Over the last several years, the Wood Street Commons has grown to be the largest encampment in Northern California and it has been on the front lines of people fighting for decent humane housing against the repression from federal, state and local authorities. The Commons, as it is affectionately called, originally referred to the plot of city- and state-owned land that people were directed onto by the Oakland Police Department for over 10 years.
Now residents have been forced off that land through repeated evictions and into other areas of Oakland. The commons space has been moved a few blocks away from its original location, but it has become more fluid and has transformed into the embodiment of the people, friendships and family bonds that were built there. The folks who built the Wood Street Commons and continue to sustain it have done so out of a deep human need for stability. The Wood Street Commons community has helped people heal from the traumas that pushed them into homelessness, or the traumas caused when the state uses force and punishment to “reeducate” people when they become unhoused. Despite all its trials and tribulations, internal fights and external challenges, The Commons has become a collective space of stability in an unstable world. Its strategy is to embody radical love, self-help, compassion, humanity and community in contrast to the dehumanization people face every day. Birthdays are celebrated, block parties are enjoyed, community healing is created.
CAPITALIST PROPAGANDA
The Wood Street evictions are part of a significant push by the capitalist class to criminalize poverty and homelessness. People experiencing poverty, alongside social movements, abolitionists, allies and more are rising in an equally significant pushback against it.
Capitalists create policies and laws that favor their class, a legal system to legitimize their interests, the criminal justice system to punish people, police to protect their interests and the corporate-owned media to misinform and manufacture consent from the public. For example, Oakland created an “Encampment Management Policy” after businesses and corporations started complaining about the “problem” of unhoused people that they themselves created. Then the Oakland city attorney helped draft encampment “closure” flyers that are posted before evictions. Eviction day comes and, of course, the cops are at the site in full force in order to “protect” city workers and arrest anyone failing to comply with police orders. Many people not only get evicted, but they also lose all their possessions and sometimes end up in jail. The corporate media highlights how displaced persons are “criminals,” “drug addicts” or “mentally ill.” Often the media lie outright or do not tell the whole truth.
However, the Wood Street Commons and many other folks in the housing movement in Oakland have seen first-hand the immense disconnect between people’s experiences on the ground and what is being portrayed in corporate news reports, public perception and policy. They have been working diligently to build stronger coalitions and, through writing op-eds and other articles, to counter the ruling class narratives about poverty and homelessness. Their success has forced the corporate media to double down on their aggressive tactics to blame poor people for their own poverty and misinform the public about the causes of homelessness. One recent Fox News article argued that people experiencing homelessness are “drug tourists” and steal to support their habits, because there is no rule of law in Oakland due to “neo-progressive” elected officials. The reality is that Wood Street residents have no money and nowhere else to go. Oakland has only 313 temporary housing units and 598 shelter beds for an unhoused population of over 5,000.
CAPITALIST STRATEGY
The largest contributors to homelessness today are through technological advances, increased financialization of land and housing, political tactics such as the prison industrial complex and various superstructures that have always left people vulnerable within the capitalist system. The increased introduction of automation and artificial intelligence has decimated stable full-time employment with benefits in Oakland (and elsewhere) as well as the offshoring of jobs to exploit artificially low wages. Due to structural hierarchies in capitalist policies, various groups have been disproportionately impacted by the changes in technology and, as a consequence, they are unable to afford rent. Speculation has also led to the financialization of land and housing, creating the foreclosure crisis of 2008, in which millions lost their homes and rents rose for everyone. Today, roughly 60% of Oaklanders rent from landlords and 90% of the rental housing available is owned by corporate landlords.
Lastly, the prison industrial complex has pushed many people into homelessness, by discharging them into the streets with nothing but the stigma of their prison record. Prisons serve as a placeholder for people being displaced by the capitalist system, including maintaining a “legal” form of slavery. As mentioned before, the social hierarchies created by the ruling class have also influenced how the prison industrial complex impacts different segments of our class. Many unhoused people point out that “temporary shelters” for people experiencing homelessness operate under similar conditions as “reentry services” or community corrections programs operated by for-profit prison corporations.
REVOLUTIONARY LESSONS
Through reflecting on the past few years and evictions, the Wood Street Commons community has been able to summarize some of the lessons learned:
People have a fundamental human right to land and housing. The land that Oakland sits on was stolen from the indigenous peoples, so no government has the right to evict human beings who are only seeking a place to lay their heads. The real solution is community land acquisition in cooperation with indigenous peoples – the decommodification and rematriation of land so all people can thrive.
Take pride in the accomplishments of The Wood Street Commons. We not only resisted the state and city for months, but we created a new model and a new solution for the system’s disgraceful homelessness problem. We created a self-sustaining community without government assistance. Think what we could do if the government was used for supporting us, instead of attacking and trying to destroy us.
Accept assistance from mutual aid groups, but don’t let them take over or tell the community what to do, or treat people as anything less than equal partners.
Fight to build class unity with outside groups, but don’t let them interfere or divert the community from its path toward self-organization and autonomy.
Accept legal assistance, use legal observers, accept help with bail money and organize know-your-rights training for encampment evictions. Develop an unhoused bill of rights guide to use during encampment sweeps.
But at the same time, always remember that in the end – unless and until people themselves can take over the government – laws and the legal system serve the corporations and developers, not the people fighting for their human rights. Sometimes people can and should get temporary injunctions to delay evictions, but we can’t rely on restraining orders to help for very long.
A BETTER FUTURE
The fight for basic needs has become the frontline battle where revolutionary consciousness is being built. Nothing exposes the bankruptcy of the capitalist system more clearly than when the drive for profit tramples on the most basic human rights like life, food, water, housing, education, work, health and security. Revolutionaries will always fight for human needs, but we must use formal and informal political education to uplift and elevate the struggle.
In The Commons, formal political education takes the shape of weekly meetings, where anyone can attend and discuss revolutionary ideas, making people aware of their objective status as a revolutionary class and informing and elevating the strategies of the collective. These meetings often proceed from the revolutionary vision of an abundant cooperative society with common ownership of the means for meeting all basic human needs. This is the vision that provides the hope and fuel for people to continue in the struggle. Informal education fills in the gaps by keeping people and the movement on track through daily interactions. This type of education is sometimes the most impactful in the long term since it is also where revolutionary love is built and expressed. The role of revolutionaries is to popularize the vision of a cooperative future, at the same time that we elevate the revolutionary class demands of displaced workers through various forms of media. We build the loving respect and community necessary to create a home for revolutionaries and the revolutionary movement. We mentor each other as we grow. As the saying goes, WE are the leaders we have been looking for. We need to study our history, summarize our experiences and learn to maneuver with progressives and other political players to advance our demands. We fight by any means necessary, both inside and outside the system and at the same time strive to build a movement strong enough to overturn the system altogether and replace it with a new one that actually meets our human needs and respects the planet.
Published on September 20, 2023
This article originated in Rally!
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