Salinas Authorities Destroy Homes of the Homeless

Defend those without homes! campaign page [link]

Brought to our attention by Robert Norse of the "Homeless United for Friendship and Freedom - Santa Cruz" [huffsantacruz.org] [info (@huffsantacruz.org] [831-423-HUFF].
Defend those without homes! [northbayuprising.blogspot.com/2009/01/defend-those-without-homes.html]

Salinas Authorities Destroy Homes of the Homeless:
* [thecalifornian.com/interactive/article/20130127/MULTIMEDIA/130127001/Homeless-Salinas-Rudy-Reynoso]
* [thecalifornian.com/article/20130128/NEWS01/301280005/Salinas-community-gathers-find-help-relocate-homeless?odyssey=obinsite]
* [montereycountyweekly.com/weblogs/news-blog/2013/jan/31/swept-not-away-authorities-displace-salinas-chinat]

Santa Cruz PD and racial profiling against African visitors

Human Rights abuse in itty-bitty Santa Cruz [link]

2013-01-21 "Can a Black Photographer Take Pictures in Santa Cruz?"
by Alex DaRocy [http://alexdarocy.blogspot.com/2013/01/can-black-photographer-take-pictures-in.html]:After being stopped by officers with the Santa Cruz Police Department in Downtown Santa Cruz over the summer, photographer Craig Burton explained in a video interview that he was taking a picture of a child in public and that his subsequent detainment by the SCPD was a case of racial profiling.
 Burton was clear in stating that his stop by the local police was unwarranted and that they should have known that he was not a predator. Though the authorities did not apologize to him or treat him politely, he didn't blame them, they were just doing their job he said.
 Burton instead focused on liberals in California, in general, as the source of the problem, stating that, "people act like they are really liberal, but they are not really liberal." He later added, "As you can see, this is Santa Barbara now."
 When officers Winston and Warren arrived in their patrol vehicle and first caught up to him that day on Locust Street, Burton said he was told by them to sit on the sidewalk.
 Winston later told him, "that's what we do with everybody."
 A third police officer arrived in a patrol vehicle, Officer Conner, also of the SCPD.
 They told Burton to sit down three times, and said not to make them ask again, Burton recalled.
He said he then complied, and he gave them his name. They then ran a check on him, and Burton described the process as a "sit down and 21 questions."
 As they questioned him, Burton took pictures of the police officers.
 "I've got all rights to take pictures of who I want to," he said, to which Officer Winston replied, "it's all good."
 After a short waiting period, "they realized I'm not on parole or probation."
 After being released from the detainment, Craig Burton made it clear to Officer Winston of the SCPD that what he had just gone through was not "cool."
 "I know you are just doing your job and shit, but that's not really cool dude...Make me sit on the ground like I am a suspect."
 Just minutes after they were done with Burton, Officers Winston and Warren became involved in another stop just feet away from where they had first detained him. Officer Conner remained in his patrol vehicle for some time after Burton was set free, partially blocking traffic with his patrol vehicle on Cedar Street.
 Burton explained that at approximately 2:30pm he had taken a picture of, "a little Indian kid who had a little head wrap."
 He recalled not having seen someone wear a head dress like that before.
 "I don't judge on pictures, it's not my say what's good and what's bad, my job is to take pictures and keep a document of everything I see," he explained.
 Burton described himself as being from Los Angeles, and that he also lived in Iowa City, Iowa, and other places, but mostly he self-identified as being from the midwest.
 "Taking pictures, as a black guy, in Chicago....you don't go through all this shit, but in California, I'm a motherfuckin thug here."
 After his encounter with the police, Burton continued to take pictures as he spoke about what had just happened.
 "I guess they are not used to seeing people taking pictures and stuff, and somebody said I was taking a picture of a little kid, and as you see I take pictures of everything and all things, but since I took a picture of a little kid...they treat me as a predator."
 Though he felt that the officers from the Santa Cruz Police Department were not polite to him during the stop, Burton said, "he's just doing his job, I understand that, no problem."
 Burton did feel, however, that their attitude was different towards him before they knew if he had a criminal record or not. "I don't have nothing and they cant get me on anything," he explained, adding, "but if they would have had anything, it would have been a whole different story."
 Burton chose to instead point the finger of blame at those who live in the Santa Cruz area, stating that, "people act like they are really liberal, but they are not really liberal," but he was also very clear when he stated, "I still think it's profiling."
 "This shit right here is so blown up, just for taking a bloody picture," he said.
 Burton has learned a lot about how to conduct himself when traveling around the country, in order to minimize interactions with the police.
 "One thing about traveling, If you are a smart traveler, you make sure you have no warrants, because you don't want to get harassed like this," he said.
 Avoiding the police effects what equipment Burton feels comfortable carrying with him as he travels. "There is a reason why my backpack is so lite and I don't carry a bed roll; why I try and wear a white shirt and jeans," he explained.
 "I realize since I've been hitchhiking since I was 17 years old, and like I was saying I am 40 now, some places got kind of burnt, and some places are cool, but some people talk the good talk, but they don't really walk the walk, and this is one of those places."
 Burton said that when traveling around California, "sometimes you get these yuppies."
 "There aren't that many African Americans taking pictures nowadays, not like they used to," he observed.
 "I told the officer...if I see anything diverse or unique or different, I will take their picture and we will go through this all over again. I have all rights."
 "I go through this shit every fucking day, it's so fucking shameful," Burton said.
 "I'm just glad you were here. I'm glad they didn't catch me in the restroom, there would be no witnesses this time," he concluded as he laughed, half-joking.
 The events described in this article, and the interview with Craig Burton, took place on August 19, 2012.
 To see Craig Burton's photography, visit his flickr page, at: [http://www.flickr.com/photos/82936564@N02/]
---
Burton, with Officers Winston and Warren on Locust Street.

Human Rights for Prisoners

This page created by the Committee for the Investigation of Civil & Human Rights abuse.* Solidarity with the Prisoner Hunger Strike for Human Rights! [link]

* End Long Term Solitary Confinement [link], a Human-Rights abuse, according to international law!
* "Free 'em All" [link], a committee for the eduction of the public of Political, Conscious, and Innocent prisoners.
* "Occupy For Prisoners!" campaign, 2012-02 [link], a community-led series of actions in support of unjustly incarcerated prisoners and their families!

