LOS ANGELES, CA. – (Editor’s Note: Below, General Dogon of LA CAN [Los Angeles Community Action Network], ‘fight-back’ organizer from its large ‘Skid Row’ community, where many of Los Angeles’ estimated 40,000 – 60,000 unhoused residents live, speaks about the ongoing criminalization of homeless people. The city-wide ordinance 41.18 he refers to restricts where homeless people can exist, making twenty percent of the city off-limits to them or anything they do. His comments are from a recent verbal report he made on the situation in Los Angeles and the homeless-led resistance there.)
“We’re working to abolish 41.18 right now, fighting to stop all criminalizing laws. They have criminalization zones where you can’t be and you can’t sleep, by saying who can be here and who can’t. It’s gentrification and it’s not stopping. They are sweeping up people’s property and throwing it away, daily and even at night.
“They just did a sweep yesterday, at a place called the ‘white house’ where people come to, where things are given away free, like free phones and free food and other things. Fifteen carloads of cops and nine trucks, and swept it all up, chewed up the property in the trucks’ claws, and threw it away. They do it with LA Sanitation, with trucks and cops. It is a multi-million dollar operation, and it is unconstitutional. The police want more funding so they can be out there following behind the trucks.
“LA and Skid Row have always been test tube grounds. We have the largest population of unhoused people in the country, and some of the highest rents. The Safer City Initiative has always been a ‘broken windows’ law. Whatever tests they try on Skid Row, they pick up and try on other cities. That’s why we say that this is criminalization.
“We are educating people and have made a petition to abolish 41.18, and are passing out educational flyers. We are organizing against this unconstitutional law.”
