Street SpiritJ U S T I C E N E W S & H O M E L E S S B L U E S I N T H E B A Y A R E A

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by Zachary J. Stickney

Ifirst met Hayok Kay �— Miss Kay, asshe likes to be called �— near theAlliance Metals Recycling Center inWest Oakland. She had just finished

a day of recycling, and as I approachedher she was leaning exhaustedly againsther shopping cart, eating a piece of breadshe had found.

What I�’ll never forget about Miss Kay isthat, in spite of her deplorable condition,she nevertheless had a certain air of dignityaround her, and more obviously, a certaincuteness. Standing less than 5 feet tall,you�’d be hard-pressed to find a tinier recy-cler in all of Oakland, and I challenge any-one to find a sweeter smile or laugh.

But for all her dignity and cuteness, hersituation remains destitute. Nearing 60,Miss Kay�’s life has been a history of imper-manence. She was born in Seoul, SouthKorea, but left soon after to Japan beforeending up in the Bay Area. Though she hashad difficulty finding permanent housing(even in shelters) for years, recently herproblems have come to a head.

Up until September 2012, she had been

living in a homeless shelter in Richmondand commuting by bus to Oakland whereshe would complete her recycling routes.But near the end of September, she waskicked out due to alleged suicidal tenden-cies. Hayok had been caught hitting herhead against the wall in her room.

When asked why, her answers alternat-ed between, �“I don�’t want to live hereanymore,�” and �“I don�’t want to live any-more,�” prompting the managers of theshelter to remove her from the facility.They simply did not have the resources todeal with such devastation.

Since being kicked out, Miss Kay hasalternated between staying with oldfriends, paying for a few nights�’ stay inmotel rooms, living in emergency shel-ters, or sleeping next to the Emeryvilletown hall. She has even spent a few nightsin the hospital, both for her physical painas well as her mental difficulties.

While staying in the motel rooms �— amove funded by her meager GeneralAssistance allotments and her left-overrecycling income, and her meals provided

Stories of Recycling and Redemption on the Street

by Ariel Messman-Rucker

As cities across the country passlaws to criminalize homelesspeople, using a marginalizedportion of the population as a

scapegoat for larger social and economicproblems, Berkeley residents went againstthe tide of repression and voted no onMeasure S, a ballot measure that wouldhave criminalized homeless persons forsitting on city sidewalks.

The victory over Measure S is espe-cially inspiring because this is the firsttime anywhere in the nation since 1994that a ballot measure to criminalize home-less people and curtail their civil libertieshas been defeated.

�“Usually when minority rights are putto a vote it doesn�’t turn out very well,�”said Bob Offer-Westort, No on S cam-paign coordinator. �“It�’s a terrible way forhandling things like that. In recent yearswhen voters have been asked to weigh inon the rights of homeless people, thoseelections have generally gone badly.�”

The hard-fought campaign that defeat-ed Berkeley�’s proposed sitting ban is evenmore remarkable considering thatMeasure S was championed by MayorTom Bates and the city�’s most powerfulbusiness organizations, which vastly out-spent the financially strapped homelessorganizations that opposed the initiative.

Though the final count of campaign

contributions and expenditures is notavailable yet, the current accountingshows that the Yes on S campaign spentmore than $115,000 while the No on Scampaign only spent about $15,000,Offer-Westort said.

After nine days of ballot counting, theNo on S/Stand Up for the Right to SitDown campaign announced victory overthe anti-sitting measure on November 14.When the final results were tallied,Measure S was defeated by 52.30 percentof Berkeley�’s voters, a victory margin of2,458 votes, according to the AlamedaCounty Registrar of Voters.

�“I feel pretty excited about that victo-ry,�” said Offer-Westort. �“The campaignfor Measure S was by far the most expen-sive campaign that Berkeley�’s seen in along, long time and so it�’s pretty excitingto show that good grassroots organizingcan beat big money.�”

If the measure had passed, sitting downon the sidewalks of Berkeley�’s commer-cial districts would have become illegalbetween the hours of 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.,seven days a week, and those found inviolation would have been subject to cita-tion, fines and even jail time.

Proponents of Measure S marketed theordinance as a way to help local business-es and make Berkeley streets safer, buthomeless advocates and service providerswere certain the measure would be usedas a tool to criminalize homelessness and

create a legal means of driving homelesspeople from public view.

�“Yes on S spent over $100,000 tryingto get their message out to Berkeley vot-ers, sending deceptive literature sayingthat Measure S will help people and savejobs when, in reality, it will do neither,�”said Jesse Arreguin of the City Council.

Yes on S also tried to persuade votersthat their campaign was a small-scale effortwhen, in fact, the majority of their funding

came from big developers.�“We were drastically outspent, that�’s

for sure, and the bulk of their money camefrom real-estate and developer interests. Itreally showed that this was not some feel-good, grassroots, small-business measurethey portrayed it to be,�” said ChristopherCook, communications director for No onS who also runs Progressive Message, acommunications consultancy.

The stories of recyclers are an invaluable asset to society �—living maps which illustrate the holes in our safety nets andthe true beauty, dignity and value of those who fell throughthem. And they show us why we need to rectify these faults.

See Recycling and Redemption page 12

Hayok Kay rests her head on her cart in a park across the street fromthe recycling center. Fatigued and hurting, she gave way to exhaustion.

Amir Soltaniphoto

Berkeley Chooses Compassion: Measure S Rejected

See Berkeley Chooses Compassion page 4

In resistance to Measure S, Youth Spirit Artworks held a colorfulaction at Berkeley City Hall involving young artists and giant puppets.

Ariel-MessmanRucker photo

December 2012ST R E E T SP I R I T2

by Terry Messman

Martin Luther King, Jr. wasborn in Atlanta, Georgia, in1929, grew up and attendedhigh school in Atlanta, and

then earned his B.A. degree in sociologyfrom Morehouse College in Atlanta.

After Rev. King was assassinated in1968 while organizing the Poor People�’sCampaign, he was buried in Atlanta. Hiswidow, Corretta Scott King, establishedthe King Center in Atlanta to preserve andpass on his legacy of nonviolent resis-tance to the interrelated evils of poverty,racial discrimination and militarism.

Rev. King was assassinated while try-ing to mobilize poor people in a massivecampaign of nonviolent resistance tosecure affordable housing for all, fullemployment and adequate income forthose unable to work �— the EconomicBill of Rights for the Disadvantaged.

When King was buried in Atlanta, hiswork was memorialized in the city of hisbirth, but the hopes for a Poor People�’sCampaign seemingly were buried with him.

That bleak view is reinforced by thedesperate poverty that grips whole areasof Atlanta today, especially in manyneighborhoods where African-Americanssuffer disproportionately from homeless-ness, foreclosures and evictions.

It is a sad reality that Atlanta, Georgia,the city with gleaming memorials toMartin Luther King�’s struggle for justice,is one of the areas hit hardest by the eco-nomic crash and the housing crash thathave reduced hundreds of thousands tohomelessness or risk of eviction.

But this economic malaise has not dri-ven out the spirit of nonviolent resistancefrom Atlanta�’s poorest neighborhoods.

Timothy Franzen, program director ofthe American Friends Service Committee(AFSC) Peace and Conflict Resolutionprogram in Atlanta, has achieved dramaticsuccess in working with Occupy OurHomes Atlanta to organize people threat-ened with eviction and foreclosure.

The dedicated organizers of OccupyOur Homes Atlanta have achieved someof the most remarkable victories in thenation by organizing those threatened byforeclosure to nonviolently confront thebanks and real-estate interests that havedriven a record number of people intoeviction and homelessness.

In Franzen�’s four years with the AFSC,he has been instrumental in helping builda movement to defend besieged home-owners from the foreclosures that havestruck Georgia with gale-force fury.

In an interview with Street Spirit,Franzen said that many homeowners inAtlanta are facing nothing less than �“a tor-nado of foreclosures and eviction.�”

Thousands are reeling from the devasta-tion caused when the housing bubble burst.Even though the banks were bailed out withbillions of federal dollars, economically dis-tressed homeowners were abandoned toweather the storm of foreclosures with nextto no help from their government.

�“Georgia is regularly the top state forforeclosures,�” Franzen said. �“Half ofAtlanta, the southern part, is almost 50percent vacant at this point as a result ofthis tornado of foreclosures and evictionsthat have caused a manmade disaster, onelike Atlanta has never seen before.�”

Out of all the issues he could have cho-sen to address as director of the AFSCPeace and Conflict Resolution program,Franzen said he chose to wade into the

flood tide of foreclosures because theAFSC often chooses to work with the mostoppressed communities where few otherorganizations are working and many peoplehave been essentially abandoned.

Foreclosures and evictions are causingentire neighborhoods to fall apart, ravagedby levels of poverty that rival the economicmisery of the Great Depression.

When asked why Atlanta was hit so hardby the foreclosure crisis, Franzen describedthe �“pro-business climate�” in Georgia. Inother states, he said, it may take two yearsfor a foreclosure to go through and forsomebody to be put out of their house.

�“But in Georgia,�” he said, �“we�’re a non-judicial foreclosure state so you don�’t haveto be taken to court. You can have yourhome foreclosed on after 31 days of miss-ing a payment and it happens at breakneckspeed. The process is so fast here that weare really one of the states that inspired�‘robo-signings�’ because hundreds of peopleare losing their homes every day.�”

Banks began putting so many people outof their homes so fast that bank executivesdidn�’t have time to sign all the foreclosuredocuments. So they engaged in deceptionby hiring low-wage workers for a fraudu-lent practice known as �“robo-signing.�”

Franzen said, �“It�’s a type of fraud wherethe banks will set up an office somewhereand hire a couple of low-wage workers at$10 an hour and they will sit there and gothrough hundreds, sometimes thousands, offoreclosure documents and sign all the fore-closure documents en masse.�”

Another cause of the foreclosure crisis,he said, is that �“Wells Fargo and Sun Trustand some other banks have already settledout of court for their racist lending prac-tices. It�’s a fact that they gave out predatoryloans to people of color and that�’s one rea-son why the south of Atlanta is 50 percentempty, because those are the communitiesof color and they have just been ravaged.

�“They look like a storm went throughthere because a storm did go through �— aneconomic storm that pushed all these folksout of their houses.�”

Franzen charged that the banks were,in essence, using the housing market togamble against the future of thousands ofGeorgia�’s poorest residents.

�“These banks were betting againstfolks in those communities,�” he said.

�“They were giving out loans that theyknew were bad. They have not had to pay areal consequence for that. The communi-ties, on the other hand, have paid a reallyserious consequence. We have a homelesspopulation that has exploded and theseempty homes have become eyesores thathave depressed the community. They havebecome crime magnets that are destroyingthe fabric of the neighborhood.�”

The Metro Atlanta Task Force for theHomeless reports that more children livein poverty in Atlanta than in any city inthe nation. Many homeless advocates esti-mate that more than 20,000 people arehomeless in Atlanta.

At the same time that poverty and

unemployment rates were increasing, andhousing costs were rising to historic lev-els, along came a destructive new form ofspeculation by the banks and mortgagecompanies �— the final devastating com-ponent of what is now a perfect storm.

Banks began issuing predatory loans thathave jeopardized thousands of homeownersin Georgia. Just as jobless rates are highestin the African-American community, so tooare predatory loans striking those neighbor-hoods with disproportionate impact. Even aperson�’s home is not safe from the manipu-lations of the banking class.

Franzen said, �“When the speculationmarket became intimately connected tothe places we call home, it became in thebest interest of the banks to get more andmore folks taking loans. So they startedgiving loans to anybody that would takethem, whether they could afford it or not.

�“They were throwing loans out in thestreet and whoever could catch one wouldgrab one. They forged documents, andbroke their own rules to give loans to folksthat couldn�’t afford it. It got so bad that themarket eventually crashed and now 60 per-cent of people here are underwater.�”

Last December, Occupy Our HomesAtlanta was successful in helping to savethe home of Brigitte Walker, an Iraq Warveteran who had been gravely injured incombat, from foreclosure.

Brigitte Walker was sent to Iraq inFebruary 2003. After more than a year ofseeing fellow soldiers die in combat, herown military service ended in May 2004when a roadside bomb exploded, severelyinjuring her back. Doctors placed titaniumplates to rebuild her spine. She still expe-riences a great deal of pain from nervedamage in her spine.

While still in the military, she bought ahome outside of Atlanta in 2004. Afterbuying her home, Walker suffered a majoreconomic setback when the Army placedher on medical retirement against herwishes. She was now forced to subsist ondisability checks, and that cut her incomein half, according to Franzen.

As a result, Walker began falling behindon her mortgage payments. For three years,she kept applying for a loan modificationbased on hardship. Despite her service toher country, despite the spinal injury shesuffered in Iraq, despite her unavoidableloss of income, JP Morgan Chase Bank ini-tiated foreclosure proceedings on her home.

Chase Bank set the date of her evictionfor Jan. 3, 2012. �“If ever somebody had alegitimate hardship, there it is,�” Franzensaid. �“But instead of the bank saying,�‘We�’re going to work with you,�’ theysaid, �‘We�’re going to sell your house onthe courthouse steps and there is nothingyou can do.�’ So she reached out to usthree weeks before her house was set to beauctioned off on the courthouse steps andwe set up tents in her yard.�”

Occupy set up tents on Walker�’s frontlawn on Dec. 6, 2011. Franzen said, �“Weput a huge banner over the house that said,�‘This home is occupied, shame on Chase

Bank,�’ and we called a press conferenceand said we�’re not going to leave untilChase Bank does the right thing.�”

The protest was all over the news. Nextday, six members of Occupy entered aChase Bank with Walker�’s hardship letterand read it out loud in Occupy�’s mic-checkstyle. The bank threatened the six witharrest, but unknown to bank officials, morethan 100 other protesters had been waitingaround the corner. They suddenly surround-ed the bank and remained there until thebank accepted Walker�’s hardship letter ask-ing for a loan modification.

