Groups March and Rally Across the State to End Mass Incarceration and 40-Year “War On Drugs”

Contact: Emily Harris
Statewide Coordinator, Californians United for a Responsible Budget
Cell: 510-435-1176

Beginning on Friday June 17th, the 40th anniversary of the “war on drugs,” hundreds will come together to hold “Communities Rising” actions and rallies in communities across California. Over 40 organizations working with the Californians United for a Responsible Budget, or “CURB,” alliance will send a strong message from different parts of the state to Governor Brown and the state legislature, calling for the State to take active steps to end its participation in the 40-year-old “war on drugs”, and to prioritize vital social services over prison spending.

“Spending on prisons has grown from five percent to ten percent of our General Fund spending, doubling in the past decade,” said Lisa Marie Alatorre of Critical Resistance, a CURB member organization. “Locking up too many people for too long does not contribute to public safety and is draining essential resources from education and health care – programs that make a real difference to Californians.”  California remains billions of dollars in debt.

In response to the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a lower court rulings in Brown v. Plata, California has been ordered to reduce its lethally crowded prison system in the next two years. The Governor’s plan is to shift tens of thousands of prisoners to county jails, building tens of thousands more jail cells and thousands more high-security prison cells.  “It looks like Governor Brown wants to do nothing but repeat the mistakes of the last 30 years,” said Debbie Reyes of California Prison Moratorium Project, another CURB member organization. “We built 23 massive prisons and that didn’t solve overcrowding. Now he wants to extend that failed effort by expanding county jail systems. Like the Supreme Court said, you can’t build your way out of this problem.”

Organizations and residents across the state are frustrated by the impacts of the State’s economic and social priorities.  “For years we’ve been cutting back on state programs that save lives and build decent futures for the next generation,” said Amanda Vela of Madera Citizens for Better Community and Schools, “Now Gov. Brown is asking voters to raise state revenues to pay for more jail cells? We have to stop the cuts and re-channel funds away from prisons and jails and back into programs that make a difference for us and our kids.”

The various rallies, marches, speak-outs, and other actions across the state fall on the forty year anniversary of President Richard Nixon’s declaration of a “war on drugs”, a policy that many experts have shown to wreak havoc in low income communities and communities of color. “The Plata decision is a real opportunity for our state to reverse decades of racist ‘tough-on-crime’ policies,” says Rodrigo “Froggy” Vasquez of Students for Sensible Drug Policy. “We are tired of being politically ignored. We need leadership in Sacramento with the guts to get smart, end the war on drugs, and decriminalize drug possession.”

Texas, New York, and Michigan, among other states have successfully reduced their prison budgets and populations while increasing public safety. CURB argues that California could do the same by implementing parole and sentencing reforms such as amending or repealing three strikes laws.

Communities Rising Actions are planned for June 17th and 18th in cities across California, including Los Angeles, Fresno, Bakersfield, Madera, and Visalia. San Francisco’s action will kick off with a press conference on June 17th at noon on the steps of City Hall, followed by a march led by the Brass Liberation Orchestra. Activities will include puppets and other art, as well as a community speak out and a free delicious lunch served by Food Not Bombs.

Sponsoring organizations across the State include: A New Path – LA, A New Way of Life, All of Us or None, American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California, American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, American Friends Service Committee, Berkeley Needle Exchange Emergency Distribution, Blacksmith Records Inc., California Coalition for Women Prisoners, California Partnership, California Prison Moratorium Project, Californians United for a Responsible Budget, Center for Non-Violence, Community Justice Network for Youth, Cop Watch – LA, Critical Resistance, Dolores Huerta Foundation, Drug Policy Alliance, Enlace, Families to Amend California’s Three Strikes, Fresno Brown Berets, Harm Reduction Coalition, Hip Hop Not Bombs, Homies Unidos, Justice by Uniting Creative Energy, Justice Now, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, Leadership through Empowerment Action and Dialogue, Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, Madera Citizens for Better Community and Schools, October 22nd Coalition – LA, Oasis Clinic, Pico Youth and Family Center, SF Drug Users Union, Students for Sensible Drug Policy, TGI-Justice Project, These Cuts Wont’ Heal, United for Drug Policy Reform and Youth Justice Coalition.

