PUNISHMENT TO DRIVE AWAY THE PROTESTERS
There will be light PB and J snacks at mid-evening and coffee and bagels or pastries in the morning. City Manager Martin Bernal and Police Chief Kevin Vogel are likely to set up their protest-punishing klieg lights, no parking zones, and harsh ticketing at midnight policies. Nor have they agreed to let the public walk on the grounds to view city council agendas–as required by law, or to walk through along the accessways–as also mandated by law.

Lucero Luna, a vocal Spanish-speaking worker, was roughly grabbed last week without warning or charge by three police officers whose “compliance holds” left bruises on her body when she was released with an ‘interfering with an officer” type charge three hours later. Lucero’s response–she’ll be back Tuesday night.

WHY ARE WE THERE?
The Freedom Sleepers goal is to both change police practice, city law criminalizing homeless people at night if they fall asleep after 11 PM, and a safer space for homeless people to sleep. In spite of the police raids, many feel it is safer to sleep in groups with housed observers and some media nearby.

City hall is a place for the unhoused and the housed to meet and petition the government to recognize that the right to sleep is as elementary, as attorney Ed Frey once put it, as the right to breathe.

NO SHELTER, NO MERCY
The Paul Lee Loft– closure in June essentially left no Emergency Shelter in Santa Cruz. The Department of Justice has declared in an Idaho case that harassing homeless people at night if there’s no shelter is an unconstitutional form of cruel and unusual punishment. Neither Mayor Lane, nor Councilmember Posner, nor the eager “Drive the homeless RV’s out of town” crew that makes up the Council majority have put any remedy on the agenda.

Meanwhile homeless folks report getting ticketed multiple times at night, even at places where they had previoulsy been left alone–such as the Red Church at Lincoln and Cedar.

LIVE ON THE AIR
Free Radio Santa Cruz [FRSC] broadcaster Misty-eyed Merlin and his “Idle Hands” crew will be broadcasting at 101.3 FM throughout the evening playing old school rock ‘n roll and cracking jokes. He, Dolly, and Hans will be staying late to do a blow-by-blow coverage of any police attack on the protesters–which usually happens around midnight.

FRSC streams at freakradio.org . You can call in at 831-427-3772 or 831-469-3119. The FRSC collective is still offering a $500 reward for anyone who can find them a studio space for a year. Last radio broadcast will be September 21 if no one steps up.

Last week’s sleep out is described at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/09/10/18777446.php [“9th SleepOut Holds The Sidewalk…”]

For more info: follow the links at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2015/09/07/18777265.php [“At City Council and Under the Stars, Challenge the Crackdown…”]

http://freedomsleepers.org