Human Rights abuse in Vallejo, "the City of God"

Read the "Declaration of Human Rights" [link]
All governments are beholden to a set of standards which, if broken, are called "Human Rights Violations". Often, we hear about violations of Human Rights in Iraq, Colombia, China and elsewhere... and nowhere near do we hear about similar violations happening against our own People. But it is happening systematically in Solano County, and in the City of Vallejo (the "city of God"). For more information, read .
Christian Dominionism is Fascism [link]
Human Rights abuse by agencies of the City of Vallejo is made manifold by the common discourtesy by many residents of Vallejo to not advocate for Human Rights alongside those who are abused, including (sad to say) many churches, faith and civic organizations.
During 2007, members of the "Apostolic Reformation" created a political action network, and illegally secured one of their own to the office of Vallejo's Mayor. Under his regime, human rights abuse has increased alongside poverty, and it is acknowledged by their supporters that such freedoms as "human rights" are "Satanic" except, perhaps, the freedom of push their point-of-view.
As seen by the conduct recently of Vallejo's Civilian Review Board, those who are of the dominant set will shut down any criticism of their regime. "Their" officers of law have all the power to obstruct any inquiry into history of violations of Human Rights against people not of the society in power. 
Until these goodly folk of "High Society" subordinate themselves to a higher purpose for truth and justice, nobody in any of Vallejo's higher offices will seek to uphold Human Rights.
And this problem is repeated in any tyranny across the world, so what is seen as good by the monopolized media when reporting about "people's movements" against tyranny abroad, is vilified here, at home by our neighbors, and by fascists elsewhere who care not to uphold Human Rights and the Constitution.
Many people still view the many incidents of violence by police against their neighbors to be an issue affecting only a certain "minority" or of people with a criminal history, as an issue of no consequence by the dominant set of the "good ol' boys" of the many races & cultures within the City of Vallejo.
Their works include...
* Theocracy taking hold in Vallejo: Christian Dominionism [link]
* Privatization, Terrorism and lack of Services for the Homeless.
- Human Rights abuse against the Homeless residents in Vallejo [link]
- Vallejo's services to the Homeless are cut-back [link]

- Dignity Village [link]
* Harassment for the Lumpenproletariat (the bottom-class)
* Vallejo Police's Street-Executions of law-abiding individuals, and the systematic cover-up:
- Guy Jarreau, jr.! (d.2010-12-11) [link]
- Justice 4 Mario Ramiro (d.2012-09-03) [link]
* Vallejo's "Holy War" against medicinal cannabis, during which Vallejo city agents illegally destroy voter registrations, threaten to kill registrants, harass practitioners, abuse elderly patients, and spend millions on unlawful "law" enforcement. [link] The Northbay Uprising media collective members joined in with nearly ALL publicly known medicinal cannabis clinics within Vallejo during 2011-12 to 2012-12, and our community journalists were allowed to act as observer of almost all of their operations (with the kind permission of their operators). The greatest danger from the medicinal cannabis "industry" are grow-houses within residential areas whose operators modify the electrical line into "live-wire" mode. The other result was that dispensaries set the official "street-price" by which so-called "street-gangs" bought cannabis products for re-sale (like with all prescription medicines), thereby taking business in cannabis away from street-dealers and brought business to reputable dispensaries. Dr.G. observed that most of the dispensaries within Vallejo acted within the spirit of California law as concerned medicinal cannabis, but also that the Vallejo Police never went after the medicinal cannabis dispensaries controlled by known so-called "street-gangs", and instead chose to target mainly those dispensaries controlled by operators who paid the operating fee to the City of Vallejo.


2012-09-17 "Our own Civil War"
by James D. Davis [link] (Note: All opinions expressed in the "Primal Scream" column are those of the writer and not necessarily those of the Vallejo Independent Bulletin):
---
This is the first town I’ve lived in where there is a civil war between a part of the community and the police. 
A part of the community thinks it is disrespected, mistreated, and murdered by the police. 
[ ... ]
The police, on the other hand, slough off accountability. 
The mother could not see the body. The chief told her it was out of his hands. 
Whether she can see the body is the business of the coroner, not the chief. 
And the coroner? 
He’s unavailable. 
The police have not explained why officers thought it necessary to fire more than thirty times at a young man with a replica gun. 
What was so scary for the police about this encounter?
The police have not taken the statement of the mother. 
She’s welcome to come down to the station any time. 
The police have not met with the mother. 
(It’s not likely she has any useful information, but it might make her feel better to talk about it, or shout, if she chooses).
I’ve encountered this lack of government responsibility throughout my years in Vallejo. 
I was told plainly by a council member that whether or not the chief busts marijuana dispensaries, wasting police resources, is none of the member’s business; it is out of the member’s hands. 
When I tried to investigate the officer-killing of another man (Guy Jarreau, Jr.), a few years ago, I was told the police and DA were doing an investigation. 
They weren’t sure when it would be done; I was not going to be given a copy of the report anyway. 
No one was going to be given a copy. 
It was police business.
I don’t blame the complaining community.  
They are overcome with emotion, resentment, and victimhood. 
They generally lack the sophistication and maturity to deal with the government. 
I blame the police department and an incompetent council and city manager. 
They should have been on top of this; that is why we have a government. 
They are supposed to be the adults in the room, but they are helpless.
This civil war has to stop. 
It feeds on itself. 
There are ways to stop it. 
This should be at the top of the agenda for the newly created Public Safety Committee. 
Our city-manager form of government is not working. 
The council has no jurisdiction over anyone. 
The mayor stays out of it (he “prays”). 
And the city manager? 
He leaves it up to the police. 
No one is in charge.

Glossary of terms and phrases

Here are the words used during the news broadcast which may be new to you.
(update: 2016-02-22) Definitions may be updated, and words added if requested.
Many of the words are not included in the usual dictionaries because, unlike words from academic disciplines such as science and language, it is the political jargon which is censored or distorted according to security regime dictates of the era. For example, look up the definition of the word "fascism" according to publicly available dictionaries published from decade to decade.

Glossary

Captive Nation
A nation encaged within a state dominated by another nation which itself is guided by a nationalist ideology against captive nations.
see: Nation


Nation
A population transmitting a cohesive self-identity with a culture, historical narrative and/or language.


New Afrikan Nation
A descriptive phrase used by millions in place of the phrase "Black" when describing the African-American as a captive nation within the USA.


State
An entity chartered with a transnational administration to administer a jurisdiction imposed on a region.


"so-called"
An adjective used relating to commonly-used phrases to note the limited descriptive nature of the phrase used. Examples:
- "So-called Christians", describing those who ignore the teachings of the Rabbi Jesus against capitalism. See: Prosperity Gospel; "Dominionists".
- "So-called Leftists", describing a phrase used to describe anybody a state-security regime views as anti-capitalist, including victims of capitalist death squads who are not "Leftist".
- "So-called Conservatives", describing those self-identifying as of a conservative nationalist political tendency yet follow the programming produced by media owned by monopolist trans-national capitalists and their fellow-travelers.

