There is a Mutual Aid Fair @ Cal Anderson Oct 29
On the evening of Oct 28 there is a spooky cover show fundraiser at the Vera Project fundraising for Free Food Wednesdays (aka Cal Grill)
Radical zine fair + benefit show for Kitsap FNB Nov 11 @ The Charleston in Bremerton
Going into winter, City of Aberdeen destroys alternative shelters built by campers
Wednesday, Sept 27, the City of Aberdeen worked with Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) on Wednesday in order to demolish the structures the homeless residents had previously built, or assembled to make themselves homes on State Street. The campers have been steadily building and preparing their homes for another winter without a cold weather shelter,since Aberdeen refuses to allow them in its City limits. They spent the entire last year finding, hauling, nailing, and tarping whatever building materials they could get their hands on in order to make shelters that meet their needs in terms of space and warmth. The City chose the beginning of winter to come in and smash it all with excavators and throw it into dump trucks.
The campers were notified last week that this would be happening to them, and were only given a few days to move their belongings, and no real place to move them too while waiting for the City sweep.
In their own words from a Daily World article:
Brandon Snyder and Krista Bradshaw, an engaged couple who have been living on State Street for about a year, had a different viewpoint of having what was the home torn to pieces they shared with another person and their chihuahua Little Bit. According to the couple, they didn’t receive enough time to properly move.
“They only gave us a couple days. I think they came over on like the 21st and told us they were going to kick us all out of our homes,” Snyder said. “We only had so much time to pack up all our stuff. Most of us lost a whole bunch of stuff that they’re just bulldozing and throwing in garbage bags. We literally lost everything and gotta start all over.”
Bradshaw backed up Snyder’s claims with more detail that shares another struggle — being inundated with useless garbage from other residents, which is a practice they’ve dealt with for a while. Many housed people have voiced their opinions on the garbage down at the state-owned State Street property and a little bit south on the city-owned River Street encampment and seem to think it’s mostly from the homeless residents. While a good chunk is, some isn’t.
“Other people that live in houses and stuff come down here and dump their garbage from the back of their trucks because they don’t want to go to the garbage dump and pay for the garbage,” Bradshaw said. “We have so many people come down here. They keep coming back down here and doing it. … They use our dumpsters and all kinds of stuff. All of us lost everything.”
Bradshaw said during the summertime she and other homeless residents prepare for wintertime. She has a problem with the timing of this temporary move. Why? The rainy season started Saturday.
“We get our places prepared for wintertime so we’re not cold in there and they just tear our places down,” Bradshaw said. “So now we have to work on getting prepared for winter again but winter’s here. If they were going to do anything they should have done it during summertime, not when winter’s out and it’s cold out and rainy out, you know? A lot of us have lost a lot of our tarps and shelter and everything. Those tents (they’re building) are nothing, dude. They have Velcro’d doors. And me and (Brandon), two people cannot be comfortable in that tent, not even a little bit. Those are made for plants, not human beings. That’s what they give us.”
According to Bradshaw, there have been roadblocks to alternative options for where to live and she blames the city.
“It’s very stressful. Those are our homes, they’ve all we’ve got,” Bradshaw said. “Sure a lot of us need to get off our (butts) and go do something about it, but some of us don’t have hope anymore. We don’t have that drive anymore, you know? They just try so hard and they don’t get anywhere with it so they stop trying. (The city and WSDOT) just took all we had, everything. Our beds, our home. That’s home to us.”
When told the city said it’s for health and safety, Bradshaw dismissed the idea.
Everyone from campers, to City workers, to police, to social service workers expressed disgust at the action the City was taking, yet none provided any real form of resistance. For example helping the campers learn their legal rights in situations like these, rights that afford them the same ability to deny entry to their home without a warrant for entry. No one seems prepared to resist these sweeps, so much as assist them and then complain about the action they themselves are involved in carrying out.
Cleaning up Aberdeen
Unsurprisingly after the last three to five years of the issue being pushed by hate groups like Save Our Aberdeen Please (SOAP) trash is the No. 1 concern facing Aberdeen, according to the city of Aberdeen, its residents, business owners, unhoused community, the general public and people who shop within the city.
This focus on trash is the result of a directed campaign by local hate groups and politicians to demonize the extreme poverty and difficulty living in a tent under the bridge. While denying these people shelter they will complain about the lack of shelter and point to the accumulation of trash at the local encampments as a sign that the homeless are a huge money sink.
