April Fools Day March to End Homelessness

One of the agenda items at the weekly Food Not Bombs meeting was that morning’s Lookout story “In the Public Interest: A new law-and-order approach to homelessness in Santa Cruz?”

A shirtless friend of ours who lives along Highway 9 spoke on the subject. He was upset that the atmospheric rivers were washing the contents of their pit toilets across parts of the camp of several hundred people. He wanted us to press for portable toilets and garbage collection. The sewage rushing through his campsite had infected his girlfriend with sepsis and he took her to Dominican where they amputated her foot. The hospital sent her back to the camp.

Housing Matters had included me in an invitation to participate in the February 13, 2023 March to End Homelessness Community Coalition Meeting so I logged on. The subject was the April Fools Day March to End Homelessness which would gather at the future site of the city’s gift to the Front Street and Pacific Avenue condominium and retail store projects providing parking with a library and some so called affordable housing. We wouldn’t want the developers to spend money providing their tenants with their own parking. The march ends with what they are calling a festival and will cost between $50,000 and $70,000 to produce.

You may have seen the Housing Matters blue ads for this march on social media. It seems they wanted to save money by cannibalizing the corporate identity they had already paid several hundred thousand dollars to create when they rebranded the Homeless Services Center on Coral Street. I have been helping organize marches for about 50 years and other than the June 12, 1982, March for Nuclear Disarmament that drew over a million people to Central Park in New York I don’t think we have ever spent close to that amount. Generally less than $100 would be enough to bring out nearly 1,000 people if the cause is of public concern.

The presenters on the zoom meeting explained that the purpose of the march was to bring the homeless social services sector together and that they hoped to attract close to 1,000 marchers. I might have been the only person who had been homeless participating in the midday zoom meeting. Not one homeless person attended which is no surprise as people are busy surviving and were not invited to participate.

As Food Not Bombs was about to reach its third year anniversary of being the only daily hot meal for the homeless we receive an email from the city announcing that they would arrest us if we dared to attempt to share food near Garage 10 during the atmospheric rivers.

That morning The Santa Cruz Homeless Union was sent a post from staff at the Depot Park Emergency Shelter angry that the city and county would not let people enter until 8:00 pm forcing the 25 lucky people to stand in the driving wind and rain all day. They claimed they had the staff and resources to do so. We organized a campaign to open not only the Depot Park Shelter for 24 hours a day during the storms but that they should also open the Civic Auditorium. Mayor Fred Keeley’s beloved Warriors Stadium also sat empty. Hundreds of people would be doomed to survive torrents of rain huddled under tarps as trees threatened to crush them.

So in honor of our three years of daily free service to the city they chose to send us a threatening letter promising to arrest us if we did not force those joining us for a hot lunch to stand in blistering winds and driving rain.

Mayor Keeley’s allies are using his chairmanship of the  Community Advisory Committee on Homelessness (CACH) to praise his new law and order campaign against the homeless.

Steve McCarty’s letter to the editor states “Keeley spent years working on the CACH so is well aware of these issues and ways to address them. Most of us appreciate his honest assessment of the situation.”

I did attend all but one of those meetings and Steve has no idea of what he is saying. Fred shut down any conversation about the many real solutions we offered and bullied his appointed members. One of two homeless members quit when he was not able to get back into the 1220 River Street camp because the meeting went past closing time. He was left to sleep on the streets in the cold.

In 2019 the Santa Cruz Homeless Union, Food Not Bombs and campers were working with the Fire Department to make a large homeless camp behind Ross safe for its members. At that time there seemed to be a progressive majority on the City Council and it would be possible to delay a proposed eviction of the camp. The one progressive councilperson we needed to make sure voted with the other three was Justin Cummings so we invited him to a meeting at the Saturn Cafe the night before. Saturn had been my “office” when I became homeless after my second back surgery.

We told of the danger that could happen if the camp was closed. Many of the early occupants were women who were seeking protection from the all too common threat of sexual assault.

At the June, 2019, City Council Meeting Justin Cummings voted to evict the camp and as has often been the case during other major votes by the council to harm the homeless they set up the CACH committee. I suggested during public comments that they could save us all a lot of time by whiting out the date on the 2000 report replacing it with 2019 since it was likely to have the same findings and sure enough by the end of the CACH committee their report was  essentially the same.

Our dear friend Santa Cruz Union Officer Deseire Quintero moved with many others to the Pogonip. She was helping her neighbors evacuate during the Diablo Winds when a tree fell crushing her to death on October 27, 2018. These are the same woods people were swept to after the Benchlands evictions this winter.

The city appears to have intentionally launched it’s current media campaign by feeding a young reporter new to Santa Cruz their position in the Lookout story “In the Public Interest: A new law-and-order approach to homelessness in Santa Cruz?”  I spoke with him twice for that report. He began by asking if the rumor was true that Second Harvest had cut off Food Not Bombs and that we were ending our daily service as a result.

When I explained that we had always intended to return to weekends as soon as the Saint Francis Soup Kitchen and the Senior Meal at London Nelson Community Center started their weekday lunches he said he hadn’t ever heard of the London Nelson Community Center. I said it was the center at Center and Laurel across from the police station but that still didn’t ring a bell.

When he called a second time I asked him how he heard about our being cut off by Second Harvest. He sounded very nervous and said that was confidential. I asked if he knew that City Manager Matt Huffaker was also on the board of Second Harvest and that Matt had been waging a war against the homeless and Food Not Bombs since he was hired. He didn’t respond.

It seemed he was targeted by the city because he was the least informed of any reporters in town.

Just as I suggested to the young man the letters to the editor attacks against the homeless and Food Not Bombs propaganda campaign had started.

Another wave of municipal violence against our homeless neighbors is about to begin. We can expect many more sweeps of homeless camps driving those hundreds struggling along Highway 9 back into the doorways and levee banks of downtown only to face late night police raids.

Another increase in the ticketing, towing and junking of vehicular homes. More unpaid fines to destroy credit histories and more misdemeanor convictions for the crimes of living outside to make sure housing remains out of reach for hundreds of our neighbors.

Fred’s friends in Sacramento are lining up a host of statewide laws to increase the suffering of those tens of thousands who will be forced on to the streets as the economy crashes into what is expected to be as bad or worse than the Great Depression of the 1930’s.  Over 25,000 tech workers lost their jobs in February 2023, many of whom were working here in the Bay Area. It would not be surprising if the number of people seeking doorways and river banks in our town will balloon another few thousand in the coming months.

I am sure Fred’s friend Senator John Laird will be voting for SB-31. “This bill would prohibit a person from sitting, lying, sleeping, or storing, using, maintaining, or placing personal property upon any street, sidewalk, or other public right-of-way within 1000 feet of a sensitive area, as defined. The bill would specify that a violation of this prohibition is a public nuisance that can be abated and prevented, as provided.”

My local friends who survived the internment camps of Europe during World War II often share their alarm at what they are witnessing with the hatred towards the homeless. City and County officials have quietly floated the idea that the “shelter resistant” be shipped off to Camp Roberts outside San Miguel.

In meetings with Fred at the Santa Cruz Diner he hinted he supports the plan to solve the bad behavior of the homeless much as former Mayor Donna Myers and former County Supervisor Ryan Coonerty had suggested in their Two By Two meetings. Force those “Useless Eaters” into prison camps.

City of Santa Cruz – 831-420-5010 

Mayor Fred Keeley  – fkeeley@cityofsantacruz.com 

City Manager Matt Huffaker – mhuffaker@santacruzca.gov 

Police Chief  Bernie Escalante – bescalante@cityofsantacruz.com 

Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs 

PO Box 422 – Santa Cruz, CA 95061 USA 

santacruz.foodnotbombs.net 

1-800-884-1136 

FOOD NOT BOMBS WILL NOT BE SILENCED

A global war is boiling in the back kitchen with the noisy rattling of a brass kettle on a gas stove left unattended. Millions of us stand at the register discovering our food stamps have diminished leaving our families with half full bellies as the banks of the exploiters slide into insolvency promising to take us all down with them.

The invisible masters of our cloud based universe struggle to delete the digits of uncomfortable empathy. Google makes sure every search reveals a truth vetted by Langley.  Their local enforcer of cruelty, Google chief attorney Halimah Delaine Prado and her Take Back Santa Cruz husband Manuel press their City Manager Matt Huffaker into action. They are but just a few of the many AI bots that infest our town.

Force those without housing into the atmospheric rivers to shiver in weeks of drenched clothing. Deny the hundreds of homeless access to the empty parking garages and lock the doors of the Civic Auditorium tight as 40 mile an hour shards of cold water pierced the flapping garbage bag raincoats to shreds.

The Prados may not have succeeded in having the home of Alicia Kuhl’s family and my car towed but they were victorious in making hundreds of their neighbors miserable in the brutality of our floods. The next advance in their campaign of pain was the eviction of the Food Not Bombs meal from the protection of Garage 10 and threats of arrest outside City Hall. Next was the attempt to cut off Food Not Bombs sources of food with the promise of forcing the all volunteer group into some dark patch of sidewalk where the public never passes outside Housing Matters in their effort to hide opposition to their wars and exploitation. The people we want to reach avoid the Coral Streets of America.

Just as Houston Mayor Turner claims in his effort to drive Food Not Bombs out of sight into a fenced lot under a freeway, Matt Huffaker will claim that we need his permission to share food with those he refused to feed and has forced them to endure weather sure to kill.

But you never need permission to help the hungry. Sharing food is always an unregulated gift of compassion. This kindness is protected by the US Constitution. There are some things that the government has no say in and  the Food Not Bombs protest and meal at the Town Clock is one such assembly.

If they can give you a permit they can take it away. Something we experienced in San Francisco in the 90’s and led to Food Not Bombs’ global policy against accepting or requesting permission. We showed that issue was never about permits it was always about our independence and desire to change society so no one is forced to seek a meal at a soup kitchen or sleep in the streets.

Consider risking arrest if these heartless bureaucrats attempt to drive our message of Food Not Bombs into the shadows of the homeless industrial complex.

Join Food Not Bombs at 5:00 pm on Monday, March 20, 2023 at the Resource Center For Nonviolence at 612 Ocean Street, Santa Cruz, California.

FOOD NOT BOMBS WILL NOT BE SILENCED

A global war is boiling in the back kitchen with the noisy rattling of a brass kettle on a gas stove left unattended. Millions of us stand at the register discovering our food stamps have diminished leaving our families with half full bellies as the banks of the exploiters slide into insolvency promising to take us all down with them.

The invisible masters of our cloud based universe struggle to delete the digits of uncomfortable empathy. Google makes sure every search reveals a truth vetted by Langley.  Their local enforcer of cruelty, Google chief attorney Halimah Delaine Prado and her Take Back Santa Cruz husband Manuel press their City Manager Matt Huffaker into action. They are but just a few of the many AI bots that infest our town.

Force those without housing into the atmospheric rivers to shiver in weeks of drenched clothing. Deny the hundreds of homeless access to the empty parking garages and lock the doors of the Civic Auditorium tight as 40 mile an hour shards of cold water pierced the flapping garbage bag raincoats to shreds.

