Urgent: Fresno, CA Homeless need your help, especially if you can get to Fresno

[annm4peace]

The first evictions, on Santa Fe south of Ventura, will take place on Thursday October 27. Evictions at all of the other encampments - The Hill, G street, Santa Clara street, F street, and at San Benito/H street will take place on Tuesday, November 1.


Please send this to others, especially those in groups who might be able to help. Maybe the UN can come in and set up a refugee camp.
I don't know how the City of Fresno can get away with their continue destruction of what little shelter these people can put together. These people are in tent cities because there is no room at the shelters.

Hateful City of Fresno continues to abuse the Homeless. CA is one of the richest states in our Nation yet the Central Valley of CA city leaders are going to once again destroy the tent cities.. taking away what little these men, women, and many children have left. There are over 4000 people living in these tent cities.. many are children. The city of Fresno says they are going to provide 100 apartments from a federal grant.
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http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/10/22/18694453.php?show_comments=1#18694718

"The City of Fresno is moving to evict homeless people from all downtown encampments. Is the city offering them a better place to live? Will evicting the homeless, just before the holidays, help them in some way? The answer to these and other exciting questions are answered in the photos and story below. the city has 100 to offer to the homeless but the tent cities have over 5000 people.. where can they go? "

"The homeless people who I talked to today were concerned that they have no other place to go. Lucifer asked how the city could evict the homeless right before the holidays. “The weather is getting colder and we have nowhere to go.” Lucifer said he was organizing a meeting for later today, to get the homeless to develop a strategy for dealing with these evictions.

On F street Nate said that the city was offering some homeless people housing, but added that “even if the city provides 100 or so apartments, what about the rest of us? There must be 5,000 homeless people in downtown Fresno right now. Apartments for 100 is nothing but a public relations attempt by the city to make it look like they are doing something to help the homeless.”

Butch, who was busy with Saturday morning recycling work on San Benito, wanted to know “where the fuck are we supposed to go?” He said it was cruel for the city to be evicting everyone just as the weather is about to get cold. “How is taking our property and destroying our homes going to help the homeless, that is what I want to know,” Butch said.

Over on Santa Fe (south of Ventura) Rose stood around a morning fire with about 10 other homeless people. They were cooking breakfast when I arrived. Rose had called to let me know about these evictions. She introduced me to Patchrich, who asked what would happen if all of the homeless were to link there arms and refuse to allow the city sanitation workers to do their jobs on Thursday.

Patchrich and Rose also think that they may have squatter rights at the Santa Fe encampment, since they have been living there for over a year. I told them I would seek a legal opinion about that and get back to them.

In the meantime, the first evictions start at 7 a.m. next Thursday at Santa Fe, just south of Ventura. Evictions at the other encampments are scheduled for 7 a.m. on November 1. Will there be homeless advocates there to support potential resistence to the evictions? Will legal observers be on hand to monitor the situation and defend the civil/legal rights of the homeless? "

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If you can get to Fresno, CA:

Please encourage people to come out at 7 a.m. this Thursday, October 27 to the Santa Fe homeless encampment to stand in solidarity with the homeless. It looks like civil disobedience to stop the city from destroying this encampment is a serious possibility. The Santa Fe homeless encampment is just south of Ventura on Santa Fe in downtown Fresno.
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If you can't get to Fresno, CA by this Thursday:

Contact Mayor Ashley Swearengin at 559-621-8000 and/or City Manager Mark Scott 559-621-7770 and ask them where are the 5000 homeless people going to go and what is going to happen to their belongings when the City Evicts the Tent cities this week..

Gregory Barfield is the jackass who is suppose to help end homeless in Fresno.. But where do the donations for the City program to end Homelessness go? no one can seem to tell Community Alliance that is actually trying to help the Homeless. check out Gregorgy Barfield's tweets and do you think he is working to help and protect the homeless or is he just enjoying his cushy job? http://twitter.com/#!/gregorybarfield .

http://www.fresnofirststepshome.org/


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Yes, there is an Occupy Fresno.. but there isn't enough progressives to take on the city and the police: http://occupyfresnoca.com/

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To see what tent cities look like in Fresno and hoq the homeless will have nothing. It is a small group of progressives that have struggled to gather enough money to have porta potties, tents, sleeping bags, and food for the homeless but there are not enough of them to stop the city. They need more people to come out and stand with the homeless.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2011/04/13/18677085.php

Fresno city is too corrupt by neo-cons and fundamentalists to help the homeless.. they just keep abusing them.
It will take an outside group to help the homeless in fresno.. especially to give them basic human rights in shelter. I wish some christ-like churches would bring their congregation to help
At this point the City of Fresno is taking away their last little bit of cardboard shelter.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. kick!

