Protest Harassment of Poor and Homeless People in San Francisco – Defend our Right to Rest

Business districts are growing in influence and power in cities across the Americas. Corporate owners are granted state powers such as taxation and armed street patrols with one dollar-one vote (anti-democratic) governance. Prime targets of these corporate mini-states are homeless and poor people.
The United States has a long history of using discriminatory and violent laws to keep “certain” people out of public spaces and out of public consciousness. Jim Crow laws segregated the South after the Civil War and Sundown Towns forced people to leave town before the sun set. The anti-Okie law of 1930s California forbade poor Dustbowl immigrants from entering the state and Ugly Laws swept the country and criminalized people with disabilities for being seen in public. Today, such laws mostly target homeless people and are commonly called “quality of life” or “nuisance crimes.”
They criminalize sleeping, standing, sitting, and even food-sharing. Just like the laws from our past, they deny people their right to exist in local communities. Today’s “quality of life” laws and ordinances have their roots in the broken-windows theory. This theory holds that one poor person in a neighborhood is like a first un-repaired broken window. If the “window” is not immediately fixed or removed, it is a signal that no one cares, that disorder will flourish, and the community will unravel. This theory conceptualizes poor people as “things” to be removed and not people who are struggling to survive. Nowadays, we have Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) collaborating with police enforcement to keep business neighborhoods flourishing by removing poor people from visible spaces. BIDs are made up of a group of property and business owners deciding to assess or tax themselves in order to invest in a more “safe and attractive” consumer environment.
There are well over 1,000 of these special districts throughout the U.S. and Canada. Their main function is to drive homeless people away from the BID by hassling them, enforcing the sit-lie law and other discriminatory tactics, and by notifying law enforcement when quality of life offenses are being committed, thus criminalizing homeless and poor people’s existence. We are right back to Jim Crow Laws, Sundown Towns, Ugly Laws and Anti-Okie Laws. We have gone from the days where people could be told “you can’t sit at this lunch counter” to being told “you can’t sit on this sidewalk,” from “you’re on the wrong side of the tracks” to “it is illegal to hang out” on this street or corner. We will only win this struggle for social justice if we use our collective strengths, organizing, outreach, research, public education, artwork, and direct actions. WRAP and our allies are continuing to expand our network of organizations and cities and we will ultimately bring down the whole oppressive system of policing poverty and treating poor people as “broken windows” needing to be discarded and replaced. Our liberation is dependent on your liberation.