That very night, Chase Bank officialscalled for the first time in all these pro-ceedings, and pledged to work withWalker. Only six days later, the bankgranted her a loan modification that notonly allowed her to keep her house, butlowered her mortgage payments by sever-al hundred dollars per month.

�“It was a game changer for her,�”Franzen said. �“The banks were forced torelieve her debt. So, in a small way, thatwas the first time we regulated a bank.�”

One year later, Brigitte Walker is stillliving in her home with her family. She hasremained active in Occupy Our Homes.

As a result of all the positive newsreports of her protest, Walker was invited togo to the White House and addressObama�’s top housing officials, where shegave �“a real riveting speech�” about defend-ing people�’s homes from eviction.

Occupy Our Homes Atlanta has savedseveral other people from eviction this pastyear. It has generated national media cover-age that has done a great deal to educate thepublic about the foreclosure crisis inAmerica. Occupy also has begun challeng-ing broader structural injustices, includingpredatory loans, robo-signing and otherdeplorable banking practices.

For the past 12 months, Franzen hasbeen in nearly perpetual motion, travelingto protest after protest, bank after bank,arrest after arrest. In solidarity with thosecaught in the foreclosure crisis, he has beenarrested five times in the past year for actsof nonviolent civil disobedience.

Occupy Our Homes is a great sign ofhope for all people caught up in the shatter-ing experience of eviction. Their actionsgive us hope that we can overcome �— nomatter how powerful and well-entrenchedthe banks may be, no matter how manylawyers and lobbyists they employ.

Until Occupy Our Homes came along,low-income homeowners were met with thestone-hearted refusal of bank officials tonegotiate in good faith with them. OccupyOur Homes changed the rules of this riggedgame. Their insights in organizing now pro-vide a highly valuable blueprint for actionfor housing activists everywhere.

Martin Luther King may be buried inAtlanta, but the spirit of his Poor People�’sCampaign can never be buried. Today,fully 44 years after he first raised thenation�’s hopes with his vision of econom-ic justice for the poor, King�’s truth goesmarching on in the streets of Atlanta.

In his last dream, King invited the poor-est citizens to camp out to press theirdemands for housing. Now, Occupy OurHomes has taken up this call for economicjustice. It has shown the same willingnessto go to jail in solidarity with the poor.

There is no better way to honor thememory of Martin Luther King in the cityof his birth. When Atlanta activists marchin support of people facing eviction,Martin marches alongside them, unseen.

Occupy Our Homes Successfully Fights Foreclosures

Brigitte Walker appears on CNN after Occupy Our Homes Atlanta saved her home.

Editor�’s note: This is the first in a three-part series on Occupy Our Homes Atlanta.See the January and February 2013 issuesof Street Spirit for our reports on manyother recent victories against foreclosures.

Occupy Our Homes is agreat sign of hope for all peo-ple caught up in the shatter-ing experience of eviction.

December 2012 ST R E E T SP I R I T 3

by Robert L. Terrell

Iwas immediately filled with dreadwhile reading a recent newspaperarticle about the homeless man whowas run over and killed while he

slept on the ground at the entrance of thegarage door of a residence in SanFrancisco�’s South of Market area.

Even though the story did not containthe dead man�’s name, I knew instantly itwas Elvis.

I knew because of the location wherethe tragedy took place.

Elvis slept most nights in front of thatgarage door. He huddled beside the huge,mechanically operated, metal door when itwas raining and cold. And he spent moredays than he should have passed out onthe sidewalk directly in the path of auto-mobiles entering and leaving the garage.

I knew it was Elvis because I have beenphotographing him for years, documentinghis curbside saga, hoping to learn some-thing, anything, I might use to assist peopletrapped in dreadful circumstances of thesort that defined his life on the street.

During one of our many discussions,he told me he had lived homeless in thisneighborhood for more than 15 years. Hisbroken, tired, ravaged body provided sadevidence of what that was like.Nonetheless, he never complained, and hedidn�’t necessarily see himself as a victim.

Intrigued by his pleasant personalityand jaunty attitude, I began to photographhim. He grew comfortable with this prac-tice, and over the years I took hundreds ofshots of him. In many of those shots, he issprawled, drunk and oblivious, on thebare concrete in front of the garage doorwhere the homeless man �— unnamed inthe first news accounts �— was killed.

My intuition about the identity of thatunidentified homeless man was confirmeda few days later by a second newspaperarticle, which presented the dead man�’sfull name: Elvis Presley.

Elvis had told me his name over theyears, but I was never convinced he wastelling the truth �— until his identity wasconfirmed in his newspaper death notice.

The newspaper account of his deathwas brief, and minimally informative. Itstated his age, 55, the location of hisdeath, the fact that he was run over by afemale driver, and that the driver had notbeen charged for his death.

The story did not say anything aboutwhere he came from, whether he had fami-ly, why he was sleeping on the street, orhow long he had been sleeping in front ofthat particular garage door. There was noinformation pertaining to efforts that mightbe made to identify and notify relatives.

While pondering the article, which Iclipped from the newspaper and repeatedlyread, I wondered whether memorial ser-vices are held somewhere in this elegantcity for those who die alone on the street.

After spending several days privatelymourning Elvis, I attempted to obtain moreinformation about his death from people inthe neighborhood who knew him. Many ofthose I approached said they were aware ofhis death, but none of them showed any sig-nificant emotion or regret.

�“He was drunk all the time,�” said a localmerchant, who happens to be one of the

persons who sold Elvis liquor on a dailybasis. There are, of course, other localliquor merchants who also profited fromElvis�’s debilitating drinking via regularsales of whatever kind of alcohol he pre-ferred to consume at any given time.

�“Sleeping in front of that garage door,he must have known that sooner or later hewould be killed,�” replied a local woman,when asked her opinion of Elvis�’s death.She also said she held Elvis in low regardbecause he had little or no control of hisdrinking problem.

Given the fact that Elvis lived mostlyon the street where everyone could seeand interact with him on a daily basis, hewas probably the best-known person inthe neighborhood.

He was also outgoing, talkative, andunfailingly friendly. Nonetheless, otherthan the two short newspaper articles,there has been no noticeable communityresponse to his gruesome death.

This is almost certainly due in part tothe deeply entrenched modes of avoidancecurrently practiced in our society regard-ing our many homeless neighbors.

In any event, the dispassionate, alienat-ed opinions expressed by some in responseto the gruesome death of a man who livedon the streets in this neighborhood formore than a decade is troubling because ofwhat it says about the tattered, threadbareremnants of what people used to refer to asa shared sense of community.

Unfortunately, a shared sense of com-munity is one of the things we don�’t havea whole lot of these days in SanFrancisco�’s South of Market district.Mostly, people exist as individuals.

Bars, restaurants and supermarkets areour community meeting places.

The vast majority of those who work in

local businesses leave the neighborhood atthe end of the workday. However well paidthey might be, and lots of them are highlycompensated specialists in various aspectsof high tech and the social media, few ofthem earn enough to purchase housing in aneighborhood where mini-sized condomini-ums and lofts are hard to find for less thanhalf a million dollars.

Members of the chic crowd flood intothe neighborhood when darknessdescends. They are here for sportingevents, art galleries, gourmet restaurants,underground clubs and adult adventure.

Money is the glue that holds the placetogether. All the new stuff streaming intothe area is expensive, and every unusedspace is being transformed in accordancewith its potential to produce profit.

Several years ago, there were numer-ous empty buildings and vacant lots inthis section of town. There were placeswhere low-salaried workers, the unem-ployed and homeless people could hangout and not be harassed. But the cheapfood restaurants and low-rent housing thatsustained such residents in the recent pastare currently rare to nonexistent.

In other words, it has become difficultto impossible to hang out in this section of

San Francisco for those who are notnotably prosperous.

This is one of the primary reasons whypeople like Elvis spend their days andnights hovering precariously at the socialmargins of all that might be described asmainstream society.

It is critically important for as many ofus as possible to understand that homelesspeople, largely due to economic forces far

The Unmourned Death of Elvis Presley in San Francisco

Elvis Presley sleeps on the sidewalk in the South of Market neighborhood where he would later die. Robert L. Terrell photo

Despite the toll taken by living on the street for so very long,Elvis Presley was outgoing, talkative and unfailingly friendly.

Robert L. Terrellphoto

See Elvis Dies Alone, Unmourned page 11

Elvis was homeless in thisneighborhood for over 15years. His broken, tired,ravaged body provided sadevidence of what that waslike. Nonetheless, he nevercomplained, and he didn�’tsee himself as a victim.

Street SpiritStreet Spirit is published by AmericanFriends Service Committee. The ven-dor program is run by J.C. Orton.

Editor, Layout: Terry MessmanWeb designer: Ariel Messman-Rucker

Contributors: Cassandra Blau, JannyCastillo, Carol Denney, Kazu Haga,Ariel Messman-Rucker, Dan McMullan,The Positive Peace Warrior Network,Amir Soltani, Zachary Stickney, RobertL. Terrell, Chihiro Wimbush

All works copyrighted by the authors.

The views expressed in Street Spirit arti-cles are those of the individual authors,not necessarily those of the AFSC.

Street Spirit welcomes submissions ofarticles, poems, photos and art.Contact: Terry MessmanStreet Spirit, 65 Ninth Street,San Francisco, CA 94103E-mail: spirit@afsc.orgWeb: http://www.thestreetspirit.orgVisit Street Spirit on Facebook:www.facebook.com/streetspiritnews

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December 2012

December 2012ST R E E T SP I R I T4

by Lynda Carson

The Berkeley Housing Authorityadministers about 1,939 subsidizedrental-housing units for low-

income families through the Section 8Housing Choice Voucher Program and theModerate Rehabilitation SRO Program.

Unless the Obama administration andCongress come up with a new plan toavoid what is called the �“fiscal cliff,�” disas-trous, across-the-board spending cuts tonon-defense programs are scheduled to gointo effect on Jan. 2, 2013. Federal pro-grams affecting the working class, elderly,disabled and the poor could lose billions ofdollars in funding in 2013.

These looming cutbacks may never beimposed if legislators back away from thecliff, as many expect to happen. But if thecuts do occur, poor people will suffergreat harm. The 8.2 percent spending cutswould damage poverty programs, home-less programs, public housing andHousing Choice Voucher Program (for-merly called Section 8 vouchers).

Low-income tenants in the HousingChoice Voucher Program pay 30 to 40percent of their monthly income for rent,and the rest of the rent is paid to the land-

lord by the voucher from the Section 8Housing Choice Voucher Program.

The spending cuts threaten at least250,000 voucher holders with eviction, ifautomatic spending cuts go into effect onJan. 2, 2013, as scheduled.

The so-called �“fiscal cliff�” is the com-bination of Bush-era tax cuts about toexpire, and massive, across-the-boardspending cuts (sequestration) that couldtotal $800 billion next year, according tothe Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

Sequestration is a term to describe theimplementation of mandatory spendingcuts in the federal budget, such as auto-matic, across-the-board cuts that takeplace when annual budget deficits occur.

The expected outcome of sequestrationcould add up to $110 billion in spendingcuts in 2013, according to CBO estimates,unless Congress and the White House takeaction to stop the automatic cuts.

A CBO forecast predicted that if a newbudget agreement is not reached, automaticspending cuts could cause a new recessionwith 9.1 percent unemployment, and theCongressional Research Service predicted aloss of 1.4 million jobs next year.

Locally, the Berkeley HousingAuthority continues negotiations to priva-

tize 75 public housing units by sellingthem to out-of-state billionaires Jorge M.Perez and Stephen M. Ross of the RelatedCompanies of California, LLC.

Some of Berkeley�’s public housing ten-ants face pressure to trade in their publichousing townhouses for federally subsi-dized Housing Choice Vouchers. Rep. DickNorman, Democrat from Washington stateand the ranking member of the HouseAppropriations Committee, wrote on Oct.9, 2012, that if sequestration takes effect,200,000 voucher holders may be evictedfrom subsidized housing across the nation.

Furthermore, Rep. Norman writes thatin some markets, the income provided bySection 8 tenants wouldn�’t be replaced bynew tenants, and landlords would loseincome as a result. Norman also statedthat cuts to the Homeless Assistant Grantaccount would result in approximately100,000 more people on the streets ifsequestration goes into effect.

However, in their own assessment ofthe situation, the Department of Housingand Urban Development (HUD) estimatesthat 250,000 voucher holders will losetheir housing if sequestration takes effect,resulting in nearly one million people los-ing their federal housing assistance and

being placed at risk of homelessness. According to the Council of Large

Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA),about 303,499 seniors rely on Section 8Housing Choice Vouchers for affordablehousing. Also, Section 8 housing is hometo 458,124 households with one or moredisabled family member. In addition, 59percent of Section 8 households are fami-lies with children (more than 2,357,977children in total), with an average annualfamily income of $11,049.

According to the Center on Budget andPolicy Priorities, $17.37 billion will beneeded to fully renew the 2,130,000vouchers they estimated are being used bylow-income families in 2011.

