Wood Street and Homefulness “Liberation Together” Statement at Oakland City Hall

Wood Street Community and Homefulness release a statement in response to Oakland City Council’s special concurrent public safety meeting.

“Palestine to Oakland – Free the Land”

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“From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!”

Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, Ethiopia, Haiti, Kashmir, Myanmar, Nigeria, Pakistan, Syria, Philippines, Armenia, Zimbabwe, Cuba, Nepal, Afghanistan, Turtle Island, we raise your names and lives in prayer.

We must stand to stop genocide everywhere.

We want to celebrate and uplift Oakland City Council’s passing of the ceasefire resolution. We also urge that Oakland, by any means necessary, should cut off our city’s support of military aid to Israel and urge an end to Israel’s apartheid state, as well as urge full return of the land to Palestinians. We must be resolved to not let our city’s ports and resources be used to fuel the genocide in Palestine or anywhere else on mama earth. We hope that these measures will be wrapped into the resolution for ceasefire passed by our city council. 

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The US spent 17 billion dollars on military aid to Israel and has only offered a measly 100 million dollars of humanitarian aid to Palestine. The US must cease its military aid to Israel and increase its humanitarian aid to Palestine. It should be ensured that those funds make it directly into the pockets of the most impacted of the Palestinian people to restore their livelihoods and their homes and not into the pockets of the government elite to misappropriate. Our tax dollars should go to holistic housing, healthcare, and education—not genocide. Beyond funds, the occupation must be ended and the land rightfully returned to the Palestinians.

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We must weed out and cease the United States’ complicity in creating the global conditions necessary to fuel violence and grow poverty in countries around the world. We must recognize that to be against genocide anywhere we must oppose genocide everywhere. Which means we cannot ignore the ways it festers in our own country. We must free Turtle Island from the grips of the Amerikkklan.

We pray that so-called Oakland, by any means necessary, will cease its complicity with America’s ongoing genocide on BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and the poor by ending encampment sweeps which treat our lives like trash, throwing what stability we build for each other into chaos which further isolates and displaces us in the midst of this ever-growing housing crisis, and in the midst of more and more people being evicted into the streets following the lifting of the eviction moratorium. The eviction moratorium must be reinstated and its protections extended to unhoused Oaklanders. 

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Oakland must undo the current criminalization of unhoused and BIPOC folks by repealing penal codes around encampments, parking, and vehicles that discriminate against us because we don’t have the funds to move and/or register our vehicles. Oakland must abolish the racist institutions of prisons and cops and use the liberated funds to invest in communities with access to free education, free healthcare, and the necessary wrap-around services to ensure all community members’ needs are met, which will eliminate survival crimes of poverty and desperation over time. 

Oakland cannot afford to waste any more money on cops and encampment sweeps. State sanctioned violence does not keep us safe. Putting a different body or differently trained body behind the badge doesn’t change what the badge is designed to protect, which is property over people. 

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The OPD badge is designed to protect the ongoing theft and genocide of Amerikkklan settler colonialism here in occupied Huichin. Just as the badge of the Mishmar Hagvul are designed to protect the theft and genocide perpetuated by the Israeli apartheid state.

Oakland has spent more money criminalizing people for being poor than it has ever spent on housing, feeding, clothing, healing, or educating us. Oakland should move funding away from cops and towards community-centered permanent supportive housing with on-site access to holistic care. This will help communities grow as well as keep them safe in all the ways that cops and prisons have consistently failed to do.

Oakland must say no to “CARE COURTS” which is a violent piece of legislation that will allow civilians to accuse anyone of being mentally unwell, which will force the accused into a court process which will most likely lead to conservatorship and imprisonment. People need rehabilitation, not incarceration. People need care, not courts. 

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Oakland should voice its opposition to “CARE COURTS” and support intentional community housing initiatives, such as Carroll Fife’s social housing initiatives; such as the land and people liberation of Homefulness; such as the Land Liberation Act put together by Homefulness and Sogorea Te; such as the sanctioned lot of Camp Resolution; such as communities of care proposals for the North Gate parcel from Carroll Fife and Wood Street. These initiatives will foster community support networks so people can heal and grow together, through holding each other in the full complexity of our humanity, as opposed to criminalizing anyone for their mental health.

