India Joze Restaurant Hosts Benefit to Fight the Lodging Law, Keep Linda Out of Jail, and Support the First Amendment of our Constitution

OCCUPY THE FIRST AMENDMENT FOR DINNER

and Help Dislodge California's Lodging Law

Join Me For An Incredible Dinner,

4:30 pm at India Jose Restaurant on Sunday, December 4th

Help me invite people whom-else may want to come?! Entertainment will be fun ~ music, Lodging news, I'll read a poem, hopefully introduce lawyers

Comments about the Lodging Trial that has been postponed and an update on County vs OccupySC with Lodging Citations here too.

It will be the BEST food, treat yourself and help us offer a little money to my attorney

Cost is $15 to $50 per plate per person, sliding scale. Call me, 831 331 1153 or email me at homes4everyone@yahoo.com to secure a place if you're coming, or just show up Sunday at

418 Front Street, Santa Cruz, CA ~ India Joze Restaurant

THE LODGING LAW Trial Readiness Hearing Sept 14th

Yesterday in court, Judge John Gallagher accepted the Writ of Habeus Corpus filed weeks ago by my pro bono attorney, Jonathan Che Gettleman. He ordered the District Attorney to answer it by Oct 14th. Gettleman's reply will then be due seven days forward: Oct 21.

Then, a hearing about the Writ on October 28th will be held in Dept 2. The writ of habeus corpus attempts to bring together the actual setting and situation, with the incident of my getting a Lodging citation.

I am very much hoping that a closer peek at the Lodging law and it's history, which is as controversial as the law is vague here, will bring greater safety and relief to people all over California, especially homeless people with ever-diminishing safety options for sleeping. Maybe just a baby step, and maybe, God willing, we will effectively expose the misuse of this law?

In the best case scenario on October 28th, it could make furthering the trial unnecessary. Look for article I wrote about PeaceCamp2010 and about these unfolding trials and "trials", at thestreetspirit.org. Or get in touch with me for a paper copy, or -- if you are homeless -- to help vend them, and you get to keep the $1.00 per copy.

Judge's Extreme Sentence for Sleep ~ ~ 400 hours volunteer work plus three years' probation ~~ Turns Into Six Months In Jail

Santa Cruz Indymedia

Police State and Prisons

Homeless activist Gary Johnson and
lawyer Ed Frey jailed for six months for PeaceCamp2010's Sleep Protest

by Robert Norse ( rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com )

Friday Jun 10th, 2011 1:00 PM

Homeless activist Gary Johnson--repeatedly ticketed and arrested in the 3-month long PeaceCamp2010 protest against the Sleeping Ban at the County Courthouse--was sentenced to 6 months in jail and taken there in chains. Activist-attorney Ed Frey, who initiated, supported, and was arrested, during the protest was jailed at the same hearing today. Judge Gallagher refused to suspend sentencing pending appeal, denied a motion for a new trial after several jurors complained of juror misconduct, and declined to answer Johnson's question "how can I take probation to obey all laws, when you've defined "sleeping" as lodging to the jury, making it a misdemeanor crime? How can I not sleep for six months during probation?"

I got a phone call this morning from Becky Johnson who was at court for what Gary Johnson (no relation) and Ed Frey thought was a hearing on their motion for retrial in the case of four defendants (Frey, Johnson, Collette Connolly, and Art Bishof).

After denying the motion, Gallagher announced he was also holding a sentencing hearing, which may violate the rights of the defendants--since, I'm told, there has to be advance notice of a hearing. He initially sentenced Frey to 400 hours of Community Service and 3 years probation, which Frey refused. Gallagher then sentenced Frey to 6 months jail (the maximum sentence). Johnson was also given the same sentence. All this is a second-hand account from the eye-witness testimony of Becky Johnson who was in court.

Apparently the ante for those who peacefully protest the Sleeping Ban has been raised to half a year's jail time. Recent modifications in the City's Sleeping Ban law that provide for dismissal of tickets if one has signed up for a "Waiting List' at the Homeless Services Center. (See "Camping Ordinance Revisions Pass at City Council" at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/09/16/18658837.php ).

