January 27, 2023 • 44 mins
In the late 1800s, many big cities used laws against "ugliness" to cleanse the streets of the disabled, the poor, and the homeless. Fast forward to today, and in the middle of a deepening housing crisis and extreme weather, cities are breaking up encampments and passing new laws to target the most vulnerable. On this episode of It Could Happen Here, guest hosted by It's Going Down, we speak with former squatters, activists resisting sweeps, and houseless folks facing down eviction - to find out how people are pushing back against displacement.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome back once again. This is the crew from It's
Going Down, squatting the air waves of it could happen here.
On today's show, we're going to look at the growing
crisis around homelessness and how the state has moved to
address it with brutal sweeps and new laws that target
the poor. In the wake of the global COVID nineteen pandemic,
(00:25):
the US housing crisis deepened and homelessness grew Following the
George Floyd rebellion. Republicans pointed to a rising murderate during
the election cycle, along with growing encampments of the houseless,
as examples of rampant democratic mismanagement and the supposed in
result of defunding the police. In reality, two years after
(00:46):
the uprising, both funding for the police has only increased
along with the number of people killed per year by
law enforcement, while growing police budgets have had no impact
on crime. Meanwhile, both party have embraced a draconian crackdown
on the houseless as a slew of new laws targets
sleeping outside and police move against encampments even in the
(01:09):
midst of extreme weather. But a new wave of resistance
is awesome materializing as communities mobilized to provide mutual aid,
fight for access to housing, and resist sweeps of encampments.
On today's episode, we investigate the history of these struggles
and how these tactics, ranging from squatting to a canmet defense,
are spreading across the social terrain as the current crisis deepens,
(01:32):
can more people find themselves out in the cold. But
to kick things off, let's talk about state strategy. Just
why are they carrying out these sweeps? I think one
of the first thing that comes to mind for me
is how this behavior from like the Democrats or like
liberals or progressives isn't an anomaly that they are you know,
that their role is facilitating a capitalist state, just with
(01:55):
slightly different tactics than the Republicans. But basically they're trying
to do that they're doing, which is basically demonizing unhoused
people and sort of pushes the blame of um, what's
going on, of the failings basically of our culture onto
these individuals that are unhoused, rather than on their failures
(02:16):
as like mayors of democratic cities or whatever. UM and
the kind of logical outcome of class based capitalists extract
of society and when they can just make it that
instead of it being like a social problem that people
around house, they can make it these bad homeless people
and they're dirty and crime or whatever, and just kind
(02:37):
of trying eliminate that to protect their image. But I
think it's just a way of scapegoating a built in
problem with how they operate. And actually it's something that
makes me think, especially thinking about San Francisco in terms
of like precedence for this. It makes me think about
the Ugly Laws, which, for anyone who doesn't know, that
was something kind of in the eight hundred San Francisco
implemented in eighteen sixty seven, which was a law or
(03:00):
forbidding people who were kind of like unsightly. According to
this law, um to not be seen in the streets.
So if people were physically disabled or they were begging
or even limping, there were laws targeting them. And part
of it even says that anything that's triggering like disgust
or guilt like to not be seen. And I feel
like it's a really similar thing that's happening now, and
(03:21):
so yeah, progressive that they do this. I'm glad that
you brought up able is M because I think that
this ties in real role well into that. So we
live in essentially like an extremely able society that says
if you don't work, you die. And I think criminalizing
homeless people is a huge part of that. I mean,
really think about it. We have to rent our bodies
(03:41):
to corporations so we can get money to pay rent
to landlords. Essentially we're being paid at tax to live.
But how do you enforce people? How else can we
get people to do the drudgery that we have to
do at work if you don't like show them the
consequences of that. So like if they were nice to
hold with people, if they were oh, here's a free home,
they not create the presidents of like, oh you cannot
(04:04):
work and have a home, So like they don't want
to do that. So I mean, I think one thing
that people don't talk about, like homelessness is existing. I
think it's like a way to like scare us into
essentially doing these things that we don't want to do
to live, because you're constantly reminding us of like, oh
you want to quiet Quinn, you want to go on
a strike, this is what your life could be. You're
(04:24):
gonna be homeless. And not only that, we're gonna make
it so that you can't exist as a homeless person
in this society because if people like, if you go
to New York right now, all these brunchy folks they
eat on the sidewalk, they have all these like houses
build up on the sidewalk, people drinking mimosas, But you
can't have a tan. But what are these makeshift things?
So I mean it goes to show you like it's
not even like the idea of taking public space. It's like,
(04:46):
who's taking public space? And if it's somebody who's not
serving capitalism, you can't take up public space. The housing question.
To really understand the connection with democrats and capitalists understandings
of housing, we have to think about housing, property, structure, space, right,
how capitalism structures space. And so you know, when I
was thinking about this before we're recording, I keep going
(05:07):
back to um James Scott Seeing Like a State, which is,
you know, an amazing book. If people haven't read it,
absolutely pick up a copy. But in the first, you know,
couple of chapters, one of the things he talks about
his land enclosure, and he's talking about this structure specifically
in France, in which sort of towards the end of monarchism,
there was an attempt to actually create a tax regime
(05:28):
where individuals were taxed, and to do that, individuals had
to exist legally, but they didn't at that point. They
existed as communities within feudalism. They pay taxes as communities
that held land as communities. When the French government went
to these towns to figure out who owned what, but
they found was that every single community broke up their
understanding of land differently and that it wasn't really based
(05:51):
on ownership, is based on use. And so they had
to standardize all of that. To do that, they had
to fragment the comments. They had to sit there and go,
you owned this piece of land, and you own this
piece of planned. They did that, they made maps and
they went back two years later they realized nobody was
following the maps. But what they did was they started
charging taxes based on the maps, and so people had
to start making money on the land to pay the
(06:11):
taxes based on the maps that have nothing to do
with their lives, right, And what that was was the
creation of property. Right, because when we think about property,
you know, there's this fiction of you know, stateless capitalism, right,
you have like Murray Rothbard guying grand types. So we're
talking about capitalism can exist without the state. But really
we can see the fallacy of that when we look
at the at the question a property right, the question
(06:35):
of exclusion from property or exclusion from space. Um. Not
only is it fragmenting public space, but we start to
look at um the way that all of a sudden
property has to exist. Right. And so in the Rust Belt,
for example, after the financial crisis, cities Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit
got all this money from the federal government to tear
houses down, and they were tearing down like fifty houses
(06:57):
a day in these cities, right for years on end.
And these are cities that have people that don't have housing.
And so you you sit there and you go, well,
why are they tearing houses down when there are people
that don't have houses, right, When there's more vacant houses
than there are people without housing, How can you justify
tearing the houses down? And the answer was, we need
(07:18):
to create a real estate market again, because if you
allow people to just squat, there's no reason to pay
for housing. If there's a reason to pay for housing,
housing seasons to be a commodity, right, Like, this is
actually the important part that capitalism has to function through
that exclusion of access. Otherwise commodities can't have the scarcity
necessary to allow them to be priced. Right. There can't
(07:40):
be a supply that is lower than in demand, for example,
unless you artificially limit supply. Right. And so when we
really see this, we can really see not just the
way that capitalism sort of atomizes us, right, creates us
as people who live in individual housing units as opposed
to as people who can see ourselves as living unities.
(08:01):
But it also really comes to highlight the relationship between
the state and the police at capital and how we
have to understand capital as a content of the state.
It is a definition of life that is imposed through
policing purity and can't exist outside of that. Right. It's
the fallacy of quote unquote anarcho capitalism, which isn't the
thing that really exists for this exact reason. Right. And
(08:22):
so when we're looking at why are democrats engaging in
techniques that involve pushing people off the streets, this is
exactly why it's a capitalist political party. They're trying to
maintain property, they're trying to maintain property value right, And
this is why you see this happen in cities where
gentrification is really horrible at a much much faster clip
than you see it in cities where there's like open
(08:45):
housing stock. That really makes me think about the beginning
of like work houses in England in the eighteen thirties
and the polar reforms, and it goes back to what
you were saying more about just that making it really
undesirable to be poor in needing a group of people
who are in that position, and the work houses was
something that were introduced by liberals, progressives, you know, like
(09:07):
this as a form of like changing the sort of
poor release system. So instead of giving people money so
they could be supported and stay with their families or whatever,
people would put into these institutions where they're separated from
their kids, from their husbands and wives or whatever. And
it's meant to be so undesirable that you would only
seek it if you was desperately needed it or whatever.
Um as a way to like save on taxes for
(09:30):
like money to people. Basically it's really sucked up and
it's like this was part of the sort of social
reform progressive like project and I think we could see
echoes of that in this The other thing that I
wanted to bring up is, like you talked about atomizing
and isolating and like how capitalism does that. One thing
that I think about specifically New York is that homeless
and campings do offer this radical idea of like what
it looks like to take back a public space and
(09:51):
to collectively like meet together, you know, And like that's
the other thing that I was thinking about last night
when I was high, this whole idea of what happens
if we just allow homeless encampments to spread and take over.
Then people who are not homeless start interacting with homeless
people as we do, like people in the city do.
Then you form these connections and these relationships, and then
it becomes perfectly normal for people to take over public spaces.
(10:14):
And then what does that mean? Then we have to
provide services in public spaces like bathrooms and showers, because
the public would start requesting and like asking for these things,
the more of a relationship they form with homeless folks.
