28 Dec 2012

NOTES FROM NORSE:  Berkeley is plagued with its “Ambassador” program–critiqued below by long time activist and singer Carol Denney.  Santa Cruz has its “Hosts”, “Hospitality”, or “Hostility-pitaility” Program.  Described as “the eyes and ears of the police”, the hosts, most particularly one named Denise Miller, has been accused repeatedly of aggressively hostile behavior towards homeless people, street performers, and other low-income folks trying to socialize on Pacific Avenue here.
Our own Downtown Association [DTA] seems to be similarly implicated in funding this para-police program–sort of a friendly fascism–which attempts to “gently” enforce “quality of life” amendments to the Constitution created by the DTA, the Santa Cruz Neighbors, Take Back Santa Cruz, and other nasty anti-homeless groups.
Recently D. Miller has been accused of repeated harassment of street performer and jewelry (and local Cabrillo student) Brianna Brewer.  Brewer recently won a case in court that overturned Miller & SCPD Sergeant Bush’s unlawful criminalization of emotional support animals on Pacific with police retaliating immeidately against Brewer with a higher level of harassment, ticketing, and charging (misdemeanor “disturbing the peace” for denouncing Miller’s continued harassment).
We need the kind of analysis locally that Denney has done for Berkeley.  We also need a Hostwatch, someone to follow and document the behavior of these yellow-and-black costumed folks and particularly zealous warriors like Miller seems to be.  Please contact HUFF at 831-423-4833 if you’d like to involve yourself in this project.

Ambassadors for Whom? Occupy Your Merchant Association, 12-11-12 (News Analysis)

Ted Friedman

A group of local activists (and occasional bystanders) joined in song to sing anti-Downtown Berkeley Association Christmas carols in the BART Plaza in an effort to bring awareness to the privatization of public space on Sunday, December 16th, 2012.

Most people think they’re ridiculous, but harmless. They walk around downtown Berkeley in bright lime green shirts identifying themselves as “ambassadors”, a new version of an older program which hit the wall years ago as a kind of homeless patrol doling out “services” to some and calling the police on others. The merchant association claims the “ambassadors” work on making the downtown more welcoming.

Their green shirts in Berkeley have the logo of the Downtown Berkeley Association (DBA), which, along with the Business Improvement District (BID), contracts with Kentucky-based Block by Block to execute the program. Block by Block’s slogan is “Safety, cleaning, hospitality and outreach solutions for downtown improvement districts.” Block by Block currently runs 46 programs in cities from Akron, Ohio, to Yakima, Washington.

What do the “ambassadors” do? They sweep and pick up trash. They clean up graffiti, the definition of which apparently includes anything not officially written by the city or the Downtown Berkeley Association itself, which has the keys to a glass-covered information kiosk by the BART Station for their members’ use alone. If you put up a poster about your missing dog, they’ll tear it down within seconds claiming it’s illegal. They steam wash sidewalks so repeatedly that anyone carrying everything they own is likely to have their few belongings soaked and ruined. But that’s not all they do.

Block by Block “ambassadors” are not unionized. They’re paid considerably less than city maintenance crews and have fewer if any benefits, so one could argue that they save the city money, albeit at the expense of city workers. But their assignment is wider than picking up the occasional fast food wrapper:



“The largest drivers of negative perceptions are frequent low level quality of life crimes. Our ambassadors are a significant part of a proactive safety and security strategy to challenge unwanted activities.”[1]

Years ago, when Berkeley’s Downtown Berkeley Association changed its name from the Downtown Business Association, it lamented that most merchants were unwilling to call the police and sign formal complaints against “problematic street behavior,” behavior which was not specifically criminal but which they felt might discourage shoppers. They even created signs for merchants with a circle with a line through it over an out-stretched hand in an effort to encourage both merchants and customers to call the police on a special phone number if they saw examples of “problematic street behavior” assumed to depress business.

The outrage over the public funding of this effort to target the homeless, who are obligated to exist in public and more often the victims of than the perpetrators of crime, eventually gave birth to Berkeley’s Business Improvement District (BID), a private entity which levies an assessment from the property owners within its geographical confines as well as an assessment from the city itself (and thus the public) from public spaces such as plazas. In this way, what was once a public common space becomes a revenue source for the privately run and utterly undemocratic entity, the BID, which then patrols public space and regulates public behavior.

Business improvement districts began in the 1960’s and are now a worldwide phenomenon. Enabling legislation at the state level sets the stage for the local business improvement districts, according to Paul Boden of the Western Regional Advocacy Project, one of the few groups which has made a specific study of BIDs. Only 51% of the property owners within the district’s confines are required to create a BID, and in some places the threshold is as low as 31%.
Block by Block’s particular genius was in crafting a program model that could then be plugged into any town’s BID.

“They have a plan, and the plan is to gentrify downtown and make it like a shopping mall,” states Boden. “They’re self-perpetuating in that they found a funding stream that is pretty fucking limitless.”

Berkeley’s DBA tried twenty years ago to criminalize panhandling with a law that was first overturned by an outraged public’s referendum, then put on the ballot by a council majority, then passed in the next election by a bare majority of voters, and finally tossed out by the courts as unconstitutional. They probably counted on that same bare majority of voters to pass an anti-sitting law, underestimating both Berkeley voters’ common sense and a small but dedicated group of civil rights defenders.