[Mnemosyne]

2. ...

[ellisonz]

3. Fresno is the pits.

[defendandprotect]

4. kr

[emcguffie]

5. This is completely off topic, and for that I apologize --

But I cannot read your post without scrolling left and right on every single line because of those lines of asterisks you put in. For that reason, the lines can't adjust and wrap.

I am viewing this on a small laptop screen, and I am an aging person, so I have the text probably a little bit larger than a younger person would. The lines are going off the screen, rather than wrapping around in the smaller screen.

Hmm, I'm having a terrible time explaining this.

But this seems to be happening more. It could be just you? Or maybe it's something more people are doing, to put in long lines of characters without a break anywhere?

If you put spaces in those long lines of characters somewhere, then the line could break and then the text could wrap.

Sorry I'm so incredibly inarticulate at this time of the morning, but I know I would like to read this, but I will not do this scrolling back and forth on every line. Sorry.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. re-kick

[laylah]

7. Kickin'!

[annm4peace]

8. This what a Neo conservative Christian government does to a city. 30 years in the making

They are not the majority but the took over the media 30 years ago, then the big box churches, broke the unions, ..... this happened 30-20 years ago.
this is being tried all over the country... WI, OH, MN...etc.
There are no mental health facitiies anymore in Fresno,ca. LA is 4 hours away, and San Francisco 3 hours away.. families are too poor to get their loved ones to these cities for help. They are on the streets, in the prisons and jails.. there seems to be endless money for police, sheriff and jails/prisons.
Fresno is one of the riches states in the country. There are forture 500 corporations headquarters in CA with record profits... like Wells Fargo Bank.

Last night I couldn't post some of the pictures:

[annm4peace]

9. you have to go to the link above to read the last 10 years

of 10years of assualt on the homeless.

[emcguffie]

10. I tried to PM you.

About the posting thing I noted above. I'm not trying to be obnoxious. I wanted to send you a screen capture of how it looks on my computer. But I think my effort was unsuccessful.

[annm4peace]

12. no worries. thanks for your input

I also wish I knew how to shrink the photos.

[Warren DeMontague]

11. like being in Fresno isn't punishment enough, already.

You have my condolences.

[annm4peace]

13. Progressives hold Press Conference at City Hall at 10:30am Wed.

Dear Friends,

The City of Fresno has planned mass evictions of our homeless from their encampments downtown. The first is to take place at 7:00 am Thursday.

*Organizations have banded into a coalition to have two Actions opposing these evictions in the absence of immediate housing for these homeless individuals.*

Press Conference at City Hall at 10:30 am Wednesday (tomorrow).

The groups below will be represented where possible.

Mike Rhodes will have homeless people there to tell their story also.

Witness these evictions with cameras and signs at the encampment no later than 7:00 am at Santa Fe just south of Ventura.

Evictions at the other encampments are scheduled for 7 a.m. on November 1 - plans for those evictions will follow.

Support comes from
Chairs of the Fresno and Madera County Democratic Parties, and leadership of Progressive Democrats of America, DFA,
Volunteers for Change Fresno, Peace Fresno, WILPF, Raging Grannies, Communications Workers of America,
California Nurses' Association, Physicians for a National Health Program, the social justice committees of Wesley United, a member of the UU Church)
Bishop John Steinbock Homeless Advocacy Committee, Community Alliance,

--
Judy Hess
Chapter Leader

Central Valley - Sierra Progressives
Progressive Democrats of America

(they will still need more support

In the past, the City of Fresno has claimed they need to destroy the tent cities is be work is needed to be done on a bridge, or a road, or a lot.. yet once the people are cleared out the area sits vacant and the homeless have no where to go. Or they claim they have housing vouchers yet it is a very small # that ends up able to get an apartment.
What really needs to happen is the CA Attorney needs to look at the Cities books on their Homeless programs. Where is the grant money they received ? )