Miniature Ethnic Cleansing: Encampment Sweeps in Oakland

I am your host, Miya Wong. And one of the kind of things we've emphasized on the show a lot is that a lot of the structure of the kind of open fascism that we're seeing now is stuff that was put in place under liberal administrations, and it's practices that are carried out by Democrats, and one of the biggest ones of those and this is something that I think you can trace the violence here and you can trace the politics that it inspired directly to how we

got to Trump being in power. Is the just continuous crisis in the US of governments doing sweeps of encampments of unhoused people. And to talk about really one of the most horrifying things that happens regularly in a country of just unhinged and hideous horror is Emma, who does advocacy work for on house and disabled people. And I'll to County and Satia, who does support dream sweeps in Oakland when yeah, this fucking hintshit happens. So both of you two, welcome to the show.

of that is deliberate. Sweeps usually happen during business hours, during nine to five hours, because at least in Oakland, they're conducted by the Department of Public Works. They're city employees. They work nine to five, so accept in cases where they work over time or when the city uses loopholes to get around posting notice and ends up doing a sleep on the weekend. They're usually happening when a lot of middle class housed folks are at work and not

out and about seeing what's going on. So a sweep, and I'm primarily talking in the context of Oakland, California, but I think it's safe to assume that these operate in similar ways around the country. Generally, what will happen is you, let's say you're living in an encampment. A sweep has been posted. In Oakland, there is policy that states that you're supposed to have received at least week's notice. However, a lot of people don't receive this notice, so you

might not even know that it's happening. You might wake up at around nine am to a bunch of heavy machinery pulling up dump truck, small bulldozers, other types of sort of like heavy equipment, and then you'll have somebody from the city administration, like a city administrator's assistant, going around announcing that the city of Oakland is there, you know, making noise that your tent or your car or wherever you're staying, saying, hey, this encampment is being closed down.

You have to be out of here. There usually are representatives of the city's contracted outreach organization called Operation Dignity. They're supposed to be there. Very rarely do they actually have referral for somewhere to go. They'll basically just be like, hey, do you want services. They won't usually specify what the services are. They'll just show up and be like, hey,

do you want services. If you say yes or have questions about what services are available, they may give you a sort of very rundown of whatever might be available that day, because they don't usually even find out what openings are available until ten am on any given day, so at the time that they roll up, they usually don't even know what's available yet. So it kind of

progresses from there. I mean, every sweep is a little different, but the commonality between all of them is that what the city is there to do is essentially to erase all signed that anybody ever lived there. So either you are able to pack as much stuff as you can and get it out of the eviction zone before the city decides that it's your turn to be targeted or all of your stuff ends up in the back of

a dump truck. There are other sort of specific pieces of policy and operational things that can vary from time to time, like, for example, they're supposed to follow a bag and tag policy, which means that they're expected to store up to a cubic yard of somebody's belongings for

ninety days at a storage location in East Oakland. They rarely do this unless how to do so, and most of the time, the actual process of going back and reclaiming your belongings from that location has enough barriers that almost nobody ever manages to do it.

the seventies. But so there are certain requirements that the City of Oakland is obligated to follow in like certain provisions and offers that like homeless people are technically supposed to be receiving and for a bunch of complicated reasons, like rarely ever are so for instance, like the bag and tag policy that Satya was just discussing, like they've recently somebody did a PRA request to see whether or not to city was actually following faithfully following that policy.

