Public Comment

Introduction

Gratuitous cruelty? Why would gratuitous cruelty have a role to play in government? 

That is, besides forcing people into obedience. 

What might be the motivation for legally proclaiming that no person may sleep in their vehicle between the hours of 2 am and 5 am in the morning? 

It certainly wouldn’t be enforceable without the use of invasive force. But there it is, a testament to the thinking of Berkeley’s City Council. They passed it on March 26. It opens a door to the police to engage in invasive force – against peaceful, sleeping, unfortunate people. Is it to punish them for sleeping peacefully in the middle-of-the-night? 

To sleep in disobedience. The torturous logic of this must be clear to everybody – except the six councilmembers who voted for it twice. 

Questions

Why would elected government officials foster so unjust a condition? Who are they serving by writing it into the character of the city? Why would they choose the potentiality for torture (through sleep deprivation) over dialogue and due process? Why would they prefer it to listening to pleas for justice? In whose interest is it to impose gratuitous cruelty on people already suffering misfortune from impersonal economic forces? Why would they not seek to positively assist people who are doing their best to defend themselves against those forces? 

And who do we become, we who live in a city whose government officials can think in those torturous terms? How can we respond to that? 

What kind of structure must we now invent to allow us to replace forced obedience with humanity and due process? 

Sailboats

On March 26, the Berkeley City Council did not just enact one measure against the homeless. It enacted two, one right after the other. It spit in the face of the homeless twice. 

Both measures were designed to prevent – to actively prevent – the homeless from finding shelter for themselves. In the face of these two measures, whenever the City Council says it is in favor to housing the homeless, it lies. 

The first of these two measures was about sailboats. It was suddenly and surprisingly brought to the people’s attention (at the council session) that some unoccupied sailboats existed that could be lived in and were kept in the Marina. The council’s agenda item was to authorize the City Manager to destroy them all. 

These were 18 to 22 foot fiberglass sailboats (practically indestructible). They have bunks, and one or two can sleep in them. They keep the rain out. They have tables, places for a hot plate, so one can make coffee in the morning. They were there in the Marina, doing nothing, seized from owners who couldn’t pay their bill, or simply abandoned. 

Not all those boats might be serviceable. The hull might need some paint to dissuade barnacles -- but barnacles become a problem only when actually sailing. Some might leak, or be in disrepair. They should not be used. But those that are whole could be. 

Fiberglass is hardy stuff. It will take some doing to destroy them, to turn them into landfill. It would take nothing to let a person sleep there, to provide them with some tools so that they could fix the boat up, make it liveable and homey. A twenty-foot sloop would provide much better comfort than sleeping in a doorway on a sidewalk. 

Not everyone could manage to live on a boat. But none of the homeless were ever asked. Of the 1000 homeless people in Berkeley, some certainly would have jumped at the opportunity. It would have been a roof over their heads, and a chance to belong to a small community of others who had seized the same opportunity. Is that what the city is afraid of? 

Why had their existence not been mentioned, or broached positively, before this council meeting? Not to do so, to prefer destruction to shelter, is an act of gratuitous cruelty toward those who need that shelter. 

On March 26, twenty people spoke for using the boats, and said, “what an opportunity!” No one spoke against it, except the City Manager, who had proposed the destructive measure. She wanted a grant of over $100,000 to destroy the boats, and turn them into landfill. 

When the City Council voted to authorize the destruction of these boats, it was as if these elected officials were a child saying, “ha ha, you can’t have one.” No one said “wait, lets investigate.” No one said, “enough irrationality already!” 

Though these officials endlessly mouth their intention to house Berkeley’s unhoused people, they act directly against that. They actively destroy temporary shelter while the housing crisis remains unresolved. On the flip-side of gratuitous cruelty, we find abject hypocrisy. 

RV-dwellers

While the attitude toward the boats as hard to fathom, it comes nowhere near the irrationality of the RV-ban. The RV-dwellers already have a roof, and a place to make coffee. In considering its ban on them, the city clearly reveals its intention to oppose all attempts by the poor or the downtrodden or the unfortunate to become autonomous. It is the question of human autonomy that is raised by the sailboats and the RV-ban. 

When the RV issue sprang into public view, it was because some 50 or 60 RVs were parked in the Marina, as a living community of homeless people. They governed their own affairs, and sought to get those same services, such as water, showers, toilets, trash-removal, that ordinary neighborhoods also seek. But without addresses, that was sometimes dificult. That is the way with bureaucracy. 

