It’s ten to nine in the morning as we walk onto the neck of the Albany Bulb. The freezing cold air is so crisp that the distant city of San Francisco stands out with perfect clarity, our location granting us a stunning simultaneous view of San Francisco, Oakland, the Bay Bridge, and the Golden Gate. Stepping into a puddle, it crackles as a layer of ice fractures into spiderweb patterns from the sole of my boot. We’re on our way to meet with a resident to help him organize a collection of bike parts and frames such that he can determine which ones he wants to keep and which to send with us to be chopped and welded into various contraptions.The exceptionally cold morning has slightly delayed our friend in waking, so we wander toward the horseshoe pit to say hello to other residents. Everyone seems to be hiding from the freeze in their homes and we see no sign of life as we walk toward the end of the bulb. Out of nowhere, a disembodied voice amplified by a bullhorn sends adrenaline racing through my body: “Attention Albany Bulb residents. This is the Albany Police Department. Restrain your animals and come out of your residences.”I look around for riot cops and check the sky for helicopters. Seeing neither but hearing the crunch of tires on gravel, I walk toward the path wondering if this is it. If this is when the forces of the State come to crush what is perhaps the single largest autonomous zone in the Bay Area, home to dozens of people and a source of hope and inspiration to me personally ever since I first visited several years ago.I am surprised when I round the corner to find two dump trucks bearing the City of Albany logo, several workers in yellow vests, and a backhoe—yet no phalanx of armed troops. “Hi there, how’s it going, we’re just here to clean up a couple abandoned camps.” A fast-talking, slightly nervous and overly friendly worker smiles at me as he attempts to prevent a confrontation. I see two cop cars beyond the dump trucks, but that seems to be the extent of their visible force. As we follow them, they discuss the camps they are planning to clear and tell us that the residents of these camps have given them permission to tear down their structures and dispose of any items left in the camps.Following them past the dumpsters to the end-of-the-road turnaround, they consult a map to determine which camps they are supposedly cleared to destroy. The two Albany cops walk up to the first camp, which is encircled by a picket fence and a gate painted with a reminder to keep it closed so the cats don’t get out. “This is the Albany Police, is anyone home? Do you have any animals?” A voice drifts out from the tent; “Just cats.” A woman comes out and speaks with the officers, who inform her that they’ve arrived to destroy her home and that she has fifteen minutes to get her belongings out. Apparently she has found temporary housing, but has not yet been given assistance in moving her belongings off the Bulb. The cops and city workers head back to the other camp, which they claim is already abandoned, with the intention of demolishing it and then returning to destroy this woman’s home.

The supposedly empty camp has a sign in the door reading “This camp is not abandoned. –Kris S.” Disregarding this, the police walk in and call to the city workers to follow them upon determining that no one is inside. The house is built into a tree on the side of a hill and is almost invisible until you stand in the entrance, from which you can see a set of stairs leading to the main platform, a storage area to the right of the entrance, and various belongings tucked away under tarps within the ground-scraping canopy of the tree. “There’s nothing of value here” a worker calls out. At this point it began to become clear that these workers had successfully repressed any signs of compassion or understanding for the lives of Bulb residents, as it was clear that there were belongings in this dwelling that had value to its residents. The police push me back as I attempt to get a better video of the camp, informing me that I have to give them space to do their work. As is typical of these situations, the cops and city workers repeat the ‘just doing our job’ mantra each time we challenge the legitimacy of their actions.

As the workers and police confer on how best to tear down this tree structure, a barefoot man walks up the path behind them. “I’m moving up into the treehouse so I can tear my camp down,” he tells the cops. A brief back and forth between the resident and one of the police officers ensues: “Well, they’re going to tear this camp down.” “That’s my stuff in there; I left a sign stating that the camp is not abandoned.” In typical underling fashion, the officer dodges responsibility: “The lieutenant is arriving, talk with him.”

