THE CRIMINALIZATION OF POVERTY IN SANTA CRUZ: MANAGING SOCIAL DISSENT

A Statement From:
Industrial Workers of the World
Santa Cruz General Membership Branch
1994



Santa Cruz Camping Ban/Conduct Ordinances: 
The Criminalization of Dissent

We of the Santa Cruz I.W.W. hold that recent attacks on the poor, 
homeless and activist street communities are not merely the result of a 
local aberration. These attacks are part of a national effort to manage 
the radicalization and social protest of an increasing number of people 
experiencing poverty.


A Brief Introduction

Gentrification, meaning redevelopment, increasing rent, and costly 
`beautification,' (efforts aimed at attracting a more upper-class tourist 
base) provides the backdrop and justification for intensified social 
control. With the creation of several new categories of petty crime, such 
as sitting, asking for spare change or sleeping in public, a powerful 
City-Business-Developer alliance is emerging to ensconse police 
harassment in the necessary judicial legitimation. Explicit use of 
selective enforcement, condoned police brutality, the absence of jury 
trials and the imposition of costly fines for convicted offenders are all 
elements of the recently reworked public "conduct ordinances."


Criminalization of the "Lifestyle Choice;" Managing Social Dissent

While proponents argue that the new legislation targets behavior and not 
specific classes or communities of people, we of the I.W.W. maintain that 
the targeted "behaviors" are those which *characterize* certain social 
classes. Sitting on the sidewalk, peacefully asking for spare change, or 
sleeping in public are all aspects of a social *condition.* Yet city 
power players and the capitalist press have been very successful in their 
unrelenting portrayal of homelessness and poverty as an individual 
"lifestyle choice." In Santa Cruz  this assertion functions as the 
linchpin of moral justification for ever-increasing criminalization of 
homelessness. We charge that it is extremely false to assert that any 
majority of the nation's homeless are "homeless by choice." Yet the 
disgust and hatred that is exhibited towards those *perceived* as 
choosing not to participate in the current economic system seems telling. 
Why should the assertion that a particular "lifestyle" was *chosen* be 
valid grounds for its subsequent suppression? Perhaps because that 
"choice" is perceived as a tremendous threat to the current status quo in 
Santa Cruz, a status quo predicated upon cheap, available, very low paid 
labor bound to the second highest rents in the nation. What would happen 
if the option to avoid rent and wage slavery by sleeping outdoors were to 
become more desirable and/or possible for a large number of people? The 
bosses and landlords in town however "progressive" they may claim to be 
would then have to face the level to which their privileges and comfort 
depend on the subordination of others. Thus we assert that criminalizing 
a certain social condition because it is perceived as a choice, 
demonstrates the purposeful effort to manufacture consent and enforce 
bondage to the highly exploitative work/rent system. The criminalization 
of the "choice" not to participate in "the system," demonstrates the 
fascist strategy of current anti-homeless campaigns; to attack, manage, 
regulate and ultimately destroy perceived or actual social dissent.



Anti-Poor Campaigns and Class Struggle

The Camping Ban, the "conduct" ordinances and the surrounding neo-liberal 
discourse about "behavior" and `right-to-be-rich' are targeted not only 
at street populations but also those who are currently housed and 
employed. All low paid waged laborers; copy/coffee/food service workers, 
retail laborers, office workers, temporaries, light industry 
productionists etc. are essentially being warned by anti-homeless 
legislation to "play it safe" on the job so as not to end up on the 
street. The effort to stigmatize and outright vilify an economic 
circumstance that all waged workers must constantly struggle to avoid is 
a very useful strategy for keeping  labor in line. In Santa Cruz a 
worker's existence is primarily *defined by* the constant struggle to 
maintain legal housing where over half of one's monthly wages may go 
towards rent. The criminalization of the condition of being unable to pay 
rent functions as a very real demand that workers remain ever-grateful 
for current employment, regardless of conditions or pay. By securing 
access to a subdued and fearful service-industry workforce supporters of 
anti-homeless legislation (almost entirely bosses) seek to simultaneously 
*sweep the streets* of the homeless while assuring that there will always 
be a willing employee to hold the broom.

