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 Terry Messman

Dorothy Day, the co-founder of theCatholic Worker, has been a life-long source of inspiration for

James and Shelley Douglass, both in theirnonviolent resistance to war and nuclearweapons, and also in their solidarity withpoor and homeless people.

Day devoted her life to the works ofmercy for the poorest of the poor, and oftenquoted Fyodor Dostoevsky on the high costof living out the ideal of love in the realworld. “As Dostoevsky said: ‘Love inaction is a harsh and dreadful thing com-pared with love in dreams.’”

The same warning might be given tothose who try to live out the ideal of non-violence in action, since love and nonvio-lence are essentially one and the same.(One of Mohandas Gandhi’s descriptionsof nonviolent resistance is “love-force.”)

Although it may be heartening to readabout nonviolence in the lives of MartinLuther King, Gandhi and Dorothy Day, it isa more “harsh and dreadful” proposition toengage in actual resistance to a nuclear sub-marine capable of destroying hundreds ofcities, and protected by the most powerfulgovernment in the world.

Instead of nonviolence in dreams, onefaces nonviolence in handcuffs and jailcells, nonviolence sailing in the path ofmassive submarines, nonviolence on thetracks blockading “the train out of hell.”

By the early 1980s, Jim and ShelleyDouglass and the members of Ground ZeroCenter for Nonviolent Action had created ahighly visible campaign of resistance to theTrident nuclear submarine based at BangorNaval Base near Seattle.

Then, in December 1981, the Tridentcampaign took on an entirely new dimen-sion when a reporter warned Jim Douglassthat he had observed a train north of Seattlethat looked like it was “carrying big-timeweapons.” The reporter added that theheavily armored, all-white train looked like“the train out of hell.” It wouldn’t be longbefore one newspaper would refer to it as

the “Armageddon Express.”After being alerted by the reporter, Jim

went outside the house where he and Shellylived next to the railroad tracks leading intothe Bangor base, and saw the White Traincoming down the tracks. He noticed thatseveral cars had turrets where Departmentof Energy (DOE) guards could put gunsthrough slits to defend the train.

The White Train became a new focusfor Ground Zero’s resistance to nuclearweapons, as activists and train buffs discov-ered that the DOE utilized the train to shipnuclear weapons assembled at the Pantexplant in Amarillo, Texas, to the Bangor

Naval Base and other military sites.After mapping out the train routes,

Ground Zero made connections with peo-ple in more than 250 towns along the hun-dreds of miles of railroad tracks traveledby the White Train. Residents in thesetowns began holding vigils on the tracksas the White Train roared by, and manywere arrested on the tracks for blockingthe trains and their deadly cargo.

WHITE NIGHT OF EXTINCTION

The White Train campaign became sucha significant protest movement that it wasfeatured in People magazine in May 1984.Not only was David Van Biema’s reportsurprisingly meaningful and largely sympa-thetic to the anti-nuclear movement, theheadline was stirring: “Radical Catholic JimDouglass Fights a Grass-Roots WarAgainst a Train Full of Nuclear Weapons.”

For those who have never seen thegigantic Trident submarine, or witnessedthe unsettling arrival of the White Train,Douglass gave as evocative a descriptionof the nuclear train as I’ve ever heard.

“It was an awesome sight,” he said.“You feel the reality of an inconceivablekind of destruction. Anybody who seesthis train experiences the evil of nucleararms, because it looks like what it is car-rying — a white night.”

The article in People captured the

Blockading the ‘White Train of Death’

The White Train was described as the “train out of hell.” Photo: Chris Guenzler

by Carol Denney

The hearing on Berkeley’s newanti-homeless ordinances wasfinally booted over to anotherday at 1:00 a.m. on Wednesday,

July 1, when even a City Council majoritycouldn’t convince Mayor Tom Bates thatit was perfectly okay to hold a publichearing in the middle of the night.

City Councilmember Linda Maio, nowthe sole sponsor of the DowntownBerkeley Association’s (DBA) proposal formore anti-homeless laws, unveiled her lat-est unilateral changes to the proposal aftermidnight, at about 12:30 a.m. Her lengthylist of alterations was clearly an effort todeflect some of the criticism she’s weath-ered since the introduction of the originalproposal on March 17.

The public and the other members ofthe council had never seen them before.Any discussion of her brand-new changesto the proposed ordinance would have sentthe hearing, which Maio steadfastly insist-ed she still wanted to have that night, wellinto 2:00 or 3:00 a.m. The bleary-eyed butdedicated public — about a hundred strong— was still waiting for a chance to speakout even at that late hour.

City Councilmember Max Andersondeclared, “I have no intention of participat-ing in this charade,” calling the late-nightsleight-of-hand a “backdoor rear-guardaction designed to circumvent” the clearvote in 2012 against a proposed anti-sittinglaw. “How low can you get,” Andersonobserved, quickly noting the danger in not-ing a low bar before a council majority sowilling to go even lower.

Councilmembers Kriss Worthingtonand Jesse Arreguin objected as well. Acouncil chamber overflowing into the streethad weathered four public hearings alreadythat night: budget hearings about cuttingalready starved nonprofits; lively SEIUunion contract issues; issues regarding adelay of the second phase of the TillmanMason report on discrimination; a hearingon the loss of a local neighborhood view;as well as an appeal of the refusal of theLandmarks Preservation Commission tolandmark the iconic Campanile Way(which the council blandly rejected); andthe fresh contracts of all the PBIDs, prop-erty-based business improvement districtswhich garnered some inspired oppositionin the wake of the viral video of the DBA

The Merchants Who Buyand Sell Human Rights

See Blockading the White Train page 8

Mansour Id-Deen of the Berkeley NAACP speaks at the rally beforethe City Council hearing on the proposed anti-homeless laws.

Carol Denneyphoto

See City Council Delays Vote page 14

Berkeley Council delays vote on anti-poor laws

A sign shows how little space the poor would be allowed for personal possessions.

July 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T2

by Carol Denney

The most interesting thing about thepolice report on the protests held inBerkeley last December is what’s

not in it. There’s no mention of the factthat it was a Black Lives Matter protest,part of the nationwide concern over dis-proportionate black arrests, incarcerationsand shooting deaths. The Berkeley policeapparently considered this context irrele-vant. Black Lives Matter as a movementis not mentioned at all. It isn’t in the glos-sary. It isn’t in the appendix.

Everything about the “Response toCivil Unrest” report seems to fall like ashadow from that towering omission.Without the gravity of the national, evenfederal, recognition of systemic civil rightsviolations pervasive in law enforcement,housing, education and employment poli-cies toward communities of color, peoplein the streets marching together to pressurefor political change are viewed as nothingmore than a riot on the move.

The demonstrators in December’sBlack Lives Matter marches had their dig-nity, their rights, and the deep history ofthe racism they were addressing set asideonce the police saw evidence, emphasizedin their report, that agitators might jointhe march as well. The report includescopies of fliers with phrases like “fightlike hell” and images of vandalism whichhad no connection to Black Lives Matteras an organization.

The following passage is from“Response to Civil Unrest Police Report”by the Berkeley Police Post IncidentReview Team about the protests inBerkeley on December 6 and 7, 2014.

“On 12/01/14, the Berkeley PoliceDepartment received information fromvarious sources that a march was sched-uled to take place on 12/6/14 in Berkeley.The march was advertised as a ‘FromFerguson to Ayotzinapa March — MarchAgainst State Violence—Remember theDead.’ Organizers urged attendees to‘Fight like hell,’ ‘Bring masks’ andreminded the public of previous massuprisings that had taken place. Online fly-ers for the event showed a picture of aman sitting on an overturned police car.Oakland and San Francisco had justexperienced ‘Fuck the Police’ (FTP)marches which resulted in mob violence,damage to businesses, looting, vandalismto vehicles, and attacks on officers.”

Some will say that the police create thiskind of agitation themselves. But longtimeactivists know that as possible as this maybe — and police repression has beenproven historically under COINTELPRO,an FBI program to infiltrate and discreditpolitical movements — the Bay Area alsohas its own large basket of vandals andwindow-smashers who typically wearmasks and hide behind a peaceful crowd,tactics which have confounded organizersof peaceful marchers for years.

Most people acknowledge that thehandful of people who turn a peacefulmarch into a hail of broken glass arecounterproductive in the extreme to anyprincipled group, and costly to any com-munity’s ability to gather together, letalone stay in business.

But the group that smashes windows isalso very small. The Berkeley policereport acknowledges this, and yet made adecision to call in mutual aid forces and

prepare for a battle royale before themarch began, and apparently decided thatas soon as things went south, everybodyhad to go home or take the consequencesof baton strikes, CS gas, projectiles, andflash grenades. The Berkeley police reportdescribed why it called so many addition-al “police resources.”

“The Department determined thatbecause of the potential for unrest andlikely high attendance, staffing resourcesabove and beyond what BPD could fieldwould be needed. BPD requested addi-tional police resources from the AlamedaCounty Office of Emergency Services. TheCounty arranged for most mutual aidresponders to arrive in Berkeley prior tothe start of the event.”

Ironically, this kind of preparation pre-cludes the crowd management techniqueswhich would have facilitated the march,as the report itself states:

“... crowd management techniqueswere understaffed in favor of preparing toutilize resources for expected unrest.”

The demonstrators who marched to thepolice station the night of December 6 weremet with a skirmish line of officers pre-pared for war with the weapons of war.According to videos from the Internet thatpolice supplied to accompany their report,the officers seemed to have some agitatorsof their own gratuitously shoving and herd-ing people in ways that inflamed tensions,as the report grudgingly acknowledges:

“The event turned to violence and loot-ing once police blocked the roadway atMLK and Addison St....”

Even reporters with press badges wereknocked around. CS gas, moreover, isbanned in warfare by the Organization forPrevention of Chemical Weapons(OPCW) under the Chemical WeaponsConvention of 1993. There is no “non-lethal” weapon that hasn’t caused increas-ing concern regarding its injury or mor-bidity statistics.

But the decision to arm the police inthis way was made long before the marchbegan, long before any violence or van-dalism on the part of people in the street,as this report acknowledges.

The police report goes further, blamingtheir own lack of response to the few whocommitted acts of violence and vandalismon the larger, peaceful crowd:

“In addition to these violent elements,much larger contingents of protestersrefused to disperse and physically resistedlawful orders, choosing instead to standtheir ground and confront officers. Theseprotesters, by their sheer numbers, pre-vented the police from addressing themost violent offenders. Through refusingto disperse, large groups of protesters,who may have considered themselvespeaceful, protected, facilitated andenabled violent elements as they launchedassaults on officers and non-violent com-munity members within the crowd.”

The report neglects entirely to acknowl-edge what hundreds of people experiencedthat night: The police gave dispersal ordersto people trapped between skirmish lineswith nowhere to go. The garbled, repeatedannouncements in an echoing urban settingfull of news helicopters had the opposite ofits intended effect as people came out oftheir homes and apartments and walked

toward the noise to try to figure out what onearth was going on. The report states:

More than 23 dispersal orders wereissued over 54 minutes using a loudspeak-er beginning on Telegraph Ave. before offi-cers took measures to disperse the crowd.The dispersal was read from a pre-pre-pared script... Rather than dispersing, thecrowd size significantly increased atTelegraph Ave. and Durant Ave.

We as a community can all just stayhome, of course, until we can convincewindow-breakers not to smash windows.We can abandon our own civil rights, ofcourse, if we all choose to do so. But wewould be well advised, if we intend totravel the long, respected trajectorytoward justice, to keep on walking for-ward even if the Berkeley police decidethat one angry flier telling people to “fightlike hell” means we cannot.

The police and the City Council pur-portedly supervising them have a choice

to make. More gadgets, more weapons,more surveillance, and even helicoptersare requested by the “Post IncidentReview Team” which clearly wishes tocontinue militarizing police departments,as well as defending their violent responseto the Black Lives Matter movement inDecember — as though legitimate protestin our society does not exist, or is nothingmore than a cover for civil unrest.

Our lives are not a video game. Ourfriends and neighbors, our children, stu-dents, theater-goers and reporters are notan invading force. We are the breath oflife in a civil rights movement which wehave the right to describe as a battle with-out being drenched in chemical weapons.

We will continue to patiently defend ourright to gather and our treasured principles.Weapons, gadgets, surveillance, and heli-copters are no substitute for the commonsense and leadership which we hope some-day we can count on from our city leaders.

Berkeley Police Justify Attack on Black Lives Matter

Commentary by Carol Denney

On Friday, June 26, 2015, theSupreme Court announced thatLGBT couples have the right to

marry in all 50 states. Households allover the nation celebrated, stiffened, orwondered what it means to their commu-nity and to history.

In the Bay Area, the Pride celebrationshonor an historical moment as the nation’sacceptance of lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, andtransgender (LGBT) community membersdeepens and strengthens at what was onceconsidered an impossible pace.

Across the nation in small communi-ties without an organized LGBT pres-ence, LGBT as well as questioning indi-viduals in hostile workplaces and familysettings enjoy a small but powerfulmoment of support which might helpsave their lives.

The prejudice against LGBT individu-als in deeply conservative states can belife-threatening. It is no accident thatapproximately 40 percent of the home-less youth served by agencies identify asLGBT, according to a national report in2012 by the Williams Institute, a thinktank at the UCLA School of Law. And

this number may be considered an under-count because of the continued existencein some regions of severe stigmaattached to being gay, or even respond-ing as such to a survey.

Some young people, when they findand embrace their sexuality, find them-selves rejected by their families, religiousconnections, workplaces, and communi-ties. A disproportionate number end upon the streets. Nearly 70 percent ofyoung people say that physical and sexu-al abuse as a child, neglect, and otherviolent crimes happening in their homesplayed a role in having become home-less, according to Safe Horizon.

It is worth keeping this fact in mindwhen one hears the hostility toward poor,homeless, and nomadic travelers some-times fashionable in political and busi-ness circles. As hostile and dangerous asthe streets can be, they can look like amore sensible alternative, even to a child,than a life of abuse.

The Supreme Court’s majority recog-nized dignity in all human beings and thedeep connections between us all on June26. Let us hope that governing bodieseverywhere will someday address issuesof poverty in the same spirit.

Youth on the Street in Lightof the Supreme Court Ruling

Protests following the death of Eric Garner who died in New York City on July 17,2014, after a police officer put him in a chokehold. The event stirred protests of policebrutality all over the nation, including a march in Berkeley. Photo credit: www.ibtimes.co.uk

More weapons, more surveillance, and even helicopters arerequested in the police report. Police wish to continue mili-tarizing police departments, as well as defending the vio-lent response to the Black Lives Matter movement — asthough legitimate protest in our society does not exist.

The Supreme Court recognized dignity in all human beingson June 26. Let us hope that governments everywhere willsomeday address the issues of poverty in the same spirit.

July 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 3

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July 2015

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The Street Spirit vendor program ismanaged by J.C. Orton. More than 150homeless vendors sell Street Spirit inBerkeley and Oakland. Please buyStreet Spirit only from badged vendors.

If you have questions about the ven-dor program, please e-mail J.C. Orton atnoscw@sbcglobal.net or call his cellphone at (510) 684-1892. His mailingaddress is J.C. Orton, P.O. Box 13468,Berkeley, CA 94712-4468.

by Steve Pleich

On June 1, 2015, the CaliforniaAssembly voted 56-15 to approveAB 718 which: “Prohibits a city,

county, or city and county from prohibitingor otherwise subjecting to civil or criminalpenalties the act of sleeping or resting in alawfully parked motor vehicle.”

The Homeless Persons LegalAssistance Project (HPLAP) and theSanta Cruz Homeless Persons AdvocacyProject (SC HPAP) support this legisla-tion and believe that this is an opportunityto revisit practical options for safe andsecure overnight parking. The ACLU ofCalifornia and the Western RegionalAdvocacy Project are supporting this billalong with many other advocacy groupswho support basic human rights for peo-ple experiencing homelessness.

“The ACLU stands behind the effort todecriminalize homelessness, particularlyas applied to the right to rest,” said PeterGelblum, Chair of the ACLU of SantaCruz County.

Local ordinances make it illegal for aperson to rest or sleep in their own privatevehicle, even if otherwise lawfully parkedon a public way within a local jurisdic-tion. The 2013 Homeless Census andSurvey reported that people living in vehi-cles was one of the fastest growing seg-ments of the homeless community.Advocates believe that the soon-to-bereleased 2015 census will reflect a contin-uation of that trend.

“Our research has shown a dramaticincrease in the number of people whoseprimary residence is a motor home orRV,” said Peter Connery, the vice presi-dent of Applied Survey Research.

Both the HPLAP and the SC HPAPbelieve that vehicle sleeping ordinanceshave no other legitimate purpose than totarget people experiencing homelessness.In fact, punishing people who have noother form of shelter by ticketing,citing/arresting him or her, or impoundingtheir vehicle has a disastrous effect onevery person experiencing homelessnesswho rests in their vehicle.

Statistically, the number-one cause ofhomelessness is loss of employment.Often, the only way to keep the familyunit together is to purchase a motor homeor recreational vehicle to use as a primaryresidence. This situation is far more fre-quent than is commonly thought.

Vehicle sleepers — often women andchildren who do not feel safe in a shelter— are ineligible to stay in a family orwomen’s shelter because of the genderand age combination of their children,who do not feel safe out on the street or inother unsheltered spaces.

Many people who rest in vehicles havesome type of employment. For them, the

vehicle is transportation to work as wellas shelter. For all of these people, thevehicle is sometimes the last personalasset they own.

“Losing my job took everything butmy independence. My RV gives me thatat least,” said one vehicle dweller whoasked to remain anonymous.

Punishing a person with fines,impoundment or seizure of a vehicle thatis shelter, transportation and the connec-tion to employment, education or medicalcare only deepens poverty and prolongshomelessness.

