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A one-person encampment on railroad land was told shortly after noon today that #Minneapolis Parks & Recreation would be coming through Monday and "you had better be gone by then"
This camp is, again, on railroad land. John, of #Minneapolis Parks & Rec, said they would be clearing a camp near Bryn Mawr Meadows that was abandoned last month when #MPD officers falsely made the same claim. John, a remorseless tool who would not give his last name, said that they'd be bringing railroad people with them, and he would be telling the railroad about this tiny camp.
Please contact your #Minneapolis Park Board commissioners and ask them to stop the low grade war of extermination against houseless people— their employees are putting in extra effort to harm people, they need this thrown in their faces.
https://www.minneapolisparks.org/about-us/leadership-and-structure/park-board-commissioners/
I wrote:
Dear President and Commissioner Forney, Vice President and Commissioner Crudup, and Commissioner Olsen:
I am writing to ask that you intervene immediately to stop a Parks employee named John and any others from going out of their way to destroy the home of a houseless person that is not on Parks land.
Shortly after noon today [Friday], two men wearing light orange shirts and what appeared to be identification badges, approached a single tent across the active railroad tracks from Bryn Mawr Meadows park. They did not come close enough for their identification to be read.
The person i was visiting had developed an abscessed tooth, and i thought the people coming might fortuitously be [#Hennepin] Healthcare for the Homeless, because not really anyone else does outreach. This was not outreach.
One of the men said he was with [#Minneapolis] Parks & Recreation, and that they were coming out Monday to clean up the area across the tracks, which was abandoned when the police falsely said would be cleared on May 29, needlessly displacing people (who had recently been displaced from another completely out-of-sight or other use location, under bridges*).
The man said his name was John, but he refused to give his last name. He said he was "on the city committee" (for persecuting homeless people? he didn't say).
He said that Parks & Recreation would be bringing railroad people with them, and "you had better be gone by then". John said he would tell the railroad we were there, and that the tiny camp, which again is not on parks land, would be destroyed.
Lobbying the railroad to displace houseless people is a horrifying use of Parks resources. Morality, empathy, and human decency aside— is it really policy to assist the city in its campaign of incessant displacement until people are forced back onto park land?
[ #Minneapolis #Minnesota #MNastodon #parks #sanctuary #homelessness #railroad #displacement ]
He [John, #Parks' enforcer] said that there are plenty of resources available, "you just chose not to take it". This is demonstrably false, and for a person in the role of interacting with houseless people to profess this belief, while giving displacement threats and suggesting no resources, is offensive and dangerous. Clearly, if any person chooses outdoors on scrap land in Minnesota winters and summers outdoors over alleged resources, the resources are not sufficient, plain and simple.
The entire interaction was completely unacceptable, as is the societal situation and Parks outsize role in it.
There is no reason to destroy my friend's home on Monday.
Thank you for your swift attention to this matter.
benjamin melançon
P.S. If there is any park land that is unused or out of the way behind a building, if you know anyone selling land in the city, people are desperate for a place to exist in Minneapolis with at least 18 months to gain stability. Despite the immense barriers faced by anyone non-rich to attain stable housing, people frequently do move on to housing with this length of a trusted place to stay, and it costs city, Parks, county, transit, MNDoT etc nothing to permit this.
If a camp is "unacceptable" as John said, which is the city's line, then the specific things needed to be acceptable must be enumerated. Elimination of people— that is what is not acceptable.
No camp destroyers came by from the Parks & Recreation came by yesterday, Monday, nor today so far.
Also no picking up of materials left from the camp people were displaced from by police lies last month.
Jo(h)n of Parks & Rec lied to try to get people to displace themselves.
This is becoming a pattern.
The mayor using #Minneapolis police and now parks employees to lie about eviction dates is in my opinion another way of violating the law— including the right to notice, which is a part of what Mid-Minnesota Legal Aid and ACLU of #Minnesota are suing the city and the #Parks board to protect: https://www.aclu-mn.org/en/press-releases/encampmentsuit
I guess i'd better be really clear, i am asking #Minneapolis and its independent parks department, with its historical mission to #gentrify and its not-so-side hobby of #racism, to *rescind* the threats against unhoused people. I don't want them to follow through on the threats!
