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The #Minnesota Department of Transportation has posted its threat to destroy—tomorrow morning—another #Minneapolis encampment at E Lake St and Hiawatha Ave, near a Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers.
Please turn up before 9am if you can. If it is like last time, #MNDOT will be carrying water for mayor #JacobFrey and his local propertied oligarchs by initiating this, but the notoriously murderous #MPD will be providing much of the intimidation.
A long thread covering some of how it went down last time Minnesota Department of Transportation led an encampment destruction, three weeks ago on January 17:
https://kolektiva.social/@WorkersDefenseAlliance/109707728441638780
For those who cannot be there tomorrow, please call now and all night and all day:
MN DoT at 651-296-3000
MN DoT Civil Rights
Kim Collins
kim.collins@state.mn.us
651-366-3150
MN DoT Government Affairs
Jennifer Witt
jennifer.witt@state.mn.us
651-366-4824
MN DoT Ombudsman
Jim Skoog
james.skoog@state.mn.us
651-366-3534
As per their website cited in our Jan thread https://kolektiva.social/@WorkersDefenseAlliance/109711498042904759
As well as the usual gang of Minneapolis violence purveyers (not even including the cops, has anyone ever tried calling them about their impending violence?)
https://northdef.wordpress.com/2022/12/27/these-officials-have-no-conscience/
Director of Regulatory Services Saray Garnett-Hochuli has been unrepentant point person on evictions since she started the job. Direct work number 612-508-4787 (the website lists only 311 if you want to report the city actively denying people human rights the way you would report a flooded drain grate).
As for what you can do to help, beyond being there and physically blocking police and doing the reporting media is failing to do— support often means helping people move their stuff to a spot of their choice, especially for a last-minute announced attack like this. Simply show up in the morning.
For storing people's stuff for them, first step is establishing trust. Stop by tonight if you can. If you are able to get people a phone or two, on a Boost or other cheap plan or prepaid, it helps a lot to stay in touch. Even if you can do that, or the person you connect with already has a phone, be prepared to be doing indefinite storage. Being unhoused means instability.
Many unhoused people prefer commercial self-storage for access without needing to ask anybody, although that comes with a monthly bill and the risk of losing everything if the bill is not paid.
After evictions of camps, people have absolutely moved right back to where they were, and if not the exact same place then very nearby, so holding something for a day and helping resettle at an established place and time is an option.
(Above posts recapped a reply rather than linked to it because it turns out linking to mid-thread posts is a bust, at least in Mastodon's current web interface: https://kolektiva.social/@WorkersDefenseAlliance/109821234420353866 )
Also in the tangents of this thread, a troll who immediately jumps on any post about police destroying encampments of unhoused people to say that it is good. At least twice in 21 days.
Their own server's rules state: "You will not engage in any form of harassing, discriminatory, threatening, or offensive speech or behavior including but not limited to race, gender identity and expression, national origin, disability, marital status, age, sexual orientation, or other protected categories."
While being unhoused or poor are not protected categories, unhoused people are disproportionately Black, Native, and People of Color; disabled; and queer.
- https://www.splcenter.org/news/2022/11/04/defending-unhoused-people
- https://www.usich.gov/resources/uploads/asset_library/Homelessness-in-America-Focus-on-chronic.pdf
Repeatedly punching down on those who have least and, after picking these fights, being dismissive of anyone's personal testimony or cited statistics, is very much against the spirit, if not the letter, of the rules against harassment. Anyway that textbook liberal political poster who also vehemently and verbosely hates unhoused people is blocked… and we hope an outlier.
It is still quiet at the E Lake St and Hiawatha Ave encampment this morning (behind Raising Cane's Chicken). Help needed for people who want to try to move now before MNDOT, state police, #Minneapolis police, dump truck operators, and more of the foot soldiers of oppression arrive.
Reports of three workers from Hennepin County offering shelters (temporary, night-to-night, much worse than even threatened encampments for stability) and putting people on a "priority list" for housing (many people unhoused in Minneapolis are on lists for years, and still get rejected at the end, no word on if this list is different).
Some entrances may already be blocked, at least some should still be open, but people good at presenting as non-threatening vaugely services-affiliated have gotten through in the past.
If you know someone personally living at or near the camp, try that too.
And document the mindless cruelty of not being allowed to help if it comes to that.
Reports of public works truck. Margaret Anderson Kelliher, a politician at the state level for years, is director of Minneapolis Public Works:
Margaret.Andersonkelliher@minneapolismn.gov
https://www.linkedin.com/in/margaret-anderson-kelliher-014bb54/
Public Works also lists 311 or 612-673-3000 as the contact numbers.
Confirmed from multiple people that they are able to get in to help, including Southside Harm Reduction giving out bus tokens.
Mutual aid groups trying to do the bare minimum governments refuse to do, again.
More about Southside Harm Reduction Services, a good organization to get involved with to help unhoused people and others (SHRS has received small government grants but is mostly volunteer-powered and funded with general public donations)
https://southsideharmreduction.org/
That said, bus tokens are not the main need. People who want to get out before the imminent (in the next few hours) state-city destruction of their homes need someone with a car to help transport stuff most, so if that is you, please offer your help behind 3000 Snelling Ave, Minneapolis, MN 55406.
A frontloader, used to smash and trash everyone's belongigs, has arrived.
Minnesota Department of Transportation truck here, not to plow the street to make it safe for bicycles or anything socially useful, but to remove the remaining worldly possessions of unhoused people after their government goon colleagues destroy them.
The three county workers providing the fig leaf of "priority list" on the day of eviction is absolutely meaningless theater. People in the know report priority list is how the county fills housing programs. In theory, it is used to connect housing openings to the people who are the best fit for the program that has an opening. Something to be on if you are unhoused and looking to be housed. It is meaningless on the day of an eviction: people spend months. (Occasionally someone gets on the list right as an opening that they are a perfect fit for comes up and then it is days or weeks.)
But the state is again providing nowhere for people to go, and no transportation anyway. If you have a vehicle you can right now provide the latter part that city and state cruelly do not.
You can help people hold on to their only possessions by getting to the intersection of E Lake St and Hiawatha Ave now.
Repeat, could use moving support at E Lake St and Hiawatha Ave. Lot of people with stuff with no way to move it.
The assembled government forces of destruction are still allowing people to drive in to help.