The “ambassador” program has had previous incarnations. At one time it was a locally based program that, according to at least one former DBA board member, did occasionally connect homeless people with appropriate services. The decision to outsource it to Block by Block was not, according to the former member, a DBA board decision. The current DBA board tends to be populated more by large property owners than local business owners, and decisions once the province of the board tend today to be made by a smaller, less representative group, according to former staff.

The current “ambassadors” in the Block by Block model treat the poor on public streets as a nuisance. One “ambassador” was recently seen sweeping repeatedly around the feet of a woman wrapped in a blanket on a bench who had all her belongings with her. He swept immediately to her right, then right under her under the bench itself, then immediately to her left, then under her under the bench again, continuously sweeping inches from her body. It’s safe to suggest that no well-dressed bench sitter would be similarly treated.

Some of the Block by Block staff was formerly on the street themselves, which the DBA suggests helps establish rapport with poor and homeless people. But the mission, according to former DBA staff, has moved away from connecting people in need with services and toward “moving homeless people out of town,” a mission at considerable odds with developing rapport. Boden says this is not unusual. The mission of a BID, he says, is to create the same atmosphere as a shopping mall.

“Take that environment and take that kind of control and plop it down in your downtown. That’s what a BID is for,” says Boden. There are seven or eight BIDs in San Francisco. There are 37 in Manhattan.

If you’re a downtown merchant obligated geographically to pay a fee to the Business Improvement District and you oppose the discriminatory policies aimed at the poor, you can object aloud, of course. You have to be brave enough to weather the potential backlash from the merchant association and participating businesses, some of which might be enthusiastic about relocating the homeless. Business is tough, after all, and the homeless are easier to target than something as nebulous as the economy. The popular narrative that groups of transient youth, panhandlers, and homeless people ruin business is not supported by fact, nationally or locally, but it is the primary narrative you’ll hear from both the DBA and, with the exception of Kriss Worthington, Max Anderson, and Jesse Arreguin, the Berkeley City Council.

“Ambassadors” are not shy about relocating unwanted groups. It’s their job to engage with people whose “unwanted activities” are not necessarily prohibited by law, but are presumed to depress the vitality of a commercial district, according to Block by Block’s guidelines. It may well be difficult to spend several hundred dollars on an evening of dinner and theater without feeling guilty when you have to pass people living as best they can on the street. But the most guilt-ridden downtown shopper should be revolted by the idea that public streets are being cleared for their personal comfort. Clearing the streets of people in need deprives them of their right to exist in public space, and also deprives the larger community, both wealthy shoppers and the rest of us, of the opportunity to see and respond to human need, to realize its scope and take action.

The DBA describes transient youth, panhandlers, and homeless people alike as addicted to drugs and threats to public safety, as the failed anti-sitting law (Measure S) campaign literature made clear. The Measure S language criminalized all sitting by everyone between certain hours, even a kid on a curb with an ice cream cone. Questions about the absurdity of this were met with the assurance that the law would not be used against “those” people, raising additional issues of discrimination. But the point remains that demonizing poor and homeless people helps smooth the way for discriminatory laws, discriminatory practices, and a population deaf to honest human need.

Dr. Davida Coady, director of Options Recovery in Berkeley, defended Measure S’s extreme language without embarrassment on KQED’s Forum show before the fall election, rejecting the idea that anyone sitting on Berkeley’s streets might be just resting for a minute and enjoying the weather.

The city council, even if motivated to do so, would have little control over a BID, which is a private and privately funded entity. But Berkeley’s ambassador program does get some public funding. The BID goes before the Human Welfare and Community Action Commission in January hoping for $195,000 from the general fund. If Block by Block’s strategic plan is working, there will be a rash of complimentary articles published just before the funding meetings which make the “ambassadors” look like compassionate saints and the Block by Block program seem essential to commercial districts’ success. Most newspapers, strapped for local copy, will print the press releases without question.

A May 2011 City of Berkeley report on the “Public Commons for Everyone Initiative” describes the “ambassadors” as having made “a marginal change, if any, in the overall quality of life in the Telegraph and Downtown areas.” This may mean a further reduction in funding for the controversial program, or it could mean an even more determined effort to criminalize some other aspect of homelessness now that Berkeley voters rejected the anti-sitting law.

Those who oppose local efforts to make public spaces the sole territory of well-heeled shoppers need to recognize that as revolting and undemocratic as the local politics of greed-based legislation can be, the local campaigns against the poor are just examples of a national program systematizing those efforts coast to coast. Block by Block may tailor Akron’s program slightly differently than Yakima’s, but the same model is being used nationwide to make sure property owners, often the largest donors to local political campaigns, govern downtown priorities. Berkeley’s Measure S, the most expensive campaign in Berkeley’s history, was funded almost entirely by large property holding companies which play an influential role on the DBA board and whose representatives were, according to a former staff member, inspired by San Francisco’s voters’ passage of Measure L, the San Francisco anti-sitting law.

Measure S may have been defeated in Berkeley, but the political pressures that created it are alive and well. Should business interests play the largest role in creating legislation? What can a community do after watching over $120,000 in Berkeley wasted trying to convince people that simply sitting down should be a crime, noting that around 40% of Berkeley’s voters supported doing just that?

Awakening the public and the media to Block by Block’s and BIDs’ tactics are part of what a concerned community needs to do to combat the juggernaut of systematic efforts to attack the human rights of the poor. The other component is leadership that simply refuses to scapegoat the poor, the real victims in both good times and bad. There is a very tangible human cost to allowing greed to play the largest role in our community and our legislative priorities.