The 8.2 percent in spending cuts(sequestration) scheduled to kick in onJan. 2, 2013, would make it much moredifficult for public housing authorities toadminister subsidized housing programs.

Activists are urging low-income familiesin federally subsidized housing to contacttheir representatives, and to urge the Obamaadministration and Congress to stop theautomatic spending cuts that could result inthe eviction of 250,000 voucher holders inHUD housing programs.

Fiscal Cliff Threatens Federal Housing and Poverty Programs

Homeless advocates, service providers,religious leaders, poverty rights attorneys,activists and members of the communitybanded together to fight the reprehensibleballot measure using grass-root tactics.

�“All of the things we achieved wereonly achievable because we had reallygood, solid volunteers making them hap-pen on a daily basis, and that�’s the core ofwhy we won,�” Offer-Westort said.

The No on S/Stand Up for the Right toSit Down campaign visited all of theBerkeley precincts and went door to doortalking to residents and businesses formonths prior to the election.

�“The core of our campaign was beingin touch, going out and talking to people,finding out what mattered to them andhaving those one-on-one conversations,�”Offer-Westort said. �“That was really theheart of our campaign and the heart ofhow we won.�”

Securing the endorsements of theACLU of Northern California, the BayArea chapter of the National LawyersGuild, and scores of religious leaders,community organizations and local politi-cal clubs also helped the No on S cam-paign reach voters.

�“What I feel heartened by is that wegot the arguments and the facts out infront of voters with very little money, butwith a lot of passion,�” Cook said.

No on S was able to get the endorse-ments of five local Democratic clubs withthe sole exception of the BerkeleyDemocratic Club, which endorsedMeasure S and created a misleading slatecard, which included their endorsement ofthe sitting ban, Offer-Westort said.

Despite its name, the BerkeleyDemocratic Club (BDC) does not officiallyrepresent the Democratic Party any morethan any other local Democratic club. Yettheir slate cards had �“Official DemocraticParty Voter Guide�” printed on them.

�“They�’re advertising to be someonewho they�’re not,�” Offer-Westort said. �“Imean it�’s extremely dishonest.�”

The BDC supplied John Caner, thechief executive officer of the DowntownBerkeley Association and a major Yes onS supporter, with their duplicitous slatecards to give out to voters.

Caner then had Davida Coady of

Options Recovery Services, also a keybacker of the Yes on S campaign, recruitapproximately 50 homeless people tohand out the misleading slate cards to vot-ers right outside of Berkeley pollingplaces on Election Day.

The No on S campaign spoke withsome of the homeless people and weretold they thought they were being hired bythe Democratic Party to hand out informa-tion in support of the Obama campaign.

�“So they�’re handing out these slatecards, which are not of the DemocraticParty, despite what they claim, andthey�’re pushing an anti-homeless law,�”Offer-Westort said. �“It�’s one of the mostdisgusting kind of vicious things that I�’veseen in electoral politics.�”

Coady refused to comment when StreetSpirit contacted her at Options RecoveryServices, where she is medical director.

The No on S/Stand Up for the Right toSit Down campaign ran a campaign intenton winning at the polls, but also with thegoal of talking directly to the public sothey would better understand the reasonspeople end up living on the streets and thereasons laws that strip people of their civilliberties aren�’t a solution to economicproblems or homelessness.

Supporters of the No on S campaignvolunteered their time to not only speakwith the public, but also organizedprotests and creative events to get themessage out to Berkeley voters.

�“We knew that just standing on themoral high ground and waving at peoplewouldn�’t work �— that it had to be morethan that �— so we tried to educate peoplevery specifically about who was on thestreets and why,�” said Carol Denney, anindependent journalist and homelessactivist who spent countless hours work-ing for the No on S campaign. Denneyorganized events and spoke to nearly 500Berkeley businesses about Measure S.

A lack of understanding of the multiplereasons why people become homeless is ahuge impediment to finding real solutions,City Councilmember Arreguin said.

�“It�’s not just street youth,�” Arreguinsaid. �“It�’s veterans, people who have sub-stance abuse problems, people who havemental health issues. It�’s families, and avery diverse group of people and peoplewho are on the streets for different reasons.

�“I think fundamentally the problem with

Measure S is that it was put on the ballotwithout any real analysis of the problems,without any data, without any discussion ofalternatives, but even more so, without areal fundamental understanding about whoare the homeless in Berkeley.�”

Although the defeat of Measure S iscause for celebration, homeless advocatesand service providers now want to turnthe attention of city officials to findingsolutions to the real causes of homeless-ness and to create the housing and sheltersneeded in Berkeley.

�“Now let�’s take that energy that wehad to use just tearing our hair out tryingto fight this thing �— let�’s take that energyand do something wonderful,�” said SallyHindman, executive director of YouthSpirit Artworks, who is currently fightingto get additional funding to expand herprogram that helps low-income and home-less youth in Berkeley.

�“We fought off something negative andthat�’s never optimal,�” Hindman said. �“Iwould have preferred to have had the hun-dreds of hours that I had to put into fightingthat, and all of us had to put into it, I wouldhave preferred that be focused right fromthe start on something that we knew wouldwork. There are still 400 homeless youth onthe streets and couches of Berkeley on anygiven night and that hasn�’t changed. Solet�’s roll up our sleeves and get going.We�’ve got work to do.�”

Homeless activist Denney said that

while she was disheartened that the dehu-manizing ordinance even made its way tothe voters, she hopes that the work done bythe Stand Up for the Right to Sit Downcoalition will serve as a guide and sourceof inspiration for those who have to fightagainst anti-homeless laws in other cities.

�“I worry for this town and this countrythat this happened at all,�” Denney said.�“On the other hand, what I think we justdid successfully as a group �— the groupthat opposed Measure S �— was create amodel for other communities with similarundemocratic power bases trying to robother people of civil rights.�”

Arreguin echoed this in saying, �“I thinkBerkeley really can be a leader and can be amodel for how we can come together todevelop solutions to address homelessness.The next steps are equally important aswhat happened with Measure S.�”

Referring to the headline of StreetSpirit�’s story on Measure S in its Novemberissue, �“Berkeley�’s Choice: Compassion orRepression,�” Hindman said, �“I think thatthe voters took up Street Spirit on theirchallenge of repression versus compassion.I think that compassion won out. Peoplewant to do something positive. They don�’twant to do something cruel that�’s going tobe punitive. They brought their best selvesto the polls in that regard.�”

from page 1

Berkeley Chooses Compassion

�“I have the right to exist in public space.�” Young people in Berkeleyworked to defeat a measure that would have outlawed sitting in public.

Janny Castillophoto

December 2012 ST R E E T SP I R I T 5

by Carol Denney

Some of Berkeley�’s commercialdistricts are echoing canyons ofempty storefronts. Real estatecompanies boast of the town�’s

amenities, but blame the presence ofhomeless people and panhandlers for theempty commercial spaces which burdenthe town year after year. Yet, their ownrefusal to lower rental rates probablyplays the primary role in discouragingnew commercial tenants.

The Berkeley City Council currentlyhas three members who opposed MeasureS, the anti-sitting law targeting the poorwhich failed to get popular support at thepolls, but none of Berkeley�’s coun-cilmembers have spoken out yet about anissue making Berkeley�’s commercial dis-tricts discouraging and even dangerous foreverybody �— poor people and shoppersalike �— police misconduct.

Police misconduct is being ignored as acommunity-wide problem in Berkeley.

The police are currently misusing adecades-old law �— an ordinance original-ly designed to keep storeowners�’ mer-chandise from cluttering the sidewalk �—against pedestrians themselves who setdown a backpack or bag of belongings.

This misuse of Section 14.48.020 is incomplete violation of the law�’s intent andits exemption for personal belongings.Discrimination appears to be playing arole in the law�’s misuse, and appears to beplaying a role in additional incidents, suchas the following story.

Try to imagine coming across the Baywith your family to visit friends inBerkeley and being suddenly tackled, tornfrom your family�’s side, and forced tospend the night in a psychiatric facilitywithout charge or explanation. Would youever come back to visit?

Hila Sulme and her son, both residentsof San Francisco, visited friends oneSunday in Berkeley, then stopped by thedowntown library before walking back totheir car on Center Street. It was Nov. 18,2012, around 6:00 p.m.

They were on Center Street near thegame store when Berkeley bike officerEric Keen zoomed around the corner andgrabbed Ms. Sulme�’s son, taking him tothe ground and handcuffing him. AnotherBerkeley police officer, Heather Cole,was present as well. A man who claimedto have reported a crime stood nearbywatching as Ms. Sulme�’s son was hand-cuffed on the public sidewalk.

Neither Ms. Sulme nor her son had anyidea what was going on. They had wit-nessed no crime or incident during theirday, and had never had any encounterwith either police officer before.

Ms. Sulme asked the young man whoclaimed to have reported them to thepolice to step back and give them someprivacy, but Officer Keen objected, stat-ing �“he has the right to stand here.�”

Ms. Sulme said that she was the motherof the young man being arrested. OfficerKeen asked how old her son was, and whenshe told him that he was 18, Keen respond-ed that she then had no rights, and needed

to get a power of attorney. Ms. Sulme tried her best to inform the

police officers that her son had uniquemedical issues and that they needed to lis-ten to her regarding his condition, but shewas dismissed by both officers, who sug-gested that an ambulance would be calledand the emergency medical technicianswould evaluate her son.

Officer Heather Cole then made astrange comment, accusing Ms. Sulme ofbeing sarcastic as she tried to explain thecomplex medical circumstances facing herson, circumstances which she, as hismother, as a nurse, and as someone withtraining in special education, was in aposition to clarify.

Ms. Sulme denied that she was beingsarcastic, and when the officers continuedto resist allowing her to tell them anythingabout her son�’s medical issues, said that shefelt they were both being unprofessionaland unethical. Neither officer had any inter-est in what she had to say and claimed theyhad no obligation to listen to her.

Her son was now seated on the side-walk against the game store wall, and theofficers forced a Starbucks cup into hishandcuffed hands behind his back, whichshe could only presume was an effort totake his fingerprints. It had become clearat this point that the officers wereresponding to a report on the vandalism ofa car near the library on Allston Way andassumed that her son, who had never lefther side, was responsible.

Ms. Sulme�’s son had no cuts or glassanywhere on his body which might linkhim to any car vandalism when the ambu-lance took him away. But, after spendingthe night sleeping on the floor of JohnGeorge Psychiatric Pavilion in SanLeandro, he had a bruise on his arm frombeing hit by one of the patients.

Ms. Sulme got through to a physicianat the facility who was baffled that her sonhad been sent there in the first place, com-menting that not only did the psychiatricplacement make no sense, and also addingthat the setting was dangerous for her sonbecause of his medical issues.

Which is exactly what Ms. Sulme hadbeen trying to tell Officer Keen andOfficer Cole, the bike officers so eager tohave her son swept off the street into anambulance and out of sight.

Neither she nor her son have any ideawhether or not he will be charged with acrime. All she was given as her son wastaken away was a case number.

Ms. Sulme and her son remain baffledby their mistreatment. They�’ve receivedno citation or charges of any crime at thetime of this writing, nor have theyreceived any apology or explanation fromthe police officers or the departmentregarding the bizarre events of that day.

Officer Jennifer Coats, the BerkeleyPolice Department�’s public informationofficer, responded to my request for anofficial explanation by claiming that Ms.Sulme�’s son was never taken to theground, and that an eyewitness had identi-fied him as having broken a car window.

She also stated that a mobile crisisteam had been called and had arranged forpsychiatric observation. She had no com-ment on the officers�’ having forced aStarbucks cup into the handcuffed handsof Ms. Sulme�’s son.

The next time you see someone sur-rounded by police on the streets ofBerkeley, please consider simply standingby as a witness. The 10 minutes you spendobserving might end up being of crucialassistance to an innocent person. It alsomight clarify at least one reason why manypeople avoid coming to this city for a visit.

A Family�’s Disturbing Encounter with Berkeley PoliceImagine coming to visit friends in Berkeley and being tack-led, torn from your family�’s side, and forced to spend thenight in a psychiatric ward without charge or explanation.

Commentary by Daniel McMullan

Iremember Measures N and O inBerkeley, the anti-homeless ordi-nances of 20 years ago. The crowd

was so big that we had to hold the CityCouncil meeting at the Berkeley HighAuditorium. The lies they told back thenseemed slicker. Today they just say any-thing �— any lie will do.

Even on the night after the election,Gina Cova was writing for the Daily Calthat Measure S was aimed at �“sidewalkencampments,�” not just the simple act ofsitting. Yet sidewalk encampments havebeen illegal for quite some time underordinance 647 (e) P.C.

That�’s a penal code I know only toowell. I�’d love to have it on my tombstone:�“Finally. I�’m not violating 647 (e) anymore.�” But let�’s be real. I�’m too poor fora decent burial.

This year they had a Measure N and Oon the ballot, too. It was about taking careof Berkeley�’s pools. It failed. It failed forone reason: �“Where would Berkeley poli-tics be without Dirty Pool?�”

But when it came to the Yes on Sgroup, things got as dirty as it gets.

It�’s hard for me to imagine howBerkeley�’s business people keep falling forthis same one-trick pony. Instead of doingsome real work, let�’s blame people sitting,and people with no homes �—again!!

What real work, you ask?Maybe try including the people of

Berkeley, for starters. We all care aboutwhere we live, not just where we sell.

