthAfrica to end apartheid. What role, if any,did nonviolent organizing play in over-coming apartheid?

Zunes: Nonviolent action in SouthAfrica was far, far more significant than thefairly limited efforts by the armed wing ofthe resistance. The ANC never formallyrenounced armed struggle, but they recog-nized long before the downfall of apartheidthat it would be civil resistance that wouldbe the most decisive factor in bringingmajority rule to South Africa.

Spirit: What forms of civil resistancewere organized in South Africa?

Zunes: In the case of South Africa,we�’re talking about strikes, which wereparticularly significant since the whiteminority regime was totally dependent onblack labor. Boycotts helped turn the busi-ness community against the system, com-bined with international sanctions, whichwere made possible by nonviolent resis-tance in the United States and other coun-tries and helped to halt foreign investmentin the country.

Also important were the creation ofalternative institutions such as parallel gov-ernment in the townships and elsewhere, aswell as demonstrations, civil disobedienceand other methods of resistance.

The armed wing of the ANC was onlyone small component of the ANC. Theirpolitical wing within South Africa wasallied with the United Democratic Front,and COSATU, the Congress of SouthAfrican Trade Unions. They organizedthese massive nonviolent resistance cam-paigns, and despite severe repression anddespite efforts to sow divisions within theblack movement by the regime, it was thenonviolent component that was the mostcritical in overcoming apartheid. Andindeed, I have talked to a number of for-mer ANC activists who have acknowl-edged this themselves.

Spirit: Back during the anti-apartheidmovement in the United States in the1980s, did you think nonviolent resistancewould end up playing such a crucial rolein liberating South Africa?

Zunes: Everything from the geographyof the nation, to the absence of sanctuary,to the South African security apparatus,made a military victory by the armedwing of the ANC impossible.

During this period, I was very active inthe divestment campaign and the anti-

Interview withStephen Zunesfrom page 7

See Interview with Stephen Zunes page 9

April 2013 ST R E E T SP I R I T 9

apartheid movement in this country. I wasan organizer in this movement when I wasan undergraduate at Oberlin College, andlater at Cornell as a grad student.

While I could never make a moral judg-ment against the black South Africans whofelt the need to take up arms, I wanted thepeople of South Africa to win, and Ibelieved that nonviolent struggle was clear-ly the most effective means. The SouthAfricans themselves were recognizing thatunarmed civil resistance would be the mosteffective way of overcoming apartheid.

F.W. de Klerk, the last white presidentof South Africa, who negotiated the dealto end apartheid, acknowledged that thegovernment was all ready to challengeany military threat. It was the nonviolentresistance that forced them to negotiatewith the ANC and release Mandela. [F.W.de Klerk and Nelson Mandela won theNobel Peace Prize in 1993 for their role innegotiating an end to apartheid.]

Spirit: How did nonviolent resistanceforce the South African regime to negoti-ate with the ANC?

Zunes: Basically, the country wasbecoming ungovernable due to the nonvi-olent resistance in South Africa �— whencombined with the international sanctionswhich were destroying the economy.

Spirit: And didn�’t those internationalsanctions come about because of thewidespread nonviolent resistance ofgroups in the United States and Europe?

Zunes: The United States and othercountries were very reluctant to imposesanctions because investment in SouthAfrica was very profitable to very power-ful corporations. This U.S. policy wasreversed because of the mass nonviolentmovements led by church groups, laborunions, student groups and internationalorganizations and others.

Spirit: Your book, Nonviolent SocialMovements: A Geographical Perspective,seems to focus almost exclusively on ana-lyzing cases where nonviolent movementsaren�’t simply going after piecemealreforms, but are trying to topple brutalmilitary regimes.

Zunes: Yes, I am referring to insurrec-tions against autocratic regimes, asopposed to reform movements within var-ious countries.

One of the key variables determiningwhether they�’re going to be successful ornot is the defections from the police, mili-tary and other security forces. People inthese security forces are far more likely todisobey orders to fire into crowds of nonvi-olent protesters than they are with orders tofire on people who are shooting at them.

Another factor is that in any move-ment, even against a dictator, there arelots of people who either might supportthe regime, or may feel that even if theydon�’t like the current regime, they�’reafraid of what the successful revolutionmight bring.

Spirit: They�’re afraid a revolutionmight bring a new kind of repression?

Zunes: Yes, or chaos or other problems.So people are far more likely to join themovement if it�’s nonviolent. A nonviolentmovement is seen as a lot less threateningand more likely to lead to responsible gov-ernance than an armed group.