The Prados may not have succeeded in having the home of Alicia Kuhl’s family and my car towed but they were victorious in making hundreds of their neighbors miserable in the brutality of our floods. The next advance in their campaign of pain was the eviction of the Food Not Bombs meal from the protection of Garage 10 and threats of arrest outside City Hall. Next was the attempt to cut off Food Not Bombs sources of food with the promise of forcing the all volunteer group into some dark patch of sidewalk where the public never passes outside Housing Matters in their effort to hide opposition to their wars and exploitation. The people we want to reach avoid the Coral Streets of America.

Just as Houston Mayor Turner claims in his effort to drive Food Not Bombs out of sight into a fenced lot under a freeway, Matt Huffaker will claim that we need his permission to share food with those he refused to feed and has forced them to endure weather sure to kill.

But you never need permission to help the hungry. Sharing food is always an unregulated gift of compassion. This kindness is protected by the US Constitution. There are some things that the government has no say in and  the Food Not Bombs protest and meal at the Town Clock is one such assembly.

If they can give you a permit they can take it away. Something we experienced in San Francisco in the 90’s and led to Food Not Bombs’ global policy against accepting or requesting permission. We showed that issue was never about permits it was always about our independence and desire to change society so no one is forced to seek a meal at a soup kitchen or sleep in the streets.

Consider risking arrest if these heartless bureaucrats attempt to drive our message of Food Not Bombs into the shadows of the homeless industrial complex.

Join Food Not Bombs at 5:00 pm on Monday, March 20, 2023 at the Resource Center For Nonviolence at 612 Ocean Street, Santa Cruz, California.

A SPECIAL KIND OF CRUELTY – Forcing the homeless of Santa Cruz into the harsh torrents of the atmospheric river

The City of Santa Cruz is forcing hundreds of people who are homeless to stand out in the atmospheric river. Just imagine standing day after day in these torrents of rain with no way to change into dry clothes. These people could be spared this suffering if the city opened empty public buildings like the Civic Auditorium, the Veterans Hall and the Warriors Stadium for 24 hours a day during these deadly storms but they have refused. The one emergency shelter in town is only open for 25 people from the hours of 8:00 pm to 8:00 am leaving those few lucky people to spend their days huddled against the rain in the doorways of failed businesses.

The city of Santa Cruz is not only failing to provide safe shelter during the atmospheric river on March 9, 2023 the city threatened to arrest Food Not Bombs if we shared our meal next to Parking Garage 10, forcing people to stand in the downpour to get the only daily hot meal provided to the homeless during three years of the pandemic lockdown. This sure is an odd way to honor the city’s one volunteer organization who shared food and survival gear every day since March 14, 2020.

On June 29, 2021, the City of Santa Cruz announced that they would receive $14.5M from the State to fund their “homelessness response.” So far there is little evidence that this has provided any assistance and it sure has not been used to provide emergency shelter from the brutal atmospheric river.

As has been the case during each of this winter’s storms hundreds of additional people have been made homeless. “There are about 1,700 people displaced from their homes in Pajaro, and the town is inundated with water throughout,” Monterey County Communications Director Nick Pasculli told NPR. Food Not Bombs has been providing food and sleeping bags to those who lost their housing during these storms.

Adding to the crisis is the fact that hundreds of families have already had their food stamps reduced and there are additional cuts set for April.

“The average household on CalFresh will lose about $200 a month” said Becky Silva, government relations director at the California Association of Food Banks. A single-person household, for instance, could drop from $281 a month in food aid to as low as $23 in April.

Silvergate Bank, Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank collapsed this week and a bank run on New Republic also started. Many area business who had deposits in Silicon Valley Bank may not be able to meet their payrolls. Over 150,000 tech workers were let go in 2022, many employed in Santa Cruz, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties. Another 68,500 tech workers were sacked in January 2023.

By the time you read this the news might be much worse, making the need to respond to the crisis in homelessness even more dire.

Along with a failing economy we are faced with the very real possibility of a global war between nuclear armed nations.

Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs had been preparing for the economic crisis, buying our first shipping container with a grant from Second Harvest. We held a benefit concert with David Rovics at London Nelson Community Center in September 2018 and a year later I shared a flyer pretending that the city had a plan to help the residents during the global economic crash. Well it looks like that time has come and still the city has no plan and it is up to volunteer groups like Food Not Bombs to provide for the community.

The pandemic was the first major event that showed we are on our own. The government has no intention of supporting anyone but themselves. News that it would only take a few weeks to “flatten the curve” gave us hope that the Little Red Church’s Monday night meal, the London Nelson Senior Meal and Saint Francis would reopen in a month or two. Our little crew sat at LuLu Carpenters on March 14, 2020, plotting out our COVID safety protocol believing that we could cover the void left by the shuttering of the indoor meals during the few months they would be closed.

A few days later the city asked us to lure our unhoused friends into their Triage Cages, fenced in parking lots scattered around downtown but we refused. Second Harvest Food Bank delivered its first of many truck load of rice, beans and other dry goods. We were approached by Live Oak School District seeking groceries for their homebound families so we did. We packed dry goods into an empty office and dining area at India Joze. Dozens of people stepped up to volunteer. People delivered homemade meals. Good hearted people dropped off handmade cloth masks. We connected parents with unhoused children, fixed vehicles saving their homes from the city tow trucks and helped charge their phones. We provided the only reliable hand washing station.

A few days later the city asked us to lure our unhoused friends into their Triage Cages, fenced in parking lots scattered around downtown but we refused. Second Harvest Food Bank delivered its first of many truck load of rice, beans and other dry goods. We were approached by Live Oak School District seeking groceries for their homebound families so we did. We packed dry goods into an empty office and dining area at India Joze. Dozens of people stepped up to volunteer. People delivered homemade meals. Good hearted people dropped off handmade cloth masks. We connected parents with unhoused children, fixed vehicles saving their homes from the city tow trucks and helped charge their phones. We provided the only reliable hand washing station.

The CZU Lightning Complex fires sent more people to our meals and clothing distribution. After winning a federal lawsuit against sweeping the homeless from San Lorenzo Park we began a weekly distribution of a pallet or more of food to Mama Shannon’s pantry and JP’s Kitchen in the Benchlands.

Food Not Bombs bought two more 20 foot shipping containers to store our back stock of food and equipment moving them each time the city evicted us from one empty parking lot to another.

So at the third anniversary of Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs sharing hot meals and survival gear it is clear that we can’t depend on the city to provide life saving services. But we can depend on them to implement the most brutal policies designed to inflict as much suffering as possible.

The violence of those at city hall is horrific and criminal. A very special kind of cruelty.

City of Santa Cruz – 831-420-5010

Mayor Fred Keeley  – fkeeley@cityofsantacruz.com

City Manager Matt Huffaker – mhuffaker@santacruzca.gov

Police Chief  Bernie Escalante – bescalante@cityofsantacruz.com

EVERYONE ON EARTH DIES FOR DEMOCRACY

“February 8, 2023 – The US Air Force announced earlier today that a test launch of a Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile with a mock warhead will take place late between 11:01 p.m. Thursday and 5:01 a.m. Friday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.” – Leonard Eiger, Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action

My grandfather loved me. He also directed the most deadly bombing campaign ever and claimed he killed more than a million people in Tokyo during his Operation Meeting House. I watched him spin around his den surrounded by his 63 framed black and white photos of the firebombing arguing with his friends Robert McNamara and Curtis LeMay, demanding they send the communists a message by dropping a nuclear bomb on Hanoi.

Like many of the architects of the rush towards World War III he attended the best schools: Phillips Academy, Dartmouth and Harvard Law. He was recruited into the Office of Strategic Services and was stationed in Burma.

I slept in his Needham, Massachusetts finished basement next to the two file cabinets of formulas that he would sell to Ken Olson, the founder of Digital Electronic. A photo of thousands of shirtless Burmese slaves pounding rocks with hammers or balancing baskets of stones on their heads sat next to my bed. He shared stories about how he helped set up the opium trade to the United States so they could flood the black community with heroin to keep them busy with addiction knowing the GI Bill wouldn’t offer equal benefits to those who shared the horrors of war.

I was expected to follow in his foot steps. I would grow up to determine who would live and who would die, saying that this was the “white man’s burden.”  Those I killed would not have to worry about the responsibility of such decisions. He shared that elections were theater designed to give the impression of Democracy. We couldn’t give real power to the ignorant masses. I was one of the genetically special people who would help defend corporate power.

In the months before Russia’s Special Military Operation I could see my grandfather in the words of the Brookings Institute, the Atlantic Council, Victoria Nuland and her husband Robert Kagan. Suggestions that a first strike against Russia might be necessary.

The call for a direct conflict and a suggestion the US could and should use nuclear weapons against Russia was outlined in the long rambling essay, “The Price of Hegemony – Can America Learn to Use Its Power?”’ by Robert Kagan in the May 2022 issue of Foreign Affairs outlining the rationale for going to war with Russia.

Kagan writes, “It is better for the United States to risk confrontation with belligerent powers when they are in the early stages of ambition and expansion, not after they have already consolidated substantial gains. Russia may possess a fearful nuclear arsenal, but the risk of Moscow using it is not higher now than it would have been in 2008 or 2014, if the West had intervened then.”

In the opinion piece “The U.S. Should Show It Can Win a Nuclear War” by Seth Cropsey, the founder of the Yorktown Institute, wrote is but one of dozens of articles preparing us for a nuclear conflict.

Cropsey writes, “The reality is that unless the U.S. prepares to win a nuclear war, it risks losing one.”

“The ability to win is the key. By arming surface ships with tactical nuclear weapons, as well as attacking a nuclear-missile sub and thus reducing Russian second-strike ability, the U.S. undermines Russia’s ability to fight a nuclear war.”

The foreign secretary Liz Truss told a Tory hustings event in Birmingham in August 2022 that she was willing to hit Britain’s nuclear button if necessary – even if meant “global annihilation”.

Calls for regime change in Russia is dangerous. Is there any leader who would let themselves be topped without a fight?

During a speech in March 2022 in Warsaw, Poland, President Biden said of Russian President Vladimir Putin: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” Thankfully the White House staff tried to tamp this statement down.

Sen. Lindsey Graham suggested that Russians should assassinate President Vladimir Putin.

“Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?” the South Carolina Republican asked in a March 2022 Tweet.

Roman Emperor Julius Caesar was assassinated by Brutus and others in the Rome Senate on the Ides of March. Graham was also referring to German Lt. Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, who tried to kill Adolf Hitler in the summer of 1944.

“The only way this ends is for somebody in Russia to take this guy out. You would be doing your country – and the world – a great service,” Graham said.

Do we really think that sending Ukraine F16 jets, long range missiles and tanks will force Russia to agree to end the war? Was bombing the Nord Stream pipelines and the Kerch Bridge the best way to reduce tensions? Will launching intercontinental nuclear capable missiles reduce the threat of a global nuclear war?

We might not be able to stop World War III but we should try. That is why I am helping organize Rage Against the War Machine protest on February 19, 2023.

