Swept off of shattuck

By Sis Omowale/POOR Magazine ?manna From Heaven

28 April 2025

They breathed their last free, uninterrupted breaths at 3:59 am on that encamped Wednesday morning on the West and East sidewalks of Shattuck, just south of the 51st Street side of the ARCO fossil fuel gas station and its AM-PM Mini-market.

Then the earth caved in with the sounds of cop-hands exploding metal molecules on car hoods and door sides.  Cop hatred spewing venom languages , screaming "Get out", GET OUT", "we got your stuff", "Walk away"; more shock-waved anti-sleep vibrations, fraying the nerves of the waking residents.  Confusion and anger, forced shouts of resistance, dogs barking trying to run free to bark-bite their home defenses.  Then, grab your stuff. Acts of preservation, grab it and pile it, grab it and hide it, but where?  Three Oakland PD cruisers had far too many thieving hands and voices everywhere, arriving all of a sudden...!

By 6:23 am, the sweep was over, but the vibe of loss resounded in the standing sleepers, rocking to-and-from in shock, switching back and forth from hurt-filled, pained anger, like "why did they not NOTIFY us the DAY before"?  WHY 

NOT?  The cars taken.  The RV/s yanked from blocks. The people-licenses and doggie-ID's, records of their former homes and babies' footprints, Great-grans' rings and antiqued family jewels and hand-crocheted accessories, all dumped along with AC Transit bus passes and empty clipper cards.

Sis. Min. Joycelyn saw them first, spoke with one brother who seemed the least traumatized.  He relayed the story to her and then she to me, thus suddenly without breath, when I had arrived 12 minutes later.  We began to serve, as best we could, bringing the shocked to our breakfast site for that morning.  We returned with breakfast plates for those too shocked, too stunned to bring wet tears, and too saddened to move.  

******

EPILOGUE.  At 3:00 pm in the afternoon, the OPD death-by-a-thousand-cuts unit did another raid on the encampments on the diagonal side of the same intersection at 51st Street, facing Shattuck east, in broad day-light, during the beginning of peak traffic.  They hit and split before we were even able to hear of the raid.  We heard what the witnesses saw: that nothing was left, and no one was resilient enough to find anything or anyone.  COMPLETE GENOCIDE...in less than 12 hours on the same day, the 16th of April: the devil's power number.   

                                                             -  30  - 

Ms. S. Omowale Fowles