Violence can alienate a movement�’spotential supporters, and the regime canuse that violence as an excuse to depictthe opposition as terrorists. People will bemore open to accepting repressive actionsby the state if it�’s seen as necessary tocombat a violent opposition. Repression is

much less likely to be accepted if it�’sagainst a nonviolent opponent.

Spirit: Even in a faceless regime withits seemingly faceless security apparatus,there are still individual soldiers who maybe unwilling to shoot into a defenselessgroup of civilians. So do nonviolent move-ments succeed, in part, because theyappeal to the individual conscience �—even in a dictatorship?

Zunes: Yes, and one need not convertthe people at the top. You merely need tomake it impossible for them to continue togovern. At the same time, to make thatpossible, it helps to appeal to the con-sciences of the ordinary folks �— rangingfrom police and soldiers to governmentbureaucrats to workers in key industries�— to end their cooperation with the state.And a movement can do that by appealingto their moral sensibilities.

Spirit: The government and the state-controlled media often try to deceive thepublic by painting a movement as destruc-tive and extremist. How can activistscounter the disinformation of the state?

Zunes: The people in power will try todepict their opponents in the most nega-tive light possible. They will depict themas being agents of foreign governments orterrorists or people who embrace extrem-ist ideologies or outside agitators �— allsorts of things. So it�’s important for theopposition to engage in the kinds of tac-tics that would challenge these stereotypesand expose the lies of those in power.

What�’s exciting about this nowadays isthat a lot of people have smart phones andthe ability to film or photograph what�’sactually going on out in the streets, andcan immediately post it out for everyoneto see. It�’s much harder now for the policeand government officials to misrepresentconfrontations. In other words, it�’s notjust for the people who witness a particu-lar confrontation in person, but it can getout around the world �— literally.

Spirit: Gandhi�’s vision of nonviolenceincluded the constructive program �— thecreation of independent institutions andeconomic programs. That aspect of nonvi-olent struggle is often neglected in theU.S. What kind of parallel institutions areimportant in successful movements?

Zunes: In places like the UnitedStates, it can mean everything from a foodco-op to a battered women�’s shelter andother alternatives to the status quo, withindividuals taking on certain ways ofmeeting the needs of the people that helpempower people.

In insurrectionary situations, you canactually have independent structures ofgovernance. For example, in South Africa,the leadership of the black townships thathad been appointed by the white minorityrulers were ignored �— in some cases, phys-ically driven out of the buildings. In theirplace, the resistance built up parallel gover-nance and elections, and the people startedgoverning themselves. They built their ownparallel judicial system and a parallel sys-tem of distributing services and goods.

It showed the world, �“Hey, black peo-ple can govern themselves, and we can doit more fairly and democratically than thewhite minority regime.�”

Whether they are in a place like theUnited States or in South Africa or in thePalestinian territories, or other places wherewe�’ve seen this happening, developingthese alternative institutions have actuallyempowered a lot of people. They�’ve beenempowered by training in some very practi-cal skills that can be useful after the revolu-tion when they govern themselves.

But perhaps even more importantly,whatever kind of government comes forth,people will have become experienced lead-ers in the process �— people who had previ-ously felt disempowered. This is particular-ly true for people who have been subjectedto racism and sexism and other forms of

oppression, who are given the message,�“You�’ve got to trust the State becauseyou�’re not smart enough. You don�’t havethe skills to take care of yourselves andyour community.�”

When people finally can do that forthemselves, they�’re empowered. Thisempowerment enables them to not justdevelop stronger, more effective alternativeinstitutions, but can also empower them tobe more active in challenging the status quoand working for change for everybody.

Spirit: Let�’s look at a recent exampleof a nonviolent uprising in the UnitedStates. Did you take part in the Occupydemonstrations in 2011 and 2012?

Zunes: Yes, not on a daily basis, but Idid join folks in both San Francisco andOakland on Occupy marches.

Spirit: What do you think was mean-ingful about the Occupy movement? Whatlessons can be learned from it?

Zunes: Well, the good news, I think, isthat Occupy changed the debate in thisnation. The gross inequality in this coun-try and the plight of the poor is now con-sidered legitimate political discourse, andis now part of the mainstream. We don�’thave nearly the progress we should have,of course, but at least people are talkingabout economic inequality and povertyand the concentration of wealth. I thinkthat�’s really important.

I think the main problem was that therewasn�’t broader strategic thinking in termsof the next steps. The Occupy encamp-ments were an important piece, but thereneeds to be a plethora of other kinds oftactics, including the kind of door-to-doororganizing which may not be as excitingfor some people as a demonstration or atakeover of a certain piece of territory.But it�’s very important to bring in adiverse cross-section of the population. Ifyou really are representing the 99 percent,you want to broaden the base of support.

