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Dear BART Boardmember Lateefah Simon, 

I am afraid you will dishonor yourself if you join or participate in the campaign of political suppression waged by the city of Berkeley against the homeless organization known as “First They Came for the Homeless,” now in residence on BART land at Adeline and 63rd St. 

We met about a year ago when you were campaigning for your position on the BART board. I was involved in campaigning for Cheryl Davila for city council, which seat she won. When you and I spoke, I raised the issue of BART police and the brutality to which they too often lent themselves. You agreed that such police comportment had to stop. And we agreed it was wrong-headed and short-sighted to consider policing as a way of resolving social problems. 

At present there are two homeless encampments on BART land at 63rd St. in Berkeley, one on each side of the tracks where they emerge from the Ashby Station. They are separate and different groups. 

The encampment on the West side is that of the organization, “First They Came for the Homeless.” This is an intentional community, self-organized, autonomous in its ability to take care of its members, and disciplined in its ability to maintain itself as clean, free from drugs and alcohol, and collective in its self-governance. It is also a political community that has acted in Berkeley to bring to people’s attention, on a social and political level, the plight and condition of the homeless in this city, and in the country. As a model community, it presents itself as a role model to other groups of the homeless, for how to survive the dire straits that homeless people find themselves in. As Alex Vitale puts it, “homelessness is about a mismatch between incomes and housing costs.” It is not a policing issue. 

The city of Berkeley has been carrying on a campaign to suppress this intentional community for over two years because of the political position it takes, and because of the statement about civic derogation concerning the homeless that it represents. Since mid-2015, that group had been unmercifully and regularly raided by the police of Berkeley, and moved from one site to another, a campaign it escaped only by settling on the BART land at 63rd and Adeline. Only since then have they found the peace to live as a stable community. 

The group on the East side of the tracks is an ad hoc group, without the community organization that the group on the West side has. They do not know how to take care of themselves as well as the latter. It is for this reason that the woman died in that encampment two weeks ago. Members of the intentional community on the West side of the tracks have been working with this ad hoc group, to bring them to a state of consciousness equal to themselves. It is not an easy process. 

If these encampments are raided by BART police, as promised by the police on Saturday, October 21, BART will be joining Berkeley’s campaign of political suppression, to BART’s and your dishonor. And the work to organize the ad hoc group, and bring it to a level of communal autonomy needed to survive, will be interrupted and ended. 

Lives are at stake. To raid these camps by the police will make the danger to lives only that much greater. Please do not lend yourself to this totalitarian campaign by the city of Berkeley.