So I think part of the cleaning, which is what
the term Eric Adams is used, which is absolutely disgusting
in terms of like moving homeless people the whole. I
think a huge part of it is also just like
(10:35):
destroying the notion that we own public spaces, like you
do not own a public space, and we want to
let you know that and we want you out. Um
so I think that really And and the additional aspect
of that too is like when you look at homeless
is in New York, like a huge chunk of it
like black people too, So there's like a racial component
of it too. When you really want to add it
for this whole idea of like black people are not
allowed to take up space, and then specifically you're homeless,
(10:56):
you're not allowed to take up public space. I wanted
to bring that in. It's like very much related to work,
but also just related to the idea that the government
owns everything and corporations own everything, including the spaces that
we exist in. Well, speaking of corporations owning everything, here's
some words from our sponsors. Across the US, in large
(11:23):
cities often controlled by Democrats, a war on the poor,
and specifically on encampments of houses people has been increasingly
ways over the past year. In San Francisco, the city's mayor,
London Breed, recently declared it was time to quote be
less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city.
An effort to ramp up police harassment of the poor
and un housed in Portland's city officials openly toyed with
(11:46):
the idea of forcing quote up to three thousand homeless
people in the massive temporary shelters staff by the Oregon
National Guard. On California, the Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has
pushed for quote courts, which threatened to place those who
do not complete state directives under involuntary hospitalization of policy,
(12:07):
which mirrors efforts already underway in New York. Bands against camping, panhandling,
sleeping in one's car have also proliferated last spring. For instance,
Tennessee made it a felony to camp on public owned land.
In Missouri, those caught sleeping on state property could now
get jail time and fines under a new law that
just went into effect on January one. Other new laws
(12:29):
outlawed campton l a next to schools and forbid houses
folks from sleeping on public transit in New York. In
the progressive bashion of Asheville, North Carolina, over a dozen
Mutual Aid organizers also now faced trumped up charges of
felony littering for supporting protest against sweeps of encampments. This
shift in many liberal cities to criminalize attack and band
(12:51):
encampments shows just how much the Democratic Party has continued
to move to the right while embracing Republicans line on
combating rising crime. Instead of mobilizing the state's forces to
house people need their most basic needs in a period
of mass pandemic and a growing housing crisis, liberal governments
across the country have instead mobilized their forces to attack
some of the most vulnerable. When you know more about
(13:13):
what's driving these ongoing attacks on the houses and how
it relates to the housing crisis itself, we sat down
with Gifford Hartman, a long time radical organizer in the
Bay Area. In a former squatter movements arise, like say
the George Floyd uprising, and there's some changes, There's some
movement towards reforms the police brutality and things like that,
(13:34):
but then there's kind of a backlash. And I think
right now we're kind of suffering through a backlash, and
I think that's kind of a pattern that happens is
there's pushback kind of penal reform, trying to ring the
pelisse in a little bit, and then the kind of
the backlash means just the police have more power, and
they have more power to really kind of brutalize on
house people. And I think we're living through that right now.
(13:56):
I think the trends go, you know, like back in
fourth and the pendulum has swung in the direction where
right now in San Francisco there's constant sweeps of tents
and how and how's people living on the streets. There's
a lot of media support given to that, and it's
kind of like, as I said, the tail lags the dog,
and then they start doing all this stuff, and the
pushback hasn't really Activism hasn't really been able to kind
(14:20):
of stand up to that and stop it or even
challenge it. Right now, at least what I see, booms
happen and property values go up and vacancies go to
almost zero, the cops cracked down harder. And I think
there have been periods, at least in my lifetime here
in the Bay Area where there's kind of a lull
and there's the bottom of the trough when maybe there's
more vacancies a little bit more wiggle room. The cops
(14:42):
quite aren't quite so brutal. But when things are peaking,
or when the economies, you know, it's dynamic kind of
high points, that's where I see the repression is the
worst because there's more people to complain. There's more people
whose you know, values are tied to property and who
are more will to push the cops to brutalize on
house people and um. But you know, right now it's
(15:05):
kind of framed because there's a lot of tech layoffs,
Yet the agenda of sweeping tens and none house people
off the streets is kind of still kind of a
rapid pace. So I don't know how much longer it
to last, but right now it's that are pretty high
point as we speak. The weather is awful and the
sweeps haven't really stopped, and there aren't enough shelter beds
(15:27):
to house although on the house folks. So it's really
a crisis. It's not only just a you know, a
human crisis, but it's a health crisis because people out
in the cold rain are more vulnerable to getting sick
and dying. And it's it should be the time where
we're doing the opposite. We're making sure everybody's housed, and
it just certainly isn't happening. Even though San Francisco the
(15:48):
merits have been Democrats, I believe since the mid sixties.
The Democrats aren't a monolith, and they're not all progressive,
and even the progressive ones aren't that good. But the
ones that are in power now, like mayor London Breed
are moderates, and um they really are more believe in
the police more, and they believe in using police for
(16:08):
social crimes. And when they're not moderate, it's a little
less bad, but it's not better, it's just less bad.
And I don't know if that really makes sense, because
I don't think there's ever been a political regime in
San Francisco that was in pro cop. You know, everybody
loves the cops. Everybody sees the cops is um ways
to enforce the social values of society, which a private
property and all that, and it just never stops. It
(16:30):
just depends how brutal they are. And again less I
said earlier, it goes through waves, and presently we're in
a brutal way, and the only alternative that is a
less brutal wave, and so my opinion, there's never a
time when the cops don't, you know, run rapid, but
just right now. But right now they're actually at the
high point that they've been in a long time. And
now we speak with Javier from the National Coalition on
(16:52):
Homelessness in San Francisco. We talked about the current wave
of attacks against house those people in big cities and
how they mirror historic attempts to policing and repressing the poor.
The income that you need to rent a two bedroom apartment,
by the city's own estimation, you need an hourly wage
of about six fifty to have an apartment like that.
(17:13):
So the income gap is becoming more evident than ever. Nowadays,
there's a nine percent increase in homelessness for every hundred
dollar increase in rents. So it's like if healthcare, housing,
education all gets more expensive but wages don't go up,
people are gonna lose their housing. Um. So I think
people need to understand and how similar we are to
(17:37):
the unhoused population, and how important it is to recognize
that we should have solidarity with each other, because if
we're fighting against each other, then guests was when the
millionaires in the building we're suing the city because when
they do these sweeps, they're taking people's belongings, which is
the legal search and sdure and cruel and unusual punishment
(17:58):
because the shelter that they're offering and a lot of
times it isn't adequate for the folks who are being sweat.
We're looking for permanent supportive haasm for folks and it's
not there. And if you're telling people that they have
to move across the street every day in the morning,
then it kind of shows, I think, a social and
(18:19):
kind of cultural understanding that mirrors the other laws people
have had in place, especially in America for a long time,
which is homeless people are not supposed to be seen
and they're supposed to be criminalized, and speaking of things
that probably shouldn't be seen again some words from our sponsors,
(18:48):
from resisting sweeps, studying up autonomous warming centers, to taking
over vacant buildings. Over the past few years, there's been
a wide array of expressions of solidarity, direct action, and
mutual aid in the face of attempts by the state
to displace and destroy the lives of houses people across
the US. But these projects and actions haven't come out
(19:09):
of nowhere, building on the radical history of groups in
the Bay Area, such as the Diggers and the White Panthers,
who set up free stores, grocery programs, and squatted buildings.
Starting in the nineteen eighties, out of the anti nuclear movement,
peace activists began sharing free vegan food in a protest
of the U. S War budget under the banner Food
not Bombs. In the late nineteen eighties, Food Not Bombs
(19:32):
in San Francisco faced over one thousand arrest for sharing
free food publicly and taking part in demonstrations. Soon, another group,
Homes Not Jails, evolved out the same scene and began
to open up and squat vacant housing, part of a
wave of other houses activist groups that sprouted nationwide following
the economic recession of the nineteen eighties. Chapters of Homes
(19:54):
Not Jail's work to open squats weekly to covertly housed people,
also organizing public housing takeovers, which thrust squatting into the
spotlight of the mass media. Again. Here's Gifford Hartman talking
about squatting. In the nine nineties. There have been a
wave of I'm really successful to squats. In the nineteen seventies.
(20:14):
One group was called the White Panthers that did it
in the Lower Hate neighborhood, and they were modeled on
the Black Panthers. So they actually squatted, but actually created
community programs for things like we distribution. They defended their squads,
they fortified their squads, and that was a tradition that
kind of preceded my period of squatting. But so there
we're both looking at the squatting in Europe but also
(20:35):
the previous generations doing it here in San Francisco. Um
I moved to the Bay Area in nineteen eight six.
I have been Berkeley for most of the beginning of
the years I was here, from the end of World
War Two in the nineteen forties. The population in San
Francisco peak in the mid twentieth century, and then it
went down. Population decreased by a hundred thousand in the
(20:56):
late eighties. There were still a lot of cracks in
the surface some housing, and there was a lot of
empty units. There's a lot of abandoned units, and there's
a lot of a lot of ability to people to
find squads, and I was part of that. And there
were various times where I either wasn't working or had
a part time job, and I chose as a political
act of squad and I began doing that in late eighties,
(21:18):
but most of my success in squatting was in their
early nineties. But then I kind of ran up against
the contradiction and groups like homesunte Jails were founded in
nineteen two. I had already been squatting UM, but then
there was another wave of repression. So in n to UM,
the former chief of police in San Francisco, Frank Jordan,
(21:39):
got elected mayor and by nine three he was doing
something called the Matrix program. And the Matrix program was
very much like what Juliani did in New York with
his zero tolerance for broken windows, which just cops would
get tough on quality of life crimes which means like
broken windows and graffiti, but it also included food, not bombs.
