Berkeley City Council Tables Homeless Criminalization Ordinances.

Categories: Front Page, Open Mic

At 1:00 AM on July 1st, 2015 the Berkeley City Council tabled four ordinances that would have criminalized Berkeley’s homeless. They were up against an extremely upset, rather large crowd that had stubbornly stuck around beyond the witching hour, determined not to go down without a  fight long into the even wee-er hours of the morning.

Linda Maio, sponsor of the ordinance package, relunctantly acceded to Mayor Tom Bates’ request to table and adjourn after acknowledging the fierce opposition but saying “Something has to change!”

The confusion and consternation had been exacerbated when, just before 1:00 AM, Maio passed out “revision summaries” to the proposed ordinances that had been published in the agenda package. City Council member Max Anderson said that he would refuse to take part in such a travesty of democracy. Earlier, during discussion of the previous agenda item but obviously in reference to the next one on homelessness, he quoted from Mario Savio’s famous “Bodies on the gears of the machine” speech, all but inviting the crowd to pull an Oakland and shut down the meeting.

The crowd took over, shouting “Shame! Shame!” and “Adjourn!”, going on for a number of minutes.

Kris Worthington, a strenuous opponent of the ordinances, produced a genuinely impressive rant about the absurdity of being informed about significant revisions to ordinances at 1:00 AM, and Jesse Arreguin demanded to know “Why is this so urgent, what possible reason is there, that we can’t consider this at our next meeting?!?”

Finally Mayor Bates, conceivably realizing he was in a situation he could not guarantee control over, asked Maio to table, and then the meeting adjourned.

According to Berkeleyside, since the Agenda Committee does not meet until August 27th, the earliest the proposals could be considered would be sometime in September.

homelessness-not-crimeLet’s consider the broader picture. These last several days have seen a beginning of an end to certain kinds of hate and discrimination. We have seen marriage equality become the law of the land. We have seen the confederate flag lowered in many places, and it looks like Charleston will take down the Capitol flag soon. Yes, there is a long way to go, but progress against intolerance is being made.

Why, then, did the Berkeley City Council, at this juncture in history, attempt to create a set of laws which will engender hate and further discrimination against the homeless? Why make Berkeley a new national symbol of intolerance and divisiveness? Are the homeless not entitled to equal protection and recognition that they are discriminated against as are the LGBT community and people of color?

Furthermore, we know without doubt that with every interaction the homeless are forced to have with authority there is a chance for catastrophe. We saw that just months ago in Berkeley itself when an “ambassador” beat two homeless men who then got sent to jail and pled guilty to crimes they did not commit before fortuitous video of the incident was released and showed what really occurred. We see worse crimes committed against the homeless almost every day somewhere in the US by the police. Do the names Ezell Ford, Brendon Glenn, Kelly Thomas and “Africa” mean anything to anyone? The were all homeless, unarmed men in or around Los Angeles, killed as a result of unnecessary interactions with the police.

No one wants these things to happen in Berkeley, and yet they may well, if laws criminalizing homeless behaviors bring the police and other authorities down further on people who already have nothing.

59145

Comments are closed.