Recently the City began to publish the cost of City wide clean ups, posting them publicly for all to see, with the implication that the entire cost is for the two encampments under the Chehalis River Bridge. These reports are also thanks to anti homeless politicians such as Kacey Ann Morrison and Debi Ann Pieracinni. These reports are sued to further blame the homeless for the building costs facing the City, instead of realizing that the City is the very reason these costs exist in the first place and blaming them.
The city has spent a total of $160,765 to clean up trash since the start of 2023, when the homeless cleanup reports began, according to the city.
The total costs for August 2023 alone were $23,477 to clean up trash throughout the city. Much of those cleanup costs come from the homeless encampments on the state property on State Street (200 to 400 blocks of East State Street) and the city property on River Street (200 to 400 blocks of East River Street). The city bills the state for cleaning up the State Street blocks.
“That’s just for that camp down there. …,” said Ruth Clemens, Aberdeen’s city administrator. “I know the community is concerned about that but it also includes collecting all the shopping carts. We clean up pretty much as much as we can around the whole city, but the bulk of it definitely comes from cleaning up the encampments, keeping the right-of-way clear. Also in that, the dumping fees for the two dumpsters down there. But there are people within the community who see that as an opportunity to take their trash down there.”
They even say that it is because of the trash accumulation that the City now realizes it needs a shelter. Not because of the lives lost in the years they haven’t had one, but because businesses in town might have to deal with trash, or the monetary cost of tossing all the garbage dumped down there. It couldn’t be clearer who and what these people actually care about and it isn’t trash and it isn’t the unhoused.
In the meantime the plan is to send City workers to camp to clean up the area, any belongings outside the small section marked out by cement blocks is subject to being thrown away. The process is laid out in detail for any interested in the most recent Daily World article. The two City workers relate calling the police to deal with “problematic” people trying to remove their belongings from the back of their garbage truck.
Disgustingly, he then goes on to say that the businesses in the area have had to deal with “the brunt” of the effects of the unhoused encampment near them, completely disregarding the humans forced to live in these camps. Everyone focuses on how hard it is on the City, its employees, and its businesses.With little more than liberal patronizing outside of direct eugenics policies. Now, as the cold wet season approaches, the City has scheduled another sweep for the camps.
After years of failures, Grays Harbor County re-creates homeless housing task force
The Grays Harbor County Board of Commissioners voted this month to establish a state-required homeless housing task force to provide recommendations and advice on future homeless initiatives and plans. As the 2/3rds fascist board selects the members we can guess that they will stock the task force with cronies and obstructionists. The State mandates that all counties create a homeless housing task force in order to develop a five year homeless housing plan, something Grays Harbor County previously fulfilled through the Health and Human Services Advisory Board, which drafted the most recent Five Year Plan to Address Unmet Housing Needs, published in 2019. But that board was put on pause during the COVID pandemic “due to diminished public health changing requirements for county boards of health,” according to Cassie Lentz, healthy places coordinator for Grays Harbor County Public Health.
The County has failed to meet the basic goals of making homelessness rare, brief, and one-time. The following graphic comes from the report published in 2019 that outlines the performance benchmarks for the County.
The most recent performance report from the County Health Department shows how out of line with reality these paltry benchmarks were. Instead of making homelessness more rare by reducing the number of estimated unserved literally homeless households to 172 by 2021, we can see that even by 2022 the number has, in fact, risen to 415. The average length of time a household was homeless has stretched to an astonishing 536 days, a far cry from the estimated 60 days of the original report. This means that the people who were homeless when the original report was filed are likely still experiencing homelessness and have been this entire time. The percentage of households served who actually ended up moving to permanent housing went down to 76%, as opposed to the predicted rise to 80%. Meaning that in all aspects this county has failed its homeless population.
According to the Revised Code of Washington 43.185C.160, the homeless housing task force, in addition to drafting the county’s five year homelessness plan, is tasked with establishing guidelines consistent with the statewide homeless housing strategic plan for initiatives including emergency shelters, short-term housing needs, temporary encampments, supportive housing for chronically homeless persons and long-term housing. The State law also allows for the county to give existing government or nonprofit bodies the role of task force, contract with a another entity to do so, or decline to create a task force in which case the Department of Commerce would do so.
