NO PLACE TO GO
September 2, 2026
The horrific escalation in the war against the homeless of Santa Cruz
I have been sharing food with the homeless for 46 years and I have never been so shocked by what I have witnessed in the city of Santa Cruz, California, this month. The city abruptly increased its campaign of repression against its homeless community in the last weeks of August 2026. What has changed to inspire this sudden escalation? Are city officials removing the homeless from view so Labor Day tourists feel comfortable, or is there another reason? Mayor Fred Keeley didn’t deploy such brutal tactics last year.
The twice-weekly clearing of the homeless was replaced by the fencing off of the sidewalks on Coral Street opposite the entrance to Housing Matters. They wired metal signs to the chain-link fences threatening to arrest anyone who dared breach the shiny cages.
There has never been enough room at the shelters, even if you were willing to endure the institutional disrespect. The police had been forcing people onto the sidewalks outside the Housing Matters shelter for several years. The city, in cooperation with the shelter, used a $4.5 million encampment resolution grant to drive everyone off Coral Street on most Tuesdays and Thursdays, slashing their pup tents before crushing them into the waiting garbage trucks. Those who escaped with their meager survival gear huddled along the surrounding streets until the assault moved on to eradicate the homeless from other areas of town.
But that torment ended with the installation of the Coral Street fencing, scattering people onto the riverbanks, up into the Pogonip woods, or along the River Street sidewalks leading toward downtown. A group set up home on the San Lorenzo River behind the Tannery or at the end of Felker Street. Others joined their friends on the levee wall across from Trader Joe’s.
The safety of the levee walkway would be a short-lived refuge. The police started snaking along the paved levee path, stopping at each group to order them to leave, claiming it was illegal to sit. According to Santa Cruz’s finest, people are restricted to walking, jogging, or biking along the public riverway.
I first noticed this on Sunday, August 22, 2026, at around 9:30 when I saw two Santa Cruz police vehicles parked on the levee above the Gateway Plaza. The officers were forcing the last few homeless people off the walkway. By 10:30 a.m., every homeless person had been driven off the levee from the Highway 1 bridge to Warriors Stadium.
On August 27, I was walking to get my car at the parking lot outside Trader Joe’s. Several of my unhoused friends stood at one end of a row of parked vehicles, surrounded by their belongings. I noticed that three police vehicles were up on the levee. I walked over to take a closer look. They were driving the last few people from the ledge. As I snapped a few photos, one of the officers started barking orders at me.
“Get off the planter or I will arrest you,” he angrily yelled.
This “planter” was just some dirt, twigs, and the items discarded in the hasty escape of the homeless, strewn between the curb of River Street and the top lip of the levee wall. City employee Jeramy Leonard was talking with one of the victims, possibly sending them to the shelter that he gatekeeps, replacing someone he had already planned to kick out. This is a strategy used by the city to claim they are providing shelter to those they are rousting off the streets.
I visited with a group of the displaced who had moved outside the abandoned FedEx shop.
“They kick us out every day,” an exhausted woman shared. A few minutes later, a security guard told us we couldn’t gather on the sidewalk. I let him know that this was America and I wouldn’t be going anywhere. He moved on.
The police aren’t limiting their campaign to Coral Street and the levee. As soon as the Food Not Bombs volunteers had packed away our equipment after the Sunday meal, the police arrived, ordering those who were lingering to scatter.
This dramatic assault on the homeless community is so dire that it suggests city officials are preparing for something not yet announced. It is possible that with the failing economy, local leaders are taking these measures to encourage as much tourism as possible, but there could be more to this repression. The people who run Santa Cruz are at the top of the CIA-connected companies like Google, Meta, and Palantir. They may know something that they are not sharing with the public. I have been sharing food with the homeless in Santa Cruz since 2013, and I have never witnessed such a sudden increase in repression of the unhoused, not even before holidays. Something is up.
Are they trying to get ahead of a huge increase in homelessness due to the collapse of the economic system? Maybe they are trying to send a message to the community that if you join the ranks of the unhoused, you had best leave town. Or maybe the techno-fascist vulture capitalists who own Santa Cruz believe they can increase the value of their 40 high-rise condo investments by sanitizing our once-beautiful city of the people they consider unsightly.
Santa Cruz County released its annual point-in-time count report on August 5, 2026, showing a 12% increase in the number of people experiencing homelessness since 2025, to a total of 1,648 people. The number of people in Santa Cruz who are homeless is much higher, but the fact that city officials are admitting an increase may indicate that they are aware that to “solve the problem of homelessness” they need to start driving people out of sight while the numbers are still relatively low.
The poverty is likely to get much worse. Talk among economists of a depression is growing. A huge increase in the number of people living on the streets in one of America’s most expensive rental markets is not hard to imagine.
More than 4.5 million Americans have lost access to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as food stamps, since the passage of the federal One Big Beautiful Bill Act. Money that families would have used to pay their rent might now be needed to pay for food. Living that close to the margin may send many of those millions without food stamps onto the streets.
The war of choice against Iran is contributing to an already teetering economy. Shipping data shows traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped to just a single commodity vessel on August 24, marking the lowest daily volume recorded since May 7, 2026. Before Israel and the United States attacked Iran, between 120 and 140 ships passed through the strait every day. Roughly 20 million barrels of oil passed through the waterway daily. This accounted for about 20% of the world’s total petroleum and liquefied natural gas (LNG) supply. According to the Trump administration, the Strategic Petroleum Reserve has less than 40 days left. Trump’s manipulation of the oil price is about to run into reality.
The blockade has also caused an increase in the price of fertilizer, and as a result, the cost of food will continue to increase. The war in Ukraine is also reducing the amount of food reaching the world market. Le Monde reports, “The ports in the Greater Odesa area handle 90% of grain shipments. Since early August, the country has exported only about 500,000 metric tons – nearly one-fifth of its potential – according to Agriculture Minister Taras Vysotskyi.” In 2025, “more than 1 in 3 working-age adults used credit cards to buy groceries — and many of them had trouble paying them off,” according to The Washington Post.
Another cause of the increase in food prices is the disruption in access to the raw materials needed to produce fertilizer. The Persian Gulf region accounts for roughly 41% of global urea exports, 28% of ammonia, and 26% of phosphate rock. Roughly 70% of U.S. farmers cannot afford all the fertilizer they need because the conflict with Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz. Polls showed that 41% of Americans said they were concerned about being able to afford groceries over the next few months, up from 24% in April, according to a report on ABC.