PHOTO: One of the 63 photos of the firebombing of Tokyo

SURPRISE – You are under criminal investigation for buying hotel rooms for the homeless

22S – 07279 DCL

20S – 01888 PR

518 a  – extortion induced by wrongful use of force
472 – counterfeit seal
532A – false financial statement
182A – conspiracy to commit a crime
120275 – violation to comply with shelter in place


The pheromones of fear swept Californians indoors from the chilly mist of March 2020. News of death haunted the media. The streets were silent of all but the unsheltered, police and the hardy volunteers at the Santa Cruz Homeless Union COVID – 19 Relief Center and Food Not Bombs meal.

The CDC announced that every effort should be made to provide hotel rooms to the homeless to help stop the spread of COVID-19. Governor Newsom also announced that the State would provide millions of dollars in funding for what he would call Operation Room Key.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel’s March 19, 2020 article “Santa Cruz coronavirus ‘triage centers’ in the works for city’s unsheltered population” reported that the state would be “setting aside $50 million to convert hotel and motel rooms into quarantine options for those who are infected, plus more than 1,300 trailers statewide for the same use.”

“Newsom said one of his experts’ health models predicted that 56% — some 60,000 — of California’s estimated 108,000 unsheltered residents may contract the coronavirus in the next eight weeks.”

The article goes on to report the City Manager’s program:  “The city plans to open as many as seven outdoor city triage centers on an as-needed basis, temporarily housing between 10 to 15 people per site for about as long as 72 hours, O’Hara said.”

Mayor Justin Cummings visited our relief center at the Town Clock that same morning begging Food Not Bombs to help lure the homeless into their triage cages. I refused to cooperate with their demeaning program. With millions of dollars in the pipeline the city could place every unhoused person in a hotel room but the homeless were not worthy of a warm place to lay their heads. Reward them now and people would think it was possible to house everyone.

I was not willing to destroy my reputation by endorsing such a degrading  plan. I did let the Mayor know I would be happy to work with the city if they made an effort to provide hotel rooms for those who lived outside.

At about 10 am on March 23, 2020, I visited the Oceana Inn at 525 Ocean St, Santa Cruz and asked to rent 8 rooms for the homeless showing the manager a sample voucher I had designed that morning. They would not agree because the guests would be homeless people.

I crossed the street and spoke with the family managing The Islander Motel. After some back and forth they agreed to rent 8 rooms. I agreed to place an officer of the Santa Cruz Homeless Union in one of the rooms and that if there was any trouble we would remove that person. I gave them my credit card and paid for 8 rooms plus a damage deposit. That included the city’s 11% tax on hotel rooms.

The Motel Santa Cruz was not willing to rent any rooms but I was able to rent rooms at Ocean Gate Inn, Budget Inn Motel, Riverside Inn & Suites and Aqua Breeze Inn. The Aqua Breeze Inn reconsidered.

By lunch time I had paid for about 40 rooms using money I had from the sale of my farmland in New Mexico and an award I had received for my work supporting a vegan diet.

I let the volunteers at the relief center know the homeless union would be issuing hotel vouchers at 6:00 at the Town Clock. We already had social distancing marks of the line to get food and had surrounded the relief center in crates and caution tape to help maintain safety.

A volunteer started to add social distancing marks for the voucher distribution but she was arrested for marking the street so we stopped. News of a warm bed and shower raced through the community. Dozens showed up for a chance at a coveted night indoors. By 5 PM over 100 people had come for the chance to spend the evening in a bed. People were desperate to get a room and it was difficult keeping the crowd from swarming us.

Union officers arched behind me prepared to welcome their hotel mates.  Those desperate faces of hope will never leave my memory. It was crushing to announce we had exhausted our vouchers. “If we show the hotels that there won’t be any problems this will help us get another round of rooms tomorrow.”

The next morning Sergeant Jones and his patrol ordered us to shut down the relief center, handing us a letter from Chief Andy Mills who was across the street lording over a sweep of our friends who were camping next to the Post Office.

“Last night, March 23, 2020, you held a rally at the Clock tower, where dozens of people gathered close to one another. Under the current pandemic conditions and order from public health officials at the federal, state and local levels, you must immediately cease and desist from operating in an environment where people are forced to abandon safe social distancing.”

A frosty rain encouraged us to move our next voucher distribution to Garage 10 next to Wells Fargo. Our success the night before made it possible to rent rooms at Pacific Inn Santa Cruz, the Ocean Lodge and the Mission Inn & Suites making the total of 180 beds for the night of March 25th.

I painted about 100 social distancing dots at six foot intervals in the Parking Garage 10 at 24 River Street. The community cooperated with our request and stood on their dot.  We passed out 180 vouchers and officers of the union lead their guests to the assigned hotel.

On March 27th Salvation Army employee Jeremy Anthony came to me at the County Building and asked if I could place half of the 60 people at the Laurel Street Shelter into hotels. He said his guests were still sleeping eight inches apart on gym mats.

I drove to the hotels and rented another 125 beds reserving 30 for those crowded into the Laurel Street Shelter. I asked Jeremy if the Salvation Army would be willing to pay for two more weeks but he thought that was impossible and we agreed it would be better to give the rooms to people who couldn’t get into the shelter.

That same day Emergency 911 dispatch called to know if we had more vouchers. A social worker at Dominican Hospital asks if she could place her discharged patient into one of our beds. We are the reality the old system never was.

It’s day four of the great hotel voucher crusade. Thirty-six of our communities proud unhoused stand at six-foot intervals in the wet mud of the Santa Cruz Benchlands. We are operating by the street lights behind the County Court House. Cold drizzle, COVID-19, and the uncertain future drape us in sorrow.

Jake is a refugee of Police Chief Andy Mills’ morning of the lockdown sweep of the Post Office. But even though he lost his shoes in the day-long police action and stands barefoot for our rice and beans he is one of the lucky twelve who the city has placed in a hotel room for a week’s stay.

Sandra clutches our pink plastic clipboard and signs up for a room at the Riverside adding a cursive “God Bless You, Keith” below her signature. We share a smile of relief.

Lauren shivers in a beautiful lacy brown dress. It is her turn for the sacred hotel voucher for that one night at the inn. Tears cascade across her cheeks. She hasn’t bathed in days she whispers and sobs gripping her voucher for dear life with moist eyes of thanks as she joins her hotel mates.

I run out of rooms. My heart breaks as I report the desperate news and hand out blue tarps to the unfortunate. Melissa suggests I ask for their names. Put them first in line for Friday’s warm showers and soft bed and I hope their wish comes true.

A young Venessa finds a seat on the sliver of pavement next to her boyfriend Seth, looks up towards me and tells me not to worry. You did your best, they cheerfully add.

Mark grumbles the truth what everyone on the streets knows. The governor passed out $500 million to place those without housing in California’s hotels. That bought Chief Mills a week for twelve at the Motel Santa Cruz and his half dozen abandoned chain-link cages at the city’s parking lot gulags of triage. Maybe it was a psychological preparation for that final solution to the problem of our town’s useless eaters?

I leave ten of us to the frost.

Nearly three years after those first frightening days the activists at  Food Not Bombs were still comforting the unhoused every day. Twenty-five mile an hour winds and shards of rain soaked us on the one thousandth afternoon of providing daily meals, driving us from the Town Clock into the dry cavern of Garage 10. Frantic volunteers grab at a flying red canopy as it snaps into a twisted web of trash while others stuff my car with tables. Father Joel arrived with his donation of survival gear. Local students struggled to save our equipment from the gales.

After we had started setting up in a secluded corner of the garage two bedraggled Santa Cruz police officers arrived to our chaos of relocation, objecting to our safe haven but we ignore their pleas to retreat back into the deadly atmospheric river and by 3:00 pm that afternoon all are fed.  I felt so blessed that I was able to peel off my drenched clothing in the warmth of my girlfriend’s home. Those thousands of others forced to live in the storm would not have such luxury.

A crispy sun greeted our Santa Cruz Community Christmas Dinner. City hoisted wreaths gently sway from the Clock Tower on December 25, 2022. Volunteers glow with holiday joy as they spoon out blobs of stuffing, mashed potatoes and slices of ham provided by Veterans for Peace. A friend sits against the empty Light House Bank gate, his sad face reflecting the pain of Christmas separation and family regret.  For others we are family.

A second drenching storm crashes against our Pacific coast two days after the holiday festivities. Timbers bounce against the bridges crossing the San Lorenzo River. I will learn that many of my friends had rushed to scale the muddy slopes of the Pogonip to escape the rising torrents.

I get a call that police are swarming the garage area and I see two police officers forcing a cold camper out from under the sheltering overhang at the Wells Fargo ATMs into the drenching sheets of rain.

A secluded area of Garage 10 marked ‘No Parking” is a perfect location for our operation. Friends place our six new folding tables in our daily pattern. Drew strategically places the two remaining garbage cans saved from the winds of December 10th.

Ten or more Santa Cruz Police Officers amble up. Sergeant Denise Cockrum orders us to return to the ravages of the atmospheric river. I let her know we would be out of the garage at 3 and invited her to join us for lunch. It wasn’t long before she clamped on the metal cuffs and had me carted off to the county jail for an eleven hour visit and the promise of an arraignment for two misdemeanors on January 30, 2023

I arrived early to court on the appointed day. I couldn’t find my name on the docket. The window woman at Room 120 sends me to the second floor District Attorney’s office.

“Do I have a case today?” I ask sliding my drivers license into the trough under the plexiglass screen. She investigates her computer listings. “No, but you do have another case from March 2020.”

I ask her if she could print out the information. She can’t but she can write out the charges and this is what she marks down in blue ink and slides back to me with my identification.

22S – 07279 DCL
20S – 01888
518 a  – extortion induced by wrongful use of force
472 – counterfeit seal
532A – false financial statement
182A – conspiracy to commit a crime
120275 – violation to comply with shelter in place

The first line 222S-07279 DCL indicates the case of my alleged counterfeit vouchers did not disappear in March 2021 as I thought and more charges were added in 2022.

Why am I under investigation on felony charges and a violation to comply with shelter in place nearly three years after I spent close to $20,000 on hotel rooms for the homeless?

What would we find in the police reports on the great hotel voucher crusade?

Keith McHenry

PO Box 422

Santa Cruz, CA 95061

USA

1-800-884-1136

keith@foodnotbombs.net

1,000 Days of Compassion

Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs fills the lockdown void

The streets went silent that misty March 14, 2020 morning.  I passed only two other vehicles on my way to prepare the meal at the Veteran’s Hall. News that the indoor food programs had been ordered shuttered meant our unhoused friends would have to go without food if we didn’t step up and fill the void. Eight of us Food Not Bombs volunteers gathered at LuLu Carpenters that cold Saturday to discuss our plans. I think all of us were in a state of shock at the mystery that lay ahead. 

 A medical social worker who had just been trained in the COVID-19 safety protocols at Good Samaritans Hospital detailed what she had learned the day before. We moved our meal to the Town Clock from the Post Office so our line of guests would not be standing near the dozen or so people camping along the Water Street sidewalk. 

