Support Not Sweeps and Free Homefulness
By Tiburcio Garcia and Amir Cornish/Youth poverty Skola reporters for POOR Magazine (Editor's Note: Akil and Ziair are students at Deecolonize Academy- the poor and indigenous people -led liberation school on the sacred land we houseless poverty skolaz call Homefulness)
The metallic crunching fills the air, the screeching sound of metal destroying metal pierces the skin harder than the whipping ocean breeze. Homes, belongings, memoires, being crushed like tin cans by the city of Marin County, the people that resided in them for generations being shuffled around while forced to watch everything they knew be destroyed. Preventing this from happening on a larger scale, preventing this from happening to thousands of other houseless and poor people was the reason behind Tuesdays #SupportNotSweeps action in front of CalTrans.
“People living on their boats for hundreds of years are now in jeopardy as much as people living under freeways,” a houseless sailor yells, looking back at the corporate building that stands as a monument of terror. “The Harbormaster is smashing boats, the City Council and the Counsellors are agreeing to it and there's tons of money being made on the backs of the people. This man, along with many others who came out to speak out on their situations of being harassed by entities just like CalTrans, who don’t care if human lives are being put at risk because of their actions as long as they make profit.
We youth and family poverty skolaz at POOR Magazine re-ported and sup-ported on the Support Not Sweeps action through theatre and presence. The theatre acted out the very real violence so many of us at POOR Magazine have dealt with and still deal with - people being forcibly removed in the form of a Theater of the POOR, where some of us acted out a very familiar scene, houseless people in tents being harassed by cops and DPW officers, the DPW officers chanting louder and louder over the desperate cries of the people, “WE ARE JUST DOING OUR JOBS! WE ARE JUST DOING OUR JOBS!'' I hope that no matter how many times they say that they won't be able to sleep at night.
When I was younger, me and my mother were houseless, evicted over and over again in the city of San Francisco. I was never on the streets, but we always knew from our friends and family the violence of the sweeps that happened then and continue to happen nearly a decade later. Then, Homefulness was born out of a dream from my grandmother's head, from years of teaching people with race and class privilege to give reparations. Now, we are being tied up by the City of Oakland, the same that sweeps so many houseless people, unable to complete a project that will take us and our families out of houselessness. We all went to Oakland City hall to demand Free Homefulness right after the Support Not Sweeps sit in at Caltrans
The struggle unhoused people are dealing with now is nothing new - what my mama Tiny calls, the Violence called Sweeps, or the Violence of exposure, swept like we as houseless people are trash.. But it is getting worse. From Liveaboard and poor boat residents to people sleeping in tents, people are constantly being “swept” and thrown away and demolished and displaced. The sweeps and destruction is increasing in the so-called “opening back up” cities all across this state are increasing evictions of houseless peoples from their tents and lands when they have nowhere to go.
This #SupportNotSweeps action, near downtown Oakland, filled up nearly the entire block with houseless and poor people exclaiming their human rights and demanding justice. Boats being destroyed in front of their now houseless owners eyes, lifelong belongings being thrown in a dump truck by glass eyed workers, day and day it happens and it never stops. As long as there is money to be made this government will colonize and pillage and destroy to get it.
Stand with Liveaboard Mariners as they fight an eviction of their whole encampment where they have been forced to live after their boats were crushed in front of their eyes by the wealth-hoarder poltricksters of so-called Sausalito Marin County - aka Occupied Miwok Territory on Tuesday, June 28th 7am-7pm, 300 Locust Street Sausalito, Cal