At the same time, Tel Aviv and Washington’s war on Iran is harming economic trust in the United States as a safe place to invest. The use of sanctions isn’t helping. Holding your money in a U.S. bank could result in it being confiscated. The U.S. is still holding billions of dollars seized from Iran when their puppet government fell in 1979. In August 2026, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent gave investors instructions to stop selling U.S. bonds on three occasions. “But they continue to sell them,” Bessent complained, saying that the U.S. Treasury has $1 trillion and is prepared to use it to purchase long U.S. bonds. The last time the U.S. Treasury was forced to use “yield curve control” was during World War II.
The stock market is dominated by investments in artificial intelligence. Reporter Eric Esposito of MoneyWise writes in his August 26, 2026, article that “One of Burry’s long-standing arguments for shorting AI stocks like Nvidia is that their demand is more about circular financing than genuine sales to customers. As The Street reported, Burry characterized these deals as ‘byzantine financing arrangements’ that create ‘a distorted view of the data center boom.’” The web magazine 24/7 Wall St. says, “Burry isn’t merely warning that some AI stocks are overpriced. In May, the investor who famously bet against the housing bubble called today’s AI boom ‘just an asset bubble, plain and simple,’ comparing it with the dot-com era.” The principal customer for AI, and the source of the billions being spent on AI data centers, is the United States government and its security and military agencies. The circular financing of the “Magnificent Seven” tech companies—Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla—is already threatening to pop the tech bubble. When your primary customer is borrowing its own money to pay off its debt, there is little hope of avoiding a Really, Really Great Depression.
The community hovering around the “Magnificent Seven” has an oversized influence on Santa Cruz. Was the mad dash to build sterile high-rise luxury condos an effort to park hard assets during a crash they knew was coming? Were these ugly towers with limited parking tossed up in a race to beat the financial collapse? Were the buildings intended as collateral, providing something of value after the dust settles?
One thing that is almost certain is that those tech billionaires who are tormenting the homeless from corner to corner won’t be living in any of these ghastly monstrosities themselves. No fifteen-minute carless Smart City for them. They will let the tech peasants catch Google’s self-driving Waymo surveillance vehicles or zip off a high-rise rooftop in a Joby flying taxi.
I think we should take this seriously. First they came for the undocumented, deploying ICE brutes to snatch people off the streets and from their workplaces, stuffing them into massive concentration camps or flying them off to far-off countries. Our homeless neighbors are likely next to be removed to the reform camps.
Utah has proposed building a 1,300-bed facility northwest of Salt Lake City in response to President Trump’s executive order “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets.” Trump mimicked aspects of California Governor Newsom’s executive order, which mandates that state agencies and departments adopt policies to clear camps on state property. It also encourages local governments to do the same. Newsom signed the executive order a month after the Supreme Court reversed the precedent in Grants Pass v. Johnson that protected the homeless from being criminally charged if the jurisdiction was unable to provide a safe place for people to be. The justices found that it is not unconstitutional for a city to ban homeless encampments, even if there is no shelter available. The ruling, which Newsom cheered, gives city leaders broad authority to crack down on camps.
Under a yet-to-be-approved proposal drafted by Randy Shumway, chair of the Utah Homeless Services Board, the campus would include a “certified community behavioral health clinic” with 300 to 400 beds reserved for people who are civilly committed — or court-ordered into mental health treatment.
“An individual would be sanctioned to go there. It would not be voluntary. They would be there for a period of probably 90 days with the opportunity to detox in order to get mental and behavioral health care, to get substance use disorder support, to get physical health care, and to be surrounded by a community that’s helping them in healing,” Shumway told the committee while presenting his proposal.
Some local political leaders and the ACLU of Utah are pushing back. “Utah’s plan to confine people who cannot afford rent in a government-run homeless detention camp demands national attention,” notes Rep. Maxwell Frost.
Those being pushed from corner to corner in Santa Cruz may find themselves sanitized into a barracks at Camp Roberts, two hours south of the city, or institutionalized in a psych ward. Mayoral candidate Ryan Coonerty, the co-founder of the Predictive Policing software targeting the families of Gaza, Lebanon, Russia, and Iran, claimed during the Lookout.co candidates’ night at the Paradox that the county had reduced homelessness by fifty percent and that the remaining homeless were “service resistant.” When Coonerty was on the Santa Cruz County Board of Supervisors, he met with Mayor Donna Myers at what they called a 2-by-2 meeting and suggested that the homeless be shipped to the California National Guard base outside San Miguel. There will be no freedom for those who are unable to afford an apartment.
Coonerty currently serves as a senior policy advisor to San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan. Google co-founder Sergey Brin, Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, and Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan are among the Silicon Valley elite who maxed out their legally allowed contributions—$78,400 each—to Mahan’s gubernatorial campaign in January.
In a Guardian article from March 2024, “Revealed: A California city is training AI to spot homeless encampments,” reporter Todd Feathers writes “for the last several months, a city at the heart of Silicon Valley has been training artificial intelligence to recognize tents and cars with people living inside in what experts believe is the first experiment of its kind in the United States.”
Coonerty’s connections to Silicon Valley tech-fascists should concern anyone with compassion for the homeless. Joe Lonsdale not only co-founded Palantir with Peter Thiel; he started the public policy think tank The Cicero Institute. The Cicero Institute provided state and city governments with legislative templates designed to criminalize the homeless. More than 20 states are proposing laws criminalizing the homeless. The Cicero Institute succeeded in passing its template in Texas, which includes a statewide camping ban with penalties of up to $5,000 and one month in jail. Cicero also supported a bill (not based on one of its templates) making camping a felony in Tennessee.
Ryan Coonerty’s boss, San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, unveiled his “Responsibility to Shelter” initiative in March 2025, under which homeless people who choose not to accept shelter after three attempts within an 18-month period would be subject to arrest for trespassing. San Jose passed its “Responsibility to Shelter” ordinance on June 10, 2025, requiring unhoused residents to accept available city shelter or face citations and potential arrest. The San Jose police have not published the number of people arrested under this law. A March 2025 article in the San Jose Spotlight reports, “There are roughly 6,340 homeless residents in San Jose, with about 5,550 being unsheltered.” That same story says the city plans to open 1,000 shelter “beds” to respond to the law.