Moreover, increasing the number ofpeople without shelter reduces publicsafety and increases other types of localcosts. So how can we provide this mostbasic of human rights and address theconcerns of those who believe that publicsafety and order are imperiled by vehiclesleeping? Consider this if you will.

The Safe Spaces Parking Program hasbeen developed in Santa Cruz and hasbeen forwarded to both the City Counciland the Santa Cruz County Board ofSupervisors. The program is based uponthe belief that safe shelter is one of themost pressing needs in our community.

According to the 2013 HomelessCensus and Survey, more than 3,500 peo-ple in Santa Cruz County are withoutshelter of any kind every night. Of those,28 percent reside in recreational vehicles,vans or automobiles.

It is estimated that more than 200 to300 recreational vehicles, vans and auto-mobiles serve as the primary home forfamilies. Many families see this option asthe only way to keep the family togetherin the absence of affordable housing.Most of these vehicles are forced by cir-cumstances to park overnight on city orcounty streets in violation of local ordi-nance.

“My family has been able to staytogether in our motor home,” said JulieAnn, a longtime recreational vehicledweller. “Without that, we would not havenot been able to.”

The Safe Spaces Parking Program callsfor the city or county to designate a parcelof currently unused public property for thepurpose of establishing an overnight park-ing program. Each program site wouldaccommodate no less that 10 but no morethan 15 recreational vehicles.

Potential sites would be located on cityor county-owned property in commercialor industrial areas. Overnight parkingwould be from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.without exception. Registration forovernight stay would begin at 5:00 p.m.and end at 5:45 p.m. Staff and securitypersonnel would then review theovernight roster and set the night’s securi-ty procedures.

Under the proposal, volunteers or a

nonprofit agency would manage the site.Garbage service and portable toiletswould be provided at no cost to the city orcounty. Funding for the program would beobtained through private sources andadministered by a recognized nonprofitagency. Volunteer staff would be on siteat all times. The program would assumethe cost of at least one private securityofficer to be on site one hour before regis-tration until one hour after all overnightguests have exited the site.

Legislative action would be a tremen-dous help but we need to start providingsafe spaces for vehicle dwellers now.

Safe overnight parking spaces are apressing need for the ever-increasingnumber of vehicularly housed peopleexperiencing homelessness. HPLAP andSC HPAP call upon everyone to lobbytheir State Senate representatives for thepassage of AB 718 and to urge local elect-ed officials to put realistic, practicaloptions like the Safe Spaces ParkingProgram on the table.

Steve Pleich is an advocate for basichuman rights for people experiencing home-lessness. He is working with the Santa CruzSafe Parking Project.

New Hope for VehicleDwellers in California“The ACLU stands behind the effort to decriminalizehomelessness, particularly as applied to the right to rest.”

— Peter Gelblum, Chair of ACLU of Santa Cruz County

In Santa Cruz, a man and his dog are not homeless as long as their vehicle is nottowed away or impounded. Many people make their home in an RV, van or car.

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

Editor, Layout: Terry MessmanWeb designer: Jesse ClarkeHuman Rights: Carol Denney

Contributors: American FriendsService Committee, Claire J. Baker,Lynda Carson, Joan Clair, CarolDenney, Lydia Gans, Kenneth Hahn,T.J. Johnston, Elizabeth King, StevePleich, Bhaani Singh, Anna L.Snowdon, WRAP, George Wynn

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, artwork, poems and photos. Contact: Terry MessmanStreet Spirit, 65 Ninth Street,San Francisco, CA 94103E-mail: spirit@afsc.orgWeb: http://www.thestreetspirit.org

by Steve Pleich

It’s a full-time job being homeless.It’s a full-time job being poor.That’s what those who say thehomeless should just go out and get

jobs fail to understand. You already have a job, and that job is

surviving. You have to get in line earlyfor food and even earlier for a place tosleep. You carry everything you own onyour back and when your clothes wearout, you spend all your time searchingfor replacements.

You only have so much energy toexpend because you have only so muchfood to fuel your body. Most of the time,

you’re tired and you’re sore and yourclothes are damp.

But sometimes at night, you recallwho you once were.

You were a kid and played with otherkids. You had a mother and a father.

You wanted to be an engineer or afirefighter or an astronaut.

You were loved and loved in return. You were a family. And in your darkest imaginings, you

could never have seen yourself come tothis place.

You are homeless. You are poor.

Steve Pleich is the Director of the SantaCruz Homeless Persons Advocacy Project

An Anthem for the Homeless

More than 3,500 people in Santa Cruz County are with-out shelter of any kind every night. Of those, 28 percentreside in recreational vehicles, vans or automobiles.

July 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T4

by TJ Johnston

In the span of one month, police in SanFrancisco ordered Beti to move off thesidewalk at least 10 times. The 75-

year-old retired nurse — who asked thathis last name not be used — recalled hismost recent displacement occurring at 5a.m. at the hands of the authorities.

“This morning I had just fallen asleep,”he said. “I set up my tent, got in, laiddown, wrapped up and had fallen asleepuntil I heard a familiar tap. After tonight,(the police) said they would start citingagain. It’s like a terrorization game, ameans of harassment, and it makes mefeel helpless, looking for little spots.”

Even with the numerous times Betiwas forced to move along, his case is byno means isolated. Homeless people likehim are constantly asked to move out ofpublic spaces, according to a new reportfrom the Coalition on Homelessness.

The majority of homeless and margin-ally housed people, the San Francisco-based homeless advocacy organizationfound, said that city workers — usuallypolice officers — order them to leave, andthat they received citations for nothingmore than sitting, resting or sleeping out-side. Furthermore, the enforcement ofordinances prohibiting such activitiesoften leads to arrest, creating a viciouscycle of poverty and incarceration.

On June 18, the Coalition onHomelessness, publisher of the StreetSheet, released its findings in a newreport, “Punishing the Poorest: How SanFrancisco’s Policy of CriminalizingPoverty Perpetuates Homelessness.”

A research team that the Coalitionassembled, including currently and former-ly homeless people, surveyed 351 homelessand marginally housed city residents.Additionally, peer researchers interviewedon video 43 people who described theirexperiences with law enforcement in detail.

These stories bolstered the data that wascollected late last year. The research wassupervised by Chris Herring and DilaraYarbrough, doctoral candidates in the soci-ology department at the University ofCalifornia, Berkeley. (Disclosure: Theauthor of this story participated in both thedata collection and peer interviewing.)

According to the study, 70 percent ofhomeless people said that authoritiesasked them to move out of a public out-door space, and nearly as many weregiven tickets for activities in public space.Also, 64 percent said they complied bymoving, usually down the street.

The Coalition on Homelessness recom-mended that San Francisco repeal lawsused to target homeless people and stopticketing them for offenses related tohomelessness. The report also recom-mended that police prioritize seriouscrimes instead.

Assad Deiche, a 30-year-old AfricanAmerican man who is living at the recent-ly opened Navigation Center, has beenarrested about 15 times already. Like oth-ers interviewed for the study, he often issearched by police and sometimes isarrested for minor offenses.

“They basically searched me and toldme to take off my clothes and put on theirclothes (a jumpsuit), and they put me in ajail cell,” he said. “That was for an opencontainer, and that was for a couple ofdays that I remember.”

Beneeta Ardion, a 57-year-old StreetSheet vendor, said she feels safest sleep-ing at the Powell Street BART station oron the trains. Last year, the Bay Area-wide transit agency drew fire for ordering

its police officers to evict homeless peo-ple who sleep or lie down by the wallsalong the station. The Coalition onHomelessness led a sit-in protest againstthe policy. Often, Ardion is ordered tomove along and relocate.

“Every day, it’s a different place,” shesaid. “This morning, we’re sleeping on thesidewalk and (The Department of PublicWorks) have to wash the sidewalk.”

San Francisco has gained notoriety forits heavy reliance on police in respondingto homelessness, and for its many lawsdirected against homeless people.

According to a recent study from theUC Berkeley Law School’s PolicyAdvocacy Clinic, San Francisco takes thelead among California cities by enacting23 municipal ordinances that restrictwhere people can sit, lie or rest outdoors.

The Coalition’s study bears this out,with 69 percent of the study’s respondentssaying they have received citations in thepast year. From October 2006 to March2014, San Francisco police issued 51,757tickets for so-called “quality of life” offens-es, with more than 22,000 of those citationsfor sleeping, sitting or panhandling.

Most of the respondents in theCoalition’s survey said they were unableto pay for their last citation. Failure to paythese fines results in arrest warrants —something to which Ardion can attest.

“It does leave me at risk,” she said.“Every time they run my name, they tellme. What am I going to court for? I don’thave any money. I don’t want to gothrough ‘community service.’ Why am Ibeing punished for getting tired?”

The majority of survey respondents —

59 percent — said that they had beenincarcerated in the county jail or stateprison, and most were already homelessbefore their last stint in custody. Others,such as Miles, who camps out at FortMason and requested his last name not begiven, eventually lost their housingbecause of incarceration. The end ofMiles’ marriage set off a chain of eventsthat resulted in homelessness.

“I was arguing with my wife, and itended when my wife dialed 911,” he said.The police, he added, were sure they wouldfind illegal drugs on him. “They wanted$8,000 out of my wallet. They didn’t let mecall work to explain (what happened). Ittook two and a half or three days to explainto work why I was MIA.”

The Coalition on Homelessness alsofound that when homeless people getarrested, it rarely results in connectingthem with services upon release. Only 11percent of arrestees said they were offeredanything to alleviate their situation.Usually, it was just a pamphlet, a shelterbed or a one-way bus ticket out of thecity. That offer of services is likely to beaccompanied with a warning.

Miles recalled one cop’s offer to “help”and how ineffective it was. “This one offi-cer, he told me I’d get a hot meal andhoused. I knew right away he didn’t knowwhat he was talking about,” he said.

The officer drove him from the tonyNob Hill neighborhood to the much poorerTenderloin and dropped him off at St.Anthony’s dining room. “He said he wasan ‘emergency intervention specialist.’ Inthe back of his car, he had the most fancysniper rifle I’ve ever seen. Good at finding

housing for homeless, he was not.”Beti said that mistreatment from police

comes with the territory, especially whentaking his identity as a gay, transgenderman into account. “When I’m interactingwith police, they automatically addressthe situation as ‘man up, take care of yourown problems,’” he said. “I’ve had manywonderful interactions with the police, butthe bad ones outweigh the good.”

What little services are offered to peo-ple exiting jail or prison is connected tothe person’s probation, said JanettaJohnson, program director of theTransgender Intersex Justice Project. Heradvocacy organization provides corre-spondence with transgender people whoare in custody.

“For some reason, I’m not seeing a lotof re-entry support (in San Francisco),”she said. “I’m seeing a lot of stuff over theInternet about supportive re-entry, but interms of particular re-entry services, I’mnot seeing it.”

Assad Deiche said he was turned downfor Supplemental Security Income threetimes because of repeated lockups. Tohim, jail “kind of slowed benefits down.”He added, “It just delays what I’m tryingto do what is good for me.”

In the video interviews with peerresearchers, some of the subjects addressthe onus placed on homeless people whenthey’re under supervision of parole andprobation officers once they leave cus-tody. It’s a common practice, they say, forofficers to inquire about probation orparole status first thing off.

A transgender woman who chooses tobe identified as Sindi said that was herexperience. “It seems that’s their firstquestion they want to know,” she said,“because if you answer ‘yes,’ they’ll treatyou differently than being homeless, likeif you robbed a bank or something.”

Beti also said that police frequently askhim about probation or parole. “That’s thefirst thing they would ask,” he said. “It’snot ‘what’s your name?’ or ‘do you haveID?’ It’s ‘are you on probation or onparole? Are you on paper?’”

Beti added that this line of questioningmakes him feel horrible. “They’re notinterested in who I am as a person. Theywant to know if it was worth them doingany investigation to the circumstancesthey were there for.”

Apparently, police are allowed to askanyone with a history of being in thecriminal justice system that question,according to Larry Roberts of the PublicDefender’s office.

“Under most circumstances, you arenot obligated to answer any of his ques-tions other than to state your true name,”he said. “If you are on probation or paroleand a condition of your probation andparole is that you disclose this to any lawenforcement officer on demand or contact,failing to do so may be a violation of yourprobation or parole and cause to send youback to prison.” He added that a policeofficer could easily search that informa-tion if given a name.

The study shows that AfricanAmericans and other people of color wereapproached by cops, forced to move, tick-eted and searched more often than whites.It was also the consensus among the videointerviewees that police target minoritiesand poor people, as opposed to whiter andwealthier people.

In the last year, studies from SeattleUniversity, UC Berkeley and the NationalCoalition for the Homeless also noted atrend of criminalizing homeless people.

Anti-Homeless Laws Move People Along — and Push Them Further into Poverty

“House Keys Not Handcuffs. Homelessness Ends with a Home.” Poster by WRAP

San Francisco has gained notoriety for its heavy relianceon police in responding to homelessness, and it takes thelead among California cities by enacting 23 city ordinancesthat restrict where people can sit, lie or rest outdoors.

July 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 5

by Lydia Gans

Residents at Redwood Gardens, aU.S. Housing and UrbanDevelopment (HUD) project for

low-income seniors and people with dis-abilities, are experiencing increasing dissat-isfaction with the project management com-pany, Cooperative Services Inc (CSI).

Redwood Gardens is a complex of 169apartments, gardens and meeting spaceslocated at 2951 Derby Street in Berkeley. Itwas originally established as a co-op butthat is no longer its status. At present, man-agement makes decisions and takes actionwithout seeking input from residents.

Complaints, questions and requests oftenare simply ignored. There have been longdelays in correcting hazardous conditionsand ADA violations, as well as securitythreats and disregard for the health and wel-fare of those who are particularly fragile.

Last year, Redwood Gardens receivedsome publicity when managementannounced plans for major renovations andresidents protested that they were given vir-tually no input on either the plans or therenovation process. Many residentsexpressed intense frustration with the dis-ruption in their lives as it was happening.

They appealed for help from the man-ager, the workers and anybody they couldreach connected with the building.Eleanor Walden and Gary Hicks, co-chairs of the Residents’ Council, havebeen reaching out for help from commu-nity organizations, legal assistance forseniors, disability rights, housing action,as well as city departments, but virtuallynothing has been available to them.

Walden explains: “We’re in an inter-esting position. The land that we’re on isowned by the University of California, thebuildings are owned by CSI, we are in thecity of Berkeley and nobody wants to takeresponsibility for what goes on here.”

The residents of Redwood Gardensdecided that they would have to reach outnationally. Years ago, Gary Hicks hadworked with the National Association ofHUD Tenants (NAHT) in Boston. He madea strong case for joining the organization.

The NAHT website states: “NAHTworks with organizers across the countryto unite tenants in project-based Section 8housing. Through outreach and training,tenants are mobilized to fight to preservetheir housing and their rights. We are adiverse network of over 300 building-

level tenant unions, area and state-widecoalitions, tenant organizing projects,legal service agencies, and other housing-related tenant organizations.”

So last month, from June 21 to 23,Eleanor Walden and another tenant,Avram Gur Arye, attended the NAHTannual conference in Washington, D. C.The first two days were devoted to tenant-run workshops, and the third, Lobby Day,was spent on meetings with HUD officialsand members of Congress.

Walden describes herself as “an oldactivist.” The way to get things done, shedeclares, is by “nudging.” She lays out herapproach to the building management.“OK, we have a complaint, a legitimatecomplaint. We’re not just going to send it tothe manager, or to the corporation, or to thisone or that one. We’re going to send it toeveryone. We’re going to get HUDinvolved, we’re going to be a bug on theirbehind until they give us some attention.”

Avram Gur Arye is an architect. Hiswork has been in housing and he under-stands peoples’ needs for comfort and secu-rity. He is thoroughly familiar with the rele-vant regulations, departments and commis-sions, where and who to go to in the city forinformation and assistance. This is particu-

larly valuable in the situation that RedwoodGardens tenants are facing.

But he only became an activist in the lastsix years after he came to Berkeley.“Berkeley did this to me,” he says. “I wasan ordinary architect, working in housing,doing good work in San Francisco andOakland, but I was apolitical.”

Asked why he chose to be a delegate tothe convention, Arye says, “The mainthing motivating me is making sure that,whether I’m going to be in HUD housingthe rest of my life or not, I want to makecertain that the safety net of HUD housingis kept and that it stays a governmentagency, not a privatized agency.”

Arye returned from the convention fullof enthusiasm. “Tools. Tools and connec-tions,” he explains, talking about themany workshops and informal discussionsamong the participants and meetings withgovernment officials. He described aprocess called “Eyes and Ears” involvingpeople getting together and telling theirstories to representatives of HUD.

It was the people he connected withthat he was most excited about. “There areconnections that we got on every subjectthat came up in the workshops, the lun-cheons and accountability sessions. I’m

an architect, became an activist inBerkeley, and now can share information(with people) all over the country.”

Arye said he found “someone in asmall town in Texas (who) was interestedin how I had gotten the building officialsto do what HUD didn’t do, and faster.”

Eleanor Walden echoed his enthusiasmas she described the Eyes and Ears meeting.“I was in a room with more talent, intelli-gence, experience, and knowledge than Ihave seen since 1964 in the civil rightsmovement,” she says. “These mostly Black,largely women, are all tenant organizers ofgreat skill and ability and they knew whatthey were talking about. They were able torecount it in story-telling fashion.”

She says, “People use the word ‘com-plaints’ when they talk about tenants.There is no complaining. This was thefacts and the experience and this is whathas happened to me and to the people inthe larger region which I’m from.”