To fully accomplish this indirect threat to the working class the current 
pro-ordinance campaign must completely segregate those who might have  
common interests, such as waged workers and the  unemployed, as well as 
different communities of homeless people. To criminalize the 
disenfranchised without garnering sympathy or outrage from similarly 
situated groups, pro-ordinance discourse has cast the homeless into two 
predictable categories; "hapless (passive) victims" and the 
`life-stylists,' the aggressive, ugly, dirty and thoroughly unworthy. The 
"good" homeless go to the (very few) shelter spaces while the "bad" 
lifestylists "choose" to put their poverty in the public eye. In this way 
it becomes obnoxious and indeed "aggressive" merely to exist as poor, 
dirty, ugly etc. in public. These undeserving "aggressive" poor are then 
found to be quite at odds with the sought after "nice-ness" of an 
upper-class *pacific* garden mall, replete with wide "unmarred" 
sidewalks, costly decorations, and smiling ever-replaceable service. 
Homelessness is then successfully re-defined as a "public nuisance" and 
even a danger to "public safety." This re-definition makes explicit the 
class assumptions at play in the current use of the word "public." It 
also clarifies the position that any good employee who serves "the 
(upper-class) public" should occupy.  Divisions like these operate as an 
ideological stigmatization and indeed a material threat against any 
alliance or organization between those who are currently on the streets 
and those who are one paycheck away.


For this reason the I.W.W. intends to organize right over the ruling 
class division of "producer" vs. "derelict." In the IWW we understand 
that the employed and the unemployed are both part of the same labor pool 
subject to the tides of the capitalist economy and other webs of 
exploitation regardless of whether we currently have a job. Solidarity 
between employed and unemployed workers means the difference between an 
employed class with teeth, and an expendable work force easily replaced 
by unorganized labor. This sort of solidarity can also mean the 
difference between ineffective short-term resistance and more sustainable 
revolutionary movement. We will only be effective against those in power 
when we have built our solidarity between those that the ruling elite 
depends on, as well as those it is willing to discard.


The Santa Cruz Camping Ban

Thus our goal in the upcoming months is the abolishment of the SC Camping 
Ban. Like the conduct ordinances the SC Camping Ban criminalizes 
homelessness by making illegal that which largely defines it; sleeping 
without a shelter. This law, while older and less present in the media 
than the newly-passed six "conduct" ordinances, was the very law under 
contestation (via public sleeping Peace Vigil demonstrations) when the 
new ordinances began to be seriously considered. The new "conduct" laws 
are in large part a reaction to legal protest and freedom of speech 
against the older more established Camping Ban. Yet rather than be 
admonished through freedoms of speech protected under the constitution, 
the City Council, with the forceful backing of the Downtown Business 
Association and the Santa Cruz Police Department decided *to pre-empt the 
ability* to protest this particular law by criminalizing the various 
elements of such protest. This was accomplished with the outlawing of 
signs on the sidewalk after dark and the re-definition of shelter 
materials, backpacks or sleeping bags as obstructions, or "public nuisance."

While we do not intend to ignore the current "conduct" ordinances the IWW 
would like to advocate a shift in focus and a renewal of activism aimed 
at the Camping Ban in particular as well as the entirety of 
gentrification and social regulation underway in Santa Cruz. So let's get 
organized! Let's beat the bosses with a solidarity the likes of which 
they've never seen!

A Message from the Santa Cruz, CA General Membership Branch of
the Industrial Workers of the World
--original pamphlet produced by I.U. 450, Santa Cruz Local--

IF YOU WOULD LIKE more information regarding these issues or the I.W.W. 
in general, please contact us at:

Santa Cruz G.M.B., IWW
P.O. Box 534
Santa Cruz, CA  95061
e-mail: sciww@fido.wps.com

--OR--

I.W.W. General Headquarters
1095 Market St., Ste. #204
San Francisco, CA  94103
Tel.: (415) 863-WOBS
e-mail: iww@igc.apc.org


"The weather is beautiful..."
	--The only words spoken by a Wobbly before his arrest in a 1921 
	  San Pedro free speech fight.

