OAKLAND'S LARGEST HOMELESS CAMP DODGES THE BULLET, FOR NOW

OAKLAND'S LARGEST HOMELESS CAMP DODGES THE BULLET, FOR NOW
Photoessay by David Bacon
The Nation, 8/17/22
https://www.thenation.com/

 
"Housing is a Human Right!"

 
OAKLAND, CA  7/26/22 -- Seven years ago people began setting up what became Oakland's largest and oldest encampment under a freeway maze by a train yard, as the city's housing crisis grew increasingly serious.  Some folks drove RVs and trailers into the huge space next to an old railroad trestle, used decades ago to move boxcars between the port and army base and the main rail yard.  Other home seekers set up tents or even more informal housing.  One enterprising individual even built a room up under the trestle ties twenty feet off the ground.  In an environment a camp resident compared to the wild west, it  provided safety and some peace during the night.
 
The camp lines Oakland's old Wood Street, which was cleared to build the freeway maze leading to the Bay Bridge.  In one small section residents and supporters erected several small homes and a common area for meetings, entertainment and other collective activities.  The structures are made of cob - a mixture of straw, clay and sand - so they called it Cob on Wood.
 
Fires in the camp began to increase a year ago - over 90 in the last year.  The worst broke out two weeks ago, on July 11.  Propane cylinders used for cooking and heating exploded in a blaze so hot that vehicles parked under or near the trestle were incinerated.  Residents fled.  This time no one died, but last April one man lost his life in a smaller conflagration, when his converted bus filled with smoke and he couldn't get out.  
 
Firefighters responded to these fires, but there is no hydrant near Cob on Wood.  To reach the informal homes they have to stretch hoses over hundreds of feet.  A city audit in April, 2021 documented 988 fires in 140 encampments over the previous two years.  Fires in camps of unhoused people made up 12.5 percent of all Oakland blazes requiring fire department response, and cost the lives of two people during that time.
 
A week after Cob on Wood's last big fire CalTrans announced it would close the area and evict the residents.  The day after the announcement, however, unhoused people signed individual legal complaints, and their lawyers convinced Superior Court Judge William Orrick to issue a temporary restraining order barring CalTrans' planned action. While the injunction was still temporary, residents feared the eviction would happen anyway, and appealed to supporters to come bear witness.  The day following the judge's order a Highway Patrol SUV showed up, escorting a group of workers and heavy equipment.  After standing around for an hour they left, perhaps in compliance with the TRO or maybe to evade interfering photographers and witnesses.  
 
Two days later Orrick extended his order, saying that replacement housing had to be found for residents before they could be displaced.  "I understand everybody wants to wash their hands of this particular problem, and that's not going to happen," he told authorities during a zoom hearing.  When he asked them to detail their plans for providing replacement housing, none could provide any.  Residents say, however, that CalTrans and the railroad have been slowly clearing areas under the freeway and near the train tracks for weeks.  Last week Oakland city police tased and then arrested one camp resident when he resisted efforts to remove people from the section of the area that is city land.  In this property checkerboard some pieces belong to Oakland, some to CalTrans and some to the BNSF Railroad.  Residents have no way to know which piece of land belongs to whom.
 
Last May the state gave Oakland a $4.7 million grant to house 50 of the 200+ people who live at Cob on Wood, but the city hasn't used it to create any housing.  Nevertheless, Governor Gavin Newsom criticized the judge's decision, unhappy with any delay in moving the residents out.  "This encampment is risking public health and safety," he said in a press statement.
 
More than 5000 unhoused people live in Oakland, but the city only has 598 year-around shelter beds, 313 housing structures and 147 RV parking spaces.  All are filled.  United Nations Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing Leilani Farha visited Oakland in 2018, and told reporter Darwin Bondgraham, "I find there to be a real cruelty in how people are being dealt with here," comparing Oakland's treatment to what she observed in Manila, Jakarta and Mexico City.  In those cities, she observed, homelessness is basically tolerated, while in the U.S., a far wealthier country, being unhoused is criminalized.
 
"These are communities," Cob on Wood resident John Janosko told Oaklandside reporter Natalie Orenstein following the July 22 hearing.  "People stay at these places because they feel safe there."  Nevertheless, the judge made it plain that the respite was temporary, and that eventually the encampment dwellers would have to go.  Where is still the big question, however.

Captions.


 

Small homes created by residents and supporters.

