Tag: homelessness

There are 123,934 fewer people in New Orleans now than in 2000. How does New Orleans rank today, in comparison to other U.S. cities and the world, seven years after Katrina?

Rwanda's controversial policy to eradicate all thatched roofs in the country by the end of this month has led to forced evictions and left many without shelter.

Tanya McDowell, the mother in Connecticut who was charged with larceny for allegedly stealing an education for her son, faces up to 20 years in prison and a $15,000 fine for sending her child to a school outside his district.

As the 20th year passes since the West waged war against the late Saddam Hussein and the state of war slips into greater violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is another war being waged today, one which gets little coverage on TV, radio and newspapers. This war has been essentially a class war – a war against the poor and working classes.

On Black Friday 2010, at 16th and Mission in San Francisco, Creative Housing Liberation held a “Housing Harvest” rally with songs and speeches followed by a tour of four vacant neighborhood properties. Creative Housing Liberation would like to invite “all kinds of folks, including families,” to be involved in future housing occupations and demonstrations.

The Obama administration is pushing hard to privatize our nation’s 1.2 million public housing units, which would put public housing residents at risk of displacement and homelessness.

The Right to Return Weekend challenges the forced removal of all public housing residents following Hurricane Katrina and the discriminatory policies of the government to permanently displace low-income Black communities from the “new” New Orleans.

Foreclosures are soaring. Some housing experts say 4 million foreclosures are possible in 2010. To fight back, organizations across the U.S. are engaging in “housing liberation” and “housing defense” to exercise their human rights to housing. Here are a few examples.

The Chinese government responded March 12 to the release of a U.S. human rights report critical of China by issuing its own report criticizing the U.S. human rights record. The report covered issues relating to crime, racial discrimination and poverty and accused the U.S. of using its hegemonic power to continue “trampling” on the sovereignty of other countries while “posing as the world judge of human rights.”

The Alameda County Board of Supervisors proposes to cut General Assistance (GA) beginning April 1, 2010, to only three months of every year to thousands of unemployed workers living in poverty. Pack the press conference, rally and meeting of the Alameda County Board of Supervisors to protest these cuts on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 9 a.m., 1221 Oak St., Oakland.

Public housing and Section 8 tenants appeared at the Jan. 19 Berkeley City Council meeting to protest and speak out against alleged illegal activities of the Berkeley Housing Authority (BHA) and its policies to privatize and sell their 75 public housing units to an unnamed nonprofit housing developer.

When I heard about the revolutionary resistance of our South African brothers and sisters in Abahlai baseMjondolo (The Shack Dwellers Union) in South Africa, who successfully overturned the Slums Act, which would have given South African police the ability to legally demolish, destroy and evict poor people from their shacks without notice, I cried.

Communities from up and down the West Coast that had planned to converge in San Francisco to demonstrate our immense energy and BE THE CHANGE this administration needs to do what is right have been denied a previously approved permit to gather – why? on the grounds that the rally will be too large. Is this a re-run of the rise and fall of the Poor People’s Campaign’s Resurrection City on the Washington Mall in 1968?

The Olympic torch, a flamed staff that represents white supremacy, is running through Indigenous nations and territories, symbolizing their theft and dominance of our lands and ways. For 106 days every Indigenous nation in these lands has the opportunity to talk to the world about your issues and show unity between all nations here who have a common oppressor and common invader, KKKlanada (“Canada”). Let us unite voices and show the world we are a proud and independent people who will never surrender our lands.

Using footage from local policing activity in Oakland, intimate interviews with marginalized residents who have been imprisoned or impacted by the imprisonment of close family members, "Oakland Lockdown" brings to light the trauma, destruction and frustration experienced by those who remain repetitively wreaked by the economic, psychological, social and moral stigmatization of criminalization.

Despite the city's considerable wealth, our local economy is suffering. Ten thousand more San Franciscans are unemployed than a year ago, 1,000 families have lost their homes to foreclosure and more people are waiting in lines for free food than anyone has seen in a generation.

"A guy was lying on the sidewalk. I leaned down and asked him if he wanted something to eat. He pulled the blanket down and there was a 5-year-old little boy lying with him."

With Black youth on the front lines this election season, along with all youth plus older Blacks and other people of color, the struggle for real democracy can finally claim victory in the U.S. Masses of new voters have registered and are already lining up to vote wherever early voting is available, as it is here in the Bay Area.

The U.N. Human Rights Council concluded, "Thousands of Black families would continue to suffer displacement and homelessness if the demolition of 4,500 public housing units is not halted. ... We therefore call on the Federal Government (U.S.) and state and local authorities to immediately halt the demolitions of public housing in New Orleans."