- Eleanor Jonas | Senior Staff
- Sep 28, 2024 (DailyCal.org)
Community members and advocates gathered in front of Berkeley Courthouse to protest encampment sweeps Saturday afternoon, rallied by the nonprofit organization Where Do We Go.
Advocacy for the unhoused coalesced with Pro-Palestinian sentiment at the protest, marked by a banner that read “from the Bay to Palestine, free the land.”Tents facing the road spelled out “where do we go?” — the question asked by unhoused people that inspired the naming of the organization.
“This protest brings together people who are homeless in Berkeley, advocates from all over the East Bay, all to oppose the wave of repression that has come down on people experiencing homelessness since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the decision in a case called City of Grants Pass v. Johnson,” said Osha Neumann, Where Do We Go board member and a founding member of the organization.
Neumann said that the demonstration was the beginning of a “mass protest” against the eviction of people with “no place to go.”
Many of the people gathered at the protest were housed, according to Ian Cordova Morales, outreach specialist for the Homeless Action Center and president of Where Do We Go. During the protest, he said that one of the demonstration’s goals was to bridge the gap between the housed and unhoused communities.
Neumann noted that many speakers drew a connection between unhoused struggles and the war on Gaza, with people living in tents and struggling for survival.
“We are seeing this as in the context of, globally, an attack on the most vulnerable and the most despised people,” Neumann said.
Several advocates have been arrested during protests for the same cause, according to Neumann, including Andrea Henson, board chair of Where Do We Go and one of the primary speakers at the protest. She was arrested after chaining herself to a gate in protest of the eviction of a disabled person, Neumann said.
“People that are being evicted are very often the most vulnerable, the most disabled,” Neumann said. “We are going to fight back.”
Henson and fellow Where Do We Go members invited attendees to speak in front of the crowd.
One person, who did not appear to be affiliated with Where Do We Go, spoke about their anger towards law enforcement. The protest was located near the Berkeley Police Department.
“If you’re a cop and you work for these motherf–kers… and you’re bashing homeless people… f–k you. You don’t deserve safety,” they said, to several claps and whoops from the crowd.
Several other people volunteered to speak, including KaiKai Bee Michaels, a drag queen who was invited to perform at the end of the demonstration.
Gregory Clark, an attendee of the protest, described his own experience living unhoused in Berkeley, particularly in relation to the university. He said the campus Student Union building, which had previously been open to the public, has since become closed off for non-students, preventing him from entering the space. Additionally, Clark said that once “college kids” recognize him as unhoused in public, since he carries his belongings with him, they physically shrink away from him.
“I get looked down upon,” Clark said. “It’s hard on your emotional psyche every day.”
As Clark has previously experienced conflicts with business owners who do not want him to set up his tent near their business, he lamented the apparent lack of business owners at the protest. He noted that many students and community members had made an appearance.
Henson repeatedly called for community members to continue to come together after the end of the demonstration, both through formal organizing and by connecting with others, regardless of their housing status. She said that the demonstration and others like it enabled voices to be heard.
“We are in a dying world — and we are ready to birth a new one,” Michaels said.
A previous version of this article misspelled Andrea Henson’s name.
Eleanor Jonas is the lead student government beat reporter. Contact her at ejonas@dailycal.org.
Eleanor Jonas
Deputy News Editor
