September 23, 2024 • 33 mins
James sits down with two members of Bread Bloc to talk about mutual aid, how to set up your own mutual aid project, and the increasingly hostile environment for unhoused people in San Diego and California after the Grants Pass decision.
Sources:
https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2024/09/camping-ban-ordinances/
https://apnews.com/article/california-gavin-newsom-homeless-sweeps-funding-bdaf5719847e11daf8cca06c62737994
https://www.sandiego.gov/police/services/neighborhood-policing-division/unsafe-camping
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to you can happen here exchange today.
And I'm joined by Luca and Sailor. They're both from Breadlock,
which is a mutual aid group in San Diego. How
are you doing today?
Speaker 3 (00:16):
We're doing great, great.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
How are you wonderful?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah, I'm thriving. I've just received my seventy fifth COVID
booster I think, I think, so having a little miserable day,
but that's okay, not going to get novel coronavirus, which
is always nice. So can you guys start out by
maybe explaining, well, what Breadblock does, how long it's done it,
and why it does it.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Yeah, So we are a mutual aid group. We mostly
provide hot food. That's like the core of our services.
We feed about one hundred people like like eighty to
one hundred people depending on the day weekly in East
Village in San Diego. We also clothing and harm reduction
(01:02):
supplies and other things like tampons and plan b when
we can get our hands on it, and we try
to be we are there like at the same time
every day. I will not say the exact location, but
if you are interested in getting involved, you can always
reach out and that's like what we're doing right now,
(01:24):
and that happens weekly and sale am I missing anything?
Speaker 5 (01:28):
Yeah, So this form of what we're doing with bread
block in a more organized way has We've only been
doing it a few months. However, Initially we started doing
it in twenty twenty one when I started getting into
harm reduction stuff and I was working at a strange
exchange and realized a lot of people would be asking
(01:49):
for food and we weren't getting that out there, and
so that's why the initial idea came about. And then
we just had enough people who were willing to do
it in a weekly so that's how we chose that
location and got started doing that. There's just a lot
of people down there on those nights, so.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
It's time to happen at the same time that a
harm reduction services happen the Needle Exchange, So it's at
a time when a lot of people are down there
and the amount of time are like collective doing this
specific thing as exist is. I believe since end of
March early April is how long we've been like consistently
providing services every week.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, that's great, that's a long time. So especially through
like summer can be a difficult time if you don't
have a house in San Diego, Like it gets increasingly,
it gets very hot, and particularly the streets themselves get hot,
and that becomes dangerous for people.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
So I want to start with like, at some point, right,
say that you were doing a syringe exchange and you
are like, these people need to be fed. They are hungry,
and now we're here and you're feeding them every week, right,
But you had to do a whole lot of things
in between here and there. And like, I know this
because listeners email me all the time. So many people
want to do that too, and it might not exist
(03:06):
where they are. They might not know. So, like, can
you explain how you went about like seeing a need
and then organizing to meet that need?
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Yeah, so I guess what came before that was we
had already built relationships with each other around our leftist
ideals and art and protesting and different stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
So we already knew a lot.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
Of people who who were interested in mutual aid and
that capacity. Yeah, but I will say things like Instagram
have helped just meet more people who are looking to
get involved in mutual aid.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Yeah, Like Saylah said, we had like had spent some
time building community with each other and getting a core
group of people that trust each other, that had gone
to protests together, that were maybe in like affinity groups
already with each other, and then there was just sort
of like enough of us that were in community with
each other at the time that when Sala was like,
(04:06):
the encampment ban is like really making things so much
worse for people in communities and we really need to
do something, we were like, all just like it just
happened because we were all sitting in a room together
one night after a like social event, and Sala was like,
we need to talk about this, and we were like, okay, yeah,
we like need to do this, and we had enough
(04:27):
people where we could pull together a first distro and
then a second and then gradually adding like more organizations
so that we could continue doing it sustainably over time.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah. Yeah, that's like I want to be opinion the
camping ban, because the camping ban is making things worse
for people who are already having a hard time just
surviving here, and it fucking sucks and it's tog glorious fault.
You shouldn't bothe Yeah, let's talk about though, Like I
want to get into nuts and bolts, right, feeing one
hundred people? Right, you need to and ass pad, you
need loads of food, you need a place where you
(05:03):
can cook. How did you identify all those things and
how did you get to a place where you could
regularly have those things?
Speaker 5 (05:12):
So in twenty twenty one, when I had initially started
this with kind of a different group of people, but
there were definitely over us, we just did it and
like used my mom's kitchen and found some big pops
and just made it happen. And I feel like, if
you have the will to make it happen, you're going
to figure it out. And you know, maybe in the
(05:32):
beginning it was a lot more chaotic, which you know,
we are anarchists, so we're okay.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
With the chaos.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
But it just after doing it a week after week,
it just became more streamlined. And you know, we just
buy a lot of essential bulk food and we have
a few giant pops.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah, we like to make soup a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Currently our kitchen is like like our cooking equipment includes
two large pots and a rice cooker that someone recently
donated to us. And then we needed a fridge, so
we got a free fridge off offer up and cleaned
it up and put some cool stickers on it and
then plugged it into a garage. Currently, the kitchen that
(06:18):
we use is like a couple of us just like
live together, and so we use our kitchen and we
have access to our garage and we just stored the
supplies in the garage. We stored the fridge in the garage,
and we make it work through donations we get on Instagram.
So we knew some comrades that work with the community fridges.
(06:41):
There's like some community fridges in San Diego, and so
they already had a relationship with a grocery store and
so we were able to hop in on that and
we get some donations from that. We get some donations
from What's sale the group.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Oh Orchporchlight.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Yeah, and there's so much food waste that I feel
like if we were to find the right people, we
could be fully self supporting on just things that would
be thrown away alone.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
Yeah, we just have to meet the right people in
order to do that. But we're getting there. Yeah, And
I do want to say the kitchen is a small
slash regular sized kitchen, so you don't have to have
some big, crazy warehouse typed kitchen to make this happen.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, and then you're feeding people right likeuman you're doing
it like in the afternoon or evening. Have you found
there are things that you said you like soup, but
I know, like we fed a lot of people at
the border last winter, right, and we found out that
like certain things work, certain things didn't work, and we
always tried to keep it vegan because of people's religious
(07:45):
needs preferences. Right, is there anything like that that you
found that works or doesn't work.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
We have done a lot of chili with our squad,
and I know that Luca has done a lot of curry.
