Category Archives: Bathrobespierre’s Broadsides Radio Show

Sleep Protest Continues Into the Day in Downtown Santa Cruz

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http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/04/17/18735380.php?show_comments=1#18735398

by Robert Norse

Thursday Apr 18th, 2013 8:26 AM

According to Sonny in a phone conversation, the group spent the night peacefully, moved from the steps so they could be swept by a postal official, and had a polite encounter with three cops who neither ticketed them nor asked them to move from their new spot on the sidewalk. Reportedly, they plan to continue their protest through the day with signs educating the community about the Sleeping Ban.

Brent Adams has created a great video (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tBWhgjXrKaY) pressing for a Sanctuary Camp. My own conversations with local homeless people on Pacific Avenue last night indicated that they were generally supportive of the Visible Sleepers, though not willing to risk harassment, citation, or arrest themselves.

I was also glad to see Food Not Bombs activists there supporting the Sleepers. The issues involved are basic and important ones in a city with no shelter for 95% of its homeless.

I’ll be playing interviews tonight on Free Radio Santa Cruz from 6-8 PM at 101.3 FM (streams at http://tunein.com/radio/FRSC-s47254/). Feel free to call in with your thoughts at 831-427-3772.

I encourage all homeless people to sign up for the Waiting List at the Paul Lee Loft at 115 Coral St. so that their camping tickets will be dismissed under MC 6.36.055.

MC 6.36.055 reads
(a) A person shall not be in violation of this chapter [the Camping Ordinance] if, at the time of his or her citation for a violation of this chapter, either: the winter shelter at the Santa Cruz National Guard Armory is filled to capacity; or the person is currently on the waiting list for shelter service through one of the shelter programs offered by the Homeless Services Center or the River Street Shelter in Santa Cruz.
(b) Any citation issued for a violation of this chapter shall be dismissed by the city attorney in the interest of justice if, at the time of citation issuance, the winter shelter at the Santa Cruz National Guard Armory is filled to capacity or the recipient of the citation demonstrates that on the date of the citation he or she was currently on the waiting list for shelter service through one of the shelter programs offered by the Homeless Services Center or the River Street Shelter in Santa Cruz.

A discussion of the California Homeless Bill of Rights will be held at 2 PM Saturday at the Sub Rosa Cafe with Keith McHenry a featured speaker. See http://www.indybay.org/uploads/2013/04/15/arm_the_homeless.pdf.

I encourage folks to support the protesters with blankets, food, dialogue, and calls to City Hall demanding lifting the police harassment and Sleeping Ban citations and/or providing a safe place to sleep as an emergency measure whether in a parking garage, a campground, or somewhere else. Call 831-420-5020. E-mail them at citycouncil [at] cityofsantacruz.com . But don’t hold your breath.

Homeless Activists Ask Community to Join Them 9 PM Tonight in Front of Santa Cruz Post Office

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6-9 homeless people carried forward their plan to document the lack of shelter in Santa Cruz and then educate the public through direct action tonight. I am told they plan to rally on the sidewalk outside the main post office in downtown Santa Cruz at the intersection of Water and Pacific Avenue at 9 PM. Anyone who wished to is invited to attend. I was asked to pass on this and the following information.

PILGRIMAGE TO CORAL  STREET
As planned a week before, the group of people went to the Homeless (Lack of) Services Center at 115 Coral St. earlier this afternoon and requested to be put on the Waiting List for  the Paul Lee Loft.  They were advised by Charles, a worker there, that the shelters were full but that they’d be put on the Waiting List after filling out an application.  When asked if they could get a receipt or some documentation for their Waiting List status, Charles said no, nor would he give them any written statement about the shelter being full.

Other asked Charles the same question and told him that Executive Director Monica Martinez had publicly stated that on request, the HLOSC would provide receipts that one was on the Waiting List.  Christine, another worker, and he then agreed to do so.  He acknowledged he’d not done so before in the last year.

