Public Comment

Berkeley sometimes copy-cats San Francisco on policies related to homelessness. Of course, the local copies turn out to be something even worse than San Francisco's, given our relatively smaller resources. The Pathways project is an example. It is probably useful, therefore, to keep an eye on the atrocities taking place in San Francisco to anticipate what our own Mayor and City Council might do next.

The pandemic presents the state, at all levels, opportunity to adopt newly brutal and murderous policies expressing its tendency to declare this or that segment of society an enemy of society to be purged. Why the state has such tendencies is an important question but a large one that I won't take up here. We can simply observe this tendency, before and during the pandemic, in contemporary examples such as the mass internment of immigrants, the purposeful refusal to provide basic sanitation (or release) to prisoners, and the ongoing property confiscations and brutal evictions known as "sweeps". We see it also in the numerous expressions of white supremacy in the actions of the security state and the policies of the federal government. We see it in the City's persistent failure to pick up garbage from, or adequately maintain, sanitation facilities for encampments.

Does this tendency towards brutality merely resemble the early stages of Nazism in historic Germany? Or is a similar dynamic now actually unfolding? In either case, how do we stop it? 

The pandemic raises the specter of a seemingly inevitable spread of the disease to, through, and from unhoused people and encampments. In reaction to this public health concern, Mayor Breed has led the establishment of a new emergency mass shelter in San Francisco. Accompanying this essay is a picture of what it looks like inside. 

Would you stay there? Could you in good conscience recommend to an unhoused person who seeks safety from the disease to stay there? To me, and I don't use the phrase lightly, that is a death camp: an environment ripe for the spread of a deadly disease among a particularly vulnerable population. 

Let's put this in a broader context. As recently as March 27, San Francisco was continuing to confiscate tents and other personal property: https://sfpublicpress.org/news/2020-03/sf-still-taking-tents-from-homeless-people-during-deadly-pandemic 

And we also know that, in the past, the creation of new emergency shelters - no matter how inadequate, has been used as a quasi-legal excuse for sweeping encampments. 

It is not hard to imagine that we are but a hop, skip, and a jump from compelling people into "shelters" like in that picture, either with the force of law or by making entry a mandatory condition of access to vital services. 

We also know from the comments section on Berkeleyside that at least a loud subset of Berkeley residents would cheer the creation of more or less compulsory segregation of unhoused persons. Our Mayor would no doubt hear some "It's about time!" and "Attaboy!". 

And meanwhile, in spite of years of outcry, here in Berkeley, our Council and City Manager have failed to establish and adequately maintain the most basic public personal sanitation facilities, safe encampments, or an adequate supply of even minimal shelter. To this day, the foot-dragging continues. 

Now is the time to push back and use our collective muscle to create alternatives. None of knows for certain how long the quarantine will last but that it would stretch well into June is hardly implausible. School districts, colleges, and universities are even preparing for the possibility that their campuses will not be able to re-open in the fall. We can all hope for the best but we should prepare for the all-to-imminent possibility some severe form of quarantine will persist into the fall, at least (including into the national election). 

Here are some suggestions for what to demand of our public officials, although I am sure other residents of conscience and action have many practical, achievable suggestions to add to the list:

* Demand money and permission from the University of California, Berkeley, to provide round the clock maintenance and stocking of the bathrooms in People's Park, which are currently poorly maintained, inadequately stocked, and locked at night. The University has recently made small improvements in this area but not enough. Community non-profits and activists can take up the work on their own given financial support for supplies, including personal protective equipment, and funds for modest wages. 

* Similarly fund and open public shower facilities. Expand public laundry facilities. 

* Begin collecting garbage from all encampments, initiating legal action as appropriate against Caltrans. 

* Offer funds for water, food, protective equipment, and volunteer stipends to organizations such as Food Not Bombs and the Berkeley Food and Housing Project for delivery to all encampments. 

* Establish size-limited safer encampments on shuttered City basketball courts and tennis courts. 

* Request permission from BART to use portions of North Berkeley and Ashby station parking lots for size-limited, safer encampments. If necessary, remind BART of the high value to them of the City of Berkeley's continued good will towards BART, particularly as regards the future of those lots. 

* Use the Berkeley Way parking lot, across from the downtown fire station, for the FEMA trailers provided for unhoused persons in need of medical isolation. 

* Issue a "call for capacities" for various foreseeable crises, as the quarantine drags on. For example, food insecurity for unhoused and housed persons is likely to worsen. Which community organizations (formal non-profits and otherwise) can help, if provided financial, legal, and logistical assistance? Ask groups to self-identify and declare: What can they do and how would they do it? What would they need? What are their current activities and plan for quickly taking up these new activities, given the support? 

It's an emergency and a socially fraught situation. Let's act more like that.