Anarchistcook’s Weblog

THE LOGIC OF INTERNMENT ADVANCED AGAINST THE UNHOUSED

We can only hope that the celluloid avatars at the Santa Cruz City Council are clueless, otherwise their “Camping Services and Standards Ordinance” is just naked sadism.

Imagine a fleet of city trucks and vans scouring the city every morning collecting the tents and other survival gear from hundreds of unhoused people then returning that evening after 8:00 pm to deliver everyone’s equipment so they can get a night’s rest.

That is just one of the many dehumanizing insults of the  “Camping Services and Standards Ordinance” passed on May 11, 2021, in Santa Cruz, California.

Another insult features the exciting prospect of a “safe sleeping site” for 150 people when it is likely that many additional people will be finding themselves homeless on the streets of Santa Cruz every month for the foreseeable future.

“As a grant writer, I know what it takes to be competitive as a community. Funders want to see communities that are in action. Funders want to see that we are capable of moving forward with solutions, and so this is a step in that direction,” Councilmember Shebreh Kalantari-Johnson said. “And so when the state sees that we have made progress, and we have stood up 150 safe sleeping sites in a matter of months, they’re going to want to fund us because they’re going to want to see our efforts progress and expand.”

Then consider what happens with all this promised funding announced by Governor Gavin Newsom in his rule by headline desperation that seems to be exciting councilperson Kalantari-Johnson.

The Jeff Bezos “The Day 1 Families Fund” donated $2.5 million to Housing Matters in 2020 and a couple of months later the 30-bed homeless shelter at Housing Matters on River Street closed due to lack of funding.  Social workers at the shelter struggled to find new locations for the dispossessed. Consider the success of Operation Roomkey. San Francisco is paying $16.1 million to shelter homeless people in 262 tents placed in empty lots around the city. They could have placed those people at the Fairmont for that price and that is really the solution here in Santa Cruz. Start by filling the Hampton Inn on Mission Street.

By dehumanizing those who cannot afford housing city officials have guaranteed that there will not be a single location for even one of their 150 person safe sleeping sites let alone the fifteen such cruel insults to human dignity that would be required to accommodate all those outside.

The May 7th Santa Cruz Sentinel article “Eviction of Highway 1, 9 unhoused residents to start Monday” quotes city and county officials as saying that the city shelter programs don’t have a great deal of capacity”.

According to Jason Hoppin, Santa Cruz County communications manager, there are currently more than 800 people staying in various shelter types. That includes COVID-19 state-funded Project Roomkey, where motels are rented out to unhoused people who are at greater risk of the virus, as well as semi-congregate shelters at Veteran’s Halls, and the National Guard Armory shelter.

“We don’t have really a great deal of capacity in that system, and we still have hundreds and hundreds of people on waiting lists to get in to that system,” Hoppin said.

Those accepted into various shelter programs are prioritized based on medical need, Hoppin explained.

“There’s not enough shelter in the county, and the city is doing the very best we can with the resources we have available, within its purview — like the Benchlands, where we have 120 people camping,” City Communications Manager Elizabeth Smith said.”

I visited the Benchlands during the afternoon of the May 11th City Council meeting. I found a friend of mine standing under the pedestrian bridge looking exhausted still grasping her neatly packed garden wagon. “How are you doing?” I asked. “Not too good” she responded. She had lost much of her items during the Highway 1 sweep and was seeking someplace to set up her tent. I counted 184 tents already pitch on the Benchlands at 3:00 pm that day. Those numbers are sure to grow well beyond the 122 spaces ordered by Magistrate Judge Susan Van Keulen.

A city that can embrace the idea of Seabright Strong is rushing ever closer to a time when the logic of internment becomes reality.

The proposed Temporary Outdoor Living Ordinance was intentionally designed to fail with the goal of encouraging an even more anti-homeless law which is set to be introduced at the May 11 Santa Cruz City Council meeting. The withdrawal of the ordinance was not a victory for the unhoused and their allies. It’s a clear win for the property speculators and their employees at City Hall.

It has been obvious from the beginning that “legalizing” camping on sidewalks outside business and in industrial areas of Seabright from eight to eight was intended to build opposition to any humane ordinance directed at the unhoused community.

Lookout reporter Isabella Cueto suggests, “Tuesday’s meeting was intended to be an opportunity for the Council to approve amendments to the law. But instead became a discussion about a complete overhaul — and a commitment by city leaders to be more transparent with the public when crafting future policies.”

City staff had over a year to reshape Police Chief Andy Mills pre-pandemic proposal to criminalize the unhoused. This “commitment by city leaders to be more transparent with the public” is an important part of the spin.

Santa Cruz Neighbors and members of Take Back Santa Cruz are seamlessly integrated into the police and city staff and participated in the formulation of this ordinance.

The January 16, 2020, Santa Cruz Sentinel article reported, “Prominent among the ideas that Santa Cruz Police Chief Andy Mills plans to shop around the community, including the more than 50 people gathered Wednesday night at a Santa Cruz Neighbors meeting, is a revamped city no-camping ordinance.”

“Mills said he was seeking input on the rough-draft ordinance ideas before bringing formal proposals to the Santa Cruz City Council for consideration. He added that he planned to announce some four or five additional community input meeting dates for March.”

It goes on to say, “The city’s Community Advisory Committee on Homelessness also has been seeking public engagement on a revised ordinance recommendation, due for city consideration Feb. 25.” I attended nearly every one of their meetings and the ideas of those supporting the unhoused was ignored and often silenced.

The January 2020 article continues, “Let me emphasize it one more time: This is not going to solve any homeless problems,” Mills told an audience of housed residents and homelessness-issues advocates alike. “The purpose is to control behaviors that affect our businesses, that affect our community, that affect our citizens – both housed and unhoused.”

Kara Guzman of Santa Cruz Local reported on April 10, 2019, “The closure of the Ross homeless camp has been delayed yet again by the Santa Cruz City Council. At Tuesday night’s meeting, the council canceled the April 17 closure and declined to set a new date. The council also formally threw out the idea of creating a new homeless camp by Depot Park. And to the relief of many residents, the council paused its search for homeless camps in city neighborhoods or parks.” That May the City Council voted to sweep Ross Camp and formed the Community Advisory Committee on Homelessness.

In 2016, Santa Cruz City Council voted to continue the sleeping ban and formed the “Homelessness Coordinating Committee Santa Cruz City Council Subcommittee” who issued their “Final Report and Recommendations” on May 9, 2017. It was nearly the same report issued by the council on May 2, 2000.

Let’s not be fooled. The ordinance was not withdrawn because it was too cruel. It was delayed because it was not inhumane enough. This continues my contention that the plan is and has been to drive the unhoused from the city and provide cover for their effort to skirt the Ninth Circuit Court ruling against cruel and unusual punishment in Martin v Boise.

With the expected increase of people being forced to live outside the obvious solution is to provide real housing, filling vacant hotels and apartment units with the people already suffering under the campaign of city sponsored terror and prepare to house the 100 to 200 additional people made homeless each month as America suffers a tidal wave of evictions.

MEETING TO ORGANIZE FOR SOLUTIONS AND RESIST THE NEW TOLO 

Friday, April, 16, 2021

5:00 pm

Outside the Little Red Church at Cedar and Lincoln

Hundreds more people are expected to find themselves living outside in Santa Cruz in coming months.

by Keith McHenry

Santa Cruz City and County officials are struggling to find a legal means to remove the unhoused from sight while not offending their liberal base at the same time. In an attempt to circumvent the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling that sweeps are an unconstitutional violation of the Eighth amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment they have spent the last year formulating their “Temporary Outdoor Living Ordinance” (TOLO) set to be revisited by City Council on Tuesday, April 13. As it currently stands people can set up a tent, tarps, blankets and other survival gear from the hours of 8 pm to 8 am on the sidewalks of Mission, Ocean, Water and Soquel Streets and in industrial areas of Seabright, Harvey West and Mission extension.

Using the same ploy that the City Manager used to mobilize West Side opposition against any humane solution, tagging Drew Glover with a Depot Park Safe Sleeping Zone, they have mobilized the East side against their already cruel ordinance.

It is not clear yet what the city and county plan to do as hundreds of people a month find themselves living outside. Local shelters are closing and people will soon be forced from the few provided hotels, sending several hundred into the doorways and along the highways. The city also plans to sweep San Lorenzo Park including the Benchlands temporary managed camp as soon as the COVID emergency is over. Newsom says that will be in June.

In the April 5th article in Lookout, “COVID-spawned budget woes will force shutdown of River Street homeless shelter next month” county supervisor Coonerty expresses, “the bigger issue the county will have to solve soon is what to do with hundreds of people in shelters that were expanded during the pandemic — but where federal funding is expected to wind down as the virus-induced crisis begins to ebb this summer and fall”.