Spirit: What kinds of door-to-doororganizing could have been done?

Zunes: I think a lot of this has to dowith political education. It means listen-ing to a lot of people and seeing whattheir grievances are. Because I thinkyou�’ll find that a lot of people have a lotof grievances about their lives, and themovement will find that these grievancesare rooted in some of the same structuralproblems that are related to other people�’sgrievances. And basically, in finding outwhat people�’s concerns are, you will findwhat they might get involved in, and seehow you might be able to bring them in,and plug them into the movement.

Spirit: Also, it seems that a movementthat actually listens to the people is agood example for the kind of governmentthat could arise �— one that would listento its own people and be responsive.

Zunes: Exactly, exactly. Yes.Spirit: Do you think the sporadic acts

of street violence helped to shorten thelife-span of the Occupy movement?

Zunes: I think that the scattered vio-lence �— although it was primarily againstproperty, and it was only a minority ofpeople, and it was not all that significant�— did end up turning off a lot of peopleto the movement as a whole. Wheneveryou have a movement that uses mixed tac-tics, the media will always concentrate onthe most violent element, and will try toportray the whole movement as the mostviolent element.

We saw it that day [Nov. 2, 2011] when10,000 people shut down the Port ofOakland nonviolently with the support ofthe Longshoreman�’s Union. That was oneof the most remarkable events of the entireOccupy movement in the entire country.But the media coverage the following daywas primarily of a handful of self-describedanarchists smashing windows in downtownOakland later that evening.

There was not a really concerted effort,as much as there should have been, to tryto separate the movement from the hand-ful of people who were engaged in irre-sponsible tactics, and to marginalize thosekinds of narcissistic elements who weremore interested in exercising their ownselfish, cathartic expressions of rage, thanadvancing the movement as a whole.

You find that police forces will tradi-tionally use agents provocateurs, that is,government agents who will pose as pro-testers and do something violent orprovocative as a means of enabling thepolice to crack down even harder and dis-credit the movement as a whole. So itseems quite logical that you do not want todo what the authorities want you to do �—by being violent.

Spirit: During the Occupy actions, youwrote that there was an inability �— nearlya refusal �— to state clearly what thedemands of this movement were and toformulate strategies and tactics that couldadvance those demands. What could thismovement have done in that area?

Zunes: While maintaining a fairlylong-range vision of more radical change,it also could have had more specific, tar-geted campaigns that a lot of people froma wide variety of orientations might havebeen able to identify with and get behind,such as ending foreclosures.

It�’s important for even the most radicalmovement to have more immediate, short-term campaigns on specific goals that arewinnable and which people would bewilling to support and be part of �— eventhose who may not necessarily share thelong-term vision.

Spirit: You also wrote that the Occupyprotests were very inspiring, but addedthat �“being right isn�’t enough, especiallywhen you�’re up against the powers ofWall Street.�” Beyond being right, whatelse did this movement need in order tochallenge the powers of Wall Street?

Zunes: I think the movement needed tobuild more alliances with working people,and with people of color, and with otherswho have been negatively affected by thegrowing concentration of corporate wealth.Also, it needed to channel this energy intospecific campaigns with more immediate,achievable goals �— and make the move-ment an environment where people wouldenjoy taking part, where they felt safe,where they could bring their kids, andwhere there could be something that peoplewould be inclined to get involved with andwant to come back for more.

Spirit: Why do you think the Occupymovement has seemingly faded away soquickly, when just last year it seemed tohold such great promise?

Zunes: I think part of it was that whenthey started just using the same basic tac-tics over and over again, people got bored,people got tired. You need to keep itfresh, and there are times when you alsoneed to make tactical withdrawals andthen reappear in different ways, with anew focus on specific campaigns that willspark new interest.

Spirit: Whatever its problems, Occupywas one of the most massive outpouringsof popular dissent against economicinequality in our lifetime. Did its rapidemergence surprise you?

Zunes: I certainly didn�’t expect it, butin hindsight, I can very much see how ithappened. The vast majority of people inthis country are feeling in their daily livesthe negative consequences of the econom-ic and political trends in this country thatpeople in Occupy were protesting about.

So it immediately had resonance forfolks. People could identify with thosedemands. The fact that conventional poli-tics was not addressing it made the move-ment particularly attractive, so it came atjust the right time.