(22:01):
Feedings were attacked by the police, and squatters were even
myself included, were attacked and cleared out, even in a
way that was not legal. When I succeeded, we squatted covertly,
and when we didn't succeed often we were aligned with
groups like HOMESI Jails, where they were a high profile
group or a media savvy, well, media savvy might be
(22:21):
an overstatement. They were kind of had a media focus,
and the media focus was often a double edged sword.
It brought popular understanding of the conditions of the housing stock,
but also it was a way for the police to
be telegraphed exactly what we were doing in to come
down and crack down on our squads. Homes on Jails
wouldn't be the last group to take over vacant homes
(22:43):
for housing. In mid two thousand's Take Back the Land,
based out of Miami, Florida, work to block evictions and
move un housed families into foreclosed homes. In the present period,
various grassroots groups have organized to stop the sweeping of
houses and caments cruise in Olympia, Washington, and Austin, Texas.
I've been successful in organizing broad campaigns in Minneapolis groups
(23:04):
of mobilized mass numbers two at times all divictions. In
the following interview, we speak with Christian and Post from
Minnieappolis on the ongoing battle with the city government and
police to stop at tax and sweeps on their houses neighbors.
In the summer of George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police.
It raised a lot of people's awareness as to the
(23:26):
way that our systems and practices in our city aren't
really serving us UM. I think there was there was
a lot of work happening in Minneapolis in particular before
that in regard to policing and the way that our
systems do or do not serve people UM. And then
in the awareness just grew exponentially, and because that foundational
(23:49):
path had been laid already, we had something to go
with UM. And we can see the direct line between
what happened to George Floyd and to the community at
George Floyd Square and the way that that also shows
up in other spaces in our communities, such as with
our own house neighbors. We know that the majority of
(24:12):
people that are living at encampments in Minneapolis are indigenous
UM immigrant populations or UM black Americans, and so we
can see that there is you know, a specific need
and also a real um a you know, a disparity
between and a direct through line to all of the
(24:35):
oppression that that d through in the face of every
you know, I mean person with a heart. Absolutely, and
I think she started practicing a lot of mutual aid
UM more like much bigger than we ever have his historically.
In the summer, we saw lots of people getting involved
that were encampments UM throughout the city as there was
(24:59):
for some time because covid Um people were able to
stay outside and couldn't be evicted as easily UM at
that time. And we saw lots of community getting involved
and doing mutual aid UM and that really helped build
I think, UH, a movement that is, you know, sort
of beautifully disorganized in many ways because lots of people
(25:20):
from lots of different walks of life coming together and
showing up for each other. I mean, I think people
started to become aware of the way that we are
all connected to each other, and that when when we're
taking care of each other, we're all happier, we're all safer,
we're actually able to meet needs and the resources are there.
It's a matter of the will. I cannot over emphasize
(25:41):
enough how terrible the boy Mayor Fray has been since
he took power here and so called Minneapolis. You know,
he ran on ending houselessness and was in the majority
funded by developers during his campaign, and we've seen what
ending houselessness means to democrats. It basically means ending visible
(26:04):
poverty and ending the lives of houseless people. But frankly,
I mean the number of evictions over the course of
the last few years has just skyrocketed. And you know,
our so called progressive politicians love to give some money
to the nonprofit industrial complex and do their private public partnership,
and then when there are people who are quote unquote
(26:26):
resistant to service, that's the that's the phrase they love
to use. They have all of their excuses lined ups
that they can just build those people's houses and kick
them out of the roofs that are keeping them warm
and dry. And it's just been a really eye opening
thing for a lot of people, I think, to see
how our progressive quote unquote establishment here has just fully
(26:47):
committed to jack boot thuggery all in the name of
clearing the streets and making it so that people in
their kind of four story mixed use of condos can
can have a beautiful view without having to see the
poverty that that lifestyle. You know, in the summer, there
were several council at the time, council members who committed
to um defunding the police. However, that did not contro
(27:11):
fruition um. Since that time, there's been um increases in
the budget to policing in Minneapolis, no decreases, only increases
that police haven't been able to spend their whole budget,
and yet the city continues to pour more money into them.
And what we're seeing happen is unhoused people come together
to keep one another safe and also so community is
(27:33):
able to stay connected with them and you know, will
be in an encampment and then various levels of discovery
of government will come in and displace them, and so
the people don't have anywhere else to go, so they
need to move to a new space together. So what's
happening is not housing. What's happening is not even laying
(27:53):
a foundation for somebody to be able to get the
services or support that they may want or need. What's
happened ing is displacement. When somebody hears about an eviction
potentially happening, it becomes a situation that's it's almost it's
almost kind of magical that people come together and it
(28:13):
is kind of chaotic, but it always comes together and
we end up having whether it's people they're doing copwatch
or are just neighbors like we had neighbors show up
on the first day, the day that the Corey was
planned to be evicted on December UM. I can't tell
you how many different people that just live in that area.
We're coming up and asking questions, and we're appalled at
(28:36):
the response from the city because really that the Corey
encampment was in a space that you could barely see it.
You wouldn't know it was there. If you didn't know
it was there, you know. And we're talking about by
the last day, the day that it was evicted, there
were eight people there and over a hundred and fifty
police officers. It was bonkers. And that extreme response is
(28:57):
something that when you see it, can't unsee it. And
so we come together in what you know, You get
in where you fit in, with whatever skills you have,
whatever gifts you have, whatever time you have, you know,
and a lot of us show up because we are
people who have experienced other forms of trauma or have
seen and experienced other forms of oppression too. You can't
(29:17):
unsee it once you do. In the last few years,
mutual aid and autonomous disaster relief efforts have informed projects
like heat or Block, the squatting of land for people
displaced by climate change, field fires and the setting up
of autonomous warming centers in the middle of winter. In
the winter of autonomous groups across Texas also mobilized when
(29:39):
the state's electrical grid failed and hundreds of people tragically
die due to lack of heat. Autonomous groups have also
worked to directly house people in the Los Angeles area.
This has looked like House of Folks taking over homes
owned by Caltrans and various groups in the Pacific Northwest,
occupying in domaining access to hotels, and the dead of winter.
In Philadelphia, in housing activists squatted and then won the
(30:03):
keys to homes for upwards of fifty unhoused families in
the midst of the George Floyd Rebellion, and there have
been other success stories as well. In Boise, Idaho, after
months of ongoing protests by Houses Folks and their supporters,
the city was pushed to green light the building of
hundreds of housing units. In Berkeley, California, last summer, people
once again tore down the fences surrounding People's Park and
(30:25):
destroyed machines, stopping the destruction of the autonomous enclave once again.
In Sacramento, California, households. People and their supporters beat back
in eviction attempt at Camp Resolution, a parking lot which
is home to people living in their vehicles and r vs.
Here's two Camp Resolution residents, Sharon and Satara, who speak
on the deadly impact of sweeps. I think that the
(30:48):
biggest thing is like being treated inhumanely, you know what
I mean, or rudely or like you're an animals. They're
very mean to people, you know what I mean, when
they sweep you they take people stuff and just throw
it out, no don't matter if it matters to them
or you know what I mean, or you know which
you know creates mental health issues for some people, because
(31:09):
people get traumatized from stuff like that, you know what
I mean. You just coming in and the only place
that they have that they can call home or a
place of shelter, and you know, stormy times like this,
you know, they come and even now while it's raining,
and make them move and tell them, you know, they
gotta go throw their things out or you know what
I mean, make them leave without whatever they you know
(31:32):
what I mean, whatever, no matter if it's important to
them or not, you know what I mean. Like, I
think that's the most messed up part because like I
have a friend out here who who lost you know,
her child's ashes. You know what I mean, half to
half of the people that were at the we lose
contact with us. And and every time they sweep that
for another half. And they're just dimnitioning people. Where people
(31:53):
are good, where are people going? They're just disappearing. And
before the you know, people who do need like other
help with other things, help things and stuff like that,
the harm reduction people and stuff like that that come
out and you know, give people things their needs. You
know what I mean, they'll they'll they move you around,
they can't be found. People can die and people will
(32:16):
die like that all the time, especially you know when
they move us around. Sometimes we gotta go to areas
that are not necessarily safe, especially the women. You know
what I mean, women die out here all the time.
It separated. Calp Resolutions was formed because, uh, this lot
that we're on, it was part of the original sighting
plan and they spent six hundred seventeen thousand dollars on
(32:37):
this for a fence in a parking lot and promised
folks that they would that they were going to get
them into little tidy houses or trailers so they can
get back on their feet and get housing. They swept
them off the lot as soon as they were finished
with this. They just came up. They came and viciously
swept them off, as the property the other side of
the property were on and could have fend to and
(33:00):
problems with people, and they got nothing and then didn't
even want to contact them or anything, and just left
those people hanging after they signed up for all those services,
and we're denied. And my sister in law was one
of those people, and she's a quadriplegic and she's still
waiting for housing, and we weren't gonna have another winter
of her being down on the countyside in the weather,
(33:21):
in the water. So that's why we started it. And
if we're here for safety so we can get back
up on our feet, were human beings, not to mention,
like half more than half the camp, you know, the
majority of the camp. There are males that live here,
so please don't get me wrong, but this is the
camp of majority women. You know what I mean? Who
out here, who live out here, and you know a
(33:42):
lot of us, you know we're homeless, but we're not
We're not bummed, you know what I mean. Like, we're not. Um.