On the subject of words and the atti-tudes they reflect, Walden says, “I heardthe word ‘respect’ used so many times atthis conference I still get goosebumpsbecause that has been one of the thingsthat hurt me most that happened in thisbuilding (at Redwood Gardens). We weretreated with distance, lack of respect.

“I thought it was just me. The fact thatwe are old or disabled or marginalized doesnot mean that we don’t have experience,education, dedication, ability — all of thethings that they didn’t give us credit for.That came up over and over and over.”

Walden brings back from the confer-ence an “amazing amount of informationthat we didn’t know was going on nation-wide. For example, buildings like ours arebeing renovated to the tune, in this particu-lar case, of 3 1/2 million dollars and thenthey’re being sold off. And there are manyways in which they’re being sold off — bybeing upgraded to university dorms,upgraded to gentrification or they’re being,in some cases, sold to the tenants.

“People here have asked, ‘what aretheir intentions?’ That’s what I’ve beentrying to find out. Now I see that we werenot off the mark. There is a pattern of sell-ing off these buildings.”

Walden and Arye say this was just abeginning. They will reach out to otherSection 8 housing projects in the area andexpand their contacts with activists allover the country.

Tenants at Redwood Gardens Demand Respect

“I heard the word ‘respect’ used so many times at this con-ference. I still get goosebumps because that has been one ofthe things that hurt me most that happened (at RedwoodGardens). We were treated with distance, lack of respect.”

— Eleanor Walden, tenant activist at Redwood Gardens in Berkeley

Tenants at Redwood Gardens, (left to right) Avram Gur Arye, GaryHicks and Eleanor Walden, are working to uphold the rights of residents.

Lydia Gansphoto

by Lynda Carson

In early June, the much-needed bus shel-ter and passenger bench at the corner ofEast 18th Street and 3rd Avenue in

Oakland was removed without advancenotice to the passengers using the bus stop.Locals were shocked to suddenly find thebus shelter and bench removed.

Many people at the bus stop believethat the removal of the bus shelter andbench was carried out as a collective pun-ishment against the community becausehomeless people sometimes use the busshelter to store their possessions.

The bus shelter and bench sat directlyin front of a busy Lucky grocery storenear Walgreens and has been a greatlyneeded fixture over the past years becauseit protects bus passengers from the sun,rain and the often chilly breezes that blowacross nearby Lake Merritt.

Many elderly and disabled persons inthe community depend on the bus shelterand bench on a daily basis as a place torest and keep their groceries safely out ofthe sun while waiting for the next bus.

At least three different buses use the bus

stop to collect passengers heading to differ-ent destinations, including the #18 bus usedby wealthier people heading up into thehills, and the very overcrowded #14 busthat heads deeper into East Oakland. Manybus riders claim the #14 is the worst busline operating in Oakland.

Locals disparagingly call the #14 linethe “ghetto bus” and claim that it is latemost of the time, and is generally over-crowded because there are not enoughbuses operating on the line to support allthe poor people who depend on the bus toreach their destination on a daily basis.

In comparison, at times during rushhour, the less crowded #18 bus going towealthier areas of Oakland appears to berunning twice as often at East 18th Streetand 3rd Avenue compared to the over-crowded #14 bus used by poor people.

During the past few weeks, accordingto bus passengers, on at least one occasionthe #14 bus was running late by an hourand a half. It was so crammed with peopleafter a few busy stops near 11th Street andBroadway, that bus passengers wereshouting and screaming that it was inhu-mane treatment, and difficult to breathe.

Passengers stated that it became nearlyimpossible for people to get on or off thebus, as more and more people tried toforce their way onto the bus at each stop.According to sources, passengers werescreaming to get off the bus and the busdriver kept screaming back at the passen-gers during that perilous ride.

Cheryl Saunders said, “I have oftennoticed that the buses going to wealthierareas of Oakland tend to run on time, runmore often and are much less crowdedthan the buses used by poorer peopleheading into East Oakland.”

Ben Fulcher, Sr. stated, “This is collec-tive punishment against the poor, elderlyand disabled who need the bus sheltersand other services.”

In response to my request for an inter-view, Clarence Johnson of media relationsfor AC Transit repeatedly said that ACTransit does not own the bus shelters andbenches located at bus stops in Oakland.

“The bus shelters and benches are allowned by Clear Channel Outdoor, and Ido not know why the bus shelter andbench was removed,” Johnson said.

“However, shelters and benches histori-

cally have been removed when they arebeing abused. Sometimes churches will callus to ask us to remove a bus shelter whendrug dealers are using the shelters for ille-gal purposes. When people call to complainthat a bus shelter is being abused, generallythe bus shelter and benches are removed.You will have to contact Clear ChannelOutdoor for more information.”

When I pointed out that removing themuch-needed bus shelter and benchbecause of a few bad actors is inhumaneand amounts to collective punishmentagainst the whole community, Johnsoncontinued to defend the actions of ClearChannel Outdoor as being an acceptablepractice despite the hardship their actionsmay have on all the elderly and disabledbus passengers using the bus shelter.

I called Clear Channel Outdoor tospeak to someone about the suddenremoval of the bus shelter and bench, andwas connected to Selena Reynolds, whodid not respond to my call. Reynolds han-dles real estate, including furniture andbus benches at bus stops in Oakland,according to the receptionist.

Removal of Bus Shelter Harms East Oakland Residents

See Removal of Bus Shelter page 14

July 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T6

A Column on Human Rights

by Carol Denney

On March 17, two key leaders ofBerkeley’s YMCA attendedthe City Council meeting toaddress the council regarding

Berkeley’s “Community CommercialSidewalks and Public Spaces” proposal, anew raft of anti-homeless laws including asuggested law which would make it acrime to use a blanket or bedding between7:00 a.m. and 10:00 p.m.

YMCA Executive Director Hae WonRhow and Albert Chan, senior member-ship director of Berkeley’s YMCA,attended the council meeting. Chan spokeout for the proposed anti-homeless laws.

Nobody knows yet what form the finallegislation will take. Berkeley CityManager Christine Daniel just quit, and thereworked ordinances might not pass thecouncil at all, although they seem to havethe votes. But the Berkeley City Council isentitled to consider the YMCA’s pointedcomments that evening as being in favor ofnew anti-homeless laws.

Chan identified himself as a YMCAemployee, and in mentioning the 9,000households served by the YMCA, heblamed the presence of homeless peopleas the reason that YMCA members are“frightful” (sic) of coming downtown.

“I want to talk to you about safety,” hestated, citing a violent incident which hadoccurred on the Post Office steps.

There is no need to criminalize alreadycriminal behavior, so this example, likemany of the examples offered by thehandful in favor of the anti-homeless pro-posal, was an odd choice to use to pro-mote more criminalization targetinghomeless people and their belongings.

The anti-homeless law supporters thatnight who mentioned smoking, or vio-lence, or threatening behavior need onlycall the police and report criminal behav-ior when they observe it.

But Mr. Chan is like a lot of businesspeople in downtown Berkeley. It is easierto blame homeless and poor people thanactually work in cooperative ways toreduce threatening and dangerous behav-ior — even behavior sometimes commit-ted by YMCA staff and clientele.

“Phillip,” a lifeguard at the YMCA,takes a “vape” break right by the frontentrance in the accompanying photo. Heknew nothing of the smoking regulationin the commercial district or the recentlaw which was altered to include electron-ic cigarettes, nor had the YMCA supervi-sory staff informed him about it.

At least two residents at the YMCA’shotel also were told by management tosmoke right by their exit door, despite thisbeing a violation of Berkeley’s law and aguaranteed way to expose all the YMCAmembers coming and going to classes orworking out.

The two YMCA staff members behindthe counter the day this photograph wastaken also knew nothing about Berkeley’scommercial districts law, insisting thatsmoking a few feet from a doorway wasstill the operative regulation.

And they are not alone. The security

guard at the next door Social Security officetells clients to smoke right outside on thesidewalk, as does the crew at nearby FirstResponse. The AC Transit bus drivers typi-cally take their smoke break in front of theShattuck Hotel by their buses.

The City of Berkeley has abandonedthe once-vigorous efforts to ensure sig-nage and promote education about thecurrent regulations, leaving in place popu-lar mythology that poor and homelesspeople are the bulk of the smoking viola-tors downtown, which is easy to disprovewith a short stroll through the streets. Thecity’s current smoking regulations are amoving target which almost no one,including the police, can accuratelydescribe, regulations which are enforceddisproportionately against the poor.

Let’s be clear. Chan, the YMCAspokesperson, could have addressed thegeneral safety issue in the downtown duringthe general public comment period. But heand YMCA Executive Director Hae WonRhow made a decision to attend and tospeak directly to Item 19 on the March 17agenda: the “Community CommercialSidewalks and Public Spaces.”

This proposal is opposed by the ACLUand more than 60 religious leaders andlocal civil rights organizations as likely tobe used in a discriminatory fashion.

Chan could have clarified that he wasnot speaking as a YMCA representative,but he stated his job title quite clearly.The Berkeley City Council was treated tothe very strong impression that not onlythe YMCA leadership, but the YMCAmembership as well, supports new anti-homeless laws which, in fact, do nothingto improve public safety.

Executive Director Hae Won Rhowresponded to an email about the YMCA’sshow of support for the proposed legisla-tion: “I’m sorry to hear that our statementsabout the increase of concerns aroundharassment and sanitation was seen as anti-homeless. It’s quite the opposite. Webelieve that we need to address issues ofbehavior and health with all that don’t fol-low them — we see it with affluentteenagers from Berkeley HS to even ourown members. That is what we wanted toshare and that we need help with commu-nication and with appropriate conse-quences. We don’t label anyone as a prob-lem, but we only wanted to state that weare seeing an increase in the issues.”

But Chan didn’t mention any groupexcept the homeless in his testimony tothe City Council on March 17. He didn’tmention teenagers, or issues with theirown membership. “Appropriate conse-quences” are an inappropriate way todescribe criminalizing the attributes ofhomelessness in a town seemingly dedi-cated to having less low-income housingthan the community needs. And “sanita-tion,” a respectable issue to be sure, is inno way addressed by criminalizing pan-handling or blankets and bedding.

Criminalization of homelessness iscostly, ineffective and inhumane. Amajority of Berkeley voters know this,and voted down the City Council’s mostrecent effort to add to an already embar-rassingly high pile of Berkeley anti-home-

less laws, when they defeated an absurdanti-sitting law in 2012.

The Peace and Justice Commission,the ACLU, and Berkeley’s HomelessTask Force oppose the new laws, andodds are strong that a majority of YMCAmembers can be counted on to caredeeply about resolving homelessness, notmaking homeless and poor people moremiserable and burdened than they alreadyare with bewildering restrictions withwhich it is impossible to comply.

But a Berkeley City Council majorityled by Mayor Tom Bates and District 1representative Linda Maio seems deter-mined to be crowned the city with themost anti-homeless laws statewide.

The YMCA has so far refused to send aletter clarifying their stand on the new anti-homeless laws. YMCA President FranGallati and Executive Director Hae WonRhow imply that they do not support ananti-homeless agenda, but we are entitledto assume as a community what theBerkeley City Council must assume: thatAlbert Chan and Hae Won Rhow were atthe City Council on March 17 to supportthe anti-homeless laws until they produce aletter or statement saying otherwise.

If you are a YMCA member, please letthe YMCA leadership know you are con-cerned about their support for this specificpiece of legislation, and would like theYMCA, if it chooses to cheerlead politi-cally, to support honest efforts to help thepoor by increasing low-income housingthrough a moratorium on luxury housingin Berkeley, a free public campground,and a commitment to replacing the low-income housing that the City has, decadeafter decade, systematically converted tohigh-end housing.

The YMCA, if it wishes to participatepolitically, is most welcome to do so. Butright now it has put itself in a difficultposture. No one accidentally finds them-

selves speaking specifically to item 19 onthe Berkeley City Council agenda onMarch 17. And if the YMCA spoke out infavor of anti-homeless legislation some-how by accident, its leaders should, as amatter of course and for the community’ssake, clarify their position.

A YMCA lifeguard takes a “vape break” right by the BerkeleyYMCA’s front entrance in violation of the city’s anti-smoking laws.

Carol Denneyphoto

Y-M-C-A: How Do You SpellAnti-Homeless Hypocrisy?

The Berkeley City Council was treated to the very strongimpression that not only the YMCA leadership, but theYMCA membership as well, supports new anti-homelesslaws which, in fact, do nothing to improve public safety.

On the Beachby George Wynn

Out at the beachhe rubs the sleepfrom his eyes

“The oneswith the powerthey analyze usnever really talk to usand when they doin frontof T.V. camerastheir facesseem so souras ifdown deepthey really despise

us.”

A Treasured CDby Claire J. Baker

I've a restful CD —slow harp melodysprinkled with flute —single notes and sweeping chords.The gem begins and endswith ocean waves and gulls.

I wish that a multitudeof street people could hearthis calming music;in a sublime interludeglide and soar for a while,like gulls.

July 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 7

by Carol Denney

They flagrantly violate the law. Theydon’t care about ordinances or regu-lations. They claim they have to

ignore restrictions as a matter of necessity,because what else can they do?

No, we’re not talking about homelesspeople, or panhandlers, or itinerant wan-derers hitchhiking up and down the coast.We’re talking about Berkeley home andapartment owners who have figured outthat hitching a ride on Airbnb’s “sharingeconomy,” although entirely illegal, canmake them lots of money.

San Francisco-based Airbnb wasfounded in 2008 as a way for vacationersto book what their website calls “uniqueaccommodations around the world.”Cutting to the economic heart of the mat-ter, Airbnb boasts that it is “the easiestway for people to monetize their extraspace and showcase it to millions.”

The Berkeley City Council meeting onTuesday, June 23, had at least a dozenpeople claiming that without the extraincome they were making on short-termrentals they would lose their homes.

Lose their homes — an especially

chilling prediction after the HomelessTask Force’s push earlier that evening fora monolithic, one-stop “resource center”touted as a final solution to homelessnessby anointed service providers and a graft-ridden boondoggle by others.

The typical Berkeley liberal wouldrather die than panhandle (a legal activity)but apparently has no issue with standing

at the televised council meeting acknowl-edging that they routinely break the law.

The short-term rental of an empty bed-room is presented as benign by “sharingeconomy” fans who enthuse about “dis-rupting” conventional business modelsand point to lucrative ride-sharing busi-nesses like Uber as unstoppable, whichmight be the case in Berkeley.

Members of the Berkeley City Councilmight see the potential for a collision ofinterests between homeowners making

money off the kids’ old bedroom and theneighbors now living next to a swingingparty zone for out-of-towners, but theyfigure they’ll pour a few regulations overthe top and have a new tax stream.

To citizens who notice too late that theirneighborhood no longer has peace, or park-ing, or a sense of connection, the CityCouncil will look like it did something.

There will be an avenue for taxation, acomplaint mechanism and suddenlydecades of efforts to protect neighborhoodsfrom commercial impacts through zoningwill be so shot with holes it will be useless.

The “sharing economy” is not aboutsharing. It is about making money offyour home, your car, any resource youhave. And making money off a neighbor-hood with little say in the matter and acommunity that needs more stability andhousing, not less, for the inhabitants who

are already here; and profiting at theexpense of hospitality businesses and taxidrivers who struggle to comply with regu-lations and try to pay living wages.

Our minimum-wage workers alreadycan’t earn enough to pay market-rate rentsin any state in the union. They have noway to compete with wealthy out-of-towners who find it fashionable to vaca-tion on the cheap in what would havebeen an available apartment they could atleast have shared with another.

Offering no objection to Airbnb andUber, which have market capitalizationsin the billions, cheapens community val-ues and creates a larger community bur-den for the sake of the few short-sightedpeople who see a personal benefit forthemselves alone.

The Berkeley City Council affirmed avague recommendation for regulationwhich will bounce through various com-missions, but they should have cited ourhousing crisis and just said no.

People literally sleeping on the streetcannot seem to move their hearts, butcash-poor homeowners looking to mone-tize their million-dollar asset seem to haveno trouble getting through.

Airbnb Aggravates Housing Crisis in Berkeley

People literally sleeping on the street cannot seem to movethe hearts of City Council members, but cash-poor home-owners looking to monetize their million-dollar asset seemto have no trouble getting through.

by the American Friends ServiceCommittee

The killing of nine churchgoers atEmanuel African MethodistEpiscopal Church in Charleston,South Carolina, on June 17, cuts

to the very core of our hopes for racialjustice and a peaceful world.

The American Friends ServiceCommittee, a Quaker organization thatworks to address the root causes of vio-lence and oppression in communitiesworldwide, joins with all who are grievingin the wake of this purposeful act of massviolence.

The weight of this most recent tragedypresses down on us all, particularly oncommunities of color, where physicalsafety is far from guaranteed, even in ahouse of worship. This horrific attack tar-geted parishioners at a church that has along legacy in the struggle for African-American liberation and civil rights.

Members of this church serve, as theyhave in the past, at the forefront of localand state politics and are strong advocatesfor racial justice. Mother Emanuel, as ofthis writing, seems to have been targetedas an attempt to terrorize people of colorwho participate in politics or advocate forrights and justice.

Arresting the perpetrator of this massmurder has resulted in the arrest of a per-son, but not the problem. We will makeno progress as a society if we believe thatjustice is done simply by punishing oneindividual white supremacist. Racism isnot just a historic problem or the work ofa few individual “bad apples.”

Racism — whether by direct intent ordeeply entrenched structural factors — isa problem in all aspects of American life,including economics, housing, healthcare, criminal justice, policing, education,media coverage, among others.

We are living in a moment when many

people in this country and abroad are see-ing our nation’s addictions to racism andviolence for what they are: social illswoven deeply into the tapestry of our soci-ety. This is a vital social challenge for allof us, and one that white people have par-ticular responsibility to address. None of uswill be truly secure until our systems arebuilt to protect the well-being of all people.

