Decline to Accept Ruling on Grants Pass vs Johnson

and Demand of Land Back/Land Return and Reparations for Black/Indigenous Houseless Residents and Decriminalization of all “public space” on Turtle Island for temporary or life-long use by Houseless, Disabled, Poor residents and ComeUnities anywhere they may commune.  

This Decline to Accept, Decriminalization and Reparations demand is co-created by poor, houseless, Black, Brown, Indigenous, and Disabled peoples from all four corners of occupied Turtle Island. The following are some of the Writers, Signers, and Survivors from poor /houseless/disabled, Indigenous people-led movements.

To watch an emergency press conference featuring all of the groups, signers and commenters listed below please go to this link on POOR Magazine's Facebook page If you would like to add your name, your Comments and your organizations name please email poormag@gmail.com. For more background on the settler roots of this CONstitutional ruling see Grants Pass is NOT for Sale article by tiny gray-garcia here -

The Signers/Commenters Who Collectively Decline to Accept

Homefulness/POOR Magazine/PoorNewsNetwork

Poor Peoples Army

Self-Help Hunger Program 

Aetna Street Solidarity

Reclaiming Our Homes 

Wood Street Commons

Krip Hop Nation

Camp Resolution 

Roofs Over Their Heads 

Indian People Organizing for Change (IPOC) 

Rooflesser 

Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP)

Street WatchLA

Peoples Park, Berkeley

Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC)

The following document is a response to the violent ruling Friday, June 28, 2024, by the U.S. Supreme Court, which overturned Grants Pass v. Johnson, a case that had barred multiple settler cities across stolen Turtle Island from citing and arresting people for the sole act of being homeless in public. The Supreme Court, packed with a majority of wealth-hoarding, land-owning, classist, racist, ableist settlers,  in a 6-3 decision, said fining and arresting homeless people does not violate constitutional protections against cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.

We Decline to Accept this Settler CONstitution Ruling.

We, as houseless, Black, Brown, Indigenous peoples from all four corners of Mama Earth, who have suffered multiple forms of oppression in this krapitalist system, ranging from colonial genocide, false border terror, historic violent racial profiling, and over-poLicing of our neighborhoods and bodies, redlining, ComeUnity violence, sweeps, theft of belongings and lives, incarceration, eviction, banksters, foreclosures, theft of land and generational wealth, ableism, poverty, scarcity,  ancestral and current trauma, and multiple more forms of gender-based violence, child abuse, and predation and survive and reside by any means necessary in street-based Communities, our cars, RV’s and/or wherever we can lay our heads, if even for a minute, all across Turtle Island overstand and know that Turtle Island is stolen, occupied Indigenous land and must and should go back to Indigenous stewardship.  We believe that Mama Earth is NOT now, nor has ever been for sale. 

We also believe and know that the “legal” document known as the US CONstitution and the peoples appointed to adjudicate and uphold said document  are not now , nor will ever “rule” in favor of poor and houseless people. They can’t. 

The document known as the CONstitution was created by the original Land Stealers known and referred to as the “Founding Fathers”  and is a document that is now, and has always been there to protect the racist and classist settler lie of private property and the wealth-hoarding white people who originally stole this land and imported Black and Brown bodies to build it and who continue to hoard, pillage, extract and steal from Mama Earth and her precious waters, air, oceans, and land.  Which we, as houseless people, are directly opposed to by our very existence. Conversely, the entity known as the Supreme Court believes and upholds the full, unfettered rights of protection for the kraptialist system of buying, selling, extracting, trading, and profiting off of Mama Earth. 

Read on for more comments by signers and/or add your own. 

Some of the Signers /Commenters:

POOR Magazine Houseless/Formerly Houseless Poverty skolaz individually 

JuneBug Kealoha 

I’m poor!

I’m unhoused!

I’m not trash!

I’m not a criminal !

Sweeps on unhoused neighbors is a crime!

Tiny aka @povertyskola:  

We are criminalized in our bodies for being poor outside, for living without a roof, sleeping in our car, in doorways, in parks, on streets and in tents. What is never mentioned is we are in these doorways and cars because of a system of krapitalism that commodifies mama earth and profits off of our poverty and the incarceration of our bodies.  

So-called Grants Pass, Oregon itself is stolen land, and should be returned to the Takelma, Shasta and Athbaskan relatives, who are the first peoples of that territory. And many of whom make up the houseless relatives in so-called Grants Pass. Just like they do in so-called Bellingham, Olympia, Seattle and much of the Pacific Northwest (and all of occupied Turtle Island) . Un-reparated, un-supported, original peoples, houseless on their own land.  Secondly, I don’t recognize the Stealing Fathers’ and their lying lies aka the CONstitution, which has proven over and over again to be a “fluid” document that only protects the white, wealth-hoarding , land-stealing class that originally stole Turtle Island.  Tiny gray-garcia aka povertyskola 

Wood Street Commons 

All the government  "Solutions" like Cabin Communities and shelters have failed to create the necessary foundation unhoused people need to be able to rebuild our lives,” said John Janasko, houseless resident leader at Wood Street Commons

Self-Help Hunger Program/POOR Magazine 

There are so many atrocities of homelessness for all of us poor people one of them  i am most concerned about is for the babies - the lack of water, safe housing, healthy food, and abuse… We are constantly under attack as poor and houseless peoples. We are constantly under attack as Black people and Black families. This is an emergency. 

RECLAIMING OUR HOMES 

This is horrible sleep is a body’s survival need. If unhoused people are a concern then provide housing for them or truly affordable housing options. Rent is too high and wages are low there are too many people struggling that may be unhoused soon. Elders are the highest population growing as unhoused because they can’t pay rent with their pensions. Martha Escudero, houseless mama member of Reclaiming Our Homes 

Aetna Street Solidarity:

The Grants Pass decision will mean what it has always meant for poor people, houseless people living in every city and town in the United States: we do not belong in your world.