We have regular lives like everyone else. We have family,
we have friends, you know what. We're like. We and
we take care of each other, you know what I'm saying. Like,
And a lot of us have been campting right here
for this last for years, some of us years up
against the county ends, you know what I'm saying. But
(34:05):
for every success, sweeps remain a daily constant United States.
In many attempts to push back by houses folks and
their supporters are met with extreme resistance from law enforcement.
So I'm curious what you all think our game communities
continue to organize for change in the face of his brutality.
Something that comes to mind is just kind of more
of some things that have already been happening basically. Um.
(34:27):
And I'm thinking of Echo Park that you brought up, um.
And the Encama Park was really interesting to me because, um,
it was that that's a neighborhood in l A. And
it grew to maybe sort of two to three hundred
people living there. Um And as it went on, it
kind of like a sense of community developed pretty strongly
(34:48):
there with support from people in the neighborhood to UM
and people had set up like a garden, a community kitchen.
They were like meetings, even showers near the end. Like
UM was actually kind of thriving. I guess it's like
doing well and people are like pretty like uh politicized,
are like aware of like what's going on and talking
(35:09):
about it and sharing with each other. UM and yeah,
people coming together to resist sweeps and like threats of
sweeps of the park UM and the response to it
was one of the most like heavy handed, sort of
disproportionate seeming things that I've ever seen, where they had
been threatening the city had been threatening that they were
going to do a sweep, and they were saying they
(35:30):
were going to get everyone into housing. It's like this
humanitarian offer of secure housing to people, UM that they
came with like four hundred cops and like all the
rest of like l A p D S four forcing
the helicopters and just like everything. They blocked entrances into
Echo Park to stop supporters coming from out of the
neighborhood UM and basically yeah, evicted people, fought with people
(35:54):
resisting UM and then put a fence up very quickly,
like during this whole thing and closed the park off
and that fence is still up, and that's like and
then what is it now a year and a half
or something these years that that fence has been up.
And something I think is like interesting about this example
is I really think that the reason that response was
so heavy handed is because the very existence of it
(36:16):
was disrupting this logic of like rent and landlord in
terms of like people were reclaiming the comments, basically reclaiming
public space using it to meet their needs, and this
was incredibly threatening to the city and they needed to
shut it down and sort of turn the park back
into recreation for middle class people basically. Um. And I
(36:36):
think you know what we've talked about already, like um, Tom,
what you were talking about with like enclosure and stuff like,
I really see that these sweeps like this is such
a just a continuation of this in Echo Park um
in a really big way. And what you were saying
more about just like what happens when we challenge that
logic being the most like threatening thing to them, you know,
of just like what happens if it was just like
this home was camp survived and then another encampment, another encampment,
(36:59):
and it basically disrupts everything we know about property and
rents and everything. Anyway, So I think just more of that, Yeah,
I mean I would, Yeah, I agree with you. So
I think it's like more of what's happened. Like currently
New York there's still sweets happening, like um DTAs Department
of Home of Services puts up these like UM sweet
notices UM. And the way it works is that when
these two TEPS notices go up, like there's a group
(37:20):
of people who let each other know that sweet is
about to happen. People show up to the people who
are about to be swept. I hate that word swept.
Oh my gosh, that's so disgusting. What can we use
instead of swept um treated badly by evil air adoms?
I don't know, maybe we could do that, um. But anyway,
so like UM, so people will go and talk to
the people who are in the encampment we're going to
be swept and asked them like what type of support
would you like? Like do you want us to help
(37:41):
you us move your stuff? Do you want us to
stand you know when the cops and like so, the
sanitation department comes usually during these cleanups and like throws
away people's things. And because you don't if you don't
serve capitalism, your stuff you don't matter. So definitely your
stuff doesn't matter. One thing that has been happening is
that people have been showing up for people who are
about to be how their things drown out and either
(38:03):
moving the things for them or supporting them, or standing
in the way from in front of the police, or
like documenting it. And I think that's like a huge
way to just like show up right now if you can,
you sickly block out time on your calendar at work,
if you know something happening down the state, like this
is like something like you could do now. And I
think that's really important. Like this is solidarity that we
should show and which show up for our comrades because
(38:23):
they are on the ground of fighting for us having
housing as a human right, and that's why we should
show up for them and to support them. Another item
that I wanted to bring up, I don't know if
y'all heard about anarchy rope which happened last year, where
like s RG, which is the Strategic Response Group, showed up.
This is a counter terrorism group, y'all showed up to
get people out of an encampment in Tompkins Square, which
(38:46):
was deemed anarchy. Right. I think it was like five people.
Five people brought in SRG or counter terrorism groups. It
just goes to show you the extent to which like houses,
people taking a public space is a threat to ide,
the idea of property as we know it is a
threat to capitalist and there's a threat to landlords like
Eric Adams. Eric Adams is a landlord. I don't know
if you all know that this the New York the
(39:08):
New York City mayors a landlord. If you need to
know anything as to why they're sweeping homeless people. Landlords
run everything and they have rats like Eric Adams because
he had racks and he was supposed to pay a
fine and he didn't pay a fine because he's the landlord.
I guess just going back to that is like, yeah,
show up for people now, like the need now is
like when steeps are happening, is for people to show
up in place with people. And the other part of it.
(39:28):
I want to say this, and this is a wild idea,
but I've been thinking about it for a while. What
do we all stop paying rent? What if we all did.
What if we got together with all our friends and
stop paying rent? And I know this is wild, and
I know some people might be like, oh no, Marcella,
we're gonna get a victim. But what have we paid rents?
And we all thought the cops and they're trying to
pay us when when when they're trying to evict all
of us? So like that's another part of it, is
(39:49):
like showing up to people's evictions, trying to come up together,
to come up with a long strategy. Because houses people
right now are fighting for us to like have housing
as a human right. We can meet them on the
other end and say, actually, we're not going to pay
rent as long as we're doing this because we're That's
like solidarity. When I'm thinking about how to resist displacement,
you know, what I go back to is squatter movements
(40:09):
that existed in Europe, right, like the social center movements
in the seventies and eighties, um, but also squatting that
happened in the Rust Belt in the two thousand's, right,
And like what was unique about those situations, Like others
have have existed, obviously, but what was unique about those
situations is that squatting became about more than just space.
It also became about autonomy and self defense. Right. So
(40:30):
in those situations, what would happen is in these Rust
Belt squads, people would like lock down a whole street
and take over a house and then just that was
just their space, you know, and the cops just couldn't
get back there or didn't want to get back there, um.
And some of those squads held out for years, like
years and years and years um. And we see that
in Europe too. And so what that does, though, is
(40:51):
it it accomplishes something really important which I think we
have to sort of shift in our discussions of this question,
which is that the question isn't just about housing. The
questions about space, right, and very specifically, how we understand space.
So currently we talked about a neighborhood, or when city
(41:12):
politicians talked about a neighborhood, they don't mean what I
think a lot of us mean. Like a lot of
us we talked about our neighborhoods. I mean, like our neighbors, right,
the people that live around the corner, the old lady
up the street that feeds the cats, like whatever it
happens to be, you know, like you have a community
that you live in, at least where I live. When
city politicians talk about a neighborhood, what they mean is
real estate. They mean this fragmented space of commodified housing
(41:37):
where individual houses can just be slotted in and slotted out.
New residents could just be slatted in and slotted out,
and the space becomes reduced down to its physical form, right,
and within all capitalists understanding some space, that is what happens.
Space gets reduced down to the commodification of that space, right.
And so when we're talking about that inscription into our spaces,
(41:59):
you know, it's saying earlier that doesn't occur without the
ability to get arrested for trustpassing. And so this becomes
a fight against the police as much as it's a
fight against housing, because at the end of the day,
the enforcements of that structuring of space comes through the
projection of police force into that space, right, whether that's
passive things like surveillance, with those active things like sending
(42:22):
a counter terrorism team to evict five people from a
park in Manhattan. And so as we're kind of like
looking through this, we can take some interesting sort of examples.
I mean, the Paris Commune had a whole discourse that
talked just about how they were going to rebuild the city,
like what is the city going to look like without property?
How are we going to restructure our use of space?
(42:44):
Who gets to decide how to use these big public spaces? Right?
These were the big discussions that were happening. The Situations
International had a whole discourse on building conceptual cities and
avant garde cities, and you know, graffiti was a big
part of that because what is graffiti. Graffiti is the
market of people's presence in space. Why do you cities
cracked down under feeding so hard every single time? So
(43:05):
it puts a tag up, that's a gap in police coverage,
is being marked literally every single time. Right, And so
when we're talking about these questions, we have to push
this into a question of capitalism in general, but that
makes it a question of the state. We can't talk
about capitalism and isolation from that, and so we have
to really talk about how our spaces are fragmented and
(43:27):
the ways that things like even encampments or squats or
things like this that are defended that are able to
be sort of preserved asn't the right word are able
to maintain their autonomy. Those becomes sort of the models
of different ways to live in some ways, right, these
become the places where people are experimenting with different types
of living, whether it's my choice or not. But these
(43:48):
are the spaces that get eliminated because of that specific
dynamic right that they are fundamentally violating the entire concept
of property in their very exist and that's why we
see the crackdown is happening. The way that they are.
Democrats are just as you know, complicit in that as
Republicans are. It's it's functionally no different, especially after the
(44:10):
George Floyd uprising, where you really seeing a lot of
democratic cities them hiring a lot more cops, giving them
a lot more guns, like doing the same stuff that
happened in more conservative cities. Right, the gap is almost
non existent. That's going to do it for us. Once again,
this has been the It's going down cruise squatting the
offices of it could happen here. Thanks again for listening,
and we will see you soon. It could happen here
(44:35):
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for listening.
