Tag Archives: Protests

HUFF Flyer from the Women’s March Saturday

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Flyer Distributed at the Women’s March Earlier Today
by Robert Norse (rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com)
Saturday Jan 20th, 2018 11:22 PM

This is an updated version of a flyer originally prepared last year in response to repression at the Bookshop Santa Cruz in its hypocritical reading of George Orwell’s 1984, while excluding disfavored activists from the store, even from access to its publicly funded bathroom. My broader focus was on the criminalization of the poor and specifically poor women..
The tumultous massive Women’s Day march seemed to have as many as last March’s huge march, though not having a helicopter it was hard to tell. Folks packed into Pacific Avenue and at points it became hard to squeeze through.

Many signs, many unfamiliar faces, hundreds of children, dogs, women and men. Organizations with huge banners and an ocean of anti-Trump signs and pussy hats.

As ever, I was concerned about this being another “kick out Trump and reinstall Trumpism under the Democrats” rally with little or no focus on local discrimination against women (specifically homeless women). I did see one “End the Sleeping Ban” sign.

Many (myself included) have delighted in the drop in citing people for sleeping at night on public property and the opening (for a few) of the San Lorenzo Park as campground, However the Sleeping Ban law is still on the books; City Council is still in the hands of a repressive Terrazas majority; and homeless women (and men) continue to face harassment and citation for just being in public spaces.

Neo-liberal hypocrites like the Coonerty clan (that own and manage the Bookshop Santa Cruz) continue to play politics with homeless lives, supporting anti-homeless laws like the Parking Lot Panic law (which bans being in a parking lot without parking a vehicle or walking directly through).

The question I’ve repeatedly asked is whether these large nationally organized parades actually lead to any real local action on human and civil rights issues. I didn’t see much come out of last year’s March Women’s March.

My interviews and commentary will be broadcast on Free Radio Santa Cruz and will be archived 1-22 at http://www.huffsantacruz.org/Lostshows.html .

http://huffsantacruz.org
§The flyer
by Robert Norse  
Download and distribute–not just for the Women’s Day March.
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Download PDF (517.6kb)


TO MAKE AND READ COMMENTS GO TO: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2018/01/20/18806061..php

Martin Luther King Day Parade–Beyond the Puff to Principled Practices

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Updated Flyer Distributed in the MLK Police-Led “Peace and Justice” March Monday
by Robert Norse    Tuesday Jan 16th, 2018 1:49 PM
My brief report on the Monday MLK march.

The crowd was huge and the streets filled with people, banners, and music. Thanks in part to organizing by Santa Cruz Indivisible (which my friend Steve calls “Indistinguishable”), the NAACP (apparently no complaints about racism in the last year according to a staffer at their table), the RCNV (marching arm and arm with the armed and violent), and, of course, the main weapon-toters in town, the SCPD.

I walked along with a small “The Cops are Not Gods Over Us” sign and distributed a flyer. See https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10215519544920940&set=pcb.1661308183891202&type=3&theater&ifg=1 .

I also distributed a longer updated version of a flyer HUFF (Homeless United for Friendship & Freedom) has been distributing for several years, demanding radical changes in the SCPD. I’m attaching this flyer–which is the real point of this article.

Elsewhere on facebook Steve Schnaar and Steve Argue have made criticisms of the rally, with Abbi Samuels noting the sell-out putdown cry of “All Lives Matter” wafting over the parade. See https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10215519544920940&set=pcb.1661308183891202&type=3&theater&ifg=1 [Shouting “All Lives Matter” or “Blue Lives Matter” in response to “Black Lives Matter” is like shouting “What About Cancer!” in response to “Fight AIDS!”.