We were honored to fill in for the weekday meals at St Francis and Louden Nelson senior lunch during the two week lockdown to flatten the curve. When they reopened we would return to our weekend schedule.

Two weeks turned to a month, then two months, then two years and on December 10, 2022, our all volunteer group will have shared hot meals, drinking water and survival gear every afternoon for 1,000 days. 

The City of Santa Cruz responded to the crisis by erecting Triage Cages for the homeless in downtown parking lots while locking down everyone else. The Santa Cruz Homeless Union and Food Not Bombs responded by setting up a Covid -19 Relief Center at the Town Clock and placed 180 people in hotels for several nights. The police evicted us for the first of eight times claiming our hotel voucher distribution was an illegal gathering. 

Second Harvest stepped up and started their weekly deliveries of pallet loads of dry goods. They delivered at least 20 pallets of rice, beans and other provisions during the first week of the crisis. We filled the empty offices at India Joze at 418 Front Street, a shipping container, and warehouse at Barrios Unidos. We provided groceries to the Live Oak School District and helped them acquire their own account with Second Harvest.

Our kitchen moved from the Veterans Memorial Hall to India Joze to the Little Red Church and now up to Scotts Valley. The stress of loading and unloading our van several times just to set up became too much so we bought a second shipping container and placed it at our meal next to the abandoned Taco Bell at Laurel Street and when an out of town developer threatened to seize it we moved it across Front Street to lot 27.  When another out of town property speculator announced the destruction of India Joze and the other business on Front we bought a third shipping container and cleared out our supplies at the 418.

While our all-volunteer staff was scrambling to meet the needs of the ever growing number of the just evicted people we also provided food and logistical support for several Black Lives Matter marches, organized protests against the war in Ukraine and fed the strikes at the University.

The sky turned an eerie red as those fleeing the CZU Lightning Complex fire joined us at our Laurel and Front Streets meal. I remember several people coming to us desperate for a change of clothes.  

When the city forced us onto the Benchlands our equipment was flooded in two feet of water so we returned to the higher ground of Garage 10 only to be forced to Laurel and Front Streets. After we won a federal law suit stopping the eviction of those camped in San Lorenzo Park and those on the higher ground moved to the Benchlands our volunteers began our weekly delivery of a pallet or more of food to that community of hundreds every week.

Our group had to think creatively. We first met on Zoom then in person to figure out solutions to each logistical issue and set that week’s schedule of volunteer tasks. A food recovery team picked up at farmers markets, Trader Joes, Companion and Beckmanns bakeries, and a host of other food sources. Another group shared the meal, clothing and drinking water while  often having to calm people suffering from emotional crisis. We provided the only reliable hand washing station for hundreds. Others prepared the hot meals and spent hours washing pots and hotel trays. Community members graced our program with their own hot meals and survival gear donations. 

We repaired vehicular homes to keep them from the city tow trucks. We reunited family members seeking their unhoused children. We comforted the stunned newly homeless and helped them with  a pup tent,  a warm meal and a listing of mostly closed services. 

Our volunteers provided the annual Thanksgiving and Christmas community meals during the two years of restrictions. We also hosted a free concert during every holiday. We also lost many friends during these 1,000 days. Rick our Bread Man and Tree the hibiscus tea lady died early in the crisis. The death toll from the elements, murders and addiction has been horrific. We held our annual longest night of the year memorial to honor those who did not make it on the cruel streets of Santa Cruz and plan to do so again at the Town Clock this December 21st. 

We will be celebrating our 1,000th day with live music. The 1,000 Dancing Doves is performing at the Clock Tower at noon on Saturday, December 10th and Folk Punk musician David Rovics will be playing a benefit concert at the Resource Center for Nonviolence on Friday, December 9th at 6:30 pm.

We have 1,000 days of filling the void left by the governments while those vultures were too busy aiding investment firms in their construction of luxury condominium projects to provide necessities to their residents. 

We are practiced at responding to the impact of a failing economy. There is every indication that a Great Depression scale collapse could sweep the world in 2023 and we know city, county, state and federal officials are not about to help our community in this time of crisis. The politicians have wars to fund, metal and glass monstrosities to build, and off shore bank accounts to fill, so it will be up to all of us cooperating together to take care of the needs of our people.  

Our compassion will be required to navigate the difficulties ahead. Food Not Bombs is hosting a community meeting on Sunday, January 15, 2023, at the Resource Center for Nonviolence to discuss the logistics of survival as the economy crashes and we face cuts in electricity, food shortages, the possible transition into a cashless digital security state and increase in homelessness and poverty. 

If we all work together and think outside the box we can flourish. We invite you to join us. 

Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 USA santacruz.foodnotbombs.net – 1-800-884-1136

NINE HUNDRED DAYS OF LOVE

Day one of the pandemic restrictions here in Santa Cruz, California was on a misty Saturday, March 14, 2020. The indoor meals for the poor were ordered closed and access to water and toilets for those who lived outside locked.

 The volunteers of Santa Cruz Food Not Bombs met at LuLu Carpenters that morning to sketch out a plan on how to respond. A health professional walked us through the COVID safety protocol she had been taught at Good Samaritan Hospital the day before. We outlined our plan. Move to the Town Clock so the usual line of 40 people would not be standing next to the people living in tents up against the Post Office fence.  We planned to pass the plates down the row from gloved server to gloved server asking each person what they wanted added to their plate.

We were ready for a month long lockdown to slow the spread. Saint Francis, the senior meal at Louden Nelson and the Monday night coffee house at the Little Red Church would resume soon. We could fill the void of shuttered meal programs for a month or so at least.

It’s 900 days later and the indoor meals are still closed or restricted, no Monday night coffee house. Who would have imagined in those first days that we would have to navigate so many twists and turns in our journey to meet the needs of our community?

Preparing for the unknown is our speciality. We moved to the Town Clock and placed a distancing barrier of large yellow Trader Joe’s lugs and yellow caution tape between the serving tables and those joining us for a meal. The bleach stains on my seven black Food Not Bombs t-shirts attest to the hours spent disinfecting tables and van surfaces. The faint ghost six-foot-apart spray painted dashes marching towards our service areas are a sad reminder of those days of fear.

The only people outside were those without housing, our volunteers and the police. Traffic had vanished. I waved at drivers passing by and they waved back.

The city erected COVID triage cages on downtown parking lots to quarantine the unhoused. That cruel plan was abandoned in short order as the optics and our lack of cooperation with their plan to have Food Not Bombs lure the homeless into their inhumane scheme failed.

We unloaded dozens of pallets of dry goods donated by Second Harvest Food Bank, storing thousands of pounds of rice, beans and canned food first at Barrios Unidos and our first shipping container. We would buy two more 20 foot conex boxes in the first year of the crisis. They are also filled to the ceiling. We are getting ready for the food shortages.

We helped organize a weekly grocery distribution for the Live Oak School District even as the city was evicting us into the flooded grounds of the Benchlands, kicking us out of the Town Clock to Garage 10 on River Street, then out into the rain. Our equipment was swamped in nearly two feet deep water so we returned to the garage. They wouldn’t end their campaign of evictions until we returned to the Town Clock and ignored their efforts to drive us out of sight to the margins of our community. After all we have wars and poverty to protest and the Collateral Damage statue is the traditional public space for free speech and assembly. Our protest is daily from 12:00 noon to 3:00 pm and includes a hot full course meal, coffee, water, groceries and clothing. The theater of what is possible.

When the holidays came we helped organize that year’s Community Thanksgiving and Christmas hosting the well attended feast at Lot 27. The Vets Hall was a shelter and indoors at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History was out of the question according to government restrictions.  We collaborated with Lee Brokaw and the Veterans for Peace, the crew at India Joze and Steve Pleich. A few dozen people from the community volunteered to help. We had piles of pies. These were beautiful days of love and joy.

We also participated in blocking the city’s 2020 Holiday Evictions of the over 100 campers trying to survive at San Lorenzo Park. We joined the Santa Cruz Homeless Union in filing a Federal Lawsuit that stopped the sweep, protecting them from facing arrest if driven to the doorways and levee banks of downtown.

A year later we provided another Thanksgiving dinner at the corner of Laurel and Front Streets and overcame huge obstacles to share the Community Christmas Dinner under the parking garage at 24 River Street during the driving rain.

Desperate fire evacuees joined us at Lot 27 under the eerie red skies, seeking food and clothing as they fled the CZU Lightning Complex Fires, many with only the clothes on their back.

We had to adjust to ever changing conditions. We scrambled for a kitchen when the Vets Hall was turned into a shelter. India Joze kitchen bridged the gap. We secured the Little Red Church until they needed to reclaim their kitchen and had to move to a commercial space in Scotts Valley.

The daily packing and unpacking of our food, hand washing station, tables and canopies requiring skill and several trips a day in our van to and from the meal. This seemed unsustainable so we bought our second shipping container and placed it at our meal. A month later a luxury condominium developer surprised us one afternoon saying he would seize our equipment and shipping container. They had escrow in the morning he pleaded.  We had to call a flatbed to move it across the street from the abandoned Taco Bell to Lot 27 reclaiming the parking lot for a second time.

A late Friday afternoon call from the city manager’s office threatening to take our conex box to make room for more construction forced us to make another hasty move to the parking lots down Front Street when yet another threat by another luxury condominium developer from Sandy, Utah forced us to move to the Ron Swenson’s land near the Homeless Garden Project. But it didn’t take long for the city to kick us off his private property so we moved it and the tons of food it stores to a location out side the city limits.

In the early days the emotional stress of the unknown sparked outbursts and fights among some of the more fragile people attending our meal. There were times when it seemed someone might get beaten to death if we didn’t intervene. Just like our friends who joined us for food we never quarantined. But our shared days of misery in those first months helped strengthen our relationships and the tension and violence started to calm as people became relaxed about the pandemic’s threat.

We hosted Johnny’s free solar powered concerts at every holiday and celebrated the 40th anniversary of the founding of Food Not Bombs in Lot 27 with Keith Greeninger. Live music filled the perfect May afternoon during Soupstock 2022 at the San Lorenzo Duck Pond.

The people of Santa Cruz have been generous, delivering food, clothing, survival gear and money. A group has set up an herbal tea stand at the meal. The UCSC farm drops off their fresh produce. Random student groups pass by with vegan burgers. Curtis Reliford donated bundles of clothing to the music of Ray Charles. We have been touched by so many the list would fill pages.

Our meal is often the first place the just evicted come to find services. Since the shelters are always full we try to provide them with a pup tent and offer suggestions on where to hide. To see their expression of terror at the prospects of a cold night alone on the levee is almost more than one can bear.

We are Santa Cruz intertwined with those drifting homeless on our streets and struggling to stave off eviction. We help repair vehicular homes in an attempt to keep them from being seized and junked by the city. We’ve helped connect family members. We’ve embraced those in their times of crisis and danced together in defiance of the lockdown fear that once threatened to smother hope. We fought and struggled. We laughed and loved.

We claimed our freedom from the dystopian corporate state and their celluloid avatars in local government. Predatory vultures disinterested in making necessities of life accessible to those who share our seaside community. Blind to the reality of the food riots that our meals have stopped.