Welcome back once again. This is the crew from It's
Going Down, squatting the air waves of it could happen here.
On today's show, we're going to look at the growing
crisis around homelessness and how the state has moved to
address it with brutal sweeps and new laws that target
the poor. In the wake of the global COVID nineteen pandemic,
(00:25):
the US housing crisis deepened and homelessness grew Following the
George Floyd rebellion. Republicans pointed to a rising murderate during
the election cycle, along with growing encampments of the houseless,
as examples of rampant democratic mismanagement and the supposed in
result of defunding the police. In reality, two years after
(00:46):
the uprising, both funding for the police has only increased
along with the number of people killed per year by
law enforcement, while growing police budgets have had no impact
on crime. Meanwhile, both party have embraced a draconian crackdown
on the houseless as a slew of new laws targets
sleeping outside and police move against encampments even in the
(01:09):
midst of extreme weather. But a new wave of resistance
is awesome materializing as communities mobilized to provide mutual aid,
fight for access to housing, and resist sweeps of encampments.
On today's episode, we investigate the history of these struggles
and how these tactics, ranging from squatting to a canmet defense,
are spreading across the social terrain as the current crisis deepens,
(01:32):
can more people find themselves out in the cold. But
to kick things off, let's talk about state strategy. Just
why are they carrying out these sweeps? I think one
of the first thing that comes to mind for me
is how this behavior from like the Democrats or like
liberals or progressives isn't an anomaly that they are you know,
that their role is facilitating a capitalist state, just with
(01:55):
slightly different tactics than the Republicans. But basically they're trying
to do that they're doing, which is basically demonizing unhoused
people and sort of pushes the blame of um, what's
going on, of the failings basically of our culture onto
these individuals that are unhoused, rather than on their failures
(02:16):
as like mayors of democratic cities or whatever. UM and
the kind of logical outcome of class based capitalists extract
of society and when they can just make it that
instead of it being like a social problem that people
around house, they can make it these bad homeless people
and they're dirty and crime or whatever, and just kind
(02:37):
of trying eliminate that to protect their image. But I
think it's just a way of scapegoating a built in
problem with how they operate. And actually it's something that
makes me think, especially thinking about San Francisco in terms
of like precedence for this. It makes me think about
the Ugly Laws, which, for anyone who doesn't know, that
was something kind of in the eight hundred San Francisco
implemented in eighteen sixty seven, which was a law or
(03:00):
forbidding people who were kind of like unsightly. According to
this law, um to not be seen in the streets.
So if people were physically disabled or they were begging
or even limping, there were laws targeting them. And part
of it even says that anything that's triggering like disgust
or guilt like to not be seen. And I feel
like it's a really similar thing that's happening now, and
(03:21):
so yeah, progressive that they do this. I'm glad that
you brought up able is M because I think that
this ties in real role well into that. So we
live in essentially like an extremely able society that says
if you don't work, you die. And I think criminalizing
homeless people is a huge part of that. I mean,
really think about it. We have to rent our bodies
(03:41):
to corporations so we can get money to pay rent
to landlords. Essentially we're being paid at tax to live.
But how do you enforce people? How else can we
get people to do the drudgery that we have to
do at work if you don't like show them the
consequences of that. So like if they were nice to
hold with people, if they were oh, here's a free home,
they not create the presidents of like, oh you cannot
(04:04):
work and have a home, So like they don't want
to do that. So I mean, I think one thing
that people don't talk about, like homelessness is existing. I
think it's like a way to like scare us into
essentially doing these things that we don't want to do
to live, because you're constantly reminding us of like, oh
you want to quiet Quinn, you want to go on
a strike, this is what your life could be. You're
(04:24):
gonna be homeless. And not only that, we're gonna make
it so that you can't exist as a homeless person
in this society because if people like, if you go
to New York right now, all these brunchy folks they
eat on the sidewalk, they have all these like houses
build up on the sidewalk, people drinking mimosas, But you
can't have a tan. But what are these makeshift things?
So I mean it goes to show you like it's
not even like the idea of taking public space. It's like,
(04:46):
who's taking public space? And if it's somebody who's not
serving capitalism, you can't take up public space. The housing question.
To really understand the connection with democrats and capitalists understandings
of housing, we have to think about housing, property, structure, space, right,
how capitalism structures space. And so you know, when I
was thinking about this before we're recording, I keep going
(05:07):
back to um James Scott Seeing Like a State, which is,
you know, an amazing book. If people haven't read it,
absolutely pick up a copy. But in the first, you know,
couple of chapters, one of the things he talks about
his land enclosure, and he's talking about this structure specifically
in France, in which sort of towards the end of monarchism,
there was an attempt to actually create a tax regime
(05:28):
where individuals were taxed, and to do that, individuals had
to exist legally, but they didn't at that point. They
existed as communities within feudalism. They pay taxes as communities
that held land as communities. When the French government went
to these towns to figure out who owned what, but
they found was that every single community broke up their
understanding of land differently and that it wasn't really based
(05:51):
on ownership, is based on use. And so they had
to standardize all of that. To do that, they had
to fragment the comments. They had to sit there and go,
you owned this piece of land, and you own this
piece of planned. They did that, they made maps and
they went back two years later they realized nobody was
following the maps. But what they did was they started
charging taxes based on the maps, and so people had
to start making money on the land to pay the
(06:11):
taxes based on the maps that have nothing to do
with their lives, right, And what that was was the
creation of property. Right, because when we think about property,
you know, there's this fiction of you know, stateless capitalism, right,
you have like Murray Rothbard guying grand types. So we're
talking about capitalism can exist without the state. But really
we can see the fallacy of that when we look
at the at the question a property right, the question
(06:35):
of exclusion from property or exclusion from space. Um. Not
only is it fragmenting public space, but we start to
look at um the way that all of a sudden
property has to exist. Right. And so in the Rust Belt,
for example, after the financial crisis, cities Cleveland, Buffalo, Detroit
got all this money from the federal government to tear
houses down, and they were tearing down like fifty houses
(06:57):
a day in these cities, right for years on end.
And these are cities that have people that don't have housing.
And so you you sit there and you go, well,
why are they tearing houses down when there are people
that don't have houses, right, When there's more vacant houses
than there are people without housing, How can you justify
tearing the houses down? And the answer was, we need
(07:18):
to create a real estate market again, because if you
allow people to just squat, there's no reason to pay
for housing. If there's a reason to pay for housing,
housing seasons to be a commodity, right, Like, this is
actually the important part that capitalism has to function through
that exclusion of access. Otherwise commodities can't have the scarcity
necessary to allow them to be priced. Right. There can't
(07:40):
be a supply that is lower than in demand, for example,
unless you artificially limit supply. Right. And so when we
really see this, we can really see not just the
way that capitalism sort of atomizes us, right, creates us
as people who live in individual housing units as opposed
to as people who can see ourselves as living unities.
(08:01):
But it also really comes to highlight the relationship between
the state and the police at capital and how we
have to understand capital as a content of the state.
It is a definition of life that is imposed through
policing purity and can't exist outside of that. Right. It's
the fallacy of quote unquote anarcho capitalism, which isn't the
thing that really exists for this exact reason. Right. And
(08:22):
so when we're looking at why are democrats engaging in
techniques that involve pushing people off the streets, this is
exactly why it's a capitalist political party. They're trying to
maintain property, they're trying to maintain property value right, And
this is why you see this happen in cities where
gentrification is really horrible at a much much faster clip
than you see it in cities where there's like open
(08:45):
housing stock. That really makes me think about the beginning
of like work houses in England in the eighteen thirties
and the polar reforms, and it goes back to what
you were saying more about just that making it really
undesirable to be poor in needing a group of people
who are in that position, and the work houses was
something that were introduced by liberals, progressives, you know, like
(09:07):
this as a form of like changing the sort of
poor release system. So instead of giving people money so
they could be supported and stay with their families or whatever,
people would put into these institutions where they're separated from
their kids, from their husbands and wives or whatever. And
it's meant to be so undesirable that you would only
seek it if you was desperately needed it or whatever.
Um as a way to like save on taxes for
(09:30):
like money to people. Basically it's really sucked up and
it's like this was part of the sort of social
reform progressive like project and I think we could see
echoes of that in this The other thing that I
wanted to bring up is, like you talked about atomizing
and isolating and like how capitalism does that. One thing
that I think about specifically New York is that homeless
and campings do offer this radical idea of like what
it looks like to take back a public space and
(09:51):
to collectively like meet together, you know, And like that's
the other thing that I was thinking about last night
when I was high, this whole idea of what happens
if we just allow homeless encampments to spread and take over.
Then people who are not homeless start interacting with homeless
people as we do, like people in the city do.
Then you form these connections and these relationships, and then
it becomes perfectly normal for people to take over public spaces.
(10:14):
And then what does that mean? Then we have to
provide services in public spaces like bathrooms and showers, because
the public would start requesting and like asking for these things,
the more of a relationship they form with homeless folks.