“I think we have 650 people in shelter for COVID, mostly in motels and others, and you know that funding is disappearing and so in terms of what we’re worried about that continues to be the major issue,” he said.

Adding to the crisis resulting from an end to these marginal accommodations for those unhoused the moratoriums on evictions will end soon causing millions of Americans into cramped apartments doubling up with family and friends or even more likely, out into the streets seeking shelter in  cars or tents. So far there is no plan to pay the back rent or mortgages of nearly 40 million families. That $1,400 check if it ever arrives will do little to slow this crisis. Money allocated for rent assistance has been difficult or impossible for many to access.

If local officials have any plan at all I worry that it includes shipping everyone to a large managed camp in an unincorporated area of the county.

An October 10, 2020, article in the Sentinel says “Vice Mayor Donna Meyers, however, called Santa Cruz’s situation “dire,” citing the concentration of 53% of the county’s homeless services located in a city with 23% of the county population. City Manager Martín Bernal, citing the armory shelter, the county’s Emeline Center complex and the city’s largest homeless shelter at Housing Matters on Coral Street, said community members are concerned, asking that future resources be located elsewhere in the county.”

When Fred Keeley was facilitator of the city’s “Community Advisory Committee on Homelessness” he asked several of us if we supported a mega Navigation Center, “five or six times larger” than the current Housing Matters site.

THE EVICTION CRISIS

NPR reports on April, 7, 2021, ”We’ve had a failure of leadership that’s going to result in tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Texans becoming homeless in relatively short order,” says Mark Melton, who heads up a pro bono team of 175 volunteer lawyers in Dallas.”

“On paper, landlords could still face hefty fines and jail time for violating the CDC rules on evictions. But Melton says in reality there has been virtually no enforcement for landlords who violate the CDC order. He expects a significant number of landlords will now push ahead with evictions.”

“I think we just stepped off a cliff that we really didn’t want to step off,” Melton says.”

As is the case in most states rental assistance is difficult if not impossible to get in South Carolina. Rebecca Liebson writes in the State, “Since the moratorium went into effect, according to court records at least 50,000 evictions have been filed across five of the state’s most populous counties — Richland, Lexington, Horry, Greenville and Charleston.”

“Though there’s no way to tell how many of those tenants will ultimately be forced to vacate their homes, date from the Census Bureau  shows that many South Carolinians have serious concerns about losing housing. Nearly 53% of renters said they were very likely or somewhat likely to be forced to leave home due to eviction in the next two months.”

Six people came to me in March and were seeking a safe place to sleep in their car. Sadly like most people they do not qualify for the City’s Safe Parking Program and are likely to have their vehicles confiscated under the crush of tickets they are now being issued.

The Biden administration has not announced the cancellation of rents and mortgages nor are they offering to issue $20,000 checks to everyone who has not been able to pay their housing costs during the past year.

The Eviction Lab at Princeton is warning that as many as 40 million Americans are facing eviction. At the same time a luxury condominium building boom is underway. Poor people are being “Red Lined” from their communities and are forced to seek shelter under bridges, doorways on along highways.

Tragically everyone could be housed. Bay Area business journalist Aaron Glantz’ book “Homewreckers” about the 2007 housing foreclosure crisis he provides evidence that property speculators had a strategy that included parking their money in housing that they intended to leave empty. The current wave of building here in Santa Cruz is also likely to sit vacant. The Pacific and Laurel property was already sold to another out of town investor before any construction had begun.

AMERICA’S VERSON OF GERMANY’S “USELESS EATERS”

I was first confronted by the now common use of language to justify the elimination of the homeless in the fall of 1986 in Massachusetts.

I had a graphic design business in Kenmore Square, Boston and lived in an apartment across the street from my office. The Boston Red Sox were among my Kenmore Square clients. I also volunteered my services to the Kenmore Association, a local civic group organized by local property speculators where they called the people who lived outside in our neighborhood, tramps, vagrants, punks, druggies, transients, vermin, and streetpeople.  

The October 1986 issue of the association’s newsletter included this:

KENMORE NEWS

    “The Security & Maintenance Committee encourages all KA Members to assume an active role in cleaning up Kenmore Square. In order to prevent the attraction of streetpeople (especially the “rough element”, new to Kenmore Square), following guidelines were suggested at the breakfast meeting…

    “Please don’t give free food to these streetpeople.

    “Please lock all dumpsters. Unlocked dumpsters will be cited by the City inspectors and all infractions will be subject to fines. Open dumpsters attract street people looking for collectibles and food.

    “Please refrain from throwing returnable cans and bottles in public trash receptacles. The streetpeople find Kenmore Square a profitable location for collecting on these cans and bottles.”

    “Start calling the police if certain annoyances persist and keep a record of your calls (ie. date, time of day and response time).”

OUR RESPONSE

My wife and I were shocked and responded to the association. 

“As members of the Kenmore Association we object to the dehumanizing statements against those living on our streets made by the Security & Maintenance Committee in the October newsletter.”

    “These people are our neighbors, friends and family and deserve our compassion and support.”

    “Dehumanizing people in this manor smacks of Hitler’s Germany. The association is showing a total disregard for people being people. We urge the Association to support efforts to help our neighbors instead of adopting policing to drive them out of the community.”

    “There is no evidence that their presence is having any impact on business. We should celebrate the unique qualities of Kenmore Square that make it attractive instead of seeking to become a second Newbury Street.”

“Sincerely

Andrea and Keith McHenry

24 hour residents of Kenmore Square”

FEMA CAMPS?

The decades long drum beat of dehumanization maybe coming to its logical conclusion. 

The time is coming where we are either going to turn our gaze away from the inhumane policies of the property speculators and their employees in government or we are going to unite against these plans to drive the unhoused into camps.

Three decades of the dehumanization of those who cannot afford rent has set the foundation for forced removal of America’s “Useless Eaters.”

We better act now or as the poem of from German Lutheran pastor Martin Niemöller, 

“First they came for the homeless, and I did not speak out —

Because I was not homeless.

Then they came for the Mexicans, and I did not speak out — 

Because I was not a Mexican.

Then they came for the Muslims, and I did not speak out — 

Because I was not a Muslim.

Then they came for me —

and there was no one left to speak for me.

The first Food Not Bombs soup line – March 26, 1981

The founders of Food Not Bombs spent the evening of March 25, 1981, busy preparing a 60 quart pot of soup and other goodies for the next day’s street theater outside the stockholders meeting of the Bank of Boston. 

Ronald Reagan just took office promising his Trickle Down economic theory and a ratcheting up of America’s nuclear deterrent. The board of directors of the bank also sat on the boards of Raytheon and other nuclear industry heavy weights. They had invested in our target, the Seabrook Nuclear Power Station, a project that local activists like ourselves had been attempting to stop.

Our plan was to dress as Depression era hobos, set up a soup line and hand out literature warning that if the policies of the bank and those of Reagan were to be implemented people would find themselves seeking meals at a soup kitchen. Our young enthusiastic crew wanted to shock and believed the sight of people lining up to eat outside the Federal Reserve Bank might jolt some people into action.

But as we prepared our vegan stew we became concerned that we had not done enough outreach to have a line of faux hobos necessary for the intended impact.  We also had a lot of food and didn’t want to waste it so two of us went to the only homeless shelter in Boston late that evening. 

I knocked on the door of the Pine Street Inn a little after mid-night. The manager welcomed us in when we explained our intentions. He lead us to a room where twenty or thirty men sat on the tile benches or laid out on the floor. I explained the purpose of the action. One guy noted with excitement that it reminded him of the protests in the sixties. His bench mate added his support assuring us he would participate. 

Sure enough the men arrived outside the Federal Reserve Bank the next day at noon. A business man walked up to me shocked that it had only taken a couple months of Reaganomics before the poverty of his policies had resulted in the need for food lines. “You are likely to see a lot more hunger if we don’t start organizing now,” I responded. Some of those attending the stockholders meeting cursed us but one blue haired lady gave us the thumbs up. “Yes, these guys are crooks and I plan to vote against their proxy,” she smiled.

I remember that first man who reached out to receive his bowl of soup. “God bless you,” he quietly prayed as his eyes lit up with gratitude, “you should do this everyday. There is no food for us here in Boston.”

So that evening as we cleaned up from our first soup line we agreed to quit our jobs and spend our days recovering food that we would deliver to housing projects and share meals with the public at Harvard Square or Park Street Station. 

Forty years later I have to remind people that there were no tent cities and we only saw an occasional unhoused person. There was that lady bound in black garbage bags who propped her self on the stairs of the building next to the symphony and the huddle of men who sat in a dark ally near the Naked Eye.  We had a system that provided housing, affordable education and wages while meager still made it possible to rent an apartment.

