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

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by Linda Ellen Lemaster

The Freedom Sleepers hadalready been demonstratingagainst the city’s anti-sleepinglaws every Tuesday night for

many weeks when my girlfriend and I vis-ited the scene of the growing protest at theCity Hall gardens in Santa Cruz.

We circulated around the two informa-tion tables and the little clusters of home-less sleepers and their friends participat-ing in this once-a-week overnight proteston the parched but still garden-like CityHall grounds. The Freedom Sleepers haveshown real perseverance over the past fewmonths, and have held more than 16overnight sleep-outs.

In one corner, signs declared: “Sleep IsA Human Necessity” and “6.36.010 HasGot to Go” — a reference to the SantaCruz municipal ordinance that prohibitssleeping for homeless people. Two busyyounger guys, dynamic in a pile of inkmarkers and backpacks and posterboard,were making messages into signs alongthe brick and stone pathway under an

arbor of roses and hanging fuchsia.The opposite front corner in the garden

sheltered an older couple, seemingly soundasleep around 5 p.m., under a shady four-foot palm tree near the stone retainer wall.

We showed up while some of thehomeless sleepers and most of their allieswere inside attending the City Councilmeeting. Councilmembers were seekingmore ways to make it a crime to be home-less. They’ve banned the act of sleepingoutdoors in a city with a documentedshortage of housing and shelter beds.

Can you believe these people? The CityCouncil's response to demonstrators presentat the meeting was to agendize several newbatches of anti-homeless draft laws andrevisions, to see how they can further crimi-nalize and exclude the city's poor.

Instead of focusing on greater solutionsto the recent loss of homeless serviceswhen the budget for the HomelessServices Center was abruptly slashed, thecouncil evidently has decided instead topave their pathway to criminalization. It

BEFORE THE DELUGEFreedom Sleepers Confront a FloodTide of Homelessness in Santa Cruz“In their hearts they turned to each other’s hearts for refuge,in the troubled years that came before the deluge.” — Jackson Browne

by Carol Denney

John Caner, CEO of the DowntownBerkeley Association (DBA), madehis third public apology in less than a

year, this time for having the DBA’s“ambassadors” rip down legally placedfliers and posters — in a city where theFree Speech Movement defended freespeech and dissent.

Caner first apologized about a year agowhen his 2012 election campaign in sup-port of his anti-homeless measure,“Berkeley Civil Sidewalks—Yes on S,”was fined $3,750 by the Berkeley FairCampaign Practices Commission for notreporting more than $5,000 in cash pay-ments to homeless people to hand outdeceptive fliers advocating making sittingdown a crime.

Next, Caner apologized again earlierthis year when two of his DBA ambas-sadors were videotaped attacking and bru-tally beating two homeless men. Canercharacterized this violent assault as an iso-

lated incident, yet several homeless peo-ple had previously reported similarencounters with DBA ambassadors.

Now, Caner has apologized once again,on October 13, 2015, when communitymembers spoke in favor of a motion byBerkeley City Councilmember KrissWorthington asking the city manager to“examine whether any constitutionalquestions arise if DBA Ambassadors takedown fliers placed on poles that appear tocomply with Berkeley Municipal Code.”

Once again, Caner characterized theDBA’s practice of employing their privatepatrol to rip down fliers as an isolatedincident which he was hearing about forthe first time.

Caner said, “Sometimes ambassadorsmake mistakes. Sometimes our ambas-sadors don’t know all the nuance. I invite(the public) to give us a call. I was notaware of it. We’re trying to keep down-town neat and clean.... I would welcome

Defending Freedom of Speech in BerkeleyDowntown Berkeley Association apologizesfor ripping down First Amendment rights

DBA Ambassador Jamie Bush tears down a flier saying, “Restricted Area—WealthyPeople Only.” This kind of political message is protected by the First Amendment.

It is absurd that the DBA, representing the wealthiest prop-erty owners in town, is taking public money to pay a privatepatrol to tear down the posters of poor artists, musicians,activists and community groups. We’re paying them to teardown our posters — and rip up the First Amendment.

See Before the Deluge page 2

See Defending Freedom of Speech page 8

Freedom Sleepers in Santa Cruz call for an end to Sleeping Ban. Photo by Alex Darocy

November 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T2

seems the council majority has no capaci-ty to resist the Not In My Back Yard rav-ings of hateful people promoting greaterfear of these roofless, powerless folks.

Yet, the day after I finished this storyfor Street Spirit, Santa Cruz Mayor DonLane published his long letter apologizingfor some of his past votes that impacthomeless people here (and, in my opinion,have helped to criminalize them).

[Editor: See Mayor Lane’s letter onpages 6-7 of this issue of Street Spirit.]

Mayor Lane makes several new pro-posals, including changes to the sleepingban. I want to believe this impassionedletter may push elected officials to action.I saw no concern coming from the CityCouncil prior to the mayor’s letter aboutthe harms and dangers created by long-term council neglect of homeless folks.

Now, the mayor’s letter is all overtown and it has already triggered lots of“buzz” and maybe even action. I’m pray-ing Lane's words can be understood by hisgovernmental peers and employeesresponsible for much of the systematicallybigoted destruction of people’s lives I seeon the streets of Santa Cruz.

Meanwhile, back at the plaza outside, Imet several families in sleeping bags, awoman with three dogs, a dizzy singer,and another handful of single guys com-paring maps and journeys.

Lucero was on her feet and on the ballwith her strong voice and a good signdirected toward passing cars along the frontsidewalk where, at 10 p.m., anyone demon-strating who doesn’t want a ticket or arrestwould be forced to leave when police andguards come to empty the City Hall garden“park.” As has become very typical at polit-ical demonstrations in these parts, mediaworkers also were cited by police, trippedup, and pressed to protect themselves dur-ing the first few Tuesday sleep-outs.

Years ago, the City Council passed anordinance just to make the city govern-ment’s plaza into yet another “city park”with a curfew. Curfews for city parksbegin at 10 p.m. Those grounds became a“park” by the City’s legal definition pre-cisely to block homeless protesters fromstaying overnight.

From a little broader legal perspective,California’s public meeting laws and theU.S. Constitution’s promise of freedom ofspeech will prove stronger some day thanthe City of Santa Cruz’s long-enduringban on sleeping and camping.

Just about the time of night whenalmost every housed person is goingunder their covers, Freedom Sleepers willbe roused by the police, and maybe ticket-ed, fined or arrested. The ones who haveno other legal place to go, and a few oftheir friends, line the sidewalk on ChurchStreet, crowded together like sardines,until either dawn erupts or police comeback for more easy pickings.

Food Not Bombs, one of the foundingcollaborators of Freedom Sleepers, has pro-vided the luxury of hot meals, and theirgenerosity is now going into the fifthmonth. Food Not Bombs banners are visi-ble both across the street by the downtownlibrary and inside the City Hall councilchambers, setting a relatively high standardof both visibility and healthy living.

That night, we saw the row of regularvigilers sitting on the plaza facing traffic,sitting on a bench, leaning against thestone wall all evening, with signs in theirlaps. They clear out by the time sleepersare forced to either evacuate the “park” orare ticketed for a flurry of laws, including

“being in a closed area.”The sleepers convene a General

Assembly at a fixed time, as needed, mostTuesdays. Other seeds of community havesprouted, and we have begun talkingabout how a Women’s Circle might bestunfold. In recent weeks, many FreedomSleepers, perhaps in tandem with FEMAscouts and Santa Cruz County, are advo-cating for and working on how to be safewhen El Nino’s predicted downpour hitsMonterey Bay and environs.