Interview withStephen Zunesfrom page 8

April 2013ST R E E T SP I R I T10

by Jack Bragen

Common decency and kindness �—versus cruelty and meanness �—seem to occur at about the same

rates across all demographics. I have dealtwith mean and kind people wherever I�’vegone, and this seems unrelated to howmuch money someone has, how success-ful, or how intelligent.

Having more money is preferable tonot having enough. However, sometimesleading �“the good life�” and taking forgranted that you can purchase any materi-al thing that�’s needed, can have a negativeeffect on people. When someone gainswealth or is born into it, their set of con-cerns may change from that of meetingbasic needs, to frivolous concerns aboutstatus. In contrast, poor people may nothave the luxury of being concerned aboutthings unrelated to survival.

The wealthy are often preoccupied withsocial stature. They may become enviousand resentful when someone flaunts more�“toys�” or �“status symbols�” than they. Theymay be highly sensitized to possible insults.

A wealthy person is often preoccupiedwith perceived dignity, while a poor per-son is preoccupied with having adequatefood and decent housing, filling the gastank in their used car, and getting ade-quate medical attention when ill.

I speak from personal experience, afterlong years of witnessing the differingbehaviors and attitudes of the rich and thepoor. The following comparisons betweenwealthy and low-income people maysound like generalizations, yet they are allbased on my personal observations.

Wealthy people are often hard-nosedtoward people less fortunate or towardthose in a subordinate position. It is oftenby having a mean edge that they haveaccumulated their wealth and their posi-tion in the first place. Wealthy peopletend to be very territorial.

Rich people are upset when there is ascratch on their new Jaguar. Poor peopleare upset when they are stranded becausethey missed the last bus for the night.

Rich people won�’t give you anythingfor free, unless something is in it forthem, while poor people will help youwhen they can.

Rich people can afford to buy the latesthome security system to protect theirvaluables, while poor people are protectedthrough having nothing worth stealing.

Rich people may consume alcohol orrecreational drugs, while stereotyping thepoor as always being �“druggies.�”

Rich people may get clogged arteriesfrom a fat-laden, luxurious diet, and thenthey get bypass surgery. Poor people eatoff the �“dollar menu�” or in soup kitchensand then die of a massive heart attackbecause of untreated arteriosclerosis.

Rich people are, on occasion, victimsof home-invasion robberies, while poorpeople receive eviction notices or have

their homes searched by police withGerman Shepherds.

Rich people often display classism, thedisdain of those from a less fortunatesocioeconomic background. Poor peoplemay display reverse classism, a disdain andcontempt toward those who have more.

This may be a bit off-subject, but whyis it that when rich people are billions ofdollars in debt and owe far more than theirassets, they are still in a more advanta-geous position compared to someone whois penniless but doesn�’t owe anything?

A good example is Donald Trump.According to his book, How to Get Rich, atone point he owed 9.2 billion dollars afterthe real estate market crashed. Trump saidthat on the day he passed by �“a beggar�” onhis way to speak with bankers, he realizedthat the beggar was worth $9 billion morethan he. Yet, where is that �“beggar�” now?

Trump was able to cash in on his nameand went on television, and bounced backquite handily, which is what he had prophe-

sied. If you�’re not a member of the wealthyelite, you don�’t get member benefits.

Poor people also can sniff out someonewho doesn�’t belong. The poor are expectedby one another to abide by their own ver-sion of social norms. The specifics are dif-ferent than with rich people, but it is thesame idea. Either you fit in or you don�’t.

Poor people are usually preoccupiedwith survival issues, with getting throughthe month, with fulfilling the bureaucraticrequirements of various public benefits,and with merely staying alive. However,rich people are concerned with their pub-lic image, with their social status, andwith gaining more wealth.

Being financially secure does not makea person evil, nor does it mean someonelacks conscience. However, when survivalissues have been solved, the little thingsthat were previously on the back burner,the seemingly inconsequential concerns,are magnified and can sometimes createarrogance.

The Rich and Poor Live in Very Different Worlds

In San Francisco, two men in business suits pass silently by a homeless man lying in a doorway. Every day inAmerica, the rich and the poor encounter one another on the same streets, yet they live in very different worlds.

Photo credit byDong LIn

Rich people are upset whenthere is a scratch on theirnew Jaguar. Poor people areupset when they are strand-ed because they missed thelast bus for the night.

An open letter to the communityby Sally Hindman, Youth Spirit Artworks

Since 1983, the Berkeley Boosters have engagedlocal police officers in off-duty service thatinvolve homeless and low-income local youth inactivities making a difference in young people�’s

lives. The Boosters have distributed turkeys to needyfamilies, organized a summer youth camp, taken youngpeople on outdoor adventures, and provided youth lead-ership trainings.