I can’t deny I enjoyed the parade. But there was a superficiality to it all that bothered me later. In the face of the Happy Face mood, I found it harder than usual to focus on the hard questions that the one-day paraders were fluffing over. I found the dialogue between me and the cops I spoke to reduced to stereotyped acknowledgments, a kind of manufactured peace. Wasn’t it King who said “There can be no justice without peace and there can be no peace without justice.?”…

The false camaraderie helped to build the illusion that police are always trying to foster that they are “your friends”. In 2018 Santa Cruz, this is simply not true. Particularly for youth, activists, poor people, and people of color. It’s a treacherous assumption to start with. But it certainly helps police gather information, ignore embarrassing questions, and silence angry dissent.

Was King’s memory again being turned into a rallying platform for established politicians (Zack Friend, Andy Mills, a clot of reactionary City Council members) with no focus on actual racist practices here in Santa Cruz? Were we watching another organizing party for the Democrats, perhaps wearying of their latest anti-Russian hysteria–again with substantive issues of a local kind largely ignored (with the exception of some individual activists)?

Were we being sheepdogged again, Bernie Sanders-style, into the Brighter Day where we’d have the Happy Choice of a Wall Street Warmonger over a Racist Blowhard–all pushing the same lethal agenda in different language? Did reassurances from police officials and politicians mean we no longer had to face down class brutality, greedy landlords, compliant bureaucrats, and their armed guards with clarity, solidarity, anger and determination?

I’ll be playing interviews from the parade on Thursday evening (1-17) at 6 PM on Free Radio at 101.3 FM, streaming at freakradio.org. The show will archive at http://www.huffsantacruz.org/Lostshows.html a day later.

TO READ AND MAKE COMMENTS AND DOWNLOAD THE FLYER GO TO: https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2018/01/16/18805901.php

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FightBack against City Manager’s Anti-Homeless Signs at City Hall

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Throughout the past week, unhoused folks, who some call the Survival Sleepers, have defied the latest drive-em-out edicts of City Manager Martin Bernal. Other activists are planning protests at City Council next Tuesday. Bernal has refused to answer simple questions about his newly posted signs. Mayor Chase in a recent interview refused to put the issue on the May 23rd Agenda for Public Discussion and Vote.
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[ Photo by Abbi Samuels. Items labeled as “Personal Survival Property” at Santa Cruz City Hall. ]

DARKER SIGNS OF THE TIMES
In his latest attack on peaceful protesters and unhoused folks. the powerful City Manager Martin (pronounced Mar-TEEN) Bernal has made sitting, lying, and setting down one’s property on the courtyard outside City Hall a $250 crime. Their mere presence there on the weekends or outside office hours can result in a similar fine. The new green signs went up eight days ago. According to some homeless folks, City law enforcement teams have even been (llegally) insisting that being on the sidewalk in front of City Hall is a crime. See https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10210733963080027&set=pcb.1429285667093456&type=3&theater

“Survival sleepers”, a group increased with numerous elderly and disabled men and women refugees from the closed Winter Shelter program–have been sleeping on the edges of City Hall for nearly two months now. “Bums Begone!” Bernal locked the previously-open City Hall bathrooms and then used complaints of poo poo and pee pee found on the grounds to justify a “no trespass” order. The City hall has been traditionally public space, not to mention the center of government where folks thought they had a First Amendment right to gather peacefully to seek a redress of grievances.

Bernal’s latest “bumbuster” ban is only one of a long series of anti-homeless measures at City Hall. See “5 Citations and New “No Trespassing” Zone Closes City Hall Grounds at Night 10 PM to 6 AM” at https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/08/22/18656536.php

DISPERSE THE DISABLED !
The population of folks staying there overnight have been driven out of other areas where the act of sitting and lying down, day and night, is frequently treated as a crime. Many of these folks are elderly and disabled–with no emergency shelter, no nighttime bathrooms, spotty daytime meals, and shrunken services. Santa Cruz’s unsheltered population (the City alone) is 1000-2000.

