Blog

They call it an "abatement policy." City hall frames it with sanitized, bureaucratic words like public safety, sanitation, and neighborhood revitalization. But if you want to know what Oakland’s Encampment Abatement Policy (EAP) actually feels like, you have to look at it through the eyes of the people whose lives it disrupts, dismantles, and shatters. Elected officials are supposed to protect all members of this community. But somewhere along the way, "the community" stopped

There is an unspoken, jarring hypocrisy woven into the fabric of California policy. Watch the machinery of the state move when an animal facility faces crisis. Statewide oversight boards are proposed, multi-agency task forces mobilize, public funds are unlocked, and leaders rightfully demand accountability, tracking, and protection. Yet, human beings, our neighbors, our classmates, our families, are systematically pushed off public blocks, cited, swept, and treated as a publi