Frey has been an outspoken and principled activist who provided nightly portapotty support for the homeless protest (a first in Santa Cruz), something even the City was unwilling to provide. He has been a regular pro bono defender of homeless victims of the Sleeping Ban like Robert "Blindbear" Facer (see "Mayor Mike Rotkin debates Ed Frey on Free Radio Santa Cruz at http://peacecamp2010.blogspot.com/2010/07/mayor-mike-rotkin-debates-ed-frey-on.html ).

Gary Johnson continued the principled protest against the Sleeping Ban as others tired, retired, or fell away. SCPD and Sheriff's Deputies adopted a variety of new repressive measures against him and those activists that continued the protest (see "Lights, Camera, Tickets! Klieg Lights at City Hall--Throwing Light on the Shelter Shortage" at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/08/19/18656364.php

Frey's debate with former Mayor Rotkin can be found at http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2010/07/08/18652988.php .

Six months in jail (even four months for "good behavior") is likely to cost Ed Frey his law practice and his home.

Becky Johnson should be writing a more extensive account of the shocking court repression shortly.

Those interested in supporting Gary and Ed can contact HUFF at 831-423-4833 or e-mail me at rnorse3 [at] hotmail.com .

VEHICULARLY HOUSED ACTIVIST CROW (LL: and PeaceCamp2010 survivor) ANNOUNCED HE WOULD BEGIN A MORNING PROTEST AT THE COURTHOUSE FROM 7:30 AM TO 9 AM MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY.

Linda's Hearth note: These two men are still in jail -- despite the state's determination to exit a huge percentage of incarcerated from California's overcrowded prison system. The problem came to a head when the federal government's lawsuit ordered our legislature and Governor Brown to obey a court order, because they had not been able to make health and safety changes to the prisons. Six months in jail because of one interrupted night's sleeping "crime". I hope I can join Crow on Monday morn?

Peace Camp 2010 Defendants in Court~~ Homeless Not Helpless

Trial Begins for Six Peace Camp 2010 "Lodgers"

dateline ~ Santa Cruz ~ Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Day Two for six Peace Camp 2010 survivors: legal agents are still picking jurors and their understudies.

The Honorable Judge John Gallagher predicted this Lodging trial could take up to two weeks. Attorney Ed Frey is representing himself and five other brave, persisting defendants; one person is MIA and the four others are stuck sitting all day, backs against the courthouse wall to Judge's left, watching these proceedings.

California Superior Court of Santa Cruz County, Dept 2, 701 Ocean St. Not a lot revealed so far. The trial resulted from last summer's ongoing demonstration and protest over anti-sleeping laws used to render homeless people into criminals, for sleeping at night. After more than a month, Santa Cruz County's Sheriff was pressured to "clean up" the demo-campers, and so he authorized ticketing sweeps. Groups of Deputies came, first with City of Santa Cruz sleep ban citations, then with California's quit broad lodging law, 647(e).

The demonstration changed but did not go away until weeks into this sudden criminalization in the very place locals gather to redress their government, to inform the general public, and to share their grievances: the lawn and walkway, under the US and California flags, in front of the Courthouse. Next door to the County Government Building.

As I noted earlier somewhere, a Necessity Defense will be allowed for this "lodging" trial. Necessity, related to homeless defendants in California, is a strictly defined list of qualities required to be met (proved), to demonstrate one has NO other sleepy-time recourse besides sleeping outside (in public). This trial will likely have five necessity defense presentations.

In the past three decades, the growing body of clinical evidence regarding harm resulting from a person not getting enough sleep has been glossed over or prevented outright, in courtroom efforts I've witnessed over three decades, and in general around these selectively administered anti-sleeping laws.

In my view, one of the hurdles is trying to get the judges and commissioners, or occasionally a jury, to UNDERSTAND we are not concerned about a one-time, middle-class outing, here; like say boy scouts camping with their telescopes, or Faire merchants guarding their wares and their generators or stoves or tents along the riverside before the show.