In order to carry out this work, the City of Berkeleyprovided $118,000 from its General Fund in 2012 to theBoosters. Sadly, this year the Berkeley Boosters are clos-ing their doors. The Boosters are facing financial hard-ship and are unable to continue operating. Our communi-ty will greatly miss the Booster�’s presence! No nonprofitorganizations are finding the recession easy, so all of ussympathize with the difficulties of trying to survive in avery rough economy.

Out of this darkness and potential despair, YouthSpirit Artworks is reporting for duty. The young artists ofYouth Spirit are ready, willing and able to step up to theplate and roll up our sleeves, in order to keep the work ofthe Berkeley Boosters alive.

Paint brushes in hand, we pledge to take youth out forice cream, on adventure raft trips and other outdoor out-ings. We will hold backyard BBQs and arrange rides toBerkeley�’s 4th of July Fireworks. We would delight inworking hand in hand with off-duty Berkeley police in

every way possible, thereby making all of these previous-ly offered Berkeley Boosters activities possible!

In addition to carrying on this important work, YouthSpirit Artworks can offer even more. With an additional$60,000 grant from the City of Berkeley (half of what theBoosters received), Youth Spirit would also commit toproviding a daytime space indoors where homeless andlow-income youth can receive art jobs that providestipends and training, Monday through Saturday, 11 a.m.to 7 p.m., year-round.

Since Youth Spirit had requested a $50,000 budgetincrease this year in order to expand our program,responding to the challenge of homeless youth onBerkeley sidewalks, $60,000 of the Boosters fundingwould allow us to both organize the activities theBoosters did AND respond to the huge community needfor a way of helping youth get off Berkeley streets andinto jobs training.

Give youth a chance!Youth Spirit currently serves 125 homeless and low-

income young people each year at our 650-square-footart studio and retail store in South Berkeley. We do that18 hours per week after school from 3:30 p.m. to 6:30p.m., Monday through Friday (and Saturday from noonto 3 p.m.) during the school year and 40 hours per week,from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. during the summer.

Funds previously allocated to the Boosters are exactlywhat Youth Spirit Artworks need in order to expand ourspace and the hours we can be open providing the art jobstraining that could keep at least an additional 50 youth

each year off the street. Please support our proposal seeking an additional

$50,000 in 2013-14 to serve homeless youth on Berkeleysidewalks with no place to go!

Youth Spirit Artworks ... Reporting for Duty!!!!

Youth Spirit Artworks Reporting for Duty

A young artist created this painting of a powerfulwoman as part of her work at Youth Spirit Artworks.

April 2013 ST R E E T SP I R I T 11

social worker, people who in their own con-science, during the day mostly, came downand checked out who was there. But in thewhole infrastructure of county government,nobody thought to do that.�”

In their absence, Lemaster felt that lawenforcement was left to deal withPeacecamp on their own, and they han-dled it as a complaint-driven process.

�“They made this plan to wipe thewhole thing out,�” she said, �“and give peo-ple like me a ticket based on the com-plaints they had, as it was shown in thetestimony during my trial.�”

Lemaster believes local authorities�“were remiss�” in dealing with the issuessurrounding Peacecamp. �“They didn�’teven think of talking to social workers.�”

She said, �“All of these executive deci-sions were left more or less to Plageman[Lieutenant Fred Plageman of the sheriff�’sdepartment].�” She pointed to Plageman�’stestimony during her trial where he statedthat he had looked to law enforcementmodels that were being employed outsideof Santa Cruz County to enforce the lodg-ing law, as opposed to looking to socialworkers within the county.

Lemaster faulted the police decision to�“shut down what they knew was a FirstAmendment protest,�” adding that it wouldhave been more appropriate to have offi-cials from the County AdministrativeOffice and County Board of Supervisorssetting policy regarding the demonstration.

Instead, deputies handed out fliers atPeacecamp warning participants that theywere lodging illegally. Lemaster said, �“Iknow they carefully put words in thatwarning saying we were guilty of lodgingto make it sound like a demonstrationdoesn�’t count at night, but that�’s not true.�”

Beyond the police-centered decision-making, Lemaster also said that deputiesconducted law-enforcement activities in amanner influenced by a �“homeland securi-ty�” approach to dissent.

She said that the deputies�’ approach tomonitoring the protest shifted notablyfrom a somewhat informal and easygoinginteraction with camp dwellers, into amore repressive, law-and-order approach.