And I think in like over a year there were I believe eight bagging tags that were registered in the city system. And that was in that same period there were like well over one hundred sweeps. You know, I Jesus don't have the exact number on me, but are yeah, actually five hundred and thirty seven closure two instances of

storing property. So you know that's people's their whole lives, all their possessions, like precious items that they they're able to hang on to are just yeah, destroyed and they never see them again.

use to continually justify the way that they operate. Is that in for example, city council meetings and Homelessness Commission meetings where city admin is questioned on their procedures because they get complaints, like the Homeless Commission gets complaints constantly of people being mistreated, losing all their belongings, never getting referred to housing, and so forth. And the justification that's constantly used is like, well, we're offering people services every time,

and they just refuse them. And I think that that is pretty much the number one mythology that is continuing to spur a lot of the like pro sweep discourse in Oakland specifically, and I'm sure in other parts of the country as well. And people are not, like to be clear, most of the time, people are not actually being offered services.

and providing housing or legal services. Like there's a whole range of things that's out there, but a lot of the time like these are the only options that are available to people, and they tend to produce less than

stellar results. So, out of the twenty four billion dollars that was allocated to help homeless people in that same period of time, homelessness in California just like skyrocketed, right, So rates of homelessness increased while this money was getting plumped into the pockets of the bank accounts of like

landlords and developers. It is an issue that people on every side of the political compass like they like to use this point to their own ends, right, So Elon Musk talks about it, and like people on the left will talk about it. But I think, like the experience that people on the street have is very different than any of these narratives that you tend to hear in the media.

the homeless industrial complex. There's a reason that most of that money is going into the pockets of landlords and developers and then sort of like these sort of large like nonprofit almost like conglomerates of like service providers. And it's because the primary point of homelessness services as it exists in this country is not to get homeless people into housing. It's to line the pockets of the people that are making the most money off of the real

estate market anyway. And so because of that, it is not an accident that you see homeless spending and homelessness like escalating at the same time. It's because this is the feedback loop, Like, this is the way that our you know, economic priorities in this country are structured, are such that those two things are going to feed into each other because that money doesn't actually exist to serve the populations that they say that they're using it to serve.

What they do get to do is by claiming that that money is going into homelessness abatement, when clearly it isn't. They then get to spind a narrative where they say, oh, we've spent all this money, but the problem is just getting worse. That must mean that it is the fault of unhoused people and that they're choosing this because clearly the services must exist to get them off the street. In reality, that's not the case. At all.

notify people that it's happening. The City of Oakland is required for the terms of this lawsuit back in I believe twenty nineteen, the Moralees lawsuit, and there was a settlement that resulted in the city being required to provide clear notices whenever they're going to close like a site. So yeah, this nonprofit providers was to like notify people

and try to get them connected with services. However, the services for the most part, like housing for people who are unhoused, is largely funded through the federal government and through this very complex and inaccessible system called coordinated Entry. The coordinated Entry system is not something that the City of Oakland or Operation dignity like that is not something

that they're providing people with during the suitep. So when the City of Oakland, like for instance, and one of the commissions on Homelessness meetings, the city administrator Harold Duffy, he presented actually in response to a question about somebody's

wheelchair being destroyed by public works. Yeah, he gave this really like roundabout deflecting answer where he said basically that everyone who is at an encampment at the time of the sweep has like expressly refused services like shelter or housing or whatever, and that they kind of presumes that the city actually has opportunities that they can provide people with,

which is just not the case. The Coordinated Entry System, it is a program that is first of all, like only people who are disabled can get what's called permanent supportive housing through the program. But also it is in such high demand and is so inadequate to the needs that Alameda County is currently like the situation that we're in that the wait list is like thousands of people long, and it can take well over a year before someone

can get housing through that system. So it's just like it's not true they do offer people what are called community cabins, which are tough sheds. They're not even offering people that they're full the full. Yeah, that's what they say. They offer. Sorry, I had me to cut you off.

in response to what they're like internal systems actually look like.