The August 22, 2026, The Washington Post article “How a Billionaire Shaped Trump’s Homelessness Policy” described one of Mayor Mahan’s supporters: “A co-founder of Palantir, the data-mining firm, Mr. Lonsdale, 43, is an unlikely force in homelessness policy. He brings to it vast wealth but no experience with homeless services and a distrust of conventional expertise. He argues that his outsider’s perspective gives him and the young generalists he hires a fresh view.” Joe Lonsdale claims the homeless are mentally ill or addicts and should be criminalized, yet a study by UCLA shows that nearly 300,000 California K-12 students experienced homelessness in the 2024–25 school year, a new statewide high and a 10% increase from before the pandemic.
Thankfully, the tech-feudalists of Santa Cruz may be blind to the fact that their efforts will not crush the human spirit. While there are no plans to exterminate the homeless in death camps as the Germans did in response to their economic crisis, this kinder and gentler approach to criminalizing the homeless is inching our society down that path.
First they came for the homeless
And I did not speak out
Because I was not homeless.
Then they came for me
And there was no one left
To speak out for me.
But this time we know better. We are speaking out.
Soup Street – A memoir by Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry
https://foodnotbombs.net/soup_street.html
Keith McHenry
THE INTERNING OF AMERICA’S HOMELESS
August 17, 2025
Will we be silent about our neighbors being removed from our communities?
Yes, that time I have been warning of since 1985 has arrived: prison camps for the homeless. Nearly four decades of demonizing the homeless as sub human drug addicted mentally ill “useless eaters” has provided the justification needed to intern those who cannot afford housing.
Thankfully many Americans have compassion for their homeless neighbors. Many of us have family on the streets or are struggling to keep housed and appreciate the difficulties tens of thousands of us are experiencing.
My wife and I owned a graphic design company in Kenmore Square. We designed ads and publications for companies in our neighborhood including the Boston Red Sox and local retail shops who were members of the local business association. The vice president of the Kenmore Association invited me to his stuffy second floor office to ask me to design another publication.
“Keith, the Association wants you to take a photo of that black guy that stands outside Captain Nemo’s Pizza and make a poster with a red circle with a line through it over his face like a no parking sign. The poster should say “Wanted out of Kenmore Square.”
I refused to make the poster, volunteered to share food behind Fenway Park before each game and suggested it would not be possible to drive the homeless from Kenmore Square since the crowds of Red Sox fans and college students made it the perfect place to panhandle. I also explained that “that black guy” was loved and had a name.
A few weeks later my wife Andrea called me over to her desk at our graphic design business to show me the Kenmore Association newsletter.
“Keith look at this.” pointing to page 2 of the October issue of the Kenmore News. The typewritten newsletter of the association mostly reported on the news of the Security and Maintenance Committee.
“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), the 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 streetpeople 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).
We stopped what we had been doing and typed out a response to the business 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
We shared our life with our homeless friends. The most visible and lovable of our street friends was “that black guy” Mr Butch who could be found outside Captain Nimo’s Pizza with a blue electric guitar slung across his chest welcoming the streams of Boston Red Sox fans chugging through Kenmore Square. Harold Madison Jr could have been Jimi Hendrix’s double.
The war against America’s homeless had begun.
As the number of Americans who were not able to afford housing increased business districts and municipal governments started to enact laws deigned to remove the homeless from sight.
After eight years of Reagan’s trickle down economics the number of homeless Americans had grown to more than 750,000 people. Cities started to pass and enforce what they called “quality of life” laws designed to make it a crime to be unhoused citing the pseudo science of the Broken Windows Theory to justify their dehumanizing campaigns.
Demonizing the homeless took another ugly step after I had relocated to San Francisco. Mayor Dianne Feinstein held a press event in my Richmond District neighborhood praising the city’s homeless-proof Muni bus stops. Her replacement, former social worker Art Agnos continued her anti-homeless programs including arresting Food Not Bombs for sharing meals at the entrance to Golden Gate Park at the end of Haight Street.
But that was nothing when compared to Mayor Frank Jordan’s “Quality of Life Enforcement Matrix Program”. In the first months Jordan order the police to confiscate the shoes off of people living outside.
Jordan would brag that Rudy Giuliani had adopted his program to clear Manhattan of their homeless.
The next mayor of San Francisco continues the repression. Mayor Brown asks to borrow the Oakland Police Department night vision-equipped helicopter to locate homeless people illegally sleeping in Golden Gate, but Oakland refuses to help. Sweeps of the parks continues anyway and the quality of life enforcement continues with 23,871 tickets issued to people living on the streets in 1999. Brown orders the police to charge people with shopping carts with a felony.
When Gavin Newson was on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors he initiated the ballot measure Care Not Cash which would change San Francisco’s General Assistance from $395 per month to just $59 per month but came with a guarantee of housing and food for the homeless. The promise of housing and food failed to materialize but the cuts in assistance was implemented.
When Gavin Newsom took the mayor’s office in 2004 he launched “Operation Outreach,” a special police unit that responds to 911 calls to rid the streets of the homeless, claiming he would be placing people in rehab or mental facilities, but with the lack of services people were just arrested or ticketed. Newsom claimed his program would eliminate the chronically homeless from San Francisco by 2014.
The cruel criminalization of the homeless got a new ally in 2016 when the billionaire co-founder of CIA In-Q-Tel funded Palantir, Joe Lonsdale, started the Cicero Institute. He provides model legislation to states banning “unauthorized street camping.” The Cicero Institute also provides model legislation on civil commitment of the homeless saying that “states should amend civil commitment laws to make it easier to help those who cannot help themselves”.
The Cicero Institute succeeded in getting states to pass their legislation. Their Safer Kentucky Act started to be enforced in July 2024. Anyone cited with the offense for the first time can be fined. Subsequent offenses are Kentucky Class B misdemeanors and can bring more fines or jail time. Under this law, if a property owner believes an unhoused trespasser is uncooperative they can shoot the homeless person under a stand-your-ground provision.
With Joe Lonsdale’s help Tennessee made it a felony to camp on most state-owned property. Having a felony conviction will make getting housing even more difficult.
