Photo/Kyle Cooper
SACRAMENTO, CA — As l walk through the camps with a huge jacket, frosty temps in the air. . . It takes me back to a time when l was young and homeless. I look at what I’m fighting now and what my friends on the street endure and there is no comparison. My goal today was to make sure there is at least one working phone in the camps, after hearing of a stabbing where they literally had to walk to get help.
As l climbed through the hole in the gate and walked the long trail of colorful tents, l could see my breath in the evening dusk. Walking down l could smell the smell of fires. I walked past many tents. People were making dinner on their little man-made BBQ and fire pits.
Growing up as a group home foster youth, l spent many nights on the run. Sleeping outside, hitchhiking back to Sacramento from wherever the county placed me. As l aged out l was dumped with no services. Mind you this was 20+ years ago. We still see it, very young people on their own on the streets.
Being on the run and then homeless/unhoused wasn’t a struggle like today. I was living by the river like the free spirit I was. Survival came natural.
Twenty-plus years ago isn’t today. I never feared law enforcement, sweeps didn’t happen, people didn’t hate us like they do now, people gave willingly, even offered space in their homes. We had restrooms and we didn’t have to buy something to use them. We stayed in vacant houses not legally but not with the fear people have today. Even 20 years ago you could speak to your mayor without an auto response and a slammed door in your face.
Society has divided, we can’t even be heard without a fight. People are being punished for surviving! People are getting lewd and lascivious charges for urinating and defecating outside because as humans we have to relieve ourselves. The police are being forced to do the dirty work handed down by officials. They are militarized and aren’t afraid to do as they are told, like marionettes in the capitalistic hands that run this nation.
Laws now have hundreds of ordinances and other things linked to them. Do you consider that being 62,000 affordable housing units short is a reason to punish those with nowhere to go? Are we really free? What is gonna have to happen for you to say ‘enough’? What rights do they have to take from you for you to see what’s really going on?
Tonight brought back a bit of my PTSD, a sense of déjà vu, with a trigger of thought and fear. Not for me or my past but for the future of my unhoused friends and the PTSD that the state is creating.
Stand up, and look outside the straight lines!