So there are certain things and they can both be
easily made vegan. Initially, a lot of people when we
would have vegan stuff would ask for me alternatives, to
which I understand people, you know, they don't always have
access to protein, So we tried out both options when
(08:12):
we can.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Nice.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Yeah, it varies what we have because our group kind
of functions with for like autonomous squads, like well semi
autonomous that take turns doing the distress so that you're
only really responsible for it once a month, which helps
reduce burnout.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah, definitely, how does that work? Explain how you came
up with that and how it's organized.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Yeah, So this was kind of like something we've been
talking about for a while. Some of us are like
more into the theory than others, but we're just kind
of talking about, like, oh, well, like how do we
get more people involved, because I think what happens oftentimes
with these mutual aid groups is there's like a lot
of people sitting in a group chat and there's like
a small core of people who do end up doing
(08:58):
the majority of the labor, and that often results in
burnout for those people and building a resentment between like
the people who are doing a lot and the other
people because I think also like sometimes people feel left
out and they don't feel like they can get involved,
and then they feel like the people who are doing
the core of the labor are like in charge and
they have to defer to them, which creates a lot
(09:19):
of problems, which I'm not saying like we don't have
any of those problems, Like we're still trying to work
out the kinks, but the squads sort of like dynamic
makes it so that groups of about like five to
ten because a distro you need about like six people
to make it happen, so about five to ten people
(09:39):
take turns, so you just rotate, so you know when
your day is. It's once a month that you are
responsible for the distro and you are responsible for choosing
the food that you're cooking, making sure it gets cooked,
organizing with your other comrades, getting the donations, all of
that stuff. But you can always ask the larger group
for help or extra hands if you need it. Yeah,
(10:01):
But it sort of shares that like responsibility because I
think the most stressful part oftentimes is like, oh, the
distro happening tonight is on me and I and if
I don't do it, it's not going to happen. Yeah,
And so it sort of spreads like that sort of labor.
But we have members who like show up to every
single distro because they want to, and that's totally fine,
(10:21):
even if they're in like whatever designated squad they're in, right.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Yeah, or some people who shall like once every few
months because they have other stuff going on, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
So it's very open and you don't have to be
in a squad.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
You could just to join whenever you have the time,
with whoever week it is. So it's pretty loose, yeah,
I would sell, but it does give a good sense
of structure.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, that helps a lot. I remember one day last year,
that's winter, and I was out building shelters with an
Uzbek guy and a few Kurdish guys, and we built
these shelters and we built three of them. And afterwards,
so sitting down with some of my friends who are
also there as volunteers, and they're all anarchists too, we
(11:04):
each trust each other what we did. And then one
of them said, so what do we all learn? What
did you learn when you did that today?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Right?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I think that's a really valuable question that we should
be asking ourselves in our organizing spaces. So like from
your first distrow to now, I want to ask what
did you learn?
Speaker 5 (11:19):
I would say, we've really learned how to trust each other.
We're working on, you know, how to get consensus models,
how to split the labor between different people, how to
work with different people, and also, yeah, like I said
in the beginning, how to really how to trust each other,
which you know, we all want to see the revolution
(11:40):
happen at some point and so I feel like one
of the most important and valuable things we can be
doing is building relationships and communities with each other where
we can actually rely on each other. And so having
a mutual task really helps with that.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Yeah, And I think for me, like we've like tried
to do stuff in the past, like the and I
think the issue we've always run into was that, like
sometimes there's like a tendency to want too much structure
right away and be like, oh, if we don't have
everything planned down, we don't know how everything's going to work,
then we can't do it, and we need to figure
everything out beforehand. And we learned a lot like doing it,
(12:20):
and even like we didn't have everything figured out, like
we're still working on like our consensus structure. We're still
working on like how we're going to make like big
decisions as a group and like when the squads can
make their own decisions and when the group can make
their own decisions, and like we don't have everything figured out,
like it's very like loose, but we didn't need that,
(12:41):
and we're we've been able to do a distro for
like months and we don't have everything figured out. We
have something we had enough to get us started, and
we're like working on like slowly adding things as we
need to, without like overburdening ourselves because I think sometimes
like lots of layers and lots of company exodies can
really make it difficult to organize and adapt to what's
(13:04):
happening on the ground.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Definitely, I think, yeah, we can overcomplicate it and like
be too anxious. Talking of anxious, I'm anxious. So we
have yet to pivot to advertisements. So let's do that
and then we'll come back and we're back. Okay. So
(13:31):
you spoke about like a lot about the logistics of cooking,
which is great, but I know from experience of feeding
hungry people can be a challenge, right, and it's none
one's fault, especially when people are hungry, Like we're not
our ourselves. It's a whole advertising campaign built around that.
So how do you organize your distroage such should everybody
feels that they're being taken care of, Everybody feels safe
(13:53):
and knows that they're going to get enough to eat.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah, Well, that also goes back to something more we.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
Learned is we try to have enough people at the
distro so we can have different people doing different things,
and sometimes that means one person is just walking around
talking to people, de escalating a situation if needs be.
And then we also figured out that at the end
when we run out of food in order, but people
who have been waiting in line don't get mad, which
(14:21):
it's understandable, you know, they've been waiting in line and
there's no more food than they're hungry.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:24):
Of course, we try to have like different snacks and
like muffins or granola bars and water just to hand
out at the end for those people who still need something.
And so sometimes we have music and we all just
try to bring a good energy and so far nothing
that we haven't been able to handle.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
How to happen.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, I know. We we found
the music was really helpful and we were disributing food
when really big groups at the border like play some
music or have a friend who plays music plays some music,
and then we'd always ask folks from the group who
we were feeding to volunteer to help us in that. Oh,
it helped us so become language barriers and stuff.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
That's happened a couple of times as well, where people
have just stepped up and wanted to help, which has
been great.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah, it's nice and it gives us all. Like part
of what we're doing with mutual Aid isn't just meeting
material needs. It's also like the difference between solidarity and charity, right,
Like we're there because we care about you as people,
not just as like hunger mouths that we can take
off a spreadsheet like and working together is an integral
part of that. It's what distinguishes us from charity model.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
And thankfully most of the time we have enough people
that if somebody needs to step aside and have a
one on one conversation with somebody because that's what they
need in that moment, and we can do that.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, having floaters is really important.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Like we always have like two people at least two
people serving food, and then we have like a snack table,
water table usually, and then we have a section for
harm reduction that usually gets served on like another table,
and then we have like a section for clothes depending
on what we have, and people sort of like go
down the assembly line kind of like going down grabbing
their different things, and we give people like plastic bags
(16:09):
that we get from grocery stores so they can get
their things, but we also have like floaters usually so
that like if someone's like having like a medical issue,
or someone's like upset or whatever is going on, someone
can like step aside and spend some time with them.
Like the other day, we had a woman who was
(16:30):
not feeling well because of the heat, and she had
been out and she needed to sit down, so we
like grabbed one of our chairs and we sat her
down and got her some water and just like talked
to her. And we had a couple people who could
step aside and do that, and then everyone else just
could keep like feeding people without it kind of stopping things.
But she still got what she needed.