In September 2022 Governor Gavin Newsom started the first of his Community Assistance, Recovery, and Empowerment (CARE) Courts, opening a way to force the state’s homeless into involuntary mental health treatment.
Governor Newsom’s Proposition 1 passed in 2024 providing funding for facilities for those forced into state conservancy.
Two close homeless friends of mine were forced into civil commitment in 2023. Both were happy and no danger to themselves or others. All they required was enough money to afford an apartment.
The County of Santa Cruz removed one friend from a COVID hotel a week before everyone else was evicted in the Benchlands homeless camp. He was held in a psychiatric unit for months. Both of his cars were junked and he lost 30 years of crystals and drums he had in storage because he was blocked from paying for his units or his website, losing his life’s work. His once magical life was crushed.
My “rainbow family” friend was captured and forced into the mental facility and made to take psych drugs against her will. She died a couple of weeks after being released when she stopped taking the SSRIs.
On July 25, 2024, Newson signed the Executive Order N-1-24 calling on all state agencies to clear encampments. “With the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in Grants Pass v Johnson, local governments now have the tools and authority to address dangerous encampments and help provide those residing in encampments with the resources they need.” He also told counties and cities who failed to clear homeless camps that the state would cut their funding.
Two months before Newsom signed his executive order the State awarded the City of Santa Cruz a $4 million “Encampment Resolution Grant” that provides two years of funding to remove the homeless from the streets around the Housing Matters homeless shelter. There is a claim that the grant will provide 55 people with a place in a tiny house or apartment. We will see.
The weekly sweeps scatter people to the woods and doorways until the police force them back to the relative safety of the camp outside the shelter.
In June 2025 San Jose, California passed a law making it illegal not to go into a shelter. San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan stated, “Homelessness can’t be a choice” when pushing for his Responsibility to Shelter Initiative. Those refusing shelter three times will be arrested for trespassing on public land. The San José Spotlight points out that the county only has one shelter bed for every three unhoused people.
Trump continues the drive to criminalize those who cannot afford housing with his “Ending Crime and Disorder on America’s Streets” executive order essentially plagiarizing Newsom’s 2024 anti-homeless executive order.
A month after signing his order he spotted several people living in pup tents as he traveled to play gulf in Virginia, writing on Truth Social platform, “The Homeless have to move out, IMMEDIATELY. We will give you places to stay, but FAR from the Capitol” ordering the unhoused residents to leave the US capitol or face eviction and vowed to use officers to make arrests.
Trump also federalized the District of Columbia’s police ordering them to enforce the anti-homeless laws passed by the liberal Democrats.
On August 12th White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt took questions about President Trump’s takeover of the Washington, D.C.police force and the Trump administration’s plan to remove homeless encampments in the city, responding that, “The Police Department, with the support of the new Federal agencies who have been surging on the street of the District of Columbia, are going to enforce the laws that are already on the books here in Washington DC. For far too long, these laws have been completely ignored in the homelessness problem, has ravaged the city. So D.C. Code 1307 and D.C. Municipal Regulation 24-100 give the Metropolitan Police Department the authority to take action when it comes to homeless encampments so homeless individuals will be given the option to leave their encampment to be taken to a homeless shelter, to be offered addiction or mental health services and if they refuse they will be susceptible to fines or to jai time. Again these are preexisting laws that are already on the books.”
The New York Post reported that, “In the past five months, U.S. Park Police have removed 70 homeless encampments, giving the people living in them the same options, she said. As of Tuesday, Leavitt said only two homeless encampments remained in district parks maintained by the National Park Service and would be removed this week.”
Associated Press reporter Meg Kinnard notes that “Trump said this week that homeless people will be moved far from the city in his crackdown on crime. But details of the plan to do so are unclear”.
The number of Americans facing homelessness is increasing as rents and the cost of food continue to rise, families face cuts in SNAP food stamps and other social safety nets. With the potential of tens of thousands more people being forced onto the streets US officials may believe they need to be prepared to deploy the National Guard across the country.
When we speak of the homeless people of Santa Cruz “being moved far from the city” there may already be a plan. Former Mayor Donna Meyers and former County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty were quietly proposing during their 2 by 2 meetings that people could be sent to the Camp Roberts California National Guard Base outside the tiny village of San Miguel in San Luis Obispo county.
Is this what Trump means, that America’s rapidly growing homeless population will be moved far from the city ?
IT IS ALREADY HAPPENING HERE
July 27, 2024
Santa Cruz and the theater of hypocrisy, carnage and suffering
The “Buzz Windrip” type characters of Santa Cruz planned to read the 1935 dystopian political novel written by American author Sinclair Lewis. A Good Times cover story promoting Bookshop Santa Cruz’s reading of “It Can’t Happen Here” warned that if we didn’t vote for the political party waging a genocide in Palestine and arming far-right Nazi groups in Ukraine that Trump would come to power. The fascist dictator Buzz Windrip of Lewis’s text.
Before that July 19th The 418 Project event featuring Congressman Jimmy Panetta and Mayor Fred Keeley I visited my friends on the levee handing out some of the last of the announcements for that evenings “It is Already Happening Here” protest. As I walked up to one group perching along the levee I could hear two Santa Cruz Police officers chatting with several tent occupants about providing pizza. Once the officers moved on I asked about this pizza donation. They explained that the police claimed they would give you pizza if you took a drug test. They were not sure if that offer was still good if you tested positive.
Joe Shultz of India Joze met me at the Trader Joe’s parking lot delivering ice tea for the 6:00 pm rally. We set up the table with pastries, sandwiches and cold drinks on the River Street sidewalk. The first of those from the levee joined us for a snack. I saw a few people assembling outside the front door of the theater so not wishing to waste the last of my flyers I ambled down to share them with the people waiting to hear the congressman and mayor. A security guard dashed out of the venue and thrusting two white envelopes at me as he mumbled something about my being banned from the area. I shared that I didn’t care and continued passing out flyers until he summoned one of Santa Cruz’s police officers. To avoid a pre-protest arrest I wandered off to retrieve my bullhorn returning to blast my message to those in my banned area. “It’s already happening. You don’t need to wait for Trump. A genocide sounds like fascism. Arming Nazis in Ukraine sounds like fascism. Sweeping the homeless also sounds like fascism”.
