For Immediate Release:
Contact: Muteado or Tiny/poormagazine (510)-435-7500
A ComeUnity Disappeared – MLK & West Grand
Land Liberation Not more Incarceration and LIEgislatons
The City of Oakland and the State of California just violently destroyed a houseless comeUnity of over 100 people in Oakland while making false promises for housing and refusing to release hundreds of vacant and hoarded land so we could create our own solutions
What: Press Conference, Speak Out and Prayer Ceremony
When: 1:30 pm Tuesday, Sept 24th
Where: 23rd St and Northgate, Oakland CA
“They came here and tore all of our tents down, threw all of our belongings and even a wheelchair into the trash bin, and promised us services and housing but actually gave us no housing.” Said Marty, a houseless resident of Martin Luther King Jr Way.
The City of Oakland received 7.2 Million Dollars for this recent eradication of human beings and our homes, in tandem with the State of California just completing a devastating “sweep” of an interdependent houseless comeUnity at MLK and West Grand. This violent sweep led to the scattering of scores of people to nowhere which resulted in increased danger for the majority of disabled, elder houseless women and men who resided there.
In the grant application for the 7.2 Million dollars the city promised they would be relocating houseless residents of MLK and West Grand to temporary shelter at the Jack London Square Inn and then into permanent supportive housing. This was a blatant lie as the Jack London Square Inn is not even open yet.
Marty, one of the WeSearch reporters that contributed to the 2024 RoofLessRadio WeSearch report which spoke to houseless victims of violent sweeps all across the Bay from Oakland to San Francisco was released in August and focused on the increasingly violent sweeps being ordered by Governor Newsom and Mayors from Oakland to San Francisco to Los Angeles to disappear our houseless bodies and lives from the public streets of so-called California following the Grants Pass Vs Johnson Court Case.(WeSearch report Sweeping us to Nowhere)
“7.2 Million Dollars!!!!! – do you know how many Homefulness Projects we houseless people could build with that much hoarded money!!!” said tiny gray-garcia houseless co-founder of POOR Magazine/Homefulness Houseless/poor/disabled Comeunities have viable and practical solutions that they have offered to the Cities of Oakland and San Francisco, projects like Homefulness- a homeless peoples solution to homelessness that currently houses 20 houseless residents in rent -free forever, healing housing and the proposal for surplus land redistribution to Wood Street Commons, another site of a violent sweep that led to the death of many of the residents,
Since the Grants Pass Vs Johnson ruling was made and the subsequent order by Governor Newsom, the mayors of towns across so-called California like Sheng Tao, London Breed, and Karen Bass, have been waging a war against our houseless bodies. Sweeping, disappearing, and arresting us to nowhere.
“Notwithstanding the Grants Pass Ruling of denial of protection under the 8th amendment, there is the 14th Amendment, which implies a “citizen’s” right to life and the material resources that guarantee life, such as food, water, shelter, and essentially all of the things that are stolen from people in these violent sweeps, as such, sweeps are not just unethical but patently unconstitutional.,” said Jeremy Miller, revolutionary legal advocate with Poor Peoples Law Clinic at Homefulness/POOR Magazine in his article
“We are out here giving resources and support to our houseless community like we always do,” said John Janasko, co-leader and organizer with Wood Street Commons,” Alternatively, a community of houseless/formerly houseless advocates, caregivers, and housed allies were out every day of the violent sweep providing urgently needed resource for the West Grand /MLK comeUnity to help them with housing, food, medicine, health care resources as well as legal advocacy to ensure their Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) rights are not being violated and they are legally protected in the face of this state-sponsored violence.
This Press Conference and Speakout is a collaboration between POOR Magazine and Wood Street Commons and is co-sponsored by the Anti-PoLice Terror Project and Where Do We Go.
The Resource Fair included advocates from Coffee Not Cops, Love and Justice in the Streets, POOR Magazine, Wood Street Commons, Where Do We Go, APTP, Peoples Park Berkeley, and many more.
Sweeps deny Our Right to Live
Day 2 & 3 of the violent Sweeps
1st RoofLessRadio WeSearch Release