A tense conversation between Kris, the Bulb resident, and the Albany Police lieutenant ensues. Kris maintains that the previous residents of the camp gave him permission to be there and that he has spent the last several days moving his belongings into the camp. The lieutenant insists that the camp is going to be demolished, stating “You have the opportunity to gather your belongings. That’s where we stand.” Kris stands barring entrance to the dwelling as the police demand his full name and date of birth. I stand at a distance filming until Kris calls out, “You can come in, you don’t have to stand where they tell you.”

I have never met Kris before, yet the simple fact that I am filming and questioning the legitimacy of the police has created some degree of trust between us. Entering the house, Kris gives us a tour and explains his experience of the escalating harassment of the Albany PD against Bulb residents. The previous night he had been stopped and ticketed for a supposed lack of lights on his bicycle and the officer had warned him not to violate curfew at the Bulb—despite them being a mile from the Bulb entrance. The house itself is a platform built up into a tree, with a domed roof made from a parachute which lets in light while keeping tree debris and water out. One wall has a built-in bookshelf and carpets cover the wooden floor. A housekeys not handcuffs sticker is prominently placed on the wall near the front entrance.

The police walk toward the entrance, so we go down to ensure they can’t come in. The lieutenant again tells Kris that the camp will be demolished and to get his stuff out. Kris insists that the previous residents of the camp gave him permission to be there and demands to see the paperwork the lieutenant claims releases the city to destroy the camp. The lieutenant finally agrees to show paperwork and heads to his unmarked car; Kris goes to put on shoes and warmer clothes.

Unfortunately Kris does not return. In his absence and above our protests, the city employees bring the dumptrucks and begin loading them up with the contents of the camp. They attack the tree with chainsaws, cutting a gaping hole into the canopy as they tear apart and remove the treehouse platform. Indiscriminately throwing personal effects, a bathroom bucket, and remnants of the demolished house into the trucks, they take the destroyed remnants of the camp to the large dumpsters up the road. As I film, a comrade sends texts and calls others: an alert to come help slow or halt the process.

As I stand watching the workers casually destroy this home, I wonder how they can possibly perform this task without a crushing sense of guilt at taking away the best shelter available to someone who has nowhere else to go. Many Bulb residents have pets or other factors which make them ineligible for the extremely limited housing resources offered by the city as the ‘cover our ass from lawsuits’ portion of the plan to sterilize and yuppify the Bulb. Most find the prospect of leaving the homes they have built and occupied for years in favor of three-month ‘transitional housing’ unattractive. The injustice of kicking people out of their space, alongside the love we share for the art and community enabled by the autonomous nature of the bulb, has caused a network of activists to coalesce in defense of the bulb and in solidarity with its residents.

Within two hours of our initial call-out, approximately thirty people have arrived. As soon as we numbered more than five, the decision was made to block the dump truck from continuing to haul items from the camp. Standing in a circle in front of the truck, the workers at last showed a shred of humanity in their decision not to simply run us over (an act that I would not have put past them considering their disregard for the basic right to shelter). To my surprise, the two police officers kept their distance and did not attempt to make us move. In typical anarchist fashion, we took the opportunity to hold a spontaneous meeting and discuss our plan. Consensus is reached almost immediately on the point of preventing any more camps from being destroyed, regardless of any police claims of release from the residents. Especially in the coldest part of the year, we agree that it is absurd to allow shelter which could be utilized to be destroyed.