It wasn’t long before a crowd of protesters arrived and I suggested they could move from the sidewalk and take the action directly outside the entrance to the event. Before long several dozen people arched around the people lining up to get in. I gave my bullhorn to one of the Palestinian activists and joined the group holding our “Stop the Sweeps” banner defying the threat of arrest.
Wallace Baine writes in Lookout Santa Cruz “Several dozen protesters, armed with bullhorns, drums and flamethrower passions, ringed the theater, creating a din that the ‘actors’ inside had to nearly shout over. On top of that, a few protesters found their way into the audience and, at least five times, interrupted the play reading with loud denunciations aimed at the panelists.”
After the spoiled political theater ended it was clear from their distressed looking faces that Keeley and Panetta were desperate to flee their free speech circus.
I opened those two envelopes the next morning discovering that The 418 Project executive director Laura Bishop’s letter that I was “persona non grata” adding “person not welcome” until August 1, 2034. You read that right, a decade long ban “at 155 River Street or any event held elsewhere by The 418 Project.” The second letter also banned me from the Galleria Mall for 10 years.
Sinclair Lewis’s novel warned that Buzz Windrip was an enemy of free speech, adding an interesting twist to my pre-ban letters seeking to silence the protest. This is not too much of surprise. The event’s host, Bookshop Santa Cruz commemorated “Banned Books Month” while owner Casey Coonerty-Protti’s husband Michel Protti directed the unit at Meta that silenced medical professionals who were critical of Trump’s COVID policies, posts detailing the arming of far-right Azov Nazis by the Biden administration and the ugly truth of the genocide in Gaza.
Fascism is a family affair for the Coonerty folks. Casey’s brother is former county Supervisor Ryan Coonerty. A 2012 Monterey Herald article titled “‘Predictive policing’ gets capital boost” reports that “Attorney Caleb Baskin and Councilman Ryan Coonerty have taken the experimental ‘predictive policing’ program used by the Santa Cruz Police Department and created software that they hope to sell to law enforcement agencies around the nation. The duo, who founded the co-working business NextSpace, say they’ve raised more than $1 million so far to fund their newest venture.”
The article continues, “The program has gained international media attention — and the attention of law enforcement agencies nationwide, many asking how they can get the program.”
“Based on such requests, Zach Friend helped coordinate a meeting between Mohler and Baskin and Coonerty to discuss the idea of creating a business.”
“Baskin, 36, and Coonerty, 38, say investors who’ve helped fund their venture include Plantronics CEO Ken Kannappan, former eBay executive Rob Chesnut and Coonerty’s brother-in-law Michel Protti, a vice president at Yahoo.”
PredPol is based on an analytics model developed by a group of researchers, including mathematician George Mohler of Santa Clara University and Jeff Brantingham at UCLA’s Department of Anthropology.
In 2018 theverge.com posted, “Jeff Brantingham is as close as it gets to putting a face on the controversial practice of ‘predictive policing.’ Over the past decade, the University of California-Los Angeles anthropology professor adapted his Pentagon-funded research in forecasting battlefield casualties in Iraq to predicting crime for American police departments, patenting his research and founding a for-profit company named PredPol, LLC.”
A June 2021 article “Stop LAPD Spying Sues LAPD to Uncover Communications with UCLA Professor Who Founded PredPol “ reports on opposition to this dystopian racist police state software started by Ryan Coonerty.
In 2019, a group of 68 UCLA professors and graduate students sent a letter to LAPD condemning Professor Brantingham’s work on “predictive” policing technologies. And in June 2020, over 1,400 academic mathematicians joined a public letter condemning mathematical research that contributes to racist policing. The letter singled out Professor Brantingham’s work with LAPD and named PredPol’s “racist consequences.”
Posted on datasmart.hks.harvard.edu in 2013, “Dr. George Mohler could not have foreseen the deluge that descended upon him at Santa Clara University, shortly after local police adopted his groundbreaking algorithm in July 2011 and media reported that his new software program was taking criminals off the streets.”
“It may seem a stretch, but the model of post-earthquake temblors is very similar to that of criminal activity,” Dr. Mohler says. “Criminals want to replicate their successes, they go back to similar locations, they repeat their crimes — it’s almost identical to how aftershocks roll out after earthquakes, following predictable fault lines and timetables.”
“In 2010, Dr. Mohler took his seismology theory north to Santa Clara University, where he joined as assistant professor of mathematics and computer science, married and started a family. Then serendipity struck — he met Zach Friend, a public information officer and crime analyst with the Santa Clara police. Friend was intrigued by the potential of predictive analytics; soon he and Dr. Mohler were brainstorming how the latter’s algorithm to track earthquake aftershocks could be adapted for police work.”
“We met several times and decided to try for deployment with the Santa Cruz police,” Dr. Mohler says. “I wrote the prototype software and gave it to the police in July 2011. It turns out Zach was a media mastermind — he’d worked in the press office of the 2008 Obama campaign. Once PopSci and The New York Times picked up the story, it was off to the races.”
It was fitting that someone supporting the genocide in Gaza and the arming of Azov far-right military units in Ukraine would be reading a play warning of fascism. His April 20, 2024 post on his blog announced his support for more war as he writes, “The package would deliver critical support for Ukraine in its efforts to push back against Russia’s unprovoked war of aggression, safeguard Taiwan from an advancing China, and ensure the security of the nation of Israel in a volatile Middle East.”
“The $95 billion national security package includes; $61 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel, $8 billion to bolster defense capabilities in the Indo-Pacific, and $9 billion for global humanitarian assistance.” Meanwhile the City of Santa Cruz is getting $4 million to clear the homeless from outside the homeless shelter.
Bookshop Santa Cruz is not shy about hosting war criminals. They invited a former CIA Director to speak on the need to expand the war on terrorism on September 10, 2018 at Peace United Church. Several of us who protest Panetta’s call for more war were banned from Bookshop Santa Cruz for life but Casey changed her mind realizing I was helping organize an event with Chris Hedges and she had already ordered copies of his books.
Panetta has been a solider advancing the agenda of the Empire for decades. When Panetta was Clinton’s chief of staff the administration’s sanctions and no-fly zone killed more than 560,000 children according to a study by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations.
A December 12, 2011, Voice of America report noted “U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is on a surprise visit to Afghanistan, where he says 2011 will mark a turning point in the 10-year-old war.” Panetta would denounce Biden’s hasty evacuation 10 years later after tens of thousands of Afghans had been killed.