I can think of dozens of things to bringpeople back to Telegraph Avenue. Peoplecame to Telegraph for that fabled vibe �—one of its best parts being its street musi-cians. Telegraph Avenue should hold a�“Telegraph World Street Musician

Competition.�” Every year. Close off thestreet, let people walk around, listen to themusicians, check out the vendors.

Look at the state of Haste and Telegraphtoday. When Andy Ross attacked the pooron behalf of business and profits, he starteda trend that continues to burden Telegraphwith some bad, bad Karma.

Let us bring back the best of that oldvibe and help those in need with somegenuine good will and imagination.

A lot of people sitting around are poorpeople that have places to stay, but theycost so much that they have no money leftto do anything. Why not a program in coop-eration with local businesses that givesthese people credits for time they put in vol-unteering in Berkeley? These credits can beused to go to movies, get something to eat,get items they need, etc.

I would also like to develop somethingI call �“E.T. (Errant Teenager) phonehome.�” That puts kids on the streets intouch with their families.

These are just a few things on mymind, but they sure beat the lame scape-

goating and negative impressions ourbusiness leaders have been killing us with.

Try getting some new, more positiveand nicer people to head the TelegraphBusiness Improvement District and theDowntown Berkeley Association. Peoplewho are willing to do great things andstop moaning about how bad these placesare. Who could read their whining andever want to buy what they are selling??

John Caner is the director of theDowntown Berkeley Association and wasa major supporter of Measure S. Whywould Caner, who owns a huge hilltopvilla in Sonoma, want to begrudge somepoor person a piece of sidewalk?

Then we come to Dr. Davida Coady ofOptions Recovery Services. On electionday, she reportedly sent Options clientsover to John Caner�’s place to pick up Yeson S literature to pass out at voting sta-tions. Homeless people asking voters tocriminalize homeless people? These arepeople that Coady often holds the powerover �— the power of the legal system.

Many Options people are the very ones

that would get tickets if Measure S hadpassed, but they are too afraid to say no,and they were too afraid to say no when Dr.Coady (fearing a loss in her power to jailpeople?) came out against Prop. 36, the lawthat gave first-time drug offenders theoption to go to a real treatment program,rather than jail, for drug possession.

Why was someone who runs a recov-ery program so opposed to a propositionthat supports and provides funding forrecovery programs? And now, OptionsRecovery Services has no problem withsucking up all that Prop. 36 money.

When I think of laws that criminalizesitting, I am reminded of Kevin Freeman,a homeless man murdered in a Santa Ritajail cell. His crime? Being poor. Throughthe model that criminalizes poor people,he should have left town. But he didn�’t.

So Kevin needed some more jailing.Enough jailing to end up getting his brainssplattered all over a jail cell by a homici-dal prisoner. That got him off our side-walks for good. I knew Kevin as a gentle,generous man. I�’m still mad about, andsad about, what happened to him.

That�’s why I want to thank you,Berkeley. Thank you for seeing throughthe B.S. surrounding S.

As City Councilman Jesse Arreguinsaid, Berkeley�’s spirit is better than thislaw. And some said he was naive. But no,he was right, and the defeat of Measure Swas one of Berkeley�’s finest moments.Now let�’s get on to some real work.

Dan McMullan is the coordinator of theDisabled People Outside Project. Pleasedonate clothes, coats, sleeping bags, andblankets to the Disabled People OutsideProject. Call (510) 684-5866 or donate athttp://www.neighborhoodlink.com/Disabled_People_Outside_Project

Berkeley�’s Finest Moment: The Defeat of Measure S

Dan McMullan is sworn in as a Berkeley Commissioner on the HumanWelfare and Community Action Commission on Nov. 26, 2012.

Cassandra Blauphoto

December 2012ST R E E T SP I R I T6

by Terry Messman

Over the past year, the PositivePeace Warrior Network hasconducted workshops in thestrategy, philosophy and ethi-

cal values of �“Kingian Nonviolence�” formore than one thousand people �— includ-ing high-school students, grandparents,prisoners in local jails, young people ofcolor living in dangerous neighborhoods,Occupy activists, and organizers involvedin many social change movements.

The Positive Peace Warrior Network(PPWN) defines �“Positive Peace�” aspeace with justice for all because Dr.Martin Luther King, Jr. taught that �“peaceis not only the absence of violence, butthe presence of justice.�”

I first became aware of the work ofPPWN organizers Jonathan Lewis andKazu Haga during last winter�’s Occupymovement when they played a highly prin-cipled role by advocating for nonviolentsocial change at a time of great controversyover tactics in Occupy. In the next fewmonths, PPWN organizers gave workshopsin Kingian Nonviolence to a total of about300 Occupy activists, including peopleactive with Occupy Oakland, Occupy SanFrancisco, Occupy Seattle, OccupyProvidence and Occupy Wall Street.

Now, in the Bay Area, the Occupymovement has apparently fallen into oneof those low ebbs that seem to occur peri-odically throughout the history of social-change movements. Yet, the PositivePeace Warrior Network and many othergroups are still working with great dedica-tion to keep the spirit of justice alive.

The dedication of people like KazuHaga and Jonathan Lewis gives the lie toone of the most deceptive media myths ofour era. This prevalent myth holds thateven though countercultural youth rose upin rebellion to war and racism in the1960s, the fiery spirit that once animatedtheir dissent has long since been extin-guished and is now irrelevant.

This myth has clouded our vision andmade us believe that young people see thecivil rights and peace movements as histori-cal curiosities and little more. Yet those ofus who have attended high-spirited eventsorganized by the Positive Peace WarriorNetwork in the Bay Area have witnessedgroups of fired-up and dedicated youngactivists describe their own work for humanrights and peace and justice.

Perhaps that should not come as such asurprise, given the fantastic organizing bythousands of young activists this past yearthat created one of the most significantsocial-change movements of our time �—the Occupy movement. Even thoughOccupy has, at least temporarily, lost someof its energy and sense of direction, theyoung people who gave birth to it are stilldoing the very serious work of reflectionand analysis and movement building.

One dedicated organizer still working tobuild a stronger and more principled move-ment is Kazu Haga, 31, a Japanese-American activist who was trained in non-violent resistance by his mentors, Dr.Bernard Lafayette and Jonathan Lewis.

As a key organizer of the Positive PeaceWarrior Network, Kazu has conductedworkshops in Kingian Nonviolence for sev-eral hundred activists this past year, includ-ing such disparate groups as academics andanarchists, faith leaders and prisoners,senior citizens and high-school students,

longtime activists and those who havenever attended a demonstration.

The message of Kingian Nonviolencecan be traced in an historical line from thecivil rights organizers of the Southern free-dom movement in the 1950s, through theanti-Vietnam War struggles of the 1960s,on through the anti-nuclear and anti-apartheid movements of the 1980s, all theway to today�’s young Occupy activists.

Martin Luther King�’s vision of thebeloved community helped to inspire allof those movements, and Dr. BernardLafayette, Kazu Haga and Jonathan Lewisformed the Positive Peace WarriorNetwork to pass that all-important mes-sage on to the next generation.

On the morning of April 4, 1968, a fewhours before his assassination, MartinLuther King met with Bernard Lafayetteat the Lorraine Motel in Memphis to dis-cuss strategic details of the Poor People�’sCampaign they were planning. At the endof the meeting, King abruptly shiftedgears and told Lafayette of a vitallyimportant new mission that he saw as thenext step for the movement.

On his last morning on earth, Rev.King said: �“Now, Bernard, the next move-ment we�’re going to have is to institution-alize and internationalize nonviolence.�”That one momentous sentence set thecourse for Dr. Lafayette�’s entire life.

In the aftermath of King�’s assassination,his last words echoed with such fateful sig-nificance that Lafayette made it his life�’swork to carry the message of nonviolenceto the world. In an interview with StreetSpirit, Dr. Lafayette explained the deepermeaning of his life�’s work: �“The reason Iwent and prepared myself for this work isbecause I wanted to make sure that thosewho attempted to assassinate MartinLuther King�’s dream �— missed.�”

In the decades since King�’s murder,Lafayette has conducted nonviolent train-ings for thousands of activists all over theworld, taught courses in nonviolent con-flict resolution in universities and semi-naries, and created peace education pro-grams in the academic world.

Kazu Haga is one of the thousands ofpeople who have attended Dr. Lafayette�’snonviolence training. In an interview withStreet Spirit, Kazu said, �“The way KingianNonviolence has been handed down to us isthat it�’s essentially Dr. Martin LutherKing�’s final marching orders.�”

The Positive Peace Warrior Networkhas worked especially hard to ensure thatthe youth of today learn about the philoso-phy and vision of Kingian Nonviolence.

In Chicago, the PPWN conducted nonvi-olence trainings in North Lawndale CollegePrep High School, resulting in the schoolreporting a 90 percent reduction in violencesince they began working with them.

In Oakland, the PPWN has worked withlow-income and at-risk youth, includingthose who were gang-involved, formerlyincarcerated, or homeless. Jonathan andKazu have worked with a collaborative ofyouth organizations �— including YouthSpirit Artworks, BAY-Peace, and YouthAlive �— to introduce Kingian Nonviolenceinto the ongoing work of those groups.

Sally Hindman, executive director ofYouth Spirit Artworks in Berkeley, saidthat their workshops in nonviolence havebeen tremendously helpful to the youth inher group who live in dangerous neigh-borhoods where street violence and policerepression are ever-present realities.

�“The Positive Peace Warrior Networkhas been transformative for the lives of ouryouth,�” she said. �“It really turned their wayof thinking upside down. They were justcompletely enthralled by the training.�”

Hindman said the youth in her group hadbeen turned off by nonviolent trainingsgiven by more �“middle-class�” organizationsand found them alienating and irrelevant.But Kazu Haga and Jonathan Lewis spoketo the youth in their own language so theycould really relate to them.

�“Kazu and Jonathan have been aroundthe block,�” Hindman said. �“They knowfrom their own experience what nonvio-lence is about, and they know what life onthe street is about. They totally get it. Sowhen they talk to our youth, they�’re com-pletely coming from the place our youthare coming from. It�’s the differencebetween night and day.�”

One of the most powerful insights theyouth gained was a fresh way of looking atthe vision and commitment of Dr. King.

�“ I think our youth were blown away bythis fresh analysis and this fresh approachto talking about who Dr. King was,�” saidHindman. �“I think Martin Luther King getsserved up to all of us now in a very sani-tized way that even Republicans can use.

�“But Jonathan and Kazu are bringing Dr.King back to life. They�’re really talkingabout what King has to say that can changethe lives of youth right now, and he is call-ing them to radical nonviolence to save awhole population of young people.�”

As a young man, David Hartsoughtook part in the lunch counter sit-ins in theearly days of the civil rights movement,and he marched with Martin Luther Kingand Ralph David Abernathy. Later, as astaff organizer for the American FriendsService Committee, Hartsough conductedcountless nonviolent trainings himself.

At present, Hartsough is the director ofPeaceworkers and the cofounder ofNonviolent Peace Force, and he hasalready experienced nearly every variationof nonviolence training imaginable.

Yet Hartsough was so inspired by theworkshop in Kingian Nonviolence given

by Jonathan and Kazu, that he has takentheir training twice in the past year.

Hartsough said, �“Kazu is a young per-son of color who has been very active inthe Occupy movement�’s people of colorcaucus and the young people�’s caucus andthe nonviolence caucus. I think he has beendoing everything he can to infuse an under-standing of nonviolence in the broadermovement. Kazu has taken seriously whatMartin Luther King and Mahatma Gandhiand other nonviolent leaders have saidthroughout history, that for movements tobe powerful �— not only morally powerfulbut also strategically effective �— it�’simportant to operate from a very clear andstrong nonviolent perspective.�”

Hartsough said he especially appreciatedKazu�’s role last winter when OccupyOakland was undergoing deep divisionsbetween those who advocated nonviolenceand those calling for a �“diversity of tactics.�”

�“What is really impressive is that Kazuis not just studying King, but putting hislife into helping deepen the understandingof Kingian Nonviolence by people in themovement,�” Hartsough said. �“He is doingall this to follow his conscience and hisheart and put nonviolence into practice.

Asked to name the people who havemost inspired him, Kazu quickly listsMartin Luther King, Bernard Lafayette,and his mother Maoko, who gave him abelief in compassion and service. Anotherinspiration is Nichidatsu Fujii (known asFujii Guruji) a Japanese Buddhist monkwho founded Nipponzan Myohoji, aBuddhist order known for its work inbuilding Peace Pagodas and going onpeace pilgrimages all over the world.

When he was 17, Kazu was adrift onthe streets until the monks and nuns ofNipponzan Myohoji �“took me under theirwing.�” He traveled with them to India andlived in their monastic order for a yearand a half, doing everything from heavyconstruction work while building PeacePagaodas, to peace walks in Cambodia,and volunteer work in Sri Lanka.

The experience was formative in theyoung man�’s life. �“That�’s how I came intoall this work in nonviolence,�” he said ofhis involvement with the Buddhist order.

Kazu talks with great enthusiasm aboutthe unfinished work of transforming theworld into the �“beloved community�” thatMartin Luther King dreamed of creating.

This is how a legacy is entrusted to anew generation: Martin Luther King gavehis very life to spreading the message ofnonviolence. Bernard Lafayette picked upthe fallen torch of Kingian Nonviolenceafter King was murdered, and passed it onas a living legacy to Jonathan Lewis andKazu Haga. Now Jonathan and Kazu are ona mission to offer a vision of the belovedcommunity to the next generation.