Speaker 5 (16:50):
And during that heat waves at one of the distros,
I remember you ran across and thought somebody gating because
they really were needed electrolyte. So we're lucky that we
have enough people that we get to be able.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
To do stuff like that when we need to, right
and I imagine that regularity is really important, Like people
know that you will be there and that they can
come and you will feed them. Like that builds trust,
right like, and everyone I think benefits from mittal structure
and being unhealthed. It can be really fucking hard to
find structure.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
Yes, exactly, and it's very hard to get like home
cooked food.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah, this is something I've encountered living in my cart,
Like it's hard to get healthy food. The food you
buy is shit. It's more expensive and it's less good
for you. And like these things compound over time to
have health and psychological consequences.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah, everything we cook we eat as well.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
And you know, if we're cooking or we're helping out
with sister, of course it's that's.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
A mutual and mutual aid. We can also eat it.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely something else we learned at the
border was like, especially if we're looking something that's maybe
not a cultural cuisine because we're meeting people from all
over the world. A lot of times, it's like, like
you were saying, chili and courage, it's like hot wet food, right,
Like you know that big semi liquid pan of chili
or whatever that we would cook and spaghetti and like
(18:16):
folks being like what's that, We're like, oh, do I'm
going to eat some? Do you want some?
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And like I honestly had some of the happiest moments
of last year, just like I remember one day. I've
been building yurts all day with an osbat guy, and
then we sat down and had our beans and just
like talked about our lives and it was really sweet.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I think that that is a moment of solidarity that
you don't get when you're you know, I've seen NGOs
and the US military tossing MRIs or refugees, and I
think the same thing.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Yeah, No, there shouldn't be like a line between like
you and the people that you're providing mutual aid to.
I mean, like it should You should never give someone
food that you're not willing to eat yourself. And like
if someone's hungry while we're cooking, like they can totally
eat the food that we're making too.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
It's not like cordoned off.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
Like, of course, we like, you know, we wear our
ppe and we like you know, aren't getting our hands
or whatever. But I mean because a lot of the
people who are like who do provide mutual aid and
work in mutual aid groups like, are also people who
may face houselessness or have trouble paying for groceries or something.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, Yeah, there's no separation you know
between us and them at the end.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Of the day.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, I think that's super important. So I want to
talk about the camping ban. Maybe let's take another rab break.
We'll talk about the camping them when we come back.
We are back. We are now discussing the topic which
(19:55):
I love to talk about, which is evil things that
Todd Gloria has done. Today. It could be the whole
podcast every day of the week for years, but we're
going to talk about this camping ban. For folks who
didn't listen to a camping ban episode, can you give
me like a sixty second synopsis on the camping ban
and then we can dive into what it's done.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
So basically, earlier this year, the Supreme Court overturned of
basically an ordinance that you don't have the ability to
cite or arrest somebody if there's not shelter available. But
they overturn that, so now they can, and Gavin Newsom
issue the Sleeping Order that the agencies have to clear
encampment and ordered that cities and counties do the same.
(20:41):
So now there's fourteen plus the cities in California that
do have a camping ban in place. So that's criminalizing
living outside yea.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
The existence of unhoused people is now a crime. Yeah,
so what have you seen post enforcement?
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (20:59):
So I so like work in the field of harm reduction,
So you know, I do this in my free time
because I want to do it, but I also do
it for work, which there's definitely sometimes I feel weird about,
like working for an organization and wish that I didn't
have to.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
But it's just one of those things. And I've seen.
Speaker 5 (21:17):
It's really hard and really sad because when people are
in encampment, a lot of times they build a sort
of community and family and they learn how to take
care of each other, and constantly being split up is
destroying these communities. And then they just have to travel
further and further away so that they're disconnected from not
only their community but also resources that they do have,
(21:39):
and so it's just really hard, and sometimes we lose
connections with people.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
We don't know where they went, you know, or they
end up in jail or it's been really.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
Horrible, and we're just talking about how it just seems
like people don't really care and it's crazy that this
is happening in our communities and people aren't talking about
it and aren't outraged by it.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Yeah, these bands also have like a really nasty ripple
effect because when these people got pushed out of San Diego,
then they go to other cities that don't have an
encampment band, like Cheu La Vista National City, and now
Cheu La Vista National City and other cities are advancing
their own camping bands and citing an influx from San Diego. Right,
(22:21):
so it's like creating this really awful, like just progressive
expansion of these bands.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
And one more thing I'll add is that some people
are like, oh, well, that's just going to you know,
be good, because these people are going to get into shelters,
find alternative ways of getting help. But that's not what's
happening because we have not had any more shelters. It's
really hard to get into a shelter actually, And you know,
since Newsom has been governor, we've had apparently so many
(22:53):
billions of dollars twenty four billions spent tackling.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Homelessness, and it's like, what is there to shell for it?
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Right?
Speaker 5 (23:00):
People still don't have a place to go, and even
if they do get into a shelter, a lot of
times there's so many rules and regulations that if somebody
has a high level of mental health needs and they're
not going to be able to stay there and there's
just no solutions.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, it's giving the appearance of doing something to make
homeowners right, people who they think matter happy. It's really bleak. Yeah,
let's discuss a little bit then, like this camping band,
as you say, it's forced people to other cities, Like
what do you think it does to the unhoused community?
(23:34):
Like you talked a little bit about breaking up encampments,
Like where do people end up right when their encampments
get broken up in the community, and like where do
they end up? And how can people because this is
this is nationwide, right, Yeah, Gavin Newson is being a
particularly odious turd about it, but like other people other
states are doing it too. It's something of ni San Diego,
(23:55):
for instance, people ending up in a riverbed. So can
you talk about like the risks there and then like, yeah,
the needs that it creates and how we can meet them.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
So you're right, some of them are ending up in
river beds.
Speaker 5 (24:08):
There's also like what they refer to as an island
kind of close to Old Town where a lot of
people have been going, but you know, you have to
get a rash to go there, and it's not easy
to get there.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
They don't have a lot of resources there. There's a
lot of.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
Crime that happens, and it's not the best scenario. And
other than that, they're making these safe sleeping sites which
are not actually safe, and they're kind of like concentration
camps and they're from people I've talked to actually live
in them.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
They're not good places to be yet at all.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
And it's just kind of like pushing the problem out
of you without actually doing anything or providing anything meaningful
to people.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, which is the goal. I think it is to
make poverty invisible.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
And the other thing that happens is like I live
in an area where there are a lot of encampments
and there probably would be permanent encampments if it weren't
for the band, And personally I would prefer that, because
like what happens is these people get like moved like there,
their encampment will like crop up, It'll be there for
(25:18):
like maybe a week, and then like it'll disappear, and
like I'll wake up one morning and they're gone, and
all of their stuff often gets thrown away. They lose
access to their things if they're not there to take it.
They basically can take only what they can carry on
their backs if they're lucky. If they happen to be
there when their stuff is being thrown away, they're sighted,
they could be arrested. And then usually I see sometimes
(25:42):
the same people come back, but they just had to
like go find somewhere else. So they're basically being forced
to be like migratory rather than like staying in one place,
which means that it also makes like the people who
live in neighborhoods like because I can't form relationships with
these people as much as I could before. Like I
can't know my neighbors as much because my neighbors are
(26:03):
constantly getting moved around, So like I'll like former relationship
with someone and I'll be like, you know, like I'll
be like their beer guy, and I like, you know,
like there's people that I'll know that I'll like go
buy a beer for, go get water for if I
see them and I know their name and that. But
then when with the encamp ban, they might just disappear
one day and I don't know if they got arrested.