Since they had no receipts available, HUFF workers provided their own version of a receipt which they’d created, anticipating that the HLOSC wouldn’t have any handy.   Christine and the  HLOSC staff helpfully copied, filled out, and signed them for the 8 or so clients applying, documenting that each person was on the Waiting List for the Paul Lee Loft.

THE IMPORTANCE OF WAITING LIST STATUS
Waiting List status means that camping tickets will automatically be dismissed by the City Attorney’s office prior to court, as stipulated by MC 6.36.055.   It might also persuade the police of the futility and even impropriety of giving out camping tickets at all, since all such tickets are supposed to be automatically dismissed.

We also interviewed a few workers out there who confirmed that there were no spaces available on the Paul Lee Loft–suggesting that anyone cited for the more serious offense of “illegal lodging” (PC 647e) would have a “necessity” defense in court.

I hope this procedure will be followed by every homeless person so that they can more safely sleep in groups, well-lighted areas, and closer to police protection–given the increased risks homeless people face outside from violence.   The procedure again is to go to the HLOSC M-F around noon, sign up for the Paul Lee Loft Waiting List, and get a receipt indicating you are on the list.  You then have to check in once a week or your name will be removed from the list.

TONIGHT OUTSIDE ON THE SIDEWALK  NEAR THE MAIN POST OFFICE
This group of homeless people claims to have repeatedly been harassed by police and/or rangers for simply being on public property, to say nothing of sleeping.  In response, it is my understanding they intend to exercise their right to be on the sidewalk (perhaps another group might call it “Positive Loitering”), even to sleep there, since they have no legal place to sleep.

Two  of those involved–Freedom and Andrew–were arrested yesterday and apparently face misdemeanor charges involving something like “disobeying an officer”.  (See “ALERT: Two Arrested For “Being” in the Pogonip” at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/04/16/18735297.php) with trial slated for May 14th.)

Sleeping During the Day–Now a Crime in Santa Cruz?

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http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/04/16/18735297.php

ALERT: Two Arrested For “Being” in the Pogonip
by Robert Norse
Tuesday Apr 16th, 2013 5:07 PM

I received the following information by phone a few minutes ago. The charges against the two arrested were not clear, though they may be something like “camping” (i.e. survival sleeping during the day–which is not illegal).

I just received a preliminary report from two of six people who were accosted by authorities in the Pogonip about an hour or two ago. Two others in the group–Freedom of Occupy Santa Cruz and Andrew–were arrested for failing to leave (the charge was unclear). Since it was during the day, the Pogonip was open. One of those I spoke with, Baba, told me that when he asked what their crime was and why they were being told to leave, one of the three officers (a ranger, a SCPD officer, and a sheriff) told him “what if a family with some children came down and saw you here?”

Baba noted that he first found this offensive with the implication that they were “unsightly” because of their appearance (youthful traveling alternative culture folks). Then on reflection he was even more deeply troubled because the officer’s comments implied that the area was open to families but not to “his kind”.

Baba noted that the officers did not confiscate any property, gave them time to move their stuff (including two dogs), and told them they could “go to some other city”. It was still not clear what Freedom and Andrew were arrested for, but I hope to learn more soon.

Freedom had widely announced her interest in convening a meeting to deal with safe and secure sleeping space for the 100 people denied shelter when the Winter Armory Shelter had its last night on April 14th-15th.

The weekly HUFF meeting, as described at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/04/15/18735243.php tomorrow at 10 AM will discuss the situation. All are invited.

I’m attaching a history of criminalization of the homeless from WRAP (Western Regional Advocacy Project), a group of West Coast organizations fighting for the civil rights of those outside.

