For over 10 years of my life, starting when I was 11 and my mama became disabled and unable to work, we struggled with different forms of houselessness. Sometimes we would scrape together enough money to afford a cheap motel, sometimes we would squat a storefront with no heating, or electricity, freezing at night and/or burning ourselves almost to death with mini fires ( I still have the scars). But most of the time we resided in our car. In every one of these scenarios we were criminalized, watching for cops/sheriffs, “landlords” and/or security gaurds, always there to protect the most valuable resource in AMerikkkka; private property.
In the end, when I was 18 I was incarcerated for the act of being houseless in Amerikkka and for the crime of sleeping on the streets without paying “rent” or having a piece of paper stating that we "owned" the stolen land we were on.
I reflect on all of this pain now with the fight to bring the insane, hate-filled, 21st century version of the Dickensian pauper laws into the allegedly progressive Berkeley in the proposition S, backed by businesses, mini-corporate interests and the politrickster mayor of Berkeley currently in office. This law would make it (more) illegal to sit or lie in Berkeley streets.
Because of revolutionaries like attorney Osha Neuman and my fierce Black-indian mama who never gave up, no matter what, I am conscious and alive today, but in all of those years, the criminalization, the endless citations, harassment and eventual incarceration caused me so much trauma that I still suffer today. And in many instances, tried to take my own life due to that trauma.
Fighting for Proposition S we have the 21st century settlement house workers and missionaries like Options Recovery founder Davida Cody saying this will “help” (read: save) all of us poor people because it will force an “intervention” on all the “drug addicts” who sit on the street in Berkeley.
My mama and me never used any substances, drugs or alcohol. We couldn’t afford it. If we did we wouldn't have had enough to pay for the meager food we would score at corner liquor stores and discount supermarkets. And no matter how many times we were "helped" with incarceration it never made a difference in our impossible struggle with poverty and houselessness.
As I read a beautiful op-ed recently published in the SF Bay Guardian by Osha Neuman, entitled The Return of the Ugly Laws, I was reminded of the insane way that the non-profit industrial complex, places like Options Recovery and others, literally makes profit off the broken backs of us poor folks, and when Cody fights for the so-called “helping” aspect of Proposition S, she is following in the footsteps of what Susan Schweik points out in her book entitled the Ugly Laws, gathering as many of us up through criminalization so she can get paid by the county for filling the beds in her recovery homes, aka make a profit.
How did we get here? Because capitalism is based on products and consumption and poor people and our multiple problems and the ways we are intentionally kept poor and denied access to reparations as African Peoples, indigenous peoples, im/migrant peoples for all the work, time, blood, sweat, struggle, resources, land and labor we have given or that was stolen from us, to make a few people profit is NEVER considered, because if it was it would throw off the peaceful lie of exploitation that occurs silently everyday in Amerikkka.
Prop S is a lie, like all of the other sit-lie lies (laws) that proceeded it in cities like Santa Cruz, Santa Monica and San Francisco. Or the Ugly Laws, Pauper laws and debtor prisons from the past. It is just about poor people getting hated and scape-goated because its easy to do so and because in the US we have a myth about the existence of poverty. If we can't see it, it must not be there.
And besides there are ALOT of non-profit plantations, prison plantations and corporate plantations there to make money on our increased harassment, incarceration, "saving" and "treatment".