Bringing Dr. King�’s Message to a New Generation

Kazu Haga (left) holds a nonviolence workshop in the East Bay Meditation Center as Courtney Supple and Rebecca Speert listen.

�“The way Kingian nonviolencehas been handed down to us isthat it�’s essentially Dr. MartinLuther King�’s final marchingorders.�” �— Kazu Haga

December 2012 ST R E E T SP I R I T 7

Interview by Terry MessmanStreet Spirit: What led you to make

Martin Luther King�’s vision of nonviolentmovement building such a central part ofyour activism and your life?

Kazu Haga: I took my first two-daytraining in Kingian Nonviolence in thefall of 2008 from Jonathan Lewis when Iwas living in Oakland. We were bothworking with an organization called TheGathering for Justice founded by HarryBelafonte. Kingian nonviolence was to beone of the core strategies for that group.

So I took the workshop from Jonathanand I told him at the time that this philos-ophy was something that I always knewbut just didn�’t have the language to articu-late. Jonathan Lewis had already beenworking with Bernard Lafayette for about10 years at that point.

So after I took that training, it wasweighing heavily on my mind, and thenabout two months later, Oscar Grant wasshot. [Editor�’s note: Grant, an African-American man, was fatally shot by BARTpolice officer Johannes Mehserle in theearly morning on New Year�’s Day 2009at the Fruitvale BART Station.]

I ended up on the steering committeeof the Coalition Against PoliceExecutions (CAPE) which was doing allthe mobilizations after the shooting.

So this philosophy of nonviolence wasreally heavy on my mind during thatwhole campaign and I really started to seehow the anger and, at times, the hatredthat was within the movement was start-ing to impact our work. The internaldynamics of our movement were startingto have an effect on the external impactsof the campaign.

Spirit: What effect did anger or hatredhave on the movement, in your view?

Kazu: I really started to see how amovement that�’s largely driven by angerultimately kind of eats itself up. Whathappened internally in the movement isthat there was a lot of turmoil within theorganizers and a lot of arguing and a lotof friction that really tore the Oscar Grantmovement apart. The steering committeeof CAPE eventually just collapsedbecause of that internal turmoil.

I also started to see how a lot of theanger which was righteous anger �— andeverybody clearly had a right to be angry�— was being targeted straight at JohannesMehserle. I felt like this was an issue thatwas so much bigger than Mehserle, andthe more we focused on JohannesMehserle, the more we were letting thesystem off the hook. As one of our strate-gies, we can hold Mehserle accountableas an individual, but also attack the largersystem that creates people like Mehserle.

Spirit: It has always been an impor-tant part of the analysis of nonviolentmovements that you resist the injustice ofan oppressive system, rather than simplis-tically targeting individuals.

Kazu: Always, individuals are not theenemy. Injustice is the enemy. And it�’snot about any one individual, but it�’sabout being able to develop strategies thataddress the root of the injustice. I alwayssay that if it wasn�’t Johannes Mehserle, itwould have been another cop. That�’s justthe way the system works.

Spirit: Since then, you and JonathanLewis have become leaders in the PositivePeace Warrior Network, spreading Dr.King�’s vision of nonviolence far and wide.What is the long-term vision of thePositive Peace Warrior Network?

Kazu: It�’s an organization that is tryingto create a culture of long-lasting, positivepeace through the institutionalization ofnonviolence. We believe that a lot of oursocial movements today focus on how tocreate policy change and structural change.That�’s really important and we need to trainourselves so we can do that better.

But ultimately, it�’s a cultural shift thatwe need in this country. You can createthe best system of governance that youcan possibly create, but if the culture ofthe people is so corrupt, then they aregoing to corrupt that system. So our long-term goal is not only to train people inhow to change policy, but also how tochange cultures and how to reprioritizeour values as a society.

Our training really addresses both ofthose things. It addresses how to buildsustainable movements that create long-term, systemic change, but also how tochange how we relate to each other aspeople, how we handle the conflicts thatare internal to our families and to ourmovements. It�’s really about changingthat culture of violence. It�’s not just a sys-tem change. It�’s not just a policy change.It�’s also a cultural change.

Spirit: Many people embrace nonvio-lence as a tactic, but not as a way of life.Is your commitment to nonviolence a tac-tical commitment or a way of life?

Kazu: It�’s absolutely a way of life.Spirit: Why?Kazu: Because what we need in this

country is not just a change in our form ofgovernment, or a change in certain poli-cies, but also a shift in values. We need ashift in how we respond to the conflicts inour lives. I think one of the problems isthat we continue to justify the use of forceand violence and fear and intimidation tomake the changes that we want to see.

That�’s not just a tactical question. It�’s amoral question. It�’s an ethical question.It�’s a question about our principles as asociety, and our values as a society. Andto shift that, we need to be committed tononviolence in a far deeper way than justhow we�’re going to act when we�’re out inthe streets protesting.

It�’s about how are we going to relate toeach other as a people, and how are wegoing to respond to the conflicts that we

may have between communities andbetween individuals. Until we address thatquestion, we can continue to argue all wewant over tactics, and over how to changepolicies and systems. But at the end of theday, we need to figure out how we canrelate to each other better as humanbeings. To me, that�’s a question of princi-ples. It�’s not merely a question of tactics.

Spirit: Is it true that you left a goodjob with the Peace Development Fund topursue this nonviolent organizing fulltime? What was your role there and whydid you leave that job?

Kazu: I was at the Peace DevelopmentFund for 10 years in their San Franciscooffice. Before that I had worked in theirmain office in Amherst, Massachusetts. Iwas the program director so I was over-seeing our grantmaking program and Ialso managed several of our capacity-building initiatives which meant workingwith a network of organizations providingthem with grants and trainings.

Spirit: So why did you leave?Kazu: For me, it was really that I saw

the potential of Kingian Nonviolence eversince I took that first training. We get thissame comment a lot from people that gothrough our workshops. From the momentI took this training, I knew this had hugepotential and this philosophy had to getout there to more people.

Spirit: What was so eye-opening aboutthe new insights you learned from yourfirst Kingian training in 2008?

Kazu: I gained such a better understand-ing of the way conflict works in our society�— both on an interpersonal level, as well associal conflicts like police violence �— andreally such a better sense of how it is thatwe can move through those conflicts in away that is actually effective.

One of my favorite quotes is by MarcusRaskin. Raskin said that the opportunityfor revolutionary change happens in theblink of an eye, and if you miss thosemoments, it�’s gone. [Editor�’s note: Raskinwas a founder of the Institute for PolicyStudies and an early opponent of theVietnam War. He was indicted with Dr.Benjamin Spock and William Sloane Coffinfor conspiracy to aid draft resistance.]

I felt like the Oscar Grant movementand the Occupy movement are momentswhen we could push for radical change �—but our communities aren�’t prepared tocapture those moments. I see the KingianNonviolence sessions as training our com-munities so that when these opportunitieshappen, we�’re ready to mobilize, we havea long-term analysis and we build long-term strategies, and we have a better senseof what needs to happen internally withinthe movement for it to be successful.

I�’ve just been part of so many cam-paigns that weren�’t able to capture thosemoments, and that�’s really a shame.

Spirit: What is the particular vision ofKingian Nonviolence?

Kazu: The way Kingian Nonviolencehas been handed down to us is that it�’sessentially Dr. Martin Luther King�’s finalmarching orders. He had a conversationwith Dr. Bernard Lafayette before he wasassassinated and he said the next move-ment they had to lead is to �“institutional-ize and internationalize nonviolence.�”

For all of us doing Kingian Nonviolencework, I think our goal is to ensure that Dr.King�’s legacy is alive with us, so that whenthat bullet was fired into his chest, theymissed the target. King had a vision thatthis philosophy that he was starting todevelop could be effective not just in thestruggle against segregation, but also in thestruggle against militarism, in the struggleagainst economic injustice, and in how wedeal with any sort of conflict as a society.

The more we can prepare people tolead these movements, and the more wecan give people an understanding of howto respond to the conflicts in our lives andin our society, the closer we can get toKing�’s vision of the beloved community.It�’s about keeping that legacy alive andeducating more people about how we candeal with conflict in an effective way.

Spirit: What do those words �“thebeloved community�” mean to you? InKing�’s vision, what is the nature of thebeloved community we�’re striving towards?

Kazu: It�’s a community that has justicefor all people, and where all relationshipshave been reconciled. As much as I love the

Building the Positive Peace Warrior NetworkBay Area activists are dedicated to spreading the vision of Kingian Nonviolence

The Street SpiritInterview withKazu Haga

See Positive Peace Warrior Network page 8

Smiles light up the faces of men at the San Bruno County Jail as they listen to a workshop by Kazu Haga and Jonathan Lewis.

�“If we don�’t have leadership from men and women who aregetting locked up, men and women who have been homeless,then ultimately, we will never be able to create sustainedchange. I feel like we need to start there.�” �— Kazu Haga

December 2012ST R E E T SP I R I T8

99% framing in the Occupy movement, Ithink that�’s not a framing that King wouldhave ultimately supported, because ourvision of the beloved community includes areconciled relationship even with those wecall the 1% right now. We need to recog-nize that there are members of the 1% thatare supportive of Occupy, as well as mem-bers of the 99% that are not supportive.

So it�’s never about pointing the fingerand saying, �“Those people are the prob-lem,�” as much as recognizing the injusticein that situation, and saying, �“That�’s theproblem.�” And how can we address theinjustice while winning over more friend-ships with the group that we�’ve consideredto be the enemy. So the beloved communi-ty is the 1% and the 99%. It�’s the commu-nity of East Oakland and the Oaklandpolice department. It�’s the Iraqi citizensand the U.S. citizens �— everyone havingcome to some reconciled process so wecan live in a balanced world.

Spirit: What role, if any, did BernardLafayette play in your becoming involvedin nonviolent organizing? Did you ever gothrough trainings with him?

Kazu: Dr. Lafayette is the coauthorwith David Jehnsen of the Kingian nonvi-olence curriculum, so I met him indirectlywhen I met Jonathan Lewis.

[Editor�’s note: In 1990, David Jehnsenand Bernard Lafayette published �“TheLeaders Manual �— A Structured Guideand Introduction to Kingian Nonviolence:The Philosophy and Methodology.�” It hasbeen called the most authentic education-al and training text about King�’s philoso-phy and strategies of nonviolence.]

Right when the Oscar Grant movementwas going on, I felt instantly that if Icould articulate better the philosophy ofKingian Nonviolence and really passthose lessons on, then we could have amore effective movement. So that sum-mer, I attended the two-week summerinstitute that is held every year at theUniversity of Rhode Island. This is wherepeople come to get trained to become cer-tified trainers in Kingian Nonviolence.

Spirit: Isn�’t the University of RhodeIsland where Dr. Lafayette originated apeace and nonviolent studies program?

Kazu: Yes, he set up what is called theCenter for Nonviolence and Peace Studiesthere. I went there and I studied under Dr.Lafayette for two weeks �— two weeks of14-hour days. Before taking this training,I used to think, like a lot of people, thatnonviolence was essentially about turningthe other cheek and not throwing a punch.But obviously we were not going to spend100 hours exploring different ways to turnthe other cheek [laughing].

So as a result of this session, I reallyunderstood the depth of the philosophy ofnonviolence. I had the opportunity tospend those two weeks learning from Dr.Lafayette and I�’ve since had the opportu-nity to train with him on several occasionsin different communities.

Spirit: How did the intensive study ofnonviolence affect you on a personal level?

Kazu: For me, as a Japanese personthat grew up in Massachusetts, it�’s amaz-ing to now feel like I�’m part of the contin-uing legacy of Dr. King�’s work.Sometimes I�’m doing a workshop in ajail, or I remember one time I was doing aworkshop with some kids in Selma,Alabama, where King worked, and I wasamazed at how I ended up in that position�— talking about King�’s legacy to a bunchof kids in Selma.

A lot of times what happens with youthdevelopment work is that, in an effort toempower young people, and to tell young

people that they�’re the leaders of today,you lose the connection with the elders.So the message is that young people cando it on their own, and they don�’t want orneed the elders �— and I vehemently dis-agree with that.

Spirit: Why do you disagree? Inactivist circles, we tend to almost idolizethe role of youth in building movements.

Kazu: I think that people like Dr.Lafayette have learned so much �— bothwhat worked and what hasn�’t worked �—and I think it�’s our responsibility to learnfrom them and to continue their legacy sothat we can take our struggles one stepfurther than what they did.

You know, I�’ve kind of come to termswith the fact that the idea I have of thebeloved community is not something thatI�’m going to see in my lifetime, and I�’mokay with that. Which means that my roleis to get up as close as we can to thatvision so that the next generation can takeit a little bit further and the generationafter that can take it a little bit further.

It�’s like a relay race. So in that sense,we have a responsibility to learn every-thing we can from the past generation sothat we�’re not starting where they did, butwe�’re starting where they left off. So it�’salways a privilege for me to work withand learn from our elders in that way.

Spirit: The vision and strategies ofMartin Luther King�’s Poor People�’sCampaign in 1968 seem very close to theOccupy movement that began last year.

Kazu: AbsolutelySpirit: What major parallels do you

see between these two movements andwhat do you see as the differences?

Kazu: A lot of people don�’t know this,but in the last speech King gave inMemphis the night before he was assassi-nated, he was actually calling on people tomove their money out of big banks andmove it into local financial institutions.

In the Poor People�’s Campaign, theywere organizing the Resurrection City andthey were calling on poor people all overthe country to come camp out inWashington, D.C. That encampment was tobe used as a hub of operations to shut downthe entire city. So I think, tactically, thereare a lot of similarities with Occupy.