I get concerned about this TREND of making criminals out of individuals, groups and throngs of people who's every single day is at best ten times more difficult and critical and immediate than most folks', and who's nights are a rigged crap shoot of options for the thirty people in every thousand (around here) of sleeping on somebody's couch or back porch, or of getting rolled and robbed in their sleep by a lost drunk or crushed in a municipal recycling truck. Or committing suicide because they have become isolated for way too long. Yes, I am saying about thirty known-to-be homeless people out of each thousand manage to come up with an alternative to hiding all night.

I become concerned when I meet the huge numbers of women in their 40s who lost their stable housing simply because they were faced with urgent medical needs but had no kind of insurance at their jobs, forced to hide now; or upon seeing already disabled people who cannot round up a landlord and all the trimmings by themselves, despite their fixed incomes, thus being put at greater risk because we shun them at every turn.

I'm trying to say for every "bum" and "ingrate on the sidewalk"we experience, there are hundreds of other folks (who also happen to be homeless) whom you'd recognize as fellow humans if you would only see them: going to work, caring for their kids, studying for their midterms at the cafe with a laptop just like housed dudes, fixing their friend's bike, paying their taxes, and trying to clean things up 'round about themselves, no matter where they land.

Our government could not get away with this total failure of social policy -- creating ever greater homelessness while our banks empty our homes they are not able to sell -- if we were not parties to it's creation. It's called tossing the baby out with the bathwater. It is most certainly NOT Christian to blame a whole sub-population for the actions of a few jerks, whether those jerks are the golden-parachute banking crooks or the hustling street rejects who act out our shadow fears: homeless does not mean "bum", homeless does not mean "thief."

Maybe if we could all stop using the word homeless as a euphemism, and start naming the behaviors that we actually fear or loath, our own eyes could acclimate to notice homeless PEOPLE? But I digress. Remember the movie, "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?" (Memory wants me to believe it featured a young Jane Fonda, but...)

Struggling around this latest cattle prod, the Lodging Law, alongside the City of Santa Cruz's camping/sleeping ban, and just like many new municipal and national ordinances across the land exhausts everyone involved. A little widespread integrity could help us cure these efforts at legal trickery as banishment and selective enforcement, with it's dishonest underpinnings. We are leaving innocent people to suffer and die in the dark so we don't have to face our own flawed assumptions, just to forestall our collective discomfort for all the wrong reasons.

We need to become more aware of our own and other people's human rights.

It is, simply, wrong to make sleeping illegal. None of the pop excuses hold water, they're just exhortations of fear. The more US Americans get downsized while we ignore and deny our role as citizens in our own economic sinkhole, the sooner what I'm saying will become self-evident.

Meanwhile, here's hoping it's not YOUR uncle who gets his pack stolen because he fell asleep, losing YOUR phone number again, and here's hoping it's not YOUR granny who gives up and goes to sleep for the last time, in the muddy river tonite.

You Snooze You Loose in Santa Cruz

Housing NOW! in Santa Cruz's
Linda Lemaster Loses Hearing to
Demur 647(e) Friday, March 4, 2011

Today, I went to Santa Cruz County Superior Court in hopes of convincing
Judge Rebecca Connolly that the County's Sheriff's use of 647 ( e ), an anti-lodging State law, is unconstitutional.

I still believe the lodging law as used here is overly broad, vague, and undefined. A person can't really know, based on reading this law, even with research alongside one's reading, whether her behaviors are intended as "lodging". Too chilling!

In the face of my personal right to, and need for, freedom of speech, and other particulars of this case, I am disappointed by Judge Connolly's decision.

The judge said, "I can't believe this statute is vague. Regarding unconstitutional
issues, I don't think it's so vague it would influence the 1st amendment. I find
the statute as written is sufficient on its face.

"As to the citation, it's sufficient to address the charges -- it says it's illegal to lodge -- with respect to 647(e), (it) is not void for being overbroad. I'm going to deny the demurrer."

Attorney Mark Garver, my Public Defender, made a compelling presentation for my long- awaited demurrer hearing in court Friday morning. Becky Johnson and Gary Johnson, both Peace Camp 2010 participants provided support and solidarity, for which I am grateful.

Superior Court Judge Connolly wrapped the whole mess up by sending my lodging "violation" to Judge John Gallagher's court next door, in Dept. 2, 8:30am March 11th, because. she said, he has "the other" lodging law cases from Peace Camp 2010.