And what we have seen over the last six months to a year is not only this pattern that e'm I was talking about of like they're like people are consistently not getting connected with services and then being accused of refusing services just due to the conditions that they're living under, but also everything that Oakland has and that approaches like livable transitional housing, which is kind of laughable in this case because we can also go into the

conditions of the transitional housing programs and shelters in Oakland which are abysmal, but everything that they have that approaches livable transitional housing is full.

he wasn't even approaching talking about services. He was approaching being like, Hey, I'm just here to let you know that this area is going to be closed down, Like there's a sweep that's going to be happening, so you guys have to be out of here. So that was what they led with. And then I prompted him because I was there chatting with one of the guys that he was talking to, so I prompted him. I was like,

do you have any services to offer? And then he was like, oh, you can go over to Saint Vincent de Paul, which is conger Get shelter in West Oakland with about forty beds, and nobody is guaranteed a spot, is just a room full of cots. A lot of people refuse to go there because the conditions are so terrible and they don't feel comfortable or safe sleeping in a room full of a bunch of strangers with no kind of security, no guarantee of being able to hold

onto their stuff. People are only allowed to bring in like a backpack sort of stuff, I'm pretty sure. And you also have to it's first come, first service. You have to line up outside every single day, and you are not guaranteed an indoor place to sleep even if you line up outside. So what we have is a situation where the availability of services varies from day to day.

I cannot think of a single sweep in the last year that I have been to, and I'm at usually multiple sleeps a week where there were enough guaranteed spots

available for every person being swept. So the implicit assumption at every single sweep and the Operation Dignity people know this too, like they know this, the implicit assumption when they roll up, and the assumption that colors even the tenor of all of their conversations that they're having with people is that the majority of people are just going to have to figure out how to pack their shit

up and find another place to camp. It's the assumption, and it's gotten to the point where, like od employees will roll up and like I said, they won't even necessarily lead with an offer of services. They'll lead almost in the hopes that the majority of people already have a place to relocate. They'll ask do you have a place to go? Before they offer services, or ask if people are entered as services, they'll they'll ask, like, do

you have another spot to move this stuff first? Because what they're hoping to do is eliminate as many people as possible from their list of people that they feel obligated to offer services to because they know they don't fucking have anything.

The city is telling the media. They're telling like businesses, anyone that comes to them with problems related to like helplessness or concerns, they're telling them that everyone is being offered shelter and housing and it's just not true and that is reflective in the city's own publicly available data, so they actually publish like a list of all of the encampment suites that they do throughout the year, and in the Commission on Homelessness meetings, will report back to

the Commission about like service enrollment that they've done through a certain period of time, and like from May to September they had enrolled I believe it was sixty people and to services like non specified services. And during that

period there was approximately eighty sweeps. And if you assume there's at least five to ten people at every encampment when they do a sweep, and usually it's more that is like nine percent four point five percent of people like getting enrolled into into services, and like of those

maybe a smaller traction getting into shelter. And when they get into shelter, they just languish there, right, they aren't connected with case workers who help them get through this really convoluted coordinated entry process and like lengthy coordinated entry process, and so within a few months they're just right back

on the street. You know, it's just ridiculous. And unfortunately, because homeless people have very little like I guess you could call it social capital, you know, the city can get away with a lot of this stuff they do, like blatantly illegal things that are against even their own policies, and nothing happens. And I guess like maybe we should back up a little bit and discuss the city's policy.

But there's all a range of people. There's people that are actively malicious and violent, and there's literally people going out doing vigilanti shit and like destroying almost people's stuff on their own. And then you also have people that are well intentioned and really think the city is offering services. So you have this whole umbrella and the narrative that the city sells to everybody is bolstered by their policy.

That's the purpose their policy services, not to inform their actions, but to inform their pr So I think it would be helpful, Emma, how do you feel about if you want to kind of give a breakdown of the city's policy and then I can kind of give a breakdown into what that translates into on the ground.