I see a big difference in the twoapproaches. Freedom Sleepers are con-cerned mostly about already displacedpeople whose lives and survival are liter-ally on the line; while Santa Cruz Countyand FEMA officials are out to help securereal estate and personal property, offeringrakes and sandbag kits for protectinghouses and gardens for those alreadysecurely indoors. Two separate worlds.

“I’d like to see a permanent and expand-ing pressure group that activates students,workers, renters around this issue of con-science — the Sleeping Ban — particularlyas the El Nino weather approaches,” saidRobert Norse of HUFF, “while simultane-ously maintaining and expanding our defacto safe sleeping zone.

Norse elaborates, “Of course, thelonger term objective is ending theSleeping, Blanket, and Camping Bans.”

HUFF (Homeless United for Friendshipand Freedom), along with CommonGround: Santa Cruz Homeless Depot, Food

Not Bombs, and Homeless Persons LegalAssistance Project initiated this demonstra-tion which has since evolved into FreedomSleepers. There was also support from localACLU chapter board members.

The founding groups brought together acommunity gathering in July, a hundredstrong, on the downtown Post Office steps,a place where homeless people were onceallowed to sleep rough at night until toomany came there. People picked a cam-paign launch site that evening, marching onIndependence Day to City Hall plaza.

My friend and I were just casualAugust visitors. She brought her folksongs with lyrics customized for FreedomSleepers and her strong, loving voice, andI brought cupcakes we had made for 50.

Nearby I saw a table offering informa-tion and petitions to sign about a “consti-tutional protection zone.” Someone elsewas flattening and stacking cardboard. Bythe time we left, the banana-slug-coloredport-a-potty arrived and was set up acrossthe street around 7 p.m. City staff refusesto permit bathroom use at night.

Clusters of sleeping bags dotted the frontand one side of the campus. Some were setup but empty, holding the space; others hadfolks already halfway tucked in, reading abook or lost in quiet conversations.

Freedom Sleepers are people of allstripes, ages, beliefs. They want to overturnthe selectively enforced laws enacted by theCity of Santa Cruz that are being deployedto target, banish, criminalize and even crush

people experiencing homelessness. Andthey remind us about the other class-basedminority groups — youth, students, artists— who are feeling systematically shunnedand pushed out of their world.

We left that evening as five meandering,uniformed security guards changed theirpace and converged to greet three gas-spewing klieg lights being rolled out intothe empty parking spaces fronting the vigil.The giant lights get turned on around bedtime. I have serious asthma/breathing prob-lems around such toxic fumes, so I wasforced away from City Hall’s main entryduring the council meeting, but not beforefolks found the cupcakes I brought.

City officials deploy these beacons, itappeared, to make safe and peaceful slum-ber even more difficult. At 10 p.m., theFreedom Sleepers are pushed onto thesidewalk — a gritty concrete “bed” I tast-ed in 2010. I would not wish it on anyone.

Week after week, homeless people arereturning to join the vigils held by theFreedom Sleepers, where, so far, they arenot being hit with the sleep/camp ticketsthat cost roughly $150, like they’ve beengetting elsewhere in the city.

*** *** ***Contact Freedom Sleepers: freedom-

sleepers@gmail.com, 800-884-1136.facebook.com/groups/freedomsleepers

Linda Ellen Lemaster is a formerly home-less woman who facilitates Housing NOWSanta Cruz. homes4everyone@post.com

from page 1

Freedom Sleepers take their message of protest inside the chambers of the Santa Cruz City Council. Alex Darocy photo

Food Not Bombs and Freedom Sleepers have carried out a series of weekly protests with great perseverance. Alex Darocy photo

BEFORE THE

DELUGE

November 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 3

A Column on Human Rights

by Carol Denney

Is your local politician immune tomoral shaming? Does he or she passordinances targeting homeless peoplefor sitting down, sleeping in public,

or having sleeping bags or blankets? Arehomeless people in your city reeling froma barrage of repressive laws and policeraids? Are you scratching your head won-dering how to make it stop?

The U.S. Department of Housing andUrban Development might be able to help.

Almost two billion dollars of“Continuum of Care” grant money is slat-ed to go to applicants who use proven,effective strategies to address homeless-ness. Applicants will compete for fundingbased on their willingness to adopt bestpractices — such as permanent housing— and avoid destructive practices — suchas the criminalization of homelessness.

It’s one thing to stack up positionpapers showing the fallacy of giving tick-ets to people with no money, cycling peo-ple through emergency rooms instead ofproviding housing and services, and wast-ing police resources on issues whichwould disappear if everybody simply hadsomewhere to live.

But it’s quite another thing to hold asteaming pot of two billion dollars of pub-lic funding under municipal and countynoses with an offer to share it — if andonly if it isn’t wasted.

Treating people who have nowhere to goas though they were criminals isn’t just

bewildering, ineffective, and immoral —it’s wasteful. The HUD guidelines are clear.They want proof that cities are using provenstrategies that have a lasting impact on alocal level, a focus on root causes, a com-mitment to decriminalization, and housingfirst as an effective strategy.

The guidelines were issued only a fewshort weeks after the Department ofJustice’s Statement of Interest clarified thatlaws criminalizing sleeping, sitting down,etc., are cruel and unusual punishment anda violation of constitutional rights.

Eric Tars of the National Law Centeron Homelessness and Poverty explainedthat “for the first time HUD is askingContinuums to ‘describe how they arereducing criminalization of homeless-ness.’ In the extremely competitive fund-ing process, Continuums’ ability to fullyrespond to this question can determine upto two points in the funding application,and in many cases could be the differencebetween receiving funding and not.”

Imagine the city of Santa Cruz, whichhas criminalized sleeping, or the city ofSacramento, which has criminalized“camping” on public or private propertywithout a permit, attempting to addressthis particular portion of an application forfederal funds.

No one can be sure whether this clearsignal regarding Continuum of Care grantmoney is something cities can sidestepsemantically by referring to what we rec-ognize as anti-poor laws as something else.Perhaps they will claim they are only“safety enhancement” laws to keep side-

walks from being blocked? Park protectionlaws to keep public lawns healthy?

Politicians use stock phrases to defendanti-poor laws, suggesting that they’re try-ing to make sidewalks accessible, orenhance “commercial vitality,” or addressa public “perception” of danger, etc.

And certainly, HUD’s even morerecent announcement that it is proposing areduction in the East Bay’s Section 8 fairmarket rents, which will increase thenumber of households unable to useSection 8 Housing Choice Vouchers, indi-cates that the housing crisis will not disap-pear overnight.

But the Department of Justice’s recentStatement of Interest announcing thatBoise’s anti-homeless law is flatly uncon-stitutional and the HUD grant guidelinesasking cities to describe “how they arereducing criminalization of homelessness”are a clear signal that, at least in thesewaning days of the Obama administration,there is agreement that wasting money isbad policy.

Cities that Criminalize thePoor Risk Losing Funding

Street Spirit EditorialAdvisory Committee

Street Spirit is guided by an advisorycommittee of dedicated advocates. AFSCexpresses thanks to the members of theStreet Spirit advisory committee:

Janny Castillo, Ellen Danchik, DianaDavis, Carol Denney, Michael Diehl,Lydia Gans, David Hartsough, Sister EvaLumas, Daniel McMullan, The SuitcaseClinic, Pattie Wall, Susan Werner.

