41.18

The Longest Night

National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day takes place on the longest night of the year, the Winter Solstice (usually December 21st).

This week in Little Tokyo, on the 31st Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day, we lost yet another community member to the violent economy of
Los Angeles. Rest in power, Comfort, you will be missed.

Every single day, capitalism kills five Unhoused people in Los Angeles. Landowning capitalists force people out of their homes and into the street. Politicians like Kevin De Leon, the lapdogs of the capitalists, then send in the police to destroy their tents. More people die from hypothermia in LA than in San Francisco and New York City, combined.

There is No Housing

60,000 people live unhoused in Los Angeles. Between LAHSA, Bridge Home, and Project Room Key, the city offers only 2,700 beds—or only 4% of what is needed to end the housing crisis.

KDL has no plan to provide 57,000 more beds. His nonprofit partners like The People Concern promise unhoused people shelter and then shuffle them to a different encampment. KDL’s only real plan is to build political clout on the misery of unhoused people.

The Toriumi Plaza encampment has doubled in size since KDL helped pass LAMC 41.18. This ordinance hasn’t created a single bed—but it has created countless refugees, fleeing from LAPD and LASD violence. The police don’t house people. They either move them or kill them.

KDL is a Puppet

Politicians like KDL will destroy an unhoused encampment on Christmas Eve and pose for a photo-op at a shelter on Christmas. They claim to believe in housing while the City Council leaves federal and state funds for shelter untouched. Their real priority is pleasing the capitalists.

When the capitalists tell KDL and the rest of the Council to jump, all they ask is how high? The Council leaps at the chance to enforce 41.18, giving the capitalists the power to declare every unhoused person who crosses their path a criminal. The Council breaks the CDC’s COVID-19 guidelines to ensure the

LAPD and LASD can attack unhoused people at any landowner’s demand.

All Power to the People

Los Angeles has enough space to house everyone. The problem is that LA’s property is controlled by the capitalists. Housing doesn’t have to be a luxury—it can be freely available, if we fight for a revolutionary society where the people control LA’s property.

Revolutionary society can only be created by organized communities. 41.18 is an act of class war—an attack not just on individuals but on unhoused communities. To defend against it, we must help strengthen unhoused communities by offering non-patronizing, material support: mutual aid.

We must reject capitalism and believe in socialism. We must reject cops and believe in abolition. Put simply, we must reject any power to the oppressors and believe in all power to the people.