I don't know if they've just been displaced, and that's
(26:25):
like not great for me, not great for them, not
great for literally anyone around, because it's like people are
safer if they're able to have like a stable place
to be, Like everyone is safer.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, if as stated goal is getting people off the streets,
like chasing them around the streets, isn't doing that? They
can get hot for people to find stability.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
Yeah, And you know, I've talked to people also about
the reason sometimes I don't like the term homeless is
because they're like, yes, we may not have a house,
but we make our homes, we make a community, we
make a home, and losing that sense of security, any
little bit of security they have, constantly having to move,
(27:06):
not ever feeling comfortable or safe.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
You know, that's traumatizing, taking a bad situation and making
it worse, just what the state likes to do. I
wonder like, before we finish up, a lot of people,
like I said, want to start a mutual aid thing,
do you have any advice for them? Things that you
would do if you were starting over, things that you
felt like you did well, if you wanted to start
bread buck now how would you go about it?
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Start a group chat, maybe make an Instagram where you
can post about it and find people who are also
interested in that.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Go to a local event.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
What else Luca having like a place where people can
like congregate with each other, like having a regular like
community event to meet people and get to know each
other and trust each other. I really wish that we
had started like sooner, because I think we had the
capacity to start sooner, like way beforehand. And I think
it was like the incamment ban and like Salah being
(28:02):
like we need to do this, like happening it Like
it just takes like one person being excited enough about
something and then like their comrades being like, yeah, no,
you're right, like we do need to do something. And
I think people are really afraid to be that person
to like push for something, to try to like wake
other people up or like convince other people that you
have to capacity to because I think the state can
(28:23):
be really disempowering and they make you think that you
need like a budget and you need like all of
these things to like be able to provide people like
aid or or like like mutually to provide people anything.
And like we did it with like literally just like
a couple of our members just like gave some money
that we had and that we had, like you know,
like we had like a couple hundred dollars that we
(28:44):
got from people, and then that was enough to start
and like you could literally start with like fifty bucks
and figure it out.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
Yeah, we did not come from a place of any
of us having a lot of money, so we've basically
just had to figure it out. And anybody can figure
it out, you know. I feel like our culture is
so individualized, but we do have the capacity to come
together and yeah, just take somebody being like all right,
let's do this, and you'll meet enough people who are
also interested in that, because people do want community at
(29:14):
the end of the day, and people do want.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
To help people.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah. Is there anything else you guys want to mention
before we go?
Speaker 5 (29:21):
Yeah, the only last thing I wanted to mention is
that we do have a lot of future goals of
expanding and doing more street medicine as well and expanding
to different areas.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
We're also having mobile teams where we.
Speaker 5 (29:36):
Can go out and leach people who aren't in one
location or who maybe have certain disabilities and can't walk
and get there. So we have a lot of ideas
for that, and that just takes meeting more people who
are into this and getting more funds and yes.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Yeah, so hopefully that's something we can do.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
And I just wanted to briefly mention one of our
men first did some really great research on the way
the Hillcrest Business Association is using the Encampment band to
further harm and using they're actually using like private security
to push people out so people can enjoy their night
life without having to deal with an objectionable minority that
(30:18):
wants to live however.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
It pleases.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
For fuck's sake, the quote from mister Ben Nicholas, oh
god of the Hillcrist Business Association. So they have a
initiative called Hillcrest Clean and Safe Program where they displace
people from Hillcrest for the benefit of the businesses.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
And they have like if you go on.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
A Voice of San Die you can hear some like
just the way they talk about these people is really
insane and really dehumanizing, and it kind of notes how
business is, how like capitalism in the state are working
together hand in hand to displace our community members. So
the business associations and the businesses themselves are being empowered
(31:05):
by these encampment bands to further repetuate violence on people jeces.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
Yet, Yeah, and on that topic, the way that people
actually are dressing it here is making it so much worse.
Like San Diego has a hot team which is part
of the police department.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
It's called the Homeless Outreach Team.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
And they're supposedly supposed to help get people into shelters
and stuff like that. But anybody I've talked to who
have tried to reach out for them and ask, you know, okay,
if you're going to move me, like I need to
get into a shelter. One of them who I was
talking to about this was in his seventies and very
medically vulnerable, and instead of helping them find somewhere to go,
they just put his car which he was sleeping in
(31:45):
because it was unregistered, and so they're not actually helping
at all.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
It's just a cop.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
And that's why, you know, just us regular people have
to do something because the state's not going to.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, I think that's a great thing. That's the fucking
doc about I hip GRASPAS is association for people who
aren't familiar with San Diego San Diego is like lgbt
q A. A neighborhood is called Hillcrest. One in three of
our trandth youth are run housed and like I guess
they don't manage to the Hillcrest Business Association. Not surprising
but just fucked up. Where can people if they want
(32:17):
to support you, they want to follow you, if they
want to come out and do food distro, where can
they find you on the internet?
Speaker 4 (32:23):
Yeah, they can find us on Instagram. Our instagram is
bread Block Underscore Distro if you want to provide like
direct funds. Bread Underscore Block is our Venmo.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Block with a CE not o k b l o
c oh.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah yeah b l oc like block.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah. We are anarchists, so yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
And I also wanted to mention a couple of comrades
of ours are facing housessness themselves and there's a mutual
aid post on our Instagram and you can also find
them at ruster dot music that's our u s t
Er music or their Venmo is also in a post
on our page. They could really use some help because
(33:06):
they are really big individuals who like show up all
the time and help us cook and our a big
part of our group and you know also could use
some mutual aid, yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
People to help them. Thank you so much for your time, guys.
Thank you for doing all that important work, and thank
you for sharing it with us. If people have questions,
they can reach out to you, right, Yes.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yes, of course. Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, thank you so much. It's much appreciated.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
It can happen here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
You can now find sources for it could Happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Thanks for listening.
Al Zone Media.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to you can happen here exchange today.
And I'm joined by Luca and Sailor. They're both from Breadlock,
which is a mutual aid group in San Diego. How
are you doing today?
Speaker 3 (00:16):
We're doing great, great.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
How are you wonderful?
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Yeah, I'm thriving. I've just received my seventy fifth COVID
booster I think, I think, so having a little miserable day,
but that's okay, not going to get novel coronavirus, which
is always nice. So can you guys start out by
maybe explaining, well, what Breadblock does, how long it's done it,
and why it does it.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
Yeah, So we are a mutual aid group. We mostly
provide hot food. That's like the core of our services.
We feed about one hundred people like like eighty to
one hundred people depending on the day weekly in East
Village in San Diego. We also clothing and harm reduction
(01:02):
supplies and other things like tampons and plan b when
we can get our hands on it, and we try
to be we are there like at the same time
every day. I will not say the exact location, but
if you are interested in getting involved, you can always
reach out and that's like what we're doing right now,
(01:24):
and that happens weekly and sale am I missing anything?