I want the #displacement and #violence from the local government agencies to stop. No more threats. No more "clearings". Don't want #homeless people around? Provide #housing!
#Local #governments and multiple agencies, i should say– #Hennepin county is standing off to the side acting as if they aren't complicit in the cruelty but their #security doesn't let people stand 2 minutes on #county #land that they have lying around by the acre.
The #Community #Planning and #Economic #Development office of #Minneapolis (CPED) is hoarding even more land, which used 100s of cops to finally displace the long-lived @nearnorth camp.
Meanwhile #Minneapolis #Public #Housing #Authority (MPHA) hasn't faced so much as a tent on the acres they are withholding from providing stable housing (whether built by them or allowing people to make self-built #houses
And the #Minnesota #Department of #Transportation (#MNDOT) is a prime #displacer right now, hand-in-hand with Frey's goons kicking people off another stretch of South Minneapolis #roadside every other day. #MetroTransit's unused land and their #police are never far away.
MNDoT had a presence at the #pride parade in #Minneapolis but i couldn't get their attention to ask them to advocate internally that their department stop displacing #unhoused people— who are disproportionately #LGBTQ nationally, and locally already, even before #Minnesota became an official #trans #refugee state.
(I heard #Minneapolis #Mayor of #lies, #police #killings, and #violent #gentrification, #JacobFrey, was also at the #pride parade. Remember, #Frey rhymes with "lie" not with "gay"— the handful of people who know his persecution of #houseless people and saw him told him off, but it's outrageous that any place #justice-minded people gather doesn't run off a #dangerous #grifter #politician like him. He's currently thwarting #RentControl while mercilessly punishing the victims of high #rent.)
This is probably a good point in the thread to note that the cause of keeping, or really winning, a #RightToTheCity in #Minneapolis could really use a #communications #volunteer who is not me. About to get to the important part of what i've needed to post for the past two days…
Despite the overwhelming weight of #government #oppression against #unhoused people that i briefly touched on above, i think we have a pretty good chance of keeping some space to live in this case— it is #railroad land, and the #Minneapolis #ParksAndRecreation employee John or Jon is going out of his way to push the railroad to go along with the city's plans for total elimination.
A little bit of pressure could convince parks to stay in their lane, and #BNSF truly, profoundly, doesn't care.
Please join me in literally calling on #Minneapolis #Parks and #Recreation #Board to stop their employee, or any employee, from using their #official position to target #unhoused people – who are not on #park #land – with #displacement
Superintendent Al Bangoura
Phone: 612-230-6404
Email: abangoura@minneapolisparks.org
Commissioners: https://www.minneapolisparks.org/about-us/leadership-and-structure/park-board-commissioners/
Or dial 612-230-6443 and 8 for president Meg Forney, 9 for Vice President Alicia Crudup, 7 for Tom Olsen, or the # for your district.
Please e-mail and call #Minneapolis #Parks and report back any response you get. Please boost this thread, and in particular, during business hours, the above contact information. Copy and paste the above post and boost again!
My calls, texts (from a business card, official cell numbers don't seem to be on the website: https://www.minneapolisparks.org/about-us/leadership-and-structure/department-directory/ ), and e-mails have been ignored since Friday but one person is a lot easier to ignore than dozens.
#Minneapolis #Parks started the current continual wave of #mass #displacement of #unhoused people when the board betrayed their pledge of #sanctuary in 2020 and loosed their #police on every #houseless person on park property.
If they choose to pursue, to persecute, people not on #parkland, they need to be reminded enough violence has already been done at their behest.
Keep calling 612-230-6443 and 612-230-6404 et al.
And at their #public #meeting on July 5 we can be even harder to ignore.
#Parks #police have harassed and displaced people not on parks land before, i know of cases in Northeast near a park and on national #Mississippi land where they asserted (without proof) some kind of shared jurisdiction over, but in this current wave of displacement #Minneapolis is trying to make #police, parks and otherwise, take a low profile role and instead turn ever more government employees into unarmed #cops, as it takes hundreds of cops to destroy an encampment: https://northdef.wordpress.com/2022/10/06/minneapolis-destroys-near-north-camp-with-massive-militarized-police-led-attack/
And more so than in other cities, i think, #police and others recruited to be the #displacement machine are doing so not because of a #culture of #harassing #houseless people (although #MayorFrey is doing his best to inculcate that attitude), but due to top-down directives and initiatives.
