Where Can We Pee? Houseless, Disabled Black and Brown Elders and Community Lose their Porta Pottie to Pressures from New Residents and Gentrification

Categories:

When:
October 30, 2014 @ 8:30 pm – 9:30 pm
2014-10-30T20:30:00+00:00
2014-10-30T21:30:00+00:00
Where:
Oscar Grant Plaza amphitheater, Oakland City Hall
Broadway & 14th Street
Oakland, CA 94612
USA

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“We were just trying to provide a dignified, safe and clean place for homeless people to use the restroom,” said Frances Moore, lifelong resident of North Oakland and founder of Auntie Frances’ Self-help Hunger Program.

On Tuesday, October 21, 2014, after months of harassment by newer residents in the North Oakland community of “Driver Plaza” where the Self-Help Hunger Program feeds poor and houseless elders and families of color every week, Oakland officials succumbed to pressure by newer residents and instructed the Porta Pottie company to remove the toilet from Driver Plaza.

Auntie Frances’ Love Mission and Self-Help Hunger Program was launched 5 years ago by Frances Moore, a life-long resident of South Berkeley/North Oakland who herself dealt with homelessness, hunger and poverty in one of the richest countries in the world. The Porta Pottie was rented by the Self-Help Hunger Program in March 2014 for a Black History Celebration to provide the houseless North Oakland community with a dignified place to use the bath room.

“When my mother and I were houseless no business or home would ever let us use the bathroom,” said Lisa Tiny Gray-Garcia, author of “Criminal of Poverty: Growing Up Homeless in America,” and co-founder of POOR Magazine, who has been working alongside community members and groups like Phat Beets Produce to fight City-backed gentrification of the Love Mission and all of Oakland.

Several months ago, many residents not historically from Oakland that have moved into the area near Driver Plaza began harassing Aunti Frances and others at Driver Plaza for feeding and supporting poor and homeless people, as well as claiming that folks at Driver Park were defecating and urinating in public. Some newer residents began to launch more attacks on the people at Driver Park, claiming that the Porta pottie increased blight and criminal activity, despite it being an action taken for self-determined. In fact, the Porta pottie was fundraised for by Aunti Frances and the Self-Help Hunger Program, Driver Park residents, POOR Magazine and Phat Beets Produce. When Driver Park had no toilet, they were criminalized for relieving themselves in public. When they raised money to maintain a toilet and went to the bath room in a dignified manner, they had it taken away.

Oakland City Council Member Dan Kalb of District 1 in North Oakland and Oakland Public Works Agency refuses to support the life-long African-American community of this neighborhood, taking no action at all to ensure that residents have a dignified place to use the restroom, the same way people utilizing others city parks do. Marginalized in their own neighborhood by new residents and their different vision for Driver Park, people have begun speaking out, specifically the youth.

“All they wanted was a dignified place to use the bathroom, said Kimo Umu, 11 years old, student at Deecolonize Academy- an Oakland based school who have been supporting Auntie Frances Love Mission and Self-Help Hunger Program as part of their report on Bay Area gentrification for their Revolutionary Journalism class. Students and teachers of the Academy will be building a Porta pottie to install in the Oakland Mayors Office on Thursday.

Self-Help Hunger Program supporters say that It is important to work with neighbors new and old, but the city is putting the power in the hands of the privileged to decide what is best for a long-time working class, African-American community. What Kalb fails to acknowledge is that many people in the park are neighbors as well, and when he speaks about approval from the community he is not considering Driver Park users constituents or the community.

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POOR Magazine/Prensa POBRE is a very grassroots, poor people of color-led arts organization providing media, education and art to very low and no-income youth, adults and elders of color locally and globally.

Co-sponsors/endorsers for this emergency press conference are the San Francisco Bay View Newspaper, Manilatown I-Hotel Center, Deecolonize Academy and Healthy Hoodz.

 

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