Here’s the published story – well, sort of… “Sacramento Homeless Evicted from American River Camp” (Sac Bee, Dec 29, 2011)
It has nothing to do with “camping”, nothing to do with the environment, absolutely nothing to do with public health and safety. It has to do with a decades old vicious and relentless attack on anyone who is too poor, sick and tired to harness themselves to the 1% or become expendable work-slaves to fuel their engines. In short, who would dare claim any unused portion of this earth as a place to rest, think or even dream about having a future. “If it ain’t a “shelter” we provide and control, then we own it anyway and you can’t even sit on it,” is the violent refrain of a City that doesn’t even pretend to care very convincingly. It’s all charade, folks.
More than a decade ago, when Mather Air Base was being close, I proposed that the more than 800+ units of base housing, in perfect condition, might be turned over to the homeless and working poor to build their own community and begin to reconstruct their lives. I had many willing to help, architects, builders, social workers, business people. Even Sac State took some interest in locating a special section of their School of Social Work at the site to assist in the development of a new community. What did the city father’s say? “We’ll give them a few rooms in a couple of dormitories over by where our new police training academy is going to be built. That way, “we can keep an eye on them.” Then we’ll give them a little exploitative job-training program where we can do a photo-op now and again. To tell the truth, I couldn’t even get the clergy and religious leaders of Sacramento to try to get together and turn the church on the hill above the base housing community into an ecumenical facility and church to serve those new residents, if we could make that happen. So much for the teachings of Jesus, and the rest of the gods of River City.
A few years ago, when Oprah used one of her programs to shine a spotlight on how shameless Sacramento’s treatment of the homeless is, the city officials ran around like chickens in heat, wringing their hands and crying about doing something for those “unfortunate people”. Bullcrap. It was all theater. The heat died down and shame continued. They rousted them from an unused piece of vacant land behind a factory; a peaceable community that had very strict rules to govern its own behavior. Why? Because a couple of residents complained that “those people” walked by their homes on the way to town (and, oh yes, someone probably urinated somewhere they weren’t supposed to). So you go and forcibly eject an entire community because a couple of “good people” don’t like your looks (“residents complained” is the favorite excuse the city uses to apply its draconian hand to anyone who doesn’t contribute to their campaign coffers).
Not long after that, Sacramento did it again, when a local attorney gave the homeless a place to stay on his fenced, private property. Once again, those “neighbor’s complaints – what? one, two? – served the city’s purposes. And what are those purposes, exactly? What is its real policy with respect to the homeless? Its called ‘enforced mobility’. In short, you deny a demonized and marginalized group of people the right to even lay down anywhere on this planet, (unless its is in your own regimented, policed, social worked to death, meager quarters where you can constantly surveil and harass them with your “mainstream programs”.) In short, where you can deny them the right to have enough ground to stand on for a moment’s respite, to begin to heal, develop a strategy for their own development, perhaps to dream of something larger than this stingy little town with no imagination of its own would deny them.
Yes, that’s is Sacramento’s “homeless policy” in a nutshell. The one they parade so visibly, right next to the half-million dollars they just approved for consultants to take a look at their other great scheme of the decade – building a sports-palace for the Kings Basketball team. Ya, with priorities like that, the homeless should consider themselves lucky they aren’t just taken to some other remote “camp ground” and shot. And let this bit of official brutality be a lesson to the rest of you work-slaves at the bottom of the ladder, “THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU IF YOU DARE COMPLAIN OR ASK FOR A LIVING WAGE!” And the Sacramento Bee Newspaper? Right in there pitching&wooing the 1%, along with the rest of the shameless rascals they fawn. Ain’t it all so grand? We’ve got 60 “shelter beds” – oh great. There are about 1500 homeless in the immediate Sacramento area. Nice offering boyz, and a happy yuletide to you.
In 1921, George Orwell (the same one) wrote a little book, “Down and Out in Paris and London”, that detailed the brutality and false-economy of forced mobility and of making homeless vagrants “move on”. Britain had a system of ‘spikes’ (shelters) placed a day’s march apart, making it impossible for the homeless to sit for a moment and reset their lives. With Orwell’s pressure, a year later the British did away with the system and began programs to insure the homeless were able to have places and tools to begin building their own lives. Sacramento is only about 100 years and 99% out of date. Time for a clean sweep of all these 1% public officials and a police force with nothing better to do.
Unfortunately, we’ve yet to see a progressive group in this community come forth to really mount a challenge to the status quo and sweep the house clean. It remains the first place we need to cut the power lines of the 1% is in the halls of local government. Occupy Wall Street may be the ambition; but that effort is certainly going to have to remove locally corrupted and 20th century politicians that serve as their agents. Ah, Sacramento, the city that puts the U.S. Constitution to bed at 11pm.
yes, “God bless us, everyone!” …and to all, a good night. Oops, not you, “move along.”
related article: “Sacbee’s Shameless Occupy Editorial“