Pam Kinkaid–Fighter for the Fresno Homeless

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NOTE BY NORSE:  Fresno has numerous survival camps–none of them funded by the City or legal.  They developed and retain a certain existence through the work of independent activists gathering funds for portapotties, garbage pick-up’s, and oother supplies.  Much of their support came from the  homeless victory in the famous Kinkaid lawsuit of 2007, when the City of Fresno and Cal-Trans had to pay $2 million+ to the  Fresno homeless and their attorneys for seizing and destroying property (sound familiar?).    Mike Rhodes, long-time activist and Community Alliance newspaper editor, gives some of the background in this video:

A fresno activist writes:

Please share the campaign link with your family, friends and network…
Unfortunately, since 2 weeks have passed and I haven’t raised the minimum $500, the campaign is no longer found on the ‘browse’ section of Indiegogo’s website.  It can only be found through direct link.  Those are part of Indiegogo’s merit-based policies to give all campaigns a chance.  Currently, there are $130 in funds raised, so an additional $370 is needed to be featured on the website again for the remaining 40 days. 
Spread the word and donate if you can.  Any amount of money can be donated, including $1 dollar.  You only need to donate a minimum of $15 dollars if you want to receive any contribution ‘perks.’
Remember, 100% of proceeds go directly to the non-profit Eco Village Project of Fresno.
On my part, I will contact several organizations this week, join several blogs and as many homeless & human rights groups as I can to get the word out.
-Mario

Mock-Nazi Salute Case in Two Mayors Trial Goes to Appeal

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Update on the Two Mayors Trial Case
by Robert Norse
Friday Apr 12th, 2013 4:46 PM

The eleven-year-long lawsuit against the Santa Cruz City Council for an exclusion and false arrest back in March 2002 is now going to appeal before Judge Robert Whyte in Federal District Court. Late last year, an 8-person jury in November dismissed all damage claims against former Mayors Christopher Krohn and Tim Fitzmaurice. Eleven years ago, I was arrested at City Council for making a brief gesture of dissent (a silent mock-Nazi salute) and refusing to leave. The two attorneys involved are challenging the jury verdict with a response due from the City Attorney by May 5th.


This was a civil trial around the issue of the right of citizens to remain at City Council, even if Council members find their opinions and the expression of those opinions offensive. The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals had held that only an actual disruption can be the basis for a criminal charge of disrupting a public meeting. Hence the kind of arrest that Mayor Krohn–pressured by former Mayor Fitzmaurice–initiated was a false arrest. Indeed, even the Santa Cruz District Attorney’s Office declined to file any criminal charges against me.

City Council declined to modify its “decorum” rules to comport with the First Amendment and the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals standards. They preferred to spend $125,000+ of the City’s money defending the arbitrary and erroneous use of power by the Mayor to exclude outspoken critics from Council.

For more detail, follow links in the stories below.

Some reports on the actual trial:
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/10/29/18724715.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/10/31/18724886.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/03/18725012.php
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/11/05/18725161.php

A video of the “don’t act like fascists” salute:
http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=Robert+Norse+Nazi+salute&view=detail&mid=4F2A7A28CA0D15CA656B4F2A7A28CA0D15CA656B&first=0

A 25-Year-Old Lawsuit and the Persistence of Homelessness Advocates

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NOTE BY NORSE:   Fresno activists are at work looking for locally federally owned property.  A decade or more ago, the city made a listing of its unused properties as possible homeless campgrounds, shelter, or housing under pressure from homeless advocates here.   Time to dust off the local list and join with other advocates to look into the federal prospects as well.

Oh, and in the meantime,  for those outside: postpone sleeping at night and stay out of public spaces during the day.   Santa Cruz’s new investigatory commission on “public safety” as another of the “blame the homeless and their enablers” measures by the NIMBY crowd formed last night by “Enough is Enough” Mayor Hillary Bryant has no homeless people or advocates among its 20 members.