Lentz said public health will solicit applications and recommendations for members of the task force once its bylaws are approved. State law provides a long list of eligible members: “representatives of the counties, cities, towns, housing authorities, civic and faith organizations, schools, community networks, human services providers, law enforcement personnel, criminal justice personnel, including prosecutors, probation officers, and jail administrators, substance abuse treatment providers, mental health care providers, emergency health care providers, businesses, real estate professionals, at large representatives of the community, and a homeless or formerly homeless individual.”
Last and least is the actual homeless community themselves. Any decision made about them should revolve around their needs and center their voices in the conversation. Based on the make up of the last such board, it seems unlikely that they will solicit members from those experiencing homelessness. But what good does a varied board matter if the commissioners decline to follow their advice? That is precisely what we have seen from the county over the last few years, which has contributed to the ghastly numbers discussed above.
“I’m not a social worker and neither are either of my seat mates,” District 3 Commissioner Vickie Raines said. “It will make it I think less of a conflict between the commissioners, because we selected this board, this is the recommendations that they have — are we going to follow the recommendations of our task force?”
The board will be made up of members who have been recommended for the position by the commissioners, meaning that if they want to stock the board with business and real estate interests, then that is what we will see.
Despite denying multiple shelters, officials emphasize need for homeless shelter
At the same meeting this month local government leaders discussed the prospect of greater collaboration in addressing homelessness and the immediate need for a homeless shelter in Grays Harbor County.
Aberdeen City Administrator Ruth Clemens delivered a presentation to the Grays Harbor County Board of Commissioners with information about the city’s Homelessness Response Committee meetings and recent community surveys, which the city is using to create a homelessness strategy. This strategy seems to be to remove as many resources and rights for the unhoused as they can, forcing people out of town when possible. Their terribly written survey was used to present the ignorance and hostility of the local business community in regards to the unhoused. The City said it’s next steps include looking for permanent shelter options, a process being carried out in secret by City of Aberdeen Mayor Pete Schave and County Commissioner Kevin Pine, both members of the local hate group SOAP (Save Our Aberdeen Please). They seem to desire to put them in an open air prison setting and if possible force them into work and treatment.
Clemens said a majority of responses indicated the city of Aberdeen has been “very ineffective” in addressing the challenges of homelessness, and people were “very doubtful” of the ability of political and civic leaders in that regard.
“The people have lost hope and trust in the government’s ability to respond to these important social issues,” Clemens said. “If we were able to get a shelter, that would be one of the greatest responses, to be able to provide something like that. That is our ultimate goal.” It seems they will only approve a shelter that is outside the City limits, regardless of how terribly they are doing at their jobs, and the desperate need for shelter years ago. In 2021, the board of commissioners passed on an opportunity for nearly $1.5 million in state and federal funding to develop a homeless shelter in Aberdeen, with Commissioners Kevin Pine and Jill Warne stating they were not in favor of providing a “low barrier” shelter that did not mandate sobriety or treatment for an overnight stay.
Input from surveys and meetings pointed to the need for shelter and brought to light “both sides of the coin,” Clemens said. Business owners raised the problem of people urinating and defecating near store entrances and in nearby alleys; homeless people, especially women, indicated that was their only safe option when nature called in the middle of the night. This is the result of the City removing all portable restrooms from the City last year.
Clemens said getting people off the street (and out of the way of business) would benefit the city’s downtown core, and ultimately help an effort to “rebrand” downtown Aberdeen. They know their priorities and are beholden to the business community and real estate and development interests. A big part of the Cities current gentrification platform is removing the unhoused from the City. The ruling class wants to impose a high barrier forced treatment model that is located outside Aberdeen City limits.
She then went on to complain about the ability of law enforcement to criminalize homeless existence because of the US Constitution. The 2019 case Martin V Boise decided that such behavior when there is no available low barrier shelter in town violates the 8th amendment and amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. State and federal grants usually mandate shelters to be low barrier, or without requirements of background checks, program participation, identification or sobriety.
Pine, who represents District 2, which includes Aberdeen, told The Daily World Tuesday that he would not be supportive of a low barrier shelter within the city limits. He and Aberdeen Mayor Pete Schave have searched for a shelter site outside the Aberdeen city limits for months but have declined to share locations. He also lied and claimed that funding was the biggest obstacle, ignoring the $1.5 million they turned down in 2021.