Our crew of volunteers have provided healthy hot meals with about 200 people every day for 900 days. The logistics can be challenging. We developed patterns of food collection, meal preparation and service.

One team would recover food from groceries, farmers markets and bakeries. They would order two or three pallets of food from Second Harvest, storing some in our secure shipping containers, some at our kitchen and at least one pallet was delivered every week to the pantry and kitchens of the Benchlands.

Our logistics included securing pallets of donated compostable paper products from WorldCentric and buying coffee, oils and sugar from Costco. We bought propane tanks and stoves, extra canopies, kitchen equipment and a third shipping container, packing it to the ceiling with more dry goods in preparation for the expected food shortages. Volunteers work to raise money for the monthly rent of $4,100 for our commercial kitchen and hundreds of dollars in gas for our delivery vehicles. There is always the hours of paperwork and reports for insurance, Second Harvest and the Internal Revenue Service.

A sea of other essential workers kept our vehicles in working order, printed our literature and supplied us with cooking and cleaning supplies. Security guards and cashiers at New Leaf helped me load and unload our many five gallon jugs of filtered water.

Another team washed and chopped vegetables and fruit while volunteer chefs staffed the cook pots and grill. Another team set up our three canopies, eight folding tables, looped yellow caution tape around the serving area, set out our hand washing station, signs and banners and bleached the tables clean.

Scotts Valley, Harbor and Santa Cruz High, UCSC and Cabrillo students joined those doing court ordered community service and our unhoused and housed volunteers in dishing out plates of our tasty hot meals.

After packing away all our equipment it was off to wash the seven or eight five gallon hotel trays, remaining pots and pans and serving supplies.

Then we did it all again the next day over and over again for 900 days.

And we will repeat this daily ritual for another 100 days and another after that, welcoming an ever increasing number gracing our dining area of the streets.

A total of 8.5 million Americans were behind on their rent at the end of August 2022, according to the US Census Bureau. And 3.8 million of those renters say they’re somewhat or very likely to be evicted in the next two months.

More requests for pup tents, more deliveries of paper products and more five gallon hotel trays of lovingly prepared hot dishes. More evictions, more billions sent to Ukraine, more of those frightened eyes on that first night of terror on the streets of Santa Cruz.

Another 100 days of opportunity for love.

Food Not Bombs – PO Box 422, Santa Cruz, CA 95061 USA

Please visit foodnotbombs.net

/http://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/

You can also make a donation here:

http://foodnotbombs.net/new_site/donate.php

NOWHERE LAND – The magical thinking of Santa Cruz Officials

Mama Shannon’s Pantry in the Santa Cruz Benchlands.

 “The staff at the Armory treated me so badly I climbed on the van with my walker and bags and moved to the bushes near the Benchlands,” explained a recently widowed woman in her 70s at the Union of the Homeless meeting this week. She was one of more than twenty Benchland residents who came to discuss the closing of camp.

Another camper spoke about staying at the Salvation Army run Overlook Camp. The van driver didn’t show so she was late to her job. Her employer wanted a note as to why she was late but to do so would tip her boss off to the fact she is homeless and would result in her losing her job. A third pointed out that you have to catch the van before 8:00 pm and if you miss it you have to spend the night on the streets.

At an April City council meeting City Manager Huffaker noted, “We did discover last week that some of the individuals that had secured alternative sheltering sites, for one reason or another, had made the decision to return to the Benchlands,” adding “Part of the challenge that we’re encountering as we move through the closure — and we do think it warrants getting some stronger controls of the physical site in place to help ensure that once individuals are relocating that we don’t have the possibility of folks repopulating the camp.”

The people participating in the meeting voted to invite city officials to the Monday, August 15th meeting so they could hear the voices of those who will be impacted by the announced eviction. They also suggested we request an audit of the millions spent by the city and county on homeless programs. We also agreed to send a letter to the city to get more details on the scheduled evictions.

So the closure of the camp is set to begin. City Manager Huffaker responded to the Homeless Union’s request for details on the evictions saying, “Fencing and closure of the upper park will begin next week.”

According to Jessica York’s August 4, 2022 article “City targets August camp closure” city spokesperson Elizabeth Smith claims “Meanwhile, in the face of a national supply chain shortage, Santa Cruz crews and contractors are limited in their access to chainlink fencing needed to portion off the benchlands camp in phases, Smith said. She added that the city’s likely first visible step in clearing the park will be to fence off the mostly unoccupied upper San Lorenzo Park for restoration, space which houses the park’s duck pond, children’s playground and lawn bowling area.”

The City Manager also responded “Following the closure of the upper park, limited fencing will be installed in the lower park, dividing the Benchlands into segments.  Closure of each segment of the Benchlands will be contingent on additional sheltering locations coming online. Our goal is to provide an alternative sheltering option to anyone in the park who wants shelter.

The Homelessness Response Team will be providing their Quarterly Homelessness Response Update at the Council’s next meeting, including additional details and updates on the planned closure and restoration of San Lorenzo Park. Broadly speaking, as mentioned above, the closure will occur in phases, as additional sheltering locations become available. City and County outreach teams are in the process of connecting with every individual in the camp and working to develop a rehousing plan for those interested in alternative shelter.

Food Not Bombs has been delivering more than a pallet of dry goods and produce to the Benchlands every week for nearly 2 years. Our volunteer, Joy Binah drove her blue Honda down to Mama Shannon’s pantry and JP’s kitchen loaded to the roof at 12:30 today, August 11th. As she was helping unload she turned and saw three police officers standing at the front of her car. “I’m towing you right now,” barked officer Ross. Joy asked him to take off his mirror sun glasses and he did. “Why aren’t you giving a warning?” she asked. “This is your warning,” he viciously blurted telling her she had to go up and finish unloading by the bike path.

So Joy drives the rest of the delivery up to the location Ross had directed her too. Two more officers arrive and demand she hand over her ID and Officer Klar writes her a ticket for Drive In A Park.

The city has repeatedly bragged about getting $14 million in funds to “help” the homeless but much of that money will pay for staff. Here is the city’s report on the use of the new money.

Community Relations Specialist (Budget: $111,836)

Public Works Building Maintenance Worker II (Budget: $67,094)

Public Works Homelessness Response Field Worker (Budget: $173,128)

Public Works Field Supervisor and Senior Homelessness Response Field Worker for Homelessness Response Field Division (Budget: $212,733)

Contract with County of Santa Cruz for additional Mental

Health Liaisons (Budgeted: $188,000)

Planning & Proposal Development Consultant (Budgeted: $336,000)

Legislative Advocacy Consultant (Budgeted: $150,000, reduced from $216,000) Land & Resource Management Contractor (Budgeted: $520,000)

Vehicle Abatement Contractor (Budgeted: $37,500)

The Homeless Persons Healthcare Project claims about 250 people make the Benchlands their home but the number could be much higher. The Sentinel reported on April 19, 2022, that they counted 285 tents.

The numbers of those living outside is unclear and the disorganization of the February 2022 Housing and Urban Development required Point In Time Count made the programs traditional undercount even less reliable. According to the report there were 2,167 people unhoused in Santa Cruz County in 2019 and 2,299 people unhoused this year.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel August 10th, story on the Point In Time Count at the Board of Supervisors noted “Officials also did not find any unsheltered children younger than age 18 and youth age 18 to 24 saw a 61% reduction in homelessness.”  I personally know a number of “unsheltered children younger than 18” who lived outside during the February count.

Early this year, Huffaker announced a goal of July for relocating the Benchlands campers to alternative shelter sites. “So far, the city has relaunched a controlled encampment for about 30 people at its River Street property and recently completed lengthy negotiations with the Salvation Army to open the “Armory Overlook” outdoor encampment in DeLaveaga Park on the National Guard Armory’s south lawn. Opened last month to an initial 20 occupants, the property is slated to hold a maximum of 65 ongoing occupants, with an additional 10 spaces reserved for emergency overnight stays.

In August the number of spaces for those being evicted from the Benchlands remained the same.

About 60 individuals evicted from the National Guard Armory in DeLaveaga Park to the Benchlands in June can return. Another 70 people could move to the pup tents at the Overlook camp next to the Armory but most of those spaces are already occupied by people so desperate they are willing to stay there, and the 30 pup-tents at the encampment at 1220 River Street are also occupied, so in reality of the 160 proposed shelter spaces for the over 300 people now struggling to survive in the Benchlands the proposed shelter spaces are already filled.

If the Benchland evictions happen the City’s misuse of the $14 million will leave the campers to seek shelter in the doorways and roadsides of downtown Santa Cruz or force people into the dry tinder of the Pogonip.

This winter the number of people becoming unhoused is sure to increase and could double by the first of the year.

An August 10, 2022, Associated Press story reports, “I really think this is the tip of the iceberg,” Shannon MacKenzie, executive director of Colorado Poverty Law Project, said of June filings in Denver, which were about 24% higher than the same time three years ago. “Our numbers of evictions are increasing every month at an astonishing rate, and I just don’t see that abating any time soon.”

 “According to The Eviction Lab, several cities are running far above historic averages, with Minneapolis-St. Paul 91% higher in June, Las Vegas up 56%, Hartford, Connecticut, up 32%, and Jacksonville, Florida, up 17%. In Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, eviction filings in July were the highest in 13 years, officials said.”

The Public Policy Institute of California reports, with the state’s eviction ban set to end on June 30, almost 1.5 million California renters are behind on their rent payments, and more than 600,000 of them believe that they are very or somewhat likely to face eviction in the next two months, according to recent Census Bureau surveys.

When I spoke with Santa Cruz Mayor Sonja Brunner on August 10th, she agreed that the doorways downtown are already occupied each night by those who cannot find a place to sleep.

LISTEN TO THE VOICES OF THOSE WHO LIVE IN THE BENCHLANDS

Please join us at the Santa Cruz Homeless Union meeting, Monday, August 15, 2022, starting at 6 pm at the Resource Center For Nonviolence, 612 Ocean Street, Santa Cruz.

www.foodnotbombs.net

“I AM DONE WITH THE LEFT-RIGHT DIVIDE. IT’S NOW THE HUMANS VERSUS THE DEADLY ROBOTIC CORPORATE STATE”

“I am done with the left-right divide. It’s now the humans versus the deadly robotic corporate state”

Keith McHenry of Food Not Bombs is interviewed by Paul Cudenec

Paul Cudenec: Thanks very much for agreeing to this exchange, Keith. It is very encouraging to know that in this age of near-universal deceit and hypocrisy, there are still individuals out there who stand true to their values. First of all, I gather you have a proud family history of fighting for freedom, going back to the American struggle for independence from Britain?

Keith McHenry: Thanks Paul, at this point there is nothing more important than resisting this rush to the totalitarian police state. Our liberty, humanity and connection to the natural world is at stake and we don’t have much time to stop this catastrophe. Events grow more dire every day so, by the time people read this, the devastation of war, censorship, famine and digital slavery may be so severe many in our audience are likely to feel hopeless, but hang in there! This could be a transformation even larger than that of the American Revolution.