Suddenly, there was a necessity to move them off the lot they had occupied opposite the Double Tree Hotel. They moved over to the “His Lordship” parking lot (the restaurant had closed), which was part of the same landfill mass as the rest of the Marina. And suddenly, again, there were rules against being there. Did they just spring from the publicity? The city refused to supersede those rules temporarily in the name of the homeless crisis, or simply in the name of justice. They chased the RVs out of that parking lot (which was then fenced off). And they refused to establish temporary parking space, though plenty was available. That was because, once the RVs had moved into neighborhoods, the city could start talking about complaints. 

It fit the pattern of prohibiting autonomy, the autonomy the RV-dwellers had gained for themselves through their vehicle investments. 

The ordinance the city then passed (on March 26), subsequent to its refusals, banned living on an RV for more than 3 months. After that, the people would have to leave town. And this was the ordinance that made sleeping in an RV between the hours of 2 am and 5 am illegal. 

There was an outcry against this (120 people spoke against it on March 26). So one councilmember suggested some exceptions (like being a student at UC – some are actually homeless). But those exceptions don’t cover all the RV-dwellers. They just make it look like the council cares, though its actions prove that it doesn’t (by outlawing sleep). 

Of course, the city would say, we don’t want people living permanently in boats in the Marina … or in RVs on the street. But no one said anything about permanence. They don’t want to live in RVs permanently. Ask them and they’ll tell you. 

Indeed, for the homeless, everything is temporary. Life is a constant search for meals, for bathrooms, for company, for a quiet spot, for a place to sleep where one is not open to attack. Every person buying a house sees that house as providing precisely those five things -- meals, bathrooms, a place to sleep safely, a place to have company, a quiet spot. In times of crisis, even the permanence of homes is threatened. 

Against the city’s phony reasons, we see the real one. It is that misanthropic theme that runs through City Council’s attitude toward people. It does not want them to shelter themselves from the elements. That would represent a level of autonomy that the city could not abide. It would be a level of community (thrown together in the “same boat”) that would question the city’s power. “We will not abide people who act in ways that diminish our control over them.” 

From sailboat destruction to bans on sleeping, we have seen the city also do tent confiscations (in violation of due process), fence off parking lots, invent resident complaints (concocted because most RVs park on warehouse and industrial blocks), refuse to provide sanitation facilities, arrest neighbors (who attempt to protect the homeless against police raids), refuse to listen to outraged people, refuse to involve the homeless in resolving their own situation. Is there nothing this city will not do to keep a thousand people in danger of death from exposure to the elements? 

The city even ignores the fact that RV presence on a street enhances security because it is a presence with eyes, and is thus a favor to neighbors. 

It calls its refusals "regulation" in the interest of the people of the city. "Regulation" is a threadbare euphemism for the cruelty of refusing shelter to city residents. It is a euphemism for the city’s refusal to play a role in bringing about dialogue and discussion between the RV-dwellers and the people of the neighborhoods they park near. In making the homeless condition worse, the government shows that common interest and mutual benefit will not be forthcoming. Government is ostensibly for the promulgation of mutual benefit and common interest. But this one acts consistently against that. Even portapotties are begrudged, so their absence will create hostilities between people. 

In the face of all this, homeless people have to figure out how to survive on their own. The abject hypocrisy occurs when the city holds that bit of autonomy against them. 

The scream

The misanthropic theme behind all this contains a silent scream that also threads itself through the night. It is the scream of a torture victim. There is no other word for it. Disobedience gives a green light to police assault (on sleeping people). To wake them up and give them a ticket is the first step toward jailing them if they don’t show up in court, or can’t pay the fine (leading to a bench warrant). The city ordinance is designed to make people suffer. That has to be said, baldly, and without temerity. The city is dedicated to making people suffer. 

On the other hand, to obey that law would mean subjecting oneself, at one’s own hand, to sleep deprivation. And sleep deprivation is a form of torture. Didn’t City Council see what it was writing, or what that meant? Or have they just become machinery? 

Well, suppose the police do not enforce it. It doesn’t matter. Now, every RV-dweller knows that the cops can come in the middle of the night. They live with that uncertainty, along with all the other uncertainties of homeless life. It imposes further stress. These RV-dwellers live with that psychological stress every night when they go to bed. That is what city harassment and derogation of all autonomy means. It is a form of slow subtle destruction of people. 

No one hears the scream of the victim. The cruelty happens slowly, and under the authority of law. People come to council to engage in “Public Comment” and plead with the City Council not to criminalize them nor to condemn them to becoming human landfill. When 150 people showed up at City Council to tell their stories, begging the city to recognize their humanity, those stories become the form the scream takes. Even the knowledge that they are reasoning with the unreasonable (the bureaucratic) becomes part of the scream. We may not hear the scream, but it nevertheless signifies that we too remain unrepresented – all of us, even the housed. 

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! … Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! … Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!  

From Howl, by Allen Ginsberg