    Written by Ruth McCambridge
Created on Wednesday, 10 April 2013 13:48
April 7, 2013; Source: The Washington Post
NPQ has written repeatedly over the years that it is one thing to pass a law, but an entirely different and more lengthy process to enforce implementation. In this case, after 25 years of fighting, advocates have finally garnered a court ruling to have a federal law properly implemented.
Title V of the McKinney-Vento Act, passed in 1987, requires federal agencies to list unused, surplus, or underutilized properties in the Federal Register, and to reach out to homeless services providers, giving them a 60-day right of first refusal on leasing or buying the sites. Since then, almost 500 properties have been obtained by groups serving the homeless.
But on March 21, 2013, in response to a lawsuit filed by the National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty, Judge Royce Lamberth of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia found that many government agencies have not been complying with the law. That ruling mandates that the General Services Administration and the Department of Housing and Urban Development must take more steps to ensure that agencies comply.
“We’re very hopeful this order will result in potentially thousands of properties that have never been made available to homeless services providers to be screened for suitability and be made available,” said Tristia Bauman, an attorney with the Center. “We expect we’re going to be able to more closely monitor whether the government is complying, and have access to buildings that were unbeknownst to us before.”
According to this article, the agencies named in the original suit were the Department of Veterans Affairs, Defense Department, Department of Housing and Urban Development, the GSA, and D.C.’s Department of Health and Human Services. A permanent injunction issued in 1993 ordered the government to implement the law and preserved the right for the issue to again be brought to court if agencies did not comply. Attorneys for the government have tried to get that order lifted, but to no avail.
In the March opinion, Lamberth noted a large difference between the count on unused federal properties (28,000 between 2005 and 2011) reported through the Title V process and on properties labeled by the Office of Management and Budget as surplus (69,000 excess, unused ,and underused) federal properties.
The National Law Center for Homelessness and Poverty, one of the groups that filed the original lawsuit in 1988, has long advocated for better administration of Title V. Without constant monitoring and pressure, this law would fade into disuse, wasting the original advocacy effort. NPQ has written similarly about the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Act.—Ruth McCambridge

Santa Cruz Human Rights abuse news compilation at North Bay Uprising Site

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North Bay Uprising compiles Santa Cruz homeless civil rights updates.   Tip of the hat to the NBU folks!

Date: Wed, 10 Apr 2013 00:15:11 -0700
Subject: Santa Cruz Human Rights abuse news compilations
From: northbayuprising@gmail.com
To: rnorse3@hotmail.com

Thank you for taking the time (and the energy) to provide us with information about the abuse in Santa Cruz. Your Notes by Norse are insightful and give context.

I have separate compilations for the attacks against those without homes, and against political activists:

[http://northbayuprising.blogspot.com/2013/01/santa-cruz-attacking-houseless-people.html]

[http://northbayuprising.blogspot.com/2013/01/santa-cruz-11-with-linda-lemaster-ed.html]

—
Tune in every Thursday, 3 to 6pm, at www.ozcatradio.com, transmitting live in Vallejo at 89.5fm KZCT.
Northbay Uprising radio is a showcase featuring a wide variety of soul-driven music across many genres, interviews with independent musicians, producers of “do it yourself” media, and information about bay area concerts and cultural events, including a news digests for the San Pablo bay area, reporting on the ecology, community localization, civil rights movements, and more, with interviews of the people in the news. http://northbayuprising.blogspot.com

Kansas City Homeless Can’t Even Hide Out

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NOTE BY NORSE:  This story headlines the usual anti-homeless bias when media tails the police department in its “clean-up”s.  For more dialogue and discussion, go to the tv/audio attached and more relevant extensive comments that can be found following the article at http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/police-discover-hidden-underground-tunnels-used-homeless-221637268.html .

Santa Cruz homeless activists distributed several hundred “Empty Buildings Are the Crime” stickers at the Project Homeless Connect event yesterday here; meanwhile across the street the Santa Cruz City Council threw more money (another quarter million dollars in promised bonus recruitment payments) at the police department  This in a city with no documented rise in crime, simply a form of police-pandering hysteria after the .shooting of two SCPD cops.  

Deputy Steve Clark of the Santa Cruz PD absurdly claims that 1/3 of the crimes in Santa Cruz is committed by homeless people.  If true, of course, it shows how police are being used as a private security force to criminalize homeless people in public spaces at the behest of the merchants and conservative hate groups.  A recent Public Records Act request seeking the specifics behind Clark’s venomous statement has still gone unanswered here.