Yes, the first member of my family to arrive in North America was a young James McHenry who stepped onto the docks at Philadelphia in 1773. I grew up knowing that he had been on George Washington’s staff during the war. Family history claims a 20 year old James was recruited into the uprising by Dr Benjamin Rush when James was his medical student. James was tasked with starting a field hospital in Cambridge Port in preparation for what became know as the “Battle of Bunker Hill” and met George Washington there. Dr James McHenry was at the surrender of British general Cornwall at Yorktown, participated in the Continental Congress signing the US Constitution as a delegate of Maryland, was Secretary of War under Washington and Adams. There is a fort in Baltimore Harbor named after him where the text of the US National anthem about bombs “bursting in air” was written by Francis Scott Key during the British bombardment during our war of 1812.

Washington wrote of my ancestor at the low point in the revolution during the winter at Valley Forge: “McHenry’s easy and cheerful temper was able to bear the strain which we suppose must sometimes occur between two persons thrown so closely and so constantly together in a position of social equality and military inequality.” Those who know me may say I also have a cheerful temper.

On the other hand I had a grandfather who dedicated his life to defending corporate power. My mother’s father volunteered to join the Office of Strategic Services, the precursor of the US-CIA. He directed the globe’s most deadly bombing campaign, burning as many as a million civilians to death in Tokyo in Operation Meeting House. When I was a child I watched him argue over the phone with his military friends Robert McNamara and Curtis LeMay demanding they drop the nuclear bomb on Hanoi as he swaggered around his office surrounded by photos of his raids on the Japanese city.

These two relatives helped shape my belief that I need to dedicate my life to ending corporate power and at the same time showed me that a mortal like me could have an impact on the direction of society.

PC: It took me quite a while, as a young man, to find my way to anarchism, but I understand you got there at a very early age! How did that happen?

KM: My first step in my evolution to adopting the ideas of anarchism really started in the ancient Hopi village of Old Oribi in what is now Arizona. My father’s father had lived with the Hopis during the Great Depression, becoming friends with the elders of the 2,000 year old stone pueblo. I was witness to the Snake Dance where young men held rattlesnakes in their mouths as the community watched from the roof tops above the dusty plaza. Large drums roared at one end. At the end of the dance, the boys who had just become men handed food to their audience who, like me and my family, were perched on the mudded roofs of the rock homes surrounding the dance floor. This was before electricity had arrived in these majestic lands.

My family also sat on the rim of Glenn Canyon and watched the cement trucks hugging the far wall descending to the mighty rapids to dump their loads into the foundation of a dam on the Colorado River that would, once it was completed, flood hundreds of Anasazi cliff dwellings, beautiful rock ruins I would be one of the last people to see. I was five and six when I stood on the edge of Second Mesa at Walpi hundreds of feet above the burial grounds. The spirits of those whose centuries of graves lay below bathed me in a warm golden wind of eternity, flooding my essence with a feeling that I would always be one with the cosmos. I was witness to a vast wilderness free of the modern contraptions of murder and sterility. That feeling has never left me.

A few years later when my father was a ranger stationed at Shenandoah National Park in Virginia he gave me a copy of “Walden” by Henry David Thoreau. I had just learned to read so I started with the shorter essay in the back of the paperback called “On Civil Disobedience” and that snippet of inspiring text, “I heartily accept the motto, ‘That government is best which governs least’; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically” changed me.

I read that life-changing text when I was in the fifth grade. The Vietnam War was raging. Like many American families we ate dinner while watching the chilling images of the bloody conflict in Southeast Asia with those body count numbers on the evening news. My mother’s brother who I adored was eager to join in the tragedy as a paratrooper. He was spared that horror because he contracted hepatitis in basic training and was hospitalized. The failure to live and die in the jungles as a hero doomed him to a life of self-hate.

Another relative was stationed at the national morgue and gave our family a drive through the Dover Airbase where I was witness to the huge stacks of shiny tin coffins that marched along the tarmac like rows of city blocks. Block after block of caskets waiting to receive the bodies of America’s dead youth.

I lived in the racially segregated town of Luray, Virginia at a time when “colored only” and “whites only” signs were sold at the local Five and Ten shop on Main Street. The murder of Martin Luther King Jr and the riots that followed was another influence that made Thoreau’s night in jail as a tax resister have relevance. Our family happened to head out on a vacation from our home, passing a burning Washington DC and Baltimore and a journey through the black neighborhood of Philadelphia under military occupation. Tanks, gatling guns and helmeted soldiers armed with M-16s and angry german shepherds made an impression. Smoke from the uprising filled our hotel room that evening.

So when I read Thoreau’s argument in his lecture “On Civil Disobedience”, explaining that he had refused to pay his poll tax because he would not contribute to the funding of the Mexican war and a slave state, I saw the similarities to my own time and adopted core aspects of his philosophy.

When I was 14 years old I took my first job cleaning an art gallery. I recall being so happy that I had joined the fellowship of working Americans as I sat on a step of the building across the street eating my first lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwich. That was also the moment I vowed to never pay for war and started my journey as a tax resister and free person untethered to the state. I was also determined to create my own version of Thoreau’s Concord of seekers. Food Not Bombs became my global Concord. I would cast off the use of my Social Security number after my first arrest when I was 18 years old and lived free from the clutches of the State.

PC: Could you say a little bit about Food for Bombs, how that came about and what it aimed, and indeed aims, to do?

KM: Food Not Bombs is a global all-volunteer movement that protests war and poverty by taking direct action. Our people share the gift of food with anyone, without restrictions, while reclaiming the public commons. We are independent of state and corporate power. Our activists recover food that can’t be sold from groceries, bakeries, farms and distributors, prepare vegan or vegetarian meals that are shared on the streets behind the banner of Food Not Bombs.

Our main goal besides meeting the needs of the poor is to influence the public to take action to force the state to redirect our resources from the military to provide access to healthy food, safe housing, education and healthcare. We are a classroom that practices the philosophy of anarchism without the dogma of the fashion anarchist.

The first collective came together at an anti-nuclear action in New Hampshire, “The May 24, 1980 Occupation Attempt of Seabrook Nuclear Power Station.” A friend, Brian Feigenbaum, was arrested at the protest and we were able to secure his bail from someone with means. On the way home we agreed to hold bake sales to pay the contributor back. That turned out to be a slow way to raise money. We also had a moving company called Smooth Move and one family we were helping was tossing out a copy of the poster “It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need, and our air force has to have a bake-sale to buy a bomber”. This gave us the idea to buy surplus military uniforms, set up our poster at our bake sale and tell those walking by that we needed help buying a bomber. This got the attention of pedestrians who otherwise would have rushed past, giving us the opportunity to speak to them about the threat of nuclear war, poverty and hunger.

In 1979 and 80 I was a produce worker at a natural food grocery called Bread and Circus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I took the produce that was wilted or bruised and could not be sold to several families living in public housing on Portland Avenue. One day one of the mothers pointed out the construction of the new glass building across the street from their crumbling housing, noting that it was about to be completed and that scientists who would be designing nuclear missiles would be moving in. This gave me the idea for the name Food Not Bombs.

The street theater of our bake sale was so effective at engaging people who walked past in conversation that we adopted the street theater ideas of the Living Theater. We also started a campaign against the banks who financed and would profit from the construction of the Seabrook Nuclear Station. The First National Bank of Boston was our main target and when we learned that their stockholders meeting would be held on March 26, 1981, at the Federal Reserve Bank we decided to protest by setting up a soup line on the Atlantic Avenue sidewalk outside the towering facility. We asked our friends to join us at a “soup line” dressed as Depression Era hobos with the intention of giving a visual example of the future we would face if we failed to stop the policies of Ronald Reagan, the nuclear industry and banks. The night before the action we realized we had not recruited enough people to look like a soup line so I went to the last surviving homeless shelter from the days of the Great Depression. I spoke with those sitting around the bleak tile room of the Pine Street Inn about the protest. Some recalled their participation in the protests against the Vietnam War and expressed excitement at attending. The next day nearly everyone I had spoke with joined us. Pedestrians rushing past said they were surprised to see a soup line just a month after Reagan had become president. The guys from the shelter told us there was no food for the homeless in Boston and suggested we set up every day. That evening we agreed to do just that.

I started a second group in San Francisco in 1988. The police made 94 arrests of our volunteers for sharing food without a permit that summer. I would learn some 35 years later that the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force had sent a memo to the San Francisco Field Office about the August 22 arrests, claiming Food Not Bombs was “a credible national security threat”. The arrests sparked interest in other cities so I took my notes on how I started the San Francisco group and made a flyer, “Seven Steps to Starting a Local Food Not Bombs Group” and mailed it to those who wanted to start a chapter in solidarity. During the next few years the city would make a total of 1,000 arrests and with each wave of repression more people would respond by starting their own local group. I also made a point of letting people know they could use the carrot and fist logo and any other Food Not Bombs images or texts without restriction.

I was arrested 94 times between 1988 and 1994 and was framed on three violent or serious felonies and faced 25 years to life in prison, spending a total of 500 days in jail. Volunteers were beaten by the police and our food was seized and tossed out. We organized a system to reduce the loss of meals using decoy buckets with tiny amounts of food.

These arrests in San Francisco, followed by arrests in Florida, inspired the formation of more chapters. Today there are at least 1,000 groups in over 65 countries. We provided the food aid to the survivors of Hurricane Katrina and hundreds of our volunteers helped with Hurricane Sandy. Our volunteers also provided food and material relief after super Typhoon Yolanda smashed the Visayas region of Philippines.

Food Not Bombs has also provided food and logistical support for direct actions to defend the environment, indigenous sovereignty, strikes, anti-war actions, Occupy and many other anti-globalization protests including the WTO blockades in Seattle in 1999 and Cancun.

Maybe the most impressive action we inspired was the uprising against the corrupt government of Iceland that resulted in the collapse of the political leadership and the jailing of several bankers. It is clear to me that Food Not Bombs must step up our organizing efforts as the planned economic calamity of 2022 will make the 2007 financial crisis seem minor by comparison.

Our four decades of organizing against international economic policies takes us to the point where we are today, where we need to take action against the “Build Back Better” stakeholder capitalism policies of the World Economic Forum, the World Health Organization and other global corporate institutions. There is a continuity in our founding resistance to corporate plunder and its ravages of poverty and war outside the Federal Reserve Bank in Boston and our resistance to the trans-humanist totalitarian technocratic globalist policies threatening our humanity and Earth today.

PC: What projects were you involved in at the start of 2020 and what was your initial reaction to the Covid moment?

KM: I had just returned from three weeks in Guatemala where I had been writing a book about my life when news came that a deadly pandemic was about to sweep the country. I had intended to continue writing and help with the preparation and sharing of our weekend meals but that changed four days after my arrival in Santa Cruz, California.

When we learned that the indoor meal programs for the homeless and poor had been ordered to close on March 14, my local Food Not Bombs group agreed to fill that void. If we didn’t start sharing food and water with the unhoused community, hundreds of our friends would go hungry and suffer from a lack of drinking water.