Street SpiritStreet Spirit is published by AmericanFriends Service Committee. The ven-dor program is run by J.C. Orton.

Editor, Layout: Terry MessmanWebsite: Jesse ClarkeHuman Rights: Carol Denney

Contributors: Claire J. Baker, LizBrown, Joan Clair, Jess Clarke, AlexDarocy, Carol Denney, BenjaminDonlon, Sulaiman Hyatt, Judy Joy Jones,Linda Ellen Lemaster, Dan McMullan,Ibrahim Bilal Mubarak, Shayla Myers,JoJo Smith, WRAP, George Wynn

All works copyrighted by the authors.

Street Spirit welcomes submissions ofarticles, artwork, poems and photos. Contact: Terry MessmanE-mail: spirit@afsc.orgWeb: http://www.thestreetspirit.org

Santa Cruz police surround activist Robert Norse at the sleep-out nearCity Hall. City officials have criminalized the essential act of sleeping.

Alex Darocyphoto

“I’ve had enough of reading things byneurotic psychotic pigheaded politicians.All I want is the truth, just give mesome truth.” — John Lennon

“If the American people ever allow pri-vate banks to control the issue of theircurrency, first by inflation, then bydeflation, the banks and corporationsthat will grow up around them willdeprive the people of all property untiltheir children wake up homeless on thecontinent their Fathers conquered.... Ibelieve that banking institutions aremore dangerous to our liberties thanstanding armies.... The issuing powershould be taken from the banks andrestored to the people, to whom it prop-erly belongs.” — Thomas Jefferson

“Reader, suppose you were an idiot. Andsuppose you were a member of Congress.But I repeat myself.” — Mark Twain

Gimme Some Truth

by Carol Denney

Buckle your seatbelt for moreanti-homeless laws inBerkeley. Just in time forThanksgiving and Christmas,

the City of Berkeley is turning its back onthe Department of Justice and Housingand Urban Development guidelines, aswell as best practices.

Instead, it is embracing more anti-homeless laws which will “increase night-time enforcement” in parks and severelycurtail the amount of belongings peoplecan have with them.

These anti-homeless laws will be con-sidered at the City Council meeting on theevening of Tuesday, November 17.

A new wave of oppressive prohibitionsis in store for homeless people: “...place-ment of personal belongings on sidewalksand plazas covering more than 2 squarefeet or, for a mobile unit, no more than 6square feet (i.e. a standard shopping cart),during the day, from 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.(storage to be provided). 3. Any personsoliciting another who is making a pay-ment at a parking meter or pay station. 4.Lying inside of planter beds and onplanter walls. 5. Personal items affixed topublic fixtures including poles, bike racks(except bikes), planters, trees, tree guards,newspaper racks, parking meters and pay

stations. Pet leashes exempt only as notprohibited in BMC 10.12.110. 6.Placement of personal objects in planters,tree wells, or within 2 feet of a tree well toenable tree care and to protect treetrunks....”

Come to the City Council and speakout for justice on Tuesday, November17, 2015. The U.S. Department of Justicecould not be clearer in its August 6thstatement of interest: Cities which crimi-nalize the inevitable results of a lack ofhousing are in violation of the U.S.Constitution’s 8th Amendment againstcruel and unusual punishment.

These are the councilmembers mostlikely to vote for the anti-homeless laws:

Mayor Tom Bates: 510 981-7100,mayor@cityofberkeley.info

District 1 Linda Maio (510) 981-7110,lmaio@cityofberkeley.info

District 2 Darryl Moore (510) 981-7120, dmoore@cityofberkeley.info

District 4 Jesse Arreguin (510) 981-7140, jarreguin@cityofberkeley.info

District 5 Laurie Capitelli (510) 981-7150, LCapitelli@cityofberkeley.info

District 6 Susan Wengraf (510) 981-7160, swengraf@cityofberkeley.info

District 8 Lori Droste (510) 981-7180,ldroste@cityofberkeley.info

But the real power behind this move isthe Downtown Berkeley Association andthe developers and property owners on itsboard. This unaccountable, undemocraticgroup of out-of-towners control the coun-cil majority and make up the bulk of polit-ical contributions in elections.

More Anti-Homeless Laws on the Way November 17

November 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T4

by Western Regional Advocacy Project

The annual International DowntownAssociation conference, held thisyear at the Marriott Hotel in San

Francisco on September 30, was gearedtowards increasing business success indowntowns all over the United States andCanada, as well as policing, harassing andforcibly removing people deemed a “nui-sance” from downtown centers.

George Kelling, the infamous originatorof Broken Windows policing, helped open

the conference with his workshop, “BrokenWindows, Community Policing andQuality of Life Issues.” WRAP was there tohelp usher him into San Francisco.

As WRAP members from Portland,Denver and Los Angeles came into town,we mobilized to infiltrate and disrupt theIDA conference and George Kelling’stalk. While we intended to enter the con-ference room unnoticed and disrupt theworkshop, we were spotted by securityguards on our way in, due to the sameracist, classist and violent policing strate-gies that we are fighting.

Though we could not enter the room,WRAP members took up space outside ofthe conference room with banners, chantsand T-shirts that read, “We are not brokenwindows” and “Kelling you are killing us.”Organizers held down the disruption for

about 15 minutes before exiting the build-ing to join our comrades from POOR mag-azine who had organized a sister demon-stration criticizing Broken Windows polic-ing in front of the Marriott.

A source inside the workshop toldWRAP that Kelling said, “they always findme,” in response to the disruption.

The next day, on October 1, WRAPmembers organized an alternative panel tothe IDA conference called “BrokenWindows and BID Business: How BigBusinesses Use Broken WindowsPolicing to Gentrify and Exclude,” toteach our communities about BusinessImprovement Districts (BIDs).

With WRAP organizers IbrahimMubarak from Right 2 Survive, BenjaminDonlon from Denver Homeless Out Loudand JoJo Smith from Los Angeles

Community Action Network, as well asallies Shayla Myers, Liz Brown andSulaiman Hyatt, the panelists debunkedBroken Windows policing and the waysthat Business Improvement Districts ter-rorize street-based communities.

The panel brought out a large crowdand gathered lots of positive feedback.This is merely the beginning for WRAPand our organizing efforts against theBusiness Improvement Districts and any-one who encourages the policing, harass-ment and incarceration of poor and home-less people.

We continue to build our momentumfor another year of the Homeless Bill ofRights with a message of dedication: Weare not broken windows and we will con-tinue to fight this violent system trying tobreak us until we are all free.

Broken Windows Policing Breaks Lives Apart

by Jess Clarke

Broken windows policing is atheory of law enforcement thatconcentrates on arresting peo-ple for low-level offenses such

as loitering, vagrancy, sitting on side-walks, sleeping on the streets, and litter-ing, in order to create an atmosphere ofpropriety and order for residents andworkers in business districts and down-town areas of cities.

Its original proponent was GeorgeKelling, co-author of a 1982 article in theAtlantic where he laid out the case using areal-estate metaphor to provide justifica-tion for discriminatory law enforcement,directed at poor and homeless people andaimed at “quality of life” crimes.

Kelling wrote: “One unrepaired brokenwindow is a signal that no one cares, andso breaking more windows costs noth-ing.... If a window in a building is brokenand is left unrepaired, all the rest of thewindows will soon be broken.”