The overwhelming majority don’t even have temporary shelter under recent “Smart Solutions” and “compassion fatigue” that seek to make Santa Cruz “less welcome”. The Homeless (Lack of) Services Center [HLOSC], for instance, discontinued emergency services 2 years ago (such as shelter and food) under the grant-grabbing a “Pathway to Housing” requirement. The HLOSC now looks like a low-intensity prison camp with gates, fences, security patrols, ID cards, and a “move along” attitude.

SUCCESSFUL FREEDOM SLEEPER MOVEMENT
The two-year long Freedom Sleeper campaign to end the City’s 11 PM to 8:30 AM anti-homeless Sleeping Ban has pressured the City into abandoning MC 6.36.010a tickets for sleep at least in front of the sidewalks at City Hall on Tuesday nights when they gathered in small but persistent numbers.

With police driving away unhoused folks from the protective corridors outside City Hall into the rain and wind over the last month, the Survivor Sleepers have taken to the sidewalks as well.

Continue reading →

Crackdown at the City Council Sidewalk and Interview with Mayor Chase 6 – 8 PM Free Radio 5-18 (tonight!) at 101.3 FM; At City Hall: Emergency Defense Meeting at 6 PM for Freedom & Survival Sleepers

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If you can’t make it to the Emergency Meeting today at 6 PM, Contact Keith and Abbi at 575-770-3377 to provide immediate support for the Survival Sleepers–now facing a round-the-clock attack, designed to drive them at the Freedom Sleepers from City Hall and expand “no homeless” zones outside the library and elsewhere in the city.

Leave your comments and questions at 831-423-4833.

Tonight’s show also streams at www.freakradio.organd archives at http://radiolibre.org/brb/brb170518.mp3

 

If you missed the Sunday show, it ran too long for the normal archive (http://radiolibre.org/brb/brb170518.mp3 ).  To catch the full show go to http://huffsantacruz.org/lost/FRSC%205-14-17.MP3 & http://huffsantacruz.org/lost/FRSC%205-14-17%202.MP3 for six plus hours of mind-numbing sweet street chatter!  For Bathrobespierre’s Broadsides fans, other Lost shows (that missed the regular archives) can be found at http://www.huffsantacruz.org/Lostshows.html .

Emergency Freedom Sleepers Sleep Out Tonight

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DateFriday May 12

Time6:00 PM – 6:00 AM 

Location Details 809 Center St. City Hall Courtyard and Sidewalk along Center St

Event Type Protest

Organizer/Author Keith McHenry (posting by Norse)

Email keith [at] foodnotbombs.net

Phone 575-770–3377 

PLEASE ATTEND !

The City Manager, Martín Bernal made a number of policy changes that will have an impact on those without housing all across Santa Cruz, the Freedom Sleepers and the Survival Sleepers at City Hall.

The City of Santa Cruz has made it illegal to be at City Hall from 6:00 PM to 7:00 AM Monday through Friday and has closed all of the City Hall grounds on Saturday and Sunday. The signs posted this morning also ban amplified sound without a permit, personal property on sidewalks, walls or pathways, bicycles or sitting, lying on sidewalks, walls, pathways or courtyard areas. There are reports that these policies will be enforced at a number of other city buildings in Santa Cruz.

Library staff have also reported that City Manager, Martín Bernal will be removing the benches outside the library and stationing two or more police officers at City Hall.

The Freedom Sleepers campaign inspired an attempt by Councilpersons Don Lane and Micah Posner to seek a change in the camping ban in March 2016 to make it legal to sleep outside, ending the law that made it a crime to sleep outside or in a vehicle from 11:00 PM to 8:30 AM.

Their proposed change failed to gain enough votes. In response to pressure from the Freedom Sleepers the council did create a Homelessness Coordinating Committee whose report was introduced at the May 9, 2017 City Council meeting.

Local unhoused people started their own nightly protest at City Hall the night after the Winter Shelter closed who are referred to as the Survival Sleepers.

Signs stating that it is illegal to participate in the activities of the protest were posted this morning at City Hall. More signs restricting the homeless were placed at the Downtown Library this afternoon.

