Housing NOW! in Santa Cruz Supports the Santa Cruz Eleven
Photo by Becky Johnson
On behalf of Housing NOW! in Santa Cruz, I support the Santa Cruz Eleven, and I will work to help them resecure basic civil rights.
I do NOT support the District Attorney’s considerable efforts to create a political trial using the Eleven as scapegoats. Perhaps the District Attorney’s office is, it appears to me, working to maintain a level of fear among Cruzans; fear about congregating even in small groups, fear about speaking their Truth to “power”, and irrational fear-mongering being to mollify and cripple our communities.
Seeking scapgoats for a victimless crime, fabricating dishonest charges against active people, community media people, and against the very existence and visibility of Occupy Santa Cruz is a throwback unworthy of our County agents. I believe this statist action does not reflect the soul of our communities in Santa Cruz County, but rather, would help destroy what is unique here by cultivating pervasive fear.
Further, I stand with the UNCHARGED actual people who would turn a vacant bank building into a community center. Not that I could have broken into the property (evidence suggests whoever actually entered the building used a key system, btw). Not that I would impinge on another human being’s perceived or actual personal or real property. But I stand aside from the banks who offer lip service in place of their responsibility for communities out of which they make profits, and I continue to stand with any others who choose to maintain their humanity by attempting to restore some humanity to those who are “under the bridge”, or otherwised ostracized, due to poverty, illness, criminalization or harrassment.
Eugene Debs famously said, “As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.” In this tradition, while we actively push human beings from safety and shelter, we are all ejected, and we are all deprived of our rightful human dignity. It is not right for gangs of armed gunmen, whether they work for the state, for some bank, or for themselves, to set social policy, then to expect our District Attorney and political elite to infill and clean up their mess. This function — establishing policy and law — belongs to all of us in a democracy. SCPD and the County Sheriff’s office both need to be relieved of making up the laws as they work.
Meanwhile, I stand with the Santa Cruz Eleven and against this misuse of our legal system and of the People.
Linda Ellen Lemaster, facilitator
Housing NOW! in Santa Cruz
P O Box 42
Davenport, CA 95017
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