{"id":2059,"date":"2015-09-09T14:45:31","date_gmt":"2015-09-09T14:45:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/?p=2059"},"modified":"2015-09-09T14:47:41","modified_gmt":"2015-09-09T14:47:41","slug":"city-rejects-homeless-compromise-huff-to-meet-11-am-9-9-at-sub-rosa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/city-rejects-homeless-compromise-huff-to-meet-11-am-9-9-at-sub-rosa\/","title":{"rendered":"City Rejects Homeless Compromise; HUFF to meet 11 AM 9-9 at Sub Rosa"},"content":{"rendered":"
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HUFF will be meeting as usual–hopefully out of the hot sun–at 703 Pacific with perhaps some cold coffee (does any one have any ice?).\u00a0 Up for discussion: Freedom SleepOut #9 and #10 Next Week;\u00a0 Invisible Blue Boxes on Pacific Avenue; Report from the Monthly Monterey Sitting Ban Protest, & Campaign Zero in Santa Cruz–the Black Lives Matter suggestions for police reform.<\/p>\n
> Subject: City Manager Mart\u00edn Bernal rejects Freedom Sleeper’s compromise and plans to continue ticketing homeless
\n> From: keith@foodnotbombs.ne<\/a>
\n> Date: Tue, 8 Sep 2015 13:37
\n>
\n> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
\n> September 8, 2015
\n>
\n> CONTACT:
\n> The Santa Cruz Freedom Sleepers.
\n> 1-800-884-1136<\/a>
\n> Email Rabi Phil Posner at Chatrabbi@aol.com<\/a>
\n> freedomsleepers.org<\/a>
\n>
\n> FREEDOM SLEEPERS PLAN TO SLEEP OUT AT CITY HALL ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 8,
\n> 2015
\n>
\n> City Manager Mart\u00edn Bernal rejects Freedom Sleeper’s compromise and
\n> plans to continue ticketing homeless
\n>
\n> Emergency services for homeless people in Santa Cruz have been
\n> eliminated at the Homeless Services Center. Police continue to issue
\n> sleeping tickets.
\n>
\n> PRESS CONFERENCE AT 6:00 PM<\/span><\/span> OUTSIDE SANTA CRUZ CITY HALL
\n>
\n>
\n> Local activists in Santa Cruz, California announce a protest that will
\n> take place this coming Tuesday, September 8, starting at 5pm<\/span><\/span> in front of
\n> Santa Cruz City Hall. Santa Cruz has a law in place which bans camping
\n> within the city limits, but is used most often to harass and displace
\n> houseless people of the community who have nowhere to sleep but outdoors.
\n>
\n> The Freedom Sleepers call on the community to join them in defending the
\n> rights of the homeless by sleeping out at Santa Cruz City Hall the night
\n> of the City Council meeting. City officials are seeking to drive the
\n> weekly sleep-outs away from City Hall. The sleepers will announce that
\n> they will move the sleep out away from City Hall if the city manager
\n> agrees to make the ticketing and arrest of the homeless for camping and
\n> sleeping related infractions the police departments lowest priority.
\n> City Manager Mart\u00edn Bernal rejected the Freedom Sleeper’s compromise and
\n> plans to continue ticketing homeless
\n>
\n> On Tuesday, September 1, 2015 The Santa Cruz Police wrote 15 citations
\n> for being in “the park” at City Hall, arrested two Freedom Sleepers for
\n> being in the park after hours and issued one 24 hour stay away order.
\n> Police also erected spot lights around the east side of City Hall and
\n> blocked off parking.
\n>
\n> The Freedom Sleepers feel that the ban is cruel and unusual, in keeping
\n> with the recent Justice Department the 2015 statement of interest on the
\n> 2009 case of Bell v. City of Boise. The Justice Department stated, that
\n> it \u201cshould be uncontroversial that punishing conduct that is a universal
\n> and unavoidable consequence of being human violates the Eighth Amendment
\n> \u2026 Sleeping is a life-sustaining activity\u2014i.e., it must occur at some
\n> time in some place. If a person literally has nowhere else to go, then
\n> enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against that person
\n> criminalizes her for being homeless.\u201d
\n>
\n> The 2-15 Grand Jury Report claims that Santa Cruz county has 3,500
\n> unhoused community members. That number is not conclusive, having been
\n> counted over a period of 4 hours in one day by a group of volunteer
\n> researchers. There are not nearly enough shelter beds in the county to
\n> house all the unhoused people here, therefore to criminalize people for
\n> sleeping outdoors is to criminalize them for engaging in a survival
\n> activity for which they have no legal alternative. For this reason, we
\n> the group of activists known as the Freedom Sleepers are engaging in
\n> civil disobedience, defying the camping ban in order to draw attention
\n> to its cruel, unusual, and inhumane character. We and the homeless
\n> community present at the protest have been harassed by police, prevented
\n> from sleeping by enormous lights rented by the police department,
\n> ticketed, and arrested.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  HUFF will be meeting as usual–hopefully out of the hot sun–at 703 Pacific with perhaps some cold coffee (does any one have any ice?).\u00a0 Up for discussion: Freedom SleepOut #9 and #10 Next Week;\u00a0 Invisible Blue Boxes on Pacific … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[128],"tags":[4,152,14],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2059"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2062,"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059\/revisions\/2062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/huffsantacruz.org\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}