To see the new posted restrictions go to https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10155150021813820&set=a.489759988819.266614.691903819&type=3&theater

PLEASE JOIN US WITH VIDEO AND AUDIO EVEN IF YOU CAN’T STAY THE NIGHT!

Please contact Keith McHenry at 575-770-3377

Support the Survival Sleepers on May 9th; Add a Dose of Reality to the Evening City Council Meeting; Time to Reclaim Public Spaces for the Community and Rights for the Unhoused

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Yesterday former Councilmember Micah Posner posted an appeal for folks to come to a protest march and sleepout on Tuesday May 9th, beginning at the County Building at 3:30 PM, going to the main Post Office and its anti-homeless fence, and arriving at City Council at 5 PM in time for Oral Communications.   At 7 PM City Council will have an evening session billed as a consideration of a Homelessness Study.  Human rights supporters are encouraged to bring bags, blankets, and nightwear into City Council for a sleep-out later that night.

To read Posner’s thoughts, go to his article “Homelessness: Our Failure As A Society” at https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2017/05/05/18799186.php

My article below is a comment on his.

Focus on the Survival Sleeper Struggle

Missing from Micah’s analysis–good in many points–is any specific historical understanding of the role of City Council and its masters, the City Manager and his staff. Micah’s tendency to be deferential to the staff was unfortunately much in evidence when he was on City Council and can be very misleading to newcomers who want to understand the situation.

Much of the anti-homeless legislation, priorities, and attitudes in the last thirty years can be traced to an entrenched reactionary staff headed by City Manager Bernal, City Attorney Condotti (and before him Barisone), and other department heads who earn the big bucks. To excuse their behavior is to justify and perpetuate the abuses against poor people outside.

A PHONY REPORT
The Final Report of the Homelessness Coordinating Committee on the Council’s May 9th Evening Agenda is a bad joke. [http://scsire.cityofsantacruz.com/sirepub/cache/2/efyi3lsa1xpovuc2poq3qitk/457855405052017100625392.PDF ]

A better report is the Final Report of the Santa Cruz City Homeless Issues Task Force – at http://sccounty01.co.santa-cruz.ca.us/bds/Govstream/BDSvData/non_legacy/agendas/2000/20000502/PDF/020.pdf . It was ignored by the City Council and served as an activist “cooling off” tactic which effectively derailed protest. But there was sufficient pressure at that time for the report to actually recommend elimination of the entire Camping Ordinance as an emergency resolution many months before releasing the final report (p. 0064). For the City Council, the report served as protective cover and false reassurance. We have seen the pathetic results in the last 17 years.

Mayor Chase’s report is fluffed up with flowery and political correct blather about “ending homelessness” through “smart solutions”, more future plans, shifting responsibility to the County, and other false hopes. It is a complete facade that attempts to cover over and divert our attention from the actual behavior of city authorities towards unhoused folks to the glistening good intentions of two-faced politicos. To afford it any credibility and waste time “discussing” it is to play into the hands of those whose interest is in getting rid of the visible homeless, pandering to neighborhood bigots, and serving merchant interests. I.e. shifting the focus from what they’re doing to what they’re saying. Preserving the status quo.

It’s also a small clue, that the three Councilmembers who cooked up the report all voted last March to maintain the absurd and abusive 11 PM – 8:30 AM Sleeping Ban and have not changed their position.

WELL-MANNERED ACTIVISTS DON’T MAKE HERSTORY
As for the idea of “making nice” with the Council on Tuesday night (or thereafter).

Consider City Council’s recent history of almost continuous expansion of anti-homeless legislation, its contraction of support for shelter space (i.e. ignoring the conversion of the Homeless (Lack of) Services Center into a Homeless Prison/GrantGrabber), and its support of police mythology criminalizing homelessness and propagandizing the community with “public safety” nonsense and measures (closing the levee, intensifying Parks and Rec powers, winking at Bernal and Vogel’s attacks on activists).