Oakland must voice its opposition to and promise not to implement laws criminalizing unhoused folks for not accepting shelter. Many shelters fail to provide any of the services they are contracted to offer by the city. Many of the shelters are a carceral environment with unfit staff who harass residents. 

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Thousands of people have been returned to the streets from these temporary shelters. Meanwhile, we can count on our hands the people we know who’ve gotten housing. Of those who have gotten housing, many are returned to the streets after their one-year rent subsidies are up and they can no longer afford the rent. There is no permanent supportive housing available, yet cities across the Bay enforce evictions and sweeps, as well as pass laws to criminalize unhoused folks who refuse to be retraumatized by being recycled through temporary shelter programs that leave us more homeless than we were when we went in. We demand a full audit of these temporary shelter program’s contracts and expenses so we can see where all these millions of dollars are going, and have a better picture of where this money is getting spent instead of getting spent on wrap-around services that will actually help people. 

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We also demand a full audit of how many folks have been successfully transitioned into housing from these programs and how long they were able to stay housed ,versus how many have been returned to the streets from these programs and/or their housing. We urge Oakland not to follow in Sacramento and San Francisco’s footsteps by divesting from failed temporary shelter programs and investing in community-centered, permanent supportive housing projects. For those who ask: “but what will happen to the staff’s jobs if the non-profits contracts are voided?” They can become care providers who outreach directly to encampments like HAC and LifeLong Street Medicine. If they’re respectful and caring, they could even get jobs providing care in the community-centered permanent supportive housing projects. We need dedicated and patient caregivers for our communities—not security, overlords, and red tape middlemen waiting on a paycheck who don’t seem to give a damn about us as people.

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Oakland must abolish the Encampment Management Policy that aids in the criminalization of unhoused Oaklanders and allows cops and city employees to dismantle people’s lives and displace them from their support systems. As an emergency measure, until long-term to permanent community living spaces can be established, we urge the city of Oakland to replace the Encampment Management Policy with encampment care action. Funds for encampment care action would be sourced from divested sweep, cop, and prison funds. Encampment care action would ensure aid in constructing temporary structures for individuals in tents to healthily and safely live in. It would ensure vehicle maintenance and covering of registration fees for vehicle dwellers. It would ensure on-site, low-cost makeshift shower infrastructure and regular porta potty service. It would ensure dumpsters at every encampment with regular trash pick up. It would ensure safe use sites, sharps containers, and harm reduction/street medicine centers at every encampment. 

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It would ensure regular meals and water are provided to encampments. It would ensure seasonal support for inclement weather conditions. Encampment care action would ensure the provision of a guaranteed income that could help folks in need make ends meet, until the harmful bloody institution of money can be abolished because the only cost of living should be our care for one another. Encampment care action would ensure the health and safety of us unhoused Oaklanders, which would in turn benefit the health and safety of our housed neighbors. Encampment care action would ensure the immediate support necessary to make encampments more livable until long-term to permanent community living spaces are built.

We urge the city of Oakland to cede land sovereignty to the Ohlone, and provide active support to landless people’s movements like Homefulness, Sogorea Te, Camp Resolution, and Wood Street who house, feed, clothe, educate, and heal people with no cost to the city. 

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The city of Oakland should follow Carroll Fife’s suggestion of using eminent domain to open vacant land and buildings for public use. These spaces could be utilized by all of Huichin’s landless people’s movements who are doing the daily work to keep each other alive and provide the conditions necessary for healing compacted trauma from hundreds of years of systemic displacement and abuse. These liberated land spaces would be built by and for the communities they are chosen to house. Residents would be able to live there indefinitely and rent-free. Residents would have full access to wrap-around services on the site they live in. Access to food, medicine, safe use, harm reduction, mental wellness support, skills training, education, creative outlets, gardening, recreational activities, computers, doc-ready support, family reunification services, and legal aid. Residents could have on-site small businesses that make the community self-sustainable.

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These permanent sites will be more successful than any temporary site will ever be, because when you celebrate someone’s whole humanity and engage their creativity you can’t help but inspire them to grow. These places of liberated land and people will provide the time and space necessary to heal years of systemic displacement and abuse.

