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ONE DAY'S NOTICE

Oakland Social Service organization’s protest one day’s eviction notices given to poor Oakland tenants and multi-service agencies.

By Joseph Bolden

"What Do We Want"?

"No Evictions."

"When Do We Want It?"

"NOW."

"Jerry Says Go Away."

"We Say ... No Way!"

Protester's loudly voice their anger as both tenants and non profits that help low-to-no income people find drug treatment, jobs, housing, and other necessary life sustaining accommodations are systematically being edged out of Oakland’s downtown area. The people are loud and proud, moving around in a circle next to Jerry Brown’s house, a large two or three story building made from or covered with aluminum siding. I can’t tell which.

Sitting in a chair away from the sun near where the protesters turn on the sidewalk is a well dressed, white-haired, elderly lady. Part of the sign she held on a stick, in a firm grip reads "One-Day’s Notice is Wrong" I wasn’t able to read the rest, the woman behind the sign is what piqued my interest.

Her name is Mrs. Margarie Edwin, a well dressed, quiet, elderly woman; she is my first interview.

Sitting quietly in a chair she too is part of the protest. It seemed incongruent at first until I slowly approach, bending on both feet to speak with her. " I work for Saint Mary's Center on 22nd Street in Oakland, I have several clients who've been evicted with one day's notice....In the case of one woman, they just put a lock on her door and took all of her stuff....."

[Saint Mary's Center is a drop-in for Senior Citizens's and Mrs. Edwin is a Case Manager, several of her clients are in the process of dealing with one-day-eviction notices from their homes or apartments.]

I then approached another protestor in the line around Jerry Brown’s house,

"This has been going on for awhile and they won't put it on the ballot so the people can vote on it, they 'gonna make it so that the landlords can just push you out for no reason." Teresa Mason, an employee of Building Opportunity for Sel-Sufficiency ( BOSS) began to relate her experiences to me.

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I then Asked Teresa about the one day’s notice issue, "Right, they (landlords) are not supposed to do that, they have to give the people 30 day notices just to vacate the premises, that's just because the landlords’ wanna use the unit for whatever....... because you see once they raise the rent then it's harder for low income peope to get in. You know a lot of landlords are not taking section 8 vouchers anymore because they know they can get more money than that."

"If these landlords are allowed to do that, (Evict tenants on one-day-notices or raising non profits rents beyond their ability to pay.) and if they’re allow to raise the rent to whatever they wanna raise it too-we’re ‘gonna have more and more homeless people. "I can understand it they’re destroying your property, drug traffic, whatever but just because they can get more money?"

I then spoke to protestor, Alex Salazar, from the Just Cause Coalition in Oakland, "Well I think if this doesn’t have any sway on Jerry Brown - he’s a heartless Mayor, proving that he doesn’t care about people that live in Oakland, doesn’t care about African-Americans or Latino’s. The City Council just voted down Just Cause so its very clear, I think everybody here that it’s time to organize-get our movements going. It’s ridiculous that service providing agencies to homeless folks are getting kicked out of downtown- that doesn’t have to happen, we’ve struggled too hard, for too long to get those services here and now it’s time to fight back and make Jerry Brown responsible for the displacement that he’s causing."

I then spoke to Linda Berklin, "I’m with an agency called B.O.S.S I’m the Housing Director for BOSS so I oversee all of our housing projects."

She explained what had happened at the Oakland City Council meeting the night before, "The men (male council members) all voted against us, they say they’re going to try and do some kind of sanction for landlords, that (Dot-Com’s) are just evicting people without cause-and that if you evict people without cause then you cannot raise your rents for two years.

(This from council members who just voted down just-cause for tenants rights.)

As the protestors continued to chant I wondered as I stood in front of Jerry’s large tin box of a house, "what if he recieved only one days’ notice to vacate his home, or like one of the protestors chanted, "Jerry’s got a home, why can’t we have one??"

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