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Born in Battle: The Salinas Homeless Union

by Salinas/Monterey County Homeless Union
Nine years ago today, on the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 2016, the Monterey County/Salinas Homeless Union was formed out of a battle to defend the residents of that city's largest encampment.
Nine years ago today, on the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., 2016, the Monterey County/Salinas Homeless Union was formed out of ...
From that seed has grown a new movement to organize the unhoused of California with some two dozen locals across the state, hundreds of union-organized and union-led camps, thousands of members in the camps, streets, shelters, boats and cars. An affiliate of the National Union of the Homeless, the California Homeless Union Statewide Organizing Council has initiated grassroots "projects of survival" during COVID-19 and life-threatening weather extremes, amassed an unprecedented record in the courts and the "court of public opinion" and continues to grow with its demand of "Housing NOW! No more death in the streets!"

“We are not just about the visible homeless. We are about all poor people who are only a step away because they can’t make the rent or they’ve lost their jobs. We are about Monterey County’s 6,000 homeless school children, day laborers sleeping in their cars, the disabled, and the families doubling and tripling up in substandard housing.”
--Wes White, founder and Co-President, Monterey County/Salinas Homeless Union

“Sometimes people tell me I do not look homeless. What does homeless look like, I ask them. Living on the street was especially hard for me because I experienced serious domestic violence in the past. I was beaten until I could not see straight. This is how I ended up in Chinatown: I came because I knew the person who beat me would not follow me there.”
--Rita Acosta, founder and Co-President, Salinas Homeless Union, lead plaintiff, Acosta v. City of Salinas

It was nine years ago on MLK Day, 2016, that the Salinas Homeless Union arose from the intense battle to save the City’s largest homeless encampment from destruction. From there, the Union has grown thousands-strong and expanded across the state including Marysville, Santa Cruz, Sacramento, Fresno, El Centro, Sausalito, Oakland, Berkeley, Gilroy, San Luis Obispo, Vallejo, Novato, Pajaro/Watsonville, Ventura County, Venice Beach, Chico/Paradise, San Jose/Santa Clara County and into the RV parks, homeless shelters, weekly-rate motels, and hundreds of encampments on the streets, under the freeways, in the parks, atop the levees and along the railroad tracks of California. There are now more than 25 Homeless Unions in California.

Wes White, co-founder and co-president, along with Rita Acosta, of the Salinas Homeless Union describes how it all began:

On MLK, Jr. Day 2016, the Salinas/Monterey County Homeless Union officially started. Three months earlier, the city had proposed and passed the Storage of Personal Property on City Property ordinance, which was vague and overbroad on its face as it authorized police and other city police to subjectively deem and immediately seize and destroy personal property items found in “public areas” if such items were “broken, dirty or in disrepair.”

As applied, the measure clearly targeted the City’s homeless residents. Anthony Prince, an organizer for the original National Union of the Homeless and attorney, was able to support six plaintiffs, including lead Plaintiff Rita Acosta, 2024 Baha’i Faith Human Rights Awardee and founder of “Tents by the Garden,” a self-governed encampment that was destroyed by the City; Van Gresham, living in his RV and editor and publisher of the “Voices of the Street” newspaper, William Silas, an outspoken leader of the City’s largest homeless community and others in a federal lawsuit.

Rita Acosta, Pamela Weston, Dread McCall, Michael Houston, were all supporting folks living outside during the latest Chinatown sweep but before the ordinance went into effect. Providing boxes and a couple wagons to help people move, moral support. Salinas city council member Jose Castaneda, who supported Rita Acosta before and during Tents by the Garden, asked for constituent support which generated the lawsuit against the city. Wes White heard about the ordinance and sweep during the city council meeting, and decided to help people living outside by meeting those directly affected and gathering evidence for the case.

Willie Baptist and Anthony Prince then approached Wes White about Re-Establishing the National Union of the Homeless, which used to have a membership of over 30,000 in 30 states in the later 1980s-early 1990s, on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 16, 2016, which was held at the California State University Monterey Bay Learning Center in Chinatown Salinas, California.

The seed planted in Salinas led to dozens of local Unions today comprising the California Homeless Union/Statewide Organizing Council and, in 2019, to the re-establishment of the National Union of the Homeless.

See Wes White’s powerful documentary at: https://youtu.be/WKzIjyS-tXg

For more information: nuh2020 [at] gmail.com
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by Salinas/Monterey County Homeless Union
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by Salinas/Monterey County Homeless Union
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by Salinas/Monterey County Homeless Union
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