So I think part of the cleaning, which is what
the term Eric Adams is used, which is absolutely disgusting
in terms of like moving homeless people the whole. I
think a huge part of it is also just like
(10:35):
destroying the notion that we own public spaces, like you
do not own a public space, and we want to
let you know that and we want you out. Um
so I think that really And and the additional aspect
of that too is like when you look at homeless
is in New York, like a huge chunk of it
like black people too, So there's like a racial component
of it too. When you really want to add it
for this whole idea of like black people are not
allowed to take up space, and then specifically you're homeless,
(10:56):
you're not allowed to take up public space. I wanted
to bring that in. It's like very much related to work,
but also just related to the idea that the government
owns everything and corporations own everything, including the spaces that
we exist in. Well, speaking of corporations owning everything, here's
some words from our sponsors. Across the US, in large
(11:23):
cities often controlled by Democrats, a war on the poor,
and specifically on encampments of houses people has been increasingly
ways over the past year. In San Francisco, the city's mayor,
London Breed, recently declared it was time to quote be
less tolerant of all the bullshit that has destroyed our city.
An effort to ramp up police harassment of the poor
and un housed in Portland's city officials openly toyed with
(11:46):
the idea of forcing quote up to three thousand homeless
people in the massive temporary shelters staff by the Oregon
National Guard. On California, the Democratic governor Gavin Newsom has
pushed for quote courts, which threatened to place those who
do not complete state directives under involuntary hospitalization of policy,
(12:07):
which mirrors efforts already underway in New York. Bands against camping, panhandling,
sleeping in one's car have also proliferated last spring. For instance,
Tennessee made it a felony to camp on public owned land.
In Missouri, those caught sleeping on state property could now
get jail time and fines under a new law that
just went into effect on January one. Other new laws
(12:29):
outlawed campton l a next to schools and forbid houses
folks from sleeping on public transit in New York. In
the progressive bashion of Asheville, North Carolina, over a dozen
Mutual Aid organizers also now faced trumped up charges of
felony littering for supporting protest against sweeps of encampments. This
shift in many liberal cities to criminalize attack and band
(12:51):
encampments shows just how much the Democratic Party has continued
to move to the right while embracing Republicans line on
combating rising crime. Instead of mobilizing the state's forces to
house people need their most basic needs in a period
of mass pandemic and a growing housing crisis, liberal governments
across the country have instead mobilized their forces to attack
some of the most vulnerable. When you know more about
(13:13):
what's driving these ongoing attacks on the houses and how
it relates to the housing crisis itself, we sat down
with Gifford Hartman, a long time radical organizer in the
Bay Area. In a former squatter movements arise, like say
the George Floyd uprising, and there's some changes, There's some
movement towards reforms the police brutality and things like that,
(13:34):
but then there's kind of a backlash. And I think
right now we're kind of suffering through a backlash, and
I think that's kind of a pattern that happens is
there's pushback kind of penal reform, trying to ring the
pelisse in a little bit, and then the kind of
the backlash means just the police have more power, and
they have more power to really kind of brutalize on
house people. And I think we're living through that right now.
(13:56):
I think the trends go, you know, like back in
fourth and the pendulum has swung in the direction where
right now in San Francisco there's constant sweeps of tents
and how and how's people living on the streets. There's
a lot of media support given to that, and it's
kind of like, as I said, the tail lags the dog,
and then they start doing all this stuff, and the
pushback hasn't really Activism hasn't really been able to kind
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of stand up to that and stop it or even
challenge it. Right now, at least what I see, booms
happen and property values go up and vacancies go to
almost zero, the cops cracked down harder. And I think
there have been periods, at least in my lifetime here
in the Bay Area where there's kind of a lull
and there's the bottom of the trough when maybe there's
more vacancies a little bit more wiggle room. The cops
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quite aren't quite so brutal. But when things are peaking,
or when the economies, you know, it's dynamic kind of
high points, that's where I see the repression is the
worst because there's more people to complain. There's more people
whose you know, values are tied to property and who
are more will to push the cops to brutalize on
house people and um. But you know, right now it's
(15:05):
kind of framed because there's a lot of tech layoffs,
Yet the agenda of sweeping tens and none house people
off the streets is kind of still kind of a
rapid pace. So I don't know how much longer it
to last, but right now it's that are pretty high
point as we speak. The weather is awful and the
sweeps haven't really stopped, and there aren't enough shelter beds
(15:27):
to house although on the house folks. So it's really
a crisis. It's not only just a you know, a
human crisis, but it's a health crisis because people out
in the cold rain are more vulnerable to getting sick
and dying. And it's it should be the time where
we're doing the opposite. We're making sure everybody's housed, and
it just certainly isn't happening. Even though San Francisco the
(15:48):
merits have been Democrats, I believe since the mid sixties.
The Democrats aren't a monolith, and they're not all progressive,
and even the progressive ones aren't that good. But the
ones that are in power now, like mayor London Breed
are moderates, and um they really are more believe in
the police more, and they believe in using police for
(16:08):
social crimes. And when they're not moderate, it's a little
less bad, but it's not better, it's just less bad.
And I don't know if that really makes sense, because
I don't think there's ever been a political regime in
San Francisco that was in pro cop. You know, everybody
loves the cops. Everybody sees the cops is um ways
to enforce the social values of society, which a private
property and all that, and it just never stops. It
(16:30):
just depends how brutal they are. And again less I
said earlier, it goes through waves, and presently we're in
a brutal way, and the only alternative that is a
less brutal wave, and so my opinion, there's never a
time when the cops don't, you know, run rapid, but
just right now. But right now they're actually at the
high point that they've been in a long time. And
now we speak with Javier from the National Coalition on
(16:52):
Homelessness in San Francisco. We talked about the current wave
of attacks against house those people in big cities and
how they mirror historic attempts to policing and repressing the poor.
The income that you need to rent a two bedroom apartment,
by the city's own estimation, you need an hourly wage
of about six fifty to have an apartment like that.
(17:13):
So the income gap is becoming more evident than ever. Nowadays,
there's a nine percent increase in homelessness for every hundred
dollar increase in rents. So it's like if healthcare, housing,
education all gets more expensive but wages don't go up,
people are gonna lose their housing. Um. So I think
people need to understand and how similar we are to
(17:37):
the unhoused population, and how important it is to recognize
that we should have solidarity with each other, because if
we're fighting against each other, then guests was when the
millionaires in the building we're suing the city because when
they do these sweeps, they're taking people's belongings, which is
the legal search and sdure and cruel and unusual punishment
(17:58):
because the shelter that they're offering and a lot of
times it isn't adequate for the folks who are being sweat.
We're looking for permanent supportive haasm for folks and it's
not there. And if you're telling people that they have
to move across the street every day in the morning,
then it kind of shows, I think, a social and
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kind of cultural understanding that mirrors the other laws people
have had in place, especially in America for a long time,
which is homeless people are not supposed to be seen
and they're supposed to be criminalized, and speaking of things
that probably shouldn't be seen again some words from our sponsors,
(18:48):
from resisting sweeps, studying up autonomous warming centers, to taking
over vacant buildings. Over the past few years, there's been
a wide array of expressions of solidarity, direct action, and
mutual aid in the face of attempts by the state
to displace and destroy the lives of houses people across
the US. But these projects and actions haven't come out
(19:09):
of nowhere, building on the radical history of groups in
the Bay Area, such as the Diggers and the White Panthers,
who set up free stores, grocery programs, and squatted buildings.
Starting in the nineteen eighties, out of the anti nuclear movement,
peace activists began sharing free vegan food in a protest
of the U. S War budget under the banner Food
not Bombs. In the late nineteen eighties, Food Not Bombs
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in San Francisco faced over one thousand arrest for sharing
free food publicly and taking part in demonstrations. Soon, another group,
Homes Not Jails, evolved out the same scene and began
to open up and squat vacant housing, part of a
wave of other houses activist groups that sprouted nationwide following
the economic recession of the nineteen eighties. Chapters of Homes
(19:54):
Not Jail's work to open squats weekly to covertly housed people,
also organizing public housing takeovers, which thrust squatting into the
spotlight of the mass media. Again. Here's Gifford Hartman talking
about squatting. In the nine nineties. There have been a
wave of I'm really successful to squats. In the nineteen seventies.
(20:14):
One group was called the White Panthers that did it
in the Lower Hate neighborhood, and they were modeled on
the Black Panthers. So they actually squatted, but actually created
community programs for things like we distribution. They defended their squads,
they fortified their squads, and that was a tradition that
kind of preceded my period of squatting. But so there
we're both looking at the squatting in Europe but also
(20:35):
the previous generations doing it here in San Francisco. Um
I moved to the Bay Area in nineteen eight six.
I have been Berkeley for most of the beginning of
the years I was here, from the end of World
War Two in the nineteen forties. The population in San
Francisco peak in the mid twentieth century, and then it
went down. Population decreased by a hundred thousand in the
(20:56):
late eighties. There were still a lot of cracks in
the surface some housing, and there was a lot of
empty units. There's a lot of abandoned units, and there's
a lot of a lot of ability to people to
find squads, and I was part of that. And there
were various times where I either wasn't working or had
a part time job, and I chose as a political
act of squad and I began doing that in late eighties,
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but most of my success in squatting was in their
early nineties. But then I kind of ran up against
the contradiction and groups like homesunte Jails were founded in
nineteen two. I had already been squatting UM, but then
there was another wave of repression. So in n to UM,
the former chief of police in San Francisco, Frank Jordan,
(21:39):
got elected mayor and by nine three he was doing
something called the Matrix program. And the Matrix program was
very much like what Juliani did in New York with
his zero tolerance for broken windows, which just cops would
get tough on quality of life crimes which means like
broken windows and graffiti, but it also included food, not bombs.