Fast forward to today.The governments and their corporate sponsors left Americans to fend for themselves as the Congress showered wealthiest one percent with trillions of our tax dollars. 

The total corporate capture of society was ushered in with the inauguration of the new administration. Americans are embracing the censorship of an army of disinformation specialists funded by the military and social media titans. We are repeatedly told the $1,400 check and child tax credit will lift us out of poverty. Critics are de-platformed, fired and ridiculed. A sea of cheery propaganda insults those struggling to survive and mocks those pointing out the obvious fact that no one can pay twelve months rent with a child tax credit and their stimulus check. Its become rule by headline. The fear of Trump, COVID and poverty has Americans celebrating the implementation of the corporate police state.  

Millions of Americans are facing eviction as hedge funds and shell companies rush to park their billions in luxury condominiums developments that are unlikely and not intended to be occupied. Families selling their homes are finding it impossible to buy another house because deep pocket investment companies are always able to out bid them. Property speculators are scooping up the failed businesses. Millions of Americans had already been forced live on our streets, in our parks, hotels, cars and couches before the pandemic. Empty apartment units still outnumber the unhoused even as the numbers of people find themselves dumped on to the streets.

Even though soup lines have become common place there is hope in the memory of a time before people lived in tents.  But under the current clampdown on ideas and expropriation of resources this will be challenging. This is where Food Not Bombs and our allies can make a difference. Since we are not welcome in the advancing global economic paradigm it is up to us to create our own society outside their walls. 

Millions of America’s 140 million poor are already living without housing and many of us are a medical crisis, layoff or car repair away from joining the ranks our country’s unhoused. Cities across America are increasing their sweeping of camps, discarding people’s tents, blankets, and other survival property. At the same time economist are warning that there could be a global recession as a result of a number of issues including the trade wars, tax breaks for the super-wealthy, and the student loan debt. There is a potential catastrophic increase in the number of America’s being forced to live on our streets.

This impending crisis could be one reason for the new attacks against those living outside. An ideological war that attempts to paint the homeless as mentally ill drug addicts beyond help or redemption and is driving a wave of Recall Campaigns against political leaders who have attempted to introduce humane solutions for the growing homeless crisis.

The Discovery Institute’s Center on Wealth, Poverty, & Morality is initiating a campaign suggesting that there are scholarly arguments against solving the crisis with the construction of shelters and affordable housing claiming the homeless are mentally ill drug addicts who will never have the resources to rent housing so there is no reason to build it. “An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis”

The new campaign is even more disturbing than the Manhattan Institute’s first anti-homeless attacks which included a vigorous promotion of the Broken Window Theory and a call to pass Quality of Life Laws like those against sitting on commercial streets, so-called aggressive panhandling and public sleeping that justified the municipal criminalization those without housing in the mid-eighties. The homeless were to blame for our economic problems “because no one will go downtown and shop anymore”.

The Discovery Institute’s June 2019 essay in the Manhattan Institute’s City Journal “An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis” by Christopher F. Rufo suggests that there is a scholarly argument against claims that high rents, low wages or other economic policies have anything to do with the increase in those living without housing.

Rufo ends “No matter how much local governments pour into affordable-housing projects, homeless opioid addicts—nearly all unemployed—will never be able to afford the rent inexpensive West Coast cities. The first step in solving these intractable issues is to address the real problem: addiction is the common denominator for most of the homeless and must be confronted honestly if we have any hope of solving it.

Sinclair Broadcasting’s hate film Seattle Dying is the first shot in this new well-financed and nationally coordinated effort to dehumanize the homeless.

Former Democratic California State Assembly Person Mike Gatto had advanced this theory in a June 2019 OpEd in the San Jose Mercury News, “So if economics aren’t the issue, what is? Two things. About 40 percent of homeless are addicts and another 25 percent have severe mental illness. In other words, over two-thirds of the homeless suffer afflictions that diminish rational behavior.”

Another disturbing development is the use of the recall process against politicians who advance solutions to the homeless crisis as is the case in Chico, Santa Cruz, and Los Angeles.

Alexandra Datig creator of the Front Page Index whose tagline is “God, Country, Liberty, Freedom” introduced a “Petition to recall Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti for the homelessness crisis plaguing the city,” claiming that they are responding to the June 4, 2019, report of a 16% increase in the number of homeless in the county.

The petition claims “Mayor Garcetti’s inaction and lack of prioritization for the citizens of Los Angeles has caused third-world conditions, with disease breeding devastation on the homeless of Los Angeles who are forced to live in conditions that are a danger to all of the public health.”

Another group hostile to the homeless calling themselves One Chico launched a recall campaign in May 2019 to unseat Mayor Randall Stone and Councilman Karl Ory. Two of their main justification for the recall is the “Inability to uphold Chico’s mission to make Chico a safeplace to raise a family, an ideal location for business and a premier place to live.” and, “Promotes failed homeless solutions that attract and coddle criminals.” The members of One Chico, Nichole Nava, Jaime Jin, Kim Burke and Tim Lynch supported a tough sit-lie law against those without housing and organized to block a shelter on Orange Street.

A coalition of anti-homeless hate groups dubbed Santa Cruz United filed a petition in June 2019 to remove Council members Drew Glover and Chris Krohn they “repeatedly voted against closing the Ross Camp, while falling to pursue legal, realistic, and humane solutions to homelessness in the City of Santa Cruz. By opposing the closure of the Ross Camp, he (they) contradicted the recommendations of Fire Chief Hajduk and County Health Officer Leff, and endangered the health and safety of Santa Cruz residents, both housed and unhoused.”

Members of Santa Cruz United have remained silent about threats and claims of violence against those living outside on their social media platforms. They have also championed sit-lie laws, the continued ban on sleeping outside at night and blocked efforts at the creation of shelters and addiction services. This group includes Pamela Comstock, Analicia Cube, of Take Back Santa Cruz, Deborah Elston, President of Santa Cruz Neighbors, and Kevin Vogel, Former Police Chief City of Santa Cruz.

All three recall campaigns use the fear of the homeless spreading disease and lawlessness. None of the politicians facing recall have been accused of anything but voting to support realistic solutions to address the growing crisis of families living unhoused.

Trump’s favorite TV Stations is participating in the dehumanization of those without housing now that it has successfully sowed fear of the refugee to millions of Americans. Are those frightening pictures of standing room only fenced in immigration detention centers a means to accept camps for the millions evicted onto our streets?

Fox’s Jesse Watters comments on the increase in those living outside in Los Angeles saying “you only have one solution. You bulldoze the 50-block radius, and you institutionalize everybody and detoxify them, and then you let them out.”

The Washington Post story, “Trump paints a dark picture of homelessness in cities: ‘We may intercede’ about the July 1, 2019, Trump interview with Tucker Carlson adds a frightening voice to the war on America’s homeless.

Trump responds, “Police officers are getting sick just by walking the beat,” he claimed. “We cannot ruin our cities. And you have people that work in those cities. They work in office buildings and to get into the building, they have to walk through a scene that nobody would have believed possible three years ago.”

“We have to take the people,” he said. “And we have to do something.”

“When we have leaders of the world coming in to see the president of the United States and they’re riding down a highway, they can’t be looking at that,” he said. “They can’t be looking at scenes like you see in Los Angeles and San Francisco . . . So we’re looking at it very seriously. We may intercede. We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up.”

The war against America’s homeless also includes a campaign to underestimate the crisis. Most reports on Trump’s comments claim that 500,000 people homeless based on federal data collected in the HUD Point in Time counts. It seems unlikely that the homeless population dropped by 250,000 people during the 2008 housing foreclosure crisis.

The National Alliance to End Homelessness website states,”The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires that communities receiving federal funds from the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Grants program conduct a count of all sheltered people in the last week of January annually. Unsheltered counts are required every other year, although most communities conduct an unsheltered count annually. In an unsheltered counting effort, outreach workers and volunteers are organized to canvas Continuums of Care to enumerate the people who appear to be living in places not meant for human habitation. The first of these counts were conducted in January 2005 meaning that we have data for every CoC for the last ten years.”

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 2007 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress, There are 750,000 Americans who are homeless on any given night, with one in five of them considered chronically homeless. The National Alliance to End Homelessness reports that 564,708 people in the U.S. are homeless in 2018.

If the history of past dehumanization campaigns against those without housing is any indication the framing of the crisis facing millions of Americans as “An Addiction Crisis Disguised as a Housing Crisis” and the use of the recall to stop political leaders from advancing realistic and humane solutions suggests a dramatic increase in the passage and enforcement of harsher laws, destruction of people’s survival property and the possibly of internment as is already the case with people fleeing the chaos and violence caused by decades of US wars in Central America.