In memory of the nine beautiful soulslost to the violence of a man propelled byracist philosophies and a culture of vio-lence that our society as a whole isaccountable for, each of us must recommitto ending these evils at their root.

Acknowledging the effects of genera-tions of racism and violence on our cur-rent condition is a first step. Taking con-crete actions to transform our society,institutions, and relationships to endracism and violence is the next.

While the beloved community where

all are treated justly feels far off today, wemust press forward now more than evertoward that necessary goal.

We have found several good resourcesthat address systemic racism and whitesupremacist culture that help shed newlight on this moment of tragedy. Here area few we recommend for individuals andother faith and social groups to explore:

“Take Down the Confederate Flag” by Ta-Nehisi Coates on white supremacy cultureand the Confederate flag (The Atlantic).

“Only white people can save themselvesfrom racism and white supremacism” byBaynard Woods (Washington Post op-ed).

“Call it terrorism in Charleston” by PeterBergen & David Sterman (CNN online).

“Schooled in disconnection: Waking upand struggling for social justice” by LucyDuncan (Acting In Faith on AFSC blog).

Attend the White Privilege Conference,April 14-17, 2016, Philadelphia, PA.

Arresting Hate Throughout Our Culture

A memorial service for the Charleston church shooting was held at Morris Brown AME Church on June 18. Photo: Nomader

The Emanuel AME Church is oftenreferred to as “Mother Emanuel” and isthe oldest AME church in the South.

Photo credit: Cal Sr from Newport, NC.

Acknowledging the effects of generations of racism andviolence is a first step. Taking concrete actions to trans-form our society to end racism and violence is the next.

This horrific attack targeteda church that has a longlegacy in the struggle forAfrican-American libera-tion and civil rights.

July 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T8

“harsh and dreadful” nature of love inconfronting the nuclear arsenal. A WhiteTrain en route to a military base inCharleston, South Carolina, crossed theMississippi River into Memphis, where40 protesters watched the train, and eightmore stood on the tracks to block it.

Biema reported: “As the train crossedthe bridge, its whistle shrieked and itsbrakes screeched. Yards away, it seemedunable to stop. Seven of the demonstratorsbacked off, but Sister ChristineDobrowolski stood firm. Just 10 feet away,the train squealed to a halt. The groupreturned to the tracks to pray, and six werelater arrested for criminal trespass.”

Sister Christine nearly gave her life inthis vigil for peace. Love on the trackswas more costly than love in dreams.

Three years later, on Sept. 1, 1987,Brian Willson, a Vietnam veteran and anti-war protester, sat on the tracks at theConcord Naval Weapons Station in aneffort to block trains carrying bombs andnuclear warheads. A munitions train roareddown the tracks, and instead of slowingdown at the sight of nonviolent protesters,gathered speed and ran over Willson, sever-ing his legs, fracturing his skull and spillinghis blood on the tracks.

Willson recovered from this near-fatalcollision and has continued to live out theideals of nonviolence. In an interview,Douglass said that Willson showed greatcourage and added, “Brian’s pilgrimage isone of profound nonviolence. He contin-ues on that journey today.”

The tracks campaign continued into thelate 1980s. Then, activists discovered asecret memo stating that the Department ofEnergy could no longer ship nuclearweapons on the White Train. The reasongiven in the DOE memo was: “IN VIEWOF THE GROWING ANTI-NUCLEARMOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES,WITH ITS APPARENT FOCUS ON THEWHITE DEATH TRAIN.”

The power of nonviolence had notstopped the nuclear arms race, but it hadstopped the White Train in its tracks.

THE CALL TO RESISTANCE

When I was a journalism student in thelate 1970s, my friends and I committedseveral acts of civil disobedience at theRocky Flats plutonium trigger plant inColorado and at Malmstrom Air ForceBase, a command-and-control center forMinuteman missiles in Montana.

At that time, we read articles in peacejournals and CoEvolution Quarterly thatquoted Jim Douglass saying that move-ment activists needed to greatly deepentheir acts of resistance in order to abolishnuclear weapons for the sake of humanity.

It was exactly the kind of prophetic callto action we had been waiting to hear, sowhen Ground Zero announced a largeprotest against the Trident submarine in thefall of 1979, my friends Karl Zanzig, DavidArmour and I answered the call.

At sunset on October 28, 1979, Karl,David and I climbed the fence, entered theBangor naval base and walked inland tothe place where nuclear warheads werestored in bunkers and guarded by Marineswith shoot-to-kill orders. Just as we nearedthe bunkers, Marines drove up, pointedtheir rifles at us and arrested us.

I’ll never forget what happened next.As we were handcuffed and led away,three deer suddenly emerged from thetrees and watched us as we were put invehicles. Three protesters were going tojail, but those three deer were free, andtheir freedom felt like nature’s consola-tion to us, or its solidarity. I realize that

must sound sentimental, but all three of usfelt that we had been blessed by theforests and the wild creatures who werethreatened by those weapons no less thanthe people living in Kitsap County.

After being sentenced, Karl Zanzig and Ispent several months in Boron federalprison with Jim Douglass. Karl went on toorganize the “Silence One Silo” campaignand was arrested for sitting on the concretelid of a nuclear missile silo in Montana.

A year after my release from prison inJuly 1981, Ground Zero put out a call for aboat blockade of the Trident submarine inthe summer of 1982. I was attending semi-nary in Berkeley and my first wife, DarlaRucker, was a director of Livermore ActionGroup. We traveled to Ground Zero for theblockade and boarded a sailboat, the Lizardof Woz, with Jim Douglass and our fellowSpirit affinity group member Bruce Turner.

With 46 other Trident protesters, wefaced years in prison and went through aheavy pre-emptive attack from Coast Guardships on August 12, 1982.

I told the story of the boat blockade inthe June 2015 issue of Street Spirit. Whatstill needs to be said is the high degree oftrust and respect Darla and I had for Jimand Shelley Douglass in order to risk ourlives in this way. The risks that peoplefaced while climbing fences into theBangor base, sailing to block a nuclearsubmarine, and sitting on tracks to stop theWhite Train, reveal the respect that werefelt by many activists for the Ground ZeroCenter for Nonviolent Action.

THEOLOGY OF REVOLUTION & PEACE

Yet, as inspiring as these actions were,the theology I found in Douglass’s firstthree books left an even deeper mark. In re-reading The Nonviolent Cross, Resistanceand Contemplation, and Lightning East toWest, I’ve rediscovered how greatly thesebooks influenced my theological and politi-cal values, and what a strong foundation foractivism they have given.

The Nonviolent Cross, written in 1968,is subtitled “A Theology of Revolutionand Peace.” Douglass presents a profoundresponse to the anguish of the victims ofHiroshima and Nagasaki, Auschwitz andDresden, and reflects on the terrible suf-fering inflicted on the people of Vietnam.

The Nonviolent Cross is one of themost significant theological works on thegreat issues of war and peace, nuclear dis-armament, resistance and revolution everwritten. It offers a farsighted analysis ofthe ethical values underlying the just wartradition, the Christian perspective onpeacemaking and Gandhian nonviolence.

But it is more than simply a fine workof theology. It is also a passionate call toresistance and revolution.

The Nonviolent Cross is the work of a

Catholic theologian who had taught reli-gion at Notre Dame, and worked closelywith priests and archbishops, yet it wasamazingly inclusive, open-minded andrespectful of people from diverse faiths.

Douglass declared that Gandhi, a Hindu,was the greatest follower of Jesus in histo-ry, even though he obviously was not aChristian. He wrote with great admirationfor the Lutheran pastor DietrichBonhoeffer, who was executed in a Nazideath camp for resisting Hitler. Douglasseven showed great empathy and respect foragnostics and atheists who cannot acceptreligious dogma, yet who often show greatintegrity in their search for the truth.

THE LAST OF THE JUST

In this Street Spirit interview, whenasked what book had inspired him themost in his life, Douglass named The Lastof the Just by André Schwarz-Bart. Askedwhy this book has such deep meaning, hereplied, “Because of the evil he was deal-ing with: the Holocaust. And the depth ofthe response to it from the heart of aJewish man — Ernie Levy in the book —who walked the path of the just personand took on the suffering of the world.For me, he became a figure like Jesus.”

The Last of the Just is an eloquent andanguished account of centuries of perse-cution, pogroms, and massacres thatJewish people suffered at the hands of so-called Christian nations from the time ofthe Crusades to the death camps atAuschwitz, Buchenwald and Treblinka.

In real life, the parents of AndréSchwarz-Bart were deported to Auschwitzand murdered in the Nazi concentrationcamp. In the tremendously moving finalpages of The Last of the Just, the novel’shero Ernie Levy is exterminated withcyanide gas in Auschwitz, along withcountless Jewish children and adults.

The Last of the Just was of such para-mount importance to Douglass that hedevoted an entire chapter to it in TheNonviolent Cross. He unflinchingly con-fronted Catholic and Christian churches forcenturies of anti-Semitism that laid thefoundations for the Third Reich’s genocide.

Yet it is not only the violence and preju-dice of the past that concerns him. It is alsothe present and the future.

In The Nonviolent Cross, Douglassasks these piercing questions: “Why has itbeen so necessary to defend what men callChristianity at every step of the way withweapons of a constantly increasing bar-barity? If Christians are truly repentant fortheir deep involvement in the ThirdReich’s policy of genocide, why then arethey today so solidly in support of ther-monuclear genocide?”

Criticizing Vatican II for not going near-ly far enough in confessing the guilt of

Christendom for its long history of anti-Semitic prejudice, Douglass reminds us thatJesus himself was a Jew, just like all thosepersecuted in Christian nations over thecenturies. As André Schwarz-Bart writes,Jesus was “a simple Jew like Golda’sfather, a merciful man and gentle.”

Douglass includes a haunting quotationfrom The Last of the Just on the dedica-tion page of The Nonviolent Cross: “TheChristians say they love Christ, but I thinkthey hate him without knowing it. So theytake the cross by the other end and make asword out of it and strike us with it.”

Those who read this Street Spirit inter-view to its end will learn of Douglass’speace marches and arrests in the MiddleEast, and will find that he is critical notonly of the U.S. wars against Iraq, but alsoof Israel’s nuclear weapons and its oppres-sion of the Palestinian people. The role ofthe peacemaker and the justice seeker is toresist any nation, whatever faith it may ormay not profess, that wages unjust wars,stores nuclear weapons and commits acts ofviolence against civilians.

THE LAMED VAV

Everett Gendler, an American rabbi whowas deeply involved in the civil rightsmovement and in the Jewish PeaceFellowship, wrote of Douglass’s chapter onThe Last of the Just: “Is there anywhere somoving or profound an appreciation of TheLast of the Just? ... I was so stirred that Iwas moved to include nearly all of it in ourYom Kippur service at the Jewish Center ofPrinceton, and I still find it one of the mostaffecting essays I have ever read.”

To this day, Douglass continues toponder the deep meaning of the novel’scharacterization of Ernie Levy as one ofthe Lamed Vav, the fabled 36 just andrighteous people of Hebrew tradition.

The compassion of the Lamed Vav isessential for the life of humanity to con-tinue, even though, according to this mys-tical teaching, the identities of the LamedVav are hidden from the world and maybe unknown even to themselves.

Yet, for the sake of these 36 humble andhidden givers of justice and compassion,God preserves the world, even in the faceof its cruelty, violence and injustice.

What can this mean for people who seekpeace and justice, people who offer sanctu-ary to the homeless and food to the hungry?

Perhaps it means this: Whenever wemake even a humble effort to seek peaceor give mercy and compassion, more maydepend on our work than we will everknow. It may be terribly important to notgive up on our work for peace and justice.

It may be hidden from us, but in the longrun, simple acts of kindness and compas-sion may matter more to humanity than wecan possibly imagine.

Blockading theWhite Trainfrom page 1

On board the Lizard of Woz sailboat, activists prepare to blockade the Trident submarine in Puget Sound. Darla Rucker sits atthe rear in the far left. Terry Messman and Bruce Turner sit on the deck in the left foreground. Jim Douglass stands at far right.

July 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 9

Interview by Terry Messman

Street Spirit: The White Train cam-paign mobilized people in hundreds of far-flung communities to stand in nonviolentresistance along the tracks where nuclearweapons were transported. How did theWhite Train campaign get started?

Jim Douglass: Well, the White Traincampaign began as the Tracks campaign ata time when we didn’t yet know there was aWhite Train. Shelley and I had been look-ing at a house for years next to the Tridentbase as a location that was analogous to theGround Zero Center for Nonviolent Action,which was itself a piece of land 3.8 acres insize alongside the Trident base that we hadbought as a community.

At another location alongside the fencesurrounding the base, there was a houseover the tracks leading into the Tridentbase. We thought that if we lived in thathouse, we would have our eyes opened towhat was going into the base. To useArchbishop Hunthausen’s analogy, itwould be a little bit like having a housealongside the tracks leading into theAuschwitz concentration camp.

So I knocked on the door of that houseperiodically for several years, asking thepeople who owned the house if they wantedto rent or sell it. They always said no, buteventually the house was empty and wefound they were selling the home. With thehelp of friends, we bought the house.

Spirit: Knock and it shall be opened.Douglass: That’s the statement of Jesus

that we were inspired by. So we then livedin the house that had originally belonged tothe stationmaster of a railroad yard that ser-viced the Trident base. You literally had tocross the tracks to get into our house; therewas no other access to it.

So we then began to call together peo-ple who lived alongside the tracks nearthe Hercules propellant plant in Utahwhich regularly makes shipments to theTrident base of the highly volatile fuelpropellant for the Trident missiles.

We began monitoring those shipments.We would see them a couple times a week.So we began the tracks campaign aroundthose shipments, with people between SaltLake City, Utah, and the Trident submarinebase near Seattle. We held a retreat forpeople along the railroad tracks in the sum-mer of 1981. That was the beginning of thetracks campaign.

‘THE TRAIN OUT OF HELL’

Spirit: Soon people were conductingvigils all along the railroad tracks. Howlong did it take before you discovered thatnuclear warheads were being shipped onthe White Train?

Douglass: In December 1981, we sawthe first White Train come in. We werewarned by a reporter that he had seen sucha train north of Seattle. He said he had afeeling that it had something to do withthe Trident base, because it “looked likethe train out of hell.”

It was a heavily armored, all-whitetrain. Several cars on the train had turretson them where Department of Energyguards could put guns through slits todefend the train.

The reporter thought, “This is carryingbig-time weapons.” So he called us andasked if we’d ever seen it. And we said,no. So when I received the call from thatreporter, I went outside our house and aWhite Train was coming down the tracks!I took pictures of the cars of the train.

Then we did our research and discov-ered that the assembly point of all nuclearweapons was at the Pantex plant in

Amarillo, Texas. With the help of trainbuffs, we identified all the routes betweenAmarillo and the Bangor Naval Base, andthen waited for the train to come out ofthe Bangor base, and then followed thetrain with the help of people at key junc-tions back to the Pantex plant and con-firmed that it did come from that locationin Amarillo, Texas. So that was the begin-ning of the White Train campaign.

Spirit: So the first step of the WhiteTrain campaign involved researching thetrain routes and exposing the shipments ofnuclear warheads. What was the secondstep of the campaign?

Douglass: Next, we mapped out moreof the routes. Again it required train buffs.Tom Rawson, who was a wonderfulpeace-and-justice singer in Seattle andwho also had been a follower of trains allhis adult life, suddenly became a greatasset in our work on the White Train.

We mapped out all the possible routesto the Trident base, and then we contactedpeople in all of those cities and began fill-ing in the gaps. In the course of the trackscampaign, which continued through the1980s, we had connections with people inover 250 towns and cities along the routesof the train.

And thanks to a woman named HedySawadsky, a wonderful Mennonite friend,we had a watcher in Amarillo, Texas. Shemoved to live in Amarillo to watch thePantex plant and identify the departures ofthe White Train. That was her contempla-tive/active vocation for several years.

Spirit: So these train watchers enabledGround Zero to get the word out aboutthe departures of the White Train andmobilize your network for vigils?

Douglass: Sure. It was a network andonce it went into action, we could followthe train all the way and people either vig-iled by the tracks or sat in front of the train.They would give early notice to the policeabout what they planned to do. Nobodywanted to get run over by the train.

Spirit: The tracks campaign reallyflourished, with many acts of civil disobe-dience in dozens of cities.

Douglass: Many, many acts of nonvio-lent civil disobedience.

Spirit: It’s kind of amazing that, withyour help, the White Train built up a com-munity of peace-loving people stretchingfor hundreds of miles.

Douglass: Yes, that was the irony ofthe tracks campaign. The railroad tracksbecame a connection of community alongthe route of a Holocaust train. The trackscampaign went on into the late 1980s.

Spirit: It all began with only a handfulof activists and train buffs. How did it feelwhen it blossomed so quickly into a cam-paign that involved hundreds of communi-ties all up and down the tracks?

Douglass: It was an experience ofhope: hope spelled “community.” [laugh-ing] From the very beginning, we calledthat community “the Agape community.”

Spirit: Why the Agape community?Douglass: Agape means “God’s love.”

It is God. Love and truth are the primarynames for God, not only in Gandhi’svocabulary, but in the vocabulary of manygreat religious traditions. So it was a wayof realizing that love and truth in actionagainst a threat to all life on earth asposed by our weapons and policies.

That was a great development out of theTrident campaign. The Trident campaignand the tracks campaign are really the samecampaign, but the tracks gave it a wholenew dimension. We’re not the only bunchof people who were working in that way.

As you know well, Brian Willson andthe Nuremberg Actions community weredoing the same thing at the Concord NavalWeapons Station, and we were in close

communications with them, and with Brianwho came to visit us at Ground Zero afterhe had been run over by the train. [Editor:See “Blood on the Tracks: Brian WillsonDances in Resistance to Weapons of MassMurder,” Street Spirit, September 2012.]

