It Could Happen Here - How Bread Bloc Feeds Unhoused People In San Diego

Episode Date: September 23, 2024

James sits down with two members of Bread Bloc to talk about mutual aid, how to set up your own mutual aid project, and the increasingly hostile environment for unhoused people in San Diego and California after the Grants Pass decision.  Sources: https://www.thetrevorproject.org/research-briefs/homelessness-and-housing-instability-among-lgbtq-youth-feb-2022/ https://calmatters.org/housing/homelessness/2024/09/camping-ban-ordinances/https://apnews.com/article/california-gavin-newsom-homeless-sweeps-funding-bdaf5719847e11daf8cca06c62737994https://www.sandiego.gov/police/services/neighborhood-policing-division/unsafe-campingSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Curious about queer sexuality, cruising, and

expanding your horizons? Hit play on the sex-positive and deeply entertaining podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Join hosts Gabe Gonzalez and Chris Patterson Rosso as they explore queer sex, cruising, relationships, and culture in the new iHeart podcast, Sniffy's Cruising Confessions. Sniffy's Cruising Confessions will broaden minds and help you pursue your true goals. You can listen to Sniffy's Cruising Confessions, sponsored by Gilead, now on the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Thursday. Welcome to Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get real and dive straight into todo lo actual y viral. We're talking

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast. And we're kicking off our second season digging into Tex Elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley valley into a playground for billionaires from the chaotic world of generative ai to the destruction of google search better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose listen to better offline on the iheart radio app apple podcasts wherever else you get your podcasts from iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. Hello and welcome to It Could Happen Here. It's James today and I'm joined by Luca and Sailor. They're both from Breadblock, which is a mutual aid group in San Diego. How are

you doing today? We're doing great. Great. How are you doing today? We're doing great. Great. How are you? Wonderful. Yeah, I'm thriving. I've just received my 75th COVID booster, I think. So having a little miserable day, but that's okay. Not going to get novel coronavirus, which is always nice. So can you guys start out by maybe explaining what Breadblock does, how long it's done it, and why it does it. Yeah, so we are a mutual aid group. We mostly provide hot food.

That's like the core of our services. We feed about 100 people, like 80 to 100 people, depending on the day, weekly in East Village in San Diego. day weekly in East Village in San Diego. We also provide clothing and harm reduction supplies and other things like tampons and plan B when we can get our hands on it. And we try to be, we are there at the same time every day. I will not say the exact location, but if you are interested in getting involved, you can always reach out. And that's what we're doing right now. there like at the same time every day i will not say the exact location but if you are interested in getting involved you can always reach out and that's like what we're doing right now and that happens weekly and say am i missing anything yeah so this form of what we're doing with bread block in a more like organized way has we've only been doing it a few months however initially we started doing it

in 2021 when i started getting into harm reduction stuff and i was working out of syringe exchange and realized a lot of people would be asking for food and we weren't giving that out there and so that's why the initial idea came about and then we just had enough people who were willing to do it in a weekly manner so that's how we chose that location and got started doing that there's just a lot of people down there on those nights so it's timed to happen at the same time that a harm reduction services happen the needle exchange so it's at a time when a lot of people are down there and the amount of time are like collective doing this specific thing has existed i believe since end of march early april is how long we've been like

consistently providing services every week yeah that's great that's a long time still especially through like summer can be a difficult time if you don't have a house in san diego like it gets increasingly it gets very hot and particularly the streets themselves get hot and that becomes dangerous for people yeah exactly so I want to start with like at some point right say that you were doing your syringe exchange and you were like these people need to be fed they are hungry and now we're here and you're feeding them every week right but you had to do a whole lot of things in between here and there and like i know this because listeners email me all the time so many people want to do that too and it might not exist where they are they might not know so like can you explain how you went about

like seeing a need and then organizing to meet that need yeah so i guess what came before that was we had already built relationships with each other around our leftist ideals and art and protesting and different stuff so we already knew a lot of people who are who are interested in mutual aid in that capacity yeah um but i will say things like instagram have helped just meet more people who are looking to get involved in mutual aid. Yeah. Yeah. Like Selah said, we had spent some time building community with each other and getting a core group of people that trust each other that had gone to protests together. That were maybe in affinity groups already with each other.