It’s important that the community be made aware of this, not misled into believing that the Council is actually doing anything real or planning to do something real. The community has to be spurred to understand the legitimacy of outrage, and the need to ACT on that outrage. That is done by clearly defining the issues –clarifying who are the heroes and who are the villains. Whose actions show themselves to be the enemies of reform, and those who are waging the struggle.

BRING BAGGAGE AND FRIENDS
We need to take sleeping bags and blankets into City Hall and lay them down.

I was told that two trucks hauled away houseless folks property from City Hall two days ago and disposed of sleeping gear, blankets, and cloth as “trash”.

There can be no meaningful dialogue until there is the power of visible commitment. I have my doubts about pretty speeches and a one-night sleep out having much impact. In fact, they may fit quite well into the Council’s “see how democratic we are!” stance as they send cops and rangers in the next day to steal survival gear from those who remain after we liberals have gone home.

The “incremental” approach failed a year ago (in the token Sleeping Ban repeal vote). The notion that being “moderate” will attract the timid and tame the Neanderthals is simply wrong here. The Democrats have been proving that for years on the national scene. It’s a form of surrender before the struggle has begun.

SUPPORT THE SURVIVAL SLEEPERS
Meanwhile Survival Sleepers at City Hall are taking the real heat while we engage in media posturing. It is their nightly struggle, however unpretty and unpopular with the powerful that needs to be supported. As long as they choose to make it. That’s where our energy needs to be going as best we can.

Contact HUFF at 831-423-4833 to offer help to the survival sleepers. Suggestions are at https://www.indybay.org/uploads/2017/04/24/survivor_sleepers_sign-up_list.pdf .

A GOOD EXAMPLE
Black students up at UCSC have shown that direct action gets the goods.

And Reclaiming City Hall might be a very good start.

See you Tuesday night. With bag and bathrobe.

http://huffsantacruz.org

Freedom Sleepers # 94 – Sleep-Out to End the Sleeping Ban

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Date Tuesday April 25
Time 3:00 PM – 12:00 AM
Location Details
Santa Cruz City Hall 809 Center Street, Santa Cruz
Event Type Protest
Organizer/Author Keith McHenry
FREEDOM SLEEPERS #94 – Sleep-out to end the sleeping ban – Please join us

Free food provided by Food Not Bombs and India Joze.

The campaign against the houseless of Santa Cruz is growing more repressive.

On Monday night April 17th the police came and kicked people out from under the city hall awning into the pouring rain during a very severe storm.

Wells Fargo Bank install “The Mosquito” high frequency box outside their downtown branch to drive people out from under their eves. They may have experienced an increase in people seeking shelter from the heavy rains from under their eves since the Anti-Homeless fence was placed around parts of the downtown Post Office. The city installed “The Mosquito” in several parks in the fall of 2014.

“The Mosquito” was placed under San Lorenzo River bridges downtown primarily to stop chronic illegal activity, Assistant City Manager Scott Collins said.

Abbi Samuels was arrested the night of April 13th while filming the police drive those seeking shelter under the City Hall awning out into the rain. She spent 18 and a half hours in jail before being freed without charges. 

Police and Rangers are confiscating survival blankets and sleeping bags even when spoken for or being watched by friends. Police even confiscated a broom and partially filled garbage bag and many pounds of survival gear from people at City Hall.

A few days later Park Rangers confiscated several pick-up trucks full of personal belongings at the Civic Auditorium as people looked on helpless to do anything.

Freedom Sleepers Sleep-out #93 provides a view of the struggle facing those who are forced to live outside. Around 30 people slept outside Santa Cruz City Hall on the night of April 18 to 19, 2017.

