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.
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
#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.
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!
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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*).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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"