For more information about actions, prisons, the budget crisis and realignment, surf to www.curbprisonspending.org

Gentle Reader, allow me to entertain you with a story:

Once upon a time, a child was hired to tend to a flock of sheep in the dell outside a bucolic village. As the cock crowed each morning, she drove the sheep out of their pen, down the hamlet’s main street, across the bridge, through the grove, over the hill, and into the dell. But as she passed through the village gate every morning, she counted the townsfolk’s flock: One sheep, two sheep, three sheep, four sheep, five sheep, six sheep, seven sheep… sleep.

And so she would slumber until the dairymaids stirred to tend to their herds, and the beerwenches rose to open the tavern for the security guards coming off graveyard shift, the code monkeys who kept odd Mountain Dew-fueled hours, and the chronic inebriates who were rumored to be many and costly to the village’s Europinko healthcare system. Then, the little child would run across the bridge, through the grove, over the hill, and into the dell to catch up with her flock.
And the same would happen on her return every evening as the sky blushed and the green grove greyed: One sheep, two sheep, three sheep… sleep. Until she was awakened by the cling-clang of the milchherd’s approaching bells, and she scurried up the hill, through the grove, and across the bridge to catch up with her flock.

Until one morning, upon reaching the dell, she surveyed her flock and found one sheep to be missing. “Alas! O, woe! What ever shall I do?” And so she thought for five seconds before deciding. “A wolf!” she cried. “A wolf has come and seized one of our flock!” Her little exclamation echoed through the chamber of the dell, over the hill, through the grove, across the bridge, down the main street, and into the ear of the snarky gossip columnist who called himself the town crier. “A wolf!” he cried! “A wolf!” he hued. “Our wee hamlet’s flock is being devoured by a wolf!”

And so the townspeople gathered pitchfork and torch and hurried off to put down the beast: Across the bridge they ran, through the grove (slowly, keeping an eye to the ground for the dirty needles that were rumored to litter the forest floor), over the hill, and into the dell, where the lachrymose lass jumped to her feet (not wishing to be caught violating the townsfolk’s strict prohibition on sitting) and waved her crook in the air. “Alas! O, woe! A wolf has come and devoured one of the flock! This is pretty obviously not my fault!”

“Was it red or grey?” asked the townsfolk. “Yes!” cried the little girl. “Did it run east or west?” they asked. “Probably!” she cried. “Did it eat the sheep here or run off with it, still bleating and alive?” they asked her. “Don’t you think that Ed Lee should run for burghermeister?” she replied. “Oh, yes!” concurred an anonymous townsperson.

At this point, a little boy stepped forward. “Pardon me, little girl, but are you certain it was a wolf?” “A wolf!” cried the little girl, looking intently at the snarky gossip columnist who called himself the town crier. “Wolf wolf wolf! Wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf!” “I only ask,” continued the little boy, “because we live on the coast, and no wolves have been seen in this state since approximately 1900, and that was in the Sierras.” “Wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf!” cried the shepherdess to the snarky gossip columnist who called himself the town crier, and the townsfolk nodded in agreement.

The snarky gossip columnist who called himself the town crier turned to the lad with a contemptuous scowl. “If it wasn’t a wolf, little boy, how do you explain the disappearance of the sheep?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the little boy replied. “But the current explanation seems statistically and ecosystemically improbable, and the story doesn’t quite add up. Perhaps a little more thorough consideration would behoove us.” “Wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf wolf!” cried the little shepherdess. The snarky gossip columnist who called himself the town crier sneered at the little lad and turned to Bo Peep. “This is a far more interesting story,” he concluded, and all the townsfolk agreed.

