My name is Crystal Sanchez, I’m the Western regional director for the National Union of the Homeless, the President of the Sacramento Homeless Union, and the founder of Sac S.O.U.P which stands for solidarity of unhoused people, a 501C3.
Home is a place where we go ….A destination. That destination does not need to be physical …. home is a space. Home is a place with family … community support strength and the ability to feel secure in your fight where you stand.
Home is with people like Jazz, John, Freeway, Keith, Jennie, Sharon, Joyce, Robbie, Wes, Jay, Betty, and Tiny – the list goes on and on. A place where sometimes we don’t agree, but we’re still family. A place where people come together and strategize how they’re going to protect each other.
Home is places like Wood Street Commons, Camp Resolution, Stockton SOS, People’s Park, and the thousands of encampments, shelters, and spaces that have created community, family, and safety.
In the lives of those experiencing homelessness, home is what we have made when housing has become unavailable. A place to be safe and secure when oppressive measures try to come in and destroy the homes we have created. Home is a place where the unhoused communities are taking a stand together as family and community to say ‘You will not break up this home, you cannot break up this home!’
While they may take away our physical possessions they can never take away HOME… We need to continue to fortify our home base and make it strong. We need to continue to fight for housing and to end the death of our family on the streets.
We must march and protect our home, and in the meantime acquire the housing that is rightfully ours.
This is a war, a war on the poor, and they think they can silence us, they think we are weaker because we do not have the money or ways to enforce political will… They can underestimate us all they want -we are street smart and we are book smart and the combination is mountain-moving. What they don’t realize is we do have the power and we are coming into that power. The power to know that together within our groups we are home and nobody messes with home or family.
Martin Luther King said “Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed”
And for us the demands and the take back of what is rightfully owed to the people is coming.
Crystal Sanchez is with the Sacramento Homeless Union.