I am unhappy with her decision mostly because the Judge didn't even care enough to wonder, or ask, what situation(s) could lead us to raise the question of whether this law is viable for it's application last summer during an ongoing demonstration to protest the dangerous and even deadly sleeping-camping ban cherished so long by the City of Santa Cruz.

For more information on the demurrer hearing, check out Becky Johnson's "One Woman Talking" article also on blogspot.com.

Lodging Law being tried Friday, January 21, 2011, at 1:30 pm in Department 2

CRIMINALIZING HOMELESS PEOPLE

FOR LODGING

AT THE COURTHOUSE ~~

Sleeping Outside at Night Deemed Illegal,
as Everywhere Else in Public

excerpt of article from Becky Johnson, One Woman Talking, on Blogspot

This Friday, following a flurry of briefs filed back and forth between the City and the District Attorney's office, the first major court hearing will be held this Friday, January 21st, 2011 at 1:30 PM in Department 2. The State anti-lodging law makes it illegal to "lodge" anywhere within the state boundaries absent a deed, a mortgage, a lease, a rental agreement, or a receipt for a local motel room. This is a misdemeanor which allows for immediate arrest and jailing.






Peace Camp 2o1o had been protesting the City of Santa Cruz' MC 6.36.010 section a also known as the Sleeping Ban, which is an infraction, when sheriff's surprised them by making arrests under the more serious, anti-lodging law.

Frey, representing himself, along with six other defendants including Gary Johnson and Collette Connally, two of Peace Camp 2010's most courageous protesters. Both are protesting the law which makes it a crime to sleep out of doors anywhere within the city limits outside of a home or motel room, outdoors or in a legally parked vehicle. A separate provision outlaws the use of a blanket at night even if the person remains wide awake.


Linda's Hearth note: see more photos and rest of this article at onewomantalking.blogspot.com. Her photo above features my wonderful friend, Colette, getting awakened by the state, outside Santa Cruz County courthouse plaza.

To Sleep, Perchance to Dream . . .

What Does Lodging Mean Today?

Santa Cruz County's Superior Court hears Friday, Nov 12, Constitutionality of state Lodging law 647(e) used against demonstrating sleepers from Peace Camp 2010.

by Linda Ellen Lemaster

While I was attempting to support demonstrating homeless and other sleepers at PeaceCamp2010, I got a lodging ticket. So now am slated to appear in Superior Court Friday, November 12, at 1o am to plea.

Continued Arraignment?

I have asked my Public Defender, Mark Garver, to ask for a court hearing to determine whether or not the lodging law is even constitutional these days. Am told I can demurr having to say "guilty" or "not guilty" until after this hearing.

While it is hard to imagine such an antique law being constitutional, use of similar cruel tools is spreading around the country, and especially "lodging" gets applied against homeless people. I feel this resumption of laws from the past is a form of retaliation against people for their status of being "homeless" and often without money or significant property.

Another concern I felt when I first GOT a citation for allegedly trying to sleep on cement: the legal words appear to be supportive of private property and it's agents, yet the presumed crime of "sleep" occurred on public property. I believe teh courthouse entryway was selected initially by PeaceCamp2010 creators because it could be a refuge, however briefly (PeaceCamp2010 lasted over 3 months but in two locations).

Hopeful that the Court can deliberate from a place beyond provincial alliances, and keep it's focus on what will unfold in the future because of it's interpretation of justice, and will consider who becomes hurt and who benefits by it?

Consider witnessing this hearing to determine the constitutionality of California's Lodging law: Friday, November 12, 10 am. And join me if you want, I'll be "warming up" for it in the Court/County Bldg Atrium at 9:20am, or out on the same walkway PeaceCamp2010 occupied this summer if it's warm.

Let's talk. Lives are at risk by what unfolds. This story feels "incomplete" without mention of campers' totem, Porto Potty, but you'll have to show up to hear more.

Linda's Hearth note: I posted this article in Indybay santa Cruz today. Come to court with me on behalf of standing up to the Big turnip Blood Combine machine that's spitting out more and more homeless people than ever.