More Bulb defenders arrive, including the legal team. A news van drives up and parks next to the police. As our numbers grow and the dumptruck is turned off, a couple of us take a walk toward the entrance to see if more police or city workers are arriving. We find a Waste Management truck coming up the road, bringing yet another dumpster for the use of City workers. To our dismay, after dropping off the empty container the truck positions itself to haul away the full dumpster containing the rubble of Kris’s dwelling and his personal belongings. I approach the driver of the truck and politely inform him of the situation, stating that I can’t let him take the dumpster until Kris has had a chance to retrieve his belongings. He walks off to consult with the City workers, and returns with the typical mantra: “I have to take this to the dump. I’m just doing my job, you would do the same in my position.” After we respond strongly that we would most certainly not do the same, he informs us that he will run us over if we attempt to block his truck.
Rallying a few people, we climb up into the dumpster in the hopes that it will prevent him from hauling it up onto the truck. Others work to open the back end so that trash will fall out if it is hauled away. Once it is opened and people are stationed on top of it, the worker gives in and tells us he will call his boss to declare an unsafe work environment. Although we later heard city workers planning to pick it up the next day, a small victory was won in that people were given a chance to retrieve their effects.

Other Bulb defenders inform us that negotiations regarding the second camp that was slated for destruction have resulted in the resident will be left alone to pack up her belongings and move them, which was her initial request that morning that the police had declined. We head down the low road and have another assembly.

After the meeting, the dump trucks returned yet again: A line formed along the entrance to the low road to block them from entering. A couple cops pull up and take a video but do not approach us; clearly they had not planned on encountering resistance and the two officers who did respond were unprepared to deal with our human blockade.

While Monday was far from a victory, seeing that a home was destroyed, the bonds of solidarity formed through the events and discussions which have taken place in the past months were called upon and a meaningful response occurred. The fact that within an hour of the call out well over two dozen people were present and acting directly in opposition to the continued dismantling of the residences shows that the City’s plan to destroy and sterilize the Bulb is being met with determined, ongoing resistance that will only grow as connections are strengthened and actions carried out.

From Fireworks: http://fireworksbayarea.com/featured/into-the-cold-evictions-at-the-albany-bulb/

( runningwolf.zachary [at] yahoo.com ) Friday Dec 13th, 2013 10:58 AM

Labor SEIU is the Union of City Workers nation wide as there is a fight within going on but the Leadership is with Obombma and the KKKorporations. After the Gezi Garden raid in San Francisco (assisted by the City workers of SEIU), we the Tree People not only exposed their participation but expressed out outrage on their headquarters which can be located in Oakland, CA,, Only direct action can help with the current battles at the Bulb and at the Occupy @ Decolonize (Tree People at 34th and Telegraph which got its belongs taken by CalTrans workers who were lying and got my Cellphone along with Sacred items. I heard that Labor backed off as soon as the workers felt endanger and can opt out and this one of the effective tools that need to be applied. I personally as being an Indigenous elder am not the biggest supporter of Labor as they are with the Industrial pigs we need to bring it to.

http://www,runningwolfformayor.org, www.st…From Street Spirit, November 2013 at http://www.thestreetspirit.org/finding-refuge-in-refuse-at-the-albany-landfill/

“I eat so healthy now. Soon I will not be able to have a stove. I don’t even mind eating leftovers from dumpsters, I do it all the time out here, but it is going to be so different when we won’t have anywhere to live. The thought of being tethered to a town sidewalk, rather than our home here, is incomprehensible.
“They want us out of our homes because they are thinking about making this into a park, even though many of us have been encouraged to move out to the Bulb. You know, out of sight, out of mind. Now they want to make the dump into a park. Well, it already is a park. And then they wonder why I don’t want to be a part of society. Gee, I wonder.
“You would never catch me treating people like this: ‘You there, I want you out of that home I have allowed you to settle in for seven years because I may want to go and recreate there sometime, possibly, if you weren’t there, but if you are there, I definitely won’t ever want to go there and hang out.’ ”

Danielle Evans

Danielle Evans has become a painter during her residency at the Bulb. This creative outlet helps keep her “sane” in troubled times. Danielle’s paintings are featured in the documentary and exhibition.
Danielle said: “The paintings are my mood swings. I just go with how I feel and what my mind tells me to do. I paint when I am pissed off.  I express my anger in the paintings. I started painting two months after we arrived here (at the Albany Bulb). To be honest, it is a little crazy living here sometimes. Some of the people around here are kind of nutty so I stay to myself pretty much and I paint.
“Following my dreams and getting out my feelings — I think that is what I am doing. It is weird, some of the paintings are coming from within. Something takes over until it is done and then I know it is where I want to go. It is a good way of meditation, it helps me to relax and to not hurt anybody or think evil thoughts.
“Painting makes me feel calm and saner. I am able to go to sleep with a relaxed mind, not all jacked up. If I don’t paint, I can’t sleep because of all the anxiety of what is going on. So, painting is good.”