Using metaphorical reasoning and aseries of anecdotes from Newark andChicago, but backed up by almost noempirical evidence, Kelling comes to theconclusion that: “Serious street crimeflourishes in areas in which disorderlybehavior goes unchecked.”

Kelling spins a tale of the good olddays when the police enforced communitystandards of middle-class respectabilityand all was right with the world. Butbeneath the surface rhetoric and themetaphorical reasoning, he isn’t all thatshy about spelling out the real purposes— and targets — of this policing strategythat has been used against Blacks, Okies,homeless and disabled persons, and otherundesirables.

“[T]he police in this earlier periodassisted in that reassertion of authority byacting, sometimes violently, on behalf ofthe community. Young toughs wereroughed up, people were arrested ‘on sus-picion’ or for vagrancy, and prostitutesand petty thieves were routed. ‘Rights’were something enjoyed by decent folk...”

Even at its origins, Kelling was wellaware of who the victims of selectiveenforcement would be, but he franklystates that he just doesn’t care: “Arrestinga single drunk or a single vagrant who hasharmed no identifiable person seems

unjust, and in a sense it is....”He also acknowledges that his policy

could easily result in lending the force ofarms to the enforcement of prejudice.

Kelling writes: “The concern about equi-ty is more serious. We might agree that cer-tain behavior makes one person more unde-sirable than another but how do we ensurethat age or skin color or national origin orharmless mannerisms will not also becomethe basis for distinguishing the undesirablefrom the desirable? How do we ensure, inshort, that the police do not become theagents of neighborhood bigotry?”

His only answer to this very significantdanger is to hold out the faint hope thatsomehow the selection and training ofgood police can make up for bad policy.

“We can offer no wholly satisfactoryanswer to this important question. We arenot confident that there is a satisfactoryanswer except to hope that by their selec-tion, training, and supervision, the policewill be inculcated with a clear sense of theouter limit of their discretionary authority.That limit, roughly, is this — the policeexist to help regulate behavior, not tomaintain the racial or ethnic purity of aneighborhood.”

It seems a very slim hope indeed thatpolice will always remember, without fail,“the outer limit of their discretionary

authority” while conducting police raidsand street crackdowns.

Even in 1982, Kelling was concernedthat the citizenry, and even the police brass,might not think that pouring policeresources into driving “undesirables” out ofa neighborhood would garner sufficient tax-payer support. His suggested solution wasthe use of private security forces. “One wayto stretch limited police resources,” hewrote, is to “hire off-duty police officers forpatrol work in their buildings.”

Broken windows policing is losingpublic support across the country andpopular uprisings are bringing policeunder ever greater scrutiny.

So here we are today, when policehired by Business Improvement Districtsand other property owners are on the frontlines of a policing strategy that, by itsoriginal design, was premised on gettingback to the good old days when “rights”were something enjoyed by “decent folk”— not by undesirable such as ourselves.

On the Origins of Broken Windows Policing

We are not broken windowsand we will continue to fightthis system trying to break usuntil we are all free.

A protest of BIDs and Broken Windows policing in San Francisco. Jess Clarke photo

WRAP members protest the International Downtown Association’s support for Broken Windows laws. Jess Clarke photo

Kelling acknowledges that his“Broken Windows” policycould easily result in lendingthe force of arms to theenforcement of prejudice.

November 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 5

WRAP Panel on Broken Windowsand Business Improvement Districts

INTRODUCTION

Business Improvement Districts andbusiness associations such as theChamber of Commerce are very

powerful lobbies that advocate the crimi-nalization of homelessness and the use ofpolice power to maintain the fabric ofracial and economic segregation in manycities across the United States.

Real estate owners, developers and largeretail businesses are the biggest beneficia-ries of “Broken Windows Policing” and“Stop and Frisk” approaches to maintainingorder in public spaces. Segregation of thepoor and people of color and removingthem from areas where property values areincreasing or already high, is typicallyaccompanied by methods of police enforce-ment that criminalize the very presence ofpoor people and people of color.

As police murders and abuse stir a popu-lar movement for police accountability, cor-porate interests continue to preserve andexpand their investments in urban centersby shifting police enforcement to private-public entities where corporate interestsrule more directly. Business ImprovementDistricts are one such mechanism.

At a panel discussion organized byWRAP in San Francisco on October 1,speakers addressed the increasing powerof Business Improvement Districts in SanFrancisco, Los Angeles, Denver and othercities, and discussed how policing is con-nected to racial and economic segregation,gentrification and mass incarceration.

Excerpts from the panelists follow. Tohear the speakers’ own words please visitthestreetspirit.org/brokenwindows

LIZ BROWN, DEPARTMENT OF

CRIMINAL JUSTICE STUDIES, SAN

FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY

George Kelling’s stance is he thoughtthat it’s the application that’s been wrong,and not the actual theory and practice ofbroken windows policing itself. It is veryclear that he’s actually lamenting a timewhen police could play the role of, as heputs it, “kicking ass,” without the over-sight of the court. So he’s actually lament-ing a couple of changes that went on inthe ‘60s and ‘70s that brought things likeFourth Amendment rights to local citizensand the relationship between the policeand local citizens.

Wilson and Kelling both point out that,in fact, broken windows policing is notmeant to solve crime. It’s actually justmeant to decrease people’s fear of peoplethat they find disorderly, people he identi-fies very explicitly as people who are notviolent, people who are not criminals; butpeople who are loiterers, people who aregang members, people who are homeless.

The logic of broken windows is notmeant to decrease crime. It’s not meant tomake us safer. It’s actually meant toexclude people that are dispossessed by acapitalist society, by a racist society, by awhite supremacist society. I found that veryshocking. I also found it very shocking thatit’s actually been claimed in any way that itshould decrease crime, when almost everysingle study that has been done of police —and this is actually cited in the Wilson andKelling article — shows that, in fact,increasing police has no effect on crime.

There’s an excellent study of KansasCity that shows that when they divided upKansas City into three different districts,they increased police in one, theydecreased police in another, and they keptpolice the same — and none of thosestrategies had any effect on crime rate.

So the turn towards police, the turntowards broken windows as a crime con-trol measure, is a fallacy in itself. And Ithink if you read “Broken Windows,” it isdoing exactly what it was intended to do,which is to harass the poor, which is toharass communities of color, and to createthe cycle of incarceration that we see sopresent in American society.

Liz Brown is an associate professor in theDepartment of Criminal Justice Studies at SanFrancisco State University and director of theSchool of Public Affairs and Civic Engagement.

BENJAMIN DONLON, DENVER

HOMELESS OUT LOUD

I got my start around homeless advocacywith Occupy Denver. Its destruction cameabout because of the BIDs, specifically oneBID, the Downtown Denver Partnership,which lobbied with prewritten legislationfor a camping ordinance they’d been tryingto push for a long time. But they finally hadthe momentum through Occupy to con-vince City Council members to pass theordinance. They passed it within a monthand began harassing the homeless on awide scale throughout the city.

Because they knew it could be chal-lenged constitutionally, they use it as ahomeless stop-and-frisk and they use it asa mechanism to essentially approach anyhomeless individual and then subsequent-ly search them for warrants and checktheir pockets for contraband or whatever.

