Raising Awareness About Camps, Sweeps and Displacement in the United States

In recent months, cities and states across the United States have dramatically increased their efforts to sweep and displace homeless encampments and to criminalize people on the streets. In Tennessee, new legislation has made camping on public lands a felony with a possible jail sentence of up to six years in prison. 

A series of posters as part of the nation-wide campaign ‘Housekeys Not Sweeps’, led by the Western Regional Advocacy Project (WRAP),

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Housing for the People: Tennessee Law to Make Homelessness a Felony

The world is changing. Many American cities are experiencing a crackdown on homelessness. Individuals and families without a safe place to call home are being displaced with no place to go. People are losing their belongings. In Tennessee, it’s become extreme. On 1 July, a new law will pass making homelessness a felony “for a person to engage in camping on the shoulder, berm, or right of way of a state or interstate highway,

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The Real-world Impact of Social Security’s Crackdown on Benefits

For three decades, I have relied on Social Security benefits to put a roof over my head, to put food in my belly, and to provide much needed medical care. I have valid, documented reasons that I am entitled to these benefits. However, for over a year, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Social Security Administration sent me harassing communications, threatening to cut me off should I fail to comply with their demands. 

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Poetry

I Had a Dream

To make it come true,

When I wake up,

To feel good

It was a matter of time

When I made her be mine

To live and give all her love to me,

To make me happy for the day

To stop and say

That I wanted to lover her in my dream

But now I’m here

To have you near

So you could hear me

To say to you

That I really love you,

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What Juneteenth Means to Me?

Imagine not knowing that you’ve been freed from slavery because nobody told you. That’s how the Juneteenth holiday got started.

Juneteenth is celebrated in the African American community on June 19 every year. It began as a commemoration of the emancipation of slaves in Texas. It was first recognized in Galveston, Texas, two and a half years after President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863. Even after Texan slaveholders knew of the proclamation,

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