The locally owned Bookshop Santa Cruz is not the innocent free speech defender of democracy as it likes to project. Like others in Santa Cruz who seek to project a “do no harm” image many are direct participants in the creation of a frightening dystopian digital panopticon complete with robotic warfare.
An officer of the anti-homeless hate group Take Back Santa Cruz is the husband of Google’s general counsel Halimah DeLaine Prado. We received a snap shot of Manuel’s emails between himself, City Manager Martin Bernal, Mayor Donna Meyers and Republican City Councilperson Renee Golder coordinating efforts to rid Santa Cruz of the homeless.
In a December 18, 2020, email Manuel thanks Martin for the week before’s zoom meeting writing about striping Delaware where many living in vehicles sleep, stepping up enforcement of all parking rule “(not just 72-hour limit)” and this “- Update on why some folks such as Keith McHenry (parked on McPherson) and Alicia Kuhl (parked on Delaware) have not been towed despite receiving so many tickets.” It is a relief to learn that their intelligence on my parking locations and ticket reality is so inept.
Google is one of many companies advancing slaughter in Gaza with their product Project Nimbus. This $1.2 billion joint contract between Google and Amazon signed in 2021 provides cloud computing infrastructure, artificial intelligence (AI) and other technology services to the Israeli government and its military.
A staff person who attended the 2 by 2 meetings between city and county officials shared the Halimah DeLaine Prado exchange with County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty and Mayor Donna Meyers. Meyers and Coonerty talked about busing the homeless to Camp Roberts California National Guard Base in Monterey and San Luis Obispo counties.
Facebook is another local CIA linked member of the national security state. Investigative journalist Whitney Webb’s April 12, 2021 article “The Military Origins of Facebook” writes”Facebook’s growing role in the ever-expanding surveillance and ‘pre-crime’ apparatus of the national security state demands new scrutiny of the company’s origins and its products as they relate to a former, controversial DARPA-run surveillance program that was essentially analogous to what is currently the world’s largest social network.” According to Meta’s website Ryan Coonerty’s brother-in-law Michel Protti is the head of privacy at Facebook.
Webb writes “In mid-February, Daniel Baker, a US veteran described by the media as ‘anti-Trump, anti-government, anti-white supremacist, and anti-police,’ was charged by a Florida grand jury with two counts of ‘transmitting a communication in interstate commerce containing a threat to kidnap or injure.’”
“The communication in question had been posted by Baker on Facebook, where he had created an event page to organize an armed counter-rally to one planned by Donald Trump supporters at the Florida capital of Tallahassee on January 6. ‘If you are afraid to die fighting the enemy, then stay in bed and live. Call all of your friends and Rise Up!,’ Baker had written on his Facebook event page.”
“Baker’s case is notable as it is one of the first ‘precrime’ arrests based entirely on social media posts—the logical conclusion of the Trump administration’s, and now Biden administration’s, push to normalize arresting individuals for online posts to prevent violent acts before they can happen. From the increasing sophistication of US intelligence/military contractor Palantir’s predictive policing programs to the formal announcement of the Justice Department’s Disruption and Early Engagement Program in 2019 to Biden’s first budget, which contains $111 million for pursuing and managing ‘increasing domestic terrorism caseloads,’ the steady advance toward a precrime-centered ‘war on domestic terror’ has been notable under every post-9/11 presidential administration.’”
Palantir was in the news the night Congressman Panetta and Mayor Keeley read “It Can’t Happen Here”. Palantir’s co-founders Joe Lonsdale and Peter Thiel announced that they would be supporting Donald Trump and JD Vance. Peter Thiel is the puppet master behind JD Vance’s career from setting him up in his Mithril Capital hedge fund, his book and movie deals, the US Senate to his rise as Trump’s Vice Presidential running mate. The “Swamp” is already in Trump’s tent. Another Thiel associate, the military contractor Elon Musk also pledged support for the Trump ticket assuring the wars will continue no matter who is elected.
While Palantir is donating millions to Trump’s campaign they are also bragging in their ads that their AI software was used by the FBI to nab nearly 1,000 January 6th Trump supporters.
Palantir serves as a contractor to all 17 of the U.S. intelligence agencies, as well as many other U.S. federal agencies including the Pentagon. It was largely funded into existence by the CIA’s In-Q-Tel and the CIA was Palantir’s only client from 2005 until 2008, during which time the CIA was a key part of directing Palantir’s product development.
James Bamford writes in the April 2024 issue of the Nation, “ Earlier this month saw a continuation of that effort, with the targeting of three well-marked and fully approved aid vehicles belonging to World Central Kitchen, killing their seven occupants and ensuring that the food would never reach those dying of starvation. The targeting was precise—placing missiles dead center in the aid agency’s rooftop logos. Israel, however, said it was simply a mistake, similar to the ‘mistaken’ killing of nearly 200 other aid workers in just a matter of months—more than all the aid workers killed in all the wars in the rest of the world over the last 30 years combined, according to the Aid Worker Security Database.”
“Such horrendous ‘mistakes’ are hard to understand, considering the enormous amount of advanced targeting AI hardware and software provided to the Israeli military and spy agencies—some of it by one American company in particular: Palantir Technologies. “We stand with Israel,” the Denver-based company said in posts on X and LinkedIn. “The board of directors of Palantir will be gathering in Tel Aviv next week for its first meeting of the new year. Our work in the region has never been more vital. And it will continue.” As one of the world’s most advanced data-mining companies, with ties to the CIA, Palantir’s ‘work’ was supplying Israel’s military and intelligence agencies with advanced and powerful targeting capabilities—the precise capabilities that allowed Israel to place three drone-fired missiles into three clearly marked aid vehicles.”
Cicero Institute’s Joe Lonsdale
Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale’s corporate profile says he is a technology entrepreneur and investor. He is the managing partner at 8VC, a US-based venture capital firm that manages several billion dollars in committed capital. He was an early institutional investor in several technology startups including the Santa Cruz military contractor Joby Aviation. Ryan Coonerty’s investor Ken Kannappan sold his Plantronics building to Joby Aviation in November 2022. The Joby Aviation website noted in April 2022 that the U.S. Air Force’s Agility Prime program would net more than $45 million for the Santa Cruz company.
