The War on (Some) Drugs might well end in California on November 8th, but one thing remains constant: the War on Homeless People and anyone who steps up for them in Berkeley.
Nanci Armstrong-Temple is a strongly progressive, Black Lives Matter supporting, community advocate for the homeless and candidate for City Council in Berkeley, CA. In the wee hours of Friday morning, November 4th, she was alerted to police presence at the First They Came for the Homeless protest/encampment in South Berkeley; she came over to attempt to de-escalate a potentially explosive situation as she had done during a previous eviction. This time, though, as the police moved in, she came to the aid of a 65 year old woman with a cane...
According to a statement issued by her campaign.
Nanci Armstrong-Temple... was injured while being arrested for offering assistance to disabled activist Barbara Brust, who provides [homeless] support.... First word from Santa Rita County Jail is that Armstrong-Temple may be charged with lynching.
Indeed, video from the arrest shows Nanci pinned to the ground by Berkeley police officers as one of them tells her she has committed "lynching" - this to a 41 year old black woman. She has in fact been charged with felony lynching, which requires $55,000 in bail to be posted to be freed. She was released after presumably posting a bail bond at around 2:00 AM Saturday morning.
Barbara Brust, the woman Nanci moved to protect, is known in Berkeley as the "soup lady." She has been delivering hot soup and other amenities to Berkeley's homeless for a good while, and is the founder of Consider The Homeless. It is tragically symbolic that two of the four people arrested Friday morning were those whose goal it is to create a more just and equitable space for homeless people, and a third was the homeless mother of the fourth, trying to protect her son.
Berkeley's War on the Homeless goes back to, well, almost antiquity. It's immediate history follows the Great Recession, as more and more homeless people appeared in Berkeley, followed by the recovery, as Berkeley's downtown began to be gentrified but conditions did not improve for the neediest. The cry to "do something" (about homeless people on downtown sidewalks) attracted the attentions of Berkeley's so-called liberal politicians who speak with compassion on their (forked) tongues but act with cold calculation. A sit-lie initiative was placed on the ballot in 2012, but was narrowly defeated. Then, a year ago, "the bastard child" of this initiative, as one City Councilor put it, was passed by the Council, forbidding homeless people from occupying more than two square feet of sidewalk space.
In opposition to this legislation, First They Came for the Homeless (see, e.g., here, here, here and here) protested with an occupation in front of Old City Hall (above); they were eventually removed, their belongings destroyed by Berkeley Police (once the anti-homeless law had been safely enacted).
In the last few months, as frustrations with Berkeley government's continued refusal to do anything to actually house the homeless grew, First They Came for the Homeless initiated the "Poor Tour" - a series of encampment/protest sites around Berkeley. (Here’s a great, detailed article)
They first occupied the space outside of Berkeley's centralized office to process the homeless, known as the "Hub," protesting the office's bureaucratic and often heartless-seeming approach to providing support for homeless people. One case:
She is a grandmother. Her back is so bad, her head is by her hip when she walks. She came to the HUB in Berkeley to apply for services. She was sent away because she had no proof of disability. She walks with her head on her HIP! If we were not occupying here, what would she have done tonight? She would have slept exposed! She told me she has never had a tent to sleep in.
And in a particularly ironic theater of the absurd scene, the Hub will not allow homeless people to use their bathroom facilities unless they are being "processed" at the time.
Rousted from outside of the Hub, the Poor Tour then occupied three different locations in succession, all of which they have been removed from after stays of a day or two to weeks. The latest was at Adeline and Fairview, in a small square, interfering with nothing and no one — the scene of the arrests.
They are now on the steps of City Hall (right).
What happened to Nanci, and to Barbara, and to the others arrested, is the embodiment of First They Came for the Homeless's meme. They are indeed coming for all the underprivileged in our country, be those coming the one percent - through financial and economic exploitation - or the political elite - using their police tools as weapons of suppression.
Martin Neimoller might well be proud - there was someone who spoke out, and continues to speak out, as they come for the homeless and those about to be homeless. Nanci Armstrong-Temple has spoken in the streets; she has spoken up in Council Chambers and on the stump…
“People shouldn’t be forced to live on the streets, but if they are, their rights for dignity and self-determination shouldn’t be ignored.” — Armstrong-Temple
She has now spoken with her actions.
Let's make sure hers is not the only voice. This piece is but a start.