Later on in King�’s life, he really startedseeing the ties between racial injustice andeconomic injustice, and really was seeinghow poor people throughout the countryare impacted in very similar ways. I thinkthat�’s what the Occupy movement wasalso trying to show, is that regardless ofwhere you live in the country, regardlessof what race you are, we�’re all impactedby these economic policies.

When the housing bubble popped, a lot

of people started to see that it wasn�’t justpoor Black communities that have had todeal with these issues forever, but that, atany given moment, they could also beimpacted by these issues as well. So that�’swhen you started to see the solidaritybetween all the different classes and the dif-ferent races so that all the different commu-nities started to come together in Occupy.

There are also some major differencesbetween Occupy and the Poor People�’sCampaign �— some major differences.

Spirit: What are the major differences?Kazu: The idea that Occupy was a lead-

erless movement and how decentralized itwas. That was very different from how theyorganized in the civil rights movementwhere they had very clear leadership andthey also had very clear goals. That�’s onething that campaigns in the civil rightsmovement were always very strategicabout: being able to articulate very clearlythe specific goal for each campaign.

Without specific goals, it�’s hard tobuild strategies and figure out what tacticsare best to use. In Occupy, we spent a lotof time talking and arguing about tactics,and that created a lot of division in themovement. But we never even agreed onwhat the goal was. And tactics are some-thing you use to get to a goal. So we wereputting the cart in front of the horse,essentially, in arguing over tactics beforewe agreed on what the goals were. I thinkthat was one of the main faults of Occupyand one of the main differences betweenthe civil rights movement and Occupy.

Spirit: I can think of other major dif-ferences too. First, the Poor People�’sCampaign had a breathtaking vision oftrying to paralyze Washington, D.C., withmassive nonviolent resistance until feder-al officials granted an Economic Bill ofRights for the Disadvantaged. Occupybuilt a large movement, but they didn�’tdevelop such an audacious strategy to wineconomic rights and overcome poverty.

Second, the SCLC organized massiveacts of civil disobedience, but they weredeeply committed to nonviolence, whereasOccupy has often been unclear on this.

The third difference is that the PoorPeople�’s Campaign was based on orga-nizing in poor communities all over thecountry, and mobilizing poor people tospeak for themselves and act for them-selves. But in Occupy, poor and homelesspeople often didn�’t feel welcomed andcertainly were not given the central placeof honor that King had intended.

Kazu: Yes, I agree. I think that wasone of the other dangers of that 99%framing, because the 99% is a big umbrel-la and there�’s a lot of power dynamicswithin that 99% that I don�’t feel were

properly addressed. Yeah, within Occupythere were always a lot of conversationsabout how to bridge that gap.

But I think because a lot of these issueswere something that a lot of communitiesof color and low-income communities hadalready been dealing with for hundreds ofyears, so when different people started tospeak out around Occupy issues, a lot oflow-income communities were looking atit like, �“Where have you all been?�”

So now, when people within Occupywere asking why aren�’t poor people andcommunities of color coming to the gen-eral assemblies, I think a lot of it has to dowith why weren�’t the folks that are activein Occupy involved in East Oakland andWest Oakland beforehand. A lot of thehomeless people that were sleeping in thecamps were sleeping in camps before theOccupy camps started, and where werewe in helping them when they werealready feeling this repression?

There�’s a need for folks to really look atthat history �— a long history of colonialismand racism and injustice that have gone onfor a long time in this country, from thefounding of this nation. And withoutacknowledging that history, it�’s hard to ask,�“Well, why aren�’t the poor people here?�”

Spirit: I first became aware of yourwork as a nonviolent organizer when aforum was held at a moment of great con-troversy last winter to discuss the two dif-ferent directions confronting Occupy �—nonviolence versus the diversity of tactics.In looking back now, what do you thinkabout the importance of that forum?

Kazu: Well, I don�’t know if we weresuccessful in doing so, but one of the mostimportant things about that forum was thatwe were really clear from the start that wedidn�’t want to frame it as a debate. It was adialogue to get to better understand eachother�’s perspectives. I think that�’s essential-ly what we still need to do.

Obviously, I�’m opposed to things likeproperty destruction. But I really dobelieve in a dialogue with the people thatare advocating those tactics. If theydefined the vision of the society they�’retrying to create, and I defined the visionof the society I�’m trying to create, I�’mpretty sure it would be very similar.

So I think we really need to learn toidentify what we have in common, asopposed to focusing constantly on wherewe differ. There are some real differencesin ideology, in tactics and strategy. But ifwe can�’t first have the conversation aboutwhere we agree, we�’re always going to bearguing with each other, because we haveno baseline level of trust.

One thing we were trying to do at that

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Young activists get highly excited as the Positive Peace Warrior Network holds a spirited discussion of Kingian Nonviolence.

December 2012 ST R E E T SP I R I T 9

event was to offer both perspectives sothat even if folks disagreed with our per-spective, at least they could understand it�— and vice versa. Within the nonviolentmovement, there�’s often a tendency torush to judgment anytime anyone identi-fies as an anarchist or even mentions thatthey believe that property destruction is alegitimate tactic. I happen to disagree withthat, but that shouldn�’t automaticallymake me believe that they�’re an enemy tothe movement or that there�’s no way wecan work with them.

One goal of that event was to try tobridge that gap. Yes, we have differencesand let�’s really articulate where our differ-ences are, but let�’s also realize that we�’reall trying to build the same movement.

Spirit: So the forum was the first steptowards that. Did it accomplish that goal?

Kazu: I don�’t believe it did, unfortu-nately. There were many factors involved,but I think ultimately we weren�’t success-ful in doing that. And you look at whereOccupy Oakland is now, because thatevent was held by Occupy Oakland, andyou really see all the divisions.

Spirit: In those days of controversyover tactics in Occupy Oakland, you tooka pretty visible public role in advocatingnonviolence. In the �“diversity of tactics�”circles, that wasn�’t the most popular thingyou could have done. So did you takesome heat for publicly upholding nonvio-lence, and, if so, what did that feel like?

Kazu: Absolutely, I took heat. Being anadvocate for nonviolence in a place likeOakland, I�’ve developed a really thick skin.I was taking a lot of heat ever since theOscar Grant movement for advocating forthese things. I think a lot of it has to do withmisconceptions about what nonviolence is.But I�’ve been booed, I�’ve had thingsthrown at me, a lot of negative online postsand things like that [laughing].

I�’ve really had to learn to ignoreFacebook discussion groups and onlinedebates because I really feel like that�’sone of the main culprits of some of thedivisions within Occupy �— Facebook dis-cussions and online discussions.

Spirit: Why do you think online discus-sions tend to worsen these divisions?

Kazu: Well, because I think humanbeings communicate with a whole lotmore than just words. I think that thingslike tone and eye contact are so essentialto our ability to communicate and under-stand each other, and when we take thataway and we have these discussions onFacebook and the Internet, we say thingsto each other that we would never say toeach other in person.

Spirit: Because it�’s called Facebook,but it�’s really faceless.

Kazu: Right, right [laughing]. It�’sanonymous, and so I think it�’s really dan-gerous. I�’ve never seen a conflict success-fully resolved through Facebook. Becausethe general assemblies weren�’t a place thatwas conducive to real dialogue, peopleturned to Facebook to try to hash out differ-ences, and I think that�’s one of the worstplaces you could possibly try to do that.

Spirit: What does it feel like to beattacked when you�’re just trying to do goodwork for a cause you really believe in?

Kazu: Well, I�’ve grown a really thickskin. And I understand that a lot of the peo-ple that criticize me, first of all, are doingso without a good understanding of what itis I�’m actually advocating. But I also rec-ognize that for every person that booed me,there�’s ten supporters out there, and myfocus really has to be on them.

I think that anytime anybody speaksout for anything, you will have haters.

Anytime you have success with anything,anytime you take a stand for anything,you�’re going to have haters. Anytime youtake the lead for anything.

I remember Martin Luther King talkingabout all the dozens of death threats hewould get all the time. It just comes withthe nature of the work. Whether I�’m takinga stand for nonviolence, or for the diversityof tactics, if I�’m having success with mywork, there�’s going to be people who criti-cize me. My focus has to be on the peoplethat actually want to work with me.

Spirit: What do you make of the argu-ment for diversity of tactics, as espoused bysome in the Occupy movement?

Kazu: Well, first of all, I think thatway of framing things is completely off.There�’s so much diversity within nonvio-lence that I think this argument between�“nonviolence versus diversity of tactics�”is completely wrong. Starhawk made areally good point about this conflict ofdiversity of tactics: Without some base-line agreement of what we�’re not going todo, then how far are we allowed to take it?Does that mean that we would legitimizetorture, for example?

Spirit: If we just blankly endorse anydiversity of tactic imaginable, does thateven allow for assassination?

Kazu: Right. I�’m sure that people whoare using black-bloc tactics wouldn�’tagree with a lot of those things, so I thinkboth sides can agree there�’s some limit toit. But the advocates for diversity of tac-tics really didn�’t allow for that conversa-tion to take place.

Also, with a lot of the advocates fordiversity of tactics, the anger that kind ofguides some of their work is righteousanger and I think it�’s important toacknowledge that. I would almost rathersee people out there breaking windowsthan people sitting at home doing nothing,and seeing all the injustices of the worldand saying, �“That�’s not my problem.�”

At least they�’re taking a stand and real-ly putting their bodies on the line. So Ithink it�’s important to acknowledge thosethings that we do share in common,because one of the complaints that a lot ofadvocates for nonviolence get is thatwe�’re not out on the streets risking ourbodies. I think we need to acknowledgethe courage they do have, but be able totalk to them and have real dialogues aboutthe differences in strategies and how thosedifferent strategies impact our movement.

Spirit: Do you think that the propertydamage we�’re talking about �— the rock-throwing and window-breaking and start-ing fires in downtown Oakland �— isresponsible for the divisiveness and lossof support that consumed OccupyOakland? And, if so, do you believe theloss of public support caused by theseactions may be irreparable?

Kazu: Well, the first question: Yes,absolutely. Whether or not you agree withproperty destruction, the property destruc-tion did help contribute to the loss of publicsupport for our movement. When you�’reable to remain nonviolent even in the faceof police violence, that paints a very clearpicture of who is right and who is wrong.

There�’s a big difference between theimages that we saw of the students at UCDavis who were getting pepper-sprayedand who were sitting there nonviolently,and the violence that happened at OccupyOakland. That public narrative is a reallypowerful weapon for us, when we canshow people that we are standing nonvio-lent and claiming that we�’re on the rightside of justice. But when we engage inproperty destruction, then that narrativegets really complicated.

When we use militant tactics �—whether those tactics are nonviolent or

violent �— then we need the support of thepublic. Because those who have thecourage and the ability and the privilegeto use those militant tactics �— again,whether the tactics are nonviolent or not�— are always going to be in the minority.

There�’s always going to be those front-line soldiers in any movement who arewilling and able to use those tactics. So ifthe people who are willing and able to usethose tactics are in the minority, then theyneed the support of the majority �— or elseit�’s just never going to work.

So, back to your question. Absolutely,the property destruction in Oakland led toa decrease in public support and thatdecrease in public support is ultimatelywhat has hurt this movement the most.

Spirit: Where is the Occupy movementtoday, in your view? And what happenedto the great hopes it sparked only a yearago and where is it now headed?

Kazu: One of the things I�’ve beenthinking a lot about is the fact that afterthe end of the Montgomery bus boycottand the beginning of the lunch counter sit-ins, which was the next major campaignof the civil rights movement in the South,there was a four-year lull.

So I think we�’re in that lull right now,and the potential to gain that momentumis still there �— as long as we�’re active inbetween, and we don�’t look at the lull andsay, �“Oh, the movement is dead,�” and wejust give up. I think as long as we keepmoving, and as long as we keep organiz-ing, and as long as we keep evaluating ourpast successes and failures, I do think thatthe potential for this movement to becomereborn, if you will, is definitely there.We�’ve just got to be really strategic abouthow we�’re moving forward in this time.

Spirit: How do you understand whathappened with the civil rights movementin that interval between the end of theMontgomery bus boycott in 1956 and thestudent sit-ins at lunch counters in 1960?What did civil rights activists do duringthose four years?

Kazu: A lot of what they did wastraining and strategizing and building net-works. And strengthening those networksso that the next time that opportunitycame about, they were much more readyto take advantage of it and ride thatmomentum long-term. For example, oneof the most successful lunch-counter sit-ins was one that Dr. Lafayette wasinvolved in down in Nashville. Theytrained for an entire year before theyengaged in those sit-ins.

So what I look at with Occupy is whattypes of trainings are we doing to ensurethat the next time people are trained to dothis? I think that the idea that we�’re sendingpeople into the streets to fight for justice

and face potential police violence withoutbeing trained at all is dangerous and ludi-crous. Social change does not come easily.People need to know what they�’re doing.We need to be building a nonviolent armywho are disciplined and strategic and knowexactly what needs to happen.

Spirit: What positive things do youthink were accomplished by Occupy?

Kazu: One of the things that Occupydid that we�’re still benefiting from todayis that it woke up so many people. So it�’sno longer taboo to say that we�’re callingfor radical, fundamental changes in thiscountry. That is a huge, huge success ofthis movement. If we can continue to takeadvantage of that and continue to workwith people who, before this movement,may never have considered doing any sortof direct action, and continue to trainthem, and continue to strengthen thoserelationships, and continue to push forsome of the analysis around economicinjustice that came out of Occupy, I dothink we can be reborn as a movement.