The phrase “life unworthy of life” or “Lebensunwertes Leben” in German was a Nazi designation for the segments of the community which, according to Hitler’s regime of the time, had no right to live. We cannot let this happen here. We are homeless not helpless.

 

In the 38 years that I have been sharing meals with the hungry, I have never met so many people who reported becoming homeless for the first time during a single month.

I was walking pass Pacific Cookie May 31st and noticed a woman sitting on the sidewalk with a number of signs. I took a closer look when I saw “VIRGIN” on one of the poster boards.

“VIRGIN panhandler, this is my first day” secured to the sidewalk with blue tape and a small frying pan.

That is really clever I said, I see you have a pan with a handle. She smiled and started to talk. She lost her apartment the day before. This would be her first night sleeping on the streets of Santa Cruz.

She suffered from injuries she sustained in a car accident and could only work in spurts.

When our neighbor came to our apartment in a panic in late April I had no idea this would be the first of many accounts of people experiencing homelessness for the first time.

“I work at Jewels On Pacific and my boss’s friend just became homeless. She can’t afford to help her friend pay for another night at the motel. Is there a shelter for her to stay at?”

Our neighbor said her boss’s friend had spent last night sleeping outside Verve Coffee on Pacific Avenue. It was her first night on the streets. I told her about the shelter. Sadly it is full and she would be lucky to get in.

A couple of weeks later I was speaking with a man who had come to eat at Food Not Bombs. I asked him about his little white dog, Buddy Boy. He told me he slept outside for the first time that evening. He had been a mechanic maintaining the AT&T fleet but became disabled outside work.

A week later another person eating with Food Not Bombs outside the downtown post office shared that he had just become homeless. He had been an engineer at a company producing LED lights. They had to lay off half their engineers when they ran into financial difficulty. His unemployment ran out and he could no longer afford his rent. He talked optimistically about how his first Social Security check would be coming in a few weeks.

The post office erected a chain linked fence around it’s exterior this March to keep out the homeless who were seeking shelter from the rain and wind. Another sign that homelessness is increasing.

I met another engineer that day. It was also his first week living outside.

“Where is the safest place to sleep? I slept under a stairway by the parking garage last night but it didn’t seem safe.”

His company also ran into hard times and he lost his job. At 60 he didn’t think he would get another job in his field soon.

The five newly homeless people lived in Santa Cruz before losing their homes. They aren’t “transient,” coming to Santa Cruz because they heard the city offered great services. No, like the eighty-four percent of homeless surveyed in a 2015 Applied Survey Research study, they were living in Santa Cruz County at the time they had to sleep outside.

Santa Cruz is not the only American City experiencing a surge in people becoming homeless. Los Angeles homeless numbers jump 23% in a year according to the 2017 annual survey conducted by The Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti told reporters “It’s impossible to wrap your head around the numbers…”

Trump’s 2018 budget proposes a $6.2 billion cut to the US Department of Housing and Urban Development impacting rental assistance and other programs that help keep people from becoming homeless. Trump is also calling for $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid, the health program for the poor. His budget also asks for $192 billion in cuts to food stamps over the next decade. With a Republican majority and a Democratic party that dances to Wall Street we can expect much of Trump’s budget to become reality.

Republicans are also seeking to end the Dodd-Frank Banking Regulations put into law in 2010 in response to the housing foreclosure crisis.

“It’s an invitation for another Great Recession or worse,” Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the panel, said during the House Financial Services Committee’s markup of the “Financial Choice Act”.

People are already finding themselves homeless before the 2018 budget takes effect. Add to that, the deregulation of the banks and we can expect many more millions of Americans to be forced out onto our streets to face the cruelty of local anti-homeless laws and the promise of nonexistent shelter space.

Millions of people are already facing hunger and live in extreme poverty. Conditions look more and more like those of Great Depression. The National Center for Family Homelessness reports that there are 2.5 million homeless children on the streets of America. Who really knows how many millions of adults live without housing?

The National Hunger March in 1931 and 1932 helped build a movement to that brought America’s poor the New Deal. Support is building around the country for another National Hunger March proposed for October 2019.

America’s economic crisis is just beginning. City officials think they have a “homeless problem” now. They haven’t seen anything yet.

DEFEND THE RIGHTS OF THE POOR
Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at 10:00am
Department 1 – Superior Court of Santa Cruz County, California
701 Ocean St, Santa Cruz, CA 95060

FOOD NOT BOMBS CO-FOUNDER KEITH McHENRY FACES NEW CRIMINAL CHARGES FOR HIS WORK TO DEFEND THE RIGHTS OF THE POOR

Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry is facing three misdemeanor charges in Santa Cruz Superior Court as a result of his work to defend the rights of the poor.  City officials have been seeking to drive artists and the poor from Pacifica Avenue and other areas downtown. The original case stemmed from an action where McHenry replaced 33 “blue artist boxes” on Pacific Avenue that had been removed by the city. On December 8th, Santa Cruz District Attorney Archie Webber told the court that a warrant had been issued for Mr. McHenry’s arrest in a new case where he has been charged with “offensive words” under California Penal Code 415(3). The other new misdemeanor was ‘Failure to obey a police officer’ who claims he told McHenry to use a cross walk at City Hall at midnight during the Freedom Sleepers protest. Santa Cruz City Council member, Cynthia Chase, City Redevelopment Manager, Julie Hendee and two others came together to observe Keith McHenry and Abbi Samuels’ December 8th court hearing. At the next hearing on the three misdemeanor cases was held on Wednesday, December 16th in Department 1 in Superior Court before Judge Paul Burdick. The District Attorney Webber offered a plea where McHenry would plead guilty to vandalism and have all other charges dropped. Mr. Weber told the court that if McHenry agreed to do this he would do two months in jail which the judge said could be work release. The DA also said the offer would include a years stay away from Pacific Avenue Mall and Assistant City Manager Scott Collins which would make it impossible for McHenry to continue protesting the city’s anti-homeless laws. The offer makes it clear that city officials believe it important to silence McHenry’s effective work in bringing attention to the criminal actions taken by the city against its poor. The next important court hearing will be held on Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at 10:00 AM.Please show your support by attending the hearings.

FREE SANTA CRUZ

CALL 1-800-884-1136 TO GET INVOLVED

 

The policies promoted by Charles Rivkin and agribusiness during the World Food Prize event at the Iowa State House today ( http://www.state.gov/e/eb/rls/rm/2014/233030.htm ) are the some of the most dangerous threats faced by humanity. The Food sovereignty movement encouraging local control of food, organic agriculture and seed diversity free from genetic engineering is really the only way to successfully feed the estimated 9 billion people predicted to be alive in 2050. The World Food Organization reports that more than half the world’s food is provided by women on small farms or from the sea.

The policies of the World Food Prize threaten global food security. Famine and climate chaos will increase if we do not stop the United States and their friends in transnational corporate boardrooms from implementing these policies
.
The Trans Pacific Partnership is set to legalize the ownership of many important crops by transnational corporations, forcing many small farmers off their land. Secret meetings this November if “successful” could threaten global food security providing the “legal” framework for corporate control of seeds while justifying attacks on seed saving. Past trade agreements have already forced many small farms off the land and have reduced access to food for thousands.

Second point in this article is the idea that patent protection of GMO’s will provide for the 9 billion people expected to live on earth by 2050 even though in reality this is a threat to seed saving and will have huge impact on the ability of small farmers to feed the world. A third point made is the promotion of industrial meat production which is in fact according to the United Nations is the leading cause of climate change and that the resulting extreme climate events are another major threat to global food security.

It is up to us to stop these threats to global food security by both restricting the policies promoted at the World Food Prize and by supporting local organic agriculture.

Keith McHenry
—-

Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry was one of the speakers at the Thursday, Oct. 16 OWFP Rally and Direct Action 6 p.m. State Capitol building, World Food Prize Awards Ceremony

Artist, activist, and author Keith McHenry helped start Food Not Bombs
He lived in National Parks as a child. He has recovered, cooked and shared organic food with the hungry with Food Not Bombs for over 30 years. Keith was arrested “for making a political statement” trying to feed people in San Francisco, spent two years in jail and faced 25 years to life in prison.

http://www.foodnotbombs.net/keitharrest.html

He wrote and illustrated “Hungry for Peace – How you can help end poverty and war with Food Not Bombs.”
http://foodnotbombs.net/hungry_for_peace_promotional.html

http://www.foodnotbombs.net/
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/keithbio.html
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/hungry_for_peace_promotional.html
http://fnb-freeskool.org/

OWFP contacts for more info:
Sharon Donovan
515-987-5443Frank Cordaro-
515 282 4781 / c 515 4902490
Occupy the World Food Prize campaign
http://occupytheworldfoodprize.com

Just as soon as I think the authorities may be backing down on their effort to stop people from feeding the hungry in public I am reminded that the state never sleeps even if it shuts down at times. I received an email on October 23, 2013, from the Director of Environmental Health Division of the Mariposa County Health Department. David seems like a nice person even using a funky cool typeface to sign his email.

