Lydia Gans

Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground

Features
In cold and stormy weather, J.C. Orton opens an emergency shelter at the First Congregational Church in Berkeley. “I think it’s a fantastic situation where we’re able to shelter these people,” Orton said. “The satisfaction of being able to give that depth of service, to my mind, is overwhelming.”

UC Berkeley Officials Desecrate People’s Park

Features   Uncategorized
That University of California officials carried out their vandalism against People’s Park without once notifying any of the many volunteers who had worked on that project about their plans, although they themselves had required the volunteer activists to go by the letter of the book, was a rape.

Rising Hunger and Food Shortages in Desperate Times

Features
Many service providers in Berkeley are reporting increasingly desperate levels of hunger and poverty. Survival for the growing numbers who are homeless or on the edge is very difficult. There is not enough of anything — food, housing, health care or safe places.

An Alternative to Psychiatry and the Drug Industry

Features
The concept of the wellness model – the kind of peer help and advocacy practiced at the Berkeley Drop-In Center – is a welcome alternative to the powerful drug industry’s proliferation of psychotropic drugs for their newly invented mental illnesses.

Young People Lead Protest at Berkeley City Hall

News
Homeless youth led a colorful protest at Berkeley City Hall, displaying scores of prayer flags in an appeal for compassion for homeless people targeted by a sitting-ban proposal. The Stand Up For The Right To Sit Down coalition scored at least a temporary victory by sending this proposal “to limbo.”

Building a Movement to Reclaim Public Spaces

News
Same-day protests were held in San Francisco, Berkeley and Portland to challenge laws banning sitting or lying by homeless people. These “copy-cat laws” travel from city to city, as municipal officials copy each other’s efforts to erode human rights by making it illegal for poor people to exist in public.

Creative Sit-In Challenges Berkeley Sitting Ban

News
A unique, quirky and imaginative protest was held at the Berkeley BART on May 22 to protest the City Council’s proposed sitting ban ordinance. Called a “Chair-a-Pillar,” the colorful act of defiance summoned forth a powerful historic echo of past sit-ins for civil rights.