Speaker 5 (01:28):
Yeah, So this form of what we're doing with bread
block in a more organized way has We've only been
doing it a few months. However, Initially we started doing
it in twenty twenty one when I started getting into
harm reduction stuff and I was working at a strange
exchange and realized a lot of people would be asking
(01:49):
for food and we weren't getting that out there, and
so that's why the initial idea came about. And then
we just had enough people who were willing to do
it in a weekly so that's how we chose that
location and got started doing that. There's just a lot
of people down there on those nights, so.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
It's time to happen at the same time that a
harm reduction services happen the Needle Exchange, So it's at
a time when a lot of people are down there
and the amount of time are like collective doing this
specific thing as exist is. I believe since end of
March early April is how long we've been like consistently
providing services every week.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yeah, that's great, that's a long time. So especially through
like summer can be a difficult time if you don't
have a house in San Diego, Like it gets increasingly,
it gets very hot, and particularly the streets themselves get hot,
and that becomes dangerous for people.
Speaker 3 (02:42):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
So I want to start with like, at some point, right,
say that you were doing a syringe exchange and you
are like, these people need to be fed. They are hungry,
and now we're here and you're feeding them every week, right,
But you had to do a whole lot of things
in between here and there. And like, I know this
because listeners email me all the time. So many people
want to do that too, and it might not exist
(03:06):
where they are. They might not know. So, like, can
you explain how you went about like seeing a need
and then organizing to meet that need?
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Yeah, so I guess what came before that was we
had already built relationships with each other around our leftist
ideals and art and protesting and different stuff.
Speaker 3 (03:28):
So we already knew a lot.
Speaker 5 (03:30):
Of people who who were interested in mutual aid and
that capacity. Yeah, but I will say things like Instagram
have helped just meet more people who are looking to
get involved in mutual aid.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (03:44):
Yeah, Like Saylah said, we had like had spent some
time building community with each other and getting a core
group of people that trust each other, that had gone
to protests together, that were maybe in like affinity groups
already with each other, and then there was just sort
of like enough of us that were in community with
each other at the time that when Sala was like,
(04:06):
the encampment ban is like really making things so much
worse for people in communities and we really need to
do something, we were like, all just like it just
happened because we were all sitting in a room together
one night after a like social event, and Sala was like,
we need to talk about this, and we were like, okay, yeah,
we like need to do this, and we had enough
(04:27):
people where we could pull together a first distro and
then a second and then gradually adding like more organizations
so that we could continue doing it sustainably over time.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
Yeah. Yeah, that's like I want to be opinion the
camping ban, because the camping ban is making things worse
for people who are already having a hard time just
surviving here, and it fucking sucks and it's tog glorious fault.
You shouldn't bothe Yeah, let's talk about though, Like I
want to get into nuts and bolts, right, feeing one
hundred people? Right, you need to and ass pad, you
need loads of food, you need a place where you
(05:03):
can cook. How did you identify all those things and
how did you get to a place where you could
regularly have those things?
Speaker 5 (05:12):
So in twenty twenty one, when I had initially started
this with kind of a different group of people, but
there were definitely over us, we just did it and
like used my mom's kitchen and found some big pops
and just made it happen. And I feel like, if
you have the will to make it happen, you're going
to figure it out. And you know, maybe in the
(05:32):
beginning it was a lot more chaotic, which you know,
we are anarchists, so we're okay.
Speaker 3 (05:37):
With the chaos.
Speaker 5 (05:38):
But it just after doing it a week after week,
it just became more streamlined. And you know, we just
buy a lot of essential bulk food and we have
a few giant pops.
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Yeah, we like to make soup a lot.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:57):
Currently our kitchen is like like our cooking equipment includes
two large pots and a rice cooker that someone recently
donated to us. And then we needed a fridge, so
we got a free fridge off offer up and cleaned
it up and put some cool stickers on it and
then plugged it into a garage. Currently, the kitchen that
(06:18):
we use is like a couple of us just like
live together, and so we use our kitchen and we
have access to our garage and we just stored the
supplies in the garage. We stored the fridge in the garage,
and we make it work through donations we get on Instagram.
So we knew some comrades that work with the community fridges.
(06:41):
There's like some community fridges in San Diego, and so
they already had a relationship with a grocery store and
so we were able to hop in on that and
we get some donations from that. We get some donations
from What's sale the group.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Oh Orchporchlight.
Speaker 5 (07:00):
Yeah, and there's so much food waste that I feel
like if we were to find the right people, we
could be fully self supporting on just things that would
be thrown away alone.
Speaker 2 (07:10):
Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
Yeah, we just have to meet the right people in
order to do that. But we're getting there. Yeah, And
I do want to say the kitchen is a small
slash regular sized kitchen, so you don't have to have
some big, crazy warehouse typed kitchen to make this happen.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
Yeah, and then you're feeding people right likeuman you're doing
it like in the afternoon or evening. Have you found
there are things that you said you like soup, but
I know, like we fed a lot of people at
the border last winter, right, and we found out that
like certain things work, certain things didn't work, and we
always tried to keep it vegan because of people's religious
(07:45):
needs preferences. Right, is there anything like that that you
found that works or doesn't work.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
We have done a lot of chili with our squad,
and I know that Luca has done a lot of curry.
So there are certain things and they can both be
easily made vegan. Initially, a lot of people when we
would have vegan stuff would ask for me alternatives, to
which I understand people, you know, they don't always have
access to protein, So we tried out both options when
(08:12):
we can.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
Nice.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
Yeah, it varies what we have because our group kind
of functions with for like autonomous squads, like well semi
autonomous that take turns doing the distress so that you're
only really responsible for it once a month, which helps
reduce burnout.
Speaker 2 (08:30):
Yeah, definitely, how does that work? Explain how you came
up with that and how it's organized.
Speaker 4 (08:36):
Yeah, So this was kind of like something we've been
talking about for a while. Some of us are like
more into the theory than others, but we're just kind
of talking about, like, oh, well, like how do we
get more people involved, because I think what happens oftentimes
with these mutual aid groups is there's like a lot
of people sitting in a group chat and there's like
a small core of people who do end up doing
(08:58):
the majority of the labor, and that often results in
burnout for those people and building a resentment between like
the people who are doing a lot and the other
people because I think also like sometimes people feel left
out and they don't feel like they can get involved,
and then they feel like the people who are doing
the core of the labor are like in charge and
they have to defer to them, which creates a lot
(09:19):
of problems, which I'm not saying like we don't have
any of those problems, Like we're still trying to work
out the kinks, but the squads sort of like dynamic
makes it so that groups of about like five to
ten because a distro you need about like six people
to make it happen, so about five to ten people
(09:39):
take turns, so you just rotate, so you know when
your day is. It's once a month that you are
responsible for the distro and you are responsible for choosing
the food that you're cooking, making sure it gets cooked,
organizing with your other comrades, getting the donations, all of
that stuff. But you can always ask the larger group
for help or extra hands if you need it. Yeah,
(10:01):
But it sort of shares that like responsibility because I
think the most stressful part oftentimes is like, oh, the
distro happening tonight is on me and I and if
I don't do it, it's not going to happen. Yeah,
And so it sort of spreads like that sort of labor.