“Hello Food Not Bombs, My name is David and I am the Environmental Health Director for Mariposa County, CA. I am a member of the California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health Food Safety Policy Committee. I am working with other Environmental Health Directors around the State of California to try to make feeding the homeless/hungry easier for groups such yours. I would like to know if you have a lead group in California that would be willing to talk with me about how your operations work and discuss how we can partner to change the law in California to make it easier for organizations such as yours to complete their mission.”

Sounds innocent enough but when considering the context of current events impacting Food Not Bombs it is clear that there will be more to this post than an offer to help. It is also clear that the participation of California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health Food Safety Policy Committee is not going to make it “easier ” for organizations such as ours to complete our mission. We have done fine so far for the past 34 years without their “help.” I believe David is sincere in his desire to reduce hunger and poverty but he may not be aware of the bigger issues. I believe he is unknowingly the messenger of a project designed to protect the interests of those threatened by the possibility of higher taxes and reduced profits. In July of 1988 I was approached by the director of the Haight Ashbury Soup Kitchen. He suggested I ask the Parks Department for a permit. As it turned out he had been used. There was no permit. The authorities had planned to use the requirement of a permit as a way to drive us out of Golden Gate Park and end our organizing efforts. I don’t to disrespect David the messenger but he may have accidentally become part of a larger effort to end the sharing of food in public. I am as concerned about food safety as anyone and have taken many classes in the subject, published flyers, website and included a section on food safely in my books. We have designed Food Not Bombs to be not only safe but the best quality organic vegan meals on the streets.

Receiving this letter days after authorities have interfered with our meals in cities all across America seems suspicious. For example fifteen police told Sacramento Food Not Bombs to stop sharing food at Cesar Chavez Park on Sunday October 6th. The next week the police backed down a bit telling the media they really did not send 15 police to the park to tell the volunteers they could not provide food any more and did not really threaten to take their equipment and food while warning them not to return. That same week as the Sacramento police were video taping the activists as they defied the orders from the week before. One officer also road up on a bike handing a letter to one of the volunteers remarking that it was information on “food safety.” Yes that same “food safety” mentioned in David’s helpful email.

That same week authorities asked Food Not Bombs to stop sharing food in Santa Monica, California.The church group, Crazy Faith Outreach was told to stop sharing food with the hungry in public in Olympia, Washington the week before and I was issued a $500 citation for “selling” food at the Taos Plaza in New Mexico. Authorities also told the Food Not Bombs volunteers in Worcester, Massachusetts to stop. That follows a summer of interference with our meals in states all over the country.

Environmental Health inspector James Jenison issued me a $500 ticket for “selling” food in Taos Plaza without a permit on October 5th even though I was speaking at the Resolve to End Poverty Conference in Chapel Hill, North Carolina that day. I called inspector Jenison the week after his visit to ask him why he gave me the citation. He told me that he had been called by Steve Zappe who said that Robert Deblassie called him to instruct James to issue me the citation.Steve told James to come out on Saturday, September 28th but he already had plans that weekend so he came to the Plaza on October 5th. One of our dedicated Taos volunteers, David Lewis, was handed the citation and asked if I was still in Baltimore. When David asked if he wanted anything to eat James laughed nervously responding “no thanks, I just ate” and walked off. He didn’t check the temperature of the food or investigate our project in any way.

During my phone conversation that week James said he really had no idea why he was told to issue the citation. He explained that Steve was a “nice guy” worked for the State of New Mexico ands in charge of “food.” James also gave me Robert Deblassie’s and Steve Zappe’s phone numbers. I called Steve on October 10th and left a message. His message did seem friendly but never returned the call. While waiting to hear back from Steve I looked up Robert Deblassie on the web and came across several sites stating that he “Worked in Defense & Space” and listed his history as:

“Quality Engineer at Sandia National Laboratories from August 2011 to August 2013, a Plant Manager at Thomas & Betts and a Buyer/Contract Administrator, Floor Support at General Electric.” Mr. Deblassie had stopped working as a military contractor a little over a month before instructing Mr. Jenison to issue me a ticket. It is also unlikely that Deblassie would have traveled to Taos one Saturday and notice our meal during his few weeks in his new position and became alarmed at seeing our weekly meal. Just why was he instructing James to confront us and why did he search the Food Not Bombs website to find out that I was not even in Taos?

A week after I was ticketed and volunteers in the other cities were to to stop Food Not Bombs activist in Worcester, Massachusetts were told they were not allowed to share food at the “hub” transit center. The problem in the city of Olympia according to the local local officials who told the media that the church had to stop feeding the hungry. The local paper reported that the city “said ‘no more’ to one group who has been feeding the homeless in the same parking lot for the past two years. The city received complaints of traffic and trash problems.” Worcester Food Not Bombs was also told they had to stop because of complaints about traffic problems and trash.

New of efforts to stop the sharing of meals in public has been on the increase. Groups in Boulder, Raleigh, Portland, Seattle and Taos were also told to stop this summer. Successful organizing has slowed efforts to stop those meals. Philadelphia, Houston, Dallas, St Petersburg, Tampa, Daytona Beach, Myrtle Beach, and Las Vegas are among the nearly 50 cities in the United States that have passed laws limiting or banning the sharing of free meals in public in the past couple of years. The city of Orlando made 24 arrests in 2011 for violating “The Large Group Feeding Law” and several cities in California have also made arrests for sharing food in public. We learned our lesson in San Francisco after requesting a permit. Our application was used to justify our arrest to an unsuspecting public. After the first 94 arrests the mayor invented a permit process. We spent months buying equipment and agreed to move out of sight behind a tall stand of bushes. A federal judge had to order the Health Department to stop adding rules telling the inspector to provide one last list of requirements and issue the permit once we had completed the list. A few months later as soon as the authorities wanted to stop us they claimed a hungry man had taken a slice of cake from out table before we had posted our permit. The mayor told public that our permit had been revoked and resumed the arrests making over 1,000 arrests in all.

In each case local authorities were provided a template for laws, talking points and opinion letters to be placed in the local paper explaining why it was wrong to provide free meals in public. If history is any indication it will be discovered that a template was provided to someone in power working with California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health Food Safety Policy Committee a fact that David may not be not aware of.

Local food programs receiving government funding would be encouraged to sign onto the letter, participate in meetings, radio and television programs providing authoritative public statements on the dangers of providing food to the hungry in public locations. These dangers included leaving trash behind, making it difficult to drive near the meals, potential violence by those eating, harm to lawns and fear that someone might be made ill eating the food. In recent years there has been the addition of claims that Salvation Army and other government funded programs provide job training and other programs to help people get off the street ignoring the fact that they have little or no success. Food Not Bombs provides one of the most important things most people need for overcoming poverty, something that most other programs never provide, dignity and respect. Food Not Bombs encouraged those relying on our food to participate as an equal in our meetings and operation.

When I received the October 23rd email I stopped every thing and wrote a note to the David reminding him that no one has ever reported having been made ill eating with Food Not Bombs and outlined why I felt his organizations “help” was not necessary. My response best describes how I feel and I hope will help other Food Not Bombs volunteers communicate with the authorities if they are approached by someone wishing us well like David.

My letter goes as follows.

” Hi Dave,”

“Thanks for writing. As you may know no one has ever reported having been made ill eating with Food Not Bombs. We have have a policy of not applying for permits or asking permission for governments to provide food and information in public. ”

“First no one should need to ask permission to help their neighbors period. Gifts should never be a regulated activity. ”

“Second it is clear that the intention of food safe laws is to protect people from food providers that might ignore food safety standards and cutting corners to increase their profits. Any group that has no paid staff and makes no money from sharing with their community should not be required to ask permission. ”

“Food Not Bombs is always protected free speech under the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”

“Finally after we requested a permit in San Francisco in July 1988 we discovered the intention of the permit process was to withhold the permit and provide a justification for shutting down our program not because anyone had ever been made ill eating with Food Not Bombs but because military contractors and other corporate leaders were concerned the public would be motivated on visiting us to pressure federal and local officials to have our taxes be used for education, healthcare and other social services reducing their profits. Again as you may know, not one person has ever reported having been made ill from eating with Food Not Bombs ever in any city at any time during our 34 year history. We provide information on the proper ways to safely share food, our food in always vegan or vegetarian and shared within two hours of being prepared. ”

“We have designed our program so anyone can reproduce it with out requiring any funding and still safely provide hundreds of very healthy meals to the hungry. Our food is not only vegan but we focus on organic whole foods and do not limit the quantity of food or have any restrictions as to who can enjoy our healthy meals. A permit process even if suggested by well intended public officials would lead down a path that would become costly and limit the number of people we can support. ”

“Soup kitchens that have paid staff and directors and share meat and dairy may be subject to state food safety laws because they could save money cutting corners and they are not in general seeking to change society and would not face repression, violence and prison because of their efforts to solve the crisis of hunger seeking to returning the country to a time before 50 cents of every tax dollar was directed to the military budget and we had almost no homeless Americans.”