The city is required by this policy to offer shelter. I believe it's a week for any person who's subject to one of their encampment closures. And also we mentioned the bag intag policy. So if somebody, you know, they are evicted and they move somewhere outside with the tent,

they bring all of their possessions with them. They are provided with a I believe three foot by three foot like storage space and this facility that is super inaccessible and kind of like like I don't even know if it's actually real, to be honest, because it's just like nobody ever, I've never heard of anybody actually like getting their stuff stored and getting back. But technically that is

a possibility. However, the city will only hold on to it for so long before they throw it away, and then the last protection or provision is the city was

until recently supposed to provide people with shelter. So a few different Supreme Court cases are behind that provision specifically, and I think a lot of cities kind of had a similar policy framework that they were following until the Grant's Pass ruling, and I guess maybe we don't need to get into that too much, but basically, the whole idea of that policy was like, if somebody is outside the thing outside and the city suites them, they have

to provide them with some kind of alternative accommodation because according to like the Ninth District Court, it was consideredly cruel and unusual punishment to panalyze somebody for being homeless

without offering them some kind of temporary like accommodations. And so that was more or less the city's nominal framework for several years basically, and the degree to which they actually followed these policies, you know, they really didn't, except for in certain situations where there are like, for instance, legal advocates who will file injunctions to stop the city from doing a sweep on the basis of like failure

to provide an alternative accommodation. And typically those arise when there is a very large encampment clearing operation that is scheduled and a contentious issue. You know, a lot of the time, for instance, they'll be people staying on city or like California state land and the city will like force them to move because of some development project that

they're planning to do. And so in those situations when the media has kind of narrowed their their focus and begun like discussing some of this stuff and the local press, then like something like that became possible. But after the Grants Past ruling this past year, the city was no longer like obligated under federal law to all of those policies, and in September of last year, the late Mayor Shankal, she issued an executive order that more or less like

just totally rendered that policy framework irrelevant. So she put forth a new framework that allows the city to sweep encampments under a tiered system of what are called emergency suites. So if for instance, a encampment is blocking a roadway or a sidewalk, then it is a hazard to the public quote unquote, or if it's somebody has a tent that is up against a building of some sort, it's

a fire hazard. And so in this tiered system, there's like different levels of safety hazards that they're doing now. And basically what that looks like is like a fire marshal and the city administrator will convene after somebody calls in a complaint about somebody that's staying outside by their business. And with the fire hazard one, I believe that they can just sweep without any prior notice, whereas the other two there is some like level of notice that they're

technically required to provide. But yeah, so the shelter provisions and the notice and storage like it, they're technically still supposed to follow that by their own city resolution, but there is this provision that like, if for instance, they issue somebody like a no or a one hour notice to leave because of like a fire hazard, and like add kids can't make it there because they don't really know nobody knows it's happening, then the city can just

do that and not offer people anything. Right, So these policies have the effect of disempowering our the ability to respond to like a scheduled operation. Then the city can really just do whatever they want because nobody's watching what they're doing.

the case, you know. I think people should feel empowered to be able to physically intervene, because the most effective way of physically intervening with this kind of violence is to commit to relationship building, something that I've talked about a lot with sort of like fellow advocates and folks that are kind of involved in like sweeps response and crisis response in Oakland is that the one thing that the city cannot take away from us that we have

an advantage over them in is relationship building. Part of the reason that, for example, the Operation Dignity employees are so inefficient and so you know, seemingly bad at their jobs is not just the fact that they don't have anything to offer, but also because everybody on the street knows they're full of shit because they never show up with anything real and addressing housed people in particular, right, like, one of the things to get out of is sort

of like the savior mentality or the guilt mentality of like, oh, like I don't have any housing to offer, therefore I can't do anything, Like I can't fix the problem, I can't fix the roots, so I can't do anything. In reality, all you really need to do is to learn to set that mentality aside and show up and like start meeting folks where they're at, Start meeting your neighbors where

they're at, start building relationships. You need to know, like if you live in a particular neighborhood, Think to yourself, I need to know that if any unhoused person within a mile radius of my home was disappeared, I would need to I would need to know, you know what I mean, Like, I would want to know if that happens.