Tamara Robinson

Tamara Robinson feels she is “not really alive.” She feels “invisible” to a public that disregards her existence, simply because she is homeless. Tamara speaks of life’s hardships and decides to dramatize the character of the Wicked Witch of the West at three distinct sites on the landfill. The film and exhibition highlight Tamara’s highly personal and yet very political landfill performances.
“I am nobody, really. I am just a 23-year-old ex-convict who is dying. I can dream all I want about being the Wicked Witch of the West, Elphaba. She was my favorite because, just like me, she was a person and the reason why she turned into the Wicked Witch is because of life and its horrors. I don’t even feel alive, just like a spirit roaming. I know I see people and people see me, but the way they make me feel by their quick judgment, I wouldn’t say I was alive or anything.
“I wanted to die and felt like nobody cared. Growing up, I had nobody. In the hospital after I had taken all my father’s medicine to kill myself, he left me sitting there with a goodbye as he drove off with his new wife and her family. He is cold-blooded. It is all about him. Some people join the service with the idea that they are helping somebody, but he went in with the idea of kill, kill, kill. He wanted to destroy other people for the power of doing it.
“Just like the City Council wants to make us feel like we are a problem here at the Bulb, but I have noticed people out here do more for each other than I have seen anywhere else. This may have just been a dump that nobody wanted, but we made it our home.
“I relate to Elphaba, how she got the way she was. She did not start off like that; she was forced into it really, just like some of us here. Some of us are forced into this situation. I am alpha in every situation and I will fight for our rights. Expressing myself with fashion, performance, and dance out here at the landfill gives me something to look forward to, it makes me happy, gives me hope.”

Katherine Cody

Katherine Cody is the resident cook at the Bulb. Her tent is the Landfill Kitchen. Towards the end of the month, when money dwindles, Katherine feeds 10-15 residents in a day. Campers find daily food, friendship, and solace at the Landfill Kitchen. Katherine is featured in the film and we hope she will be willing to cook food recycled from dumpsters for the opening receptions.
“I have this tiny oven. I feed the hordes with Easy Bake Oven parts! I think we are the most wasteful nation on the planet. We throw away tons and tons of edible food every day and that is where I get a lot of the food to feed people. Well, some folks will buy food with food stamps and contribute, others dumpster dive and contribute. Certain folks have really little to kick in except what they can do for work. So they wash the dishes and take out the garbage. I am terribly spoiled in that way. If you learn how to cook, you will be spoiled because it is an overwhelming process for some people.
“I put a big chunk of my income into it because I am feeding people that cannot do anything about work for food. And then there is Sparky. Sparky has difficulties. One day he came to me and said, ‘I have a can of gold spray paint,’ and I thought, ‘Oh no, because a lot of people huff with gold paint.’ And he said, ‘I am going to paint gold stars.’ I went out the next morning with my dog and walked amongst the stars. And that’s pretty awesome.”

The White Rock Manifesto

In 2012, a former resident, Kelly Ray Bouchard, wrote this prophetic, white-rock manifesto: “This landfill is made from the shattered remnants of buildings and structures that not so long ago were whole and standing, framed in concrete and steel, expected and intended to last. Now, through the concrete, grasses make their way. Atop the plateau, a eucalyptus drives its roots down through the cracks. Waves constantly erode the shoreline and wash out the edge of the road. And here and there, in sections leveled and cleared of rebar, our tents are hidden away. We live around and within the rubble. Live — not merely survive. Can you see how hopeful this is?
“The Bulb is not utopia. It is not free from strife and cruelty and chaos, but neither is anywhere else. It is flawed, but it isn’t broken and shouldn’t be treated that way. We, too, are flawed but not broken. So when the politicians start asking their questions and making their decisions, you can help insure that we aren’t treated that way. Enjoy the Bulb. It is yours as much as it is ours or anybody’s.”