Two Santa Cruz police officers arrived to City Hall at about 5:00 pm and arrested a person named Mark after he had gone up to the bike racks to retrieve his bicycle. He said he was arrested for violating a stay away order. Mark returned to City Hall to recover his backpack at about 11:30pm

Maile McGrew-Fredé hosted the All-In: A Community Seeks Solutions to Homelessness meeting at the Downtown Branch of the Santa Cruz Public Library at 6:00pm.  Over 30 people participated including several people who planned to sleep out at City Hall.

After the meeting ended Library staff shared that City Manager Martin Bernal was making several changes including the removal of the benches outside the library and the stationing of two police officer. The librarian also reported that the City Manager also planned to implement new restrictions to the area “like those at the Civic Auditorium” but these details were not clear.

After the All-In meeting members of the Freedom Sleepers gathered at city hall to plan a Tuesday, May 9th march from the County Building to the Downtown Post Office fence to City Hall agreeing on the message “HOUSING FOR ALL- No penalty for poverty”

Eight Santa Cruz Police officers arrived around 2:00 am and issued 13.04.011  Park After Hours tickets and 13.08.100 24 Hour Vacate stay away orders to 4 people, three of which had been sleeping on red brick or under the City Hall awning. One of those people was very ill and had been throwing up during the night.

Food Not Bombs co-founder Keith McHenry was one of the people who got a ticket while he was filming the police waking sleeping people. They put him in cuffs while they gave him an in the park after hours ticket. They also gave him a 24 hour stay away order and told him they’d be coming back in the morning to arrest him for a misdemeanor when he violates the stay away order by trying to clean up and share food. All people that received tickets for in park after hours also received a stay away order. It was freezing out!

Two Rangers arrived soon after breakfast was served at about 7:30 am. All was peaceful until a city employee arrived on Center Street with a leaf blower. She walked up to a person sleeping near Locust Street and blew a burst of dirt into his face. Keith McHenry asked her to refrain from using the leaf blower to assault people but she did not respond. 

The employee walked towards the Church Street end of Center and blasted dirt and someones paper bowl of food into the face of a man sitting on the stone wall.

City Manager Martin Bernal is one of the central proponents of the wave of anti-homeless laws and policies. He is paid  $216,158.90 per year by the people of Santa Cruz. Maybe we should go and wake him up at his 96 Brookwood Drive home.

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Support the Freedom Sleepers and the Survival Sleeps on May 9th: Housing for All ! N o Penalty for Poverty!

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3:30 PM County Building

4 PM Main Post Office Forbidden Fence
5 PM City Hall
Throughout the Night: Inside and Outside City Hall

While the federal government continues its efforts to eradicate the social safety net, the cost of housing in Santa Cruz continues to rise, creating an unstable situation locally, and leaving many of our poorest residents without homes. Local action to reduce the cost of housing and provide homes for all is long overdue.

A protest and march calling for a commitment to house all residents will begin on the steps of the County Building at 3:30PM on Tuesday May 9th, continue to the Post Office (which recently fenced its grounds to prevent people without homes from having access) and arrive at City Hall at 5PM in time for oral communication. The County Building is at 701 Ocean Street in downtown Santa Cruz. The City Hall is 809 Center Street.

Activists are calling for local government to take steps to insure that housing is available at a reasonable rate, to provide emergency shelter for the houseless, and to decriminalize sleeping, among other measures.

Sherry (last name withheld to avoid persecution by City officials) has been sleeping at City Hall for a week since the winter shelter closed and left her without a place to be. “At least here,” she says, “I feel a little bit safer. It’s public and there are people around. Plus I like supporting other people who are in the same situation as me.”

Since Max doesn’t have another place to sleep anyway, his choice to sleep at City Hall is tactical, “I want them to see me here in the morning. I want them to see homeless people here until they do something about it.”

Rabbi Philip Posner was a freedom rider who spent 39 days in jail in Mississippi in 1961 as part of the civil rights movement. He views the treatment of the homeless as this generation’s call to conscience “A legal place to sleep is a human right. Criminalizing the homeless amounts to penalizing people for being poor.” Posner and his son Micah plan to sleep out at City Hall after the demonstration in solidarity. They are inviting people with and without homes to bring sleeping bags and join them in the unsanctioned act of sleeping on public property.

