Homeless

Homelessness, From Burning Man to Wood Street

Published

5 years ago

August 24, 2019

Mavin Carter-Griffin at the Woodside homeless encampment in West Oakland. Photo by Michelle Snider.

A self-described performance artist, Mavin Carter- Griffin said she can perform art anywhere. Her “curb urban loft” at the Woodside homeless encampment in West Oakland is decorated with a motorcycle on top of a trailer. The three-room home is a roomy, carefully assembled wood structure that includes a living room space, bedroom, and kitchenette. Light beams through cracks from the ceiling with illusive purpose as veils of colorful fabrics blow in the wind.

Fifty-four-year-old Carter-Griffin said she has been homeless for 10 years, six of of which were spent living in West Oakland. A fifth generation San Franciscan, she has lived in the Bay Area almost all of her life.

Carter-Griffin said she once had a business making sculptures, selling them at retailers like Macy’s. Before she became homeless, Carter-Griffin also had a home in Crockette, but she lost it when her grandmother’s property was partitioned.

“I don’t have any family left,” Carter-Griffin said. “I had my mom, my aunt, my uncle, and they were the people that took my house from me.”

Carter-Griffin said there is a lot of shame and blame involved in being homeless. That is one of the reasons she prefers calling the Woodside encampment a “curbside community.” She said being homeless is stigmatizing in such a way it can leave a person socially blackballed, making it harder to get a job or go anywhere in public if there is no possibility for simple necessities like grooming products, clothing and access to showers.

Carter-Griffin equates being homeless to being a settler, “from back in the days when you came over in wagons, only these days people use RVs.”

Self-preservation is key, she explained, and it can often be an exhausting experience.

“Google homelessness, you’re going to see the typical sad images of people sleeping on the curb,” Carter-Griffin said. She wants that narrative to change. There are people who can sleep on the sidewalk and not bathe for long periods of time, but Carter-Griffin describes that type of living so hardcore that one would have to divorce their mind, spirit, and body from everything.

Carter-Griffin admits there are some who are problematic at camps, people who dump vehicles, steal and sometimes become violent. She is fine with the city’s Tuffshed programs and efforts, but she sees potential in the people of her curbside community, most of which are peaceful and have unique skills. That is why she wants to start what she calls a “random citizen pilot.”

“There are people who would act differently if they were trained,” she said. “The people who stay on-site would be the ones responsible to create a Burning Man campus for living affordably.”

Integrating homeless populations as part of society instead of treating them like outsiders that are a social illness is essential, according to Carter-Griffin. She believes in building a cooperative society.

“The only way we are going to be seen as human beings is to be treated as human beings,” she said. “Not everyone can fit into these molds they’re trying to fit us into.”

Under the Burner “playa” name Alchemy, Carter-Griffin went to Burning Man almost every year since 2000. Burning Man is a world-famous cultural event held annually in a remote desert at Black Rock City, NV., Years of attending the festival and being homeless has inspired Carter-Griffin to think outside the usual homeless solutions that tend to focus on moving nameless, faceless bodies off streets in systematic motion to quickly appease the aesthetics of a neighborhood. She wants the now often wealthy attendees of Burning Man to go back to their root principles and use those principles to improve society as a whole.

The 10 principles of Burning Man started as a guideline in 2004 by Co-Founder Larry Harvey. The principles are radical inclusion, gifting, decommodification, self-reliance, self-expression, communal effort, civic responsibility, leaving no trace, participation, and immediacy, which is to recognize the barriers that stand between a recognized inner self.

“If 85,000 people can leave no trace in a temporary city every year based on Burning Man principles, the same can be applied to curbside urban encampments,” Carter-Griffin said.

Calling it a radical housing solution, she said unhoused residents can use skill sets like gardening, carpentry, and artistry to create economic industrial potential, creating jobs while designing a culture of co-habitation with the environment. She said Burning Man runs several non-profits, and she would like to pitch the concept of a non-profit encampment co-op that works in the same way Burning Man does every year. She would call the organization “The Department of Curban Affairs,” and the co-op style “curb urbanization.”

Carter-Griffin said using the principles of Burning Man and rethinking the urban landscape is about rethinking the urban landscape to include all people, including the few people who like to live “inside out,” meaning, the few who do not want to live indoors.

“People living outdoors is nothing new, we’ve just become detached from that way of thinking,” Carter-Griffin said.

Through grants and camp residents starting their own businesses, Carter-Griffin wants a sustainable community that builds, creates, gifts and applies community self-reliance. She wants unused land to be turned into permaculture gardens, a sustainable and low-maintenance way to cultivate land. She also wants an on-site radio station. Podcasting can work as well but many unhoused people have free government provided “Obama phones” that do not provide much data for streaming podcasts. Other skill sets Carter- Griffin would like to foster at camps are writing, journalism, and talk shows.