“Building on more than five years of engagement with defense agencies, the expanded contract leverages Joby’s years of research and technology development and will include new testing to evaluate Joby’s advanced technologies. It brings the potential value of the total contract to more than $75 million.”
Joe Lonsdale also started the Cicero Institute, a policy group that delivers “entrepreneurial solutions to public problems.” The Cicero Institute campaigns for laws that allow private competition in government areas such as health care, housing, and education.
The Cicero Institute provides legislative templates to states and cities.
His website on homelessness starts, “States should ban unauthorized street camping.”
“Street camps are dangerous to the public and the vulnerable homeless alike. They are often hotbeds of violence, especially against women and children— especially those who are homeless themselves.”
“The public widely supports enforcing ordinances against dangerous street camps and moving individuals into emergency shelters.”
He goes on to write, “States should amend civil commitment laws to make it easier to help those who cannot help themselves — and keep them out of prison” adding, “Many street homeless suffer from chronic and untreated mental illness. For those that are a public nuisance or a danger to themselves or others, there must be a third option besides prison and abandonment.”
So far the Cicero Institute, has placed ten bills in at least eight states including Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, Florida and Wisconsin. Texas became the first state to pass such a law in 2021, and Tennessee and Missouri followed in 2022.
Cynthia Griffith wrote about Wisconsin’s Assembly Bill 689 and Senate Bill 669 on the Invisible People website, “Concentration camps and secret committees, out-of-state lobbyists, and flat-out lies — as unbelievable and terrifying as it sounds, this is a glimpse into what’s happening behind closed doors in 2024 Wisconsin.”
And it gets even worse. “Kentucky GOP’s New Bill Decriminalizes Use of Deadly Force Against the Unhoused” writes Zane McNeill for the January 17, 2024 edition of Truthout.
“Republican lawmakers in Kentucky introduced a bill last Tuesday that would criminalize homeless encampments and expand the state’s Stand Your Ground law to allow property owners to confront unhoused people with a gun. The bill, dubbed the “Safer Kentucky Act,” already has received more than 45 Republican co-sponsors and the Kentucky State Fraternal Order of Police has committed to testify in support of the legislation when it has a committee hearing.”
The Cicero Institute website notes, “On March 20, 2024, Florida, Governor Ron DeSantis signed HB 1365 / SB 1530, which will make Florida a leading state in the fight against the failed homelessness policies that have wreaked havoc on so many American cities.”
Joe Lonsdale writes in his blog, “It has been a momentous few weeks for homeless policy in the United States. As you may know, this has been a keystone policy area for us since founding the Cicero Institute, and we have become the leading organizational voice for reform, as well as a resource for state leaders who want to take bold action. In Florida, we were proud to work with lawmakers on a legislative package that meets the needs of the state and emphasizes the incentives & accountability model that we pioneered at Cicero.”
Joe Lonsdale had another win on April 22, 2024 with the US Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v Johnson letting localities impose criminal penalties for acts like public camping and public sleeping without violating the Eighth Amendment — even if they lack sufficient available shelter space to accommodate their unhoused population.
Democratic mayors and governors pushed to have the meager protections of the Grants Pass case overturned. “Today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court provides state and local officials the definitive authority to implement and enforce policies to clear unsafe encampments from our streets,” Newsom said in a statement after the ruling, “This decision removes the legal ambiguities that have tied the hands of local officials for years and limited their ability to deliver on common-sense measures to protect the safety and well-being of our communities.”
The bipartisan march to criminalize America’s homeless doesn’t need to wait for the election of Trump and Vance. It is happening now in Santa Cruz.
The city of Watsonville began to clear out a homeless encampment along the Pajaro River Levee on Monday July 22, 2024. It’s a process that is expected to last through August 2, 2024. The Santa Cruz Police posted eviction notices on tents throughout the Pogonip telling those who fled the sweeps at Harvey West and Coral Streets they had to remove their belongings by 9:00 am on July 29, 2024.
Jessica York writes in her April 19, 2024 Sentinel article “Santa Cruz receives $4M to address Harvey West, Coral Street homeless encampments”
“In April 2024 the city of Santa Cruz has been awarded a two-year $4 million state homeless encampment resolution grant.”
“During the two-year life of the Encampment Resolution Fund, granted via the state Department of Housing and Community Development, Santa Cruz would be expected to assist 55 people sleeping on the streets.” The city claims there are over 1,000 people living outside in the city and that is based on what seemed an intentionally poorly organize Point in Time Count.
In a June 4, 2024 email, Chief Executive Officer of Housing Matters Phil Kramer thanked Mayor Keeley, City Managers Matt Huffaker, Lisa Murphy, Larry Imwalle and Housing for Health Director Robert Ratner for clearing the area around the homeless shelter of the homeless.
“Hi all- Thanks you for your work to create a more welcoming and safe Coral Street for shelter guests, day services participants, staff and partners. I appreciate what a large undertaking this was and understand there is more infrastructure work (fencing, etc.) coming soon.”
“The sidewalks are stained and reek of urine. Is it possible for City staff to do some sidewalk powerwashing? If you give us authorization we might be able to do some of this cleaning work ourselves, or hire it out. Please let me know.
Thanks again,
Phil”
Deputy City Manager and girlfriend of Police Chief Bernie Escalante responds that afternoon by email.
“Hi Phil,
Thank you for recognizing the incredible undertaking this effort took to accomplish. We had nearly 20 employees out at the location on Monday, and we will continue to have our team in that location. We still have lots of work to do to try to break the cycle of people returning to that space. Our team is scheduled to power wash the sidewalks, and may have already done so by now. It may need multiple washes. I will let you know what the status is of the cleaning.”
“I look forward to working with Housing Matters as a valuable partner to help those individuals in and around Coral Street with our recently awarded Encampment Resolution Grant. This will help keep this location clear.”
The rush to remove the homeless got another boost when California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Executive Order N-1-24 on July 24, 2024, directing state and local officials to start removing homeless encampments stating that the recent Supreme Court ruling in Grants Pass v Johnson now empowers cities to enforce bans on sleeping outside in public.
“Today I announced an executive order to move the process forward. We’re done, it’s time to move with urgency at the local level to clean up these sites, to focus on public health and focus on public safety. There are no longer any excuses,” Newsom said. “We now have no excuse with the Supreme Court decision.”
