About us WIthout Us… a “Community” Meeting that Never was meant for the Community

For Immediate Release

Contact: 

Tiny garcia 510435-7500 / Jon Janasko/ (510) 712-7639 Wood Street Commons /Freeway Oakland Homeless Union 510-260-9420 

Houseless/formerly houseless organizers and advocates with Wood Street Commons and POOr Magazine call out the lack of houseless community members in an upcoming community meeting about houseless community members 

When:5:30pm TODAY Monday, May 5th  

Where: EBAYC 2025 East 12th street Oakland 

What: Invitation to Media to witness non-community meeting held about us without us houseless people

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Over the month of April houseless residents of Mosswood Park were violently “swept” from their long-time comeUnity to nowhere. Some of the residents were offered rooms in the Extended Stay hotel, many were not. Now the City of Oakland is planning a huge and devastating “sweep” of a longtime houseless comeunity on East 12th street medium where hundreds of houseless, disabled, elder Oakland residents reside in their street communities. 

“What Meeting, I never heard about a meeting,” Jack Ray, a disabled elder resident and RoofLEss Radio reporter for POOR Magazine declared. “I only know about the sweeps and im afraid cause i have nowhere to go,” he concluded.

“Once again the powers that be in Oakland decide to have a community meeting without the people impacted most by the decisions made by the City of Oakland. There is never an excuse for this kind of intentional exclusion of impacted voices,’ said John Janasko, Wood Street Commons

Wood Street Commons and POOR Magazine, two houseless/formerly houseless, poor people led movements providing street based advocacy, support, solutions and resources to fellow houseless residents of the Bay Area, have been conducting ongoing direct outreach and support to residents of East 12th street for the last several years and when this community meeting was announced, they polled the East 12th street community to see if they were coming to the meeting and no-one even knew it was happening. 

“This follows a pattern of exclusion, extraction and violence by the City of Oakland, always working to create decisions about us without us. Last week after the City spending thousands and possibly millions of dollars on police and trash workers to evict peaceful residents of Mosswood Park, a meeting was hosted by Extended Stay Hotel management on zoom, which included none of the recently swept MossWood Park residents and none of the soon to be swept residents of East 12st street, Extraction because the City of Oakland granted the HCEB management over 7 million dollars without houseless peoples input or vision, while poor peoples led solutions like the Academy by Wood Street Commons and Homefulness exist and were presented to them,,” said tiny gray-garcia, co-founder POOR Magazine/Homefulness- a homeless peoples solution to homelessness   (Listen at this link to the broadcast of the zoom meeting on Poor Peoples Radio)   

‘The East 12th street sweeps follow the sweeps of Wood Street, the death of James Edward Oakley from a Sweep in Vallejo and the brutal sweep of Lake Merrit, in every single incident, all of the residents lose their communities, their safety and their precious belongings, having serious impacts on their already fragile health

“The Oakland Homeless Union stands in solidarity with all unhoused Oakland residents, and we will continue to fight until the voices of the unhoused are acknowledged as the experts of our own lives that we are. We are not subhumans, nor are we garbage to be swept into the shadows; we are human beings, and one day history will show who was on the side of right, and who was not.”,said Freeway , Oakland Homeless union 

Because of the upcoming deadly sweep of East 12st street and the daily sweeps harassment POOR Magazine, Wood Street Commons and Oakland Homeless Union are demanding the City of Oakland place an immediate moratorium on sweeps and we are inviting Press to attend tonites non-inclusive community meeting

Click on this link for sanctuary solutions/demands created by houseless and formerly houseless residents and leaders of Homefulness/POOR Magazine and Wood Street Commons 

Please follow:

IG & fb @poormagazine 

IG @woodstreetcommons

IG & fb: @oakland.homeless.union