Jun 22, 2021
No Evictions On Stolen Land
Testimonies written by CURYJ young leaders for the Board of Super Moms action to stop evictions organized by ACCE.
I am 15 years old and I am the middle sister out of two brothers. My mother is dependent on me. I help out my mother on decisions with my family, and every day I am the heart of keeping my family sane. If I fall and don’t get up then my family falls, and stays down.
Once somebody asks what you wish for I would tell you that I wish at the end of the day I could have a bed to lay my whole body on and rest into a deep sleep.
Now it’s Wednesday, October 7th at 1:11 PM and the wish I want to make is that my family is in a better place and to also have a place I can call home. But instead I call my car home — that back seat in my car is my bed, my closet is in the trunk where I put my clothes and shoes. The window I look out in the morning is the car window. At night it gets cold sometimes but all you gotta hope for is the next night to get warmer. At night you have to cover the windows so you don’t wake up to people looking at you as you sleep. When it is smoky outside from the fires I can’t breathe because of my asthma so we have to keep the windows up and it gets so hot sometimes but I can take the heat so I can breathe at last.
It’s 2020 and over the years I have been homeless at least three times but this time has been the longest eviction. Once somebody asks what you wish for I would tell you that I wish at the end of the day I could have a bed to lay my whole body on and rest into a deep sleep. But that’s not the reality of my current situation.
What I wish for my baby brother, a poor child who happens to be put in this situation to make his fortune the best. These are just children but all you hoped for is that they don’t fall the same way we did. That they become the better parts of us. It’s Wednesday, October 7th, 1:49 PM thank you for taking the time to listen to some parts of my story.
—Homies 4 Justice intern
It’s October 2020 moving on to 2021 and homelessness has lingered in my family over the years thanks to the root problem of an eviction back in Jan 2017. Thanks to you, thanks to the fight we bring, thanks to us the community it gets better every year. I use the word better because the manifesting problem has not been solved. It has been normalized and runs through my family’s veins like it’s okay to be misplaced.
Living in a shed, a car in an alley, or in a dead-end, a tent by the train tracks along San Leandro Street is not a place for a family to shelter in place and should not be tolerated.
You see the world does not stop for you, you have to stop the world from pushing you closer to the flames. I learned that we have to plant seeds along the way, we are the ones closer to the problem so we are closer to solutions.
The manifesting problem has not been solved, it has been normalized I said. You see during COVID or Post COVID evictions no matter what the circumstance should not be tolerated. Living in a shed, a car in an alley, or in a dead-end, a tent by the train tracks along San Leandro Street is not a place for a family to shelter in place and should not be tolerated. Now we have red zones and yellow zones because of fires across California. Soon we will have an earthquake but are we ready for a bigger disaster?
Now is the time we have to teach our landlords to work with the people that they are sheltering because there is a bigger problem going on. We have to educate them and bring the stories of the tenants to life.
Now is the time we have to teach our landlords to work with the people that they are sheltering because there is a bigger problem going on. We have to educate them and bring the stories of the tenants to life.
You see if you evict someone and take them to shelter it’s just a band aid fix when you are in a shelter it is another form of incarceration. Within shelter facilities their workers should not have to call Child Protective Services on families barely making it, their needs to be a shift of heart and put yourself in the shoes of these families, a shelter should not be controlling of your life or where you are going when you are coming back it’s another form of probation supervision.
Thanks to you, thanks to supporters like CURYJ, my family is still a float and I hope a little piece of my story moves you and educates you that there are issues falling through the cracks and being overlooked. Stay motivated and support!
— Dream Beyond Bars fellow