Spirit: What did you feel about Brian’ssacrifice in losing his legs while blocking aweapons train at the Concord base?

Douglass: He is the only person in theworld, I think, who could have had thathappen to him and who would smile whenI said, “Brian you’re the perfect person tohave been run over by that train.”

Because he has such courage. And hehas such a complete absorption of his ownexperience from Vietnam and from goingthrough the jungles and roads ofNicaragua where he could have had hislegs blown off at any time by the Contramines. Those weapons were then blockedby Brian on the tracks of the ConcordNaval Weapons Station, where they werebeing shipped to Nicaragua when he wasrun over by that train. Brian’s pilgrimageis one of profound nonviolence. He con-tinues on that journey today.

Spirit: Brian not only smiles, hedanced on the railroad tracks at Concordon the anniversary of the loss of his legs.He dances on those prosthetic legs.

Douglass: He does indeed.

Acts of Resistance and Works of MercyStreet Spirit Interview with Jim Douglass, Part 2

A secret Department of Energy memo said the DOE couldnot send any more White Trains. Why? The reason givenwas: “IN VIEW OF THE GROWING ANTI-NUCLEARMOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES, WITH ITSAPPARENT FOCUS ON THE WHITE DEATH TRAIN.”

See Interview with Jim Douglass page 10

Good Friday/Passover walk from the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham for the Trident train tracks on April 17, 1992.

The White Train transported nuclear weapons across the nation. Photo: Chris Guenzler

July 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T10

STOPPING THE TRAIN IN ITS TRACKS

Spirit: When did you and Shelley moveto Birmingham, Alabama?

Douglass: We moved to Birmingham inSeptember 1989. The White Trains startedgoing to the East Coast as well as to theWest Coast, first to the Charleston NavalWeapons Station and then to the Kings BayGeorgia Trident submarine base.

As the trains began going east, we feltwe could help along that route. We stoppedin Birmingham, Alabama, and met peoplewho welcomed us there, so we came. Butby the time we got here, a year later, thereason we moved here had ceased to existbefore we arrived, unknown to us.

The tracks campaign had reached thepoint where the Department of Energystopped sending the White Trains. Butthey didn’t inform us, of course, so wewere in Birmingham a fair length of timebefore it became obvious that theyweren’t sending the trains anymore.

Eventually, through the Freedom ofInformation Act, we had that confirmed.

Spirit: What did you discover throughthe Freedom of Information Act?

Douglass: A secret Department ofEnergy memorandum, dated August 6,1985, declassified in 1990. It said the DOEcould not send any more White Trains.

Why? The reason given was: “IN VIEWOF THE GROWING ANTI-NUCLEARMOVEMENT IN THE UNITED STATES,WITH ITS APPARENT FOCUS ON THEWHITE DEATH TRAIN.”

The DOE memo was typed in caps, and“WHITE DEATH TRAIN” (with no quotemarks around their phrase) was their ownmatter-of-fact description —written on the40th anniversary of the Hiroshima bomb.

Spirit: So the DOE’s own documentsshow that the White Train shipments werestopped because of the tracks campaign?

Douglass: Sure.

Spirit: That shows the powerful effectall those communities of resistance werehaving on the federal government.

Douglass: It shows the effect we werehaving, but that didn’t mean that we hadstopped the Trident submarine. It justmeans that the campaign was a means bywhich people in hundreds of communitiesrecognized the ways in which the armsrace is present in our lives.

Spirit: Recognized it, and took a per-sonal stand against the arms race.

Douglass: Yes, and took a standagainst it. We didn’t succeed in “stop-ping” the train because that train, in termsof the nuclear arms race, kept on going.

However, we took a step as part of alarger movement. We learned that throughthe initiative of a young man whose par-ents, Glen and Karol Milner, have workedwith Ground Zero for decades. Glen wasarrested for blocking the White Train.

Years later, his son, Aaron, did a classpaper in high school on the tracks cam-paign. He queried the DOE about theimpact of the tracks campaign. InDecember 1994, Aaron received a remark-able response from Gail L. Bradshaw, theacting director of the Negotiations andAnalysis Division of the Department ofEnergy.

“Popular movements, and even civil dis-obedience,” Director Bradshaw wrote, “canbe an alerting mechanism, causing citizensto think more seriously about an issue... Aresult of the nuclear disarmament move-ment was, often, intensified awareness anda more informed public dialogue generatinga more responsive policy approach.”

In other words, a U.S. governmentofficial is acknowledging here that such

demonstrations may have prevented anuclear war at a critical time.

Spirit: I’ve always felt that way, Jim.Seriously. I’ve always believed that themassive anti-nuclear movements in the U.S.and throughout Europe helped to avoid theultimate catastrophe at the moment in the1980s when the arms race had escalated toan extremely dangerous level.

Douglass: You know, it was all part ofa much larger movement. And that largermovement, of which the tracks campaignwas one key element, succeeded in keep-ing us alive during that period. So I thinkit was a good thing.

THE NONVIOLENT CROSS

Spirit: Your first book, The NonviolentCross, is one of the most profound studiesof nonviolence, peace theology and thenuclear arms race. What was your inspi-ration in writing The Nonviolent Cross?

Douglass: Dorothy Day. I was intro-duced to Dorothy Day in spirit when Iwas a first-year student at Santa ClaraUniversity. A great English professor atSanta Clara, Herbert Burke, introducedour class to the story of a group of peoplein New York City who refused to takeshelter during a Civil Defense drill.

During the drills, millions of peoplewere going into fallout shelters with theassumption that a hydrogen bomb hadfallen on New York City in the spring of1957. Dorothy Day and the CatholicWorker and members of the LivingTheater went to a park instead and weresent to jail for their noncooperation.

When our class at Santa ClaraUniversity was introduced to that, we allobjected to the Catholic Worker and thosewho non-cooperated. But I was taken bywhat they had done and I started readingthe Catholic Worker newspaper and Iwound up writing for it.

Spirit: If your immediate reaction wasdisagreement with their protest, why wereyou still interested in the Catholic Worker?

Douglass: Well, they were not onlyrefusing to cooperate with nuclear war, theywere also living out the Sermon on theMount. It was all of a piece. What electri-fied me from their act of resistance to airraid drills in the park was that they wereresisting preparations for a war that coulddestroy humanity. They were resisting it onthe basis of the teachings of Jesus.

So I felt that here was an answer to a ter-rible question: Would the human race con-tinue to live? Dorothy Day and the CatholicWorker were saying, “Yes, through thegrace of God, and through a commitment toact on the teachings of Jesus.”

Spirit: In what other ways did you feelthey were living out the values of the

Sermon on the Mount?Douglass: They fed those who needed

it. They housed those who needed it. Theylived according to Jesus’s teachings ofprovidence. They did the whole works.They carried out the whole vision.

Spirit: Now, more than 50 years later,you’ve co-founded a Catholic Workerhouse with your wife Shelley Douglass.Dorothy Day has had a long, long influ-ence on your life.

Douglass: That is true. [laughing] Backthen, I felt called to write The NonviolentCross because that was the way to respondto the awful question of nuclear war. Ibelieved deeply that Jesus and the CatholicWorker, in our own context, and thoseother people who believed in nonviolence,were living out the answer.

GANDHI, JESUS AND NONVIOLENCE

Spirit: How is the nonviolent cross aresponse to “the awful question” ofnuclear war?

Douglass: The nonviolent cross is, ofcourse, a paradox, because a crucifixion isnot nonviolent. But I had been introducedto Gandhi at Santa Clara University, andGandhi was the way into Jesus in mybook, The Nonviolent Cross.

Spirit: The teachings of Gandhi havealways been at the center of your booksand your peace activism.

Douglass: I was convinced thatGandhi was the greatest disciple of Jesus.And that was a wonderful truth becausethen I wasn’t restricted by dogma.Instead, I opened up to the truth of Jesusthrough a Hindu who was carrying it allout without being a Christian.

Spirit: Gandhi’s vision of nonviolencecomes right out of the Bhagavad Gita andThe Upanishads, but it is also very closein spirit to the Sermon on the Mount.

Douglass: That is certainly right.

Spirit: In The Nonviolent Cross, youlooked at the profound messages of spiri-tuality and justice in such figures asFyodor Dostoyevsky, Dietrich Bonhoefferand Boris Pasternak. What book wouldyou say has inspired you the most?

Douglass: The Last of the Just byAndré Schwarz-Bart.

Spirit: Why was The Last of the Justso meaningful to you?

Douglass: Because of the evil he wasdealing with: the Holocaust. And the depthof the response to it from the heart of aJewish man — Ernie Levy in the book —who walked the path of the just person andtook on the suffering of the world. For me,he became a figure like Jesus.

The Last of the Just told the story ofErnie Levy and Christianity’s violence

against the Jewish people as the backdropto the Holocaust. To understand that historybehind the Shoah or the Holocaust, and tounderstand a nonviolent response to it in thelife of Ernie Levy, was just transformingfor me. That book is the basis for one of thechapters in The Nonviolent Cross and agood part of my inspiration.

Spirit: Who else do you draw on asinspirations on this path of nonviolence?

Douglass: I always think of DorothyDay and the Catholic Worker and Gandhi.And Martin Luther King, and Dan andPhil Berrigan, and Shelley Douglass.Another key person in my life wasThomas Merton. They have walked thetalk, and embodied the vision of Jesus inword and deed.

A PARTNERSHIP FOR PEACE

Spirit: In what way is Shelley Douglasssuch a key inspiration in your life?

Douglass: Because she knows my faultsbetter than anyone else on earth and we’restill together. And she is the person who Iidentify most closely with Dorothy Day.We have a house of hospitality and it’sShelley who bears the brunt of that. I’mmainly writing and researching. And there’sno better writer I know than Shelley. LikeDorothy Day, she’s a great writer. So she’swriting and living like Dorothy Day.

Spirit: You and Shelley have been apartnership for peace and justice for sev-eral decades. Can you describe that a lit-tle? What has been the nature of yourworking together all these years?

Douglass: We’ve been married since1970, so that’s over 44 years now. Duringthat time, we’ve been separated for abouttwo years, from either she or I being injail for acts of nonviolent civil disobedi-ence. I think that is a key to understandingthe mutual vision we have, which is for aworld in which people love one anotherand treat each other as we try to acttoward each other. We have believed thatsince we were married.

We married each other by exchangingrings. No clergy were present. We com-mitted ourselves from that time on to liv-ing out the Gospels. That’s what marriageis all about for a couple of people who didthen, and still do, believe in the teachingsof Jesus, and also of his greatest follower,Gandhi, and of the greatest American dis-ciple of Jesus, Dorothy Day. So put thattogether and that’s what Shelley and I aretrying to live out in the Catholic Workermovement today. We have had a CatholicWorker house since 1992.

Spirit: What was it about the vision ofthe Catholic Worker that led you to formMary’s House in Birmingham, Alabama?

Street Spirit InterviewWith Jim Douglassfrom page 9

See Interview with Jim Douglass page 11

Members ot the Walk for a Peaceful Future demonstrate on June 6, 1992, on Mount Carmel, above AtlitMilitary Prison in support of Israeli soldiers imprisoned for refusing to serve in the Occupied Territories.

Photo credit: AnnaL. Snowdon

July 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 11

Douglass: Well, Shelley in particular,who had lived in Catholic Worker housesearlier in her life, had felt called for a longtime to be at the heart of a Catholic Workercommunity. So I was joining in that visionwhen we moved to Birmingham and dis-covered that there were no White Trainsgoing through here.

We asked ourselves why we were inBirmingham, Alabama, and we felt it wasan ideal place for a Catholic Workerbecause one day, at a Catholic church wewere attending, the priest told us he had aproblem and maybe we could help himwith it. So we followed him out of thechurch and found that the problem hap-pened to be a couple with four children whowere driving from Florida to Washingtonstate — the longest journey one can takeacross the United States. When theyarrived in Birmingham, they were runningout of gas and food. They had been goingfrom church to church (seeking help) andat the church just before they came to thisCatholic church, they had been turnedaway by an armed guard.

These people, who happened to beNative Americans, were looking for help,so we took them home with us to our littlehouse by the tracks. They stayed with usfor a couple nights as we went aroundtown looking for resources for them —which we found were very limited. Noshelters were available for married peoplewith children. At other shelters, the wifeand husband and children would have to besplit up. So that was our call to start justsuch a Catholic Worker house for homelessfamilies. We have that to this day.

Spirit: What has it been like to live ina small Catholic Worker community?

Douglass: We actually have two hous-es because we moved into the house alongthe train tracks for a campaign that neverreally happened. So that residence hasbecome more of a hermitage, a place ofwriting and of prayer. Then we have ourhouse of hospitality for homeless families,which is in another part of Birmingham.

Both are in predominantly poor areasand Shelley and I go back and forthbetween the two. She is mainly involvedin the hospitality, and I am mainlyinvolved in research and writing. But weboth do both the hospitality and writing.

DOROTHY DAY’S WORKS OF MERCY

Spirit: Dorothy Day described theworks of mercy as resisting war, comfort-ing the afflicted, and giving hospitality tothe hungry and homeless. From your per-sonal experience, how would you describethe mission of the Catholic Worker?

Douglass: The Catholic Worker visionis not to be another agency for the poor,but to live with people who are overcomeby that form of oppression. Dorothy Daywas inspired by a man named PeterMaurin, a French peasant who was a stu-dent of the social teachings of theCatholic Church and of the Gospels.

The two of them began a movement inthe early 1930s which said as its bottomline: Respond to all those in need.Respond to all the evils of war and injus-tice in our society by taking them on. Andestablish houses of hospitality so that ineverybody’s home, there can be a placefor those who need help, because these areour brothers and sisters, just as much asthe immediate members of our family.

Spirit: Many consider Dorothy Dayone of the most significant figures in thehistory of nonviolence. What have youlearned personally from her life’s work?

Douglass: Dorothy Day led that visionby being repeatedly arrested for issuesranging from the United Farmworkers to

peace and nuclear war. Even before shebecame a Catholic Worker, she wasinvolved in the suffragist movement forwomen’s right to vote. She was arrestedrepeatedly for resisting nuclear weapons.

She spent a significant amount of time injail. It’s really a way of trying to live thevision of the Sermon on the Mount and tak-ing it on personally. “Personalism” is thekey to the Catholic Worker movement.Personalism means that a teaching of theGospel only becomes real through our rela-tionships to one another. So a CatholicWorker house is not only a way of caringfor people. It’s a way of being with peopleand working together in community.

Spirit: Dorothy Day and Gandhi taughtthat poverty is the worst form of violence.Gandhi said that those working for justicemust keep in mind the face of the poorestperson they have met and ask how theiractions would affect that person.

Douglass: Poverty is at the heart of vio-lence because the weapons that we have inour midst that now threaten to destroy theearth are means of protecting privilege.That’s why they exist. And the people whoare at the bottom of that pyramid of vio-lence are all over the world, of course, andwe have to seek them out.

This society and its institutions deliber-ately create barriers among us — likefreeways that arch over the poorest areasof the country. Or people fly over thoseareas in planes or ignore in one way oranother that form of violence. WhatGandhi did, and what Dorothy Day did,was to instead live in community withpeople on the lowest level of society,without pretending that they could everexperience that poverty themselves.

Because whether you’re Gandhi orDorothy Day, you have immense resourcesthat you have developed by simplyresponding to people in that way. Becausethey will join you and that gives you enor-mous power in solidarity and community.

Before he became the one we nowidentify as Gandhi, Gandhi was simplyone lone individual trying to be a Britishlawyer. But once he identified himselfwith the poorest people in India, hebecame, in a sense, hundreds of millionsof people. That’s why he was giving usthat teaching of his: Only if you can helpthe poorest person you have ever encoun-tered by what you’re doing... That was hisdaily way of life.

RAIDS ON THE UNSPEAKABLE

Spirit: You often cite the Trappistpriest and monk Thomas Merton for hisinsights on contemplative prayer, war andpeace, nuclear weapons, racism and non-violence. During our blockade of the

Trident submarine, you even named yourboat, the “Thomas Merton.”

Douglass: I was corresponding withThomas Merton from 1961 until his deathin 1968. I also knew Merton personallybecause in 1965 I taught at BellarmineCollege in Louisville, Kentucky, and I wasvisiting Merton. [Editor: Thomas Mertonwas a Trappist contemplative who lived inthe Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky.]

Merton had a deep influence on myunderstanding of nonviolence, to the pointthat I was hugely influenced by him inwriting my book called Resistance andContemplation. Merton put together thecontemplative life with nonviolent resis-tance as nobody else did. Not even DanBerrigan did it as deeply as Merton did.

Merton’s books were very important.Merton’s Raids on the Unspeakable werea series of essays he wrote in the 1960sand it forms the basis for my understand-ing of the assassinations of the 1960s.

In a poetic way that was deeply contem-plative, Merton was exploring the unspeak-able evil that included nuclear war, theHolocaust, the Vietnam War, racism andthe assassinations of the 1960s. And heused the term “The Unspeakable.” It’swhere we don’t want to go, and it’s whatwe can’t even say because if we do say it,we realize the responsibility to go into arealm of resisting evil that has enormousconsequences, both hopeful and traumatic.

Spirit: Why did you write in Resistanceand Contemplation that the interactionbetween political resistance and contem-plation is so vital in nonviolent movements?

Douglass: Well, at the time, and todayas well, there was a tension between thosewho were resisting the war and the racismand the sexism by fairly direct and extreme-ly active means, and those who were turn-ing on and dropping out, especially throughdrugs, or through countercultural activitiesthat didn’t engage directly the oppression.Nonviolence is an integration of those twodimensions in a deeper way. Gandhi andDorothy Day and Thomas Merton are allexamples of a fusion of direct action —especially resistance to evil on a hugesocial scale — and prayer, with an empha-sis on the contemplative side.

