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

Latest

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.

LA Skid Row/ Photo Crystal Sanchez
Sacramento CA. / Photo Crystal Sanchez


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.

Sacramento CA. / Photo Crystal Sanchez

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.

Sacramento CA. / Photo Crystal Sanchez

Stockton CA / Photo Crystal Sanchez
Sacramento CA. / Photo Crystal Sanchez

Sacramento, CA / Photo Crystal Sanchez

+ Articles by this author

Crystal Sanchez is with the Sacramento Homeless Union.

Free to republish but please credit the People's Tribune. Visit us at www.peoplestribune.org, email peoplestribune@gmail.com, or call 773-486-3551.

The People’s Tribune brings you articles written by individuals or organizations, along with our own reporting. Bylined articles reflect the views of the authors. Unsigned articles reflect the views of the editorial board. Please credit the source when sharing: ©2024 peoplestribune.org. Please donate to help us keep bringing you voices of the movement. Click here. We’re all volunteer, no paid staff.

LEAVE A REPLY

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here

Featured

Immigrants Begin 13th Hunger Strike This Year at Tacoma Detention Center

More than 40 migrants held at ICE's infamous Northwest Detention Center in Washington state have begun a hunger strike to protest conditions there.

The Right Wants to Divide Rural People and the Working Class. Here’s How We Unite.

The director of the Appalachia People's Union speaks on why the South is ready to stand up to Trump.

A Third Woman Died Under Texas’ Abortion Ban. Doctors Are Avoiding D&Cs, Reaching for Riskier Miscarriage Treatments

Thirty-five-year-old Porsha Ngumezi’s case raises questions about how abortion bans are pressuring doctors to avoid standard care even in straightforward miscarriages.

‘Who Was Officer?’: Family Still Seeks Answers From Jackson Police a Year After Son’s Burial

Dexter Wade, killed by off-duty officer, was mistakenly buried by Hinds County, Mississippi in a pauper’s field. His mother seeks answers to what happened to her son.

Students Walk Out Across the Country to Protest Trump’s Election

Read the speech delivered by a student at the student walkout at MSU two days after the Presidential election. Thousands of students nationwide walked out to protest Donald Trump's election and his policies on the same day.

More from the People's Tribune