Reporters Document Recent SF Sweeps and the Meaning of WeSearch

Mayor London Breed has been following in Governor Newsom's footsteps by continuing the aggression against houseless people. She has ordered more sweeps, more incarceration, and more discomfort for houseless people. Last week, she said she will make it so uncomfortable that "they [houseless people] will have to accept our offer and will have to leave." I went along with Tiny, Momii, Leajay, and two youth scholars to San Francisco last Thursday and Friday to document how houseless people have been dealing with the recent sweeps.

By 1pm in the Tenderloin, the Department of Public Works (DPW) and Urban Alchemy were already tossing people's belongings into large trash bins. Surrounding them was a throng of police cars and an absurd number of armed officers ready to carry out Breed's order to arrest or disappear as many houseless people as possible. We were armed with nothing but our phone cameras and breakfast pastries to stand in solidarity with our unhoused neighbors, who all of us at POOR Magazine once were. 

POOR Magazine defines WeSearch as poor people-led research.  I watched as the mainstream media camera crew in the Tenderloin turned tail and ran when they saw us recording. Corporate media like CNN and local FOX news stations have never been interested in writing stories that feature our voices. They talk around us, turning us into data points and flattening us into "the homeless" with one story, one viewpoint, one experience, without bothering to ask us how we got to where we're at. After the report, Tiny outlined the point of WeSearch to me, saying, "We quantify data because politricksters like numbers. Crapitalism cares more about numbers than they do about people.” According to Tiny, WeSearch is “a very revolutionary aspect to this kind of community collectivity [compared] to ‘data collection’. Data collection is turning people into data. Community collectivity gives people back their sovereignty.” Part of giving people back their sovereignty is flipping the script on subject and interviewer. When we ask people to share their stories with us, they craft their own narratives, and in so doing, become reporters of their own stories.

We met many people affected by Breed's new policies, all of whom spoke of harassment by cops and dehumanization at the hands of city workers tasked with "keeping the streets safe." One ROOFless Radio reporter said, “I got a seller’s permit, that means you can sell anywhere in California. Anywhere! And they still took my shit and impounded it and took everything from me last night with no remorse.” 

On Friday, we saw the effects of Mayor Breed’s relocation venture to offer free bus tickets to houseless people regardless of if they are even from outside San Francisco. We met an older houseless reporter in SoMa who had just been given a bus ticket. He said he had chosen Salinas as his destination and they gave him a ticket on the spot. According to him, he has no friends or family in Salinas and needed directions to the bus station. This is elder abuse, plain and simple. The government has forced older adults to leave their homes to go to a random city simply to move the “nasty homeless” out of San Francisco. Displacement is not a solution to homelessness. 

In this writer's opinion, poor people are as tired as they are angry. Tired because they have to cope with the daily struggles of being poor and homeless, and angry because they are becoming increasingly isolated as they attempt to carve out a life from the edges of society. Newsflash: we are society. We have our own communities where we live lives of joy and mirth and laughter and loss just like everyone else. We create our own solutions to the problems the government throws our way. We cleverly and skillfully navigate a world that has been set up to deny us basic human rights, and we do so with great success. Homefulness 2, POOR Magazine’s sophomore housing solution built by and for houseless people, is a success that proves every negative stereotype said about poor people wrong.