But we have members who like show up to every
single distro because they want to, and that's totally fine,
(10:21):
even if they're in like whatever designated squad they're in, right.
Speaker 5 (10:25):
Yeah, or some people who shall like once every few
months because they have other stuff going on, you know.
Speaker 3 (10:30):
So it's very open and you don't have to be
in a squad.
Speaker 5 (10:33):
You could just to join whenever you have the time,
with whoever week it is. So it's pretty loose, yeah,
I would sell, but it does give a good sense
of structure.
Speaker 2 (10:42):
Yeah, that helps a lot. I remember one day last year,
that's winter, and I was out building shelters with an
Uzbek guy and a few Kurdish guys, and we built
these shelters and we built three of them. And afterwards,
so sitting down with some of my friends who are
also there as volunteers, and they're all anarchists too, we
(11:04):
each trust each other what we did. And then one
of them said, so what do we all learn? What
did you learn when you did that today?
Speaker 3 (11:09):
Right?
Speaker 2 (11:10):
I think that's a really valuable question that we should
be asking ourselves in our organizing spaces. So like from
your first distrow to now, I want to ask what
did you learn?
Speaker 5 (11:19):
I would say, we've really learned how to trust each other.
We're working on, you know, how to get consensus models,
how to split the labor between different people, how to
work with different people, and also, yeah, like I said
in the beginning, how to really how to trust each other,
which you know, we all want to see the revolution
(11:40):
happen at some point and so I feel like one
of the most important and valuable things we can be
doing is building relationships and communities with each other where
we can actually rely on each other. And so having
a mutual task really helps with that.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:55):
Yeah, And I think for me, like we've like tried
to do stuff in the past, like the and I
think the issue we've always run into was that, like
sometimes there's like a tendency to want too much structure
right away and be like, oh, if we don't have
everything planned down, we don't know how everything's going to work,
then we can't do it, and we need to figure
everything out beforehand. And we learned a lot like doing it,
(12:20):
and even like we didn't have everything figured out, like
we're still working on like our consensus structure. We're still
working on like how we're going to make like big
decisions as a group and like when the squads can
make their own decisions and when the group can make
their own decisions, and like we don't have everything figured out,
like it's very like loose, but we didn't need that,
(12:41):
and we're we've been able to do a distro for
like months and we don't have everything figured out. We
have something we had enough to get us started, and
we're like working on like slowly adding things as we
need to, without like overburdening ourselves because I think sometimes
like lots of layers and lots of company exodies can
really make it difficult to organize and adapt to what's
(13:04):
happening on the ground.
Speaker 2 (13:06):
Definitely, I think, yeah, we can overcomplicate it and like
be too anxious. Talking of anxious, I'm anxious. So we
have yet to pivot to advertisements. So let's do that
and then we'll come back and we're back. Okay. So
(13:31):
you spoke about like a lot about the logistics of cooking,
which is great, but I know from experience of feeding
hungry people can be a challenge, right, and it's none
one's fault, especially when people are hungry, Like we're not
our ourselves. It's a whole advertising campaign built around that.
So how do you organize your distroage such should everybody
feels that they're being taken care of, Everybody feels safe
(13:53):
and knows that they're going to get enough to eat.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah, Well, that also goes back to something more we.
Speaker 5 (14:00):
Learned is we try to have enough people at the
distro so we can have different people doing different things,
and sometimes that means one person is just walking around
talking to people, de escalating a situation if needs be.
And then we also figured out that at the end
when we run out of food in order, but people
who have been waiting in line don't get mad, which
(14:21):
it's understandable, you know, they've been waiting in line and
there's no more food than they're hungry.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (14:24):
Of course, we try to have like different snacks and
like muffins or granola bars and water just to hand
out at the end for those people who still need something.
And so sometimes we have music and we all just
try to bring a good energy and so far nothing
that we haven't been able to handle.
Speaker 3 (14:44):
How to happen.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense, I know. We we found
the music was really helpful and we were disributing food
when really big groups at the border like play some
music or have a friend who plays music plays some music,
and then we'd always ask folks from the group who
we were feeding to volunteer to help us in that. Oh,
it helped us so become language barriers and stuff.
Speaker 5 (15:07):
That's happened a couple of times as well, where people
have just stepped up and wanted to help, which has
been great.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Yeah, it's nice and it gives us all. Like part
of what we're doing with mutual Aid isn't just meeting
material needs. It's also like the difference between solidarity and charity, right,
Like we're there because we care about you as people,
not just as like hunger mouths that we can take
off a spreadsheet like and working together is an integral
part of that. It's what distinguishes us from charity model.
Speaker 5 (15:35):
And thankfully most of the time we have enough people
that if somebody needs to step aside and have a
one on one conversation with somebody because that's what they
need in that moment, and we can do that.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Yeah, having floaters is really important.
Speaker 4 (15:47):
Like we always have like two people at least two
people serving food, and then we have like a snack table,
water table usually, and then we have a section for
harm reduction that usually gets served on like another table,
and then we have like a section for clothes depending
on what we have, and people sort of like go
down the assembly line kind of like going down grabbing
their different things, and we give people like plastic bags
(16:09):
that we get from grocery stores so they can get
their things, but we also have like floaters usually so
that like if someone's like having like a medical issue,
or someone's like upset or whatever is going on, someone
can like step aside and spend some time with them.
Like the other day, we had a woman who was
(16:30):
not feeling well because of the heat, and she had
been out and she needed to sit down, so we
like grabbed one of our chairs and we sat her
down and got her some water and just like talked
to her. And we had a couple people who could
step aside and do that, and then everyone else just
could keep like feeding people without it kind of stopping things.
But she still got what she needed.
Speaker 5 (16:50):
And during that heat waves at one of the distros,
I remember you ran across and thought somebody gating because
they really were needed electrolyte. So we're lucky that we
have enough people that we get to be able.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
To do stuff like that when we need to, right
and I imagine that regularity is really important, Like people
know that you will be there and that they can
come and you will feed them. Like that builds trust,
right like, and everyone I think benefits from mittal structure
and being unhealthed. It can be really fucking hard to
find structure.
Speaker 5 (17:22):
Yes, exactly, and it's very hard to get like home
cooked food.
Speaker 2 (17:28):
Yeah, this is something I've encountered living in my cart,
Like it's hard to get healthy food. The food you
buy is shit. It's more expensive and it's less good
for you. And like these things compound over time to
have health and psychological consequences.
Speaker 3 (17:45):
Yeah, everything we cook we eat as well.
Speaker 5 (17:48):
And you know, if we're cooking or we're helping out
with sister, of course it's that's.