Which means we are committed to building ours, where everyone has a home, everyone has a place to go, everyone has enough food to eat and a place to rest. We refuse every ruling that attacks life, including the Grants Pass decision to continue and accelerate the slow genocide of poor people, black people, queer and trans people, indigenous migrants, elders and disabled. We belong to us.

Aetna Street Solidarity is committed to fighting for a world where everyone belongs. We were born out of resistance to LA Municipal code 41.18 which banned sitting, lying, sleeping on public sidewalks in Los Angeles including Aetna Street in Van Nuys. The Grants Pass decision is an extension of an ideology rooted in white supremacy and capitalism that brought us from the ugly laws to this moment in history, where 6 unhoused people die a day on the streets of LA. When LA passed an amended version of LAMC 41.18, we saw unprecedented loss of those living on the streets who died in the days and weeks following the passing of 41.18 coupled by state-sanctioned raids led by our city’s sanitation, police, and housing authority. All while city politicians declared “VICTORY!” over the bodies of our friends with your tax money. The only services that were offered were permanent fences, the threat of punishment, arrest, illegal search and seizure (sweeps) and nothing beyond a temporary shelter bed.

This is the Wheel of (Mis)Fortune, created by Ron, an unhoused member of our community organization dedicated to saving life while living on the streets. These are the names of our friends who have died in a world that enforced our criminalization. We choose LIFE over DEATH. We reject the Grants Pass decision that rejects life. We choose life, which means we choose to resist any law that seeks to criminalize our existence as poor people living in the heart of Empire.

Long live the struggle of poor people fighting for our common goal and cause— a life worth living.

KRIP HOP NATION 

"Man over Mama Earth. Is the Supreme Court going to pay my rent, or should we be knocking on your door, Move over we are moving in," said Leroy Moore, Formerly houseless, disabled povertyskola with POOR Magazine, Homefulness and Founder of Krip Hop Nation

Peoples Park, Berkeley

In response to the frighteningly inhumane us Supreme Court ruling on grant’s pass, with the generous offerings of @plantingjustice, an autonomous collective of community members have planted a food forest and extended the mural in the “Dwight Triangle” Chuck P Herrick Peace and Freedom Memorial park.

We denounce scotus’ grant’s pass ruling as an act of colonization, setting a vile precedent for displacement, incarceration, human rights violations, and fascism. We vehemently reject and will continue to organize against all attempts at mass enslavement and land seizure.

We will eat free fresh fruit in our future— peaches, apples, cherries, plums, figs, loquats, pears, pomegranates, gooseberries, and olives— available for all to share in a liberated Xučyun.

Now, as our ancestors since time immemorial and forever into the future as our descendants, we will take refuge and delight in our right to sleep, outside, to camp, to live, to leisure, to love, to rest, luxuriate, to dream... to LIBERATE! By any means necessary. Land back is our demand; NO peace on stolen land! Fuck the fascist haters.

From People’s Park to Palestine, our liberation is intertwined. May 1000 food forests bear fruit! End all settler occupations. End empire! Permanent ceasefire! Free Congo! Free Sudan! Free Palestine! Free People’s Park!

Like a mycelial network, People’s Park survives attempts to colonize it by shifting tactics and expanding territory.

Keeping our baby food forest alive and thriving WILL require that we take turns watering the triangle in shifts. There is NO running water at the park! We need You to haul water (by any means necessary…) to Dwight and Telegraph, to hand water the saplings and other plants growing in the ground AND in containers at Chuck P Herrick Peace and Freedom Memorial Park.

StreetWatchLA

The role of the courts has always come at the convenience of the ruling class, and it’s unsurprising that the same guys getting free vacations from billionaires and flying MAGA flags sided with total criminalization of homelessness, and we shouldn't be surprised that it was in total agreement with the liberal governors and mayors 

Trump-appointed judges made the same cynical anti-homeless rhetoric used by disgraced racist LA councilperson Nury Martinez, claiming it is injustice for the housed people when encampments occur more often in poor, working class, and Black and brown neighborhoods. As rents continue to rise, tenants lose their housing and then are banished from their own neighborhoods while a politician calls it social justice.

One of our members who has cared for his community in the midst of brutal encampment evictions at the hands of LAPD, Sanitation, and Los Angeles City Council said, “i had a feeling Martin vs. Boise was going to be brought up again. The politicians didn’t like that the Ninth Circuit Court ruled against them, because their intentions are to change the laws to criminalize people for being homeless. What we really need to do, is to get in touch with all homeless people here in the state of California and push back as hard as we can against our government. Make them give us that housing that we need. Seems like our government doesn’t give a shit about people who are struggling in paying their rents and whatever other bills they have, like utilities, because it seems like they’re only after the money and nothing more!”

Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC)

Our hearts break at this ruling, thinking of the increased violence against poor people that this decision will enable. However, we are not surprised. The U.S. legal system is doing what it was designed to do: protect private property at all costs and uphold the system of racial capitalism.

When our communities, livelihoods, and very existence are deemed illegal and subject to violence, we respond: the U.S. is illegal, as it causes the most violence to all living beings. This violent white cishet property system imposed on Turtle Island has led to people in cages or inescapable conditions of death, stolen wealth hoarded, and ecosystems devastated. As lawyers, we know that private property and U.S. empire has had no greater source of legitimization than the Supreme Court. We firmly reject this ruling, and we reject the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.

We support people building community, with each other, and with Mama Earth. If any Supreme Court Justices on the majority opinion are reading this, go to Poor Magazine’s People Skool on August 24 and 25—it is powerful and necessary medicine that will help heal your generational wealth hoarder/capitalist trauma!