The Israeli government, just like the Nazis, have modeled their genocidal settler-apartheid state over Palestine after the United States ongoing genocidal settler-military police state over BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and the poor. 

After the Mexican-American War, the state of California made it legal for settlers to enslave and kill natives, following the bloody tradition of the enslavement of Africans in the US. 9,000 to 16,000 natives were killed. A 1910 census showed fewer than 20 Ohlone left in California at that time. Now, the Ohlone struggle to rematriate their land with little to no recognition or support by local, state, and federal governments. 

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Israel invaded Palestine in 1948. Since 1949, over 75,ooo Palestinians have been killed by military weapons and tactics provided by the US through 50 billion dollars worth of economic and military aid to Israel. 

Israel used the term “town planning”—after America’s racist practice of “urban planning”—so they could put rose-colored glasses over their gross investment in the building of settler communities to displace millions of the local Palestinian population into derelict refugee camps, homelessness, and abroad. The start of this process happened alongside the 1940s/50s red-lining in Oakland and cities across America that excluded communities of color from wealth-building and homeownership after their labor was exploited to build Oakland infrastructure that ultimately supported the WWII-era US war machine abroad more than it ever supported or uplifted local communities of color. 

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This violent force of gentrification continues to this day in Oakland as market rate developments rise atop the land of the displaced. Even the developments that the city totes as affordable housing are not at all affordable to unhoused Oaklanders; and many of these developments in actuality are mostly market-rate units with a small percentage of  “affordable for 50k per year” units. 

Black folk make up 60% of unhoused Oaklanders and that’s only counting those who have been forced into the tiny tomb cabin concentration camps, after millions of taxpayers dollars and houselessness support funds are spent to destroy, displace, and fracture our unhoused communities through sweeps enabled by Oakland’s Encampment Management Policy. 

These displacements are carried out knowing that there are over 5,000 unhoused Oaklanders and only about 1,000 or so shelter beds, most of which are congregate shelter beds. 

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These displacements are carried out knowing full well that the housing—these few and far between rapid rehousing programs they are supposed to be sending us to—does not physically exist. These temporary programs return countless of us to the streets no matter how many times we go through them because low- to no-income housing is not getting built and the vacant buildings that do exist are not getting turned into low- to no-income housing. This necessary housing is not getting created because the money is being spent to displace us and recycle us from programs to the streets and the city has refused to open vacant land and buildings for supportive, intentional community housing projects.

Israel has denied Palestinians food, water, and electricity.

Oakland criminalizes unhoused Oaklanders when we tap public electrical/water sources and take food we cannot afford for ourselves and our loved ones.

Oakland has closed public restrooms and erected anti-homeless architecture to deter unhoused folks from seeking refuge on public land and city streets.

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Israeli military and police stand by and physically assist civilian Israeli settlers who violently attack Palestinian civilians. 

OPD physically enforces encampment sweeps and have stood by while civilian housed settlers have ransacked unhoused Oaklanders homes and belongings, setting fire to our tents and our vehicles.

Israeli settlers dump their trash in Palestinian communities.

Oakland housed settlers dump their trash in the city-sanctioned dump piles Oakland has designated in our unhoused communities.

Israelis have painted the Palestinians as a “cancer,” “vermin,” and “human animals.”

Oakland’s government and media has painted unhoused Oaklanders as “sprawling,” “blight,” “lazy,” “crazy,” “drug addicted,” and “human trash.” 

Israel has blocked transit to Palestinians and severely limited the spaces in which Palestinians are allowed to exist. 

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Oakland continues to pass laws that criminalize and displace the unhoused for the locations and conditions of the vehicles, tents, and structures that we live in, telling us the only places we can exist are out of sight, in tiny tomb cabins, mental institutions, and prisons until far-off housing does or does not get built. 

Just this year, the US gave 17 billion dollars worth of military aid to Israel’s military police state.

This year Oakland gave 353 million dollars to Oaklands military police state.

At least 3 million dollars have been spent on Oakland encampment sweeps in the last year.

17 billion dollars has equaled over 10,000 Palestinian deaths this year.

3 million dollars has equaled over 300 deaths of accounted for unhoused Oaklanders this year. 