Speaker 3 (17:51):
A mutual and mutual aid. We can also eat it.
Speaker 2 (17:53):
Yeah. Yeah, that's definitely something else we learned at the
border was like, especially if we're looking something that's maybe
not a cultural cuisine because we're meeting people from all
over the world. A lot of times, it's like, like
you were saying, chili and courage, it's like hot wet food, right,
Like you know that big semi liquid pan of chili
or whatever that we would cook and spaghetti and like
(18:16):
folks being like what's that, We're like, oh, do I'm
going to eat some? Do you want some?
Speaker 1 (18:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (18:20):
And like I honestly had some of the happiest moments
of last year, just like I remember one day. I've
been building yurts all day with an osbat guy, and
then we sat down and had our beans and just
like talked about our lives and it was really sweet.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I think that that is a moment of solidarity that
you don't get when you're you know, I've seen NGOs
and the US military tossing MRIs or refugees, and I
think the same thing.
Speaker 3 (18:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:46):
Yeah, No, there shouldn't be like a line between like
you and the people that you're providing mutual aid to.
I mean, like it should You should never give someone
food that you're not willing to eat yourself. And like
if someone's hungry while we're cooking, like they can totally
eat the food that we're making too.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
It's not like cordoned off.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (19:08):
Like, of course, we like, you know, we wear our
ppe and we like you know, aren't getting our hands
or whatever. But I mean because a lot of the
people who are like who do provide mutual aid and
work in mutual aid groups like, are also people who
may face houselessness or have trouble paying for groceries or something.
Speaker 5 (19:28):
Yeah, yeah, for sure, Yeah, there's no separation you know
between us and them at the end.
Speaker 3 (19:33):
Of the day.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
Yeah, I think that's super important. So I want to
talk about the camping ban. Maybe let's take another rab break.
We'll talk about the camping them when we come back.
We are back. We are now discussing the topic which
(19:55):
I love to talk about, which is evil things that
Todd Gloria has done. Today. It could be the whole
podcast every day of the week for years, but we're
going to talk about this camping ban. For folks who
didn't listen to a camping ban episode, can you give
me like a sixty second synopsis on the camping ban
and then we can dive into what it's done.
Speaker 3 (20:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (20:16):
So basically, earlier this year, the Supreme Court overturned of
basically an ordinance that you don't have the ability to
cite or arrest somebody if there's not shelter available. But
they overturn that, so now they can, and Gavin Newsom
issue the Sleeping Order that the agencies have to clear
encampment and ordered that cities and counties do the same.
(20:41):
So now there's fourteen plus the cities in California that
do have a camping ban in place. So that's criminalizing
living outside yea.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
The existence of unhoused people is now a crime. Yeah,
so what have you seen post enforcement?
Speaker 3 (20:59):
Yeah?
Speaker 5 (20:59):
So I so like work in the field of harm reduction,
So you know, I do this in my free time
because I want to do it, but I also do
it for work, which there's definitely sometimes I feel weird about,
like working for an organization and wish that I didn't
have to.
Speaker 3 (21:14):
But it's just one of those things. And I've seen.
Speaker 5 (21:17):
It's really hard and really sad because when people are
in encampment, a lot of times they build a sort
of community and family and they learn how to take
care of each other, and constantly being split up is
destroying these communities. And then they just have to travel
further and further away so that they're disconnected from not
only their community but also resources that they do have,
(21:39):
and so it's just really hard, and sometimes we lose
connections with people.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
We don't know where they went, you know, or they
end up in jail or it's been really.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
Horrible, and we're just talking about how it just seems
like people don't really care and it's crazy that this
is happening in our communities and people aren't talking about
it and aren't outraged by it.
Speaker 2 (21:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (22:00):
Yeah, these bands also have like a really nasty ripple
effect because when these people got pushed out of San Diego,
then they go to other cities that don't have an
encampment band, like Cheu La Vista National City, and now
Cheu La Vista National City and other cities are advancing
their own camping bands and citing an influx from San Diego. Right,
(22:21):
so it's like creating this really awful, like just progressive
expansion of these bands.
Speaker 3 (22:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
And one more thing I'll add is that some people
are like, oh, well, that's just going to you know,
be good, because these people are going to get into shelters,
find alternative ways of getting help. But that's not what's
happening because we have not had any more shelters. It's
really hard to get into a shelter actually, And you know,
since Newsom has been governor, we've had apparently so many
(22:53):
billions of dollars twenty four billions spent tackling.
Speaker 3 (22:56):
Homelessness, and it's like, what is there to shell for it?
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Right?
Speaker 5 (23:00):
People still don't have a place to go, and even
if they do get into a shelter, a lot of
times there's so many rules and regulations that if somebody
has a high level of mental health needs and they're
not going to be able to stay there and there's
just no solutions.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, it's giving the appearance of doing something to make
homeowners right, people who they think matter happy. It's really bleak. Yeah,
let's discuss a little bit then, like this camping band,
as you say, it's forced people to other cities, Like
what do you think it does to the unhoused community?
(23:34):
Like you talked a little bit about breaking up encampments,
Like where do people end up right when their encampments
get broken up in the community, and like where do
they end up? And how can people because this is
this is nationwide, right, Yeah, Gavin Newson is being a
particularly odious turd about it, but like other people other
states are doing it too. It's something of ni San Diego,
(23:55):
for instance, people ending up in a riverbed. So can
you talk about like the risks there and then like, yeah,
the needs that it creates and how we can meet them.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
So you're right, some of them are ending up in
river beds.
Speaker 5 (24:08):
There's also like what they refer to as an island
kind of close to Old Town where a lot of
people have been going, but you know, you have to
get a rash to go there, and it's not easy
to get there.
Speaker 3 (24:19):
They don't have a lot of resources there. There's a
lot of.
Speaker 5 (24:23):
Crime that happens, and it's not the best scenario. And
other than that, they're making these safe sleeping sites which
are not actually safe, and they're kind of like concentration
camps and they're from people I've talked to actually live
in them.
Speaker 3 (24:39):
They're not good places to be yet at all.
Speaker 5 (24:43):
And it's just kind of like pushing the problem out
of you without actually doing anything or providing anything meaningful
to people.
Speaker 2 (24:50):
Yeah, which is the goal. I think it is to
make poverty invisible.
Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (24:57):
And the other thing that happens is like I live
in an area where there are a lot of encampments
and there probably would be permanent encampments if it weren't
for the band, And personally I would prefer that, because
like what happens is these people get like moved like there,
their encampment will like crop up, It'll be there for
(25:18):
like maybe a week, and then like it'll disappear, and
like I'll wake up one morning and they're gone, and
all of their stuff often gets thrown away. They lose
access to their things if they're not there to take it.
