Everyday Erinyes #54

This week I have cut the stories down again; there are more which seem to call for the efforts of the Greek Furies (Erinyes) to come and deal with them, but I can't feature all of them, even all of them which are underreported.  As a reminder, though no one really knows how many there were supposed to be, the three names we have are Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone. These roughly translate as "unceasing," "grudging," and "vengeful destruction."

There is so much going on, and I am sure there are stories worse than what is happening to Jahahara Alkebulan-Ma'at in Oakland, CA, but it's a story that bears on a bigger problem, one affecting many more people, as I will touch on.

Alkebulan-Ma'at moved to Oakland from Chicago in 1995, roughly 21 years ago.  At that time he quickly found the apartment he has lived in since.  Of course, then, Silicon Valley was just starting, and gentrification and impossible housing costs were still in the future.  His (now former) landlord always kept his apartment affordable, so when in 2014 he retired due to disability, his social security check covered the rent.

But in May 2016, his former landlord sold the building, and the new owner is evicting him, effective December 25.  Charistmas Day.

The East Bay Express interviewed both Alkebulan-Ma'at and the new landlord (well, the man behind the "Redevelopment Group").  Certainly Mr. Gorelik thinks he has tried to be fair.  He offered Alkebulan-Ma'at a buyout of $3,646.00.  Which I would roughly guess, in now gentrified Oakland, might last two months.  Alkebulan-Ma'at is on a waiting list for senior housing – but the wait can take years.  Years which he now does not have.

Adding insult to injury, shortly after November 8, Mr. Gorelik put up a huge Trump "Make America Great Again" sign in the property's front yard.  It was attached to a couple of trees, high enough so drivers on Interstate 580 could see it.  It was stolen, so Mr. Gorelik replaced it with one attached to the building itself, surrounded with barbed wire, and floodlighted.

Many of Popular-Vote-Loser Trump's supporters are making a big thing about how committed Trump is to urban renewal, and how wonderful this is going to be for people of color living in inner cities.  The reality is the experience of Mr. Alkebulan-Ma'at.  He now has no home and no place to go that he can afford.  He is disabled and lives on Social Security.  And he is not alone.

You may remember that Oakland was recently the site of a huge warehouse fire – at least, a building which was once a warehouse, which had been converted to varioua uses by artists, including, for some of them, housing.  The East Bay Express has numerous articles related to this situation, not the least interesting of which is An Open Letter to the Community from the Former Residents of the Recently Closed LoBot Gallery.  One excerpt:

We are just a few days into a nightmare that is still unfolding. Bodies are still being carried from the warehouse that many friends called home, but already people outside of this community are calling for a crackdown on art spaces. This threatens our ability to survive and create in a rapidly gentrifying city that we helped build.

Note that the LoBot was NOT the building which burned.  That was the Ghost Ship.  But the LoBot is still a casualty of that fire.  Another excerpt:

At LoBot, a fire inspector visited following an anonymous “concerned citizen” complaint. Even though we prioritized fire safety, and were not cited for any violations, our landlord told us to leave, and refused to negotiate. The art space we spent thirteen years cultivating was crushed in a matter of weeks, our home destroyed, our ability to create pushed further into the margins.

"We want safer buildings," say the LoBot evictees.  "But please listen to this community before you try to protect us."  Well, it is certainly gracious of them to be so charitable about the mortives of that "concerned citizen."  I don't know whether I could be that gracious myself.

So what to do?  Well, for starters, Tisiphone, maybe you could track down and sit on all thise "concerned citizens,"  who, I am convinced, have decided that what I would call art and creativity are actually sin and degeneracy.  Megaera, you may want to look up that landlord, his wife (who is also his business partner), and their lawyer, all of whom are named in the article, at least, and educate them on what it really costs to find a place to live after gentrification. 

And Alecto – OK, this is a stretch, but it seems like every time I comb through these happenings I end up saying "s**t."  And, well, s**t is kind of timeless.  It has been around forever, and will be around forevermore.  So maybe you would look into the episode of the "s**t sandwich."

So.  This Officer with the San Antonio, TX Police Department decided, last May, that it would be really cute to make a s**t sandwich, with real bread, and real s**t, and put it into a styrofoam container and give it to a homeless person.  So he did.  This guy must be just a barrel of laughs.   Several officers had knowledge of the incident and eventually reported it.  And the officer, Officer Luckhurst, admitted it.  But he said, he was really, really sorry.  Mm-hmm. 

So, in October , he was fired.  But, in San Antonio, they have a binding arbitration rule.  So, if an officer who is fired wants his job back, he and the department can go to arbitration.  The process is open to the public and to the media – but that may not mean that anyone can testify, just that anyone can watch.  And if the arbitrator says the officer gets his job back, then he gets it back.  Period. 

The police chief can attach conditions to his re-hiring/  For instance, in 2012, Officer Michael Garza was fired for shooting and killing his girlfriend's ex-boyfriend.  In 2015, an arbitrator ruled that he could get his job back.  I am not making this up.

All the Department could do was to ensure that he would never be in a position where he could interact with the public.  Well.  That sounds to me like he probably has a sinecure now.  It's probably too late to do anything about that now, but Alecto, if anyone can, it would be you. 

But I suspect the first thing is to make sure that the Luckhurst case does not get assigned to a wacko arbitrator.  Luckhurst may not have thought his action was so serious – I say that because there is a name for his facial expression in his picture ("a s**t-eating grin") – but the rest of us have plenty of outrage here.  Good luck.

The Furies and I will be back.

Cross-posted to Care2 at http://www.care2.com/news/member/101612212/4025947