Clark’s long-time hostility to the local needle exchange program bore toxic fruit a month two months ago when City Council met behind closed doors and shut down the only needle exchange program in the City Limits.   A less accessible more distant and hence less effective county agency which demands documentation from those using needle exchange in a self-defeating move, has taken over the program.

Clark has recently been reported verbally assaulting and demeaning homeless people to discourage their presence at public buildings and in public places if they speak up for their rights.  When recently criticized in a Starbucks restaurant by a homeless person nearby, he reportedly imperiously (and successfully) demanded the man leave with an implicit threat of arrest.  Ironically, Clark’s mentality is what is driving homeless people “underground”, out of sight, and out of town.  Which is the point, of course, of this kind of hate crime.

Treating the homeless need to hide underground as some sort of bizarre and amusing curiosity or a public health hazard when the city offers no alternatives is a kind of fascist doublethink which is a curious obscenity all its own.

Police discover hidden underground tunnels used by the homeless

By Eric Pfeiffer, Yahoo! News | The Sideshow

During a routine crime investigation, Kansas City police discovered a series of underground dirt tunnels being used by the city’s homeless.

Local affiliate KMBC was on hand for the discovery when newscasters accompanied Kansas City Police

Officer Jason Cooley, who was leading an investigation of stolen copper wiring from a nearby grain mill.

While checking on the seemingly ordinary homeless campsites, Cooley discovered a series of tunnels that went several feet under the earth and stretched nearly 25 feet.

“It was kind of in a little hill and probably four feet beneath the surface,” Cooley told the Kansas City Star.
Hope Faith Ministries, a local homeless organization, said the group had never seen anything like it. Carla Brewer was on site from the organization, offering the homeless individuals a place to shower and sleep away from the camp.

Police said they were especially concerned about a pile of dirty diapers discovered next to one of the underground tunnels.

“We’re working to find out if, in fact, they’ve got kids down here, because this is not a safe environment for that,” Cooley said.

The tunnels appear expertly crafted and obviously required a substantial amount of time and effort to create. In fact, authorities said they aren’t exactly sure how the individuals squatting at the site were able to create them.

After discovering the tunnels, a police robot was used to further investigate the underground dwellings.

Once police were able to confirm no one was inside them, they brought in a tractor to fill in the tunnels.

California Homeless Bill of Rights Goes to First Hearing

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NOTE BY NORSE:  Tom Ammiano’s proposed Homeless Bill of Rights apparently went to a first hearing earlier this month, but I’m still trying to get some specifics:   Has it been weakened?  How effective has its inspiration–the earlier Rhode Island Homeless Bill of Rights–been in on-the-ground protection of civil rights there?  No clear answers yet, but keep your eyes on the bill…  I also include an article detailing Ammiano’s defense of the bill.

Finally, A Bill of Rights for the Homeless!

By Rita McKeon, Member of the BOSS Community Organizing Team (COT), a project of Building Opportunities for Self-Sufficiency
Thursday April 04, 2013 – 08:35:00 PM

Authored by Assembly Member Tom Ammiano, the California Homeless Bill of Rights, AB5, had its first hearing in Sacramento on April 1st, 2013.

In recent years several cities have enacted or attempted to enact “broken window” laws—laws designed to criminalize homeless people and remove them from public view. The California Homeless Bill of Rights and Fairness Act is a first step to de-criminalize homelessness and grant equal rights protection to ALL: housed and un-housed.

This legislation would be a major public statement recognizing the basic human and civil rights of people without homes. It will help shift our discussions from the characterization of homeless people as vagrants or service-resistant to the reality in our society that there are not enough homes that are affordable on very low incomes, not enough jobs for people with low skills, not enough care for people with serious physical and mental health needs. Our discussions can then shift from blaming the victims to solving the problems: this is what AB5 will do—publicly validate the dignity of people without homes so we can direct our attention and resources to fixing the problems they face.

Inhumane laws do not solve poverty, they only increase the misery of being poor. In many major US cities there are ordinances that make it punishable by law to feed homeless people and laws that make it illegal to “camp” in a public space, ultimately making it illegal to sleep, a basic human need. Some laws even make it illegal to sleep in your car. Hundreds maybe thousands of people end up with citations they cannot afford to pay, some facing jail time because they were caught sitting or sleeping.