that were maybe in like affinity groups already with each other and then there was just sort of like enough of us that were in community with each other at the time that when sayla was like the encampment ban is like really making things so much worse for people and communities and we really need to do something we were like all just like it just happened because we were all sitting in a room together one night after a like social event and say it was like we need to talk about this and we were like okay yeah we like need to do this and we had enough people where we could pull together a first distro and then a second and then gradually adding like more organizations so that we could continue doing it sustainably over time. Yeah. Yeah.

That's like, I want to put a pin in the camping ban because the camping ban is, is making things worse for people who already have a hard time just surviving here and it fucking sucks. And it's Todd Gloria's fault. Shouldn't vote for him. Yeah. Let's talk about though.

Like I want to get into nuts and bolts, right? You're feeding a hundred people, right? You need a giant ass pan. You need loads of food. You need a place where you can cook. How did you identify all those things? And how did you get to a place where you could regularly have those things?

So, um, in 2021, when I had initially started this with kind of a different group of people, but there was definitely overlap. when I had initially started this with kind of a different group of people, but there was definitely overlap. We just did it and like used my mom's kitchen and found some big pots and just made it happen. And I feel like if you have the will to make it happen, you're going to figure it out. And, you know, maybe in the beginning it was a lot more chaotic, which, you know,

we are anarchists, so we're okay with the chaos but um it just after doing it week after week it just became more streamlined and you know we just buy a lot of essential bulk food and we have a few giant pots yeah we like to make soup a lot yeah um currently our kitchen is like... Our cooking equipment includes two large pots and a rice cooker that someone recently donated to us. And then we needed a fridge. So we got a free fridge off OfferUp and cleaned it up and put some cool stickers on it and then plugged it into a garage. Currently, the kitchen that we use is like a couple of us

just like live together and so we use our kitchen and we have access to our garage and we just store the supplies in the garage we store the fridge in the garage and we make it work through donations we get on instagram so we knew some comrades that work with the community fridges. There's like some community fridges in San Diego. And so they already had a relationship with a grocery store. And so we were able to hop in on that.

And we get some donations from that. We get some donations from what's, Selah, the group? Oh, Porch Light. And there's so much food waste from what's Sela, uh, the, the group. Oh, porch light. Yeah. And there's so much food waste that I feel like if we were to find the right people,

we could be fully self-supporting on just things that would be thrown away alone. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. We just have to meet the right people in order to do that, but we're getting there. And I do want to say the kitchen is a small slash regular size kitchen

so you don't have to have some big crazy warehouse type kitchen to make this happen yeah and then you're feeding people right like presumably you're doing it like in the afternoon or evening have you found there are things that you said you like soup but i know like we fed a lot of people at the border last winter right and we found out that certain things work, certain things didn't work. And we always tried to keep it vegan because of people's religious needs or preferences, right? Is there anything like that that you found that works or doesn't work? We have done a lot of chili with our squad. And I know that Luca has done a lot of curry.

So there are certain things and they can both be easily made vegan. Initially, a lot of people when we would have vegan stuff would ask for me alternatives to which I understand people, you know, they don't always have access to protein. So we tried out both options when we can. Nice.

Yeah. It varies what we have. Cause our group kind of functions with four like autonomous squadsads, well, semi-autonomous that take turns doing the distros so that you're only really responsible for it once a month, which helps reduce burnout. Yeah, definitely. How does that work? Explain how you came up with that and how it's organized. came up with that and how it how it's organized yeah so this was kind of like something we've been talking about for a while some of us are like more into the theory than others but we're just kind of talking about like oh well like how do we get more people involved because i think what happens oftentimes with these mutual aid groups is there's like a lot of people sitting in a group chat and there's like a small core of people who do end up doing the majority of the labor.