�“They were like people one day,�”Lemaster said, �“and then when theydecided they got their lodging law anddecided on a campaign, they stayed in therole of this military, four-man team.�”

She also felt that this �“military�”approach, as she put it, was expanded onwhen the Santa Cruz County Sheriff�’sDepartment used similar law-enforcementtechniques during the period that OccupySanta Cruz spent at the courthouse in2011, which was during the height of thenational Occupy movement.

�“Because Peacecamp had happened,and up to that point they had gotten awaywith it, they seemed willing to feel a littlemore emboldened and capable of (utiliz-ing) this homeland security-type approachat Occupy Santa Cruz,�” she said.

An even deeper problem for Lemasteris anti-homeless bigotry, which she feelsis �“pervasive.�” She said it also had some-thing to do with law enforcement�’s strate-gies for dealing with Peacecamp.

�“I really believe the sheriff�’s deputieswould have had a more adequate strategyif they weren�’t being reactionary, and Ibelieve they were reacting to people in theCounty building complaining.�”

Peacecamp was reportedly receivingsanitation-related complaints and com-plaints from County employees workingin the building, who were coming into

first-hand contact with the demonstration.Lemaster felt the complaints were reallyabout homeless people themselves, andthey weren�’t fair.

�“We don�’t go around excoriating eachother for smoking cigarettes,�” she observed,�“but we go around excoriating homelesspeople for leaving a butt behind, as if theyhad a choice. As long as they were lookingat all the homeless people crashed there,and their friends, as �‘the other,�’ they�’re notreally looking at the whole situation whenthey have to resolve a problem.

�“Homeless people come from the sameculture that we come from when we are nothomeless, but they have to live in a culturethat is much more immediate and muchmore dangerous. I expect more from lawenforcement. When they are bringing extrapeople out, I think they need to study theproblem beforehand.�”

Even though Lemaster feels her abilityto communicate directly with county offi-cials has changed over the years, she said,�“I consider them my allies still.�”

�“We used to go to the same workshopstogether,�” she said about some of thecounty officials who had a say in the deci-sion-making process regarding lawenforcement strategies at Peacecamp.

�“We used to be immediate allies. Weused to be part of a team that would con-front people. Because of the adversarialnature of the court, we are put like we areon two different sides of a team that is atwar with each other, and that is the oppo-site of what I just tried to do for most ofmy time. It was frustrating.�”

Even more frustrating for Lemasterwas how she effectively became silencedduring her trial, saying, �“I was put out ofmy life. I was put out of my volunteerwork, my relationship to my community,because I had to hold my tongue as far asanything in the county was concerned.�”

While Lemaster felt that she was onceable to visit in person any county officialshe wanted to communicate with, beingon trial for lodging forced her to hold hertongue in many situations she once wouldhave openly confronted, because her attor-neys and the district attorney told her �“itwas bad form and could infect the legalcase to come, if I talk with the other sidebefore trial,�” she said.

�“I�’ve been doing something for 40years to help poor people, and one part ofthat is when I find something where thesystem doesn�’t work, I try to show that topeople, or even fix it, or help fix it, or findout who can fix it,�” she said.

�“So if it is people on GA [GeneralAssistance] can�’t get GA if they are notalready in the system, that�’s easy to fix.You just tell everyone, and then they�’llsay, �‘OK,�’ and it somehow trickles up tothe Board of Supervisors eventually.�”

�“Real people suffered because I wasn�’t

able to be that liaison for them,�” she said. When defending her decision to not

plead guilty, or take a plea deal, Lemasterwas not only informed by her outlook as aQuaker, which guides her to never lie, butalso by a need to maintain integrity in thecommunity as an advocate for others.

�“Doing the kind of changes that affectpeople in some way in their lives for thebetter requires a credibility,�” she said.

Lemaster said she was offered a pleadeal by the District Attorney�’s office in2011 which would have reduced her mis-demeanor to an infraction if she wouldplead guilty to �“disturbing the peace.�”

�“I wouldn�’t have minded the infrac-tion�’s apparent purpose,�” she said. �“But Iwas being asked to say that I was disturb-ing the peace on Dec 10th at 4 a.m. or so.I mean, they wanted me to say eitherguilty or no contest. They were asking meto say an outright lie, expecting me to.

�“I couldn�’t.�” Pleading guilty would have felt to her

like �“totally denying Peacecamp 2010, mynew friends from there, and what it hadmeant to me.�” She said that it �“felt likebeing pressed to lie.�”

�“I don�’t think that trial had much, if any-thing, to do with seeking justice,�” she said.�“I think it was a political trial, and I feelstrongly about that, more so than when Ileft the trial. I think the district attorney wasgiven political marching orders when theypicked him.