Spirit: For many, the cross is a vaguespiritual symbol, but the Roman Empireused the cross to execute revolutionaries.How do you understand the meaning ofthe cross for nonviolent movements?

Douglass: The person I was mostinfluenced by was Gandhi. Gandhi’s greatstatement regarding the cross is in hisChristmas sermon to British people on aboat returning to India after a conferencein London. He was asked to talk about

Jesus on Christmas Day. He gave an extraordinary reflection,

the heart of which is his statement,“Living Christ means a living cross.Without it, life is a living death. Jesuslived and died in vain if he did not teachus to regulate the whole of life by the eter-nal Law of Love.” I’ve been thinkingabout that ever since I first heard it.

Spirit: What does it mean to you?Douglass: It means that to understand

the cross as an acceptance of sufferingthrough resistance to evil is to engage in atransformation of that evil. When I hearthose words, it is just embodied byGandhi’s life. It would mean nothing apartfrom Gandhi. I know his story and I lovedhis story. I tried to understand the cross inrelation to the message of Gandhi’s life.

He accepts suffering in order to resist itat a level that is impossible to understandintellectually or theoretically. It has to beembodied. And embodying it means walk-ing the same path that Dorothy Day haswalked, where you live with people inpoverty, and you go to jail in order to resistwars and violence of every kind, and youare prepared to give your life in order tostand with people who are being destroyedby our own government.

That was Gandhi’s whole life and it’sDorothy Day’s life and it’s what Shelleyand I aspire to as part of the CatholicWorker movement. It’s the story of theearly Church and it’s the story of liberationmovements all around the world today. Ofcourse, they’re not necessarily Christian,and Gandhi was not a Christian, but heembodied the meaning of Jesus’s cross.

GANDHI’S VISION OF SATYAGRAHA:HOLDING FIRM TO TRUTH

Spirit: Gandhi referred to campaigns ofnonviolent resistance as “satyagraha” —holding firm to truth. What are the essentialsteps in building satyagraha campaigns,both in Gandhi’s era and in our time?

Douglass: The most basic thing is thecommitment of the people who seek toengage in such a campaign. There wouldhave never been satyagraha campaigns inGandhi’s life if he hadn’t created commu-nities out of which they could be waged.

The ashrams in South Africa and laterin India were the bases of his work. Andeven though the number of people livingin community and taking vows of nonvio-lence was small, those people were totallyfreed to work together and to respond tothe specific evils they focused on. AsGandhi always taught, you can’t take oneverything in the world, so you focus byidentifying a social evil, as for examplewe did in the Trident campaign.

That’s a following of truth in one’sown life and then in one’s community,wherever a group of people join together.We joined together in a community calledGround Zero Center for NonviolentAction. Gandhi created ashrams in SouthAfrica and India, and then out of thosebases, they constructed campaigns.

The first step in a campaign is knowl-edge. It’s research and understanding. Sowhether it’s racism in South Africa, or anuclear submarine base near Seattle,Washington, you study and you try tounderstand. In our case, it meant under-standing a nuclear submarine that coulddestroy the world. How did we educate our-selves? Through a man named RobertAldridge who helped design the weapon.

So you go to the sources and youunderstand the problem, and then youopen yourself to the people on the otherside of the issue. In our case, when RobertAldridge came to support our campaign inHonolulu, Hawaii, and when we learnedthat his occupation was designing theTrident missile, he educated us on that —and resigned his job.

So that’s the way a campaign works,across all lines. If you start denouncing the

Street Spirit InterviewWith Jim Douglassfrom page 10

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That was the irony of the tracks campaign. The rail-road tracks became a connection of community alongthe route of a Holocaust train.

Anti-nuclear activists were arrested around the nation for blocking the White Train.

July 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T12

other side from day one, you’re never goingto hear what the perspective is from theother side. You won’t learn from a BobAldridge what the nature of the problem is.

Then, you need to be in the heart of it.You can’t deal with it from the outside, aswe were doing when the Trident cam-paign began. Shelley and I were living inCanada. Well, the Trident base was locat-ed across from Seattle, Washington, so wemoved there. As Thomas Merton teaches,and as Gandhi taught, you can’t do thingsfrom the outside. You have to do it fromwithin, both spiritually from within andcommunally from within.

You can’t come in from liberalenclaves and go to the Kitsap County areawhere the Trident base is located, andhold big demonstrations, and then go backto your liberal homes and relax. You haveto live with the people who are economi-cally dependent on Trident and experiencetheir pressures in order to disarm a sub-marine base that involves thousands ofworkers. So we moved down and foundthat house next to the base.

This is a step-by-step process thatGandhi lived out, and we were trying to fol-low in his footsteps. And then you have toaccept responsibility. Rather than denounc-ing Trident workers for doing the wrongthing, we have to say, “We who areinvolved in silence and as passive witnessesto the arms build-ups in our country, wehave to take responsibility for it.”

So that means carrying out actions that,under international law, are necessary, butthe courts send us to jail for committing.In other words, “Walk the talk. Live theverse you’re citing from Jesus or Gandhi.”

Spirit: Gandhi was already of centralsignificance in your theology of nonvio-lence in your first book. Two of the mostimportant chapters were “From Bonhoefferto Gandhi” and “From Gandhi to Christ.”Why was Gandhi such a key inspiration inthe works of a Christian theologian?

Douglass: There are two reasons thatcome immediately to mind as to whyGandhi is especially important to me.

Number one, he is my way of under-standing the life of Jesus. He is the lensthrough which I see Jesus, because I believeGandhi is Jesus’s greatest follower in histo-ry, bar none. Number two, he has given allof us a way in our lives to carry out themessage of Jesus and of whomever elsewould be in the pantheon of people we wishto follow. That method he described as his“experiments with truth.”

Spirit: Gandhi even titled his autobiog-raphy, “The Story of My Experiments withTruth.” What did he mean by experiments?

Douglass: An experiment with truthsimply means doing, step by step, whatone has come to believe most deeply. Inother words, there is no such thing inGandhi’s understanding of truth as anabstract truth. Truth in the abstract doesn’texist as satyagraha, or truth-force. Theonly way it becomes satyagraha, truth-force, is if it is experimented with, andpracticed in the most powerful ways thateach of us can discover.

Spirit: How did his experiments intruth lead to a vision of love and rever-ence for life?

Douglass: He put truth and love as twosides of the same coin. On one side of thecoin — and on one side of our being — isthe process of discovering more deeplywhat we believe as we experiment withtruth. But on the other side of truth is thenature of this process through relation-ships with other people. Nobody experi-ments with truth as a solitary individual.We experiment with truth in our relation-

ships with other people, each of whom isthe presence of God. And those experi-ments have to be done if one is going todeepen in truth through nonviolence,through ahimsa, through love.

So in that process, rather than force theother person into following our truth, wemust instead respect and deepen in dia-logue and understanding with that otherperson, no matter who he or she may be,but especially if that other person consid-ers us as enemies.

Spirit: Many have questioned whethernonviolence is still relevant given the vastincrease in technological weapons andcomputerized surveillance. What doesGandhi have to teach us in today’s world ofever more destructive weaponry?

Douglass: He has to teach that worldwhat another disciple of Jesus namedMartin Luther King sums up in threewords: nonviolence or non-existence. Weneed to explore with all these saints andteachers — with Gandhi and Jesus and theBuddha — the depth at the bottom ofevery great religion, which is the power ofnonviolence, of love and of truth.

Gandhi summarized it all by saying,“Truth is God.” And he put “truth” firstbecause it is through the process of dis-covering the power of truth that we canunderstand love. Yet, on the other hand, itis only through the process of relation-ships that are loving that we can deepen inthe truth. Truth and love are two sides ofthe same coin. It is that process of seekingtruth and love in a communal setting thatwill lead to the new world that Jesuscalled the reign of God, and that Gandhicalled truth-force, love-force and soul-force, and that Martin Luther King calledthe Beloved Community.

Spirit: Gandhi saw nonviolence as arevolutionary force that could overthrowan empire. Yet, some criticize nonviolenceas a form of pacifism — too passive toovercome powerful regimes. How do yourespond to these criticisms?

Douglass: I don’t like the term “paci-fism” because it immediately suggestssomething passive. And it’s also relatedspecifically to one issue — that of war.

I don’t like the term “passive resis-tance,” nor did Gandhi. In fact, he replacesit very specifically with the terminology of“satyagraha.” There is nothing — absolute-ly nothing — that is passive about satyagra-ha. My basic understanding of what we, in

our context, always refer to as nonviolenceis satyagraha, because truth force is not inany way a negative thing. It’s a positivething. It’s the most powerful force in theuniverse, literally.

Spirit: Why do you believe it is themost powerful force in the universe?

Douglass: Because truth is God, andGod is love. There is no force more pow-erful in the universe than the force of truthand love. Is that passive? It means theforce that overcame the British empire inthe hands of a very insignificant youngman, who chose to experiment with truth.

ASSASSINATIONS AND MARTYRS

Spirit: In writing about the assassina-tions of Gandhi, Martin Luther King,Malcolm X and the Kennedys, why do youuse Thomas Merton’s phrase, “TheUnspeakable,” to refer to those murders?

Douglass: The process that I describedas “The Unspeakable” involves killing theperson in a covert way that denies thetruth of even how the person is beingkilled in order to destroy his or her vision.

The purpose is not simply to kill thatone man or woman, but it’s to destroy thevision. Their vision is destroyed especial-ly by what happens after the killing, andthat’s the destruction of the vision throughlies, through propaganda, through the dis-tribution of enormous cover-ups.

This second part of the process is, Ibelieve, worse than the murder of theindividual person — Gandhi or John F.Kennedy or Malcom X or Martin LutherKing or Robert Kennedy. The lies aboutthat person and about how he is killed areworse than the actual killing.

Spirit: Why do you say the lies areworse than the assassination itself?

Douglass: Because it is an effort todestroy that person’s communal power,which is our salvation. As Malcolm X said,two days before his assassination: “It’s atime for martyrs now. And if I’m to be one,it will be in the cause of brotherhood.That’s the only thing that can save thiscountry.” [Editor: Malcolm X said thosewords on Feb. 19, 1965, two days before hewas murdered.] We have to understandwhat these martyrs were witnessing to.

Spirit: What were they witnessing to?And how does their martyrdom serve thecause of humanity?

Douglass: They’re witnessing to thepower of God, of love, of the transforma-

tion of all of humanity. They don’t die bybeing shot or destroyed. The power of theperson is a power that goes way, way,way beyond death. Martyrdom means wit-ness, means testimony.

The testimony of Martin Luther Kingdidn’t end on April 4, 1968, the day hewas assassinated. Everybody knows that,even if we don’t understand the depth ofhis power. And we certainly don’t believethat the power of Jesus ended at the timehe died on the cross. That power of thewitness to the truth and love that can savehumanity does not end with that person’sdeath. It deepens.

So the worst kind of act against truth isnot the terrible act of inflicting death on theperson. It’s the even more terrible act ofdenying his or her truth — the truth of whatthey were dying for and how that so threat-ened the powers that be in their context,that the powers that be took their lives.

After his death, the government foundways to keep secret the incredible powerof Martin Luther King’s vision and thefact that the United States governmentkilled him in order to destroy that vision.

MIDDLE EAST PEACE ACTIONS

Spirit: In recent years, where haveyour travels taken you in seeking peace inthe Middle East?

Douglass: I’ve been to Palestine,Israel, Jordan, Iraq. The first trip I took tothe Middle East was within a month ofour arrival in Birmingham.

Spirit: What led you to take that trip?Douglass: A picture in the newspaper. I

was writing a book called The NonviolentComing of God and trying to understandJesus’s life and death, and I saw a picturein the Birmingham newspaper of womenwalking together through the streets of atown identified as Beit Sahour, next toBethlehem. They all had their hands heldhigh making the peace sign, their facessmiling. They were celebrating their resis-tance to the Israeli Defense Forces whichhad surrounded their town for a monthbecause the members of the town refusedto pay their taxes.

That town, Beit Sahour, which is thetraditional site of the shepherds’ field inLuke’s Gospel, had become an example topeople across the globe of the refusal tocooperate with their own oppression.

They said, “We do not want to pay for

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Street Spirit InterviewWith Jim Douglassfrom page 11

“Gandhi and Dorothy Day and Thomas Merton are all examples of a fusion ofdirect action — especially resistance to evil on a huge social scale — andprayer, with an emphasis on the contemplative side.” — Jim Douglass

Dorothy Day founded the Catholic Worker with Peter Maurin. Gandhi’s satyagraha campaigns were based on “truth-force.”

July 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 13

the weapons that kill our children.” Sothey stopped paying taxes. I looked at thatpicture of these radiantly smiling women,and I thought, “What a story, coming rightout of the context of where Jesus was.”

Spirit: After seeing this picture, howlong was it until you traveled there?

Douglass: I learned that ScottKennedy from the Santa Cruz ResourceCenter for Nonviolence was going to BeitSahour and he asked me if I would like tocome. So within a couple weeks, I waswalking into Beit Sahour with ScottKennedy and about 10 peace activistswith Palestinian guides who were helpingus around the Israeli blockade.

We then went to the West Bank andGaza, smuggled into these areas byPalestinians who wanted us to see andexperience what was going on.

That was my first journey into theGospels via the analogous experience ofpeople today in those areas. One memberof our group was an American rabbi, MikeRobinson, and we met with Israeli peaceleaders. We were meeting with people onboth sides of the green line which dividedthe occupation of Palestine from the Stateof Israel. We met with Jewish leaders aswell as Palestinian leaders in the struggleagainst that occupation.

Spirit: What kind of impact did yourfirst trip to the Middle East have?

Douglass: Well, in terms of my book,The Nonviolent Coming of God, it becamethe final chapter of the book. It was thestory brought up to date of the new kindof humanity embodied by Jesus, whoidentified himself as “the human being.”

I saw a nonviolent vision of peopleacross borders, whether they’re Jewish orPalestinian, that was envisioned actually bysome of the people in Israel who saw a bi-national state, instead of this terrible divi-sion and war. We didn’t have to go downthe track that we did go down, which result-ed in the partition of that area. That was notnecessary — and is profoundly wrong.

So as a result of going repeatedly to thedifferent countries there, I would say thata critical issue that is ignored in its largerdimension is nuclear disarmament forALL of the countries of the Middle East.And when I say all, I mean ALL.

If one can engage in a disarmamenttreaty in the Middle East that will includeIsrael and Iran and Iraq and Syria andeverybody else in that area — reflectingthe commitment of the entire world, asalready represented by the Non-Proliferation Treaty — then we’re goingto have peace across the boards.

Of course, the ignored party in all ofthis is Israel, which has been the nuclearpower in the Middle East for decades.

Spirit: So the U.S. keeps threateningIran and other countries in the Middle East,but doesn’t say anything about nuclear dis-armament to its ally Israel?

Douglass: It’s total hypocrisy for theUnited States, the most powerful nuclearcountry in the world, to threaten andimpose huge sanctions on Iran when we’renot obeying the Non-Proliferation Treaty.That treaty was written as a trade-offbetween countries that do not have nuclearweapons not to develop them and countriesthat do have nuclear weapons to disarm.

Spirit: Yet the U.S. is not disarmingitself and it’s not asking Israel to disarm.

Douglass: Oh, absolutely not. Israel’sdisarmament is key to that of Iran’s andour disarmament is key to that of every-one. And that’s a treaty! We’re not obey-ing the law, in other words. We havesigned a treaty saying we would do that solong as other countries didn’t developnuclear weapons. Any student of current

American history needs to know the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the terms of it —which oblige us to do what we say.

So that’s the main issue. I would encour-age people to understand this and to see thisfrom the eyes of the Iraqis or the Jordaniansor the Palestinians or, for that matter, thepeople who raise questions in Israel andwho are loyal citizens of that country.

We’ve got to disarm the whole works,in terms of nuclear weapons, and thenprogressively through the whole range ofweapons. And we can’t do it in just onecountry. It has to be everybody. That’sobvious to everybody except us.

Spirit: Did you take part in nonviolentactions against the U.S. wars on Iraq?

Douglass: Yeah, I was arrested forresisting both the Persian Gulf War in 1990and the more recent incursion on Iraq in2003. I was also arrested in Israel andPalestine for walking for peace repeatedlythrough those areas in the early 1990s. Itook part in several peace walks throughIsrael and Palestine and into Jordan.

In all of those areas, we walked forweeks. Kathy Kelly was one of our leaders.You have interviewed Kathy for StreetSpirit and I was following Kathy’s lead.[See “Seeking Peace in a World ofImprisoned Beauty,” Street Spirit Interviewwith Kathy Kelly, May 2014.]

Spirit: Was that as part of Voices inthe Wilderness?

Douglass: No, the first time I was overthere walking with Kathy, Voices hadn’tbeen created yet. But on a later trip, I wasone of the co-founders with her of Voicesin the Wilderness. Shelley and I both wenton trips with Kathy as part of Voices inthe Wilderness. We made five trips to Iraqat different times, and I was arrestedrepeatedly in Palestine.

Spirit: What were those arrests like?Civil disobedience must be a very differ-ent proposition in that war-torn area.

Douglass: One of our nonviolent actionsin Israel and Palestine was called Walk fora Peaceful Future. We walked up throughnorthern Israel and then across intoPalestine and then down through Jericho,and then across the bridge into Jordan. Allthe way along the walk, we were beingarrested by the IDF, the Israeli DefenseForces, and then taken back to Jerusalem,always with the warning: “We’re going tolet you out here. Stop doing this!”