Schave said in August the pair identified an adequate site just outside of Aberdeen. Pine said Tuesday a potential site is “close enough to services that someone could walk and/or take a bus.” This interpretation is being made by these two able bodied men on behalf of the entire unhoused community, many of whom are disabled, have pets, or shopping carts and need to located near to services. Congregate shelters like this are the worst option for housing people, they provide a nexus for abuse and exploitation. The County’s vision is having all the homeless people concentrated into one place, with heavy security and forced treatment, then they can criminalize their existence outside this location and force the decision to go there on them.
Food shortages and inflation cause local food banks to call for more community donations
K Bramstedt, volunteer for the Aberdeen Food Bank, says this year’s count of mouths fed is larger than Bramstedt, a former food bank director and 40-year volunteer, has ever seen.
Bramstedt estimates the food bank fed 36% more people so far in 2023 than at this time last year. That equates to an increase of anywhere from 200 to 1,500 clients per month. Despite people’s needs increasing three fold since before the pandemic, food supplies including community donations have declined in the same time.
Instead of having a variety of local producers all the food pantries in town rely on the Hoquiam-based non profit Coastal Harvest for much of their food supply. That supply has dwindled in the last few years for a number of reasons, said Coastal Harvest Executive Director Brent Hunter. Supply chain issues are still lingering from the pandemic, while natural disasters have affected farms where key ingredients are grown.
“This is a nationwide problem,” Hunter said. “It’s not a Grays Harbor problem. Every food bank network in the country is feeling the same thing.”
Inflation of food prices have also hit the food banks in town as the shortages of free food donations have led to them having to outright buy food to stay open. With prices rising, “that can only last so long,” Bramstedt said. Food costs in Western Washington have risen by 4% in the last year, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and items like peanut butter are especially pricey but critical to the food boxes the pantry provides.
The conflict of capitalism and climate catastrophe are here and we need to be building systems of dual power outside control of the State, and ruling class. Having our own local food sources is an imperative. Small greenhouses can starts plenty of plants for a decentralized network of small plots throughout the County. Through local food sovereignty we can not only decrease our reliance on a single provider of food as these antiquated systems collapse, but learn how to organize our communities to accomplish countless actions aimed at making our world better.
After contributing to the opioid epidemic, Walmart agrees to pay Grays Harbor $5.4 million in settlement
As the County debates even having a single shelter for the increasing number of people on the streets, claiming funding as a reason they cant seem to open up a shelter, the Washington Attorney General’s Office announced that more than $60 million to combat the fentanyl epidemic will soon be coming to Washington.
These resources are a result of the investigation into Walmart for its role fueling the opioid epidemic as a pharmacy. All eligible local governments signed onto the Attorney General’s $62.6 million resolution.
The resources will be split equally between the state and local jurisdictions.
Locally, this will include nearly $5.4 million for Grays Harbor, with $4.3 million going to the County, and just over $1 million for Aberdeen alone.
This resolution is part of the $1.1 billion the Attorney General’s Office has recovered from 11 companies that were alleged to have played a role in fueling the opioid epidemic. Washington state’s money comes from an overall $3.1 billion multi-state resolution with Walmart.
The companies (CVS, Giant Eagle, Walgreens, and Walmart) say they did nothing wrong in the way they dispensed highly addictive pain pills. But the jury trial now getting underway could expose them to billion of dollars in liability and huge risk to their reputations. The companies earned billions of dollars dispensing opioids while often failing to implement adequate safety and monitoring systems for high-risk medications. More than 500,000 people in the U.S. have died from overdoses since the late 1990s when drug companies – including pharmacies – began distributing far more opioid medications. Critics say they were reckless in the way they dispensed opioid pain pills, ignoring red flags as more and more people became addicted.
Under the terms of the legally binding resolution, these funds must be used to combat the opioid epidemic, including fentanyl.
This means that it would be well used in constructing a holistic and permanent shelter in town. A transitional housing community built by and for the unhoused. Something with wrap around social services located on site. One can hardly imagine a more perfect use of these funds than an outreach center based in a new shelter. Unfortunately this money will be held by those who want to eliminate the unhoused rather than provide for their needs. They will likely fail to partner with the very unhoused community they claim to want to help, and will oppose their efforts to organize themselves and get what they need for themselves.