�“In our country and in Santa CruzCounty, is this a homeland security statewhere the government decides who is aterrorist, or who is a good citizen, or whois not even worthy of naming? Or is SantaCruz County still under the Constitutionthat we think of as the lead legal docu-ment of our land, where people �— even ifthey happen to be homeless �— have cer-tain civil rights, and even some humanrights are acknowledged in our constitu-

tion, and even more clearly so in the stateconstitution.�”

Lemaster said that she plans to contin-ue raising awareness about the laws thatoutlaw sleep in Santa Cruz.

She also plans to file an appeal in hercase to fight Judge Connolly�’s claims thatthe lodging law is constitutional, and shealso wants to begin a campaign that shehopes will achieve statewide participationof �“homeless-friendly�” groups and sup-porters to �“take the lodging law 647(e) offthe books.�”

She calls her motivation a �“simple andmoral imperative,�” because, �“consequencesare way too harsh for houseless and home-less folks. It has to get exposed.�”

Lemaster has thought long and hardabout why local government officialsappear bent on persecuting homeless peo-ple and driving them out of public view.

�“The legislature is under the same pres-sures that the court is, and the county is,and their deputies, to keep the homeless outof sight,�” she said. �“Because within thescheme of things, they don�’t have the toolsthey need to solve the problem.

�“So, under pressure from the citizenry atlarge, and whatever delusions some ofthem are carrying with them, the police justkeep pushing them back, and criminalizingthem, sweeping them. If you have to shovethem in a van, or put them in jail overnight,at least that curb is clear.

�“They are going to have to be a leader,in either a kind of demonic abuse of peo-ple, or solutions that are inclusive. Oneway or the other, just because of the costof housing here, and not having the infra-structure that a city would have for peoplewhen they fall, or when they are hurt, orwhen they can�’t get to the hospital.�”

For more information about LindaLemaster and her work advocating for poorpeople and the homeless, see her blog at:

http://hearthbylinda.blogspot.com/

Homeless advocates in Santa Cruz join in a show of solidarity with activist Linda Lemaster during her trial. Alex Darocy photo

Linda Lemaster speaks to supporters before her sentencing. Alex Darocy photo

Linda Lemaster Is Convicted for Illegal Lodgingfrom page 5

April 2013ST R E E T SP I R I T12

the Oakland Tribune ran stories on thenine percent rent increase in one year asBerkeley renters engaged in bidding warsover a limited supply of housing.

The crowd at the opening was full ofwry comments about the few who couldmanage both the cost of the penthouses,apartments and studios currently availablefor lease and the lack of space for the stuffwhich would make actually living in themfeasible.

Nobody was allowed to see the studioapartments. Both the public and the mediatour excluded the studios, presumablybecause they are even more shockinglyspace-resistant than the one-bedrooms.The one-bedrooms are perfect for peoplewho have no books, no instruments, nohobbies, and fervently wish to have nofriends or parties ever in their lives.

Perhaps I am being harsh. But I live in avery small place. And I don�’t really play thebanjo, at least not very well. And I havefour banjos. My CD collection alone wouldbarrel out the door of these space-free unitswith their special staged-home beds, bedsthat knowledgeable eyes know wouldaccommodate only part of a sleepinghuman being but help give the impressionof more space in a staged home for sale.

�“Don�’t worry,�” said one of the womenon the tour. �“The people who�’ll be livinghere are on their second homes.�”

I�’m not saying that to embarrass thehard-working, friendly, gorgeous crowd ofyoung, mostly white women who shepherd-ed the crowd through the tour with casualauthority and aplomb. They were smart,responsive, engaging, and very patient witha crowd that grew more raucous with eachof at least three alcohol stops.

There is no question that something iswrong with a hiring policy that manifestssuch racial and gender singularity, but

those whom I met were talented, dedicat-ed, and sincerely capable of both fieldingcritical questions and guiding drunks outof the shrubbery.

The officials, planners, and developerswho pushed for the project are only par-tially at fault for plucking the ripe cherrythat is �— surprise �— another luxury hous-ing development in Berkeley, the citywith the largest gap between rich and poorin the entire Bay Area.

Berkeley City Councilmember JesseArreguin was there beaming along withDowntown Berkeley Association members,Chamber of Commerce representatives,and, of course, Mayor Tom Bates for theribbon-cutting ceremony.

I�’m noting the second-home theory tohonor the theme represented by nearlyevery speaker at the ribbon-cutting cere-mony and most of the literature as well.The 143 units at Berkeley Central werespecifically designed to attract peoplefrom out of town.

I would have no problem with this if weweren�’t in a housing crisis. Build for therich, I would say. Build crazy stuff withgold-plated toilets and let them buy it.

