by the Western Regional Advocacy Project
When the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP) says “we,” we literally mean every single group and person that built and sustained our community organization for the past 20 years!
In 2005, representatives from seven organizations along the West Coast began strategizing around how to address the root causes of homelessness, starting with the actual day-to-day realities people experience in the streets. Since then, WRAP has grown to 12 kick-ass member organizations across five states, themselves comprising thousands of unhoused community members and allies; five central office staff members; an incredible board with deep roots in this work; and hundreds of dedicated supporters and volunteer artists, researchers, attorneys, organizers and others playing crucial roles in the fight to end the criminalization of poverty and homelessness and ensure housing for all. Building member power, sustaining funders, engaging volunteers—hell, even holding down the same office for 20 years in an ever-changing real estate market—is no joke and something WRAP can be proud of.
Over the past 20 years, we have never forgotten our roots. We continue to be accountable to people living in the streets, parks and encampments, people in vehicles, in single-room occupancy hotels and motels, in public housing and on the margins of cities, small towns and rural areas. We do this by channeling local organizing work and leadership development into a larger regional and national forum. WRAP also provides a peer-based support system to sustain this local organizing work with and among poor and unhoused community members.
WRAP facilitates discussions, analysis, sharing and skill-building across groups. WRAP staff visits with local groups to provide guidance on their particular needs, like outreach or fiscal training, and to learn from each other. We work together to collectively design and create outreach tools which seek the input of homeless people into all the policy positions, campaign priorities, artwork, and public education documents we create.
WRAP believes that it’s crucial to bring the voices of homeless people to the forefront of homeless policy and organizing discussions on the national level. WRAP’s entire work is oriented around deepening and building on the social change work that our members do, while building the capacity and leadership of WRAP members to more effectively engage in social change. Through issue-based inclusive community outreach, WRAP members document the voices and priorities of poor and unhoused people—many of whom are experiencing acute personal challenges, disabilities, and living on fixed incomes or with insecure part-time jobs. These are the community members who are most marginalized and misrepresented in our nation’s political process, and who often are not represented by mainstream “poverty” associations. Outreach to unhoused people—talking to people about their experiences, needs and priorities in our campaigns—has been, and still is, the backbone of WRAP’s work.
Most recently, WRAP’s individual and organization members began conducting another round of systematic outreach to people on the streets to find out what’s been happening since last year’s U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on Grants Pass v. Johnson. We are documenting how sweeps affect people. Sweeps entail police harassment, citations, arrests, displacement, and ultimately, when there is literally nowhere to legally sleep, banishment from our communities.
Based on the initial responses we’ve documented from 223 people, some clear trends are already showing. From these initial responses, 93% of participants had been swept—displaced—in the past 30 days before being surveyed. Of those, 67% of respondents were given no advance notice. Belongings were thrown away 62% of the time. Absolutely no services, such as shelter or housing, was offered to 81% of those swept, while 92% of all respondents were unable to access legal assistance, despite the fact that 73% of sweeps were conducted by local or state police. After being swept, 81% ended up still living in the streets, while 61% of these people were given “stay away orders” by the cops. Of the people swept, 45% identified as living with a disability. Our goal is to survey at least 1,500 people, and it’s likely we will talk with many more.
This outreach illustrates the immediate effects of the Supreme Court’s decision: Cities are criminalizing people with ever more impunity for the human acts of sleeping, sitting, standing still and eating. This violent reality is informing our ongoing development of the Legal Defense Clinic Project—in partnership with the National Homelessness Law Center)—combining the power of legal representation with the power of accountable community organizing for short-term resourcing and long-term change. What we hear in outreach will also directly help WRAP strategize our organizing campaigns toward ending violent banishment policing, and continue our work with housing justice groups to make housing a human right.
Juxtaposed with this sense of accomplishment around how we have built incredible community strength is the deadly reality we are witnessing today: police brutality in the streets, unabashed racism, transphobia and xenophobia, and dehumanizing, neoliberal policy and funding priorities. Wiping out federal funding for access to health care, housing, medical research and livable income is gonna kill people. They know this, and we know this, so the question becomes “What the hell are we gonna do about it?”
Just as we didn’t survive the last 20 years alone, none of us are gonna survive the shitstorm that has formed over all of our heads alone. We will continue to learn and build together, with love and respect for each other.
The lives of poor people will not be made better by the charity of others. Rather, true systemic change comes from the power of all of us working collectively, led by those who know the impacts of unjust systems firsthand. We need you to help us bring more people into this movement to continue building power. Your support gives us hope that, collectively, we can build a society in which a well-housed, healthy, vibrant community becomes a reality.
We need a dramatic shift from the “I” (the unhoused, elderly, tenants, immigrants, trans, etc.) to the “WE” (humans, people, us, everyone). While we acknowledge that some of us sure as hell are targeted, attacked and hurt much more than others, we also know that this is not their shit to fight alone. We build power when we collectively identify and call out the racism, ableism, sexism, and all other forms of oppression being instigated. It’s not up to individuals to fight oppression by themselves, and we can’t change the system that oppresses so many people by focusing on one issue area. If we continue to organize on just a single issue, we’re not going to change the overall system of oppression.
In this intense environment, the “tried and true” systems of “effective” community organizing, litigation and legislature strategies need to evolve. In every flyer, every T-shirt and protest sign we print, every demand we make, every press release we issue and every training session we conduct, we need to be sure we are talking about all people who are getting fucked throughout this process. Local organizers must still reflect the day-to-day priorities of their work, while at the same time, we shift our strategies in building collective power.
Visit WRAP’s website (www.wraphome.org) to read our 20-year zine, see the video of us in action, check out amazing artwork, and the 20-year poster from our Minister of Culture.
*** The impetus for creating WRAP, the support and encouragement to have it be its own entity vested in its members is a testament to the Coalition On Homelessness, SF crew and members over the past 38 years of accountable community organizing at home.
