“I started shooting meth when I was 12,” said CJ from the DeShutes encampment in occupied Squaxin Territory aka so-called Olympia, Washington. His voice was soft, almost a whisper. He was one of over 37 RoofLEss radio reporters who reported out their multitude of reasons for now living in an encampment. All of them reported an endless, non-stop struggle with sweeping, cleaning, moving, hiding, evicting, belonging theft and arrest.
From Deshutes to Division street (SF), the racist, classist violence of “Cleaning” Sweeping, Clearing and Abating. Coded words signifying the removal of unhoused peoples of all cultures and genders and diasporas is constantly used as a way to remove us.
The notion of of our collective "dirtiness" as houseless poeple is rooted in the same colonial missionary lie of the so-called "savage" Rather than see the violent settler violence of racism, poLicing, private property, eviction, removal, exploitaiton and endless criminalization of poverty which fuels the silent destruction of people and communities, or even krapitalism itself, which was never meant to be a caring system, but rather a destroying system, that needs new markets of destroyed people and stolen land to create new "products" and new profits, the 21st century colonizer perpetrates the idea that we are dirty when we are outside,
Our percieved, unquestionable dirtiness, is necessary to perpetuate the violent hygenic metaphors about unhoused peoples bodies and belongings, which then creates a simple rationalization for sociaty as a whole to agree to our removal under this lie called "sweeps"
Those of you who might be thinking right now, well they are dirty, they always got stuff all round, and defecate/urinate outdoors, yes these are all facts. to which i always counter, what if someone came into your home, dorm room or apartment and took the roof off, what would they see? a perfectly clean house? what if someone said you no longer had access to your bathroom? where, ( as me and aunti Frances famously stated in 2014 when the City of Oakland seized the Self-Help Hunger Programs porta Pottie) Where would You Pee? ( or worse, shit?)
Our lives are under Your scrutiny when we are outside, we dont have the privilege of privacy rather we have the violence of exposure, so yea, just like all human anmials, some of us are messy, dirty, sick, we need a toilet, we have belongings and medicine and sometimes we use substances, just like you, the only difference, everyone sees us doing these things. Our lives are exposed.
Our lives and back-stories are messy, filled with violence and colonial-named bad choices, self-medicating substance use and service resistance. We are fraught with all the dual diagnoses one human can hold. And everyone gets to see all of this. All the time.
RoofLEss radio street workshop at Deshutes Encampment
“They come in the night, without warning and take all of our stuff, Miguel H said in Spanish, one of the literally hundreds of RoofLESS Radio reporters from Oakland and San Francisco that have reported to POOR Magazine when we do RoofLESS radio radical redistribution of tents, sleeping bags, food and medicine, which we have done since POOR’ Magazine’s inception, but increased to four days/night a week throughout the pandemic, because the settler politricksters never stopped sweeping our houseless bodies, and in fact in many cases increased the sweeps, and in the case of SF Mayor London Breed, resisted using the FEMA money to rent motel rooms, while peoples shelters (tents) in place were being stolen from them, or in Oakland’s case where an “encampment ban” was added to the hundred of laws already in place to criminalize poor people for being poor, and houseless people for being houseless.
And because we have no access to a stable roof we are constantly grouped and kettled and contained into a monolith, The Homeless People -oftentimes even separated from the word People, into a criminalized, de-humanized object, “The homeless problem” used as fodder for settler colonial politricksters and huge non-profiteers. But, just like housed people, we are a multi-verse,with different opinions, perspectives, PTSD’s and struggles.
In addition to a disproportionate amount of Black and Brown peoples, many unhoused peoples are poor and wite, elder and disabled, evicted and barely holding on by a thread. We have been in and out of krapitalist service models of “care” and “support” so-called “service provision”
From Occupied Squaxin Territory to Huchuin (Oakland) and Willow Street in San Francisco, housed people, pumped with all these lies about our "dirtiness" then start to blur the lines of dirty into "dangerous" . Like the savage mythos, once you have made our "dirtiness" into other that human, our lives into a "group" and our actions into words like "erratic" or "crazy" or "bums"- now we are easily percieved as dangerous.
Fueled by all of these dehumanizing, classist, racist hate people resort to the solution they have all been taught, calls to the poLice and then state agencies like CalTrans and Department of Public Works perpetrate these deadly sweeps.I say deadly holding Desirree Quintero killled by a falling branch in Santa Cruz after a sweep pushed her into a dangerous terrain and Shannon Marie Bigley, killed by bring run over by a DPW truck and so many more.
“They make it illegal for your to sit, lean or even rest in Olympia,” said JX another powerfull RoofLESS radio reporter rom Occupied Squaxin territory telling his story of endless sweeps violence. “There is no housing, there is no services, but there is constant harassment from poLice and so-called residents,” JX concluded.
