You know that newspaper, “Street Spirit,” that homeless people sell on the street? It’s actually a pretty decent read, although it does get tiresome from repeating the same old tired arguments we always hear from homeless advocates.
But now that some cities, like Berkeley, have finally stepped up their anti-encampment efforts, the agitprop leaders of the pro-homeless movement have elevated their rhetoric to a higher threat level. “If any of the protest encampments are met with retaliation,” Street Spirit warns, homeless activists “will push further into the hills of North Berkeley.”
A little context here. So-called “protest encampments” are not like the old encampments that arose organically across the flatlands. Instead, they’re deliberately set up in ultra-visible urban locations, such as in front of Berkeley’s Old City Hall, in order to provoke law enforcement and political leaders, and draw media coverage. They’re a form of “in your face” and “what are you gonna do about it?” protest. The gauntlet has been thrown down by a militant homeless group, Where Do We Go (WDWG), a nonprofit that claims its mission is to commit “acts of civil disobedience.” Among WDWG’s other interests, beside advocating for the homeless, is the “BDS” movement (Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions), an anti-semitic ideology that calls for punitive measures against Israel for defending itself in the Middle East wars. WDWG is promoting a boycott of three local businesses—at least two of which are Jewish-owned—for their support of Israel.
Street Spirit’s current front page article is called “Being Poor Is Not a Crime.” They never manage to identify just who is saying that being poor is a crime. Clearly, no one is saying that; it’s pure hyperbole. There’s not a single city, county or State in the country that has criminalized poverty or written a law penalizing being poor. Quite the opposite: a vast amount of America’s wealth is transferred from the working middle classes to the poor. But WDWG insists that a racist society has “criminalized poverty.”
Well, that’s a lie. What municipalities have done, for many, many years, is to criminalize specific behaviors, like staying overnight in public parks or blocking sidewalks. These laws were crafted decades before our current homelessness crisis. Municipalities have the absolute right to do that, and it’s refreshing that cities like Berkeley, San Francisco and even to some extent Oakland, are finally clearing some of the more egregious encampments. For radical homeless advocates, though, this amounts to a declaration of war. Hence, they’re warning officials that, if their protest encampments are hassled, they’ll turn to the nuclear option of establishing as many protest encampments as they can in the Berkeley Hills.
The Hills (including the Oakland Hills) have largely been spared the depredations of encampments. Homeless people don’t like the Hills because of their geographic remoteness. It’s harder to panhandle in the Hills than in the flatlands, harder to find stores to steal from, and harder to buy and sell the illegal drugs that so many homeless people love. So WDWG’s threat to invade the Hills has got to be worrisome to people who live there, to the police that protect them, and Berkeley’s young and inexperienced mayor-elect, Adena Ishii.
Actually, on second thought it might be amusing if encampments were to pop up in the affluent Hills. We’ve all poked fun at rich hill dwellers who voted for woke politicians like Pamela Price, but who would be the first to call 9-1-1 if they saw suspicious (read: Black) people outside their picture windows. Maybe having a huge tent camp in some upscale North Berkeley neighborhood like Cragmont on up to Grizzly Peak is just what those residents need: a dose of reality. Suddenly, these wealthy progressives would decide that Black Lives Matter only when they’re kept west of San Pablo Avenue. I suspect they’d demand that the encampments be rousted, and would raise holy hell with their Council members and Supervisors.
If push comes to shove, as might be the case if WDWG carries out their threat, we’ll find out just how “progressive” those Hill people really are.
Steve Heimoff