NO TO 41.18, NO TO BANISHMENT, WE HAVE A RIGHT TO REST
This FRIDAY 11/12/21 at 10 AM council will vote to approve the four zones that make it illegal to be homeless anywhere near City Hall, Olvera Street, Union Station. This will banish hundreds of lives and scatter established support systems and communities.
We need everyone to leave a comment or call in Friday 11/12/21: call 669 254 5252 and use Meeting ID No. 160 535 8466 and then press #. Press # again when prompted for participant ID. Once admitted into the meeting, press *9 to request to speak. Ask to speak on Agenda items s 27, 28, 29, 30 (ALL 41.18 motions) and 14 (empowering LA Sanitation to give tickets, see below)
Kevin de Leon is using LAMC 41.18 to benefit downtown colonizers who aim to privatize public space and create “housed-only” zones—harming unhoused human beings in the process.
This land contains layers of historical oppression: the displacement and enslavement of the people of Yaangna, in the 30s, blamed for the economic downturn, hundreds of thousands of Mexican nationals and Mexican Americans were forced back to Mexico, targeted primarily for their ethnicity. La Placita park, a community hub then as it is now, was sealed off and raided by immigration agents. Similar to LAMC 41.18, in 1942, Executive Order 9066 enforced displacement and incarceration in Little Tokyo turning First St. into a holding area for Japanese American incarceration.
41.18 adds another layer of race and class-based targeting, with BID (Business Improvement District) and developers as the modern-day drivers of dislocation.
Council File: 21-4118-S13
Agenda item: 27
Motion
Council file
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Friday’s Meeting Agenda
TALKING POINTS
- Kevin de Leon, you can’t chant “Homes Not Prisons” while subscribing to the tried-and -failed policies of criminalization and banishment.
- Unhoused people are equals with housed people, with the same rights to public space, but this 41.18 law says otherwise.
- An offer of shelter under threat of tickets and eviction is not a service, it’s an order.
- Displacing someone to a bed in a new neighborhood away from community support can lead to harm rather than good. Temporary shelter without a path to permanent housing is a dead end.
- Instead of doing anything to address the root causes of homelessness OR the urgent needs of unhoused folks, this motion turns to criminalization as its deadly strategy—making it illegal to sit, sleep, or lie.
- When we say “defund and abolish the police,” we don’t continue with, “and fund BID security officers, guns for our Park Rangers, and Environmental Compliance Inspectors and Sanitation workers with the ability to ticket people for quality of life crimes….”
- Residents have laid out over and over the needs of the unhoused communities around El Pueblo and City Hall. There are urgent healthcare needs, elders with disabilities, families. There is inconsistent cleanup and outreach.
- INCLUDING (Pueblo): no bathrooms or handwashing stations; broken lamp posts leaving the street in the dark at night
- City Council has abandoned any pretense of trying to address the root causes of homelessness. Instead they look, again, to the tired and failed policies of criminalization and brutality, of racism, ableism and means-testing, and the Broken Windows policing that only brings more harm and violence.
- Kevin de Leon didn’t just get Mitch O’Farrell to second his motion to ban people from around his workplace at City Hall: he had fellow 41.18ers Paul Krekorian, Bob Blumenfield, Paul Koretz, Nury Martinez, and Monica Rodriguez sign too.
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- https://twitter.com/streetwatchla/status/1351726327913562113?s=21
Back in January, Shirley said at an El Pueblo community defense—“give us services instead of punishing us.” De Leon’s office doesn't care about services until they become a reason to evict houseless folks. Will he also give LA Sanitation workers powers to write citations that target unhoused people? - For months, Sheriff Villanueva has threatened the unhoused communities near Olvera Street, showing photographs of peoples tents on his Instagram Live and suggesting he wants another Venice boardwalk action. With this 41.18 motion, Kevin de Leon legitimizes the hateful rhetoric of LASD’s top cop.( #GoogleLASDGangs )
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Sheriff Villanueva pits Olvera Street vendors against the unhoused communities, but some folks in the area are unhoused and street vendors, who rely on the sale of their goods to survive.
https://twitter.com/cerisecastle/status/1433138899539292164?s=21![]()
NO TO LASAN ISSUING CITATIONS!
Council File: 14-0818-S6Agenda item: 14
In the SAME DAMN WEEK, city council is trying to give guns to park rangers and empower LA Sanitation to issue citations. We’re looking at a program of targeted harassment that saw people like Anne Moody, arrested over 100 times for resting on the sidewalk. This targeted harassment of “quality of life crimes” that Broken Windows Policing sees as “revitalization” or “improvement” will only grow as Sanitation is given the power to police. City Attorney report on LASAN citations: https://lacity.primegov.com/Portal/viewer?id=397161&type=2