Stolen land /Hoarded Resources UnTour Guides Across Occpued PAcific NorthWest Turtle Island
As houseless and poor folks and all of our economic justice advocates and organizers, we need to stop acting, naming and placing the blame solely on PoLice and policy, and face the sickkk fact that all kinds of housed and sadly even some of us unhoused people have accepted this colonial lie of dirty, messy, disorganized, and so-called failures.
“I went into rehab and then relapsed, and then went to prison and then came out and did rehab again and then went to prison,” CJ’ went onto explain a series of snares and relapses and treatment stints and more relapses.
Non-profiteers and the therapy industrial complex- also needing our problems for their products asserts that our only problem is we don’t have access to treatment and “services” but oftentimes this explanation falls into what I call the Cult of Rehabilitation- always trying to “fix” us. Many of us have been in rehab and prisons, we have been studied and reported and saved and theorized and reSearched, incarcerated, criminalized and legislated against and yet like I have said multiple times, No matter how many times, you jail me , sweep me or study me, it doesn’t give me a home. Entire institutions like Stanford and UC Berkeley continue to conduct studies about our poverty, homelessness, racism and struggle. Yet there is never a conversation about self-determination. About “support” of what we are already doing- like the hashtag of an upcoming action- Support Not Sweeps.
Tiny ( wit Stevie K) inviting wealth-hoarders to radically redistribute their stolen and hoarded wealth so people without a roof can build their own solutions like Homefulness
Non-profiteers continue to get huge grants to save us and CalTrans continues to Sweep us. But the reality is so many of us have made it clear we have our own solutions and many times those solutions are not perfect or complete, but they are what we are doing to stay alive and what we need is sovereignty and support to practice them.
Talauna Reed, Warrior Shero from So-called Olympia
“This is the Red Lion Motel where organizers rented rooms and occupied some to house unhoused folks in the middle of winter in a pandemic and then faced terrifying poLice violence of a brutal eviction with armed police officers which included the repeated tasing of the only Black houseless member of the group, that has left him disabled to this day and there is no accountability from the City or our mayor,” said Taluana Reed, a warrior Shero, powerful organizer and niece of Yvonne MacDonald who was killed and never properly investigated because she was a Black woman in Amerikkklan Instead officials pushed a false racist narrative and blamed Yvonne for her own death.
“I am running for office in this town to get some justice in this racist system.” Taluana explained to Black and Brown youth poverty skola reporters from Deecolonize Academy/POOR Magazine/Homefulness youth media mentorship who along with us adult poverty skolaz, all survivors of homelessness, poLice terror, sweeps, and gentriFUKation, are co-building Homefulness and were in so-called Olympia to bring the 2nd stop in a powerFULL Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Un-Tour thru Occupied Pacific Northwest Turtle Island. This Un-Tour made possible only thru the radically redistributed dollars of ComeUnity Reparators and the love -work of POOR family Lisa Ganser and Talauna Reed, Nomy Lam, Stevie Kampaus and Crystal Renee of So-called Olympia.
Homefulness is only made possible because we poor and indigenous poverty skolaz at POOR Magazine teach folks with race and class privilege about Radical Redistribution of their stolen and hoarded wealth and land in a seminar we do called PeopleSkool
Crystal Renee and her granddaughter on the UnTour and the hand-drum.Crystal’s Sons - Andre Thompson and Bryson Chaplin were both shot by a racist kkkop in So-called Olympia who is still on the poLice force (luckily her Suns survived the shooting but Crystal is a powerFULL warrior shero for justice
The point of our Un-Tours which we originally launched on MamaEarth day of 2016 is to unWash the Settler HIS-stories of Discovery, Racist lies of Safe, violent lies of rent and eviction and sweeps and removal and connect the dots of the settler-kkkolonial lies about so-called Private Property, PoLice Terror, CorpRape Extraction, Eviction, Removal, Criminalization and Desecration of MamaEarth, ancestors and all of us.
Equating us with “the Jungle” is another colonial code for houseless, indigenous and poor people of color. The jungle-izing of humans has a long history of genocide of disabled and migrant/indigenous and African descendent peoples. Casually assigning “savagery” or four-legged metaphors are on a contium with the missionary lies of our dangerousness and the urgent need of us to be "cleaned-up" cleared out and our removed completely. Of course this is all so extra evil when we poor and indigenous peoples know the real savages are the land stealers who stole Turtle Island.
Its so disturbing to me how even so-called service providers in cities from so-called San Jose to so-called Olympia use these terms casually. Why we at POOR say no more about us without us media, art education and culture production.