It's way past time to cut the #Parks department out of this #cycle of #violence
That #public July 5 board meeting is at 5pm at #Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board Headquarters, 2117 West River Road N
They are here now at Bryn Mawr Meadows park, not clear if they will bother the tiny one-person camp on railroad land or not. Supporters welcome to stay here in park land and advocate park workers do the same.
I was in the woods when John approached me. He told me to leave. I asked him to acknowledge my request to leave anyone living outside alone, to not harm anyone. He refused to acknowledge my request and said he would call the Park Police. I repeated my request. #Minneapolis parks employee John Myles then threatened me, saying: "I can't deal with you today, there are too many witnesses."
And when i called that out as a threat, a white worker said all of them were witnesses that i was making threats— very clearly saying they would all lie.
And then said he didn't feel safe with a crazy person there (me) and they stopped their work for the moment.
This is not ideal that they come and do a bigger job with police presence, just clean the trash and go ughh.
John Myles is on a city coordinated team compromised of people from the City (Regulatory, Public Works, CPED, #MPD, and mayors office) as well as MNDOT, Metro Transit, and Parks.
This is the kind of behavior #Minneapolis city leadership directly cultivates. Threats toward unhoused people that have nothing to do with their work and threats toward people like me who ask them to respect fundamental human rights.
Messages to #Minneapolis parks leadership about this unacceptable behavior continue to be ignored, but please join in.
And if anything happens to me, John Myles did it.
Superintendent Al Bangoura
Phone: 612-230-6404
Email: abangoura@minneapolisparks.org
Commissioners: https://www.minneapolisparks.org/about-us/leadership-and-structure/park-board-commissioners/
Or dial 612-230-6443 and 8 for president Meg Forney, 9 for Vice President Alicia Crudup, 7 for Tom Olsen, or the # for your district.
Someone needs to information act data request spending on this stuff. #Minneapolis parks already spends an obscene amount on #policing even after stuff like this https://unicornriot.ninja/2020/park-board-pays-170k-to-somali-youth-detained-after-bogus-911-call/ so probably no effect, but this workers acting as cops stuff really has an effect too. They could have simply asked @nearnorth in exile in the woods to clean up (as they were already doing with debris from past camps there) as a condition of staying in the woods— no money spent and no problem.
The cleanup crew that refused to commit to not destroy human lives while on the job left Bryn Mawr Meadows park and did not return— but they left a lot of trash, so i fear they will return.
The trash is not from @nearnorth refugees but from an old encampment— evidence of the years of failure to provide the human right to housing.
Reminder of the broader set of people directly responsible for this ongoing cruelty: https://northdef.wordpress.com/2022/12/27/these-officials-have-no-conscience/
Today, as Mayor Frey's policy of cruelty toward unhoused people filtered down to John Myles and his #Minneapolis parks crew refusing to acknowledge a request that they not harm anyone living outdoors…
…Frey's machinations killed a key path forward for voter referendum approved rent control (by having his cronies push a city council vote through while key Muslim members, including the sponsors, were unavailable due to Eid al-Adha, a high holy day).
These are inextricably related.
The brutality toward #unhoused people in #Minneapolis is directly tied to the dirty politics scuttling the popular vote for #RentControl
They cannot destroy all initiatives for stable housing for people without also having every agency coordinating in chasing people who don't have housing out of the city.
And guess which one you can do something about without falling for the trap of electoral politics and being iced out of change for years at a time?
Show up for your unhoused neighbors. Canvass with me. Take on some information-gathering and writing (can be done from anywhere, not only #Minneapolis). Don't let these repeated destructions of peoples homes and lives be buried, never entering—or rapidly eclipsed from—public consciousness.
We're also forming a land trust, if building #DualPower is more your style of #DirectAction — again, lots of things we need help with, that doesn't have to be on the ground in #Minneapolis at all.
Money is last and maybe least, but it too helps a hell of a lot: https://opencollective.com/land