"In defence of America's informal settlements" by Martha Bridegam from "The Global Urbanist"

Street sleepers under a shopfront awning in Seattle. Photo: Steve Wilson/American Street Philosophers

Overlooking a corner of Dignity Village in Portland, Oregon. Photo: Steve Wilson/American Street Philosophers

Returning to their prototype cabin in Cesar Chavez Park, Safe Ground Sacramento found this person sleeping against the shelter, an ironic reminder of the need for transitional shelter in the Californian capital. Photo: Steve Watters/Safe Ground Sacramento

A prototype cabin placed in Cesar Chavez Park demonstrating Safe Ground Sacramento's proposed transitional housing solution for the city's homeless. Photo: Steve Watters/Safe Ground Sacramento


2012-11-20 "In defence of America's informal settlements: the campers of San Francisco"
by Martha Bridegam from "The Global Urbanist" [http://globalurbanist.com/2012/11/20/campers-of-san-francisco]:
[intro] We tend to believe that wealthy countries like the United States don't have informal settlements. Not only is this false, but it allows western governments to further marginalise an already misunderstood community. In the first of three articles on America's informal residents, Martha Bridegam meets two residents of one such harassed community in San Francisco.
Martha Bridegam is a lawyer and writer in San Francisco with a history of volunteer advocacy for informally housed city residents. She tweets @MarthaBridegam.
---
In August this year, city and state authorities in San Francisco raided a camp of makeshift homes under a freeway ramp and beside a commuter rail yard near the downtown area, destroying some residents' property and evicting them from the site.
The San Francisco Chronicle's Kevin Fagan described the camp this way [http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Big-SoMa-homeless-camp-cleaned-out-3822427.php]: 'a sprawling mini-city of tents, suitcases and makeshift Conestoga wagon-style trailers, and a 50-strong homeless population that had been there for years. It was the biggest street camp in San Francisco.' One resident has denied it was so large, but it was certainly substantial for a town that discourages group camps.
Residents were given 72 hours' notice to vacate but some were offered and accepted temporary city-rented hotel rooms. The San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness (SFCOH), an activist group largely staffed by precariously housed volunteers, reported the eviction proceeded relatively respectfully [http://www.cohsf.org/?p=1213] but later posted complaints about promised rooms that didn't 'pan out' [http://www.cohsf.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/CampRaid2.jpg].
Respectfully or not, campers who didn't leave were ordered out. Some of their property was taken to maintenance yards for later claiming; some was destroyed, in part by workers wearing paper suits and masks [http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/Long-haul-for-homeless-to-recover-goods-3927170.php]. After the raid the camp re-formed, but smaller and under heavier weekly harassment. From past experience as a volunteer advocate for informal campers (in part through SFCOH) I expect the size of the camp may be ratcheted down over time.
San Francisco is dotted with small clusters of makeshift homes, especially under elevated freeways and in the remaining warehouse districts. The housing may be tents, shelters built around shopping carts, or vehicles, especially older recreational vehicles ('RVs', American English for 'caravans'). Police and public works staff regularly disperse these unauthorised communities and destroy portions of their property as waste. The campers regroup. The cycle repeats.
I think our officials justify clearances of camps, and conventionally housed neighbours accept them, out of civic perfectionism. They presume informal housing can't really be necessary, not in the prosperous United States. Taking comfort from the existence of government and NGO services for homeless people, they assume these services can meet all homeless people's needs — hence that informal housing is a choice made by people who refuse to be helped.
They are proven wrong by the quiet ubiquity of makeshift housing in San Francisco and across the United States. When thousands of Americans make the same housing decision, and stick with it through cold nights and police harassment, they can't all be suffering defects of character or logic. For them, informal housing must be the best bad deal available.
There are indeed chances to stay indoors. San Francisco's aid program for indigent childless adults provides accommodation for up to 27 or sometimes 33 months, though many initial placements are in shelters rather than hotels [http://www.sfhsa.org/171.htm]. The program typically uses old-style downtown residential hotels built during San Francisco's post-1906 earthquake recovery. Solid shelter despite the risk of crime, noise and bugs. To keep a hotel or shelter placement, though, residents must meet paperwork requirements, follow rules on matters such as dogs, clutter and visitors, and, in most cases, pursue either paid employment or federal disability benefits.
People easily fail or bolt out of that system. Other forms of subsidised housing have long waiting lists. The city's nightly shelters, though disliked, turn people away regularly. That leaves informal housing.

Two residents of San Francisco -
The Chronicle spoke of conventionally housed people as 'residents' but of informally housed people as 'homeless'. That phrasing reflects an established asymmetry: campers may see conventionally housed people as neighbours, but property owners and neighbourhood associations tend to discuss campers as inarticulate elements of a category, 'the homeless'.
When I visited the camp site in October the man who welcomed me was a lifelong San Francisco native. He introduced himself as Sticks ('I shoot pool'). Now 56 years old, he said he had lived in the camp much of the past seven years. I asked him what people called it. He said, 'we call it home.'
Highway workers had fenced off only one small camping area. Tents and shelters had returned, though fewer than in August. (Later I met more residents: some seasoned campers, some recently homeless.)
Sticks found the August eviction less worrying than the new severity of weekly sweeps by the state highway agency, Caltrans. One such raid had destroyed his own property. 'They took all my clothes and everything and just put it in that big-ass truck that crushes everything.' He meant a garbage compactor truck, the kind that breaks and compresses property and takes it to the landfill, beyond recovery.
City and Caltrans policies require property of value that is not abandoned to be stored for later claiming — rules reinforced this September by the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in Lavan v. City of Los Angeles [http://www.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2012/09/05/11-56253.pdf]. But Sticks said, 'they don't give us no option. Whatever they take, whether it's personal or what, it's going to the garbage.'
For water and restrooms he said the camp relied on a public park nearby. It has an outdoor drinking fountain and an indoor restroom that closes overnight. Sticks said an unguarded tap nearer the camp had been shut off. Had residents asked for portable toilets or other amenities? He said, 'we've talked to them about a whole lot of things,' mainly through an ex-schoolteacher spokesman, but they claimed to be 'having too many complaints.'
It's a circular problem: there will always be complaints about crime and sanitation at an informal community if authorities approach these problems not as governance and civil engineering challenges common to every human settlement but as proof that the camp must be removed.
Sticks believed the harsher weekly sweeps were reactions to a series of maliciously set fires that followed the August eviction. Sticks and his friend Rashan, who joined us mid-conversation, said the fire-starter was not part of the camp: he was a resident's bitter ex-boyfriend.
Rather than discuss guarding the community from further attack, Bevan Dufty, lead official on homelessness in the office of San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee, responded to the worst of the fires by telling the Chronicle, 'an incident like this can make people more accepting of services, and it also sets off bells that this is not a safe place to live.' [http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/SF-homeless-camp-sneaks-back-3878744.php]

Rationalising the eviction -
Public rhetoric surrounding the eviction reflected support from a liberal-conservative consensus. Expressions of solidarity on the left and objections from the Coalition on Homelessness represented minority views.
Bevan Dufty is a popular liberal figure, formerly an elected member of the Board of Supervisors (similar to local council). Speaking to the Chronicle before the eviction, he portrayed the freeway camp as dangerous to its occupants and said city employees were reaching out to provide appropriate services and housing instead. He told the paper [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/End-of-the-line-for-Caltrain-encampment-3819615.php], 'we're going to say, "this change is coming and you need to think about what you want to do and can we help you figure that out." The worst that could happen would be for 50 people to be kicked out onto the streets.'
A representative of the less liberal California Highway Patrol interviewed by a local television station spoke more bluntly [http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news/local/san_francisco&id=8789595]: 'mainly, it's to remove garbage, excrement, rats, that kind of thing.' A Caltrans spokesman told the Chronicle of plans to bar returners with a stronger fence. His comments were consistent with other Caltrans statements that portray 'encampments' as a problem of trash removal. (Caltrain spokeswoman Jayme Ackemann said the commuter rail system does not own or police the freeway camp area but does remove campers from its own land, offering services when it does.)
Right-wing anti-homeless messages bloomed in the Chronicle's online comments. One commenter used the rhetoric of addiction recovery, which holds the addict responsible for self-improvement [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/articleComments/Big-SF-homeless-camp-cleaned-out-3822427.php?plckFindCommentKey=CommentKey:6188dcc8-7c65-4bbd-bf2e-bf28903d77e9]: 'Enabling the homeless lifestyle is not compassion. When you make it comfortable for people to be homeless, they will stay homeless. The cops need to be tearing out these homeless encampments as soon as they crop up. The only money we should be spending toward the homeless issue are [sic] in drug rehabilitation and psychological services. That way the homeless have two options: Get treatment or move.'

Learning from the developing world -
Although unauthorised settlements have legitimacy problems everywhere, it's inspiring to consider that in some parts of the developing world, informally housed people count as 'residents'.
Rashan responded warmly when I suggested the freeway camp might elsewhere be understood and respected as a town. He mentioned people he had seen invoking squatters' rights during his childhood in Jamaica. 'They would just plant a little food and put up a little shanty or whatever they could use — bamboo or wood or whatever they find … not just thrown together, I mean, well-knit, you know, I mean, well done … some people just have to live like that, you know? And a lot of them had kids and stuff and their children were always the brightest in school, just, I mean, incredible, you know?'
In San Francisco I do think formally and informally housed people may yet learn to negotiate with each other as neighbours — not beloved neighbours, just neighbours who admit to sharing the same plane of existence.
As I'll discuss next, hard times in the United States are drawing attention to informal housing. Some punitive raids and legislation have followed, but there's also a current of sympathy, especially for newly homeless people living in their cars. With that, I think, comes hope for improvement.


2012-12-04 "The criminalisation of homelessness and informal settlements in US cities" by Martha Bridegam [http://globalurbanist.com/2012/12/04/criminalisation-of-homelessness]:
 [intro] Why do "squatters" in houseboats become residents, but campers in tents and caravans remain "homeless" and unwanted? In her second of three essays on America’s informal residents, Martha Bridegam describes a recent increase in criminalising legislation and policing against homeless and informally housed Americans but asks, is this a short-term backlash against changes in the nature of US housing?
---
The United States has seen a recent striking increase in local laws and clearance campaigns against visibly "homeless" people — a category that, to Americans, includes residents of makeshift housing such as those I introduced here last month [http://globalurbanist.com/2012/11/20/campers-of-san-francisco.aspx]. Infomal shelters were not the sole targets of these campaigns but group camps and some organised "tent city" communities did suffer raids and removals.
Headlines about backlash measures suggested that poor people had become more visible as users of public space. On the other hand, with mainstream news reports full of no-fault misfortunes, such as evictions of foreclosed borrowers' tenants, it seemed Americans might be attaching less moral blame to the loss of housing. There were hints of selective sympathy, especially for recently displaced people, those living in vehicles, and residents of orderly "tent cities".

Campaigns against visible poverty -
As the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (NLCHP) reported in 2010, uses of public space by homeless people have been contested for decades through criminalising legislation and civil rights litigation. Civil rights precedents on the use of public space require that arrests be made only for discrete prohibited acts, not for characteristics such as lack of housing that were formerly defined as "vagrancy". To get around this, modern anti-homeless laws criminalise acts such as sleeping, sitting, trespassing (including sleeping in doorways), begging, drinking alcohol, erecting shelters, or sharing food.
But mid-2012 produced a special hail of punitive local ordinances and eviction sweeps against people described as "homeless". In May the city of Denver passed an ordinance against camping on public or private property. Camping bans are common nationwide, but Denver's ban was especially strictly worded and represented a sharp break from the city's prior level of tolerance. It banned "eating, sleeping, or the storage of personal possessions" in conjunction with any "shelter" consisting of tents, bedding, or "any form of cover or protection from the elements other than clothing." Although arrests had not been made under the law as of October, just its threat was said to be clearing usual camping areas, with homeless people being "driven underground" [http://washingtonparkprofile.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2261&Itemid=1].
In June USA Today reported on a national trend of punitive ordinances [http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2012-06-10/cities-crack-down-on-homeless/55479912/1]: the Denver law, talk of public space restrictions in upscale Ashland, Oregon, and a Philadelphia ban on food sharing programmes in parks — a ban defended in let-them-eat-cake style by Philadelphia mayoral spokesman Mark McDonald: "We think it's … much more dignified … to be in an indoor sit-down restaurant." From the Tampa Bay Times [http://www.tampabay.com/news/humaninterest/as-clearwater-passes-laws-targeting-the-homeless-advocates-say-funding-is/1244145]: laws were passed against sitting or lying on sidewalks and rights of way in parts of Clearwater, Florida.
San Francisco's Board of Supervisors passed a law prohibiting the parking of large vehicles on specified streets, ironically including some where inhabited RVs (caravans) have traditionally been herded by police. (A friend has described her first-hand experience [http://oceanbeachbulletin.com/2012/09/25/rv-parking-plan-unfairly-targets-people-living-in-vehicles-opinion/].) Nearby Berkeley came close to passing a ballot measure in imitation of San Francisco's largely unenforced 2010 ordinance against sitting or lying on the sidewalk [http://sfpublicpress.org/news/2012-07/most-haight-merchants-say-nothing-changed-on-street-after-sit-lie-prohibition], but the proposal was narrowly defeated in the left-tending November 2012 election.
California's state highway agency, Caltrans, demolished camps in the towns of Vallejo [http://www.timesheraldonline.com/news/ci_20858527/caltrains-razes-vallejo-homeless-camp] and Los Gatos [http://losgatos.patch.com/articles/caltrans-serves-notice-to-vacate-homeless-camp-at-old-town-ab0d3863].
In Sacramento residents have been evicted from generations-established campsites along the American River [http://www.sacbee.com/2011/11/27/4080610/what-then-must-we-do.html], in one case displacing approximately 150 people [http://www.sacbee.com/2011/12/29/4150415/sacramento-homeless-evicted-from.html].
A "cleanup" campaign on Los Angeles' notorious Skid Row included both much-needed waste disposal as well as destruction of campsites, sometimes including arrests [http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jul/09/local/la-me-skid-row-sweep-20120710] [http://www.latimes.com/news/la-ed-skidrow09oct09,0,4179225.story].
But the September court ruling Lavan v City of Los Angeles, which arose from property destruction in prior Skid Row raids, presented a major advance by protecting campers' rights to possess "unabandoned" property left on the sidewalk, though the city still can and does dismantle campsites [http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/opinion/sunday/the-constitution-on-skid-row.html]. And this October, activist attorney Mark Merin won payments for 1,143 past residents of Sacramento encampments who lost property in evictions dating back to 2005 [http://www.sacbee.com/2012/10/03/4876486/homeless-receive-checks-in-sacramento.html#storylink].

Compassionate demolition?
At the national level, responses to criminalisation vary substantially and, surprisingly, by agency. At the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), spokesman Brian Sullivan chose words carefully about local measures directed at homeless people. He said he didn't know if HUD had a policy on "sanctioning" or on "depopulating camps", but "the law enforcement approach doesn't answer the fundamental question about how are you going to house homeless people".
The Department of Justice (DOJ) contributed to a recent report on alternatives to criminalisation but has also funded a policing think tank, the Center for Problem-Oriented Policing [http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/Default.asp?Item=2559], that provides an intelligent but prejudice-skewed guide to removing "the problem of homeless encampments". It presumes that camps pose crime and safety hazards by and to "transients" and must be removed [http://www.popcenter.org/problems/homeless_encampments/].
Given that the US Interagency Council on Homelessness (USICH) participated in the report on avoiding criminalisation, it was surprising to see the mayor of Fresno, California quoting approving comments from USICH director Barbara Poppe in a press release about a November 2011 camp removal [http://www.fresno.gov/News/PressReleases/2011/Cleanup.htm].
The statement attributed to Poppe apparently responded to local officials' assurances that many displaced people had been or would be housed. It reads: "I applaud the City and its partners for focusing on the housing-first approach to addressing this issue and getting the public, private and nonprofit sectors aligned to services and housing to the men and women living in the encampments … The City and its partners have shown true leadership in energizing the community to respond in a way that is compassionate to individual needs and also makes sense for the greater community."
I heard about Poppe's comments from Paul Boden of the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP), who headed the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness when I volunteered there as a lawwyer. He told me USICH confirmed the quote and provided further material from Poppe saying in part: "The costs associated with trying to ensure the safety, health, and well-being of people in encampments would be more strategically spent on housing."
At that, Boden's customary fluent profanity deserted him: he emailed a photo showing men in paper suits kicking down makeshift plywood homes (see photo gallery). He wrote: "Has she even looked at the HUD budget lately?"
That is, Poppe's comment presumed it is possible to get all campers into conventional housing — except it isn't. As Boden and WRAP point out persistently [http://wraphome.org/work/housing-campaign], HUD spending on housing construction and subsidies has been steadily far below the level of need since the cuts of the 1980s [http://nlihc.org/sites/default/files/changingpriorities.pdf].
The man who took the demolition photo, homeless-rights campaigner Mike Rhodes, writes that Fresno authorities and NGOs have created some housing meant for homeless people, but nowhere near enough. During late 2011 his activist Community Alliance Newspaper chronicled an especially heavy series of multi-site demolitions in which bulldozers destroyed residents' structures and property [http://fresnoalliance.com/wordpress/?p=3892]. He wrote to me about Fresno authorities: "They see providing any public services to the homeless in these encampments as helping them to live in these degrading conditions, therefore they refuse to help."

Why the sudden visibility?
"Tent cities" became discussed as a rising US trend as long as three years ago [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/26/us/26tents.html]. The National Coalition for the Homeless reported extensively on West Coast examples in 2010, calling them "America's de facto waiting room for affordable and accessible housing" [http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/tent_cities_pr.html]. Meanwhile its Twitter feed (a source for several items reported here) has been monitoring the nationwide backlash — including for example a Talent, Oregon, report about a sudden "homeless problem" [http://www.mailtribune.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20120627/NEWS/206270332].
Homelessness isn't new since the global financial crisis. It had a long remission in the US from the Great Depression of the 1930s through the 1970s but substantially reappeared in the 1980s with the Reagan Administration's cuts in social support programmes. It became institutionalised a quarter-century ago: July 22, 2012 marked the 25th anniversary of the federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, the first federal law to dedicate major spending to homelessness, though it spends less than was cut from welfare and housing programmes [http://homelessnesslaw.org/2012/07/the-legacy-of-mckinney-vento/].
City populations are now presumed to include a stratum of unhoused and underhoused people, described as "homeless", circulating among weekly-rental hotels, shelters, subsidised housing programmes and campsites. Homelessness is understood as a condition of life, even a quasi-ethnic social status or, in the case of "chronic homelessness", a housing status elided with medical diagnosis.
What is new is that homelessness has overflowed into public view from a system of services that, while they didn't end homelessness, managed for a generation to partially contain and routinise it.

Waiting rooms or living rooms?
It is beginning to seem optimistic to view informal communities as "waiting rooms". Moves toward legalisation of makeshift housing are already appearing as cities admit to the need. Unfortunately, some combine substandard conditions with the paternalism of traditional US shelters.
Rhodes is a long-term critic of one such complex in Fresno, Village of Hope, run by an NGO called Poverello House [http://www.poverellohouse.org/village.html]. It provides sleeping space in tool sheds without utilities. His 2004 photos of closely spaced sheds behind a wire-topped fence induce a slight shudder [http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2004/11/22/17067361.php]. Poverello House's website states the village is self-governing but Rhodes has written that homeless people tend to dislike the strict rules, which include a requirement to leave the site in daytime [http://www.thestreetspirit.org/Sept2006/raids.htm].
Similarly, town governments have experimented with legalised parking "programmes" for RVs. One in San Luis Obispo is limited to "only those people who commit to case management and remain drug-free and alcohol-free." In nearby Arroyo Grande the police reviewed applications for spaces in a small parking area. The police chief of Nevada City, California, began to issue permits to sleep in public [http://sacramento.cbslocal.com/2012/11/16/police-chief-uses-unique-method-to-control-homeless-population/].
A few camps of the autonomous type are hanging on, offering valuable chances to prove that people without money have no special need to be told how to live. After many past evictions, the large self-governing Nickelsville community in Seattle is being allowed to remain at a site on appropriately named Marginal Way [http://www.nickelsville.org/history-of-nickelsville]. However the organisation still seeks legitimacy. A resident said the community is allowed to contract for portable toilet and garbage pickup service but the city will not help with those costs nor provide utilities — yet city service programmes sometimes refer people there to stay. Last year the Seattle Post-Intelligencer found 130 residents including children and pregnant women [http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Sign-of-grim-times-Kids-in-Nickelsville-2255880.php].
In Sacramento, the uniquely sophisticated and reportedly democratic Safe Ground initiative seeks refuges for campers on both public and private land [http://www.safegroundsac.org/]. It has drawn national and international human rights attention [http://lodginginpublic.blogspot.com/2012/05/audaciously-claiming-watersanitation-as.html]. Significantly, a news report on City Council skepticism toward Safe Ground led with the question: "Should a group of homeless people be allowed to camp together in Sacramento without outside monitoring?" [http://www.sacramentopress.com/headline/49807/City_Council_weighs_in_on_safe_ground] Currently lacking a main campsite, the organisation continues to search.
Better, but more elusive, is the possibility that unauthorised communities could become regularised as neighbourhoods, with residents accepted simply as townspeople. A heartening model is available in San Francisco: the houseboats along Mission Creek, a frequently polluted but picturesque channel in the same urban renewal area as the freeway camp I've described previously. Formed in the 1960s, the houseboat group has outgrown a past semi-squatter status that at one point saw an abrupt threat of 30-day eviction notices [http://www.potreroview.net/Archives/PV_Dec_2007.pdf]. The community has become more conventional in legality and lifestyle over time [http://www.sfgate.com/entertainment/article/Still-Afloat-Mission-Creek-s-houseboat-3240003.php]. It's now viewed as a chic bohemian enclave with no questions asked about residents' trustworthiness, though the group had to campaign fiercely for a while to stay put amid development [http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Living_Memories,_1987-2010].
Unfortunately, the houseboaters are distinct from poorer residents of RVs who parked around that shore until gentrification drove them out. A recent article on the colony underscored the class difference between houseboat residents and RV campers by saying of the houseboaters, "until recently, they were the only people out there." [http://sf.curbed.com/archives/2009/01/26/curbed_inside_the_floating_homes_of_mission_creek.php]
As I'll discuss further in the next article, it remains to be seen whether informal community legalisations can be a means for residents to escape the irregular, second-class status of "homelessness" or whether such places risk becoming institutional holding areas where people wait for a chance at conventional affordable housing.


2012-12-18 "Accepting each other as neighbours: the settlements demonstrating the dignity of informal US housing" by Martha Bridegam [http://globalurbanist.com/2012/12/18/the-dignity-of-informal-housing]:
[intro] In her third piece on homelessness and informal settlements in the US, Martha Bridegam describes Dignity Village in Portland, Oregon, and other settlements across the country which are setting out to prove that informal housing can be just as peaceful, lawful and neighbourly as any other residential area.
---
In this third article on American informal housing, I'm glad to turn from accounts of a group camp's repeated decimation in San Francisco and of other criminalisations of homelessness to more hopeful talk about progress eroding the all-or-nothing view of housed status that I earlier called "civic perfectionism".
The visibility of informal housing in the US is a new factor that may reduce social exclusion of people defined as "homeless". An archipelago of encampments has formed — "movement" is too definite a word — where residents are inching toward acceptance with conventionally housed neighbours.
Such acceptance is needed because Americans will not all be in formal housing any time soon. Those without it need recognition in the meantime as community members with their own goals and rights.

Homeless Safer -
Arguably informal communities reduce housing-based social exclusion by creating a visible middle layer of housing between reductive stereotypes of "housed" and "homeless". The new prominence of "tent cities", groups of cabins sharing washhouses or kitchens, or groups of RVs (caravans) parked together, can encourage a view of housing quality as a continuum from worse to better. The continuum approach keeps the focus on improving people's real circumstances — what Jane Jacobs called "unslumming". That's healthier than the too-common official practice of destroying makeshift housing on the principle that it's not good enough to be real housing.
I've drawn some of these thoughts from a post about Giorgio Agamben and American homeownership by Aaron Steinpilz [http://www.generationbubble.com/2009/11/03/life-or-something-like-it-homeownership-and-giorgio-agambens-state-of-exception/] and much more from political scientist Leonard Feldman's 2004 book Citizens Without Shelter: Homelessness, Democracy, and Political Exclusion.
Feldman writes that Americans have been taught, in ways that feel apolitical but aren't, to see "the homeless" as victims or criminals, but not as political actors nor as townspeople. Drawing on Hannah Arendt, Agamben and others, he suggests Americans over-idealise the "proper home" and view the house-dweller as the archetypal solid citizen. He argues that such nostalgic respect has a harmful side: it tends to make conventional housing a prerequisite for acceptance as a fully fledged person with rights, therefore defining "the homeless" as incomplete people without rights. Campaigns for acceptance of informal housing are a way for people defined as homeless to claim the rights and social significance of "complete" people.

Legitimacy in tent cities -
Tent cities and other encampments have made progress winning legitimacy, perhaps because the public now believes residents who say they have nowhere else to go. By living openly and unremarkably in informal housing, and appearing as civic participants in their cities, residents prove that "homeless" people are real Americans, not figures waiting to resume life as Americans if or when they return to conventional housing.
Mitch Grubic, elected CEO at the uniquely self-managed Dignity Village camp in Portland, Oregon, knows that potential [http://www.tentcityurbanism.com/2012/10/from-camp-to-village.html]. Having lived in his car, he understands the hassling and contempt. "That attitude of 'omigosh, a homeless person coming into my neighbourhood, omigosh' — I don't know what it's going to take for that attitude to change." He said the subject comes up constantly in his community of 50 cabin-dwellers, which has contracted to use space on the edge of a city recycling yard. He said "we have game plans" to change public perceptions: to say "we are empowered people, we're not what you think we are … That's going to come from the camps. The shift in paradigm is going to be coming from camps like us."
Photojournalist Steve Wilson, who for five years has been documenting Dignity Village [http://americanstreetphilosophers.org/], calls some villagers "upper-class homeless". He defines them as "those complete enough within themselves to succeed in America's decades of 'more than my share is my share' but have opted out." He wrote: ''Upper-class homeless' are experimenting with minimalism: villages responsibly sharing, environmentally aware and self-governing by choice, not economic necessity."
Grubic says many people in Dignity Village are around his own age of 50 and fed up with a society that rejects older workers and demands too much striving to reach a too-high standard of living. Their minimalism seems a virtue created by necessity.
Working tent cities aren't utopias. The strongest ones enforce membership standards and conduct rules. Grubic imposes sanctions at Dignity Village, appealable to a resident council, ranging from one-day expulsions to permanent banishment. During our phone conversation he broke off repeatedly to judge a dispute: "Larry, you go back to the commons, Jerry, sit down, OK? … Don't fight with him, OK? I appreciate it … Larry, let me just deal with it, OK?" He was promising to impose a 24-hour expulsion on a resident. "I'm gonna get him out of the camp. But you cool off too, OK? How about that?"
So nobody's claiming to resolve the eternal tension of community versus individual rights. But at least tent city communities are starting to claim the equal protection of the laws: when police are called to Dignity Village, it's not to arrest the group for camping, but to address a crime on behalf of the group.
Grubic spoke warmly of the possibility that US encampments might form a national organisation. It's natural: they are starting to seem numerous and they're starting to find each other. In this regard Grubic pointed out the work of Andrew Heben, a researcher and activist now working on the Opportunity Village project in Eugene, Oregon [http://www.gazettetimes.com/news/state-and-regional/eugene-council-picks-homeless-village-site/article_4a97bfa3-b9ea-560b-a01d-df8d56e00559.html]. Heben maintains an impressively crowded if not comprehensive wiki map of U.S. tent cities online [http://www.tentcityurbanism.com/p/tent-city-map_05.html]. His online PDF book and web site, both titled Tent City Urbanism, build on the 2010 west coast tent cities report by the National Coalition for the Homeless to describe a nationally extending world of voluntary encampments and makeshift homes [http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/tent_cities_pr.html].

Plumbing as acceptance -
To a surprising extent, encampments' levels of acceptance are indicated by the infrastructure allowed to them. Even clean water is something not always offered to campers, since to offer water is to recognise that campers have a right to exist. Sanitation arrangements seem to represent the next step upward, then formal permission to remain on sites. With full utility hook-ups, an encampment is on its way to becoming a neighbourhood.
San Francisco provides many services to individual homeless people but does not directly serve informal housing areas except through antagonistic "clean-ups". The park restroom pictured in my first article, a block from the freeway camp mentioned there, is comparatively one of the most convenient and welcoming to campers. It's sad to remember that in 1998 the Vehicularly Housed Residents' Association, assisted by SFCOH, nearly created an authorised parking area for RVs and other inhabited vehicles. It would have had a washhouse and formal self-governance; there were architectural drawings. Then apparent support evaporated at City Hall; the plan collapsed. (A local news feature conveyed the possibilities though it understated police harassment and offended several interviewees [http://www.sfweekly.com/1998-12-16/news/no-place-like-curb/].)
This year, in passing a parking ordinance directed against RV dwellers, some members of San Francisco's Board of Supervisors (similar to local council) called for an authorised RV parking or storage area. However, the site suggested was remote Treasure Island; the purpose sounded like containment, not empowerment. Supervisor Carmen Chu told the San Francisco Chronicle [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/nevius/article/S-F-cracks-down-on-camping-in-RVs-3910865.php], "Traditionally, vehicularly housed individuals have been very difficult to get into city services … We are hoping that this will get these people to them."
In Sacramento, members of the Safe Ground Sacramento tent camp in 2011 secured a fact-finding visit from the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the violation of their human right to safe drinking water and sanitation. (I've discussed this on my own blog [http://lodginginpublic.blogspot.com/2012/05/audaciously-claiming-watersanitation-as.html].) However, Steve Watters, director of the Safe Ground Sacramento NGO, said his group has given up assisting unauthorised tent camps because local elected officials would not stop the police from repeatedly evicting campers. Instead, the group is serving immediate needs with indoor shelter arrangements. Later members hope to create an authorised "transitional housing" site with solar-powered cabins surrounding a community centre with utilities. Residents would stay one year. Ideally they would move up in life, but in case not, the group was struggling with "what do you do at the end of the year?"
Mike Rhodes, the embattled Fresno, California advocate I mentioned in previous articles, has managed to contract for portable toilets at camp sites without city objections. For six months he contracted for a Dumpster (skip) to remove residents' trash regularly from one large camp. He says Fresno is unique in that camps tend to remain for six months to two years, sometimes with solid wooden structures, between city demolition campaigns. Rhodes is involved now, for at least the second time, in a federal lawsuit over such demolitions.
In Seattle, in addition to Nickelsville (also mentioned previously), the SHARE/WHEEL local NGO supports two tentatively authorised tent camps [http://www.sharewheel.org/]. Since my own past advocacy experience in San Francisco has involved frustrating efforts to protect formerly tolerated RV campers against gentrification, I'm glad to see academic researcher Graham Pruss winning respect and empathy for vehicular residents in Seattle [http://www.artsci.washington.edu/newsletter/Dec12/Pruss.asp], recently as lead author of an advisory report to the Seattle city government that explains hardships of vehicle camping from the inside and calls for "safe parking" arrangements in the city [http://clerk.seattle.gov/~public/meetingrecords/2012/hhshc20120926_8a.pdf].
Dignity Village is one of several sites with groups of cabins. Residents have shared water taps, portable toilets, propane heat in cabins, hot water at central showers with authorised drain hook-ups, a computer room, electric coffeepots, and a microwave oven. Grubic regrets, however, that permits haven't come through for a real kitchen: "We get low marks on cooking." And he hopes for a better location: the current site gets leaf mould smells from the city composting facility and noise from the nearby airport.
Of course there's always room to improve, to "unslum". But it's great to see these sites steadily improving conditions on low budgets without waiting for someone to raise the absurdly high costs of conventional subsidised "affordable housing".
I have one more storehouse of knowledge to recommend on informal housing. Significantly, it's the guide offered by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to counting "unsheltered" people in HUD's controversial "point-in-time" enumerations of homelessness [http://www.hudhre.info/2013PIT/]. The document's authors are required by laws and rules to define nearly everyone in informal housing as "unsheltered," yet they provide knowledgeable introductions to cases that ought to be viewed as exceptional, some third thing other than "unsheltered" or conventionally housed: "snowbird" RV-dwelling retirees; the "off-the-grid" community in California known as "The Slabs" [http://www.guernicamag.com/daily/rose-lichter-marck-circling-the-sea/]; the "colonias" near the Mexican border, where houses are formally owned or rented but lack proper utilities; other substandard rural housing [http://www.ruralhome.org/information-and-publications/reports-and-manuals/587-taking-stock-2010]; trailers in rural areas whose residents count as "housed" or "unsheltered" depending largely on where they are parked with what level of permission.
It begins to seem that official knowledge unofficially includes significant awareness of informal housing; officials simply need to bring that knowledge out in the open and admit that it concerns housing.

Other encouragements -
Informal housing could benefit from a trend begun when the state of Rhode Island passed a Homeless Bill of Rights protecting, among much else, the right to exist and possess property and privacy rights in public space [http://www.pewstates.org/projects/stateline/headlines/activists-aim-to-bolster-rhode-islands-homeless-bill-of-rights-85899429426]. WRAP is now campaigning for a recently introduced California legislative bill that would grant rights similar to the Rhode Island measure [http://www.sfgate.com/default/article/California-needs-rights-for-homeless-4091545.php] [http://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=201320140AB5].
Another hopeful development is that Occupy encampments introduced middle-class demonstrators to homelessness in fall 2011 and 2012. As Barbara Ehrenreich explained [http://www.alternet.org/story/152837/how_homelessness_became_an_occupy_wall_street_issue/], voluntary and involuntary campers together faced the hounding and property destruction that police use against the poor in ways viewed as apolitical. News reports suggested Occupy campers who had nowhere else to live were not real protesters — illustrating Feldman's theory that homeless people are viewed as outside politics [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/SF-Occupy-camp-now-a-homeless-haven-3884645.php]. Maybe fellow demonstrators learned otherwise.
There's always danger that tent cities or parking areas could become places of enclosure rather than welcome. But it seems possible that democratic governance can emerge or persist in voluntary encampments.
The "homelessness" state of exception is an internal exile more populous than many US states. For most, the way out of this virtual prison isn't past formal gatekeepers into formal housing, but by blurring the lines drawn around people called "homeless" — and that requires people inside and outside the lines to contest their absurdity. People are starting to do that. And in the process, more Americans may be recognising each other as neighbours.

Fascism at UC Davis

"UC Davis Surveillance Scandal" [http://bicyclebarricade.wordpress.com/2011/03/30/uc-davis-surveillance-scandal/]

"Internal UC Davis emails Reveal Officials' Surveillance and Infiltration Tactics During Campus Tuition Increase Protests" [http://www.aclusac.org/node/346]
 
"UC Davis Docs Reveal Officials' Surveillance and Infiltration Tactics During Campus Fee Increase Protests in 2010 "
* (Part 1 of 3) [http://www.scribd.com/doc/53582551/Part-1-of-3-UC-Davis-Docs-Reveal-Officials-Surveillance-and-Infiltration-Tactics-During-Campus-Fee-Increase-Protests]
* (part 2 of 3) [http://www.scribd.com/doc/53581856/part-2-of-3-UC-Davis-Docs-Reveal-Officials-Surveillance-and-Infiltration-Tactics-During-Campus-Fee-Increase-Protests]
* (part 3 of 3) [http://www.scribd.com/doc/53579213/part-3-of-3-UC-Davis-Docs-Reveal-Officials-Surveillance-and-Infiltration-Tactics-During-Campus-Fee-Increase-Protests-in-2010]
 
“2011-11-18 UC DAVIS PEPPER SPRAY INCIDENT” REYNOSO TASK FORCE REPORT
[http://reynosoreport.ucdavis.edu/reynoso-report.pdf]

"UCD Police lie to create case against student they injured in UC Davis pepper spray incident?" [http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/08/24/18720187.php]

"Report On UC Davis Pepper Spray Incident Finds Police Conduct ‘Objectively Unreasonable’"[http://thinkprogress.org/education/2012/04/11/462900/uc-davis-report-pepper-spray]
 
"Students Sue UC Davis for Constitutional Violations Over Pepper-Spraying Incident"[https://www.aclunc.org/news/press_releases/students_sue_uc_davis_for_constitutional_violations_over_pepper-spraying_incident.shtml]

[https://www.wepay.com/donations/free-tomas]:
After being arrested and injured during the university's brutal enforcement of tuition increases using pepper spray, in addition to charging Tomás with 21 misdemeanors as part of the Davis Dozen, the University is trying to take yet more from our dedicated comrade. They have requested and have been awarded more than $5000 restitution for a vandalism charge that should never have been brought. In addition, Tomás will be required to pay court fees for the privilege of being prosecuted.


Looking for local artists to support Tomas, one of the Davis dozen. If you have any work you can donate to a silent auction please do so!
Tomás is a student in the Art department at UC Davis. On November 18th, he was arrested along with nine other student protestors in what is now known as the infamous “pepper spray incident” on our campus. The police zip tied Tomás' wrists causing permanent radial nerve damage.
As a painter and a printmaker, this news should have been devastating to Tomás. Instead, he continues to humbly make artwork illustrating the myriad of voices and movements incorporated into his practice as an artist.
During finals week in March, UCD PD arrested Tomás, confiscating his art supplies, cell phone, and computer. He was thrown in jail and prevented him from contacting his family, friends, or a lawyer. It was only after he had been missing for several days that his friends were able to locate him and bail him out. Tomás was charged with multiple counts of felony vandalism.
With little evidence, the university administration and the UCD PD pursued him for virtually all graffiti found around the campus, especially graffiti that was explicitly political in content. His involvement in a lawsuit against the same police department and administration regarding the events of November 18th makes these charges highly suspect.
Tomás is being politically targeted for his involvement in student activism in the latest tactic of legal repression by the university. The brutality of the police was surpassed only by the injustice of the court system. Tomás was forced to accept a plea bargain in order to stop the damage the legal process was having on his life. This experience drove him deeply into debt, as all available time was devoted to his legal defense.
Now the university is demanding $6,000 in restitution money. We hope to send a clear message to the university that political repression will not be tolerated. We stand with Tomás and all of those who are active in creating a culture of resistance.
HOW YOU CAN HELP:
1) Donate and spread the word. We hope to raise the money ourselves, with the help of our friends, and the support of our communities. Every bit helps! https://www.wepay.com/donations/free-tomas
2) Friends of Tomás are organizing a silent art auction. If you have artwork or other items you wish to donate, please contact Carla:inodelle@gmail.com
3) If you have any other creative strategies, please get in touch! oucd-antirepression-crew-media@googlegroups.com
Free Tomás!