Currently, gathering solutions for issues like obtaining water, bathrooms, and toiletries are on the top of Carter-Griffin’s list of asks when it comes to the needs of her curbside community.

Envisioning tiny homes that look like the creative art style seen at Burning Man, Carter- Griffin wants Oakland to be seen as an example to show the world how Curb Urbanization can work. Her own loft was created using wood and materials discarded in the process of home renovations in West Oakland. Carter-Griffin said she wants to re-using the materials left behind from gentrification, she has found family portraits that she plans to hang up in memory of those who have been pushed out of their neighborhoods.

When it comes to the one dream Carter-Griffin wants the most, she said, “I just want my house back,” one with an extra room for her daughter to live with her. She copes with the pain of missing her daughter by focusing on improving what she sees around her, turning trash into gold, she said, is what an Alchemist is meant to do.

Carter-Griffin wants to find a way to go to Burning Man this year to try and get Burners interested in her ideas, but she said she is too poor to obtain free tickets. There are tickets for low-income attendees, but they require showing W-2 forms and Carter-Griffin has not had a job or a bank account, making her unable to apply.

She currently makes no money. Receiving food stamps helps a lot, but those benefits have recently been cut. Despite that, Carter-Griffin said as long as she has food, water, and her loft, she is fine and will continue squatting at Woodside so she can fight for something more than being shuffled into a Tuff Shed with a potential future of low-paying, dead-end work that cannot sustain affordable living in the Bay Area, CA.

Michelle Snider

Associate Editor for The Post News Group. Writer, Photographer, Videographer, Copy Editor, and website editor documenting local events in the Oakland-Bay Area California area.

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Activism

Oakland Post: Week of December 18 – 24, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of December 18 – 24, 2024

Published

2 days ago

December 20, 2024

Oakland Post

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A Student-Run Group Provides Critical Support Services to Underserved Residents

Those visiting The Suitcase Clinic can get legal advice, sign up for food assistance, receive housing resources, get medical help, or enjoy a hot, fresh meal. They can also get haircuts and foot washes from the student volunteers. Nilo Golchini, executive director of the clinic, said one of the goals for most of the students working there is helping bridge the gap of trust that exists between many unhoused people and the healthcare and social welfare systems.

Published

4 days ago

December 18, 2024

Oakland Post

UC Berkeley Law Students help a clinic visitor with legal advice at their Tuesday night services. The Clinic offers a variety of resources, including medical, to those in the community who have little access to these services. Photo by Magaly Muñoz

Part One

By Magaly Muñoz

Every Tuesday evening, the dining hall of First Presbyterian Church fills up with dozens of people eating, laughing and moving from table to table, receiving much-needed services from UC Berkeley students – just a few blocks away from the university’s campus.

Individuals seeking support services can be found in this multi-stationed room on the south end of the church talking to law students, student case managers, or receiving medical attention in a corner by healthcare professionals.

This weekly event is hosted by Cal students through a volunteer-run program called The Suitcase Clinic.

The clinic, founded in 1989, was intended to offer free resources to underserved communities in Berkeley and surrounding cities. The majority of the clinic’s clientele are unhoused or low-income people looking for extra support.

Those visiting the clinic can get legal advice, sign up for food assistance, receive housing resources, get medical help, or enjoy a hot, fresh meal. They can also get haircuts and foot washes from the student volunteers.

Nilo Golchini, executive director of the clinic, said one of the goals for most of the students working there is helping bridge the gap of trust that exists between many unhoused people and the healthcare and social welfare systems.

During their tenure in the program, many of the students say they become strong advocates for homelessness rights.

Visitors of the Suitcase Clinic can receive haircuts and foot washing by student volunteers every Tuesday evening. Photo by Magaly Muñoz.

“We’re also standing in solidarity with them. So, it’s not saying, ‘I’m going to help you, but I’m also going to stand with you,’” Golchini said.

Student volunteers get extensive training prior to working directly with clients. Those interested have to take a semester-long class to become versed in areas such as outreach, intersectionality, how to interact with unhoused people, how to sign people up for social services. and more.

Volunteers then get to pick from three different clinics: General, Women’s, or Youth and LGBTQ+.

The General Clinic is the most popular among visiting residents, while Women’s and Youth/LQBTQ+ have more specialized services for attendees.

The Women’s Clinic has many of the similar services to General, but also includes nail painting, childcare, and massages.

The Youth and LGBTQ+ Clinic offers a safe space for young people navigating living on the streets, with services that include housing referrals, wellness and recreation classes and employment resources.

Golchini explained that it’s important for them to keep these clinics separate because the different demographics experience poverty and homelessness differently than those who visit the General Clinic.

Suitcase Clinic student workers posing for a photo with a frequent clinic attendee. The Clinic is open to Berkeley unhoused and low-income residents who need medical or legal service, or a hot meal. Photo by Magaly Muñoz.

“We’re able to provide spaces where people can come in and feel safe and not feel like they’re constantly worried that something’s going to happen to them,” she said.

