Extra

When a cop killed Alan Blueford in East Oakland as he lay on his back, his hands raised and empty, Blueford was saying “I didn’t do anything.” The cop shot him three times anyway. When Mr. Powell kept telling the court, "I’m trying to deal with what the city wants; I have no objection to fixing up my house, I just don’t have any money,” the court put the house in receivership anyway, and thus put Mr. Powell in horrendous debt. The city could have worked with Mr. Powell; but instead it refused to listen to him, and chose to offer him fake assistance. The court too could have worked with Mr. Powell; but instead, it refused to listen to him, and chose to hear the city’s fabricated arguments about drugs in the house, a public nuisance to the neighborhood, disobedience to city processes. 

Fast forward to 2019; we hear the punchline for this entire story. Mr. Powell has been saddled with a $750,000 debt. The city has a Deed of Trust for the house, so it can authorize a sale (to cover the receiver’s exorbitant expenditure). It can sell the house to cover the debt as soon as the judge says “okay.” 

Selling the house was to be the punchline all along from the beginning. That’s why neither the city nor the court would listen to Powell. The city had taken him to court not because he did anything wrong, but in order to put him in debt so they could get his property (after turning it into income property by violating the judge’s instructions). 

Actually, the Receiver gets to sell the house because the receivership agreement gives him power over the property. And the owner of the property becomes the victim of that power. Thus, at the beginning of 2019, the Receiver, as the creditor, decides Mr. Powell is far enough over his head in debt to ever pay, and petitions the court for the right to sell the house. 

And when and if that happens, the city just gets rid of another black family, and turns a family housing situation into a fancy rental property. The banks win, and the victim disappears into some other town somewhere. Mr. Powell is black. Isn’t that what has happened to black people ever since 1863? And it still happens in 2019. 

In other words, the city and the receiver are just pulling another trick out of their hat. It was the third round. The first round was in holding a poor black man to faked deadlines and punishing him for missing them. The second trick was promising money that would be withheld even though it was used to get a Deed of Trust signed, and give the city control over the house. The third trick was in suing Mr. Powell in civil court, a step toward putting his house in receivership, while creating the power to refuse to listen to him while he pleads his case. 

He pleaded his case on his own, having no lawyer to represent him, for two years. He knew that receivership would destroy him. He knew that intuitively. He has known from experience that "they" (cops, city administrators, etc.) take you to court not because you have broken a law but in order to gain control over you. You become a detail in a transaction in which other people in high position make profit. 

Mr. Powell knew all that. He never let go of that powerful two-letter word: "No." 

In March, 2015, the city petitioned the court to place the house under receivership. The receivership was not to benefit Mr. Powell and his family. It was to create a debt that could be used to throw Mr. Powell and his family on the street as soon as it got too big for Mr. Powell to pay. 

In January, 2019, the Receiver petitions the court of sell the house. QED. 

But it didn’t turn out that way. Mr. Powell’s community, people from his block and from south Berkeley, showed up at the court proceedings and watched silently. They made themselves witnesses. You just never know what effect a group of silent people, intently watching what is going on, will have by the end of the day. There is so much that goes on in this society that depends on avoiding the light of day. A crowd of silent people, sitting and watching, often becomes strong sunlight illuminating dark-side events. 

From 2015 on, Mr. Powell argued that he could do the work on the house slowly, raising a little money here, and a little money there. Most of it just required some maintenance work. The city threw tweaked deadlines at him, and repeated the city’s claim that the building was a “public nuisance” -- a technical or legalist term for blanket condemnation. 

The court listens when the city boasts of providing an interest-free loan. It doesn’t listen when Mr. Powell says he never got any of that money. In 2015, the court could have asked the city, “why not, why didn’t he get the money?” The city waits until 2017, and approval of its receivership petition, to say why not. 

What produced that two year delay? It was Powell’s statement that he had no representation. That was the only thing the court can hear. 

But why was representation so scarce? Apparently, local lawyers who are willing to fight the city for a black family are hard to find. 

You don’t think race played a role in this entire saga? Well, that is almost understandable. A large number of black people had to be killed on video for the nation to wake up to the role that race plays in all areas of this society. In this saga, we are dealing with only one. Yet even so, black people had to be killed by police in order for the role race plays in housing, the building of unaffordable market-rate housing on the one hand, and the displacement of low income black families on the other, to become discernible. 

Even terms like "nuisance" and "substandard" have racist undertones. As terms written into city codes well before Brown v. Board, they sit there on the books pretending to not be what they are – that is, implying a low-life character to whoever is subjected to them. A nuisance is someone who bothers you. Black person don’t have to do anything to bother some white people. Their existence is enough. Even their house becomes a nuisance if the city says so. Who do you listen to? What race are they? 

You know how the city finally got approval from the court for its trick? Someone found Mr. Powell a lawyer. Mr. Powell paid this lawyer $800 to protect him. The lawyer took the money, and said he would. But then, two weeks later, he is in court, and signs off on the judge’s order approving the city’s petition for receivership. That happened on March 15, 2017. On March 9, 2017, six days earlier, Mr. Powell had filed his own declaration stating that he did not want receivership, and that it would seriously harm members of his family (his daughter did self-dialysis every day, for instance). 

Guess what? Nobody listened to him. The judge ignored his filing and sold him out, the city ignored his family situation and sold him out, and that lawyer just plain sold him out. 

And still, it gets worse.