Spirit: What did you learn in thecourse of being involved with the peopleof color caucus in Occupy?

Kazu: I can only speak from the per-spective of Occupy Oakland. The conversa-tion around the names �“Occupy�” and�“Decolonize�” pissed off a lot of communi-ties of color. A lot of people of color feltreally disrespected during that argument.

Spirit: What issues were at the heartof that conflict? What led to so many peo-ple feeling disrespected?

Kazu: A lot of people felt like the term�“Occupy�” was not a fitting term for whatwe were actually trying to do, especiallywith the really strong presence of indige-nous leaders and indigenous activists inthe Bay Area. A lot of people felt like ourcommunities have been occupied for solong, that we weren�’t trying to occupy ourcommunities. We were trying to liberateour communities. We were trying todecolonize our communities.

In our efforts to reach out to communi-ties of color, it�’s all about recognizing thehistory of what has happened to thesecommunities of color. So a lot of peoplewere advocating changing our name from�“Occupy�” to �“Decolonize.�” I think a lot ofthose disagreements were legitimate andpeople have every right to believe oneway or another. But the tone of the discus-sions were at times very hurtful and disre-spectful to people.

Spirit: All that made it tougher tobuild a movement that united and includ-ed people instead of alienating them.

Kazu: We always say that nonviolenceisn�’t just a guide for our external actions,

Positive Peace Warrior Networkfrom page 8

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�“Each one, teach one.�” Dr. Bernard Lafayette (in suit) discusses King�’s nonviolenceat a gathering held in Oakland by the Positive Peace Warrior Network.

Learning how to confront violence, and learning how tobecome the antidote to violence, and the antidote to injus-tice, is a lifelong struggle.

December 2012ST R E E T SP I R I T10

but it also has to be a guide for our inter-nal interactions with each other within themovement. There were so many instanceswhere people felt hurt and disrespectedand there was just a lot of power dynam-ics and issues of privilege that came intoplay that people weren�’t recognizing.

Spirit: So many people of color wholive in Oakland ended up feeling that theywere not being heard on the very issuesthat affect them every day.

Kazu: Exactly, exactly. A lot of com-munities of color felt disrespected by that,and several other incidents happened inOccupy Oakland that really turned off a lotof communities of color to this movement.

Spirit: Did immigrant activists alsoend up feeling ignored or shunted aside?

Kazu: A lot of conflicts happened in theMay Day rally last year in Oakland. For thelast several years, May Day has been a real-ly important day for the immigrant commu-nity to turn out their members. But therewere some factions within the Occupymovement that were really upset that themain march applied for a permit. They feltthis should be an unlimited rally, as hasbeen the culture of Occupy Oakland.

But, of course, if you�’re mobilizing theimmigrant community, and you�’re tryingto turn out kids and undocumented peo-ple, they need to know that they�’re goingto be safe. I think there were a lot ofthings like that where we didn�’t have theability to have real discussions.

Spirit: Now let�’s focus again on howthe Positive Peace Warrior Network triesto build up and strengthen the movement.You give intensive two-day trainings inKingian Nonviolence and there�’s even 40-hour sessions. What in the world can youdo to fill up such a long training period?

Kazu: Oh, are you serious?! Two daysis never enough for us [laughing]. It�’snever enough for us! One of the greatthings about our workshop is we try to hit atevery single learning style. So we do mini-lectures, we do readings, we do videos, wedo roleplays and small group work.

This curriculum is ultimately abouthow to change the world and how tochange your relationship to the world. It�’sa deep philosophy. The biggest miscon-ception about nonviolence is that it meansto not be violent. If you�’re simply learn-ing about how to not be violent, youmight be able to get a lot of good lessonsin a day or two. But learning how to con-front violence, and learning how tobecome the antidote to violence, and theantidote to injustice, is a lifelong struggle.

So we actually say our two-day work-shop is not even a training. It�’s an introduc-tion to a philosophy which you can betrained in, if you so choose. But it�’s reallyjust an introduction to a framework of howto look at conflicts, how to analyze conflictsand how to respond to those conflicts.

Spirit: The Positive Peace WarriorNetwork gave many nonviolent sessionsfor hundreds of people involved inOccupy last year. What effect do you thinkyour trainings had on the movement?

Kazu: There�’s so many misconcep-tions about what nonviolence means, thatI think we did a really good job of provid-ing a larger framework of the philosophyto people. I think it gave people a goodway to continue to have these discussionswithin their local Occupy movement.

I hope that we really did get people to

understand the importance of reachingacross the aisle, whether it�’s reachingacross the aisle to anarchist communities, orreaching across the aisle to city govern-ments or even police departments. Thereneeds to be dialogue, and we put that outthere heavily. I hope that the next time thismovement has a new wave of momentum,a lot of those lessons will stay intact.

Spirit: How many people has thePPWN trained over the past year andwhat kind of groups have you trained?

Kazu: Coming into this year lastJanuary, we had only one two-day work-shop scheduled. In the last 11 monthssince then, we�’ve held about 40 work-shops of at least two days duration.

We�’ve reached well over one thousandpeople in the last 11 months between lastJanuary and November 2012. About 350of them have been men and women in thelocal county jails, about 350 more havebeen young people of high-school age,and the rest have been in communities allacross the country in eight different states.

Spirit: How are your 40-hour train-ings that last five days different from thetwo-day introduction to nonviolence?

Kazu: The 40-hour trainings typicallyare our advanced youth curriculum. Wetake young people through a five-dayintensive training and at the end of it,those who pass are certified to becomeyouth presenters. So our goals is alwaysthe �“each one teach one�” philosophy.

We train high-school students so theycan start training their peers and eventually,the high-school students can go to the mid-dle schools and start training middle-schoolstudents. Our week-long trainings are aneffort to recruit more young people whocan do presentations in this philosophy.

Spirit: Sally Hindman, the director ofYouth Spirit Artworks, said that yourworkshops on Dr. King�’s philosophy hada profound impact on the youth she workswith. Some of them told her the trainingswere life-changing. Why do you think ithas such a dramatic impact?

Kazu: I�’m always amazed that thereare a lot of those special moments thatcome from almost every single workshop.I�’ve seen it have that impact on youngpeople, and on men and women in prison.I can really identify with it because it wasa similar process for me when I wentthrough the Kingian training.

Spirit: Does it seem that some of thepeople who get most inspired from yournonviolence sessions are the ones wholive in the most violent environments?

Kazu: We live in a very violent worldand for many young people, violence isall they�’ve ever known. We were at aworkshop once in Chicago when we told ayoung woman that there were communi-ties even in Chicago where young kids arenot getting shot up every day. She justcouldn�’t believe it because that�’s all thatshe�’s ever known.

For a lot of people, when all they�’veever known is violence, when we offerthem an alternative way to deal with theirconflicts, it�’s something that they�’ve nevereven thought of, because this societydoesn�’t provide spaces for us to reallythink about how we�’re responding to theconflicts in our lives. We always say con-flict itself is a completely neutral thing. It�’show you respond to that conflict that givesit a positive or negative outcome.

As a society, we�’re only taught to

respond to conflicts in a way that oftentends to escalate things. So when we offerpeople that alternative way, I think it�’s areally mind-opening experience �— espe-cially for young people, and for men andwomen in jails and prisons who havenever really thought of an alternative. It�’sreally life-changing for a lot of people.

Spirit: It�’s very impressive to me thatthe Positive Peace Warrior Network holdstrainings for people in jails. Not manyactivists even think about bringing themessage of nonviolence to prisoners.

Kazu: When we talk about building amovement or a nonviolent army in thePositive Peace Warrior Network, thosemen and women in prison are warriors.They have been through so much and areable to cope with so much, and they knowmore than anybody about the impact ofviolence and how violence has affectedtheir lives and community.

They know better than anybody howmuch things need to change. It�’s their kidsthat are out on the streets today having todeal with all that. So in terms of lookingfor peace activists, the jails are some ofthe best places to look.

Spirit: Gandhi looked in that samedirection, too, by organizing among theUntouchables and by working with militarywarriors to help build a nonviolent move-ment. He found they had the courage toexpress �“the nonviolence of the strong.�”King trained members of violent streetgangs in the tough parts of Chicago as non-violent marshals in his housing marches.

Some might wonder if teaching nonvio-lence to a captive audience could seemalienating to prisoners. What have thosetrainings in jails really been like?

Kazu: We�’ve done them in San BrunoCounty Jail and in the Hall of Justice inSan Francisco. And they�’ve been incredi-ble. What always amazes me is that often,a good half of the participants didn�’t vol-unteer to be there. And they let us knowfrom the very beginning that they are nothappy at the fact that they�’re there.

Spirit: They were ordered to be thereby the prison officials?

Kazu: They were ordered to be there.And when they find out that it�’s two con-secutive eight-hour days, a lot of them getreally upset at us. So that�’s often where westart with the day. But in every workshopwe�’ve done, by the end of it, it feels likethe entire crowd has been won over.

One gentleman told us recently that hehates coming to jail over and over andover again, but if he didn�’t get locked upthis time, he wouldn�’t have come to thisworkshop, so for that time it was worth it.

We�’ve even gotten comments fromsome of the deputies on the staff who kindof sneak up to us after the event is over andsay, �“Hey, don�’t tell the guys I told youthis, but even I was listening to what youwere saying, and I�’m going to practice a lotof what you were telling the guys.�”

The last woman�’s jail that we went intoat the Hall of Justice in San Francisco,there were two women who had a conflictprior to that workshop. So when they saweach other that morning, they really didn�’tfeel like they could be in the same room.

But after the first day of the workshop,they felt inspired to try to reconcile thatconflict. During the closing circle of theworkshop, the women embraced with ahug in the middle of the circle. There�’sjust constant stories like this. And that�’sjust in two days! So our jail workshopshave been going incredibly well.

Spirit: How did you get the idea in thefirst place that you were actually going togo into jails to do nonviolence trainings?

Kazu: Oh, I�’ve always wanted to! Ifwe�’re trying to create peace in our com-munities, we need to reach out to the folksmost impacted by violence and injustice.Those are the men and women in the jails

and prisons, and in the poorest, dangerousneighborhoods, and those are the folksthat often get left out of society.

I feel like if anything is going tochange in communities like East Oakland,we need to empower the folks who havebeen living in those communities, andwho have been harmed by some of thepolicies that created those conditions.

So, to me, if we don�’t have leadershipfrom men and women who are gettinglocked up, men and women who havebeen homeless, then ultimately, we willnever be able to create sustained change. Ifeel like we need to start there.

Spirit: When Dr. Lafayette spoke herein Oakland on the International Day ofPeace, I remember how joyful he seemedat the response of prisoners in San Brunojail to the presentations on nonviolence.How did those sessions go?

Kazu: I think it was great! Because Idon�’t know how common it is for some-one like Dr. Lafayette to go into the jailsto bring programming like that fromsomeone with a big name like that.

I think it�’s really important that we areconstantly reminding the men and womenin the jails that society hasn�’t forgottenthem, and that we are trying to offerthings for them, that we are trying to workwith them, and build with them.

I think Dr. Lafayette was prettyimpressed with the work we have beendoing in there. Because up until recently,almost all our work has been outside ofthe jails. So for him to be able to go intojail, and to see these guys that have beenso inspired by the workshop that he creat-ed, I think it�’s really exciting for him.

Spirit: Another group that has beenmarginalized and ignored by society arethe youth living in very poor neighbor-hoods. It seems that the Positive PeaceWarrior Network also focuses a greatdeal of effort on training these young peo-ple forgotten by society.

Kazu: Yes, and for important reasons.No movement has been successful in thepast without leadership from young peo-ple. But also, I recognize that my visionof the beloved community isn�’t somethingI�’m going to see in my lifetime. So what-ever gains we make during my lifetime,we have to make sure that the next gener-ation is ready to take up the call after mygeneration is gone.

As long as we�’re not investing in ouryoung people, it�’s very possible that thegains that we make in our movement arejust going to get lost in the next genera-tion. So I think we need to constantly,constantly, invest in our young people.

Positive Peace Warrior NetworkIn the last speech King gave in Memphis the nightbefore he was assassinated, he was actually calling onpeople to move their money out of big banks andmove it into local financial institutions.

from page 9

Support the PositivePeace Warrior Network

Our success is only possible with thesupport of the community. Please joinus in our efforts to build the BelovedCommunity.

Donate to PPWNDonations to PPWN are tax-deductiblethrough our fiscal sponsor, the PeaceDevelopment Fund. Please make outchecks to �“Peace Development Fund�”and earmark checks to �“PPWN.�”Mail donations to: PPWN, P.O. Box 1554, Oakland, CA 94604Donate online at http://positivepeace-warriornetwork.wordpress.com

******************�“I just admire the Positive Peace WarriorNetwork like crazy. I think they�’re awe-some. They should be better fundedbecause they�’re living on a total shoe-string and they need money really badly.They�’re traveling all over the countrydoing training after training, and they�’redoing this on nothing. These amazingtrainings need to be funded. They�’re justgreat guys.�” �— Sally Hindman

December 2012 ST R E E T SP I R I T 11

Notice to Class: If you lived at theSutter Hotel located at 584 14th StreetOakland, California for at least 30 con-secutive days during the period of August12, 2010, until November 30, 2011, thisnotice may affect your rights.