Unfortunately, the Downtown DenverPartnership continues to grow in strengthand they currently hold a lot of weight,and just recently funded, I think, everyCity Council candidate that came intooffice this year. They all got funded bythe developers and by the businessalliances, so it’s a pretty big problem.

They’re taking over the city. Ideally,we can do something to stop it.

Benjamin Donlon is an organizer withDenver Homeless Out Loud. He has beeninvolved in the Right 2 Rest campaign as wellas helping build tiny houses providing immedi-ate shelter to homeless people in Denver.

IBRAHIM BILAL MUBARAK, RIGHT 2SURVIVE, PORTLAND, OREGON

After we became successful with manydemonstrations and direct actions, westarted educating the houseless communi-ty on their constitutional, human, and civilrights, and on how to fight back.

Because you cannot — I don’t carehow hard you try — outdo God and stopthe people from falling asleep. That’s ahuman right. You cannot stop people fromusing the restroom. That’s a human right.Each time a houseless person does that,they’ve been criminalized, so we have toeducate our people, our community, ourbrothers and sisters, on their rights.

That’s why we go to different cities andstates throughout this country, consultingthem on building rest areas, villages, andtent cities. That’s why we’re in a campaignwith the Right to Rest Act deal.

That’s unconstitutional by the UnitedNations Declaration of Human Rights inArticle 25 that everybody deserves a right

to rest or right to sleep. But this govern-ment and the business districts have a Godcomplex and they’re saying, “You can’tsleep because you don’t live in a house.You can’t use the restroom because youdon’t live in a house.”

That’s so absurd and ridiculous. AsMike Tyson said, “It’s ludicrous.” So wegot to come together and fight this form ofdiscrimination, oppression, and repression,then let them know we’re going to exerciseour human right— it’s constitutional.

Ibrahim Bilal Mubarak is a homeless rightsactivist and helped found Dignity Village andRight 2 Survive in Portland, Oregon. He is aleader in Right 2 Dream Too, a space wherepeople can rest or sleep safely and undisturbed.

SHAYLA MYERS, LEGAL AID

ATTORNEY, LOS ANGELES

Our clients made the strategic decisionto sue the Downtown Industrial District,not as private actors, but rather as govern-ment actors for violating the constitutionalrights of the citizens of Skid Row.

For us, that’s a really, really importantdistinction because we’ve largely thoughtof Business Improvement Districts as pri-vate actors who don’t have any authorityunder state law and who are out there oper-ating on their own. But, unfortunately, thetragic reality is that they are operating withthe permission, with the responsibility, andwith the authority that’s given to them bythe City of Los Angeles under state law.They’re operating with a different level ofauthority and, unfortunately, without theaccountability of a state actor.

Under the constitutional principles, theConstitution protects all of us, not againstprivate people, but against the govern-ment. It protects us against the govern-ment’s infringing on our constitutionalrights. So by bringing this lawsuit againstthem as a government actor, we were ableto say that the Business ImprovementDistrict was violating the FourthAmendment right to be free of unreason-able searches and seizures, and the right tobe free of having your property takenwithout due process.

We were able to stand up and say thatBusiness Improvement Districts can’t, onthe one hand, get the benefit of the gov-ernment by collecting taxes, and requiringproperty owners like LA CAN and theLos Angeles Catholic Worker to pay intotheir actions, and at the same time to beable to say, “We’re just private. We don’thave any authority. We’re just operatinglike private citizens.”

Shayla Myers is an attorney at the LegalAid Foundation of Los Angeles, focusing onhousing, civil rights and the criminalization ofhomelessness. She is currently an attorney onLos Angeles Catholic Worker v. Los Angeles

Downtown Industrial District, a lawsuit overthe unlawful practice of taking homeless peo-ple’s personal possessions.

SULAIMAN HYATT, BLACK LIVES

MATTER, BAY AREA CHAPTER

San Francisco used to be known as themost chocolate city, the blackest city westof the Mississippi. It used to be that way. Ithink we’re now down to four percent. It’sinteresting that The Fillmore actually hasgone through several street-wideningprocesses intended to disrupt the blackeconomy that was there.

And this isn’t the first time, nor the lasttime, this was actually done. It was donein L.A., it was done in Oakland, it wasdone in San Jose, it was done inSacramento, and it was done in manyplaces in California, in addition to manyplaces across the nation.

So it’s very familiar, especially withblack people, dealing with the city attack-ing the community and disrupting theeconomy. If we’re not examining race,with the removal and the dispersal ofblack people, then we’re not actuallyaddressing the real solution to things.

What we do know is that the policefunction as a mechanism in society whenyou have a split between those who haveand those who have not. They’ve alwaysfunctioned this way.

When you begin to couple this withmass incarceration, with the 2.4 millionpeople inside, not even including thoseunder monitoring right now, and you alsocouple this with a criminal justice systemthat is intent on feeding these two entities,then you begin to understand the creation ofthese underclasses that are created — peo-ple without homes, people who are impov-erished, and as Michelle Alexander states inThe New Jim Crow, a prison class of peoplewho are perpetually in prison.

Sulaiman Hyatt is an organizer fromBlackLivesMatter Bay Area chapter, born andraised in the Bay Area and mentored by revo-lutionary elders including Yuri Kochiama.

JOJO SMITH, LOS ANGELES

COMMUNITY ACTION NETWORK

One way we showed how to resist theBIDs is when they would come and tell usthat we had to take our tents down, wewould tell them, “Ya’ll do not own thesidewalk. We do not have to do that.”

We pay taxes for these streets and theytry to take our streets from us, so we haveto keep giving resistance and we’ve got tokeep showing resistance.

We got to show other communitieswhat resistance looks like.

JoJo Smith has been a member and orga-nizer with the Los Angeles Community ActionNetwork (LA CAN) since 2011.

How Big Businesses UsePolice to Banish the Poor

The WRAP panel on Broken Windows Policing in San Francisco. Jess Clarke photo

I think if you read “Broken Windows,” it is doing exactlywhat it was intended to do, which is to harass the poor,harass communities of color, and create the cycle of incar-ceration that we see so present in American society.

November 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T6

Open Letter by Mayor Don Lane

As I write this letter, the CityCouncil I belong to is about totake up a variety of measures

related to homelessness. Some of theseitems will be discussed this week. Otherswill presumably be discussed over thenext few months. With winter comingsoon and this set of issues once againcoming to the top of the Santa Cruz com-munity’s agenda, I’d like to outline aframework for looking at these issues andmake some specific proposals.

[Editor: At this point, we skip past thefirst several paragraphs on local home-less service programs.]

In contrast to the good news at thecounty government level, the City ofSanta Cruz has reduced its funding com-mitment for homelessness programs evenas the County has increased its fundingsubstantially. This City reduction was notdone to single out homeless services forbudget reductions— the cuts came toalmost all human services programs.However valid those reasons for thisreduction, it is a real problem that thereduction in City funding for homelessservices has been significant.

The Daytime Essential Services pro-gram at the Homeless Services Center hasbeen severely curtailed due to the loss ofkey state grant funding. This means hun-dreds of people without homes have lostregular access to breakfast and dinnermeals and to sanitation facilities includingrestrooms and showers. It also meansmany people who had a somewhat pro-tected place to spend their days are nowpassing their days in public spaces andneighborhoods all around the community.

