benjamin melançon"BASSETT CREEK JUSS GOT OFFICIAL NOTICE OF EVICTION! BOTH BRIDGES!!"
—from a person living there. I visited her yesterday and all was calm despite the unimaginable stress of the repeated city threats and bluffs before this 'official' one.
"MPD CAME & SERVED US A PAPER WITH RESOURCES ON IT & SAID WE HAVE A WEEK UNTIL THEY CLEAR BUT JUSS TO BE SAFE WE SHLD START EVACUATING NOW & TECHNICALLY U HAVE LESS THEN THA WEEK HE SAID.. LIKE OH WOW!!"
"I ASKD HIM FOR A EVICTION PAPER WITH THE DATES & HE SAID HE JUSS TOLD ME HAHA HE WAS ACTUALLY A NICE OFFICER HAHA NO EXTRA POLICE BRUTALITY & WHAT NOT HAHA"
These camps are on properties of two different railroads— this is a city-led attack.
We have less than a week #Minneapolis
You ready to defend people who have been pushed around relentlessly by the agents of capital? In person or by researching the city's possible legal overreach, evicting from non-city land?
Or do you have land? Money in the thousands you would put into a cooperative social housing venture? Fundraising skills or a willingness to canvas neighborhoods?
(The where to donate money part is easy at least: https://opencollective.com/mpls-northside-mutual-aid/ )
Other ways to help: One person living there is a veteran, but has been cut off from the programs he knows about for helping veterans. Anyone have a comprehensive list and recs?
And burn up the phone/fax lines of the people who have, at this point, dedicated their lives to destroying the lives of unhoused people simply because they want #Minneapolis for the rich (and willing servants) alone
https://northdef.wordpress.com/2022/12/27/these-officials-have-no-conscience/
Oh and after finding a place to move, help moving— in particular a couple residents are looking to purchase a used-but-working four-wheeler or similar to help people move out from under the bridges (not car accessible).
Direct cash support for one family about to be displaced by#Minneapolis city structural violence: $biqmama19 Ashley Cook
Where are my #Zillow experts? We need to buy some land, move this fight onto different terrain (literally). Anything in the near Northside area would be ideal.
10,000 sq ft to do https://envisioncommunitymn.org/proposal/ ideal but we'll take anything.
The building skills and desire are there among the people about to be displaced.
Unfortunately building a house for oneself isn't exempt the way making food for home use is but ah well any #legal experts able to research that part?
The people #Minneapolis is forcing out from completely hidden spots under bridges—railroad land but all city threats—are ready and very able to build. They do so everywhere they go but owning land cooperatively would kick that to another level.
Please support https://opencollective.com/mpls-northside-mutual-aid/projects/land
and see all this thread above.
Hello night crew please boost everything in thread above!
Also need people to help write up this stuff in more detail?
And in case i am not clear we still have a little under a week to try to stop this and/or help people to a safe place.
Good morning #Minneapolis if you missed this thread please read it. Another chance to stop the ongoing assault on #HumanRights by Mayor Frey.
If you call the ghouls at the city –https://northdef.wordpress.com/2022/12/27/these-officials-have-no-conscience/ – please articulate one key ask of the unhoused people living under the bridges:
"Let us have land and we will build housing."
And the carpentry, roofing etc skills are there! There has been no excuse for the city not meeting the people of Near North camp one third of the way—on still-unused "Office of Community Planning & Economic Development" for two years, no less!
Here is the original Near North camp land in #Minneapolis, still empty and unused.
"This property is a future redevelopment site."
That means #Minneapolis CPED is holding it at zero tax revenue for the city to give away to millionaire developers while keeping it out of desperately needed use by unhoused people.
People who were on that unused city land now on unused railroad land and being threatened with removal early next week *by the city* naturally ask if there are spots open at any other camps to move to. No. They are all being destroyed this week.
City is actively destroying a camp at 26th St E and Clinton Ave S despite multiple people, including a city council member, asking for just a day's delay.
Help requested by people there for assistance relocating.
Correction help wanted at 24th and Clinton
The Near North camp that was razed on October 6 in a massive, militarized, police-led pre-dawn raid (an officer in a tank-like vehicle pointed his long gun at me, among others)— still empty today, entirely enclosed in chain-link fence and "No Trespassing" signs.
Now under bridges alongside railway rights of way, even more out-of-sight than the industrial area they were forced from, my friends were served with notice from a #Minneapolis cop giving nothing on paper but this joke of a resource sheet.
