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Indybay Feature

War on the Poor

by Tim Rumford (guitarandpen [at] hotmail.com)
Humanity for Homeless concerned about recent media propaganda.
Update Feb 14th

Feb 14th - Update:

Regrettably, we missed our second week in the last 42 weeks of feeding Monday due to illness. We will be back in full force next Monday as usual.

Humanity for Homeless is very concerned about the recent attacks on poor and homeless peoples rights in Santa Cruz as well as the entire country. Few people could have missed the recent news of dumping a man onto LA's Skid Row who was paraplegic, clutching his belongings in his teeth, dragging his malfunctioning colostomy. This is not the first incident or the first hospital in that area to be busted for such horrible offenses. What is their punishment, an apology so far. In Santa Cruz we have terminally ill homeless with no place to go, some so ill, they are not allowed in a shelter, but also not taken to the hospital. What should we call this, passive dumping? Its all the same. What happened to treating all humans equally. Remember equal rights for all?

In the elitist class its fine to DE-unionize your company and give yourself a 3 million dollar raise while firing your workers and hiring low wage workers. This causes poverty. In the poor class you can go to jail for sleeping in your vehicle or sleeping at night, even when no shelter space is available.

The poor are in our face, we can no longer over look them and this makes people uncomfortable - as it should. The reaction for most is fear. What we should be fear is the class war being waged, remember anybody can end up homeless. If we take the rights away from one class we take them from all.

The more the rich become richer and the poor become poorer the more laws we will see aimed directly at the homeless, such as the Sleeping Ban which bans Sleeping at night. This is paramount to having "Colored only" bathrooms. Of course, in Santa Cruz we have few bathrooms at all.

The local front page articles have titles such as "Homeless man attacks officer." When was the last article you read that said "Rich home owner rapes teen"?

Many cities are making the act of feeding another human, a poor or homeless human, illegal, Orlando and Las Vegas to name a few.

Eventually as the poor become poorer and the middle class end up to be the lower class, people will riot out of shear necessity and lack of other options. This happened in the 30's. It brought us Social Security.

The rights of the poor should be protected not removed. If not, we will end up in the direction we have been going for some time. A country of rich and poor with no middle class , lacking the rights we allowed to be taken out of fear.
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by Robert Norse
Coming up tonight (February 15th) on Free Radio Santa Cruz:

Interviews from the last two days on the massive police crackdown downtown.

Contribute your own account and eyewitness perspective.

Call in 6-8 PM FRSC at 101.1 FM (http://www.freakradio.org) at 831-427-3772 or 831-469-3119.

What Can Be Done?
Tent City? Copwatch? Protest? Flight? You tell us!

Raise and Answer Questions

Is the Downtown Association or Downtown Neighbors behind this?
What meetings took place that generated this "surge" of enforcement between City Councilmembers, police chiefs, staff, and private parties?
Where are the crime stats that justify this level of abuse?
What is being accomplished by this massive show of force and fear?

Share your thoughts; share your strengths.


The show will be archived at http://www.huffsantacruz.org.
by Tim Rumford
Maybe its time we start are own Poor Peoples Union of some sort. This would take some work and we would need a clear and decisive mission. Possibly it could include some of the campers help out in cleaning up areas that have had some damage due to camping, to teach responsible camping, to show the community that the word homeless means nothing, except that its a human being without a home. Not every drug dealer down town is homeless, most are not. Not every long haired person is homeless. Not every drunk is homeless, most come from the bars.

We do something similar to what was done in Olympia, although I think the idea of a Poor Peoples Union could be taken further then it has been there so far, although it was affective and is still in its infancy. This includes a camp or place for people to sleep and congregate. It must be run by the people themselves, if not it becomes an institution which is something many homeless fear, being institutionalized.
We have faith that a large majority of the Homeless can and do act responsibly, and given a chance, can run a non violent clean area to sleep without the need of police.
Possibly part of the union COULD be to start a new work force for those who want and are able to work. People could hire people out of the union and I think if done right, they would. This is just an idea after hearing thoughts of other homeless and from listening to what the Olympia Poor Peoples Union did. It could include a PPU garden, a PPU ...??? any other ideas about a PPU here?
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