So, yes it is already happening here and is likely to get even more repressive as the noose of biometric IDs and programmable digital currency, an AI driven World War and the internment of homeless Americans is implemented by those very same people who struggled to read, “It Can’t Happen Here” at the Bookshop Santa Cruz event.
Keith McHenry – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 USA – 575-770-3377
YES, THEY ARE COMING FOR THE HOMELESS
February 17, 2024
Billionaire Joe Lonsdale, cofounder of CIA contractor Palantir initiates campaign to intern the homeless
A confluence of horrific policies are converging that threaten the freedom of America”s homeless. California Governor Newsom and big city mayors across the Western United States are demanding the “right” to drive the homeless from view and have pushed for the Supreme Court to remove the Martin v. Boise restrictions on criminalizing the unhoused. The case Johnson v Grants Pass based on the Martin ruling will be heard on Monday, April 22, 2024 at the US Supreme Court in Washington DC.
The effort before the US Supreme Court along with California Prop 1, the CIA linked Cicero Institute’s legislative campaign and just introduced California Senate Bill 1011 ban on public camping are among the measures lining up to force the homeless into mental facilities or internment camps.
In 2016 the CIA linked billionaire, Joe Lonsdale started the Cicero Institute which is spearheading a nationwide effort to criminalize the homeless. He also co-founded the CIA data-mining company Palantir with PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel and other Silicon Valley vulture capitalists. Peter Thiel got his start with the CIA’s law firm Sullivan and Cromwell launching a career in deep state manipulation of our society. According to journalist Whitney Webb “Palantir’s first backer was the Central Intelligence Agency’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel, but the company steadily grew and in 2015 was valued at $20 billion.”
Palantir currently serves as a contractor to all 17 of the U.S. intelligence agencies, as well as many other U.S. federal agencies including the Pentagon.
After Palantir, Joe Lonsdale founded and remains as Chairman of both Addepar, which has over $4 trillion USD on its wealth management technology platform, and OpenGov, which provides software for over 2,000 municipalities and state agencies.
Joe Lonsdale’s The Cicero Institute provides legislative templates to states and cities.
His website on homelessness starts, “States should ban unauthorized street camping.”
“Street camps are dangerous to the public and the vulnerable homeless alike. They are often hotbeds of violence, especially against women and children —especially those who are homeless themselves.
The public widely supports enforcing ordinances against dangerous street camps and moving individuals into emergency shelters.”
He goes on to write, “States should amend civil commitment laws to make it easier to help those who cannot help themselves — and keep them out of prison.” adding, “Many street homeless suffer from chronic and untreated mental illness. For those that are a public nuisance or a danger to themselves or others, there must be a third option besides prison and abandonment.”
So far the Cicero Institute, has placed ten bills in at least eight states including Arizona, Georgia, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. Texas became the first state to pass such a law in 2021, and Tennessee and Missouri followed in 2022.
Cynthia Griffith wrote about Wisconsin’s Assembly Bill 689 and Senate Bill 669 on the Invisible People website, “Concentration camps and secret committees, out-of-state lobbyists, and flat-out lies — as unbelievable and terrifying as it sounds, this is a glimpse into what’s happening behind closed doors in 2024 Wisconsin.”
And it gets even worse. “Kentucky GOP’s New Bill Decriminalizes Use of Deadly Force Against the Unhoused” writes Zane McNeill for the January 17, 2024 edition of Truthout.
“Republican lawmakers in Kentucky introduced a bill last Tuesday that would criminalize homeless encampments and expand the state’s Stand Your Ground law to allow property owners to confront unhoused people with a gun. The bill, dubbed the “Safer Kentucky Act,” already has received more than 45 Republican co-sponsors and the Kentucky State Fraternal Order of Police has committed to testify in support of the legislation when it has a committee hearing.”
Another dire measure is California Proposition 1, Behavioral Health Services Program and Bond Measure (March 2024) that would fund a $6.4 billion bond to drastically expand the state’s mental health and substance abuse treatment infrastructure. A majority of the money, $4.4 billion, would be used to build 10,000 in-patient and residential treatment beds across the state. The Cicero Institute says “states should amend civil commitment laws to make it easier to help those who cannot help themselves.”
I have lost homeless friends to the mental health system who were perfectly happy with their independence, were not a danger to themselves or others and didn’t use drugs. In two cases they were just free spirited “hippies” until someone in Santa Cruz County government decided to haul them off to the mental hospital where their health failed. In one case she died a few days after being released because she stopped taking their mind numbing psych drugs. Another lost nearly 100 pounds in less than half a year and his life’s work of jewelry, drums and his spiritual website were trashed along with the working van he lived in.
Then there is California Senate Bill 1011 introduced by Senate GOP leader Brian Jones of San Diego and Democratic Sen. Catherine Blakespear of Encinitas. Modeled after San Diego’s cruel “Unsafe Camping Ordinance,” Senate Bill 1011 would prohibit encampments within 500 feet of schools, open spaces and major transit stops. It also bans camping on sidewalks if shelter space is available; requires cities or counties to give an unhoused person 72-hour notice before clearing an encampment; and mandates “enforcement personnel” to provide information about homeless shelters in the area.
If the US Supreme Court strikes down the Ninth Circuit ruling that homeless persons cannot be punished for sleeping outside on public property in the absence of adequate alternatives it could set the stage for interning our homeless neighbors and friends.
This is of particular concern since the number of people becoming homeless is already on the increase and is sure to explode as economic conditions worsen. Pressure to “do something about all the people living on the streets” could provide the political justification from the forced removal of the those living outside. Housing and Urban Development reported an 11% increase in the number of unhoused Americans in 2023 from the year before. According to a new report from Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies claims that housing is unaffordable for half of all American renters.
Rather than spending the $95 billion being allocated to the waging of wars it could have been redirected to humane solutions to our failed economy but just as those in power view Palestinians as “human animals” they also view the homeless as less than human. If they can exterminate 15,000 children in less than four months as the world looks on in horror there is really nothing these monsters are not capable of doing to any of us.
If you are in California join the rally and civil disobedience on the west side of the State Capitol Building on Saturday, March 16, 2024 at noon to 2 at 10th Street between N and L Streets in Sacramento.
There is also a rally planned for Monday, April 22, 2024 outside the US Supreme Court.
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