“If the State of California and the Federal Government is interested in ending hunger they can start by diverting the billions wasted on the military and use it to fund universal healthcare, low cost higher education, carbon free energy and the many other solutions groups like ours have been working towards over the past three decades. ”

“We are aware of a nationally coordinated effort to drive Food Not Bombs and other food programs out of public space in preparation of a possible economic collapse. Our volunteers have been threatened in states all over the country in the past few months so it is clear who ever suggested your organization seek conversation with Food Not Bombs and has suggested this subject as one for your organization to address was covertly wishing to provide publicly acceptable justification for ultimately driving us out of sight. This may not be a fact you are aware of. ”

“I would be the best person to help you. I am not aware of any Food Not Bombs volunteers in California that would know as much about this subject and have the long view that I have but I can ask. I have taken many food safety courses, have food handlers permits in a number of states and I have written several books on this subject that have been translated into many languages. I would be happy to attend if you can pay for my transportation. ”

“The best state wide law addressing your concern is Connecticut General Statute 19A-36. ”

“Connecticut General Statute 19A-36 was changed on October 3, 2009”

“According to Peter Goselin, one of the lawyers for Food Not Bombs, “the amended state statute not only protects free distribution of food to people who need it in Connecticut, but should be viewed as a model for other states to follow so that faith-based and civic organizations can do what is needed. This is particularly important given news released today that one in six Americans now live in poverty.”

“I would also point out we provide meals in over 1,000 cities half of which are not located in the United States and the only countries that have ever suggested we request a permit or has even suggested we stop are the United States and Belarus. Not one other country on earth and we provided meals in every corner of the world has asked us for a permit. At the same time no one has ever reported having been made ill in any of our 1,000 locations so it appears the need for any such policy is unnecessary yet I am happy to speak with your organization to explain how we have safely provided meals, at no cost to the government, to so many tens of thousands of people for so many decades if you believe this would be helpful.”

“Thanks for your consideration ”
“Keith McHenry”
“co-founder of the Food Not Bombs Movement”

David responded right away telling me that he has no hidden agenda which is really very possible. He would not be the first one to be inspired by a conversation about helping the hungry or after visiting a soup kitchen decided to innocently seek a way to use their position to make a difference. Since we were in the local news David may have been moved to help. I applaud David for his compassion. But things are not always as they appear. I am sure the other inspectors in the California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health Food Safety Policy Committee are nice and would be horrified if someone had been made ill eating at a soup kitchen. I know I sure would be more than distressed if it were to happen from a Food Not Bombs meal and that again is why we make our program simple and reduce any chance of illness by design while also making it possible for anyone to provide as many as possible with healthy meals without having to pay huge amounts of money. This is way we are sharing meals and ideas in so many places.

Food Safety and false claims of concern for the poor have been used for years to drive poverty out of sight with the goal of reducing pressure to use public funds on education, healthcare and other social services. Most people believe policies to criminalize the poor and restrict the sharing of food are inspired by local business and political leaders seeking to address some real community concern but this not the case. This is a nationally coordinated program that started in the mid 1980s and continues to this day. David’s email offering to “make feeding the homeless/hungry easier for groups” such as ours is a new twist on a well established nationwide campaign to hide poverty. The current budget fight in Washington D.C. will come down to “guns or butter” and if groups like Food Not Bombs fail at building popular support guns will win out again and the legions of hungry will increase. No amount of Food Safety Permits will help.

I owned and manage a graphic design company with clients like the Boston Re Sox, Boston Celtics, The New England Patriots, Filene’s Basement, John Dellaria Salons, many local health professionals and retail stores. In 1985 the president of my local business association asked me to take a photo of a local African American person and use it in a poster that said “Wanted out of Kenmore Square.” I suggested I place a red circle with a line through it in front of his photo. I suggested this would be a very bad idea since so many people loved Mr. Butch, nicked named the “Mayor of Kenmore Square” by the many Red Sox fans that passed by him on the way to Fenway Park.

The American League Championships were coming to Fenway Park and rumors of the team making the World Series were common and turned out to be true. I offered to provide meals during the Red Sox games at one of the empty warehouses behind the outfield wall on Lansdowne Street. That same week the captain of the local police percent spoke at our monthly business association meeting explaining about the need to remove the homeless, punks. bums and other “scum” from Kenmore Square because “studies” showed people were not shopping in the local business because they felt guilty or uncomfortable seeing people asking for money and eating out of the garbage cans. The captain explained that the U.S. Justice Department had provided the research on “quality of life” crimes and with our help we could drive the homeless out of the area and increase sales.

They never could drive Mr. Butch from Fenway and when he died in a scooter accident Red Sox fans held candle light memorials in town squares all over New England. I don’t remember the name of our business association president.

This was my first introduction to what I discovered is a national effort by federal, state and local officials to address poverty and homelessness with a systematic program of confiscation, intimidation, arrest, anti-homeless laws and architecture.

Harvard Professor ‪James Q. Wilson‬ introduced the “Broken Windows Theory” in an article published in 1982. This theory was used to provide “scientific” justification for this system directed against the poor and homeless called “Quality of Life crimes.” Wilson works for the RAND corporation and many other organizations developing theories to criminalize the poor at a time when the Reagan administration was making cuts in domestic spending redirecting federal tax dollars towards the military, police, prisons and programs to support corporate interests. By the time I was approached to design the poster to encourage the people of Kenmore Square to take action against the homeless the policies of Reagan were starting to cause an increase in poverty. Instead of introducing programs to make sure people had housing, education, healthcare and jobs federal resources were being used to criminalize the victims of the harsh neo-liberal economic policies of “Reaganomics.”

In 1994 Clinton implemented the Office of Community Oriented Policing Services or C.O.P.S. providing stronger national coordination for this campaign against the homeless and poor. I had direct experience as a business person in the Sunset District of the San Francisco Police supporting the formation and resurrection of business associations. The police would send a district captain to the association’s monthly meeting where they would use “The Broken Windows Theory” to justify the need to lobby city officials for “Quality of Life” laws against sleeping outside, sitting on the sidewalks in commercial districts and many other regulations directed at the poorest people in the community. They also promoted programs like “Give a Hand Up not a Hand Out” claiming that giving change to people pan handling was financing drug and alcohol abuse so people should donate to United Way, local food programs and shelters. The police provided templates for “Give A Hand Up not a Hand Out” posters and white papers on related laws against standing near parking meters, automatic teller machines, and payment booths at parking garages.

To enforce these policies and laws the police also organize a system of neighborhood watch groups which would call the police to remove poor and homeless people, remove political flyers from store windows, bulletin boards and light poles. They also report the activities of community groups like Food Not Bombs to the local police. I was assaulted by neighborhood watch members a number of times in San Francisco and learned a great deal about this program from internal police memos I recovered through discover in the resulting criminal cases inspired by these attacks.

The watch groups also work with business associations, churches and homeless services to support anti-homeless rumors and laws. While the public statements to drive the homeless out of sight and calls for the support of more police enforcement appears to be genuine it is not. The opinion articles, letters to the editor, calls to radio programs and public comments at hearings and meetings before the Board of Supervisors are crafted by think tanks and introduced in a systematic way from the C.O.P.S. program through local police departments to community groups to provide the appearance of grassroots support for nationally designed efforts.

You may be familiar with local “ambassadors programs” where volunteers or even paid people walk along commercial districts making sure all is well. This often means telling the homeless, street performers and other unwanted people to move along. This is one of the many anti-homeless projects implemented through the C.O.P.S. program.

Anti- homeless architecture is also provided through this system. A catalog is distributed to business groups offering special benches with arm rests and spikes for walls. The amount of building features provided to desecrate people from sitting around is amazing and costly.

There are campaigns parallel to the C.O.P.S. program that provide additional coordination. A member of The International Association of Chiefs of Police told Food Not Bombs that they have a workshop at their convention called “What To Do If A Food Not Bombs Group Starts In Your Community.” There are also national and statewide conferences of city attorneys where they share and coordinate strategies, laws and legal theories. The National Conference of Mayors has its own policy workshops to help implement programs against the homeless and poor and their supporters. National and state conferences of city park administrators also offer help in driving the hungry and their supporters from public space.