This is both a waste of tax payer dollars and a civil rights abuse. In February 2013, in the San Francisco Tenderloin District, a homeless man spent 30 days in jail because on two occasions a police officer found him sleeping on a milk crate. He was charged with public nuisance, unauthorized lodging and obstructing a sidewalk. The first two violations are listed as misdemeanors which can carry a year of jail time each – again, for sleeping on a milk carton.

Whose quality of life is being improved by broken window laws? City officials say the goal of these ordinances is to preserve quality of life and keep down public nuances. Yet, citing homeless people and inflicting them with costly violations and jail time does not address their quality of life—rather, these laws are designed to serve big business and developers who want clear streets and storefronts. The fact is, people do have the right to sit, stand, and gather peacefully in public areas. And for behaviors that are less than peaceful or that damage property, there are already laws in place.

Everyone is deserving of equal rights and protection. The California Homeless Bill of Rights and Fairness Act will assure the protection of homeless people’s property rights, access to public space, right to safety, right to sufficient health and hygiene centers, right to engage in life sustaining activities, right to privacy and confidentiality, right to counsel, right for homeless school children to stay at the same school they attended before they became homeless, and more. You can find the full Bill text on assembly.ca.gov.

It’s about respect and dignity! When AB5 is passed it will help ensure that homeless people are treated as human beings: with respect and dignity. Send a letter of support to your district Assembly Member. Visit www.wraphome.org to learn more about the efforts to pass AB-5.

AB-5 is authored by Assembly Member Tom Ammiano (D, San Francisco) and co-sponsored by Western Regional Advocacy Project, Western Center on LawaBy Dan AiellPSP homelessness.

(This article first appeared this morning in the Bay Area Reporter.)nd Poverty, JERICHO: A Voice for Justice, and the East Bay Community Law Center. See a full list of Bill supporters at http://wraphome.org/images/stories/ab5documents/AB5EndorsersMarch1320

HUFFster denounces Santa Cruz County jail at protest

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http://sinbarras.wordpress.com/2013/04/09/statement-of-solidarity-from-santa-cruz-homeless-united-for-friends-freedom-huff/

Statement of Solidarity from Santa Cruz Homeless United for Friends & Freedom (HUFF)
Posted on April 9, 2013 by sinbarras

Becky Johnson, one of the Santa Cruz 11 and an organizing member of HUFF, gave a wonderful speech at our Speakout + Rally on April 6th on local homeless issues and conditions in Santa Cruz County Jail. Below is the transcript, audio and video are coming soon:

When President Dwight D. Eisenhower left office in 1961, he warned “Beware the Military-Industrial Complex.” Today, it’s “Beware the Prison-Industrial Complex.” For prisons today have become big business in a country where manufacturing generally is suffering & unemployment rates are high.

Santa Cruz County is no exception.

For a jail to be profitable, it must be full. Nevermind that it’s paid for with taxpayer dollars. Our electives & appointees don’t care. For them, it is a job security program for police, judges, bailiffs, deputies, file clerks, probation officers and attorneys.

I myself have been fodder for this system with my “criminal” career: I am a convicted sidewalk hopscotch chalker, criminal songster, & in the case of the Santa Cruz Eleven, a suspected sign-holder & blogger. But what I want to talk about to you today is the criminalization of homelessness.

Currently in liberal, progressive Santa Cruz it is illegal to sit on a sidewalk less than 14 feet from a building. It’s illegal to sit on a park bench with your feet up. The Sleeping Ban, MC 6.36.010 section a, outlaws the act of sleeping anywhere out of doors or in a vehicle between the hours of 11PM & 8:30AM within the City Limits.

A separate provision outlaws the use of a blanket between 11PM – 8:30AM out of doors. Hacky-sacking, hop-scotching, and tossing your car keys to your husband are illegal acts on Pacific Ave., the shopping-Mecca where all the City Council members friends have stores.