I know some people might have imag-ined that, if day services at HSC wereseverely restricted or eliminated, that thecommunity problems associated withhomelessness would diminish and thatmany people living on the street would goaway from Santa Cruz. The verdict on thisidea seems to be in — and homelessnessdid not go away. (My judgment on this isbased on reports from all over the com-munity suggesting that people who appearto be homeless are still present all overtown and the burden placed on the com-munity by extensive homelessness has notdiminished significantly.)

The Paul Lee Loft Shelter at HSC alsolost substantial funding this year and hasadapted to grant funding requirements bychanging its role from a short term emer-gency shelter to a different kind of interimhousing program. The Loft Shelter hadbeen the main year-around emergencyshelter for adults in the Santa Cruz areaand it is no longer a contributor to meet-ing our short term shelter needs. Despite afairly widespread misconception, we’ve

never had a lot of emergency shelter foradults in the City of Santa Cruz. And nowwe have even less. No matter how youslice it, during most of the year, there areliterally hundreds of adults without anindoor space to sleep at night.

It gets even worse. Because HSC hashad to cut so much program and so muchstaffing, without additional funding, it willnot be staffed and equipped to be the opera-tor of Santa Cruz County’s Winter ShelterProgram (at the National Guard Armory inDeLaveaga Park.) HSC will need tens ofthousands of dollars of new funding tooperate a Winter Shelter Program.

Even if our city and county come upwith enough funding to sustain the WinterShelter Program, when the weather turnsbad (as in very heavy El Niño rains) theWinter Shelter will not be sufficient. Itcan serve about 100 adults. There are sev-eral hundred unsheltered individuals inthe immediate Santa Cruz area.

It’s also important to note here what isprobably the worst news of all: rentalhousing costs are skyrocketing. It’s wide-ly agreed that our area is experiencing ahousing affordability crisis that is likelyworse than any past housing crisis we’veseen. People, mainly people with jobs, arebeing priced out of their rental housingsituations every day. This suggests thatboth a potential increase in homelessnesscould emerge and that it will be more dif-ficult than ever to move local people offof the streets and into housing.

Last but not least in the bad news cate-gory: we are continuing to experiencetremendous litter and waste disposal prob-lems along with environmental damage asa result of careless actions by peoplecamping in our parks and open spaces.The City has sought to manage this prob-lem by increasing ranger and police inter-ventions and through the issuance of cita-tions — especially camping citations. Thenumber of camping and sleeping citationsissued this year has increased tremendous-ly compared to previous years.

Yet hundreds of individuals continueto sleep in our parks and open space landsevery night. I think we have a failure ofpolicy and practice on multiple levels. a)Our camping enforcement activities arenot substantially reducing the number ofpeople sleeping in these public spaces. b)The environmental damage and litterdamage persists. c) We have more cita-tions being issued that end up having littledeterrent effect while consuming muchlaw enforcement time.

Beyond what I’ve categorized as goodnews and bad news, there is another sig-nificant piece of news. The federal gov-ernment has, in a variety of ways, sig-naled that it will not provide federalhomelessness funding to localities thatenforce laws against sleeping outsidewhen those who are sleeping outside haveno legal alternative. The feds have alsostarted to intervene in court cases thatquestion local laws that prohibit sleepingin public places for people who have noplace else to sleep.

The City of Santa Cruz has been able tomaneuver through this legal situation inrecent years. Several years ago, the CityCouncil worked with the City Attorney toset up a system whereby people who hadsought emergency shelter but were turnedaway for lack of space could have sleepingand camping citations dismissed. This has

been less than a perfect system but at leastit tried to avoid penalizing people who hadmade an effort to avoid sleeping outside.

Now this model is becoming less func-tional because there is almost no drop-inemergency shelter in our city. (In the non-winter season — April to November —there are something like 15 to 30 unrestrict-ed emergency shelter beds in Santa Cruz) Ithas become extraordinarily difficult for anyhomeless adult to find any emergency shel-ter. If court rulings continue to hold thatpenalizing people for sleeping outsidewhen they have no alternative is unconsti-tutional, Santa Cruz (and hundreds of citiesaround the country) will no longer be ableto enforce this kind of ordinance.

A related issue which has surfaced local-ly, partially in the context of our city coun-cil’s consideration of RV parking regula-tions, is the reality that many people with-out homes sleep in their vehicles. Courtshave begun to wade into this issue, too, andthe general trend seems to be that citiesmight not be able to restrict people fromsleeping in their vehicle if their vehicle is inevery other way compliant with the law.When Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispotried to ban people without homes fromsleeping in vehicles, lawsuits ensued andboth cities were required to make someallowance for sleeping in vehicles.

So we have quite a tangled web ofchallenges and circumstances to take onas we wrestle with homelessness.

As I mentioned before, our local gov-

ernments have adopted a strategic planthat I believe provides an excellent roadmap for how we can successfully reducehomelessness in our county. It’s based onwell-tested models that are working else-where. These models are now showingsuccess here. But this roadmap was notprimarily designed to address some of ourmost pressing short-term challenges. And,beyond that, the conceptual roadmap isjust a plan on our desks unless we takeconcrete actions and make a real commit-ment of resources to implement it.

So... I would like to offer for commu-nity discussion a set of proposals that Ihope will be considered and then actedupon by the City of Santa Cruz and theSanta Cruz City Council in the comingdays and months:

1) Commit additional funds in theamount of $31,000 to ensure that theWinter Shelter Program can operate againthis year and provide shelter for up to 100adults throughout what we expect will be avery wet rainy season. I also suggest weindicate a willingness to contribute a mod-est amount more if there is a weather-basedneed and a countywide willingness toextend the Winter Shelter program for extraweeks. (The final decision on this secondpart would occur in February or March.)

2) In conjunction with a mid-year bud-get update and budget adjustment inJanuary, consider an additional allocation

Santa Cruz Mayor Questions Laws That Punish andCriminalize Homeless People, Calls for CompassionAn Open Letter to my colleagues in local government and inthe Santa Cruz community about the latest challenges inaddressing homelessness ... as winter approaches.

“What public purpose is served when an unsheltered,impoverished person gets a citation for sleeping outside? Isthat kind of citation having any positive impact on thehomelessness problem we have?” — Mayor Don Lane

Freedom Sleepers stage a protest with sleeping bags at City Hall. Alex Darocy photo

See Open Letter from Mayor page 7

Editor: Santa Cruz Mayor Don Lane’sopen letter, posted on October 27, ques-tions the failed approach of criminalizinghomeless people and asks city officials andcitizens to show more compassion.

Recently, the U.S. Department of Justicecondemned laws that criminalize homeless-ness as “cruel and unusual punishment.”HUD officials warned cities they will losefederal homelessness funds if they continueto criminalize homeless people.

In Santa Cruz, Freedom Sleepers arecarrying out a highly visible protest of thecity’s sleeping ban—right outside City Hall.

November 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 7

of funds to sustain the Paul Lee LoftShelter through the current fiscal year,allowing that program additional time toseek a state Emergency Solutions Grant in2016 without closing the loft program.(Allowing that program to close prior tothe completion of the 2016 ESG fundingcycle would virtually ensure that the pro-gram would lose eligibility for ESG fundsnext year.)

3) The County of Santa Cruz has takensteps to create an emergency “warmingcenter” program that will provide themost basic of protections from the rainand cold on nights that are either wet orhave near-freezing temperatures. A volun-teer organization is working in the SantaCruz area to implement a similarWarming Center program for this winterseason. While I think it is unrealistic forthe City to take on providing all of thefacilities that might be needed for a“warming center” program, I think we canbe one of the partners in this.

