With homelessness rising and shelter beds scarce, hospitals are accused of abandoning people following treatment. When homeless patients are discharged not to shelters or housing but to the streets, it can be impossible to follow a treatment plan and there is a higher likelihood that they’ll fall ill again.

Elected leaders of the national tenants union denounced the housing bill proposed by HUD Secretary Ben Carson as a vicious and cruel assault on the poorest of the poor. “Millions will be displaced if these deeply cruel proposals see the light of day. Congress should reject them out of hand.”

Wealthy landlords, realtors and developers have teamed up and are spending a fortune to fight the efforts of renters to repeal the Costa-Hawkins Act, the law that severely limits the rent control options of California cities. Tenants have also launched rent control campaigns in 10 California cities.

In the “new” Oakland, we see “cool” new nightclubs across the street from encampments. The hip new people hang out in front of the club and stand in line to get inside. The “hip” people seem not to care about the homeless people facing them — and whom they helped displace.

Aiming pepper spray at a crowd exposes people to a chemical implicated in at least 25 deaths in California alone. Pepper spray causes temporary blindness and panic in a crowd. Pepper spray is by nature indiscriminate. No police officer can tell who has cardiac or pulmonary issues.

The mayor has no understanding of the awful defeat the loss of People’s Park would be. No comprehension of the cost in lives and the sacrifices people have made for the Park’s ideals. So many still find it a refuge in a country needing a political and spiritual overhaul.

Elisa Guevara leads protests over rent hikes and high rates for undrinkable water “We’re a forgotten community. We’re invisible,” she said. “There’s hardly any housing for farmworkers, so park operators can rent us dilapidated trailers. Workers go without electricity and a sewer system, or live with contaminated water.”

A farmworker’s death in Washington prompted his fellow braceros to put their livelihoods in jeopardy by going on strike and risking deportation. The death pushed the workers into an action unprecedented in farm labor history. When they were fired for protesting, they joined the new union for farmworkers.