A Plague of Poverty: a Homeless Union Leader’s Meditation

Sacramento Homeless Union

Editor’s Note: These photos, taken by Crystal Sanchez in Sacramento and Stockton CA and on L.A.’s Skid Row, were posted in an album on Facebook, with the statement in the article below. They are eloquent, heartbreaking witness from a tireless activist who spends her time organizing and hands-on helping her homeless brothers and sisters stay alive and find housing; most recently in the cold wet weather organizing a blankets drive, handing them out where people sleep outside.

Sacramento CA: California has a different kind of plague, a plague of poverty that the state has turned its eyes away from and stuck its nose up at too. They blame it on mental health. They blame it on addiction. They blame it on personal failure. They blame it on everyday people failing to jump through the hoops of survival that have been made impossible. They need to blame it on themselves. Billions of dollars have come down to end this crisis, but the resources never make it to the people – housing, needs or prevention that keep people from losing it all, and that that forces them to remain and maintain on the streets.

We have our own 2025 plan to fight like hell for those living on the streets, and to stop people from ending up on the streets to begin with. Do not let the deaths of our brothers and sisters go in vain. Hundreds of thousands of people on the streets is not from personal failure, it is a bad policy failure, it is an economic failure. It is a rent is too damn high failure. It is an issue of greed. It is an issue of those who have and those who have not. It is an issue of how we’ve set up our environment to be accepting of a society that harms itself and its planet. It is an issue that as long as I am working this earth I will continue to organize the poorest to fight back for equality and an equitable space for all of us that is adequate to call home. There is a lot of division amongst organizations and community members. This division makes us no better than them.

Remember, we are not only fighting for our lives, people we are fighting for a just society. A society that does not segregate discriminate and criminalize people based on failures of the state. We must unite. We must take off the blinders of hate that cause division. We only have each other. We make community, which makes society. If we cannot get it together we ultimately will continue to stay in the cycle of chaos, of hate division and struggle.