We also lift up poor and indigenous peoples solutions like Sogorea Te Land Trust, Homefulness, West Berkeley Shellmound, CobOnWood, Where Do we Go Berkeley, Intertribal Sinkyone Wilderness Council, Poor Peoples Army, Liveaboard Mariners, Camp Compassion, Missing Murdered Indigenous Women #MMIW, and so many more poor and indigenous peoples unseen solutions and soverignty that have been being practiced for 528 years and before the multiple Wite Supermacist lies of Discovery, Akkkademia, Safety, Savioring, and Missioning caught so many of us in their lies .
How our collective and ongoing struggles of homelessness, Sweeps, sacred site desecration, poverty, ableism, eviction, false border terror and poLice Terror are connected to Mama Earth and her earths peoples being seen as a commodity to be bought and sold, profited off of and stolen from.
“We are on the street where the racist, classist mayor, who condones cover-ups , poLice terror and sweeps in this City lives, “ said Miguel, a revolutionary warrior for justice from so-called Olympia, who joined us on the powerFULL stolen land Un-tour as we humbly shared the medicine of radical redistribution, The Bank of ComeUnity Reparations and Homefulness with wealth-hoarders and land-stealers living in the occupied Squaxin with the offer of them attending the next degentriFUKation/Decolonization seminars of PeopleSKool.
“Get out of the street, poltrickster Selby of So-called Olympia shouted out to me and the other Un-Tour Prayer-bringers and guides after she almost ran over us with her car and then got out angrily and walked away from her car, leaving it in the middle of the road while poLice circled us on every block.
“Here is information about PeopleSkool- its coming up in BlackAugust, I think you should register,” I shouted out to her, as she defiantly brushed past us
Youth and family indigenous poverty skolaz on the 1st stop of this Stolen Land Tour, laying down prayers in the Danza Azteca tradition for Pomo relatives and ancestors to lift up their solutions and help stop the CorpRape extraction and removal of Old Growth Redwoods and ancestors bones
The Stolen Land/Hoarded Resources Un-Tour thru Occupied Squaxin Territory began as it often does with multi-nationed prayer from a sister prayer-bringer of Squaxin descent - Tamika Green,speaking/singing praying in Lushootseed, one of the first languages of Salish Tribes. Salish is the word for the so-called puget sound. There were also powerful liberation words from sisStar warrior EarthFeather Soverign at a location I call a “KlanMark” (my newest Tinyword- I like to mess wit the oppressors language) in this case it was a series of monolithic greco-roman structures called the Capitol- you know I re-named it The Krapitol.
“As we stand in front of this Colonial Cash register, lets be clear about the violence that is perpetrated by these people, “ said Greg Urquhart, an indigenous prayer-bringer and warrior medic with the South Sound Street Medics, talking about the so-called Washington Governor. Greg brought beautiful words and hand-drum medicine and ancestors songs of healing for us all.
“We are struggling with an ongoing threat of CalTans sweeps just for sleeping while houseless, I am an elder and disabled and this is exhausting, why don’t they just leave us alone,” said a houseless resident of the Wood Street Collective, one of a powerful coalition of curbside communities that includes Where Do we Go Berkeley, Sea Breeze Encampment, Ashby Street Encampment, Marin County Homeless Union/Liveaboard Mariners, Sacramento Homeless Union and Homefulness to name a few that are coming together to demand the end of this endless violence of criminalizing public land and houseless, roofless members of the “public” to ask for support like water and trash service, and to demand that our own self-determined solutions to our problems like Cob On Wood and the Homefulness project, which is currently being blocked by the City of Oakland to finish 8 units of no rent housing for houseless families, built by houseless families, be allowed to thrive, open, live and be “approved”.
We poor, indigenous and houseless peoples aren't any dirtier than you and we don’t need to be cleaned or saved or swept or removed - we just need basic humane support serives so we can build our own.
Join us at two actions on Tuesday, June 22nd - at 2pm to demand Support Not Sweeps at CalTrans at 111 Broadway and then on the same day at 430pm at the Oakland City Hall to demand that Homefulness be Free to finish the 4 last homes us poor and houseless people have been building for the last 11 years even though the City of Oakland has done everything to stop us, charge us and block us and now 8 units of housing remain empty while houseless youth and families remain houseless.
To read Stolen Trees, Stolen Land and Stolen Lives -Pt 1 of the Tour- click here To register or find out more about the next decolonization DegentriFUKation Seminar at Peopleskool go to www.racepovertymediajustice.org To watch a video from our last UnTour thru Akkkademia- click here To watch some of the powerFULL RoofLESS radio reports go to PoorNewsNetwork channel on Youtube