I propose that the City Council directour City staff to identify a suitable facility(or facilities) to be used for up to 10 nightsof warming center use this winter season atno charge— contingent on the warmingcenter volunteer project identifying otherlocations/facilities that will commit to shar-ing in this effort by providing 30 nights ofwarming center use. (It’s my understandingthat the volunteer effort has already identi-fied 20 nights of facility use from privateorganizations.) Of course, city staff wouldset reasonable standards for the use of cityfacilities and the city’s offer of use of thesefacilities would be withdrawn if those stan-dards are not met.

4) Amend the current camping ordi-nance to remove references to “sleep” and“sleeping” and “covering up with blan-kets.” I realize that some will argue thatthis will encourage even more camping inour city...and therefore result in evengreater improper waste disposal and envi-ronmental damage. This does not have tobe the case. Any person that sleeps out-side and is also making a mess is commit-ting other violations of city ordinancesand this suggested amendment would donothing to discourage enforcement ofthose ordinances. In fact, if the city coun-cil made it clear that waste problems andenvironmental damage are a priority forenforcement rather than sleeping, wecould actually send the message that weare going to focus on the real impacts ofcamping rather than on the natural sur-vival activity of sleeping.

5) I propose that the City Council indi-cate that the City will seek a partner organi-zation with experience working on home-lessness to set up a pilot permit program forlocal residents living in vehicles (limited to25 vehicles). City cooperation on this pilotprogram will be conditioned on a rule thatthe vehicle of each participant be registeredat an address with a Santa Cruz zip code(95060-65). It would also be required thatpermissible parking locations be away fromresidences and be dispersed throughout thecommunity and that the partner organiza-tion provide outreach services to the pro-gram participants. I believe this pilot wouldbest be implemented in conjunction withthe RV permitting program under develop-ment by city staff under previous city coun-cil direction.

6) I recommend that the City of SantaCruz take a neutral and open stance on thequestion of creating a small, pilot camp-ing area for people unable to access anyother form of shelter. Personally, I thinkthis kind of “outdoor shelter” is fraughtwith likely problems of significant magni-tude. Santa Cruz’s earlier attempt at this

kind of camping space turned out to pro-vide a place for individuals to prey on themost vulnerable people in need of safeshelter. This does not mean that a gen-uinely safe and well-managed campingspace would not have value — it meansthat a community organization withproven capacity to manage this kind ofproject would have to put a complete pro-ject plan together (including a legal andworkable physical location). I think theCity should indicate a willingness to per-mit such a program but not be partner inoperating it.

7) Direct our City Manager to includea proposal for City participation in thefunding of the County’s HomelessnessCoordinator position in the 2016-17 CityBudget. (There would not be a formaldecision to provide funding in the nearfuture — just a decision to consider thisparticipation in the context of other bud-get decisions next June.)

8) Engage in a process to determinewhat would be the city’s “fair share” ofhomeless services in relation to our countyand our region. I believe we need to stopmaking our decisions on these issues basedon the unwillingness of some other com-munities to take on any significant respon-sibility on this issue. If every communityused that standard, we could pretend that itwould be justified to do nothing. In light ofthe fact that hundreds of individuals livingon our streets are “locals” by any standard,I believe we need to decide what we arewilling to do for those individuals andbuild our funding commitments aroundthis. It would also create a starting point forinviting our neighboring jurisdictions to dothe same.

9) Participate with other agencies (pub-lic and nonprofit) to evaluate and considerthe best use of the facilities located at 115Coral Street. Changes to HSC’s fundingare having an impact not only on theirprograms but on the programs run by theCounty Health Department and the RiverStreet Shelter operated by EncompassCommunity Services. We cannot afford tolet any of those facilities to be underusedwhen the need to address homelessnessremains so high. The City and the com-munity would be well-served to workwith its partners on rethinking the use ofthose facilities.

Of course, others in the communityhave different proposals and suggestions

and I will consider those approaches asothers consider mine.

When we address an issue as complex,controversial and persistent as homeless-ness it’s not unusual for there to be someavoidance of one or more elements of theissue — elements that probably fit wellunder the tag “the elephant in the room.”

In Santa Cruz, I believe the biggest“elephant” is the behavior of a handful ofhigh profile homelessness activists. (Note:these are homelessness activists— themost notable among them are not them-selves homeless.) Years of boisterous andoffensive behavior have caused me toavoid dealing with some aspects of localhomelessness issues. I imagine this is alsothe experience of some other local electedofficials. Anyway, I am not proud of mychoice to avoid some of these issues. Ihave allowed what I see as the poisonousbehavior of a very small number of peopleto keep me from taking on some trulyimportant issues.

With this letter, I am trying to move ina new direction: no longer allowing thisbehavior by others to interfere with myefforts to address difficult aspects ofhomelessness as a community issue. Ihope others in the community will join mein this new approach.

I also want to be clear here that I don’tconsider my assertion that some of theactivists have behaved badly as a rejectionof all of the substantive concerns thoseindividuals have raised about local home-lessness policy. Just because some ofthem behave poorly, does not mean all oftheir ideas or assertions are incorrect.

I also want to suggest that there maywell be a second elephant: the persistentavoidance by local government of themost difficult QUESTIONS related tohomelessness. Here are some of the ques-tions that really must no longer be avoid-ed, especially in light of the Grand Jury’srecent report on homeless services and theemergency shelter crisis:

Where is a person who attended SantaCruz High 15 years ago and who is nowbroke and troubled and living on thestreets supposed to sleep tonight?

Where will we suggest that each of theseveral hundred unsheltered individuals inthe Santa Cruz area spend the night whenit starts raining hard?

What public purpose is served when anunsheltered, impoverished person gets a

citation for sleeping outside? Is that kindof citation having any positive impact onthe homelessness problem we have?

What is our city’s “fair share” of ser-vices? How many emergency shelter bedsare appropriate for us to have in a city ofour size with our level of homelessness?

And, finally, a couple of specific ques-tions for any official who includes in theirresponse to these kinds of questions: “It isup to some other level of government orsome other entity to deal with homeless-ness.” What do we imagine homelessindividuals should do while we wait forthose other levels of government to stepup? If those other entities are not doingtheir fair share, who should pay the pricefor that failure? Should it be those entitiesand their leaders or should it be the indi-viduals who are struggling to survivewithout a home or a place of shelter?

Lest any reader believe that I am point-ing the finger at someone else to deflectfrom my own responsibility, I will simplysay that I am as responsible as anyone inthis community for our failure to addressour lack of shelter and our over-relianceon law enforcement and the criminal jus-tice system to manage homelessness. Ihave been a direct participant in many ofmy City’s decisions on homelessness. Ihave failed to adequately answer many ofthe questions I am posing. I’ve come torealize that I am not fulfilling my commit-ment to compassion and compassionateaction if I don’t address these issues morethoroughly and engage others to join inthat work with me.

I encourage others to join me in mak-ing a new commitment to address theseissues more directly and effectively. I’mlooking for new partners in this work. I’malso ready to engage in frank conversa-tions on these issues with people of goodwill — even if we have disagreements onany particular policy or funding approach.We have so much work left to do.

Don

[P.S. This is the fourteenth draft of thisletter. I apologize for its length. I continueto wish I could communicate on this set ofissues more clearly and make every pointmore completely. However, at somepoint, I have to say it’s “good enough” tolaunch what I hope will be fresh discus-sion and break out of some of the placeswe’ve been stuck.]