For more information contact:
Audrey Simmons: audreysimmons1995 [at] gmail.com. 805 540 8109
Steve Pleich: spleich [at] gmail.com. 831 466 6078
Keith McHenry: keith [at] foodnotbombs.net. 575-770-3377

Press Release by Micah Posner; Posting by Robert Norse

For more event information:

https://www.facebook.com/search/str/Santa+Cruz+Freedom+Sleepers/keywords_top

Struggle Against Sleeping Ban Becomes a Matter of Survival at City Hall

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For the last 10 nights since the Winter Shelter program ended (a month earlier than Berkeley’s or Salinas’s), some of its refugees have been camped at City Hall, spending their nights and some of their days there as well.


Some are arrayed just outside the offices of Mayor Cynthia Chase and the same Council majority that kept sleeping a crime in a Council vote last spring.

I’ve written a flyer or two about the issue & distributed it at “liberal” activist gatherings like the Indivisible rally Saturday. So far no Indivisible groups have expressed interest in the 1000-2000 unsheltered or protesting local Trumpism here against our own poverty refugees.

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Survival sleeper Lawrence MacGregor reports police and security thugs driving disabled and elderly sleepers out from under the eaves of City Hall into the rain over the weekend. Another sleeper reported police and rangers following the sleepers across the street to the Civic Auditorium overhang where they then sought shelter–and driven from there. Both structures are vacant at night.

All bathrooms remained closed late at night; the City Hall bathrooms (apparently on the order of City Manager Martin Bernal) during the day as well “for vandalism” (though they seemed to work well enough when “respectable” groups were meeting in City Council chambers.

Video of the April 6th police expulsion raids is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVvpZ5RE9FI&feature=youtu.be .

Monterey County Union of the Homeless videographer Wes White’s video of the April 11th Memorial for Michael Mears–who reportedly died of hypothermia–is posted at https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=Santa%20Cruz%20Freedom%20Sleepers .

Freedom Sleepers will be meeting Tuesday night in front of City Hall at 7 PM to discuss preparations to support a May 9th mega-demo against the Sleeping Ban as well as support for the nightly Survival Sleepers. The meeting will follow a 6 PM meeting on the 2nd floor of the Main Public Library around the Homeless Crisis.

There will also be a free showing Wednesday April 19th up at UCSC at the Kresge Seminar Room #159. Featured will be Brent Adams’ “Out of Sight, Out of Mind”, Israel Dawson’s “Freedom Sleepers”, and Rebecca Gourevitch’s “Holding Out”.

Freedom SleepOut #93 will go from Tuesday afternoon until Wednesday morning–the public is invited to drop in, stay awhile, bring blankets, sleeping bags, and video devices to film and post what the City is seeking to hide or ignore–the abuse of homeless people at the very seat of government.

http://huffsantacruz.org

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War Against the Poor and War Abroad Ramps Up

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 Friday Apr 7th, 2017 8:49 AM

There have been nearly two years of weekly overnight protests on the sidewalks adjoining City Hall (the Freedom Sleepers) and a month of nightly protests (a group I call the Survival Sleepers) at the same spot. Now, the day after Fuhrer Trump has directly attacked Syria, escalating to the brink of nuclear war, SCPD attacked the poor sheltering themselves under the eaves of the City Hall and arrested Freedom Sleeper Abbi Samuels as she videoed the abuse. The Winter Shelter program (sheltering 110 of the 1000-2000 Santa Cruz homeless) ends today.
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For further information on the Survival Sleepers and Freedom Sleepers go to https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2017/04/03/18797961.php .

For broader information about protests against Trump’s Nuclear Poker escalation in Syria, see https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2017/04/06/18798074.php .

§Activists from the Bay Area Respond

by Robert Norse Friday Apr 7th, 2017 8:49 AM
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