Then we’d go back to the site wherewe were arrested and continue our walk.Finally, we were able to walk across thebridge into Jordan, but we had beenarrested many times by then.

We were going to go all the way to Iraqby taking vehicles into Iraq. This was with-in a couple months after the Persian GulfWar. When we got to Amman, the capitalof Jordan, we waited to be given visas bythe Iraqi government, and they weren’tcoming through. So I decided to go back toIsrael and I took a bus with a group ofPalestinian refugees who were trying to getin to see their families on the West Bank —and I was barred from Israel! [laughing]

It was very interesting because when Icame to the gate, an official was examin-ing the documents and passports of peoplewho wanted to go in there — including anumber of Palestinians who were barred.

When he came to me, he said, “Oh, Mr.Douglass.” I realized he had been my jailerin Jericho — the same man! He said, “Well,I will call Jersualem, but I don’t thinkyou’re going to be allowed to go back in.”He did call, and I was barred. [laughing]

But we were then given permission togo to Iraq by the Iraqi government, and Iwas able for the first time to visitBaghdad with Kathy and the group.

Spirit: Were you also delivering med-ical supplies to the victims of war?

Douglass: We had a big vehicle filledwith medical supplies in the initial chal-lenge to the sanctions. It was the spring ofthe year after the Persian Gulf War hadended, but sanctions were still in effect.

A year later, we were arrested on a sec-ond trip in northern Israel and Galilee, and Iwas in jail in Galilee for several days onthat walk. I didn’t think I would get into thecountry because I had already been barred.

We had an international group fromabout 15 countries on that second walk,and we had come together to support avision of peace between all the people inthat area, a Walk for a Peaceful Future. Itincluded Israelis and Palestinians whowere taking part in that. It was illegal towalk across the green line without permis-sion of the Israeli government.

Of course, we weren’t asking anyone’spermission and they weren’t giving it. Wewere arrested as we took part in that walk.The key point of the arrests in that incident,because we had a much bigger group andrepresented many countries, was when wecrossed the green line, we weren’t just adozen or so, but a much larger number.

Spirit: When you crossed the greenline, what country were you arrested in?And where were you were jailed?

Douglass. In Galilee. And then wewent to jail in a Galilean prison.

Spirit: That’s heavy symbolism! Howlong were you in jail there?

Douglass: About three days before wewere released and kicked out of the coun-try. But we had enough time before wewere forced to leave to hold a demonstra-tion in support of Moredchai Vinunu athis prison site. So it was a good group,and we did a lot of things before we wereforced out of the country.

[Editor: Vinunu was imprisoned for 18years for revealing details of Israel’snuclear weapons program because of hisopposition to weapons of extermination.Daniel Ellsberg called him “the preemi-nent hero of the nuclear era.”]

Spirit: When the U.S. declared war onIraq, did you protest the U.S. invasion?

Douglass: When the invasion of Iraqbegan, I went with a ChristianPeacemakers Team to Baghdad. CPT andVoices in the Wilderness joined a largergroup called the Iraq Peace Team. OurCPT group went in during the first weekof the war, from Amman across the desertto Baghdad. We were between the U.S.Army and the Iraq Army.

Spirit: What was it like to be in Iraqwhen the war broke out?

Douglass: We were almost killed. TheU.S. forces were on a hill at one point.Our cars slowed down and stoppedbecause a car just ahead of us had been hitby gunfire. The car was burning. We werebeing driven by an Iraqi driver and in acar that had Iraqi license plates. And therewere U.S. armored personnel carriers on ahill and they had their weapons pointed atus. And the Iraqi people who were in thatother vehicle started coming toward ourvehicle as our vehicle was slowing, andour driver realized he had to speed up;otherwise we were going to be caught inthe fire from the hill. It was very close tothe fire on the hill killing everybody. Thesituation was very close.

Spirit: Why were people in your groupwilling to take such heavy risks to bethere when the war began in Baghdad?

Douglass: Solidarity. We chose to bein the sights of the weapons of our owntroops. For a few days, we were just asvulnerable as the Iraqi people, and that

remained the case for the following weekwhen we were in Baghdad. Explosionswere occurring all over the city from mis-sile attacks by our fleet in the Gulf. U.S.ships in the Gulf were firing cruise mis-siles that were exploding all overBaghdad, and U.S. planes were coming inand bombing left and right, with no IraqiAir Force to counter them.

So we knew what it was like for adefenseless population, and I mean defense-less. The Iraqi Army was a laugh. Therewere a few artillery pieces at differentstreets around the city, but it was nothing!Basically it was a defenseless populationwith a very strident commander in chiefnamed Saddam Hussein who was boastingabout his almost nonexistent armed forces,a pretense that was then echoed by the U.S.officials magnifying his threat.

Spirit: Because U.S. officials had topretend Iraq was a serious adversary.

Douglass: Yes, the consequence wasthat a defenseless people was in the midstof this terrible attack by U.S. forces. Andwe saw it all. We could come back and talkabout that, but it was at a time of uproariousmilitarism and it was very hard to getthrough. But it changed our lives in manyways, and that experience stays with me.

Spirit: Along with speaking out aboutwhat you witnessed in Iraq when youcame back to the U.S., did you do anycivil disobedience to protest the war?

Douglass: I was arrested with manyothers for vigiling in front of the WhiteHouse in protest of the invasion of Iraq in2003. You’re supposed to keep moving atall times, so we would stop to pray andwe were arrested. I wrote to the judge say-ing I would not be coming to my trial.

Spirit: Why did you refuse to go backto D.C. when you were put on trial?

Douglass: Because I did not want tocooperate any further with the process ofarresting people for praying in front of theWhite House. [laughing] It’s no reason toarrest a person in the first place, much lessput them on trial.

Spirit: Did they ever come after youfor your noncooperation?

Douglass: I was arrested years later inBirmingham for not going to the trial inWashington, D.C. A federal marshal cameto my home in Birmingham and arrestedme. The judge was planning to sentenceme to six months in prison, and he didn’teven understand civil disobedience.

Lynn McKenzie, a Catholic sister whohappens to be a lawyer, took it upon herselfto go to that judge and tell him what civildisobedience was all about. So they gaveme one day instead of six months! I onlyserved a weekend in the local jail for that.

Spirit: She wasn’t even acting as yourlawyer? She just went to talk to the judgeon her own?

Douglass: No! She wasn’t acting asmy lawyer. She just contacted him, andthen she did come into the courtroom. Butshe had already tried to explain to thisman who didn’t have a clue as to whatwas going on. He thought I was just afugitive from justice. It was only becauseof that kind Benedictine sister who was alawyer, that I didn’t serve much time.

Spirit: Well, the lesson for our readersis clear: If you ever get in trouble with theLaw, call the Benedictine sisters.

Douglass: There you go! [laughing] The Benedictine sisters are known for

many things. That was really just one actof nonviolence, compassion and under-standing from a highly skilled sister.

“We chose to be in the sights of the weapons of our owntroops. For a few days, we were just as vulnerable as theIraqi people. Explosions were occurring all over the cityfrom missile attacks by our fleet in the Gulf.”

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Street Spirit Interview with Jim Douglass

July 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T14

“ambassadors” assaulting two homelessmen on March 19 when they thought noone was watching.

The overlap between all these issueswas not lost on the public, which swelledeach hearing with mutual supporters. ButMayor Bates finally agreed to send theanti-homeless proposals back to the agendacommittee meeting in late August withMaio’s amendments, after initially resistingWorthington’s motion to reschedule. Nodoubt, the mayor finally recognized thatattempting to continue the marathon meet-ing ran the risk of obligating not just thecouncil but the city employees helping runit to watch the sunrise together.

Four people were there in support ofthe anti-homeless laws: two from theDowntown Berkeley Association whichwrote the original proposals, one from theTelegraph Merchants Association, andChamber of Commerce President PollyArmstrong. They looked pretty smallcompared to the hundreds who had ralliedagainst the anti-homeless proposals on thesteps of old City Hall with speeches,prayers and song. But those four areenough. They clearly have the votes topass the proposal, since the Berkeley CityCouncil majority seems unmoved bymoral, legal and even practical arguments.The next steps for a community dedicatedto protecting human rights are unclear.

BERKELEY’S NEW ANTI-POOR LAWS

Berkeley City Manager Christine Danielre-tooled the original anti-homeless propos-als and dialed back some of the DBA’smore extreme suggestions. She even point-ed out that they are currently enforcing lawsagainst behavior which is perfectly legal,but obediently developed some new recom-mendations on behalf of merchant groupshostile to sharing public space with poor,homeless and transient people.

The recommendations are:1. Adopt first reading of an Ordinance

amending Berkeley Municipal CodeSection 13.37.020 to add a provision thatit is unlawful for any person to solicitanother who is making a payment at aparking meter.

2. Adopt first reading of an Ordinanceadding Section 13.36.040 to the BerkeleyMunicipal Code Regulating Lying inCity-Owned Planters.

3. Adopt first reading of an Ordinanceamending Berkeley Municipal CodeChapter 14.48 to ensure that publicstreets, and especially sidewalks, are fullyaccessible and usable for the purposes forwhich they were constructed and areintended, specifically the movement ofpedestrian and vehicular traffic and goods.

4. Adopt first reading of an Ordinanceadding Section 13.36.085 to the BerkeleyMunicipal Code prohibiting urination anddefecation in public places.

The first provision expands the currentprohibition on panhandling within ten feetof an ATM to include a prohibition onsoliciting anyone in the act of making apayment at a parking meter.

The second provision expands the pro-hibition on lying on the sidewalk toinclude lying on the walls and interior ofdowntown planters unless there is a med-ical emergency.

The third provision has detailed provi-sions prohibiting anyone from puttinganything on the sidewalk which exceedstwo square feet for more than one hourunless the person gets a permit from thetraffic engineer, a measure clearly aimedat the people who traditionally share theirartwork, crafts, or political materials andcollect donations along the streets.

The fourth provision makes it a crimeto urinate or defecate in a public place(this is already prohibited under

California law) or any place “exposed topublic view.” This is more inclusive lan-guage and would cover private propertynear a public area such as an alley ordoorway without creating any additionalaccess to bathrooms. In fact, the DBA ison record recommending against adding apublic bathroom to the BART Plazaredesign on the grounds that it would con-stitute “an attractive nuisance.”

WHAT IT ALL REALLY MEANS

The City Manager’s assumption in thethird and possibly most problematic pro-vision is that the First Amendment rightsof artists, signature collectors at tables,people with political displays, etc., haveto be “balanced” with concerns about“economic vitality” which is presumed tobe negatively affected by the presence ofFirst Amendment activity.

The words “vital” or “vitality” appeareight times in the document. The words“aesthetic” or “aesthetically” appear sixtimes, with additional phrases which workovertime to avoid stating overtly the crisisof having some scruffy guy or annoyingsignature collector spoiling “an aestheti-cally pleasing streetscape.”

It’s worth noting that the ordinanceDaniel is attempting to re-word was bornin the 1950s as an effort to curb problem-atic merchant behavior on behalf ofpedestrians, who were tired of trying tonavigate through streets cluttered withchairs, tables, signs, and displays of goodsblocking the public right of way.

It was dusted off in the early 1990s byChief of Police Dash Butler for use onlyagainst poor and homeless people untilcivil rights advocates brought the patternand practice of its discriminatory applica-tion to the attention of — of all people —Councilmember Linda Maio, who had theclarity of mind in those days to call for ahalt to the obvious discrimination.

But times have changed. The city nowcreates special permits for the permanentacquisition of public space by merchantsadjacent to sidewalks. And the strugglingkid with the hand-painted patches hopingto raise enough through donations tomake it through the week can just go fish.

LIES, DAMN LIES, AND SURVEYS

A survey conducted last year “onbehalf of the Downtown BerkeleyAssociation” which gave people an optionto indicate they would like to “reducehomelessness” was cited by the CityManager as foundation for the necessityof more anti-homeless laws.

This is a crucial point. The well-intend-ed people who took this survey, includingmyself, did not clamor for ineffective andexpensive anti-homeless laws which reducethe footprint of one’s possessions to twosquare feet. They just couldn’t help but pri-oritize people who are struggling to stayalive while sleeping on the streets, an absur-dity in a town with one of the largestincome disparities in the nation.

I took that survey, and I want to “reducehomelessness,” which seems like some-thing any reasonable person would say. Thesurvey had a couple questions which con-flated homelessness with “problematicstreet behavior,” an intentionally ambigu-ous phrase used as code in the DBA andcity planning circles to mean the people wedon’t like and all the things they do.

The study seemed designed to forceanyone with a concern about homeless-ness, which is simply a concern about thelow-income housing crisis, to run the riskof having their concern abused as supportfor repressive new efforts to dog the vul-nerable people who are struggling on thestreets, the mentally ill in a moment ofcrisis, the troubles of transient travelerswith canine companions, and so forth.

Survey takers probably wondered whatI wondered: would people’s natural con-

cern about people in need be distorted tosupport more repressive anti-poor ordi-nances? The answer is yes, yes, yes. Ifyou wave your hand in Berkeley and say,“people shouldn’t have to sleep on thestreets” the City Manager and a majorityof the City Council has decided you meanthat they should all be in jail.

They should be ticketed to death over abevy of infractions and misdemeanorswhich essentially mean the courts have tosort out who is crazy, who is cogent butalready behind the judicial eight ball andhas to spend some time in jail — the mod-ern equivalent of the poorhouse — work-ing off their debt to society.

Anti-homeless laws make the eight ballbigger. None of the survey takers wereasked, “Would you like to make life evenharder for homeless people?” or “Wouldyou like to drum homeless and poor peo-ple out of town?” or “Would you like tojail the mentally ill?” If these questionshad been asked, the DBA would have got-ten more clarity about the concern theyand apparently a willing City Manager areattempting to distort.

The real survey was the 2012 election,in which an anti-sitting law was resound-ingly defeated by Berkeley voters despitebeing draped in extra funding and servicesfor the poor. Berkeley knows its civilrights like it knows its farmers markettomatoes, which is why the crafty abuseof an ambiguous survey deserves aresounding objection.

Bob Offer-Westort, one of the volun-teers for the Streets Are For Everyone(SAFE) campaign, said, “The process forthis bill has been tragicomic from thebeginning. The City of Berkeley has com-missions specifically to ensure that mem-bers of the council — who can’t beexperts on everything they legislate — areinformed by broader expertise. At nopoint has council sought input from itscommissions or from any of the city’shomeless service providers. Not a singleperson who could be considered to haveany expertise on homelessness has beenconsulted.

“Every organization in Berkeley thatknows anything at all about homelessnesshas opposed these proposals, but councilhas not sought their feedback. The rele-vant commissions have opposed the legis-lation, but council has not made space fortheir feedback. And now, less than tenhours before the City Council meeting,we’re seeing that there are going to bemassive changes, but we don’t fully knowwhat they’re going to be. This underminesthe purpose of a public legislativeprocess.”

Osha Neumann, an attorney with theEast Bay Community Law Center, notedthat specific changes mentioned by Maiowould create free speech protections after10 p.m. and implies charges would be dis-missed if those cited were to enter coun-seling and housing services “in goodfaith.”

“This isn’t meaningful,” saidNeumann, who provides legal defense oninfraction citations. “Who’s to determinewhether people are in good faith? Do theytake a lie detector test? Administered bythe police? If there is no housing avail-able, how long do they have to wait toprove good faith?

“And what’s the mechanism for imple-mentation? Do the police keep a databaseso they know when to dismiss a ticket?The proposed laws need to go back to thedrawing board. Trying to correct mistakeson the fly just leads to more mistakes.”

The worst aspect of the proposed ordi-nances is #3, the part which in the clippedagenda language sounds as though it sim-ply makes sure the streets are passable,but in the real text of the ordinance ispages and pages of instructions about theliteral square footage of personal belong-ings (two feet) and the literal distance

they need to be from a planter, a bench, acurb, a wall, a street tree, a tree well, all ofwhich may be different; five feet fromthis, three feet from that, a numbingstream of requirements no reasonable per-son could possibly keep straight.

Neumann’s observations about theordinance’s restrictions on personalbelongings and free speech indicate mat-ters which need to be studied byBerkeley’s citizen commissions.

“These new laws are actually worsethan I anticipated, particularly the oneabout obstructing the sidewalk,” he said.“You won’t be able to have any posses-sions larger than two feet square any timeof the day or night. We should ask thecouncilmembers how big their beds are.

“I’m also amazed by the restrictions onfree-speech-related activity. It won’t belegal to sit on a milk crate while sellingStreet Spirit without first getting a permitfive days in advance. And most places inour commercial corridors you won’t be ableto sit at all. That’s pretty outrageous.”

WHAT CAN WE DO?The Berkeley City Council is not

entirely impervious to reason, whichMayor Bates proved by finally calling ahalt to the idea of a middle-of-the-nighthearing as June 30 became July 1. Forstarters, we need to insist that the lengthyalterations to the original proposal get achance to be evaluated by all the relevantcity commissions, including the Peace andJustice Commission, the Commission onHomelessness, the Human Welfare andCommunity Action Commission, theYouth Commission, the CommunityHealth Commission, and the PoliceReview Commission.

This is more meaningful than it mightseem. When our city leaders consider, evenfor a minute, prioritizing the aesthetic per-ceptions of a handful of wealthy propertyowners and developers over the very realneeds of the poorest, most vulnerable peo-ple in town, it is because they are not hear-ing enough from their citizenry. They hearfrom us directly from time to time, but therecord of what they hear from our repre-sentative commissions has, or should have,legal and moral gravity.

Our commission system was designedto make room for citizen concerns, toabsorb special expertise on singularissues, to design opportunities to sort outand perhaps toss out an idea that mighthave seemed sensible at 1:00 a.m. butlooks pretty stupid in the light of day.