Yeah. And that often results in burnout for those people and building a resentment between like the people who are doing a lot and the other people. Cause I think also like sometimes people feel left out and they don't feel like they can get involved. And then they feel like the people who are doing the core of the labor are like in charge and they have to defer to them. Yeah. Um,

which creates a lot of problems which i'm not saying like we don't have any of those problems like we're still trying to work out the kinks but the squad's sort of like dynamic makes it so that groups of about like five to ten because a distro you need about like six people to make it happen so about five to ten people um take turns so you just rotate so you have you know when your day is it's once a month that you are responsible for the distro and you are responsible for choosing the food that you're cooking making sure it gets cooked organizing with your other comrades getting the donations all of that stuff but you can always ask the larger group for help or extra

hands if you need it yeah but it sort of shares that like responsibility because i think the most stressful part oftentimes is like oh the distro happening tonight is on me and i and if i don't do it it's not going to happen yeah and so it sort of spreads like that sort of labor but we have members who like show up to every single distro because they want to. And that's totally fine. Even if they're in like whatever designated squad they're in. Right.

Yeah. Or some people who show up like once every few months because they have other stuff going on, you know, so it's very open and you don't have to be in a squad. You could just choose to join whenever you have the time with whoever's week it is. So it's pretty loose.

Yeah. I would say but it does give a good sense of structure yeah that helps a lot i remember one day like last year last winter um i was out building shelters with an uzbek guy and a few kurdish guys and uh we built these shelters and we built three of them. And afterwards, I was sitting down with some of my friends who were also there as volunteers, and they're all anarchists too. We each asked each other what we did. And then one of them said, so what did we all learn?

What did you learn when you did that today? Right. And I think that's a really valuable question that we should be asking ourselves in our organizing spaces. So from your first distro to now, I want to ask, what did you learn? Like from your first distro to now, I want to ask, what did you learn? I would say we've really learned how to trust each other. We're working on, you know, how to get consensus models,

how to split the labor between different people, how to work with different people. And also, yeah, like I said in the beginning, really how to trust each other, which, you know, we all want to see the revolution happen at some point. And so I feel like one of the most important and valuable things we can be doing is building relationships and communities with each other where we can actually rely on each other. And so having a mutual task really helps with that. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think for me, like, we've,'ve like tried to do stuff in the past like this. And I think the issue we've always run into was that like, sometimes there's like a tendency to want too much structure right away and be like, oh, if we don't have everything planned out, we don't know how everything's going to work, then we can't do it. And we need to figure everything out beforehand. And we need to figure everything out beforehand. And we learned a lot doing it. And even if we didn't have everything figured out, we're still working on our consensus structure. We're still working on how we're going to make big decisions as a group. And when the squads can make their own decisions and when the group can make their own decisions. And we don't have everything figured out.

It's very loose. But we didn't need that and we're we've been able to do a distro for like months and we don't have everything figured out we have something we had enough to get us started and we're like working on like slowly adding things as we need to without like overburdening ourselves because i think sometimes like lots of layers and lots of complexities can really make it difficult to organize and adapt to what's happening on the ground definitely i think yeah we can over complicate it and like be too anxious talking of anxious i'm anxious so we have yet to pivot to advertisements so let's do that and then we'll come back to advertisements. So let's do that and then we'll come back. and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High

is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real inspiring stories from the people, you know, follow and admire join me every week for post run high. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series,

Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Black Lit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify

the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hola mi gente, it's Honey German and I'm bringing you Gracias, Come Again, the podcast where we dive deep into the world of Latin culture, musica, peliculas, and entertainment with some of the biggest names in the game. If you love hearing real conversations with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars, from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love.

