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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.