Before we tinker with our own humanrights, we should make sure Maio’sbizarre proposals are well vetted in thesober light of a commission or two.Because it isn’t just poor and homelesspeople who have a broad target painted ontheir backs by this Berkeley City Council.We may have elected them, but none of usare in any part of this City Council’svision of the future.

from page 1

City Council Delays Vote on Homeless Laws

Next I was transferred to BruceQualls, VP of real estate and governmentaffairs for Clear Channel Outdoor whowas busy on another line, according tothe receptionist. Qualls did not reply tomy request for an interview or my requestto ask what happened to the bus shelterand bench in front of the Lucky super-market, or when it would be replaced.

The elderly and disabled people ofEast Oakland are being abused by tac-tics of collective punishment whenagencies or government partners usetheir authority to target a whole commu-nity in an effort to attack homeless peo-ple, or a few drug dealers operating inan area.

Removal of Bus Shelterfrom page 5

July 2015 ST R E E T SP I R I T 15

by Bhaani Singh and Kenneth Hahn

Berkeley is a city that boasts thereputation of free speech, liber-al thought, and environmentallyconscious behavior; a land that

prides itself on diversity and socialprogress; a place that many of us findsimultaneously chaotic and serene. Likethe tie-dye shirts seen on TelegraphAvenue, Berkeley’s rich culture is a swirlof various ethnicities, academic back-grounds, and political thought.

The homeless population, too, isweaved into the fabric of our history. Yet,despite its familiar presence, we are leftwith many dangling threads of housingand mental health, which must carefullybe sewn back into this fabric to ensurecommunity strength and solidarity.

According to the U.S. Department ofHousing and Urban Development (HUD),more than 610,000 people experiencehomelessness every night, including about140,000 children. These numbers are farlower than the actual figure — closer to 3million people in many estimates —because HUD only counts once a year andthe number of homeless persons changesas people move in and out of being home-less.

It is often observed that about one infive of these individuals suffer fromsevere mental health issues, and havebeen diagnosed with schizophrenia, sub-stance use disorder, bipolar disorder, anddepression. These mental disorders mayaffect an individual’s ability to carry outessential activities for survival and main-tain stable relationships with family orfriends.

The social selection hypothesis statesthat as a result of schizophrenia impairingearning power and income, schizophrenicpersons are often forced to move intopoorer neighborhoods. On the other hand,the social causation hypothesis states thatpeople with low socioeconomic statusdevelop mental disorders as a result of thestresses and adversities they face.

Thus, mental disorders and poverty areoften thought to be of a cyclical nature.Furthermore, unmet mental health needsaffect one’s physical health. Compared tothe general population, homeless peoplehave poorer health outcomes, includinghigher rates of tuberculosis, asthma, dia-betes, and HIV. Nearly half of mentally illindividuals also suffer from substance usedisorders, as a way to self-medicate or tocope with the stresses they face.

As a result of poor mental and physicalhealth, as well as social stigma and inade-quate income, these individuals face barri-ers to housing, employment, and a healthylivelihood.

Many of the mental health issues facedby the homeless population can be treatedwith therapy or counseling. Medicationhas been effective for some individuals,but many have reported adverse andseverely incapacitating reactions toantipsychotic medications.

However, when these conditions areneglected, they end up not only costingour healthcare system millions of dollarsin hospitalization, but also prolonginghuman suffering. In Alameda County,nearly one in five adults reported that theyneeded professional help for emotionalhealth or alcohol use in 2007.

Unfortunately, a systemic discrimina-tion against the mentally disabled isprevalent in our political and economicsystems, where funding is allocatedtowards direct physical ailments but men-tal health problems are neglected andgiven a lower funding priority.

Medicare and Medicaid have far morestringent restrictions on mental health careprovision than physical health care.

Mental health facilities are underfundedand slowly emptying, while emergencyrooms and prisons are overcrowded.

In 2006, the Justice Department report-ed that nationally about 1 million peoplein custody suffered from a mental healthproblem. If funding is appropriately des-ignated to mental health resources, thesaved costs can not only help peopleavoid hospitalization and prison, but alsocan be spent towards other importantareas of our society, such as education.

As a society, we are willing to look forcures for cancer or diabetes, but we find itchallenging to focus on risk factors thatcontribute to mental disorders. It is timeto give equal importance to preventativecare, mental health resources and medicaltreatments.

One step towards alleviating mentaldisorders, especially in the homeless pop-ulation, is to acknowledge that the issueexists. Many people who suffer from amental disorder wish to be treated; theyjust don’t have the resources to receivethe necessary care towards a healthierlifestyle. Homeless individuals oftencome from backgrounds of social disad-vantage and economic instability, whichcan trigger or exacerbate the developmentof mental health problems over time.

Over the past few years, we have hadthe privilege of working with the SuitcaseClinic, a group of dedicated students andprofessionals who attempt to slowlybridge the gap between the privileged andthe underprivileged populations inBerkeley through free social and healthservices to the underserved.

Through our conversations with manyclients, we have come to realize that mostpeople do not just want the services wehave. Rather, they want to be acknowl-edged as people and to be treated with

respect and dignity, something which theydo not experience very often.

When society ignores people over andover again, for days and years at a time,people are forced to wonder why they arebeing ignored. They are provoked intoquestioning their existence. As a result, itis important to acknowledge that issues inour community exist and by doing so, wecan begin to foster dialogue and targetinterventions to help individuals breakaway from the cycle of mental disorder,hospitals, streets, and poverty.

Another important step is to create per-manent supportive housing. Permanentsupportive housing is a mixture of afford-able housing and a package of supportiveservices to help people attain educationand employment opportunities, housingstability, and improved health and socialoutcomes.

These housing programs often workwith community workers to reach out tomentally ill homeless persons and helpthem find support groups, learn daily liv-ing skills, and access treatment.

Many research studies, including thosefrom the National Mental HealthAssociation, reveal that in addition tohelping most people break free fromhomelessness, this housing approach low-ers public costs for prison stays and hospi-tal treatment, and is effective for peoplewith mental health issues.

Even in 2015, many current proposalsin Berkeley, such as preventing bedding onsidewalks and sitting near tree wells, areseemingly targeted against the homelesspopulation. Spending money towards ini-tiatives like these will not solve homeless-ness. It targets a very important group inour society and attempts to remove themfrom view, an experience that can easily beconstrued as dehumanizing.

Rather than increased citations andarrests, city officials should invest inaffordable supportive housing and increasethe number of outreach workers who canhelp homeless persons find physical andmental stability off the streets.

The government should considerincreasing funding towards these support-ive programs and mental health servicesso that even when economic timeschange, services will be still be stable andprovide help for homeless individuals,particularly those with mental healthproblems — a group that composed anestimated 40 percent of the homeless pop-ulation in Berkeley in 2009.

The homeless population is part of ourcommunity. They are part of the Berkeleywe all love and are proud of. It is time tostop labeling homelessness and mental dis-orders as controlled or personal choices,and to socially integrate individuals suffer-ing from these situations into society.

For a peaceful world and a strongerBerkeley, we must invest ourselves incompassion and empathy. The danglingthreads of our community need to besewn, for we cannot ignore those whosehumanity is intertwined with our own.

*** *** *** *** *** ***

THE SUITCASE CLINIC

The Suitcase Clinic is a humanitarianstudent-run organization and volunteercommunity group offering free health andsocial services to underserved populationssince 1989. We operate three multi-ser-vice drop-in centers in Berkeley, and areopen on Monday and Tuesday nights toanyone in need, regardless of income, res-idence, gender, ethnicity, age, etc. Formore information, please visit our websiteat www.suitcaseclinic.org.

We do not offer professional mentalhealth services, but are able to lend a lis-tening ear and direct referrals to appropri-ate professionals in the community. Ifyou, a loved one, or community memberis in crisis, please call the 24-hour, 7-day-per-week Crisis Support Hotline forphone-based counseling and referrals.Their telephone numbers are 1-800-309-2131 (Alameda County Hotline) and 1-800-273-TALK (Nationwide Hotline).

For residents of Berkeley and Albany,the Berkeley Mental Health Mobile CrisisTeam delivers crisis intervention services,consultation on mental health issues, anddisaster and trauma-related mental healthservices. Their telephone number is 510-981-5254. More information can be foundat the Alameda County Behavioral HealthCare Services website, www.acbhcs.org.

Mental Health: Investing in Compassion and EmpathySTORIES FROM THE

SUITCASE CLINIC

“Warmth in Giving 1” Art by Elizabeth King

Instead of increased citations and arrests, Berkeley officialsshould invest in affordable supportive housing and increasethe number of outreach workers who can help homeless per-sons find physical and mental stability off the streets.

At the Suitcase Clinic, wehave come to realize thatpeople want to be treatedwith respect and dignity —something which they donot experience very often.

July 2015ST R E E T SP I R I T16

by Joan Clair

In the Bay Area, thousands of peopleface eviction, homelesness and eco-nomic hardships because landlordshave raised their rents beyond all

reason. We are often told that all thisinjustice is simply due to the inexorableworkings of the marketplace.

Since the market economy is a facelessabstraction, it offers a convenient way todraw our attention away from the real-lifelandlords and real estate owners who havecaused this economic misery through theirgreed and reckless profiteering.

The so-called market economy hascaused countless cases of eviction-for-profit and displaced thousands of rentersin the Bay Area. This system exalts prof-its at the expense of life, and might betterbe called the “Heartless Market Place.”Along with causing homelessness forthousands of human beings, this heartlesssystem has also caused untold sufferingfor the animal companions of tenants.

The heartless market place is an areawhere no pets are allowed. Many tenantsare unable to find an affordable place tolive where pets are also allowed, and arethus coerced to surrender their pets to a“shelter” which puts the animal to sleep in afew days if no home can be found.

Just as homeless pets face death bybeing euthanized in animal shelters, manyhomeless people die on the streets throughlack of shelter and housing. Our societyhas an uneasy conscience about the deathsof homeless people on the streets andcountless homeless animals in shelters.

Two groups are discriminated againstin rental housing: nonhuman animals andlow-income people. Animals are not pro-tected by anti-discrimination laws regard-ing housing. In other words, “no petsallowed” is legal. Similarly, landlords arenot required to consider Section 8 housingapplicants for their housing units.

“NO KILL” ANIMAL SHELTERS

Great strides have been made in the“no kill” animal shelter movement whichbegan about 30 years ago. However, mil-lions of unwanted animals are still eutha-nized in shelters yearly, and even “nokill” shelters turn away animals that arenot considered adoptable.

There are many reasons why animalsend up in shelters: economic difficulties,job loss, divorce and break-ups, death in thefamily, and foreclosure. However, underly-ing all these hardships, another problemoften results in the death of companion ani-mals — namely, the inability, when a crisishits, to find housing where pets areallowed. “No Pets Allowed” is a typicalrestriction in the heartless market place.

With skyrocketing rents and stagnationin workers’ wages, it becomes more diffi-cult to find any affordable housing at all.

However, even with these inequitableconditions, a new way of looking at thenonhuman creatures who share our liveshas emerged and is gaining strength.

More and more people regard the non-human animals who share their lives withus as family members, rather than asmembers of a different and less worthyspecies. As a result, when for any of thereasons listed previously a person mustfind new housing and cannot because of“No Pets Allowed” stipulations, it is theloss of a family member that is at stake.

THE LOSS OF A FAMILY MEMBER

The loss can mean a death sentence forthe nonhuman family member who isturned over to a shelter when a new homecannot be found. Under similar circum-stances, would we turn over a human childto a shelter which permits euthanasia if wecould not find a residence which allowschildren? Fortunately, human children arenow covered by anti-discrimination lawsregarding housing. However, at one time,they were discriminated against as well.

Now the laws must be changed so thatnonhuman animal companions, such asdogs and cats, are included in the categoryof family members who, along with otherfamily members such as human children,cannot be denied housing.

There are safeguards landlords have inregard to any new residents, including aright to check references, including thosefrom prior landlords. Young children andyoung animals can pose risks, but notones that cannot be corrected.

The anti-discrimination laws in hous-ing make it mandatory to accept serviceanimals. Animals that are not designatedas service animals may be as well-behaved. Finding responsible renters iswhat’s important. And, obviously, thereare already legal restrictions in placeregarding the keeping of wild or danger-ous animals in rental units.

Eliminating the “No Pets Allowed”practices of landlords would greatlyreduce the number of pets that are killedin shelters or put out on the street. It is ameasure that would take the “no kill” ani-mal shelter movement to a new level ofsuccess in saving lives.

People for the Ethical Treatment ofAnimals has said we must “abandon thearchaic and unjust boundary of ‘human’that we use to justify inflicting pain, suffer-ing and death on billions of beings.”

In my own life, I have experienced dis-crimination towards nonhuman familymembers with my dog, Wind-of-Fire, mycat, Moon, and my dog, Clair. When Icame to attend a Berkeley seminary in1980 with my dog, Wind-of-Fire, I waspromised housing for both of us. Within aweek of arrival, I was told I had to get ridof Wind-of-Fire or move off campus. I didneither, and we won out in the end, butmy consciousness was changed.

We also had to fight the school admin-istration’s plan to establish a “No PetsAllowed” policy, and we won that battlealso. However, these threats to my familymember made me realize how vulnerablenonhuman animals are in our society,even in liberal institutions.

My next animal companion, Moon, wasa cat whose human companion had left himwith her roommates when she went to a

graduate school with a “No Pets Allowed”policy. None of the roommates related verydeeply to Moon. As a result, he was leftoutside at night and injured. He was a veryangry cat when he finally came to me. HadI not taken him, he would have beenbrought to the pound and more than likelyput to sleep because of his justifiable anger.

A DOG DUMPED OUT OF A CAR

Next, I found my dog, Clair, on thestreet in the business district of Berkeleyafter she’d been dumped out of a car. Therewas a “No Pets Allowed” policy in themobile home park where I lived at the time.I dearly loved Clair, and she needed mysupport, so I had to move with her and mytrailer to another park in order to keep her.[See “The Bonds of Love: Cast Off on theStreet,” Street Spirit, November 2012].

As we have reported in Street Spirit, inspite of their disadvantages, many home-less people have refused to go into a shel-ter which does not permit nonhuman fam-ily members. They’d rather remain on thestreet than give up their dog or cat.

The “No Pets Allowed” policies oflandlords are a civil rights issue. Such dis-criminatory practices should be revoked.We are unaccustomed to seeing that petsmay have rights, and this may seem likean extreme position to some. However,

once the “archaic and unjust boundary of‘human’” as described by PETA, is under-stood, with all its destructive conse-quences, a new respect and appreciationfor nonhuman animals emerges.

ENDING DISCRIMINATION

Giving pets legal status as family mem-bers in anti-discrimination housing laws is alogical next step in the battle to provideprotection for groups that have sufferedhousing discrimination based on gender,race, religion, age, sexual orientation, dis-abilities and families with children.

It would be a wholesome step in build-ing a more just society. When joined withother steps to alleviate human homeless-ness, it could lead to more humane livingspaces for all of us. We must build moreaffordable housing, fight for a livingwage, advocate for more decent levels ofdisability and welfare benefits, and elimi-nate the economic inequities which aredragging our society down at present.

And while we continue this strugglefor economic justice, let us remember todefend and protect the lives of the animalswho give us so much love, and offer suchirreplaceable companionship. For many ofus, they have become members of ourfamilies. They cannot be abandoned inshelters where they may be killed.

No Pets Allowed: Death Sentence for the Pets of Tenants

by Joan Clair

In October of 2014, Jesse Arreguin sub-mitted a proposal to the Berkeley CityCouncil to consider disallowing “No Pets”policies as a condition of tenancy.Unfortunately, there were not enoughvotes to support his position. The recom-mendation was tabled.

However, this was a remarkable firststep to end discrimination against nonhu-man family members in housing. To ourknowledge, it was the first such attempt inthe nation. We hope this will lead to simi-lar proposals and eventual legislation.

Arreguin presented many practicalreasons for initiating such a recommen-dation. These included more cost-effec-tive options for animal care services, bet-ter treatment of animals and a greaternumber of adoptions as a result of theavailability of more housing, therebysaving the lives of more animals.

Arreguin also showed how landlordswould still have legal protections. Theanimal advocacy groups he contactedwere supportive of this measure. The fol-lowing excerpt from Arreguin’s proposalis a clear statement of humane values.

“Allowing pet owners to keep theiranimals when they seek housing will alsohelp cut down on the number of animalsabandoned in Berkeley.... If fewer animalsare abandoned because their owners areable to keep them no matter where theylive in Berkeley, there would be feweranimals needing the shelter and care thatBACS provides daily. Conversely, allow-ing tenants to have pets may increase theadoption of animals from BACS withresulting animal registration fee revenue.This would save the lives of animals whomight have been abandoned and hurt orkilled, and allow BACS to save more livesby giving them more room in the shelterand save more money to continue to pro-vide top-notch care to the animals whocome to BACS in need.”

For more information, contact JesseArreguin at (510) 981-7140; E-mail: jar-reguin@cityofberkeley.info; Martin LutherKing Jr. Civic Center Building, 2180 MilviaStreet, 5th Floor, Berkeley, CA 94704. Theproposal can be found at http://www.cityof-berkeley.info/Clerk/City_Council/2014/10_Oc t / D o c u m e n t s / 2 0 1 4 - 1 0 -21_Item_24_%E2%80%9CNo_Pet%E2%80%9D_Policies.aspx .

Ending “No Pets Allowed”policies would greatlyreduce the number of petskilled in shelters or aban-doned on the street.

A homeless cat in a Berkeley shelter. A home was never found for this cat — just one of the many lives lost. Joan Clair photo

Berkeley Council Member Proposesthe Abolition of “No Pet” Policies