(22:01):
Feedings were attacked by the police, and squatters were even
myself included, were attacked and cleared out, even in a
way that was not legal. When I succeeded, we squatted covertly,
and when we didn't succeed often we were aligned with
groups like HOMESI Jails, where they were a high profile
group or a media savvy, well, media savvy might be
(22:21):
an overstatement. They were kind of had a media focus,
and the media focus was often a double edged sword.
It brought popular understanding of the conditions of the housing stock,
but also it was a way for the police to
be telegraphed exactly what we were doing in to come
down and crack down on our squads. Homes on Jails
wouldn't be the last group to take over vacant homes
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for housing. In mid two thousand's Take Back the Land,
based out of Miami, Florida, work to block evictions and
move un housed families into foreclosed homes. In the present period,
various grassroots groups have organized to stop the sweeping of
houses and caments cruise in Olympia, Washington, and Austin, Texas.
I've been successful in organizing broad campaigns in Minneapolis groups
(23:04):
of mobilized mass numbers two at times all divictions. In
the following interview, we speak with Christian and Post from
Minnieappolis on the ongoing battle with the city government and
police to stop at tax and sweeps on their houses neighbors.
In the summer of George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis police.
It raised a lot of people's awareness as to the
(23:26):
way that our systems and practices in our city aren't
really serving us UM. I think there was there was
a lot of work happening in Minneapolis in particular before
that in regard to policing and the way that our
systems do or do not serve people UM. And then
in the awareness just grew exponentially, and because that foundational
(23:49):
path had been laid already, we had something to go
with UM. And we can see the direct line between
what happened to George Floyd and to the community at
George Floyd Square and the way that that also shows
up in other spaces in our communities, such as with
our own house neighbors. We know that the majority of
(24:12):
people that are living at encampments in Minneapolis are indigenous
UM immigrant populations or UM black Americans, and so we
can see that there is you know, a specific need
and also a real um a you know, a disparity
between and a direct through line to all of the
(24:35):
oppression that that d through in the face of every
you know, I mean person with a heart. Absolutely, and
I think she started practicing a lot of mutual aid
UM more like much bigger than we ever have his historically.
In the summer, we saw lots of people getting involved
that were encampments UM throughout the city as there was
(24:59):
for some time because covid Um people were able to
stay outside and couldn't be evicted as easily UM at
that time. And we saw lots of community getting involved
and doing mutual aid UM and that really helped build
I think, UH, a movement that is, you know, sort
of beautifully disorganized in many ways because lots of people
(25:20):
from lots of different walks of life coming together and
showing up for each other. I mean, I think people
started to become aware of the way that we are
all connected to each other, and that when when we're
taking care of each other, we're all happier, we're all safer,
we're actually able to meet needs and the resources are there.
It's a matter of the will. I cannot over emphasize
(25:41):
enough how terrible the boy Mayor Fray has been since
he took power here and so called Minneapolis. You know,
he ran on ending houselessness and was in the majority
funded by developers during his campaign, and we've seen what
ending houselessness means to democrats. It basically means ending visible
(26:04):
poverty and ending the lives of houseless people. But frankly,
I mean the number of evictions over the course of
the last few years has just skyrocketed. And you know,
our so called progressive politicians love to give some money
to the nonprofit industrial complex and do their private public partnership,
and then when there are people who are quote unquote
(26:26):
resistant to service, that's the that's the phrase they love
to use. They have all of their excuses lined ups
that they can just build those people's houses and kick
them out of the roofs that are keeping them warm
and dry. And it's just been a really eye opening
thing for a lot of people, I think, to see
how our progressive quote unquote establishment here has just fully
(26:47):
committed to jack boot thuggery all in the name of
clearing the streets and making it so that people in
their kind of four story mixed use of condos can
can have a beautiful view without having to see the
poverty that that lifestyle. You know, in the summer, there
were several council at the time, council members who committed
to um defunding the police. However, that did not contro
(27:11):
fruition um. Since that time, there's been um increases in
the budget to policing in Minneapolis, no decreases, only increases
that police haven't been able to spend their whole budget,
and yet the city continues to pour more money into them.
And what we're seeing happen is unhoused people come together
to keep one another safe and also so community is
(27:33):
able to stay connected with them and you know, will
be in an encampment and then various levels of discovery
of government will come in and displace them, and so
the people don't have anywhere else to go, so they
need to move to a new space together. So what's
happening is not housing. What's happening is not even laying
(27:53):
a foundation for somebody to be able to get the
services or support that they may want or need. What's
happened ing is displacement. When somebody hears about an eviction
potentially happening, it becomes a situation that's it's almost it's
almost kind of magical that people come together and it
(28:13):
is kind of chaotic, but it always comes together and
we end up having whether it's people they're doing copwatch
or are just neighbors like we had neighbors show up
on the first day, the day that the Corey was
planned to be evicted on December UM. I can't tell
you how many different people that just live in that area.
We're coming up and asking questions, and we're appalled at
(28:36):
the response from the city because really that the Corey
encampment was in a space that you could barely see it.
You wouldn't know it was there. If you didn't know
it was there, you know. And we're talking about by
the last day, the day that it was evicted, there
were eight people there and over a hundred and fifty
police officers. It was bonkers. And that extreme response is
(28:57):
something that when you see it, can't unsee it. And
so we come together in what you know, You get
in where you fit in, with whatever skills you have,
whatever gifts you have, whatever time you have, you know,
and a lot of us show up because we are
people who have experienced other forms of trauma or have
seen and experienced other forms of oppression too. You can't
(29:17):
unsee it once you do. In the last few years,
mutual aid and autonomous disaster relief efforts have informed projects
like heat or Block, the squatting of land for people
displaced by climate change, field fires and the setting up
of autonomous warming centers in the middle of winter. In
the winter of autonomous groups across Texas also mobilized when
(29:39):
the state's electrical grid failed and hundreds of people tragically
die due to lack of heat. Autonomous groups have also
worked to directly house people in the Los Angeles area.
This has looked like House of Folks taking over homes
owned by Caltrans and various groups in the Pacific Northwest,
occupying in domaining access to hotels, and the dead of winter.
In Philadelphia, in housing activists squatted and then won the
(30:03):
keys to homes for upwards of fifty unhoused families in
the midst of the George Floyd Rebellion, and there have
been other success stories as well. In Boise, Idaho, after
months of ongoing protests by Houses Folks and their supporters,
the city was pushed to green light the building of
hundreds of housing units. In Berkeley, California, last summer, people
once again tore down the fences surrounding People's Park and
(30:25):
destroyed machines, stopping the destruction of the autonomous enclave once again.
In Sacramento, California, households. People and their supporters beat back
in eviction attempt at Camp Resolution, a parking lot which
is home to people living in their vehicles and r vs.
Here's two Camp Resolution residents, Sharon and Satara, who speak
on the deadly impact of sweeps. I think that the
(30:48):
biggest thing is like being treated inhumanely, you know what
I mean, or rudely or like you're an animals. They're
very mean to people, you know what I mean, when
they sweep you they take people stuff and just throw
it out, no don't matter if it matters to them
or you know what I mean, or you know which
you know creates mental health issues for some people, because
(31:09):
people get traumatized from stuff like that, you know what
I mean. You just coming in and the only place
that they have that they can call home or a
place of shelter, and you know, stormy times like this,
you know, they come and even now while it's raining,
and make them move and tell them, you know, they
gotta go throw their things out or you know what
I mean, make them leave without whatever they you know
(31:32):
what I mean, whatever, no matter if it's important to
them or not, you know what I mean. Like, I
think that's the most messed up part because like I
have a friend out here who who lost you know,
her child's ashes. You know what I mean, half to
half of the people that were at the we lose
contact with us. And and every time they sweep that
for another half. And they're just dimnitioning people. Where people
(31:53):
are good, where are people going? They're just disappearing. And
before the you know, people who do need like other
help with other things, help things and stuff like that,
the harm reduction people and stuff like that that come
out and you know, give people things their needs. You
know what I mean, they'll they'll they move you around,
they can't be found. People can die and people will
(32:16):
die like that all the time, especially you know when
they move us around. Sometimes we gotta go to areas
that are not necessarily safe, especially the women. You know
what I mean, women die out here all the time.
It separated. Calp Resolutions was formed because, uh, this lot
that we're on, it was part of the original sighting
plan and they spent six hundred seventeen thousand dollars on
(32:37):
this for a fence in a parking lot and promised
folks that they would that they were going to get
them into little tidy houses or trailers so they can
get back on their feet and get housing. They swept
them off the lot as soon as they were finished
with this. They just came up. They came and viciously
swept them off, as the property the other side of
the property were on and could have fend to and
(33:00):
problems with people, and they got nothing and then didn't
even want to contact them or anything, and just left
those people hanging after they signed up for all those services,
and we're denied. And my sister in law was one
of those people, and she's a quadriplegic and she's still
waiting for housing, and we weren't gonna have another winter
of her being down on the countyside in the weather,
(33:21):
in the water. So that's why we started it. And
if we're here for safety so we can get back
up on our feet, were human beings, not to mention,
like half more than half the camp, you know, the
majority of the camp. There are males that live here,
so please don't get me wrong, but this is the
camp of majority women. You know what I mean? Who
out here, who live out here, and you know a
(33:42):
lot of us, you know we're homeless, but we're not
We're not bummed, you know what I mean. Like, we're not. Um.
We have regular lives like everyone else. We have family,
we have friends, you know what. We're like. We and
we take care of each other, you know what I'm saying. Like,
And a lot of us have been campting right here
for this last for years, some of us years up
against the county ends, you know what I'm saying. But
(34:05):
for every success, sweeps remain a daily constant United States.