Let me tell you about Gary Johnson, a homeless man, and an activist. Gary was arrested 4 times within 3 days for BEING on the County property in front of the Court House after 7PM. He was charged with trespassing. When he pointed out that he had a sign which said “A legacy of Cruelty MC 6.36.010 a, PC 647 ( e )”

and that the trespassing code has an exception for “traditional public forums,” the DA turned around and charged him with misdemeanor illegal lodging. He was sentenced to 2 years in jail for these 4 acts of sleeping. Recently he lost his appeal of the sentence before Judges Symons & Burdick.

What homeless person can pay a fine of $162 for sleeping in a cardboard box? None of them. And the authorities know this. But, they can bill you and me for the salary of the police officer who cited or arrested them. They bill for the time the officer spends in court. They bill for any public defender, but with most infraction crimes, the person charged has no right to one.

This jail is full of homeless people! And many who were marginally housed when they were arrested, will be homeless upon their release.

The Drug War fuels many of these arrests. So do mandatory minimums and the 3-Strikes law. But we could cut down on a HUGE amount of local incarceration if we repealed a whole-host of laws which frankly are selectively enforced against the poor and homeless.

When I spent the night here in “G” Dorm in County Jail, I met women there who should NOT have been there. There was one woman, so mentally-challenged that the other inmates had to tell her to put her underwear on. One mother of four with chronic intractable pain from a car accident, was jailed for the crime of supplementing her inadequate pain relief with heroin.

In jail, despite a known diagnosis of chronic intractable pain due to past injury, for which she had been treated with addictive pain medications, she was forced to quit “Cold Turkey”. Her only relief were hot showers. One day, in serious pain, she was pulled from an “unauthorized” shower dripping wet & thrown into an icy holding cell. While in there, she watched as deputies watched “prison porn” on their monitors where women prisoners were tormented & sexually abused.

Another woman was serving 3 months of a 6-month sentence for assault when she herself was assaulted by three women in Jade Street Park after hours. The women beat her over the head with a frying pan (she showed me the scar on the top of her head). They stole her laptop computer. As they fled the park, she called 911 on her cellphone. Police and an ambulance arrived while the three women were still in the area. Terry, the only injured person, was sent to the hospital.

She was arrested in the emergency ward. The three women had convinced the police that Terry had attacked THEM! When by pure chance, her brother’s roommate was able to buy her laptop back (the smoking gun) the DA ignored it.

Since she was still charged with felony assault, Terry was forced to plea “no contest” to a misdemeanor. Judge Adrianne Symons ok’ed that one.

Another form of abuse is the arbitrary nature of what charges are filed and what the how much bail is set. When Gabriella Ripley-Phipps was arrested in December of 2011 for basically protesting the destruction of the Occupy Santa Cruz encampment, she was charged with “obstructing an officer” and bail was set at $25,000. When shooting suspect, Jeremy Goulet was arrested for breaking into his female co-workers home and sexually assaulting her in her own bed, his bail was set at $250.

In the case of Kenneth Massei, the man who was falsely arrested for stealing flowers from the memorial for the 2 slain police officers, bail was set at $5000. He was forced to spend 18 days in jail here until his attorney showed the receipt for the flowers that he had in his possession when he was first jailed.

Isaac Collins, the only person arrested last year at the UCSC 420 event, was jailed here for 82 grams of chocolate & butterscotch brownies that tested positive for marijuana. Collins is black. The deputy that arrested him said he picked Collins out of the large crowd of pretty much all-day law-breaking because “he was wearing a very colorful shirt.”

So in conclusion, we need to End the Drug War! End the war on the poor! End mandatory minimums! End 3-Strikes! Repeal the Sleeping Ban, Blanket Ban, and laws which were written and are enforced specifically to be us

NOTE FROM NORSE;  Becky Johnson’s blog can be found at http://beckyjohnsononewomantalking.blogspot.com/.

ed against homeless people. Justice demands that we don’t stop until this work is done. Thank you.