But we are in a housing crisis. TheDowntown Berkeley Association tried tooutlaw sitting down on the sidewalk, forthe sake of the largest property owners.The money spent on that campaign wouldhave funded a drop-in homeless center forat least three years.

It�’s safe to say that using Berkeley�’s pre-cious square footage to accommodate theneeds of the uber-class �— the high-end techworkers priced out of San Francisco whocan afford as many storage units as it takesto make sure they don�’t have to live withtheir boxes of Christmas decorations ortheir old Occupy banners next to their beds�— is, dare I say it, unfair.

They may be making up apps by thethousands over in Silicon Valley, but ain�’t

nobody making any new land. We eitherbuild with an eye toward addressing theobvious need for low-income housing, orwe sidestep acknowledging a housing cri-sis so obvious that perfectly sane,arguably intelligent people sit aroundboardroom tables discussing which of thearray of attributes describing homeless ornomadic people would be best to crimi-nalize next.

We, the taxpayers of Berkeley, pay forthe City Council�’s and the planners�’salaries. Why aren�’t they building housingto accommodate our existing housingneeds? Rich people, lovely though theymay be, are just not at a loss for housingoptions. You should have seen the high-end bicycle in the bike rack in one of thestaged rooms at Berkeley Central. This isnot your father�’s IT worker.

But oh, how well this policy works forpoliticians whose larger agenda is to sim-ply eliminate poverty by eliminating poorpeople from the community entirely.

Polly Armstrong of the Chamber ofCommerce said it, Mayor Tom Bates saidit, Councilmember Jesse Arreguin said it,and even the official literature echoes theobvious policy of addressing Berkeley�’sincome gap by tilting housing in the direc-tion of rich techie youngsters who hope-fully will never know that homes used to,as a practical matter of course, havepantries, linen closets, attics, basements,parlors, porches, etc.

Developers win when mini-apartmentsget fondled and crowed over as �“green�”for having no place to put the basketball.But then, developers always win.

You�’ll want to know, so I�’ll tell you �—$2,575 to $3,000 for a one bedroom,$3,775 to $3,900 for a two-bedroom,$5,350 to $6,300 for the penthouses.

Door-to-door trash service (a mandato-ry $30 fee) and proximity to the BARTStation. Entirely smoke-free, except thatsomebody was smoking on the penthousefloor. At least one parking space per unit(approximately 150), with a handful of�“public�” spaces; don�’t ever let them argue

that these techie newcomers won�’t haveconventional wheels in addition to the$8,000 bike.

But those two and twenty people withoutstretched hands are right outside won-dering how long they have to wait untilwe can have a ribbon-cutting ceremonyfor the majority, the poor, who havesomehow become wallpaper to the peoplewho wandered through Berkeley Central�’sluxury apartments sipping wine.

Remember �“the market�” �— the reassur-ing equation we met in school where�“demand�” put market forces in gear toaddress public needs until soaring pricescame down? When you�’re old enough, youbegin to notice how that never happensexcept in Stockton and Detroit, and eventhere the housing you�’ve managed to makedo with all your life is considered �“blight-ed,�” if not bulldozed in favor of anythingthat will coax more rich people into town.

We may be the 99%, but thanks toCitizens United and the natural tendencyof politicians to nosh with the powerful,our housing needs are having troublemanifesting into anything honestly afford-able to the majority of us. Ten percent ofBerkeley households subsist on less than$10,000 a year.

The single room occupancy housingwhich once ensured shelter for the travel-ing or working poor in Berkeley is slowly,steadily being demolished in favor ofhigh-end housing, with a few �“affordable�”units for the $80,000-a-year crowd as amatter of policy.

Local politicians and downtown prop-erty and business owners are so dedicatedto not meeting demand and not loweringrents and prices that they�’re willing toimport an entirely new upper-class clien-tele rather than think practically abouthow one manages to live on $10,000 ayear �— which is an art.

It�’s an art more of us may need in thenear future if the peculiar policy of delib-erately displacing the majority, the poor,both on the streets and in the neighbor-hoods, goes unchanged.

from page 1

Former Downtown Berkeley Association president John De Clercq talks withwine-drinking celebrants at Berkeley Central luxury apartment ribbon-cutting.

�“THE HOUSING CIRCLE OF LIFE.�” Art by Carol Denney

Berkeley Celebrates Luxury HousingI would have no problem with luxury apartments if weweren�’t in a housing crisis. Build for the rich, I would say.Build crazy stuff with gold-plated toilets and let them buyit. But we are in a housing crisis.