Each week, we'll explore everything from music and pop culture to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries. Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. offline as your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though,

I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. at roughline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean,

he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. Okay, so you spoke a lot about the logistics of cooking, which is great. But I know from experience of feeding hungry people can be a challenge, right?

It's no one's fault, especially when people are hungry. We're not our best selves. There's a whole advertising campaign built around that so how do you organize your distro such that everybody feels that they're being taken care of everybody feels safe and knows that they're going to get enough to eat yeah so that that also goes back to something more we've learned is we try to have enough people at the distro so we can have different people doing different things. And sometimes that means one person is just walking around, talking to people, um,

deescalating a situation as need be. And then we also figure it out that at the end, when we run out of food and order, so that people who have been waiting in line, don't get mad, which it's understandable. You know, they've been waiting in line and there's no more food and they're hungry.

Yeah, of course. We try to have like different snacks and like muffins or granola bars and water just to hand out at the end for those people who still need something. And so sometimes we have music and we all just try to bring a good energy. And so far, nothing that we haven't been able to handle has happened. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. I know we,

uh, we found the music was really helpful and we were distributing food when really big groups at the border, like play some music. I have a friend who plays music, play some music. And then we'd always ask folks, um,

from the group who we were feeding to volunteer, to help us and that oh yeah it helped us overcome language barriers and stuff that's happened a couple times as well where people have just stepped up and wanted to help which has been great yeah it's nice and it gives us all like part of what we're doing with mutual aid isn't just meeting material needs it's also like the difference between solidarity and charity right like we're there because we care about you as people not just as like hunger mouths that we can take off a spreadsheet like and working together is an integral part of that and it's uh it's what distinguishes us from charity model and thankfully most of the time we have enough people that if

somebody needs to step aside and have a one-on-one conversation with somebody because that's what they need in that moment and we can do that yeah having floaters is really important like we always have like two people at least two people serving food and then we have like a snack table water table usually and then we have a section for harm reduction that usually gets served on like another table um and then we have like a section for clothes depending on what we have and people sort of like go down the assembly then we have like a section for clothes depending on what we have and people sort of like go down the assembly line kind of like going down grabbing the different things and we give people like plastic bags that we get from grocery stores so they can get their things but we also have like floaters usually so that like if someone's like having like a medical

issue or someone's like upset or whatever is going on someone can like step aside and spend some time with them um like the other day we had a woman who was not feeling well because of the heat and she had been out and she needed to sit down so we like grabbed one of our chairs and we sat her down and got her some water and just like talked to her and we had a couple people who could step aside and do that and then everyone else just could keep like feeding people without it kind of stopping things but she still got what she needed and during that heat wave at one of the distros i remember you ran across and got somebody gatorade because they really were needed electrolytes so we're lucky that we have enough people that we get to be able to do stuff

like that when we need to right and i imagine that regularity is really important like people know that you will be there and that they can come and you will feed them like that builds trust right they can uh everyone i think benefits from a little structure and being unhoused it can be really fucking hard to find structure yes exactly and and it's very hard to get like home-cooked food yeah this is something i've encountered living in my car like it's hard to get healthy food the food you buy is shit it's more expensive and and it's less good for you and and like this these things compound over time to have health and psychological consequences yeah everything we cook we eat as well and you know if we're cooking

or we're helping out with this or of course that's a mutual and mutual aid we can also eat it yeah yeah that uh it's definitely something else we learned that the border was like especially if we're cooking something that's maybe not a cultural cuisine because we're meeting people from all over the world and a lot of times it's like like you were saying chili and curry it's like hot wet food right like uh you know that big semi-liquid pan of chili or whatever that we would cook and spaghetti and like folks being like what's that we're like oh do i'm gonna eat some do you want some yeah and like i honestly had some of the happiest moments of last year. Just like,