Those "Resources for people experiencing homelessness" do not even *pretend* to have anything for long-term, stable housing. "Emergency Shelter", "Drop-in/Day Services", "Meals and Showers" all with very limited times are as close as it gets!
Still a quarter-hour left in the working day telling Frey and his cogs to lay off the murder—by stress and exposure—of unhoused people!
https://northdef.wordpress.com/2022/12/27/these-officials-have-no-conscience/
Recap: Minneapolis police officers visited both camps under the bridges along Cedar Lake Rd on Tuesday and dropped off the same useless piece of paper with zero long-term shelter resources
— no long-term resources, let alone permanent housing able to compete with being under a goddamn bridge for stability.
And the cops said people would be evicted "in less than a week" so should start moving immediately.
At minimum #Minneapolis would need 3 Navigation Centers made permanent and 8 more Avivo indoor villages to give people currently living outdoors, or who may find themselves in that situation at any moment, a place to go.
It would still be unethical, a human rights violation, to use force or the threat of force to make anyone accept any services…
…but Minneapolis—and #Minnesota & #MetroTransit & Parks & every property owner—repeatedly destroys #homeless encampments, dedicating ridiculous resources to do so, without ever even offering people an arguably better alternative place to go.
This threatened eviction represents yet another escalation because it is coordinated on property not owned by the city, but rather two different pieces of property owned by two different railroads.
To the extent what the city of #Minneapolis is doing is legal at all, it took planning and coordination— to do evil instead of good.
Again, this has been going on a long time now and we know the names and official contact of the people making these decisions— including over the objections of their own staff.
Give 'em hell: https://northdef.wordpress.com/2022/12/27/these-officials-have-no-conscience/
Not to mention over the objections of sitting councilmembers!
Aisha Chughtai's statement on another camp destroyed yesterday:
My friends are looking for somewhere to move. Glad to have made it most-way through the long #Minnesota winter under the shelter of the bridges. Want to stay but don't want to have all their stuff trashed AGAIN by police and Public Works.
Know anyone who owns land? Who could donate toward purchasing land? https://opencollective.com/mpls-northside-mutual-aid/projects/land
We tried to apply to purchase city land— only around $10K for 10,000 square feet, enough to do a legit "intentional community cluster development" which we could build…
… but those purchases are meant for established developers that can prove financing and construction connections that we obviously don't (yet) have.
Any #housing law or real estate #developer people able to help on that end?
There is an obvious solution to the crisis of people being #unhoused – https://envisioncommunitymn.org/proposal/ – that the city of #Minneapolis uniquely has thanks to the work of Envision Community. It's in the zoning and everything!
But far from encouraging any of the unused city land for this, that sits year after year with developers not wanting to pick up for a mere $10K and build housing on, mayor #JacobFrey is completely opposed to truly affordable housing.
Anything that guarantees people a safe, stable place to stay—even a one-room shack—would inevitably pull rents down just a little and that is unacceptable to #Minneapolis mayor Frey and the people he answers to— those living off of others paying rent.
Frey and his cronies use police as their primary response to people being unhoused for the same reason they are trying to eviscerate the voter-passed rent control lobby. To protect the propertied class.
Pretty much everybody here – https://northdef.wordpress.com/2022/12/27/these-officials-have-no-conscience/ – represent the parasitic class and the parasitic class must have its unearned rent in full, no matter the harm to the majority of us who live here.
It is property over people, #Minneapolis for the wealthy, all the way for them.
We don't have to take it but they are using all their wealth and power to go on the offensive now.
Anyone up for canvassing around the camp and future sites?
Mostly checking in with people for what they need; if you have a car for transporting stuff that may be it.
But people want defense to at least delay this eviction also, and talking to neighbors could be key in this— tips?
benjamin melançon (@[email protected])
@[email protected] yes, this is why we don't debate fascists— but… if you are in solidarity with–for instance–unhoused people, you quickly learn there are authoritarians and conservatives that are nominally pro-democracy and liberal. People who do seem to be for civil rights for Black and trans people but want police to deny the right to shelter to local poor people. They clearly believe "the very idea of humans being all fundamentally equal and deserving is wrong and unnatural" https://social.coop/@mlncn/110102070567691467
Billy SmithThe Ecological Land Coop are crowdfunding to buy farmland in the UK, as a way of setting up smallholding farming coop's.
They're in touch with a lot of people who are looking at their funding approach, including housing coops.
Another UK-based group is the Radical Routes, who may be able to help: