As the Corona virus sweeps its deadly way across the country, homeless-led groups are demanding real housing and calling for taking over empty spaces, whether ‘given’ or not. One of the most glaring failures of local and national governments, in a system that cares nothing for workers companies don’t need, is their failure to protect homeless people, and everyone, by placing them in some of the hundreds of thousands of hotel rooms standing empty everywhere. Though there have been calls by medical professionals and homeless advocates to do so immediately, and some like California’s governor have given it lip service, little has actually been done, as the death toll mounts. In San Francisco, even after outbreaks in two crowded shelters, the mayor said that putting homeless people inside the city’s many vacant hotels is ‘untenable’; as people pitch tents near City Hall. In Las Vegas, city officials drew a grid on a parking lot for people to sleep on, in the shadow of empty hotel casinos. And if people are placed in hotel rooms, will they be kicked back onto the streets, to continue dying there, when it is considered ‘safe’ again? Housing should be immediate for all, and permanent. As the saying goes, ‘We only get what we are organized to take’. — The Editors
http://peoplestribune.org/pt-news/2020/05/food-not-bombs/
http://peoplestribune.org/pt-news/2020/05/homeless-tent-city-a-modern-day-genocide/