I remember one day I've been building yurts all day with an Uzbek guy. And then we sat down and had our beans and just like talked about our lives. And it was really sweet. And yeah, I think that that is a moment of solidarity that you don't get when you're, you know, I've seen NGOs and the U.s military tossing mres at refugees and i think the same thing yeah yeah no there shouldn't be like a line between like

you and the people that you're providing mutual aid to i mean like it should you should never give someone food that you're not willing to eat yourself and like if someone's hungry while we're cooking like they can totally eat the food that we're making too it's not like cordoned off um yeah like of course we like you know we wear our ppe and we like you know aren't getting our hands or whatever but yeah i mean because a lot of the people who are like who do provide mutual aid and work in mutual aid groups like are also people who may face houselessness or have trouble paying for groceries or something yeah yeah for sure yeah there's no separation you know between us and them at the end of the day yeah i think that's

super important so i want to talk about the camping van maybe let's take another hour break we'll talk about the camping van. Maybe let's take another wrap break. We'll talk about the camping van when we come back. Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast Post Run High is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real inspiring stories from the people, you know, follow and admire join me every week for post run

high. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to post run high on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jack Peace Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, the podcast for diving deep into the rich world of Black literature. I'm Jack Peace Thomas, and I'm inviting you to join me and a vibrant community of literary enthusiasts dedicated to protecting and celebrating our stories. Blacklit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture. Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary

works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Black Lit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Black Lit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Off offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists

in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse, and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong though, I love technology, I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. with your favorite Latin celebrities, artists, and culture shifters, this is the podcast for you. We're talking real conversations with our Latin stars,

from actors and artists to musicians and creators, sharing their stories, struggles, and successes. You know it's going to be filled with chisme laughs and all the vibes that you love. Each week, we'll explore everything, from music and pop culture, to deeper topics like identity, community, and breaking down barriers in all sorts of industries.

Don't miss out on the fun, el té caliente, and life stories. Join me for Gracias Come Again, a podcast by Honey German, where we get into todo lo actual y viral. Listen to Gracias Come Again on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba.

He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. Atian. Elian. Elian. Elian.

Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We are back. We are now discussing the topic which I love to talk about, which is evil things that Todd Gloria has done. And today, it could be the whole podcast every day of the week for years, but we're going

to talk about this camping van. For folks who didn't listen to our camping van episode, can you give me like a 60-second synopsis on the camping van? And then we can dive into what it's done. Yeah. So basically earlier this year, the Supreme Court overturned basically an ordinance that you don't have the ability to cite or arrest somebody if there's not shelter available, but they overturned that.

So now they can. And Gavin Newsom issued a sweeping order that the agencies have to clear encampments and ordered that cities and counties do the same. So now there's 14 plus cities in California that do have a camping ban in place. So that's criminalizing living outside. Yeah. The existence of unhoused people is now a crime. Yeah.

So what have you seen post enforcement? Yeah. So I also like work in the field of harm reduction. And so, you know, I do this in my free time because I want to do it but I also do it for work which there's definitely sometimes I feel weird about like working for an organization and wish that I didn't have to but it's just one of those things and I've seen it's really hard and really sad because when people are in encampments a lot of times they build a sort of community and family and they learn how to take care of each other and constantly being split up is destroying these communities and then they just have to

travel further and further away so that they're disconnected from not only their community but also resources that they do have and so it's just really hard and sometimes we lose connections with people we don't know where they went you know or they end up in jail or it's been really horrible and we're just talking about how it just seems like people don't really care and it's crazy that this is happening in our communities and people aren't talking about it and aren't outraged by it yeah yeah these bands also have like a really nasty ripple effect because when these people got pushed out of san diego then they go to other cities that don't have an encampment ban like chula vista national city and now chula vista national city and other cities are advancing their own camping bans

inciting an influx from san diego right so it's like creating this really awful, like just progressive expansion of these bands. Yeah. And one more thing I'll add is that some people are like, oh, well, that's just going to, you know, be good because some people are going to get into shelters or find alternative ways of getting help. But that's not what's happening because we have not had any more shelters. It's really hard to get into a shelter, actually. have not had any more shelters it's really hard to get into a shelter actually and you know since Newsom has been governor we've had apparently so many billions of dollars 24 billion spent tackling homelessness and it's like what is there to show for it right people still don't have a place to go and even if they do get into a shelter a lot of the times there's so many rules and

regulations that if somebody has a high level of mental health needs and they're not going to be able to stay there and there's just no solution. Yeah. It's giving the appearance of doing something to make homeowners, right. People who they think matter happy. It's really bleak.

