Along the railroad of Houselessness and racism

by Clive Whistle/PNN

The black-brown steel felt soft beneath my feet. Almost like velvet. And if I closed my eyes I could imagine the solid steel of the ancient West Oakland railroad tracks to be the plush velvet lining of a proper coffin for my murdered brother, African Descendent Houseless elder Dalrus Joseph Brown.

Dalrus or DJ , as some of us called him, was 55 years old and kept to himself and we only spoke a few times when I too, not so many months ago was staying "on the tracks" in West "O" . He was a decent man who really bothered no-one. Some people said he was a vet and I wouldn't be surprised, he had a silent courage which could have faced any situation. Inside that silent countenance was also loss, perhaps the loss of a man who somewhere along the railroad of homelessness and racism in Amerikka lost his soul..

When my editors at PNN asked me to write about the brutal beating and murder of Dalrus Brown on Saturday July 17th at the very place that he lived, the railroad tracks of West Oakland, I winced back tears of shame. I already knew about DJ's murder but something inside me just couldn't touch it It was common knowledge between folk who were homeless in Oakland that there was a "gang" of young folks, race not clear, roving the areas in West Oakland peopled by Houseless folks and beating them mercilessly.

In that story there are so many troubling things to examine. First of all, how could these "youth" as the police and corporate media referred to them become so hateful and disconnected from humanity to do such things. Perhaps, in a capitalist society that actively encourages the separation of youth from elders, Black from white, and most importantly rich from poor, these "youth" could act with no supervision from adults and have absolutely no respect for these poor elders. Or perhaps, the constant lies and myths promoted by mainstream media, policy makers and pop culture that "homeless" people are a tribe of worthless people who were born that way, rather than the kind of root cause examinations that POOR/PNN tries to do when they break down the connections between houslessness and eviction, gentrification and redlining of poor folks and communities of color. Or perhaps, the extreme violence promoted in Army-sponsored video games, the most recent being one that I saw set-up at the UA theatre in Oakland that points a "gun" at street people and animals and allows the game player to "shoot". Or maybe more likely it is all these things with some random kid tendencies thrown in.

And lest readers think that his murder was racially motivated, you're wrong. Homeless people of all colors in the West Oakland area have been violently attacked for the last several months with no regard for each persons race, age or gender. And in fact these attacks follow a national and international trend of attacks on homeless people, In June a white 54 year old man in Louisville, Kentucky man was brutally beaten, sodomized and murdered, In July two homeless men (one Native American, one white were beaten and stabbed in GRANDVIEW, Mo and in Japan (another highly competitive consumer economy well-known for its contempt of homeless people) four teenagers were arrested for beating a houseless man, dousing him with paint thinner and setting him on fire

Perhaps the saddest part of attacks on folks like Dalrus is that if these kinds of attacks happened in other neighborhoods peopled by homeful residents, folks might get bars on their windows or locks on their doors, but in Dalrus' neighborhood we all still dwell, unprotected and helplessly ready for the next attack.

In the end, very few people will miss Dalrus, but I will, forever seeing him sitting quietly, gracefully, by the soft strong steel rods embedded in the earth in West Oakland