So if you go out with that understanding that you're starting to build lifelong relationships with the folks that are living outside in your neighborhood, ideally a lot of other people in your neighborhood too, you know what I mean. But like, what they're banking on is right now, while while they're still trying to use a pr cover for

what they're doing. What they're banking on is people not talking to each other, people not finding out about the abusis people not finding out about the violations, people not being there, and people not having relationships that will remain strong even as they try to physically scatter people's communities. And what you can do to start is start investing in those relationships. Make sure you know what people's names are,

make sure you would know if somebody's routine was suddenly disrupted. Hey, Beckuy used.

point is direct on the ground sweeps response. So we're still able to keep track currently of what their schedule is on a weekly basis more or less, Like there's definitely operations we don't find out about until after the fact, but the majority of their weekday operations we do still know about ahead of time, and so we'll show up. We'll make sure we get there before the city does so like by eight am ideally right, Like we show up, talk to people, will be like what do you need?

Do you need physical help moving your belongings out of the eviction zone. Do you need to borrow somebody's phone so that you can call somebody who said they were going to come help you. Do you need help pushing

or pulling your vehicle? Any number of things really, but just like being willing to show up and ask questions about necessarily knowing what answers you're going to get, and being down to follow up and like do aftercare with people and chicken on folks and like keep building those relationships. I think that those are the building blocks of the zing that we're going to need to be doing in the future, because you know, what the city is counting on is that they're going to be able to successfully

create a scapegoat, right. They want to create like a faceless, nameless mass of people that they can pin all their problems on and then incarce rate. And the best thing that we can do is make sure that they can't successfully do that, because we all have relationships to each other.

this response, just like network of community defense. And so I think that like all of those things are are so important, especially as the term regime starts to eliminate the very like modest social safety net that that there was. And you know, before we end this conversation, I just want to emphasize that in Oakland, like a majority of the people who are homeless and are subject to state violence, they are non white, mostly black, and are homeless in

neighborhoods where they used to be housed. And so the gentrification that has happened, particularly in like West Oakland, and the influx of high income tech workers that displaced them and moved into their family homes, they are the same people who are calling three one one to push the city to displace them again, but from a tent or

a car this time. And I think it's just so so important that particularly like housed people try to tap into the networks of community defense that exist in their areas. I'm sure that most cities probably have something comparable to Oakland, but with the measures that we're seeing, cities begin to take, such as in Fremont, which is about thirty minutes south of Oakland, where they basically banned or criminalize mutual aid

with unhoused people. So you can get one thousand dollars fine or a six months in jail for dating and a betting a homeless person, and you know, that's an.

sort of imposing what you might have learned through like other sort of direct action organizing, because this is not that you know, like I think, yeah, first of all, just making sure that you're being you're organizing as being led by the needs of you know, homemost residents that

are expressing what they need to you. But also on top of that, when it comes to this particular draconian waves of legislation that are being passed or on, like anti homeless laws and stuff, don't preemptively obey, you know what I mean, Like if you live in Fremont, don't preemptively say, oh fuck, I better stop passing out blankets.

Because what we've seen in Oakland with the particular iterations of anti homeless legislation that they've passed here is that just because they've passed legislation doesn't mean that they feel confident enforcing it yet. And what you need to do really is step up real hard and show them you can't enforce this the way that you want to. They

are going to push back. There's going to be this back and forth interplay that we've seen, you know, for example in Oakland with the safe works and ordinance, which we can probably get into another time, because it's way too much to get into right now, I think at this point in the episode. But it's a two way street.

It's this fight that you have to play to show them just because you've passed this legislation doesn't mean you can enforce in a particular way, you have to give them something to fight against, you know what I mean.

So I would definitely suggest if you're feeling like any despair or like worried about becoming like black till or whatever, like, yeah, just try to tappen and focus on things that are happening in your community. It's good for you and it's good for the people in your community.

Like you're going to learn a whole lot more relevant life skills just hanging out in social settings with people in the street than you are in any other area of your life. So just go balls to the wall, just start hanging out, just like spend all your time loitering, Like just that's that's where we need to be right now, is loitering in the street.