They basically can take only what they can carry on
their backs if they're lucky. If they happen to be
there when their stuff is being thrown away, they're sighted,
they could be arrested. And then usually I see sometimes
(25:42):
the same people come back, but they just had to
like go find somewhere else. So they're basically being forced
to be like migratory rather than like staying in one place,
which means that it also makes like the people who
live in neighborhoods like because I can't form relationships with
these people as much as I could before. Like I
can't know my neighbors as much because my neighbors are
(26:03):
constantly getting moved around, So like I'll like former relationship
with someone and I'll be like, you know, like I'll
be like their beer guy, and I like, you know,
like there's people that I'll know that I'll like go
buy a beer for, go get water for if I
see them and I know their name and that. But
then when with the encamp ban, they might just disappear
one day and I don't know if they got arrested.
I don't know if they've just been displaced, and that's
(26:25):
like not great for me, not great for them, not
great for literally anyone around, because it's like people are
safer if they're able to have like a stable place
to be, Like everyone is safer.
Speaker 3 (26:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Yeah, if as stated goal is getting people off the streets,
like chasing them around the streets, isn't doing that? They
can get hot for people to find stability.
Speaker 5 (26:46):
Yeah, And you know, I've talked to people also about
the reason sometimes I don't like the term homeless is
because they're like, yes, we may not have a house,
but we make our homes, we make a community, we
make a home, and losing that sense of security, any
little bit of security they have, constantly having to move,
(27:06):
not ever feeling comfortable or safe.
Speaker 2 (27:09):
You know, that's traumatizing, taking a bad situation and making
it worse, just what the state likes to do. I
wonder like, before we finish up, a lot of people,
like I said, want to start a mutual aid thing,
do you have any advice for them? Things that you
would do if you were starting over, things that you
felt like you did well, if you wanted to start
bread buck now how would you go about it?
Speaker 5 (27:32):
Start a group chat, maybe make an Instagram where you
can post about it and find people who are also
interested in that.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
Go to a local event.
Speaker 4 (27:41):
What else Luca having like a place where people can
like congregate with each other, like having a regular like
community event to meet people and get to know each
other and trust each other. I really wish that we
had started like sooner, because I think we had the
capacity to start sooner, like way beforehand. And I think
it was like the incamment ban and like Salah being
(28:02):
like we need to do this, like happening it Like
it just takes like one person being excited enough about
something and then like their comrades being like, yeah, no,
you're right, like we do need to do something. And
I think people are really afraid to be that person
to like push for something, to try to like wake
other people up or like convince other people that you
have to capacity to because I think the state can
(28:23):
be really disempowering and they make you think that you
need like a budget and you need like all of
these things to like be able to provide people like
aid or or like like mutually to provide people anything.
And like we did it with like literally just like
a couple of our members just like gave some money
that we had and that we had, like you know,
like we had like a couple hundred dollars that we
(28:44):
got from people, and then that was enough to start
and like you could literally start with like fifty bucks
and figure it out.
Speaker 3 (28:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (28:52):
Yeah, we did not come from a place of any
of us having a lot of money, so we've basically
just had to figure it out. And anybody can figure
it out, you know. I feel like our culture is
so individualized, but we do have the capacity to come
together and yeah, just take somebody being like all right,
let's do this, and you'll meet enough people who are
also interested in that, because people do want community at
(29:14):
the end of the day, and people do want.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
To help people.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
Yeah. Is there anything else you guys want to mention
before we go?
Speaker 5 (29:21):
Yeah, the only last thing I wanted to mention is
that we do have a lot of future goals of
expanding and doing more street medicine as well and expanding
to different areas.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
We're also having mobile teams where we.
Speaker 5 (29:36):
Can go out and leach people who aren't in one
location or who maybe have certain disabilities and can't walk
and get there. So we have a lot of ideas
for that, and that just takes meeting more people who
are into this and getting more funds and yes.
Speaker 3 (29:53):
Yeah, so hopefully that's something we can do.
Speaker 4 (29:57):
And I just wanted to briefly mention one of our
men first did some really great research on the way
the Hillcrest Business Association is using the Encampment band to
further harm and using they're actually using like private security
to push people out so people can enjoy their night
life without having to deal with an objectionable minority that
(30:18):
wants to live however.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
It pleases.
Speaker 4 (30:22):
For fuck's sake, the quote from mister Ben Nicholas, oh
god of the Hillcrist Business Association. So they have a
initiative called Hillcrest Clean and Safe Program where they displace
people from Hillcrest for the benefit of the businesses.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
And they have like if you go on.
Speaker 4 (30:43):
A Voice of San Die you can hear some like
just the way they talk about these people is really
insane and really dehumanizing, and it kind of notes how
business is, how like capitalism in the state are working
together hand in hand to displace our community members. So
the business associations and the businesses themselves are being empowered
(31:05):
by these encampment bands to further repetuate violence on people jeces.
Speaker 5 (31:11):
Yet, Yeah, and on that topic, the way that people
actually are dressing it here is making it so much worse.
Like San Diego has a hot team which is part
of the police department.
Speaker 3 (31:23):
It's called the Homeless Outreach Team.
Speaker 5 (31:25):
And they're supposedly supposed to help get people into shelters
and stuff like that. But anybody I've talked to who
have tried to reach out for them and ask, you know, okay,
if you're going to move me, like I need to
get into a shelter. One of them who I was
talking to about this was in his seventies and very
medically vulnerable, and instead of helping them find somewhere to go,
they just put his car which he was sleeping in
(31:45):
because it was unregistered, and so they're not actually helping
at all.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
It's just a cop.
Speaker 5 (31:49):
And that's why, you know, just us regular people have
to do something because the state's not going to.
Speaker 2 (31:55):
Yeah, I think that's a great thing. That's the fucking
doc about I hip GRASPAS is association for people who
aren't familiar with San Diego San Diego is like lgbt
q A. A neighborhood is called Hillcrest. One in three of
our trandth youth are run housed and like I guess
they don't manage to the Hillcrest Business Association. Not surprising
but just fucked up. Where can people if they want
(32:17):
to support you, they want to follow you, if they
want to come out and do food distro, where can
they find you on the internet?
Speaker 4 (32:23):
Yeah, they can find us on Instagram. Our instagram is
bread Block Underscore Distro if you want to provide like
direct funds. Bread Underscore Block is our Venmo.
Speaker 3 (32:34):
Block with a CE not o k b l o
c oh.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
Yeah yeah b l oc like block.
Speaker 3 (32:41):
Yeah. We are anarchists, so yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
And I also wanted to mention a couple of comrades
of ours are facing housessness themselves and there's a mutual
aid post on our Instagram and you can also find
them at ruster dot music that's our u s t
Er music or their Venmo is also in a post
on our page. They could really use some help because
(33:06):
they are really big individuals who like show up all
the time and help us cook and our a big
part of our group and you know also could use
some mutual aid, yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
People to help them. Thank you so much for your time, guys.
Thank you for doing all that important work, and thank
you for sharing it with us. If people have questions,
they can reach out to you, right, Yes.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
Yes, of course. Thank you so much for having us.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, thank you so much. It's much appreciated.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
It can happen here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (33:50):
You can now find sources for it could Happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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