Residents of the Sutter Hotel have suedthe owner/managers claiming that theSutter has had an illegal practice ofrequiring residents who lived at the Sutterfor more than 30 consecutive days tomove, or check out and register in thesame or a different room before the expi-ration of 30 days.

The lawsuit is called Veasey v.Oakland Sutter Hotel, L.P. AlamedaCounty Superior Court Case No. RG 11-590352. The Court decided this lawsuitshould be a �“Class Action�” or �“class�” orgroup of people that may include past res-idents of the Sutter. This notice summa-rizes their rights and options in this case.

More information is in a detailednotice available at the website below. Ifyou�’re included, you have to decidewhether to stay in the Class and be boundby whatever results, or ask to be excluded.There is no money available now, butthere may be money or other benefitsavailable through settlement or trial.There are no guarantees that money orother benefits will be available.

ARE YOU AFFECTED? If you lived at the Sutter Hotel for 30

or more consecutive days at any time dur-ing the period of August 12, 2010 untilNovember 30, 2011, and moved roomsbefore 30 days expired, you may be partof the class. If you are not sure if you areincluded, you can call or write the lawyersat the phone number or address below.

WHAT IS THIS CASE ABOUT? The lawsuit is about whether the own-

ers of the Sutter Hotel illegally requiredresidents to move from room to roomevery 28 days or leave the Hotel, in viola-tion of their rights. Plaintiffs are suing tomake sure the practice is stopped, and tosue for money damages. The Sutter Hotelowners/managers deny that they did any-thing wrong. The Court has not yet madeany decision as to whether the Class orthe Sutter Hotel is right.

WHO REPRESENTS YOU? The Court has decided that the law

firms of Greenstein and McDonald, 300Montgomery Street, Suite 621, SanFrancisco, CA, 94104, (415) 773-1240and Law Office of Jay B. Koslofsky, P.O.Box 9236, Berkeley, CA, 94709, (510)280-5627, are qualified to represent youand class members. Together the lawfirms are called �“class counsel.�” They are

experienced in handling similar cases.The Court has accepted �“ClassRepresentatives whose claims are typicalof the Class.�” You may hire your ownlawyer. If you want your own lawyer, youwill have to pay for that lawyer, if youwant someone other than Class Counsel.

WHAT ARE YOUR OPTIONS? You don�’t have to do anything now if

you want to keep the possibility of gettingmoney or benefits from this lawsuit. Bydoing nothing you are staying in the class.If you stay in the case, and the Plaintiffsobtain money or benefits either as a resultof settlement or trial, you will be notifiedabout how to apply for a share (or youmay object to the settlement). If you donothing, you will be legally bound by anyorders or judgments the Court enters inthis case. If you exclude yourself from theClass, you won�’t get any money or bene-fits from the lawsuit even if the Plaintiffsreceive them by settlement or trial.

If you exclude yourself, you can fileyour own separate lawsuit, but will haveto hire and pay for your own lawyers, andyou will have to prove your claims. Toask to be excluded, you must send an�“Exclusion Request�” in the form of a let-ter sent by mail stating that you want to beexcluded from the Veasey v OaklandSutter Hotel L.P. class. Be sure to include

your name, address and phone number,and sign the letter. The letter should besent to: Kenneth Greenstein, Greensteinand McDonald, 300 Montgomery Street,Suite 621, San Francisco, CA, 94104.You must mail your Exclusion Requestpostmarked by December 30, 2012.

HOW CAN I GET MOREINFORMATION?

Visit the website www.sutterhotelclas-saction.com, where you will find theCourt�’s Order Certifying the Class, theComplaint that the Plaintiffs submitted,and the Defendants Answer to Complaint.You may also speak to one of the lawyersby calling Kenneth Greenstein (415) 773-1240 or Jay B. Koslofsky (510) 280-5627.You may also write to Greenstein andMcDonald at 300 Montgomery at Suite621, San Francisco, CA, 94104.

WHO�’S AFFECTED? Sutter Hotel residents who resided at

the Hotel for 30 or more consecutive dayswho moved, or checked-out of a room atthe Hotel and registered in the same or adifferent room before the expiration of 30days at any time during the period ofAugust 12, 2010, until November 30,2011. If you are a class member, yourdeadline to opt-out is December 30, 2012.

beyond their power to control, are beingdriven to inhabit increasingly dangerousmarginal places in our public spaces.

For example, Elvis was run over by anautomobile on two separate occasions inrecent years. On each occasion, he wassleeping in a dangerous location.

When he was suffering immediateagony due to being run over by a car,healthcare officials would take him awayfor a few weeks to mend. During thoseperiods, they more or less took good care ofhis physical problems. But I never got theimpression that they made any seriouseffort to help him deal with his obviouslydeep-seated mental and emotional demons.

I have many photographs of him hob-bling along the street with the help ofcrutches, or a walking cane. In some ofthe shots, his hospital bandages are stillclean. In others, they are grimy and fallingfrom his body.

Occasionally, Elvis would disappearfrom his usual streetside stations. Curiousabout his disappearances, I asked himonce where he had been for the past fewweeks. He told me he was being studiedby a group of University of Californiadoctors for health-related issues pertinentto the years he spent in the military.

His garbled, confusing commentsregarding the reasons why he was alleged-ly being studied were never sufficientlycoherent for me to truly understand whathe was attempting to tell me. Moreover, Iwas never certain as to whether he waspulling my leg just to keep my attention,and thereby acquire company and com-panionship for a few more minutes.

I am certain that he was in the military,and that he probably participated in war.He lived in Texas and Georgia. And that�’sabout all I know about his background.

I do know that he was a fine humanbeing with a warm and compassionatesensibility.

Many of the homeless people who usedto hang out with Elvis along Third Streetnear South Park have drifted away over

the years. Some of them have moved onto other cities. Others have been removedfrom the street via municipal outreachprograms, and resettled in single roomoccupancy hotels located in the vicinity ofthe Sixth Street skid row corridor.

A few of the homeless people whoused to hang out with Elvis have cleanedup and re-entered mainstream society. Butfar too many of them have simply died onthe streets in much the same manner aswild animals.

City official say they picked up theremains of 28 people on the streets of SanFrancisco last year. But homeless advocatesclaim the number of actual deaths was morethan 100. In years past, when the MedicalExaminer�’s office still worked with home-less organizations to more truthfully mea-sure the death rates of homeless people inSan Francisco (a practice that now has beendiscontinued), the number of homelessdeaths each year always was more than100, and sometimes added up to 150 ormore. Approximately 200 indigents are cre-mated each year by the city government.

In any event, Elvis was one of the lastmembers of the homeless group thatinhabited this neighborhood before itbegan to gentrify during the Dot Com era.Little by little, as the neighborhood began

the upwardly mobile transition from shopworn to tres chic, life became more com-plicated for people like Elvis.

For obvious reasons, they do not fit inwith the upwardly mobile crowd that hasessentially taken over the neighborhood.They are too old, too ragged, too unkemptand too much alienated from the culturalnorms of the new breed.

As a result, the neighborhood�’s home-less residents are finding it increasinglydifficult to find local facilities suited totheir essentially modest needs.

The cheap showers they used at the oldparking facility for recreational vehicleslocated on Townsend and Third Streetsnear the new baseball stadium are thingsof the past. The parking facility, and allthe minimal amenities it provided fortransients, has been replaced by a mas-sive, high-rise development, largelyinhabited by wealthy tech workers andempty nesters from the suburbs.

South Park was the primary meetingplace for local homeless people for manyyears. On sunny days, they gathered therein large numbers, talking, snoozing, andswilling cheap booze. But the new people,with their expensive cars and pedigreedogs, are taking over the park.

As a result, homeless people such as

Elvis are relegated to a narrow sliver ofterritory at the far western end of the park,where they gather daily around a singlepicnic table and a couple benches.

The broad expanse of the park, includ-ing the grassy areas, is reserved, accord-ing to an unspoken agreement, for thenew people, and their frolicking dogs.

Elvis was killed as he lay sleeping lessthan a five-minute walk from the SouthPark picnic table where he spent manysunny afternoons.

The spot where he was crushed used tobe the driveway of an old, abandoned gasstation. During the rainy season, homelesspeople gathered inside the empty structureand sheltered from the weather.

That building was torn down duringthe Dot Com boom, and replaced by acondominium development composed ofindividual units that initially sold forupwards of 700,000 dollars.

Most of Elvis�’s homeless peers aban-doned the site when the new owners tookup residence in the building. But Elviscontinued to drink, pass out and sleep inthe same location he had used for years.

Unfortunately, that location had beentransformed into the entrance to the newbuilding�’s garage.

They say he never knew what hit him.

from page 3

Elvis Dies Aloneand Unmourned inSan Francisco

As pedestrians walk by without noticing him, Elvis Presley sleeps on the sidewalk in front of the very samegarage door on the 500 block of Third Street in San Francisco where he was subsequently run over and killed.

Robert L. Terrellphoto

Notice to Past Residents: Lawsuit Against Oakland�’s Sutter Hotel

December 2012ST R E E T SP I R I T12

by food stamps �— Hayok barely moved.She had been so devastated by illness thatit took everything she had even to get upand purchase food, let alone to trudge ashopping cart brimming with trash allover West Oakland.

As of this writing, she has been wellenough to resume recycling, though anyday now the chill of winter will doubtlessleave her incapable of generating anyincome, yet again.

I wish I could say that the severe hard-ships faced by Miss Kay are unusual, buta single day at one of the East Bay�’smany walk-up recycling centers tells youa different story. Alliance Metals aloneserves some 700 customers a day. Whilenot all of these are homeless, many ofthem are, and those who are fortunateenough to have a home likely wouldn�’twithout the added income they receivefrom recycling. If any of these individualswere to get sick like Miss Kay, the loss ofincome could equate to a loss of every-thing they have ever worked for.

Another recycler, Jason Witt, knowsall too well what that is like. To manyaround the Alliance Metals community,Jason is thought of as one of the kings ofrecycling. On a good day, you can seeJason pull a ton of trash to the recyclingcenter �— literally.

It�’s a surreal experience watching Jasoncarry his bounty down the street: a singleman, hands calloused, pulling a mountainof trash on a creaking shopping cart, oftenwith his beloved dog Monster at his side.Jason is one of the few able to take recy-cling to the extreme. His income wasn�’tmassive, but it was enough to rent a smallhome in West Oakland�’s lower bottoms.

But after another bout of illness �—including endocarditis (an inflammationof the inside of the heart) and variousviruses from drug use �— Jason toobecame unable to work, and he soon losteverything. He is currently in and out ofhospital visits, living in a nook between aBART station and the highway.

But while the stories of Hayok, Jason,and countless other shopping-cart recy-clers may seem bleak, the incredible thingabout each of them is that they are notonly surviving, but they are doing it cre-atively and productively, in spite of the

immeasurable odds placed against them. In doing so, their stories become an

invaluable asset to society �— somethingakin to living maps which illustrate theholes in our safety nets and the true beau-ty, dignity, and value of those who fellthrough them. They show us why we needto recognize and rectify these faults �—and what we are set to lose if we do not.

Over the past four years, my col-leagues Amir Soltani, Chihiro Wimbushand I have sought to illuminate these sto-ries through the medium of film. Ourforthcoming production, Redemption,documents the lives and trials of fourshopping-cart recyclers �— entrepreneurswho live on the East Bay�’s river of trash.

Recently, the film has received fundingfrom Sundance, Cal Humanities, the SanFrancisco Foundation, and others. Our goalin bringing this project to fruition is to

reignite the poverty debate in the UnitedStates �— and to reimagine how we defineand address economic inequality, racial dis-crimination, public space, and our relation-ships with the poorest of the poor.

Far from being a story about a destituteunderclass, Redemption celebrates the sto-ries of four great Americans, and aims tochallenge viewers to face their own preju-dices and insecurities head on and toengage in dialogue to alleviate them.

I believe this film has this powerbecause I have experienced it. In my rolein the creation of Redemption, I have beenforced to recognize the walls I had builtwithin myself �— the prejudices, the igno-rance, and the apathy which have prevent-ed me from recognizing and connectingwith the poor.

I have learned things about povertyand the people who experience it that I

had never even considered. Perhaps mostimportantly, I have made friendships withpeople I previously would have turned ablind eye to and walked past.

These people �— my friends, yourfriends, these members of our community�— require that we do more than pay lip-service to the idea of eliminating poverty.

It�’s time to demand more not onlyfrom our government, our business, andour city officials, but also from ourselves,and to recognize and celebrate the connec-tions and relationships between us all.

This process of opening up, of forgiv-ing, and most importantly, of loving, iswhat redemption is all about.

Zachary Stickney is the associate produc-er of Redemption. He can be reached atredemptiondocumentary@gmail.com. Tolearn more about Redemption, visit thefilm�’s website at www.redemptiondoc.org.

A group of recyclers at the Alliance Metals recycling center. From left toright, Landon Goodwin, Hayok Kay, Roslin Sanders and Jason Witt.

Amir Soltaniphoto

This powerful image of the battered, callused hands of Jason Witt speaks volumesabout the difficulties inherent in his work gathering mountains of recycled material.

Hayok Kay pulls her shopping cart in Emeryville while collecting cans on the way to the recycling center. Chihiro Wimbush photo

Jason (at left) picks up a huge amount of recycled material on his hardworking travels through the East Bay. Amir Soltani photo

from page 1

Recycling andRedemptionFar from being a story abouta destitute underclass,Redemption celebrates the sto-ries of four great Americans,and challenges viewers to facetheir prejudices head on.