FROM STREET SPIRIT–DECEMBER 2013 at http://www.thestreetspirit.org/a-place-of-freedom-where-the-sea-meets-the-sky/

The shelter as jail

One of the reasons that people cling so stubbornly to this landscape is because there is nowhere else to go, certainly nowhere as free or as beautiful. Homeless people are well aware that if they are evicted from the Bulb, their only alternatives are being warehoused in a shelter, being confined in one of the cramped trailers set up by the City of Albany, hiding in a back alley, or languishing in a jail cell at Santa Rita for one of the class-bound offenses that are only crimes when committed by poor people.
“There are 50 to 60 people living out there, many of them with significant disabilities,” Neumann said. “Many of them have serious physical health problems, and they are proposing to take people out of their homes, out of their community, and stuff 30 of them into these two portable trailers that they have set up.”
On November 22, the City of Albany opened two small, prefab portables at a cost of over $330,000 to shelter 30 people for six months. Neumann and several other attorneys joined with Albany Housing Advocates in requesting that the City Council drop its plan to spend $330,000 on portable shelters that would only house half of the Bulb residents in severely cramped conditions.
The attorneys pointed out that, after six months, the portables would be removed, all the people would be homeless again, and Albany would have spent the entire sum with no long-lasting benefit at all. In a letter to the City Council, Albany Housing Advocates showed how the city could spend the same amount of money on direct housing assistance and place Bulb residents in permanent housing. The council dismissed the plan out of hand.
For many, it was “déjà vu all over again.” In 1999, many homeless people had avoided the trailer-shelters, likening them to jail or an internment camp. In November of this year, Bulb residents and Albany Housing Advocates warned the City Council repeatedly that homeless people would not trade their freedom and their homes on the landfill for the confinement of oppressively regulated portable shelters. They were proven right when no one sought shelter in the portables in the first four days after they were first opened on Friday, November 22.
Neumann said that the inhabitants of the Albany Bulb are avoiding the recently opened portables, in part because they have even less room than most shelters.
“These are really cramped, uncomfortable places,” he said. “You’re regimented and forced into an enclosed space with people you don’t know. Many people out there are disabled and have serious issues with being claustrophobic. Many have very bad experiences with institutionalization. For this community that has been able to exist as human beings out on the landfill, to be forced into these sardine-can portables is very dangerous to their health.”

Living in a little box

Amber Whitson has lived at the Albany Bulb for several years and is a dedicated organizer who has worked tirelessly to help her fellow campers protect the encampment from expulsion.
When asked if she would enter the portable trailers, Whitson said, “Would any of these City Council members be willing to go live in a metal trailer or Berkeley Food and Housing Project shelter that has bed bug problems and is seismically unsafe since the Loma Prieta earthquake? No! Nobody else is going to want to live in a little box that you can only be in 16 hours a day regardless of your disability or not, and where you have to be watched over by a hall monitor the entire time you’re there.”
Whitson pointed out that when all the money has been spent after six months, the trailers will be closed and the homeless people will be cast away with nothing. “When they pack up the trailers and leave, we would be again homeless,” she said. “But we would be more homeless than we were before because they would have bulldozed our homes on the Bulb.”
People are being asked to give up their homes, their privacy and their freedom in return for a few months stay in a trailer. Many Bulb residents are in long-term relationships and would have to be separated if they sought shelter in the portables. Still others have deep emotional bonds with their dogs, and cannot bear to give them up, as required by shelter rules.
Neumann said, “Albany is setting up a situation where they’re saying: ‘Cram 30 of these folks into these portables. The rest of you, basically, go to hell, or go wherever you want, but don’t stay in Albany.’ ”