That morning we met to formulate a plan on how to share meals safely under the reported conditions. We moved our weekend meal to the Clock Tower, a public plaza across the street from where we shared our normal weekend meal because about 20 people were camping up against the fence that protects the Post Office from the homeless. We didn’t think it was wise to have a line of over 100 people standing so close to people and their tents.

Like many other people in our group, I had the impression the crisis would last a month or so and the other food programs would reopen. That was at a time when the authorities were claiming we needed “two weeks of quarantine to flatten the curve”. So we set up a daily meal, our DIY hand washing station and a distribution of survival gear in solidarity with our local homeless organization, calling our project the Santa Cruz Homeless Union COVID-19 Relief Center and Food Not Bombs meal.

I remember being impressed to hear that many of my unhoused friends found that the lockdown was liberating. Everyone, housed and unhoused, was united in this chaos. Many people who lived in the streets told me on day one that they thought the whole fear story was a scam and nearly every unhoused person who I spoke with claimed that their rough life would make them immune from any plague. None of my homeless friends worried about getting COVID. The only concern they had was being able to get drinking water and something to eat.

It seems crazy now but in the first weeks of the pandemic we had an aggressive policy of wiping down our tables and our delivery van with bleached water. We wrapped caution tape looped through large yellow Trader Joes grocery lugs that we placed around our serving tables to add distance between the servers and the people coming to eat. A week later we spray painted white dashes in six-foot intervals for social distancing along the sidewalk leading to the serving area. The police claimed the virus could be passed from person to person if we continued the practice of letting people rummage through our clothes donations and, to avoid being shut down, we had volunteers hold each item up so our friends could decide if it was something they would need.

That same week the City erected homeless triage centers in downtown parking lots that were nothing more than chain-linked cages with a couple of portable toilets. The mayor of the city stopped at our meal and asked us to move to a location where we could help them lure the unhoused into their cages. I refused. I wouldn’t let them use the trust we have with the unhoused to intern those who live outside. They abandoned their program a couple days later after they realized the unhoused were not interested in cooperating. The governor of the state announced that the government would provide millions to buy or rent hotels for the homeless to quarantine but our city and county refused to take them up on the offer, even though we are a tourist town and the hotels were nearly empty. Our city leaders have been vocal about the unhoused being less than human and not worthy of help, which was at the core of their refusal to move everyone inside.

I remember thinking this could be the beginning of an economic collapse and that we needed to prepare. It looks like I wasn’t far off the mark. Our Food Not Bombs chapter ordered a truck load of dried goods from Second Harvest Food Bank. Twenty or more pallets of rice, beans and canned goods were unloaded outside the kitchen we were renting at the time. But the county government took over the facility to shelter a couple dozen unhoused people in pup tents lined across the auditorium above the kitchen. We had to find a new place to cook and moved our pallets of food to a closed restaurant and a 20-foot refrigerated shipping container we had secured a year before with a grant from the food bank.

My girlfriend Kathleen was a social worker at two local hospitals. Patients said to have COVID were wheeled down the hallways under plastic tents on their way to a COVID floor. The first days had a feel of a dystopian science fiction movie. Radio and TV programs blasted out doom. They screamed that we could all die if we didn’t obey. Nonstop fear, homeless triage cages, images of body-bagged people being wheeled to refrigerated trucks, health officials standing with Trump announcing emergency measures. We all witnessed the media madness. This was my first tip that there was another agenda other than public health.

It is no wonder those locked into their homes lost the plot. If you didn’t venture outside you would think, from the constant terror on the media, that the streets were littered with the dead.

I had just sold my permaculture farm in New Mexico and was given a financial award by a group to honor my dedication to promoting a vegan lifestyle, so I had a bit of money for the first time in my life. In an attempt to build pressure to provide dignified accommodation to those forced to live in the streets, I paid for eighty beds and announced I would be providing hotel vouchers at 6:00 pm that evening. Over 100 people arrived and the crush of desperate people seeking for a chance of a night in a bed and a hot shower was heartbreaking. The chief of police declared it a violation of COVID gathering restrictions, telling the media that we were holding an illegal rally rather than providing a chance to sleep in a hotel for the evening. I was able to pay for two more nights for 180 people and the local shelter asked me to put up half their people on the fourth night. I was investigated by the police for handing out counterfeit hotel vouchers but they never took me to court.

The county government was offered millions to provide hotel rooms but at the height they placed less then 150 of the over 2,000 people who lived outside in their empty motels. This was a sign that they did not value the unhoused as fully human. In the early months of the crisis there were more than 2,000 unused hotel beds in Santa Cruz since tourism was over for the near term.

During the first months of the lockdowns, the streets of Santa Cruz were empty of vehicles. If I happened to pass another motorist I would wave and they would nearly always respond with a nod or gesture of their own. The public restrooms were closed and drinking water was scarce. The only people walking the streets were those who lived outside.

The largest challenge was calming the violence and acting-out of those who were already suffering from mental health issues. The tension was intense in those early days and those people who were already having emotional difficulties really freaked out, making the sharing of our meals otherworldly. Lots of yelling and fights. There were times when I had to step in and keep people from beating someone to death. But we didn’t stop and have been out on the streets sharing food and water with our community for nearly 900 days in a row now., with services that the governments are refusing to provide.

Since we were the only group making sure those who lived outside had food, the public was generous and we were able to buy two more 20-foot shipping containers which we have stocked to the roof with dry goods. We also bought a water filtering system to clean the river water if the electricity failed, which is a real possibility here in the world’s fifth largest economy of California. We also prepared to cook outside in the event that gas is cut off, stockpiling propane tanks and stoves.

There was a massive forest fire that forced hundreds of people from their homes. A thick red smoke blotted out the sun for days. Fire evacuees came to us not only for food but to replace their lost clothing. We also have been giving out cheap pup tents to those who have just moved to the streets or had their vehicle or tent confiscated by the city.

We defied the fear with our introduction of a free solar-powered concert at our meals during each holiday. People danced to the live music and enjoyed each others’ company. While most people were isolated in their homes receiving food from delivery services while glued to their computer screens, our poor and homeless friends were free. In the first two years only two of my unhoused friends reported contracting COVID. Crystal worked nights at a shelter and she felt ill for two days. Dream Catcher slept at the shelter and was sick for a week. Everyone else I met who said that they had caught the dreaded disease lived inside and did as they were instructed. They had cowered before their TVs and computers and resisted the temptation to interact with other humans.

We frustrated the authorities with our gatherings but there was little they could do. The jails were full and when they did arrest our friends the police released them as soon as they arrived outside the jail gate. The courts were closed for nearly a year so we ignored our charges and went on with our lives. I remember one of our homeless volunteers was ticketed for violating the quarantine. His citation was for $1,000 and his address was marked as “transient.” He ignored it, other than to show it around to highlight the insanity of our times.

We were free. We weren’t afraid.

The Homeless Persons Healthcare Project has been aggressively injecting people, offering the unhoused $50 gift cards. It has only been in the past few weeks now that my homeless friends have started to report that they are very ill with COVID. All of those I meet who now have COVID have been injected. None of my unvaccinated friends have been ill with COVID in over a year now.

PC: So all this changed your overall understanding of the situation? How would you now describe what has been happening over the last couple of years?

KM: In the first weeks of the pandemic I feared for the worst. I recall posting negative comments about those who questioned the official narrative at first but the fear narrative around COVID was being pushed nonstop in the media, suggesting there was more to this than public health. I was also witnessing that no one I knew who, according to the screaming media should be dying, was ill. Each day I saw that the only impact was closed stores, empty streets and shuttered food programs, which increased my belief that the pandemic was not as severe as advertised.

When Trump announced the Operation Warp Speed, that got my attention. A military program coordinated with some of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world suggested there was more to this drama than concern for public health. The endless announcements that each program was sponsored by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation didn’t add to my confidence that this hysteria was based in reality. I had spent the past two decades organizing against the Gates of the world and the patenting of his GMO seeds with groups like the Organic Consumer Association.

Since I have been the direct target of covert disruption by state intelligence agencies for the past four decades I am naturally suspicious of official narratives. The media lied us into war after war so this had the same feeling as the WMD of Iraq, the babies taken from Kuwaiti incubators, the Gulf of Tonkin incident and other disinformation campaigns of the past.

It wasn’t long after that that one of my closest friends, Dr. Shannon Murray, came to Santa Cruz to visit Kathleen and me. She was on her way to start a new life since her employment as a scientist had vanished. She is a virologist and an expert on gain-of-function research.

I knew her when she was helping develop the Moderna vaccine at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. She feared there could be major health problems from the vaccines since the first human trials had not yet taken place and more study was needed before they could be considered safe. She shared that the animal trials had not been promising, killing nearly 80% of the vaccinated animals who were exposed to SARS-CoV-1. She also expressed concern that research in these vaccines had abruptly become a secret military program, sharing that her access to data had suddenly gone dark in January. At that time she was still using an alias, as did her coworkers, so they could share their concerns without fear of being banned from their life’s work or murdered like former Merck Pharmaceutical sales executive Brandy Vaughan, who was killed just as the pandemic was being announced. Like some of those she worked with at the NIH, Shannon refused to get the COVID jab and encouraged us to refuse as well.

As I said, my girlfriend Kathleen worked at a local hospital in a COVID wing. As the days passed she failed to see the deaths suggested by the news. Sure, many elderly people filled the section but few succumbed to the virus. Once the vaccine program began she would return home to share one story after another of the stroke and heart attack patients who had just received their first jab. Those injected were fast becoming the people who filled the ICU unit. They were the ones leaving in the body bags.

Sharing food every day outside also made it clear that the official story was false. Every day a hundred or more people would gather together to eat. No one said they had contracted COVID or shared that they had the symptoms. The deaths of our friends came at the end of a needle of fentanyl-laced heroin and meth or from the brutality of a life lived unprotected from the elements.

When I saw people the media called anti-vaxxers armed with AR-15s waving confederate and Trump flags at protests against the lockdowns I was horrified. There is no way I would ever join people like the Proud Boys and Trump supporters in demonstrations against COVID policies. The questioning of Dr Fauci was framed as a position taken only by racist gun-toting Trump supporters, effectively driving my friends in the left into the arms of the military and big Pharma. It seemed every leftist friend had retreated to their apartments in fear of dying.

I had the impression I was one of only a couple of progressive activists that thought something wasn’t right. I would slowly learn that several other left friends also shared my perspective. I connected Shannon with an old journalist friend, Sam Husseini, who had been writing on gain-of-function research and bio-warfare programs at places like the Fort Detrick Biological Warfare Laboratories. I learned that another colleague of mine, the director of the Organic Consumers Association, Ronnie Cummings, and my associate Vandana Shiva were also expressing concerns that mirrored our work together against Monsanto. So even though I remained publicly silent, worried my opinion could cause harm to the Food Not Bombs movement, I started to feel less alone. This was the era where, in desperation, I started to post cryptic messages about understanding how people like the artists Käthe Kollwitz must have felt as everyone she knew seemed to have signed on to the National Socialist agenda during the march towards World War Two. I did get some confused comments.

When my dear friend in her 40s messaged me from Australia that she almost died from myocarditis I could not be silent any more. That was the last straw and I became a vocal opponent of the jabs.