And that, gentle reader, is why we’re not going to tell you that the 2011 Biennial Homeless Count is statistically fatally flawed and demographically meaningless, and that we are doomed *never* to have a decent count until being homeless ceases to be a crime and the City government actively and humanly engages homeless people as equal and worthy neighbors in our city. We’ve been telling that story for almost two decades, and it seems that San Francisco media just doesn’t want to hear it. (Not *you*, Gentle Reader: You have always inspected our graphs and appreciated our statistical analyses with the utmost attentiveness and grace.)

So, instead, we’re telling you the stories that the snarky gossip-columnists who pretend to be journalists *could* have told you instead, using the exact same data.
[END SIDEBAR]

Every two years, the Federal governments Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires each geographical region that receives Federal funding for homeless services to conduct a point-in-time count of its outdoor and institutional homeless populations. Every two years, the mainstream press reports roughly the same story: (Now former) Mayor Gavin Newsom’s approach to solving homelessness would be working, if it weren’t for all those pesky outsiders coming into San Francisco! This narrative, in fact, could never be substantiated by the Count itself, and has actually been contradicted by the last three Counts. While we have always had extreme doubts about the validity of the Count (see side bar), this year we’re going to highlight seven important stories that the mainstream press is ignoring from the exact same data:

FAMILY STREET HOMELESSNESS QUADRUPLES IN TWO YEARS
According to the 2011 Homeless Count, street homelessness among families has increased by 280%, nearly quadrupling since 2009. Family homeless shelters confirm that waitlists for shelter access have increased severalfold since the beginning of the Great Recession and its concomitant increase in joblessness.

While homeless families comprised about 8.4% of the overall homeless population in 2009, they are 9.8% of the homeless population in 2011 (including both people living on the street and people living in homeless shelters and other institutions). While the overall homeless population has declined by 0.9%, the population of homeless families has increased by 15.7%. “This puts to lie the canard that homeless people are by and large bushy-bearded single men with shopping carts,” said homeless advocate Miguel Carrera. “We are in fact many communities, and we represent all the diversity of the population at large, from bushy-bearded seniors to toddlers in diapers.”

BLACK PEOPLE SIX TIMES AS LIKELY TO BE HOMELESS
According to recent enumerations, Black people now comprise 38.5% of the total homeless population of San Francisco, while they only comprise 5.8% of the city’s population as a whole. While homelessness has decreased by a little under 1% according to the 2011 Homeless Count, and the Black population of San Francisco has decreased by 22.6% according to the 2010 Census, the Black homeless population has grown by 10% in absolute terms, and by over 11% as a portion of the homeless population.
“This puts to lie the canard that we live in a post-racial society,” said activist Mesha Monge Irizarry. “Homelessness is very much a racial justice issue.”

80% OF SAN FRANCISCANS CAN’T GET SHELTER WHEN THEY NEED IT
The latest Homeless Count has found that the great majority of homeless San Franciscans seeking shelter are unable to actually obtain a shelter bed. Advocates say that difficulty in obtaining a shelter bed increased under the Newsom mayoral administration, when San Francisco lost nearly a third of its City-funded shelter beds to budget cuts. “This puts to lie the canard that the 85 to 100 shelter beds left empty every night were an indication of lack of demand,” said Shelter Advocate LJ Cirilo. “The demand was there, but the beds were apparently unavailable.”

THREE QUARTERS OF HOMELESS SAN FRANCISCANS WERE HOUSED SAN FRANCISCANS, FIRST
Most Had Lived Here for More than Five Years
According to the latest official count of homeless people in San Francisco, the great majority of homeless people in San Francisco were not homeless when they arrived here. In fact, 40.3% had been San Francisco residents for a decade or more before becoming homeless, while an additional 15.8% had lived here for five years or more before losing their housing. In comparison, 61.1% of all San Franciscans immigrated here from outside of California. “This puts to lie the canard that homeless people are outsiders who come here for our amazing array of social services,” said homeless advocate Jenise Standfield. “Most people in our community were San Franciscans long before they became homeless. Those who do come here come here for the same reasons that everyone else does: For employment, for tolerance, for relationships, and for all the aspects of our city that make San Francisco the amazing, beautiful, diverse city that it is. We’re San Franciscans: Not parasites.”