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Our deaths don’t make headlines, we are the silent quiet deaths, the nameless isolated deaths, the deaths often with no funeral, the “they should have known better” deaths, the deaths our Wood Street family has added up since we were displaced. In the months following our eviction, 8 people who lived on our parcel have died. Over the years we have lost countless others of our loved ones to the violent institutions of the US military police state. 

Jay Jona

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Deuce

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Kara

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Mingo

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Brittany

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Chuck

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Demetrius 

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Tasha

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Puffy

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Tara

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Terry

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Black Mike

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Frankie

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Tam

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“K” Lo

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Bonnie

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“Y” Not

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Bobby

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Kat

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AB

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Robert

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Retox John

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Fuertes 

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Dennis Howelet

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“Spider” Dongabon

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“Spider” Buddy Hasgar

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Eddie Edwardo “Sleepy”

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Noni

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Heather

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Uncle Hallowman

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Keelie

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Mama Dee

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Dona

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Tony

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Sam

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Sonny

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CJ

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Eric

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Tamico

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Nina

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Lovely “T”

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Swivle

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Jason Coleman

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DeLow

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Mike 

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Mr. Greg

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Darth Vader/Marvel 

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Shanni

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Red with the dreads 

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Tauri

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Mrs. West

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Kae Walker

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Drew

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Vu Nguyen 

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Kenya

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John

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Butchie

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Leilah

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Ember

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Marralla 

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Gutter Slut

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Danny Blue

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“Tink” Amy Chew

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Miguel

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Philly

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Kaegan

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Felicia

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Pneuma

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Jayda

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Mess

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Campy

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AB

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Charlie Brown

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Michelle

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Bobby McCoy

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Cara

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Andrew

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Lynn Molex

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Juanita McClure

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And so many more whose lives were lost to street sweeps, cops, prisons, and other violent institutions of this country.

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When 1707 Wood Street was alive, people stayed out of prison and no one fatally overdosed. 

So don’t look us in the eye and say, “Sweeps don’t kill,” because denial is the last stage of genocide, and no dollar amount should be worth taking anybody’s life.

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It’s a good thing Wood Street is alive, that Homefulness is alive, and Sogorea Te is alive, so that instead of supporting the US war machine from Palestine to the Philippines; and instead of supporting death making high rises, bulldozers, tiny tomb cabins, and cops; the city of Oakland can open vacant land and buildings to all its landless people’s movements who are doing the daily work to keep each other alive and provide the conditions necessary for healing compacted trauma from hundreds of years of systemic displacement and abuse.

Oakland, by any means necessary, should cut off our city’s support of military aid to Israel and urge an end to Israel’s apartheid state, as well as urge full return of the land to Palestinians. 

Oakland must put forth a resolution against genocide anywhere that contains actionable steps towards opposing genocide everywhere. 

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Oakland, by any means necessary, should cease the use of our city resources in the exploitation of natural resources across the globe and ensure that divested military spending funds make it directly into the pockets of the most impacted people’s of those countries to restore their livelihoods and their homes—not into the pockets of the government elite to misappropriate. Our tax dollars should go to holistic housing, healthcare, and education—not genocide. 

To effectively say no to genocide everywhere, Oakland, by any means necessary, should cease its complicity with America’s ongoing genocide on BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and the poor by ending encampment sweeps; repealing the current criminalization of unhoused and BIPOC folks; saying no to “CARE COURTS”; abolishing the encampment management policy, prisons, and cops; creating free healthcare and education; ceding land sovereignty to the Ohlone; as well as implementing Homefulness and Sogorea Te’s Land Liberation Act.

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Oakland, we all rise when we provide active support to landless people’s movements like Homefulness, Camp Resolution, Sogorea Te, and Wood Street who house, feed, clothe, educate, and heal people with no cost to the city by embracing the complexity of all our humanity and engaging all our creativity to heal our hurting world.

Viva Palestina

Viva Congo

Viva Sudan

Viva Ethiopia

Viva Haiti

Viva Kashmir

Viva Myanmar

Viva Nigeria

Viva Pakistan

Viva Syria

Viva Philippines

Viva Armenia

Viva Zimbabwe

Viva Cuba

Viva Nepal

Viva Afghanistan

Viva Turtle Island

Viva Wood St

Viva Camp Resolution 

Viva Homefulness 

Viva Huichin

Viva Ohlone