The National Environmental Health Association has a conference. You can find that our friendly email correspondent’s California organization is affiliated with The National Environmental Health Association who among helping make sure groups like Food Not Bombs are not able to build opposition to the economic policies that have forced so many to rely on food programs also has a program that addresses the issue of terrorism. There website notes:

“Environmental health professionals find themselves facing new responsibilities. While their mission has always been to preserve and improve environmental factors for the achievement of optimum health, safety, and well being of the public, the challenges within that mission have expanded to include security and counter-terrorism.”

“Focus groups, marketing surveys, and needs assessments show that the environmental health workforce is not well prepared to respond to a terrorist attack or other unforeseen disaster. The members of the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) realize they have a key role to insure adequate response and strongly desire training in this area. To this end, NEHA is coordinating with stakeholders most closely allied with environmental health to develop emergency preparedness curricula, training opportunities, and resources for environmental health practitioners across the country. ”

Linked to this page on their national website are a number of organizations including “FEMA Ready Campaign” and 9/11 Lessons Learned.”

Since Food Not Bombs has been listed as “one of America’s most hardcore terrorist groups” by the military, F.B. I. U.S. State department and other agencies we may be included in their workshop on domestic terrorist threats.

Another area of coordination and citizen involvement in the security state is the Department of Homeland Security’ Citizen Corps with Citizen Corps Councils, Community Emergency Response Teams, Medical Reserve Corps, Fire Corps and Neighborhood Watch programs. I was involved with Katrina and Sandy relief and at no time did I ever meet anyone from any of these programs yet I did have meet them while posting flyers or tabling for peace events where I would be arrested.

Our taxes are not limited to funding this more benign network but also supports surveillance by the F.B.I. Homeland Security, the Department of Defense, C.I.A. N.S.A. and many private security companies all with the goal of silencing opposition to an economic system that benefits the 1%. We learn more every day from documents provided by Edward Snowden and the other whistle blowers coming forward after his brave action. I could write a book and am hoping to do so about the many interconnections of the intelligence industry and their campaign to disrupt movements like Food Not Bombs.

Even with this massive infrastructure of repression groups like Food Not Bombs are succeeding. David’s letter is a good sign. Some one is worried that as the U.S. State Department noted in an April 2009 lecture that our “vegan meals are more dangerous than Al-Qaeda” because we are influencing the public to demand that our taxes go to ending hunger and poverty instead of funding the world’s largest military.

The increase in efforts to hide hunger is an indication that the authorities are realizing that more American’s understand that they can not depend on corporate and political leaders to provide a safe and secure community. If you live in David’s jurisdiction it is clear that his coworkers have missed some of the largest food safety issues. Millions of cattle crammed into filthy stockyards. Hundreds of acres of crops fed poisonous chemical fertilizers and sprayed with toxic pesticides. Oil wells spewing smoke across acres of toxic citrus groves and nutrition free produce.

How many companies in California are growing poisonous Genetically Engineered Crops which are not only manufactured into gas station food but fed to millions of confined poultry and cattle? I also recall having seen McDonald’s, KFC, Burger Kings and many hundreds of other fast food establishments selling toxic meals at nearly every intersection in the state. Shouldn’t they be stopped if food safety is of concern? I am sure David would agree but sadly according the Environmental Health officials in San Francisco McDonald’s provides the funding and information on food safety to schools certifying the state’s inspectors making it too expensive for McDonald’s competition to meet their food safety requirements.

David and the other members of the California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health Food Safety Policy Committee have more than enough food safety issue to address without bothering people who have been sharing organic vegan meals with the hungry for the past 30 years. If they want to help end hunger join us in our effort to change society and remind their membership that offering gifts of compassion is an unregulated activity that should be encouraged. If we start requiring permits to help community with free meals where will it stop? Permits to help people change a flat or assist older Americans to cross the street. There are some things the government has no business interfering with. Feeding the hungry is one of them particularly when the government is reducing it’s own efforts to end hunger and poverty.

Thanks so much for your consideration.

Keith McHenry
co-founder of the Food Not Bombs Movement
P.O. Box 424
Arroyo Seco, NM 87514 USA
575-770-3377
 
EFFORTS TO STOP FOOD NOT BOMBS CONTINUE
http://www.foodnotbombs.net/fnb_resists.html

HUNGRY FOR PEACE
How you can help end poverty and war with Food Not Bombs
http://foodnotbombs.net/hungry_for_peace_promotional.html

THE WORLD SERIES OF HUNGER The nationwide campaign to hide hunger goes into extra innings.

THE WORLD SERIES OF HUNGER The nationwide campaign to hide hunger goes into extra innings.

Too big to fail America may not really be too big to fail after all. The political crisis over Obama Care and a potential default on U.S. debt highlights the both the magical thinking of many Americans who in their fear of becoming even more desperately poor have accepted Fox TV, The Koch brothers and their Tea Party as reality.

Ted Cruz helped get the current crisis off with over 20 hours of enlightened statements on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Our texas Senator is a huge believer in magical thinking. Things like his “fact” that the earth is really on 8,000 years old. Scientist Richard Dawkins made an interesting point on CBC Radio this week comparing the belief that the earth is 8,000 years old when science estimates it is around 4.6 billion years old is the same thing as saying the continent of North America is eight yards long from the Atlantic to the Pacific. My grandfather met my father’s mother when he was teaching geology at Estes Park Colorado. Not long after he took a job as a Park Naturalist at the Grand Canyon helping create Yaki Point Look out to provide the public with the stunning example of our earth’s age.

‪Chris Hedges‬ noted that “U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz—whose father is Rafael Cruz, a rabid right-wing Christian preacher and the director of the Purifying Fire International ministry—and legions of the senator’s wealthy supporters, some of whom orchestrated the shutdown, are rooted in a radical Christian ideology known as Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism.” The magical thinkers at the core of this shut down and debt crisis hope to bring an end to the Federal Government we have had and bring a Christian version government similar to a Taliban type of Sharia Law.

The Democrats have their own version of magical thinking. The most dire at this point is equating Universal Access to Heath Insurance with Universal Access to healthcare making the entire stalemate in Washington DC all the more insane. Anyone who believes that capitalism is wonderful and that corporations are almost as sacred as Jesus should love any law that makes every American add to the profits of the medical industry. Public financing of corporate profits with the transfer of billions of dollars to America’s 1% should be the greatest gift to capitalism ever. That is after the largest gift of all, military spending, a gift that knows no boundaries where waste and fraud have no limits. Need more profits? Invade Iraq and fly in pallets of hundred dollar bills or better yet ask the poor to buy billions of dollars in gas to drive tanks, jets, and hummers all over the Middle East to “protect” our access to…yes more gas.

Fifty cents of every dollar we pay in income taxes is spent on the military. Sadly this is fact and not magical thinking. It is also estimated that half the oil used by Americas is used by the military to protect the interests of people like Charles and David Koch and their oil industry friends. Welfare or “entitlements” for America’s 1% in the guise of National Security is magical thinking the Democrats and Republicans can agree on.

If we think America may no longer be “too big to fail” what about our Earth? Magical thinking is burning millions of tons of fossil fuels in the effort to “defend” our country’s access to fossil fuels while rushing to increase the climate crisis. But wait oil does not come from fossils and climate change is a liberal myth.

Martin Wolf’s article ” America flirts with self-destruction” starts with “Is the US a functioning democracy?” He goes on to say “Analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch argue that hitting the ceiling would require the US to balance its budget at once, cutting spending by about 20 per cent, or 4 per cent of GDP. That would push the US into another recession–even if there were no default. The consequences of an actual default, particularly one that lasted for some time, are beyond prediction….”

Yes Beyond prediction. Martin Wolf is the chief economics commentator at The Financial Times and spoke on the NPR program “On Point” with host Tom Ashbrook on October 10th with economists Alan Auerbach and Austan Goolsbee in a segment called “Digging Deep Into Federal Default Scenarios” The website promise that the program would be scary. “Barreling towards default. We’ll go deep on scenarios for the economy.  They’re scary—and the politics. Scary too” and they were right. As the conversation continued often with statements about those taking off the cliff as lunatics, insane and crazy words you don’t hear so often in economic discussions it became increasingly clear that I needed to buy as many hundred of dollars in dry goods like rice, beans, flour and oats as I can as fast as I can because millions of additional bellies are about to be empty for days at a time. Calls are already coming in to our Hunger Hotline with some reporting that they have not eaten in days. Some going with food for over a week.

This could be one reason that the authorities increased their efforts to shut down the sharing of food in public. Last week advocates for the poor were told to stop sharing meals with the hungry in Sacramento and Santa Monica, California, Taos, New Mexico, and Olympia, Washington.

Groups were confronted and threatened with arrest in Boulder, Colorado; Raleigh, North Carolina, Portland, Oregon, Seattle, Washington and other cities across the United States this summer. In all over 50 cities in the United States have passed laws banning or limiting the sharing of meals with the hungry in the past two years with enforcement on the increase this fall.