Open Letter from Santa Cruz Mayorfrom page 6

Santa Cruz police roust Freedom Sleepers during the sleep-out protests at Santa Cruz City Hall. Alex Darocy photo

“It has become extraordinarily difficult for any homeless adult to find any emergencyshelter. If court rulings continue to hold that penalizing people for sleeping outside whenthey have no alternative is unconstitutional, Santa Cruz (and hundreds of cities aroundthe country) will no longer be able to enforce this kind of ordinance.” — Mayor Don Lane

November 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T8

the opportunity to sit down with the coun-cilmembers in affected districts ... beforewe eat up a lot of staff time. I’m sorry thatyou had that problem.”

But the Downtown BerkeleyAssociation had already heard about theproblem as far back as 2012, in lettersfrom me. I had first placed health depart-ment stickers in places legal to post,which were left undisturbed by the DBA’sprivate “ambassador” patrols. I thenreturned two weeks later with a photogra-pher, a videographer, and fliers with myown political message. The fliers wereimmediately ripped down.

The DBA ambassadors grabbed myarms in an effort to stop me from replac-ing the torn-down posters and even calledthe police, who at least seemed to knowthat content-based prohibitions on speechare unconstitutional.

I had alerted the Berkeley City Councilabout the issue — and got no response. Ireceived a letter from DBA staff memberLance Goree, who affirmed that the“ambassadors” were just keeping thedowntown tidy, and that only official citycommunication was allowed. Accordingto Goree, what the DBA’s private patrolwas doing was policy.

John Caner also heard about this issuedirectly from the East Bay Media Center’sPaul Kealoha Blake, who also spoke atOctober’s council meeting and has video-tape and photos of the poster removal.

The most eloquent speakers were froma local theater group who sat patientlythrough a long zoning adjustments hear-ing to document their own experiencehaving their fliers removed and were com-pelling on the point of why it mattered.

The community that appreciates their artand theater work was slowly built to its cur-rent strength over the years through patient-ly putting up fliers, and their group haseven had performance spaces opened tothem through the poster outreach. Theyknew their fliers were legal. But it has takenyears for at least one member of the CityCouncil to give the matter a listening ear.

I tried to find legal help from localattorneys, since bringing the poster tear-down issue to the attention of the DBAand the Berkeley City Council got noresponse, but none of them were interest-ed. The issue may look small to attorneysswamped with cases of evictions and thewholesale theft of homeless peoples’belongings by the police. But fliers arehow we organize about those things.

The DBA has over $200,000 of publicmoney and a huge budget of over a mil-lion dollars to advertise its point of view.The public pays for the DBA’s websiteand its shiny fliers. But people on thestreets, local political and arts groups,don’t get public subsidies to organize, andfliers are one of the cheapest ways tocommunicate directly with the public.

It is beyond absurdity that the DBA, rep-resenting the wealthiest property owners intown, is taking our money — public money— and paying a private patrol to tear downthe posters of poor artists, musicians,activists, and community groups. We’re

paying them to tear down our posters.City Councilmember Jesse Arreguin,

whose district includes the downtownarea, rushed to imply that a complaintprocess now exists, and I’m not the onlyperson in the audience that night whowinced. Several of us had insisted atHomeless Task Force meetings in thespring of 2015 that only an independentcomplaint process was workable, giventhe difficulty many of us had experiencedin trying to get assistance directly fromDBA staff and supervisors.

Arreguin had agreed at the time. Butthe crucial word “independent” seems tohave slipped out of his vocabulary:

Councilmember Arreguin: “I recallthere is a complaint process...”

John Caner: “We have on our websitea complaint and compliment process...”

The DBA has a complaint form on itswebsite if you want to complain — to theDBA! Assuming they don’t blow you offor beat you up (as the two homeless menwere beaten by DBA ambassadors), youmight at least get a letter like the one Ireceived from Mr. Goree telling you thatwhatever you’re complaining about iseither policy or an isolated incident.

The Berkeley City Council can requesta copy of Goree’s reply to my complaintabout having my posters torn down if theyreally want the nuance. He insisted thatwhat was happening was just the waythings are: The City is allowed to put upfliers, but not the rest of us.

But don’t wait for the Berkeley CityCouncil to hand your rights to you. Don’twait for the city manager or some lawyeror anyone else, because you may be wait-

ing a long time. A search through the cur-rent city policy on fliers is full of ridicu-lous assertions about how “posters createthe appearance of a fragmented anddecaying community.”

Your posters and fliers are not garbage.Your artwork is not blight. The expressionof your point of view, however differentfrom the powerful business interests con-trolling downtown and most of theBerkeley City Council, is protected by theConstitution.

If they tear down your poster, do whatI did on August 19, 2012. Put up anotherone. If the DBA ambassadors grab yourarms and try to prevent you from replac-ing the poster, remain nonviolent, butkeep putting up the poster. And when theycall the police, as they did to me, just keepputting up the poster.

Berkeley isn’t the home of the FreeSpeech Movement because there ever wasany respect here for free speech — quitethe opposite. It was the University ofCalifornia’s and the City of Berkeley’srepression of free speech that sparked thenow legendary popular revolt. It’s hightime to revisit the issue.

Kafka by the Bayby George Wynn

There are many giftedmen and women —but homelessOne day theywake up withoutjob and habitattrouble takes ona life of its ownjust like that

Everything becomes negativethey become labeled(ABCD) alcoholic,badass, crazy or dirtyIf society can makeeverything their faultthey do

Wet with sweatin the middleof the nightthey scream“I need air Ican't breathe”thinking thismust all bea dream

Hard to imaginethis could happento you or mebut in the Cityby the Baymany sayit can and did

Their livesgone to wasteif only theycould see hopereach outtouch itget a taste!

Something in Commonby George Wynn

His father's beenon the street a long timeand battered by itThe son thinkshis father will neverfind a place to live

Home used to be the two of them togetherNow they're bothout on the street

Drop Your Heads andWeepby Judy Joy Jones

drop your heads and weepfor the homeless found frozen on the streets

while we laidin our cozy little bedsall warm and fedwith dollar signs dancin’ thru our heads

who will hear our ownblood curdling screamsas we die freezing on the streets

will one person leavetheir warm homesto claim our no-name bodiesat the city morgue’s doors

oh people please drop your headsand weepand weepand weep

for the homelessfound frozen all over our streets

Street Albumby Claire J. Baker

Wish all possesseda photograph ofthe momentsomeone's eyesmeet our own —that silvery silencewhen both accept,let be.

Heart Universalby Joan Clair

In no other heartdo I belong.Heart universalis my home.

Exposureby Joan Clair

The exposure of homelessness is not prettyunless it evokes the compassionate heart.The compassionate heart when it is evokedis as pretty as She intended it.Therefore, let us give thanksto anyone who evokes in usone drop of pure love,a rare “commodity” in the universe.

Defending the Rightto Freedom of Speechfrom page 1

A DBA ambassador tore down this protest flier posted by Carol Denney.

IN BERKELEYby Claire J. Baker

Anthropologists studystreet people, find themhumane, kindly, humble —a dog in lap, parrot on ashoulder, a young mansleeping, curled like a baby.A raggedy baseball capsilvered with small coins.

Passing poets wonder:Is it unlawful to be human?But lawful to be inhumane?