 

 
The Highway Patrol bring in workers to clear part of the encampment.

 

 
Workers brought to clear the encampment.

 

 
Authorities bring in a big scoop on caterpillar treads.

 

 
Trailers, toys and tires.

 

 
A resident loads belongings into a pickup truck.

 

 
Zelda Fitzgerald, a supporter, walks into the camp.

 

 
A home built above the ground, under the tracks.

 

 
Jason is a resident.

 

 
"Keep the fuck out!'

 

 
Jason looks at the impact of the last fire.

 

 
Someone is fixing up this motorcycle.

 

 
Jake gets angry about people who steal belongings.

 

 
"Under video surveillance"

 

 
A wall of picture frames and plywood.

 

 
A living room or artist studio.

 

 
A car burned in the last fire.

 

 
When these cars were burning they had to close the freeway above.

 

 
Devastation under the freeway.

 

 
How hot the fire must have been!

 

 
All that's left is this tire rim.

 

 
Each space under the pilings is a room.

 

 
Who or what is the trash?

 

 
Benjamin Choyce died from smoke inhalation in his converted bus.

CALIFORNIA FARMWORKERS MARCH TO URGE NEWSOM TO SIGN VOTING RIGHTS BILL

CALIFORNIA FARMWORKERS MARCH TO URGE NEWSOM TO SIGN VOTING RIGHTS BILL
By David Bacon
Capital & Main, 8/15/22
https://capitalandmain.com/california-farmworkers-march-to-urge-newsom-to-sign-voting-rights-bill

 

 
Veteran farmworker activist Yolanda Chacón-Serna leads the 24-day march to expand California farmworker's voting rights into Visalia. All photos by David Bacon.


Lourdes Cardenas has worked the fields in the San Joaquin Valley for more than 20 years. "I've worked in all the crops - grapes, cherries, peaches, nectarines. I'm marching because I want representation and to be respected," she said. The respect she and other farmworkers seek is not only from their employers, but also from Gov. Gavin Newsom.

Cardenas and members of the United Farm Workers (UFW) are supporting a proposed law to make it much more difficult for growers to use workers' fear against them in unionization votes. Their proposal would extend to farmworkers the right to vote at home instead of in the fields, among other protections.

Cardenas said that change would mean they would "not be intimidated by the bosses because we want a union. If we have to vote in front of them, they intimidate us, make us fear they'll fire or suspend us." According to the California Poor People's Campaign, "AB 2183 would give more choices to farmworkers so they can vote free from intimidation - in secret, whenever and wherever they feel safe."

California legislators have agreed. Fifty signed on as sponsors of AB 2183, the Agricultural Labor Relations Voting Choice Act, authored by Assemblymember Mark Stone (D- Santa Cruz). It passed the State Assembly on May 25 by a wide margin, and was sent to the Senate floor on August 11, where its passage is virtually certain.

Newsom, however, has not made a commitment to sign it. A march to gain the governor's signature began in Delano on August 3. Twenty-six people made a commitment to walk for 24 days up the San Joaquin Valley, all the way to Newsom's Sacramento office. Each day marchers and supporters cover between 9 and 18 miles. UFW Secretary Treasurer Armando Elenes even counts the steps in a program on his cellphone. On the fifth day it recorded 14,000 paces.

 

 
A priest holds a short service with the marchers early in the morning before they start walking.


In August, the heat in the San Joaquin Valley is intense. "As we're walking in temperatures over 100 degrees," says UFW President Teresa Romero, "I look to my right and I see farmworkers working. That's what they do every day, day in and day out. They can't do what we just did. When we get tired we can take a 10-minute break whenever we feel like it."

Newsom vetoed a similar bill last year. His rejection of the legislative mandate came after the union had campaigned for him in his successful effort to defeat a recall.

Last year, when Romero asked to meet with Newsom to discuss the voting proposal, he refused. In fact, he vetoed that bill the day after a similar march began, asking him to sign it. The union was so outraged it then marched from the swanky French Laundry restaurant in Napa Valley wine country, where Newsom had held a controversial fundraiser, to his PlumpJack vineyard.



After a short service, marchers who will walk all 24 days think about the reasons for walking to Sacramento. From left: UFW march captain Antonio Cortez, farmworker Lourdes Cardenas, UFW President Teresa Romero, unidentified marcher.