An outreach team also visits encampments every other Saturday in the Berkeley area to provide hygiene kits and encourage people to visit the in-person clinic, if possible.

However, Golchini said engagement has been low for some time now due to a recent decision by the U.S. Supreme Court that allows cities to ban and cite people for sleeping on the streets.

She said a lot of their clientele got displaced to other cities over time, making it difficult to stay in contact with the services the Clinic was providing for them.

But that hasn’t slowed down the students at the Clinic, if anything, it has pushed them to do more for the community they serve.

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Post News Group Hosts Second Virtual Town Hall on Racism

“While our society tends to rebrand over the decades, we find hate as the new word, broadening its arch of issues in society,” said show host and Post News Group Global Features Journalist Carla Thomas. “However, the very first form of hate, which is racism, built this country.”

Published

1 week ago

December 14, 2024

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy of Post News Group

By Post News Group

Post News Group Global Features Journalist Carla Thomas recently hosted a second Virtual Town Hall on Racism, with guests including community builders Trevor Parham of Oakstop and Chien Nguyen of Oakland Trybe.

Thomas opened the town hall by paying homage to the ancestral losses of the African diaspora and to the Indigenous tribes, the enslaved, the freed, and the trailblazers of the Civil Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter Movement, and those more recently victimized by police brutality.

After thanking Bay Area non-profits for their work, Thomas led a thoughtful discussion on the importance of acknowledging racism as the first form of hate that built America.

“While our society tends to rebrand over the decades, we find hate as the new word, broadening its arch of issues in society,” she said. “However, the very first form of hate, which is racism, built this country,” she said.

“That act of othering, creating a narrative that made African people, indigenous people, and ultimately melanated people, labeled as less than human justified the colonizers act of subjugating our ancestors to inhumane, incomprehensible treatment for over 400 years,” said Thomas.

Parham of Oakstop, located at 1721 Broadway, explained that Nazi Germany patterned its mistreatment and extinction of Jews in the Holocaust after chattel slavery in America and the Jim Crow apartheid system that followed it.

“Nazi Germany found America’s treatment of Blacks so inhumane and denigrating that they (decided) it would actually be the perfect ingredient to undermine another group of people,” said Parham. “So, they essentially borrowed from what Americans did to Black people.”

Thomas pivoted the discussion to the limitations placed on Black America’s generational wealth through policies of red-lining, redevelopment, and title deeds to this day, based on the idea that no Black or indigenous person is allowed to purchase property or land.

“For this reason, there continue to be impoverished Black communities throughout the nation,” she said.

“The structures of racism from red-lining to lack of access to capital continue to restrict Black (people) in America; this structural racism kind of finishes you before you even start,” added Parham. “The lack of generational wealth has left our communities at a disadvantage because with generational wealth we’d have the resources to police our own communities and build further.”

Nguyen, Clinton Park site director for Oakland Trybe, spoke about his parents’ journey as immigrants from Vietnam, the challenges of being teased in school, and how his troubled brother was murdered.

Nguyen has turned his personal tragedies into triumph, pivoting from a career as an eight-year business owner in the Little Saigon community of East Oakland, to now a non-profit leader transforming and reclaiming the community’s Clinton Park at International Boulevard and Sixth Street..

“A park represents community, and between the pandemic, illegal activities, and homelessness, the park needed to be re-established, and we now offer programming for the youth and extended community,” he said.

“Between Oakstop’s business model of purchasing commercial properties and transforming them into beautiful spaces for community ownership, business space, and special event hubs, and Oakland Trybe’s ability to transform public spaces central to a community and empower our communities, we have solutions,” Thomas said.

Throughout the conversation, Parham referred to a press conference hosted at Oakstop in August where NBA icons Jason Kidd and Jaylen Brown pledged to raise $5 billion for Black businesses in the nation.

“Inspired by Black Wall Street, Jaylen began with Boston and created the Boston Xchange because he became aware of a statistic noting that white households in Boston average $250,000 and Black households averaged a mere $8 in wealth,” Parham said.

In Oakland, he established the Oakland Xchange to expand the movement right at Oakstop, he said.

Thomas encouraged viewers to connect with her guests and tap into the dozens of organizations making a change. “I encourage you to join your chambers of commerce, your community-based organizations, non-profits, and churches to uplift and rebuild the community,” she said.

Thomas also suggested that the NAACP as a great start. “The Oakland chapter’s resolution developed around racism was adopted by the national NAACP, and at the Afrotech Conference, national NAACP leader Derrick Johnson announced a $200 million fund to support Black funders.”

Thomas informed viewers of the California vs. Hate, initiative, a non-emergency hate incident and hate-crime reporting system to support individuals and communities targeted for hate.

“Your reports inform the state of where to designate resources and extra support,” said Thomas.

For more information, visit PostNewsGroup.com, CAvsHATE.ORG or call 1-833-8-NO-HATE.