Cruel and unusual punishment

On November 12, a lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court by 10 Bulb dwellers and Albany Housing Advocates charged that Albany’s plan to evict people amounted to “cruel and unusual punishment,” a violation of the Eighth Amendment to the Constitution, and also a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. The suit was filed by the East Bay Community Law Center, the Homeless Action Center and the firm of Kilpatrick, Townsend & Stockton.
At a hearing on November 18, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer refused to grant a temporary restraining order that would have prevented Albany from evicting the camp dwellers. The lawsuit on behalf of the campers can still proceed.
Many homeless people from the Albany Bulb who attended the hearing were very disappointed with Judge Breyer’s ruling. Neumann said, “The people from the Bulb who were in the courtroom couldn’t understand that the judge seemed to be unwilling to prevent Albany from evicting them just as winter is coming on and in the middle of this season of holidays. It’s hard for people who are in touch with the real human realities of this situation to understand this ruling.
“Albany is taking them from a place of safety and community where they have been able to survive — and these are people who have not been able to survive very well out in the streets and the back alleys. That is all being taken away from them. What that means is that people are going to be out in the cold and very vulnerable.”
Neumann warned that allowing Albany to proceed with this eviction could take a serious toll on the health and safety of people who have nowhere left to go.
“Some of them are extremely vulnerable, people whose health and life may be at risk because of Albany’s actions,” he said. “Many people at the landfill have significant disabilities, mental and physical. Some have serious health problems, seriously compromised immune systems, some with mobility problems.”
Amber Whitson said that “when we had 62 people at the Bulb, there were 38 disabled people. Our population keeps fluctuating in size and variety, but there is a large number of disabled people out here — more than half. But they don’t care. They just want us out of their way.”

Outrage at Sierra Club

Whitson expressed outrage that supposedly liberal environmentalists are pressuring city officials to expel homeless people from the landfill. For decades, the landfill was just a construction dump. But Bulb inhabitants have lived in relative harmony with nature, and as environmentalists became aware that homeless people were living amidst vistas of scenic beauty, they began to covet a land that had long been ignored as a dumping ground.
As Whitson pointed out, the Albany Bulb is a landfill, and as such, it is hardly Yosemite or Sequoia National Park. “It’s a dump!” she said. “It’s a dump that nature took over, and because nature took it over, the Sierra Club and Citizens for Eastshore Park feel they have a claim to it. But that’s just not how it works. It shouldn’t be how it works.”
Albany Bulb activists held a protest outside Sierra Club offices in Berkeley on October 11 to voice their outrage at the Sierra Club’s support for the eviction of homeless and disabled persons.
Whitson said, “The Sierra Club and Citizens for Eastshore Park are pressuring and prodding and urging the council to kick us out of our homes for the environment, regardless of what the reality is. They’re spreading propaganda, and they just want us out of our homes. It’s not right.”
Neumann said, “One of the things that is really troubling is that some of the main instigators pushing the council in this direction have been so-called environmentalists. I think it’s an awful form of environmentalism that pits the poorest human beings against the environment. The reality of it is that if you look at what has happened out there to the land, the reason why the Bulb still is green and verdant is because people are still living there. If you look at what they’ve done to the places where they’ve kicked people out, they’ve turned it into a desert, they’ve clear-cut it.”
To add to the irony, people at the Albany Bulb are living more in harmony with the environment than most of our affluent society. They are not part of our consumer culture of massive consumption.
“If we are setting the environment against the needs of the poorest and most vulnerable of us, then we’re going to be in real trouble,” Neumann said. “Because the fact is, it’s the people out on the Bulb who are showing us how we’re going to need to live. They’re the ones who are living with the light carbon footprint, not us.
“This incredibly rich society does not provide the resources for people who are desperately in need, and here is a place where people are supporting themselves. It doesn’t cost a dime to the City of Albany, yet even that is being taken away.”