ONLY 2% OF HOMELESS PEOPLE COME TO SAN FRANCISCO FOR SERVICES
Most Don’t Access Emergency Room Services
According to the latest count of homeless people in San Francisco, only 2.3% of homeless people in San Francisco came here for homeless services. 76.9% of homeless people do not engage in County-administered government assistance, 53.4% do not access City-funded shelters, and 52.4% have never been to the emergency room in the past year; 61% usually do not use the emergency room for healthcare. “This puts to lie the canard that all homeless people are a great drain on the public coffers,” said homeless advocate Jesus Perez. “The great majority of homeless people don’t even access City-funded services.”

HALF OF ALL PANHANDLERS MAKE LESS THAN $50 PER MONTH
According to the 2011 Homeless Count, 50.6% of all panhandlers in San Francisco make $50 per month or less. Only 7.7% make $10 per day or more.
“This puts to lie the canard that panhandling is a stupendously lucrative scam,” said homeless advocate Bob Offer-Westort. “The urban legend that panhandlers make hundreds of dollars per day through alms-begging is just that: a legend. It’s got as much truth as the notion that Alka-Seltzer makes seagulls explode or that witches can’t sink.” We contacted Bayer AG for confirmation of Alka-Seltzer’s gull non-incendiary properties, but have received no comment at press time. Members of the San Francisco Wiccan Meetup confirm that witches are similarly buoyant to everyone else.

MAJORITY OF HOMELESS PEOPLE DO NOT HAVE ADDICTIVE DISORDERS OR MENTAL ILLNESSES
The 2011 Homeless Count reports that 69% of homeless people do not abuse addictive substances, while 72.4% of homeless people have no mental illness. According to National Institute of Mental Health statistics, 26.2% of US adults have a mental illness in any given year: a number comparable to the 27.6% of homeless people who have a mental illness.
“This puts to lie the canard that mental illness and homelessness are somehow one and the same,” said homeless advocate Jennifer Friedenbach. “Mental illness is especially difficult for homeless people, who do not have the stability that housed people can depend on, and who are disproportionately criminalized for mental illness. However, the real cause of homelessness is poverty.”

By Andrew Jackson Kocher (A Common Homeless Man)

When, in the course of human events, it has become necessary for the Common People to dissolve the political commitments which have connected them with a centralized Federal Government, and to assume among the powers of the Earth the shape and spirit of a democracy which reflects the inalienable rights to which the laws of nature entitle them; a decent respect to the opinions of humanity requires that they should Declare the causes which impel them to make a charge of No Confidence.

We, The Common People, hold these truths to be self-evident, that all humanity is created equal, that they are endowed by their very existence with certain inalienable rights; and that among these are Life, Liberty, Access to the natural bounty of unspoiled land and the Fruits thereof;  Clean Air, Pure Water and the pursuit of happiness within a just and equal society.

To secure these rights, governments have been instituted over communities, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. The Common People maintain that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, by failing to uphold these rights, it is the moral obligation of the People to alter or abolish it and institute in its place a new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its obligations in such a form as to provide for environmentally sound interaction with the Biosphere Earth; and shall seem most likely to effect their safety, health and happiness.

Common sense will dictate that a government long established should not be changed for light and transient reasons and accordingly, experience shows that humankind are more disposed to suffer when corruption, pollution and other evils are bearable, than to correct the evil by abolishing the sources of the corruption and pollution to which they are accustomed.

But, when a long series of abuses, deceptions and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, exposes a design to reduce the Common People under absolute corporate despotism, it is our right and our moral obligation to reject such government and to provide a new form of government by the People to provide for our future security.

Such has been the patient sufferance of the Common People and such is now the necessity, which rallies them to separate themselves from the present Federal Government of the United States of America. The history of the present Federal government is one of repeated deception and usurpation, having in direct object the establishment of a corporate tyranny over the American population.

To demonstrate this, let the facts be submitted to a World in Peril.