Yeah. Let's discuss a little bit then like this camping ban as you say has forced people to other cities like what do you think it does to the unhoused community like you talked a little bit about breaking up encampments like where do people end up right when their encampments get broken up when the community and like where do they end up and and how can people because this is something this is nationwide that's nationwide right yeah gavin newson is being a particularly odious turd about it but like other people other states are doing it too it's something i've seen in san diego for instance people ending up in a riverbed

so can you talk about like the risks there and then like yeah the needs that it creates and how we can meet them so you're right some of them are ending up in riverbeds. There's also like what they refer to as a island kind of close to old town where a lot of people have been going, but you know, you have to get a raft to go there and it's not easy to get there. They don't have a lot of resources there. There's a lot of crime that happens and it's not the best scenario. And other than that,

they're making these safe sleeping sites, which are not actually safe. And they're kind of like concentration camps. And they're from people I've talked to actually live in them. They're not good places to be at at all. And it's just kind of like pushing the problem out of view without actually doing anything or providing anything meaningful to people yeah which is the goal i think is to make poverty invisible like yeah yeah exactly and the other thing that happens is like i live in an area

where there are a lot of encampments and there probably would be permanent encampments if it weren't for the ban and personally i would prefer that because like what happens is these people get like moved like their their encampment will like crop up it'll be there for like maybe a week and then like it'll disappear and like i'll wake up one morning and they're gone and all of their stuff often gets thrown away they lose access to their things. If they're not there to take it, they basically can take only what they can carry on their backs if they're lucky, if they happen to be there

when their stuff is being thrown away. They're sighted. They could be arrested. And then usually I see sometimes the same people come back, but they just had to go find somewhere else. So they're basically being forced to be like migratory rather than like staying in one place which means that it often it also makes like the people who live in in neighborhoods like because i can't form relationships with these people as much as i could before yeah like i can't know my neighbors

as much because my neighbors are constantly getting moved around so like i'll like form a relationship with someone and i'll be like you know like i'll be like their beer guy and i'll like you know like there's people that i'll know that i'll like go buy a beer for go get water for if i see them and i know their name and that but then when with the encampment ban they might just disappear one day and i don't know if they got arrested i don't know if they've just been displaced and that's like not great for me not great for them not great for literally anyone around because it's like people are safer if they're able to have like a stable place to be definitely yeah like everyone is safer yeah yeah if our stated goal is getting people off the streets like chasing them around the streets

isn't doing that it's making it harder for people to find stability yeah and um you know i've talked to people also about the reason sometimes they don't like the term homeless is because they're like yes we may not have a house but we make our homes we make a community we make a home and losing that sense of security any little bit of security they have constantly having to move not ever feeling comfortable or safe you know that's traumatizing taking a bad situation and making it worse which is what the state likes to do i wonder like before we finish up a lot of people like i said want to start a mutual aid thing do you have any advice for them things that you would do if you were starting over things that you feel like you did well if you wanted to start bread block now how would you go about it get

signal start a group chat maybe make an instagram where you can post about it and find people who are also interested in that go to local events what else luca having like a place where people can like congregate with each other like having a regular like community event to meet people um and get to know each other and trust each other i really wish that we had started like sooner because i think we had the capacity to start sooner like way beforehand and i think it was like the encampment ban and like selah being like we need to do this like happening it like it just takes like one person being excited enough about something and then like their comrades being like yeah no you're right like we do need to do something and i think people are really afraid to be that person to like push for

something to try to like wake other people up or like convince other people that you have the capacity to because i think the state can be really disempowering and they make you think that you need like a budget and you need like all of these things to like be able to provide people like aid or like like mutual aid to provide people anything and like we did it with like literally just like a couple of our members just like gave some money that we had and that we had like you know like we had like a couple hundred dollars that we got from people. And then that was enough to start. And like you could literally start with like 50 bucks and figure it out. Yeah.