Once again, "we're at the last step, which is his signature," Romero said. "We're trying to paint a picture for him of what farmworkers go through - the intimidation, the threats, losing their jobs. We asked one worker to make a video about it, and she said, 'No, I can't. If my employer sees it he'll fire me.' We're trying to relay that to the governor."

Lourdes Cardenas described how one grower created that fear. "When I was working in the peaches once, some friends came to work with union leaflets," she remembers. She helped hand them out. "My foreman said, 'There's no more work for you.' I never was able to work with him again. He wanted to scare the other people in the crew by what he did to me."

 

 
A young marcher comes out with his family before going to the first day of school in Farmersville.


One of the starkest examples of worker intimidation occurred in 2013, when one of the world's largest peach and grape growers, Gerawan Farming, was preparing for a vote to get rid of its obligation to negotiate a contract with the United Farm Workers. The company's effort began by sending foremen and anti-union workers into the orchards and grape rows, demanding that pickers sign a petition against the union. According to a complaint by the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board (ALRB), supervisor Sonia Martinez "went row by row and provided the employees in her crew with the signature sheet."

Supervisors then shut down work entirely, blocked entry to the fields and packing sheds, and handed out the petitions and demanded that workers sign. Agustin Rodriguez, a UFW supporter, told Capital & Main that "they stopped whole crews because of their union activity.

One worker, Jose Dolores, explained, "People were afraid they'd be fired if they supported the union. I heard it all the time. 'If I do that they'll fire me.'" According to another UFW supporter, Severino Salas, "Some of the pro-company workers said that if the company had to sign a contract with the union, it would tear out the grapevines or trees. This threat was coming from the foremen, but they would get other workers to say it."

On Nov. 5 of that year workers then cast ballots in an election held by the ALRB, in which they had to choose if they were for or against the union. Voting was conducted in the same fields where the intimidation had taken place. When the votes were finally counted, the union lost. Workers no longer had the right to negotiate a union contract.

California's labor law for farmworkers, the Agricultural Labor Relations Act, prohibits the use of intimidation. Decades of ALRB hearings, however, amply demonstrate that growers' use of fear to prevent unionization is widespread. Yet the ALRB almost invariably conducts union elections in the growers' fields, where the fear is often intense.

Workers' immigration status can increase the fear. According to UFW President Teresa Romero, "The majority of farmworkers are undocumented. When growers see them coming to vote, workers know there will be repercussions." She adds that when workers are targeted for their union support, it can affect whole families. "Often wives, husbands, brothers, sisters all work for the same farm," she explains.

 

 
UFW President Teresa Romero leads the march as it heads out of Farmersville on the way to Visalia, on the sixth day of the march.


March captain Antonio Cortez says that even if the law goes into effect, the union will have to educate thousands of workers about the new system for voting. The march itself is part of that process. Word spreads as laborers see the marchers passing the fields where they're working, or hear about it from friends.

Cortez believes that the law can potentially inspire a wave of farmworker elections California hasn't seen since the 1970s. "I think there are two places with a lot of organizing potential," he explains. "In crops like the strawberries on the coast, the wages are very low, just the minimum, and workers have no benefits. They have very little to lose there. And in crops like the wine grapes, the wages are higher, but the cost of living in liberal areas like Sonoma County is so high that workers can't survive."

The campaign for the law can also lead to greater community support for worker organizing, which would help convince growers to sign contracts when workers win elections. "This march is grassroots organizing," Romero says. "It's not about money. It's not about lobbying. It's about the people who are marching here today and their rights. It's about respect."

"I hope the governor is listening," Cardenas says. "We deserve this law."

 

 
As a child, Yolanda Chacón-Serna was part of the historic 1966 farmworker march to Sacramento led by Cesar Chavez.

 

 
Paul Boyer, mayor of Farmersville, marches with the workers as the march leaves town.

 

 
Lourdes Cardenas, a lifelong farmworker, leads one of the most frequent chants shouted by marchers to keep spirits up: "¡Newsom, escucha, estamos en la lucha!" ("Newsom, listen, we're ready to fight!") and "Que queremos? ¡Que se firme la ley!" ("What do we want? That he signs the bill!")

 

 
One supporter brings his children and a sign linking farmworkers' efforts to win healthy living and working conditions with their rights to vote for a union.

 

 
Miguel Trujillo carries the banner of the Virgin of Guadalupe, the Catholic symbol for the struggle of the poor.