Corporations, by their very nature, have no sense of national patriotism, and therefore cannot be loyal to any one people or political ideology. The only obligation of a multi-national corporation is to make profit. Therefore, they exist only to exploit the population of the Earth in the quest for ongoing profit.

We, the People, have been deprived of our inalienable rights.

The Federal Government has failed to represent the American people, either as individuals or en masse: as intended by the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights. We have learned that Free Trade does not guarantee individual freedoms and that Federal over-legislation provides the opportunity for Federal government to reach into the home or hovel of every common citizen.

We, The Common People, have been deprived of our inalienable right to the bounty of the natural world in the form of unspoiled lands, clean air and pure water.

The Federal government allows multi-national corporations to dominate and exploit the natural resources of America, and to restrict the access of Common citizens to the natural world, due to and as a result of, criminal exploitation of our environment. These same multi-national corporations continue to exploit the Common People through marketing experimentation and the quest for ongoing profit by establishing the complete dependency of the population on corporate production and distribution for the necessities of life.

The Federal government has employed deception and evasion in order to persuade the Common People to offer up their patriotism and progeny on the alter of corporate profit.

The Federal government promotes military aggression and the enhancement of a worldwide ideological struggle for dominion in order to create market opportunities for, and further promote the agenda of, multi-national corporations towards globalization of the world economy and the complete domination of the Common People.

We, therefore, the People of America, appealing to the judgment of the natural force of the universe for the moral righteousness of our intentions, do solemnly publish and Declare that the Common People are, and of right ought to be, free and independent people, that they are absolved from all allegiance to a Federal government dominated in policy by multi-national corporations, and that all political connection between the Common people and the Federal government is, and of right ought to be, totally dissolved, and that as a free and independent people, we have the power to reform our government, establish an ecologically sustainable and moral co-existence with the Biosphere Earth and the Human race, contract alliances, establish commerce, conduct peace, levy war and do all other acts and things which independent people of inalienable right do, and, for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our futures and our sacred Honor.

The bold, blunt, sans serif of page 1 is the same: Street Sheet, it reads, followed by The Newsletter of the Coalition on Homelessness. Despite a few tries by graphic design classes over the past couple decades, that look has never changed, and even in our more daring or playful layout experiments, the Street Sheet has always remained recognizable as that same publication that first hit the streets of San Francisco in December of 1989.

On October 17 of that year, beneath the Santa Cruz Mountains, the San Andreas Fault slipped—a deceptive name for a devastating event. Like the massive cuts to public housing that had ushered in the ‘80s, the Loma Prieta Earthquake closed out the decade by creating a massive new population of homeless people.

Since 1983—when the cuts to public housing had forced the opening of San Francisco’s first homeless shelter—the City had partially addressed homelessness through a program that paid for-profit hotel owners an average of $3 million per year to shelter homeless individuals for a maximum of one week at a time. But in the quake, 25% of these “Hotline Hotel” buildings were destroyed or made uninhabitable. In response, the Department of Social Services (DSS—the antecedent to our current Department of Human Services [DHS], which is one half of the Human Services Agency [HSA]) decided to phase out the Hotline Hotel system.

It was in this context that volunteers at the Coalition on Homelessness issued the organization’s first newsletter. The first article addressed this phase-out: “…the first group of individuals affected by these changes spent their final day in Hotline with the following results: of the approximately 114 people displaced on that day, 20 applied for GA [General Assistance: county cash assistance]. Of the 20, only one person was actually accepted. Twenty-five people have signed up for the GA Modified Payment Program and received more permanent housing. It seems that 88 people have fallen through the gaping holes in the safety net provided by the Department of Social Services, holes created by the department’s reneging on its initial promise to house undocumented individuals, and by the department’s refusal to loosen in any way the current GA requirements.

“In light of the current progress of the plan, one would have to wonder: is DSS planning a phase-out or a bailout of the Hotline system? Are they planning to help people out of the homeless cycle, or simply help them out of town?”

We weren’t pulling any punches.

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