In many attempts to push back by houses folks and
their supporters are met with extreme resistance from law enforcement.
So I'm curious what you all think our game communities
continue to organize for change in the face of his brutality.
Something that comes to mind is just kind of more
of some things that have already been happening basically. Um.
(34:27):
And I'm thinking of Echo Park that you brought up, um.
And the Encama Park was really interesting to me because, um,
it was that that's a neighborhood in l A. And
it grew to maybe sort of two to three hundred
people living there. Um And as it went on, it
kind of like a sense of community developed pretty strongly
(34:48):
there with support from people in the neighborhood to UM
and people had set up like a garden, a community kitchen.
They were like meetings, even showers near the end. Like
UM was actually kind of thriving. I guess it's like
doing well and people are like pretty like uh politicized,
are like aware of like what's going on and talking
(35:09):
about it and sharing with each other. UM and yeah,
people coming together to resist sweeps and like threats of
sweeps of the park UM and the response to it
was one of the most like heavy handed, sort of
disproportionate seeming things that I've ever seen, where they had
been threatening the city had been threatening that they were
going to do a sweep, and they were saying they
(35:30):
were going to get everyone into housing. It's like this
humanitarian offer of secure housing to people, UM that they
came with like four hundred cops and like all the
rest of like l A p D S four forcing
the helicopters and just like everything. They blocked entrances into
Echo Park to stop supporters coming from out of the
neighborhood UM and basically yeah, evicted people, fought with people
(35:54):
resisting UM and then put a fence up very quickly,
like during this whole thing and closed the park off
and that fence is still up, and that's like and
then what is it now a year and a half
or something these years that that fence has been up.
And something I think is like interesting about this example
is I really think that the reason that response was
so heavy handed is because the very existence of it
(36:16):
was disrupting this logic of like rent and landlord in
terms of like people were reclaiming the comments, basically reclaiming
public space using it to meet their needs, and this
was incredibly threatening to the city and they needed to
shut it down and sort of turn the park back
into recreation for middle class people basically. Um. And I
(36:36):
think you know what we've talked about already, like um, Tom,
what you were talking about with like enclosure and stuff like,
I really see that these sweeps like this is such
a just a continuation of this in Echo Park um
in a really big way. And what you were saying
more about just like what happens when we challenge that
logic being the most like threatening thing to them, you know,
of just like what happens if it was just like
this home was camp survived and then another encampment, another encampment,
(36:59):
and it basically disrupts everything we know about property and
rents and everything. Anyway, So I think just more of that, Yeah,
I mean I would, Yeah, I agree with you. So
I think it's like more of what's happened. Like currently
New York there's still sweets happening, like um DTAs Department
of Home of Services puts up these like UM sweet
notices UM. And the way it works is that when
these two TEPS notices go up, like there's a group
(37:20):
of people who let each other know that sweet is
about to happen. People show up to the people who
are about to be swept. I hate that word swept.
Oh my gosh, that's so disgusting. What can we use
instead of swept um treated badly by evil air adoms?
I don't know, maybe we could do that, um. But anyway,
so like UM, so people will go and talk to
the people who are in the encampment we're going to
be swept and asked them like what type of support
would you like? Like do you want us to help
(37:41):
you us move your stuff? Do you want us to
stand you know when the cops and like so, the
sanitation department comes usually during these cleanups and like throws
away people's things. And because you don't if you don't
serve capitalism, your stuff you don't matter. So definitely your
stuff doesn't matter. One thing that has been happening is
that people have been showing up for people who are
about to be how their things drown out and either
(38:03):
moving the things for them or supporting them, or standing
in the way from in front of the police, or
like documenting it. And I think that's like a huge
way to just like show up right now if you can,
you sickly block out time on your calendar at work,
if you know something happening down the state, like this
is like something like you could do now. And I
think that's really important. Like this is solidarity that we
should show and which show up for our comrades because
(38:23):
they are on the ground of fighting for us having
housing as a human right, and that's why we should
show up for them and to support them. Another item
that I wanted to bring up, I don't know if
y'all heard about anarchy rope which happened last year, where
like s RG, which is the Strategic Response Group, showed up.
This is a counter terrorism group, y'all showed up to
get people out of an encampment in Tompkins Square, which
(38:46):
was deemed anarchy. Right. I think it was like five people.
Five people brought in SRG or counter terrorism groups. It
just goes to show you the extent to which like houses,
people taking a public space is a threat to ide,
the idea of property as we know it is a
threat to capitalist and there's a threat to landlords like
Eric Adams. Eric Adams is a landlord. I don't know
if you all know that this the New York the
(39:08):
New York City mayors a landlord. If you need to
know anything as to why they're sweeping homeless people. Landlords
run everything and they have rats like Eric Adams because
he had racks and he was supposed to pay a
fine and he didn't pay a fine because he's the landlord.
I guess just going back to that is like, yeah,
show up for people now, like the need now is
like when steeps are happening, is for people to show
up in place with people. And the other part of it.
(39:28):
I want to say this, and this is a wild idea,
but I've been thinking about it for a while. What
do we all stop paying rent? What if we all did.
What if we got together with all our friends and
stop paying rent? And I know this is wild, and
I know some people might be like, oh no, Marcella,
we're gonna get a victim. But what have we paid rents?
And we all thought the cops and they're trying to
pay us when when when they're trying to evict all
of us? So like that's another part of it, is
(39:49):
like showing up to people's evictions, trying to come up together,
to come up with a long strategy. Because houses people
right now are fighting for us to like have housing
as a human right. We can meet them on the
other end and say, actually, we're not going to pay
rent as long as we're doing this because we're That's
like solidarity. When I'm thinking about how to resist displacement,
you know, what I go back to is squatter movements
(40:09):
that existed in Europe, right, like the social center movements
in the seventies and eighties, um, but also squatting that
happened in the Rust Belt in the two thousand's, right,
And like what was unique about those situations, Like others
have have existed, obviously, but what was unique about those
situations is that squatting became about more than just space.
It also became about autonomy and self defense. Right. So
(40:30):
in those situations, what would happen is in these Rust
Belt squads, people would like lock down a whole street
and take over a house and then just that was
just their space, you know, and the cops just couldn't
get back there or didn't want to get back there, um.
And some of those squads held out for years, like
years and years and years um. And we see that
in Europe too. And so what that does, though, is
(40:51):
it it accomplishes something really important which I think we
have to sort of shift in our discussions of this question,
which is that the question isn't just about housing. The
questions about space, right, and very specifically, how we understand space.
So currently we talked about a neighborhood, or when city
(41:12):
politicians talked about a neighborhood, they don't mean what I
think a lot of us mean. Like a lot of
us we talked about our neighborhoods. I mean, like our neighbors, right,
the people that live around the corner, the old lady
up the street that feeds the cats, like whatever it
happens to be, you know, like you have a community
that you live in, at least where I live. When
city politicians talk about a neighborhood, what they mean is
real estate. They mean this fragmented space of commodified housing
(41:37):
where individual houses can just be slotted in and slotted out.
New residents could just be slatted in and slotted out,
and the space becomes reduced down to its physical form, right,
and within all capitalists understanding some space, that is what happens.
Space gets reduced down to the commodification of that space, right.
And so when we're talking about that inscription into our spaces,
(41:59):
you know, it's saying earlier that doesn't occur without the
ability to get arrested for trustpassing. And so this becomes
a fight against the police as much as it's a
fight against housing, because at the end of the day,
the enforcements of that structuring of space comes through the
projection of police force into that space, right, whether that's
passive things like surveillance, with those active things like sending
(42:22):
a counter terrorism team to evict five people from a
park in Manhattan. And so as we're kind of like
looking through this, we can take some interesting sort of examples.
I mean, the Paris Commune had a whole discourse that
talked just about how they were going to rebuild the city,
like what is the city going to look like without property?
How are we going to restructure our use of space?
(42:44):
Who gets to decide how to use these big public spaces? Right?
These were the big discussions that were happening. The Situations
International had a whole discourse on building conceptual cities and
avant garde cities, and you know, graffiti was a big
part of that because what is graffiti. Graffiti is the
market of people's presence in space. Why do you cities
cracked down under feeding so hard every single time? So
(43:05):
it puts a tag up, that's a gap in police coverage,
is being marked literally every single time. Right, And so
when we're talking about these questions, we have to push
this into a question of capitalism in general, but that
makes it a question of the state. We can't talk
about capitalism and isolation from that, and so we have
to really talk about how our spaces are fragmented and
(43:27):
the ways that things like even encampments or squats or
things like this that are defended that are able to
be sort of preserved asn't the right word are able
to maintain their autonomy. Those becomes sort of the models
of different ways to live in some ways, right, these
become the places where people are experimenting with different types
of living, whether it's my choice or not. But these
(43:48):
are the spaces that get eliminated because of that specific
dynamic right that they are fundamentally violating the entire concept
of property in their very exist and that's why we
see the crackdown is happening. The way that they are.
Democrats are just as you know, complicit in that as
Republicans are. It's it's functionally no different, especially after the
(44:10):
George Floyd uprising, where you really seeing a lot of
democratic cities them hiring a lot more cops, giving them
a lot more guns, like doing the same stuff that
happened in more conservative cities. Right, the gap is almost
non existent. That's going to do it for us. Once again,
this has been the It's going down cruise squatting the
offices of it could happen here. Thanks again for listening,
and we will see you soon. It could happen here
(44:35):
as a production of poo Zone Media and more podcasts
and cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zone Media
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you can find sources for It could happen here, Updated
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