I first wrote a letter on this subject when I received an invitation to attend a meeting forming a new progressive alliance. To participate you had to provide proof of a vaccination or a negative COVID test. I wrote to invite the progressive community to stand in solidarity with the working class by refusing to meet in facilities that demand proof of participation in the vaccine experiments. Nearly every “essential worker” I depended on for auto repair, printing and other supplies shared my perspective on the COVID clampdown. The left I had known stood for workers’ rights during the first four decades of my life, but that had changed. We had become tin foil hat deplorables even though those smearing our position depended on us to provide for their needs.

Before the invitation to this meeting asking me to help start a new progressive group, I had shrugged off the proof of vaccine requirements. I ignored the proof of vaccination requirement for attendance to the American Civil Liberties Union awards ceremony since I couldn’t go anyway because I had to cook that day. I later learned that the outdoor venue for the meeting did not require this proof, nor did the Simpkins Family Center where the progressive alliance was intending to meet. My allies were the ones implementing this policy. Allies I know had been sitting at their computers during the entire pandemic and rarely went outside to see reality. One of the organizers kept trying to get me to be “an example for the community” by getting “vaccinated”. I patiently explained the reasons I would never subject myself to the poison but he continued to pressure me.

I also had friends that were eager for me to attend the opening of the documentary “Foodie for the People” that had a section that featured me and the work of Food Not Bombs. The filmmaker was excited to tell me that he used a clip from his interview with me to promote the film. The announcement for the film required proof of vaccination or a negative PCR test. But I also learned that Del Mar Theater, where the movie was being shown, didn’t require proof of vaccination or a negative test yet those showing the movie had made it a requirement.

The final insult was the day I went to my favorite activist cafe and was told I could not enter unless I could show proof of vaccination. That was it. I had been outside nearly all day, every day of the pandemic. I never spent a second inside being quarantined. I could see the reality of the pandemic with my own eyes. I couldn’t remain silent any longer.

I wrote an essay, “Looking at COVID as a Progressive” that I posted online and emailed it to the community. That broke things open. By the end of the week I started to get emails and calls of relief from friends who had been silent, believing they too were alone in feeling that the pandemic restrictions were part of a power grab.

One of the most discouraging aspects of the psychological operation was to see posts by Food Not Bombs groups promoting the vaccines and masks. One New York chapter shared an announcement that people could come to our meal and get vaccinated under the headline SAFE – EFFECTIVE – FREE. Another chapter posted an announcement to an outdoor protest in late June 2022 with a large type demand to “Wear Masks”. To see the movement I helped start actively support a totalitarian corporate agenda has been heart-breaking.

PC: Are there now many others in your circles who share your dissident take?

KM: Thankfully several of my close housed as well as unhoused friends are on the same page. As I pointed out before, my many of my homeless friends didn’t fall for the fear campaign right out of the gate. I was heartened when I watched The Convo Couch podcast early in the crisis and heard Pasta and Fiorella express the same bewilderment at our friends and allies pushing the agenda of those we had spent years organizing against. Glory and Steve at the Slow News Day also expressed amazement at the way in which those who once stood with us in the issues of workers’ rights, resistance to mega corporations and the military had become vocal defenders of those threatening our freedoms. After I posted “Looking at COVID as a Progressive” my circle doubled.

PC: Two things surprised me about the reaction of the rump of the left, including anarchists, to Covid. The first was the position they took, completely accepting the official line and supporting masks, lockdowns, social distancing and injections. The second was the way that this was not just an opinion, but an article of faith which had overnight somehow become ideologically essential. If you questioned government, opposed Big Pharma, exposed the links between the two or stood up for individual freedom, you were suddenly considered “right-wing”! The vitriol and vehemence with which I was attacked really shocked me. Did you experience anything like that?

KM: I have often been called a Trumper or right wing by my anarchist and other left friends during this insanity. People are not so bold any more but for the first two years people said they were shocked that I had become a far right Republican Trump follower since I had been known as an anti-war leftist. I think the fact that I have been out on the streets for nearly 900 days, sharing food when the state provided nearly no support at all for the unhoused, has made it difficult for local people to express this opinion openly to me. I am also seeing less of these direct attacks on social media now. I find it interesting that my allies in the anti-globalization and peace movements do not see a connection between our protests against the Weapons of Mass Destruction lies before the Iraq war, GMOs, a woman’s right to choose abortion and big Pharma but now are public about supporting forced vaccination, censorship, and the war in Ukraine.

PC: I have spent a lot of time trying to work out exactly why the left/anarchist scene collapsed so dramatically as a force for resistance in the Spring of 2020. Do you have any thoughts on this?

KM: Based on my having survived four decades of state and corporate intelligence agency disruption, I believe I have an educated guess. It looked like there was an effective strategy linking covertly controlled far right groups waving Trump and Confederate flags and AR-15s with opposition to the COVID policies. I know I didn’t witness any other left anarchists denouncing the policies in the first months so like many others who may have shared my perspective I thought I was alone. The headlines of most corporate media blasted stories like “Coronavirus: Armed protesters enter Michigan statehouse” with the media showing footage of protesters outside state houses chanting “Let us in!”, “Let us work” and “This is the people’s house, you cannot lock us out”. Before COVID, unarmed leftists would have been the ones chanting these slogans but the images of Trump-supporting, gun-toting anti-lockdown protesters helped shape the narrative. In the early days of the crisis, the Los Angeles Times had a story showing a Proud Boy Nazi with swastika tattoos stabbing a pedestrian during a lockdown protest.But this is only one of the many aspects of the psychological operations that was effective. The use of media to repeatedly claim isolation, masking, social distancing and shots were all about protecting the community and for the greater good of all, fed into some of the core beliefs of the left. No self-respecting leftists wants to be accused of being selfish.

The left also did not want to be anti-science and since all alternative ideas were censored or attributed to tin foil hat Qanon Trumpers it became a badge of honor to smugly sneer at those ignorant hillbilly deplorables.

I also think that those in power were clever and their foundations started to fund a loyal opposition with haste when the Democratic Party chose Biden as the leader of the regime. One of the first reports on the popular left program Democracy Now! featured Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance claiming a bat virus in a Wuhan wet market was the likely source of the Pandemic. My friend, investigative journalist Sam Husseini, was never asked to refute Daszak’s claim even though Sam had several articles published in April 2020, on the history of gain-of-function releases at American-funded bio-weapons laboratories, a dramatic subject that would have interested Amy Goodman before the crisis. The host Amy Goodman breathlessly reported on the refrigerator trucks outside New York City hospitals. She was all in on the official COVID narrative and that has had a major influence on the American left.

Foundations have helped to co-opt as many left organizations as possible. Most of our allies accepted their support, surrounding the left with community groups who danced to the tune of Gates, Soros and other philanthropists. The funding of the non-profit industrial complex is often a means of controlling dissent in the United States. The messaging was unified and total. It was intimidating. My early posts of “I always support secret military programs and Big Pharma”, in my ironic response to social media demands to comply with the totalitarian program, were either mocked or commented on with confusion. Reminding activists of our struggle against the World Trade Organization and its direct line to the proponents of a digital slavery of vaccine passports, and other programs of globalist associations like the World Economic Forum and The World Trade Organization, seems to have evaporated with the fear of COVID and the potential of being mocked for not going along with the crowd.

PC: How do you see the relationship now between the likes of you and me and those we previously called our comrades? Have the division lines softened at all over recent months, as you maybe hinted, or are we looking at a decisive rupture, do you think?

KM: It could take many years for a large portion of our allies to join the struggle even as they are forced to participate in an ever-increasing digital slavery. The impact of Mass Formation has been effective. But there is some hope. I often attend a Freedom gathering on Sunday afternoons and of the 30 or 40 people who participate at least half are left activists and the other half are Republicans. I am witnessing a shift where people on the left are now silent about anything to do with COVID and are starting to focus on the economic collapse and the dire conditions we face. Many are even starting to become quiet about their worship of Zelensky now that a Ukrainian victory is less certain. They are not ready yet though to connect the COVID program and war to the march towards the Great Reset. As events spin out of control, it is possible there will be some unity around some aspects of the Great Reset if it is presented as an attack by global capital, but the mass vaccine area of this program may be impossible for our friends to see and they may continue to support things like censorship, digital passports and mandates. It seems that even as my fully vaccinated friends keep getting COVID or die of strokes and heart attacks, that they are so wedded to the narrative that they are not able break out of the trance.

PC: How should we go forward from here? How can we best build new alliances of resistance without compromising our core values which, for me at least, remain exactly the same as they were before Covid?

KM: This is a tough question in light of the global chaos and successful divide and conquer strategy of capitalism. One path is to build local systems of mutual aid so we can survive. The war on thought is unrelenting. Building local communities that support one another emotionally and with the necessities of life may be our only alternative. Food Not Bombs history may provide some guidance. We have intentionally formed a non-hierarchical decentralized system of organization that seeks to address the needs of the community. Housing with Homes Not Jails, transportation with Bikes Not Bombs, Food Not Lawns, Free Radio, Composting, and of course the food of Food Not Bombs. The other key idea one could take from 42 years of Food Not Bombs is a joyous welcoming atmosphere that encourages dialogue by providing literature, music and theater with the necessities of survival gear and a hot meal. Evading the violence of the state may be difficult and strategies of self defense need to evolve.

On the points connected to the fear of COVID, many of our former allies may be lost to us for decades to come but on the issue of digital slavery, police repression and the economic collapse we may have some unity. As difficult as it can be, I make a point of being understanding of those who worship the COVID narrative, always make sure they know I am unvaccinated and move my conversations towards our shared history of resisting the corporate exploitation and the economic slavery of the global institutions.

The latest preplanned trauma in the United States is centered around the divisive issues of guns and abortion. There is, however, an intersection around privacy and personal autonomy with those who are pro-choice on the issue of abortion and those who want the freedom to refuse the jabs. There should be unity with the principle that censorship is never justified, but so far anarchists are still on the “silencing uncomfortable ideas” train. And there must be universal agreement between the left and right for the need to end war in Ukraine and an urgent demand to ban all nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons.

As free thinkers we can encourage a great transformation of the human spirit where we find solutions outside the left-right paradigm. That discussion and search must continue in earnest. I am done with the left-right divide. It’s now the humans versus the deadly robotic corporate state. My message in my 1992 book “Food Not Bombs, How to Feed the Hungry and Build Community” was to organize against the death culture of state and corporate power. That remains my perspective today, only now this fight must find a solution and fast. We need to form a strategy that is difficult for the intelligence agencies to disrupt, builds solidarity and threatens the power elite while nurturing a thriving community. The anarchist theories of decentralized local autonomous social structures I believe are key to survival. Total noncooperation with the system while operating survival projects independent from state and corporate institutions is the path I am taking.

We are nearing a point where the goal may be having food and shelter while avoiding being interned or killed by those loyal to the Build Back Better stakeholder capitalists. As I respond to your questions, I worry my comments won’t reach the public before the first nuclear weapon is launched or we are captured and removed from society for our thought crimes.