On Sunday, October 6th Sacramento Food Not Bombs was kicked out of the Cesar Chavez Park by the Sacramento police. Volunteers were greeted by about 15 officers when they arrived at the park when they normally do in time to start sharing the meal they created by 1:30pm. They were told that our stuff would be confiscated and we would get a summons due to an ordinance that has yet to even be passed that would prevent any group from handing out free hot meal in the park.
Even though I was speaking at the Resolve to End Poverty Conference in Chapel Hill North Carolina New Mexico Environmental Health official James Jenison stopped by our meal in the TaosTaos Plaza to issue me a $500 citation for selling food without a permit. I called James on October 10th. He told me that he had been called by Steve Zappe who was instructed by Robert Deblassie to tell James that he needed to stop by our meal in Taos to issue me a citation. Our volunteer in Taos was handed the citation As James gave our volunteer he asked if I was still in Baltimore. When I spoke with James he really had no idea why he was told to issue me a citation. He said Steve was in charge of “food” and “a nice guy.” and gave me both Robert and Steve’s phone number. I called Steve and left a message. His message did indeed sound friendly.
I thought I should look into the origins of my having been issued a citation for “selling food without a permit” and searched for Steve and Robert on the web. Sure enough Steve was the director of food safety for the State of New Mexico. It was not so easy to find out Robert’s position with the state government but there were many references to his employment with military contractors several sites saying “Worked in Defense & Space” with details that claimed he worked at Sandia National Laboratories up to August 2013. He also worked at Thomas & Betts and General Electric.

Past efforts to drive Food Not Bombs out of sight were originated from concerns that the public would see our volunteers providing vegan meals to large numbers of hungry people motivating the public to pressure the government to divert funding from the military to social programs, healthcare and education. U.S. State Department officials compared us to al-Quida in a lecture aired on C-Span in April 2009 concluding Food Not Bombs was more dangerous because we were friendly and were building momentum towards reducing military spending. Local officials worry that they too will be pressure to divert funding from projects desired by their campaign supporters in the business community to programs to help the poor.

Campaigns to hide hunger and poverty are nationally coordinated even though the public is given the impression that local officials and business leaders were inspired by local conditions to introduce laws against the sharing of food in public, restrictions on begging, sitting in commercial areas or sleeping outside.

I was approached by the president of the Kenmore Square Business Association in Boston and asked to take a photo of a local African American man to use in a poster I would design saying “Wanted out of Kenmore Square.” hey suggested I put a Red circle with a line through it over his picture. The idea came from meetings the association was having with the local Captan of the Boston Police Department who explained that the reason our retail shops were not doing as well as those on Newbury Street was the presence of homeless people.

This was my introduction into what I soon learned was a nationwide campaign promoted by the federal government. It became the Community Oriented Policing Services program and used the “Broken Window Study ” and scientific proof that local business needed to support “quality of life” campaigns. Justice Department officials funded and coordinated templates that included posters, quality of life laws, and anti-homeless architecture like benches difficult to sleep on and spikes for walls to keep people from sitting. Local police were encouraged to speak at business association meetings to explain that crime by the homeless was on the increase and studies showed that your store would sell more but people wont make purchases if they see homeless people and may not even visit your neighborhood if they know they may see a homeless person.

In the early 1990’s the chief of the Missoula Montana Police Department told us that The International Chief of Police Association’s yearly conference started to have an annual workshop called “What to do if a Food Not Bombs group starts in your city.” City attorney conferences also have discussions on the passing of laws to ban or limit the sharing of food in public, laws restricting pan handling, outside sleeping and other “quality of life crimes.” If you travel across America you may notice the greenish poster “give a hand up not a hand out” poster in store windows. Your business association might have down load the template off the Justice Department C.O.P.S. website.

While we are rushing towards global economic failure American tax payers are not only paying for the largest military on earth, housing more of ourselves in prison than any other country we address the issue of poverty and hungry by funding a nationally coordinated campaign to criminalize the victims of corporate domination. If that isn’t already magical thinking going wild America’s “best” Christians are demanding the implementation of policies designed to cause more suffering.

Just before the government shut down the U.S. Congress approved a three-year nutrition bill (H.R. 3102), with a partisan 217-210 vote, that aims to cut about $40 billion over 10 years for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and provide various reforms to the program. House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions, R-Texas, said the bill includes “reasonable changes” to address the “growing and growing and growing” amount of SNAP recipients. “There are still jobs available in America,” Sessions said. “They may not be ones you want to stay in your whole life.” Democratic congress people said that 4 million low-income people, including 170,000 veterans would be cut from the food stamp program because of the vote.

The government shut down will stop payments to over 9 million low-income women and children who qualify for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children also known as WIC. Feeding hungry children is not considered essential yet 350,000 furloughed civilian employees of the Pentagon returned to work on Monday.

Tennessee Congressman Stephen Fincher lobbied fellow Congress people to make huge cuts in the Food Stamp Program. He started his work with the gospel when he was only nine years old joining the The Fincher Family singing ministry. Fincher, who owns a farm in western Tennessee has received over $3.5 million in agricultural subsidies from the federal government.

Another wealthy American Shaun McCutcheon uses magical thinking to claim his “right to free speech’ has been deed because he can’t buy “enough” political power. He took his case to the Supreme Court. It could be very interesting to see where America goes once the Supreme Court rules that the 1% percent is protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to “hire’ any politician they wish to pass any law they need to provide access to as much money as they desire. We think the 1% is rich and powerful now. We haven’t seen anything yet.

While the courts have claimed that money is protected free speech they have also ruled that sharing free food and literature under the banner Food Not Bombs is not protected by the first amendment of the U.S. Constitution claiming that “time place and manor” restrictions apply. It might be legal to share food with the hungry in public and it might be legal to hold a banner and pass out flyers but “obviously” you can’t do both at the same time and location because that would be “too powerful of speech.” This is the magical thinking born from meetings of city attorneys in California in the early 1990’s and shared with city officials all across the United States.

MSNBC aired this on the Rachel Maddow Show report that in September 2010, a few weeks before the midterm elections, Republican Congressman Lynn Westmoreland of Georgia spoke at the Faith and Freedom Conference telling the audience that the Republican Party was going to need their support when they move to shut down the government. They played tape of Westmoreland saying

“He can tell you what happened. the government shut down. [ applause ] the American people — that’s what I wanted to hear! I wanted to hear a good clap for that. because here’s what’s going to happen. If we hold the line , if we get those courageous men and women to be part of our majority , if we say, look, we’re in partnership with the American people , we’re listening to the American people , this is what we’re going to do. if the government shuts down, we want you with us. We want you with us. We’ve got to have you. We’ve got to have you there because later on, you all will call us and say, look, i didn’t get my check. Daddy can’t go to the VA. you know, the National Parks are closed. We need to make sure that you’re going to be with us.”

Some kind of deal could be agreed to to save America and the world from fiscal cliff but for millions the crisis will continue every day regardless. Magical thinking has brought us to a critical point. Green Party Presidential candidate Dr. Jill Stein was interviewed about this partial government shutdown and debt crisis on RT and provided what will be considered the best outcome by the main stream media. Obama and the Republicans will advert the fall off the fiscal cliff raising the debt ceiling saving America and the world fro catastrophic collapse. In the process Republicans will “win” concessions like cuts in social security, medicare and other programs. Not one penny will be diverted from the Pentagon, Homeland Security or agencies like the NSA.

We may look back and have wished Obama made a “Grand Bargain and cut social security, medicare and made the Affordable Care Act even less affordable after we struggle to survive the economic chaos following a refusal to increase the debt.

At the same time Congress and the White House are in turmoil IMF chief economist Olivier Blanchard was across town speaking at the annual meeting of the IMF and World Bank. “If Congress doesn’t increase the nation’s borrowing authority this month. It would probably lead to a lot of financial turmoil.”
Food Not Bombs groups may be in for more than arrests and beatings. Millions may be looking to us for food and guidance.

Please support Sacramento Food Not Bombs. We will be risking arrest on Sunday, October 13, 2013 at Cesar Chavez Park at 1:30 PM – For more details you can call Sacramento Food Not Bombs volunteer Davida at 916-451-6503
Keith McHenry
co-founder of the Food Not Bombs Movement
P.O. Box 424
Arroyo Seco, NM 87514 USA
575-770-3377

BLACK INK
The official site for Hofstra University’s Association of Black Journalists’ newsletter
http://habjblackink.com/2013/10/10/food-not-bombs-volunteers-face-arrest-on-sunday/

Click to access YOU_DONT_NEED_PERMISSION_TO_END_HUNGER.pdf


http://www.foodnotbombs.net/fnb_resists.html