We did not come from a place of any of us having a lot of money. So we've basically just had to figure it out. And anybody can figure it out. You know, I feel like our culture is so individualized. But we do have the capacity to come together. And yeah, just take somebody being like all right let's do this and you'll you'll meet enough people who are also interested in that because people do want community at the end of the day and people do want to help people yeah

is there anything else you guys want to mention before we go yeah the only last thing i wanted to mention is that we do have a lot of future goals of expanding and doing more street medicine as well and expanding to different areas. We're also having mobile teams where we can go out and reach people who aren't in one location or who maybe have certain disabilities and can't walk and get there. So we have a lot of ideas for that. And that just takes meeting more people who are into this and getting more funds and yeah. Yeah. So hopefully that's something we can do. And I just wanted to briefly mention, one of our members did some really great research

on the way that Hillcrest Business Association is using the encampment ban to further harm and using, they're actually using like private security to push people out so people can enjoy their nightlife without having to deal with an objectionable minority that wants to live however it pleases. For fuck's sake. The quote from Mr. Ben Nicholas of the hillcrest business association so they have a initiative called hillcrest clean and safe program where they displace people from hillcrest for the benefit of the businesses and they have like if you go on a voice of sandia you can hear some like just the way they talk about these people is really insane and really dehumanizing um and it kind of notes how businesses how like

capitalism in the state are working together hand in hand to displace our community members so the business associations and the businesses themselves are being empowered by these encampment bans to further perpetuate violence on people jesus yeah yeah and on that topic the way that people actually are addressing it here is making it so much worse like san diego has a hot team which is part of the police department it's called the homeless outreach team and they're supposedly supposed to help get people into shelters and stuff like that. But anybody I've talked to who has tried to reach out for them and ask,

Oh, you know, okay, if you're going to move me, like I need to get into a shelter. One of them who I was talking to about this was in his seventies and very medically vulnerable. And instead of helping him find somewhere to go,

they just put his car, which he was sleeping in because it was unregistered. And so they're not actually helping at all no it's just a cop and that's why you know just us regular people have to do something because the state's not going to yeah i think that's a great thing that's the fucking dark about the hillcrest business association like for people who aren't familiar with san diego san diego it's like lgbtqia neighborhood is called hillcrest one in three of our trans youth are unhoused and like i guess they don't matter to the hillcrest business association not surprising but just fucked up where can people if they want to support you they want to follow you if they want to come out and do food distro where can they find you on the internet yeah they can find us on instagram our instagram is bread block underscore

distro if you want to provide like direct funds bread underscore block is our venmo block with a not a k b l o c oh yeah yeah b l o c like block um yeah we are anarchist though most of us at least yeah and i also wanted to mention a couple of comrades of ours are facing houselessness themselves. And there's a mutual aid post on our Instagram and you can also find them at ruster.music. That's R U S T R music or their Venmo is also in a post on our page. They could really use some help because they are really big individuals

who show up all the time and help us cook and are a big part of our group and also could use some mutual aid. Yeah, let's hope people will help them. Thank you so much for your time, guys. Thank you for doing all that important work and thank you for sharing it with us. If people have questions,

they can reach out to you, right? Yes, yes. Of course. Thank you for sharing it with us. If people have questions, they can reach out to you, right? Yes, yes. Of course. Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, thank you so much. It's much appreciated. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media.

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