LOS ANGELES, CA — “This was one of the most successful housing actions ever.” — Steve Diaz, LA CAN, referring to the protestors who gathered to oppose the Echo Park sweep, one of Los Angeles’s largest encampments.
One hundred people came in to support encampment residents in the morning. Sanitation was already there. During COVID the city created a “Jim Crow” situation — that is, no water, no trash cans, no hand washing stations and armed guards at the restrooms. So folks in the community created their own showers, a garden and a kitchen, and a meeting area with couches and chairs and provided the community with brooms and rakes so people could clean their own area.
On March 25 the LAPD put police tape on the block, giving demonstrators 5 minutes to disperse, using tactics similar to a police action during the George Floyd protests during the summer. Forty people in vests unloaded gates from flat-bed trucks and put chain-link fencing around half the park.
It was a well-organized raid. The LAPD had commanders at every edge of the park. Part of the statement by the LAPD was that four people had died at Echo Park. This is the only time this fact has been mentioned by the city, despite the fact that there are four houseless residents dying every day in Los Angeles.
This action is the “Safer Cities” initiative spread to all over the city. Under the guise of “fighting crime,” this “initiative” has increased the number of police in the Skid Row section of downtown Los Angeles with its 12,000 residents, to create the most heavily policed area in the world, “higher than Baghdad, Iraq.” [People’s Tribune, September 2015]
“In Van Nuys 40 police will surround a tent. These actions are traumatizing people, make unhoused people afraid to talk to anyone. It is a shame-based police model. We’ve seen versions of this in other parts of the city,” stated Carla Orendorff of Services Not Sweeps Coalition.
