Homeless FNB Activist Faces Jail For Tent At LA Housing Demo FWD

Tom Boland (wgcp@earthlink.net)
Mon, 26 Oct 1998 06:23:07 -0400 

=46WD
10/24/1998

=46ROM: FOOD NOT BOMBS / HOMES NOT JAILS

ATTEN:  ASSIGNMENT DESK

"HOMELESS L.A. PEACE ACTIVIST FACES 6 MONTHS IN JAIL FOR ERECTING SYMBOLIC
TENT AT HOUSING PROTEST"

Not Bombs / Homes Not Jails   Santa Monica

for immediate release
contact:    Organizer,  David Busch               (310) 358-5916
contact:    Attorney,    Norman Sasamori      (310) 281-9903

davidbusch@usa.net

 COMMUNITY ACTIVIST VOWS TRIAL AND POSSIBLE JAIL
 FOR 'CAMPING' FOOD ARREST AT SANTA MONICA HOMELESS PROTEST

    On November 29, in Santa Monica Municipal Court, community organizer
David Busch faces trial and possible immediate arrest merely for pitching a
symbolic tent --and setting off a police overreaction at a recent
demonstration in front of Santa Monica's City Hall over its controversial
housing policies.  The town, a trendy tourist city famous for its beaches,
carries too, a world-wide reputation for its homeless and rent
controversies and  is threatening Busch with six months in jail.

    Busch, a local Food Not Bombs organizer who coordinates a weekly
homeless meal and sleeps on the street, insists that he was exercising his
right to engage in "expressive free speech" at the June 12 demonstration.
"We are going to trial on this --this is free speech, even for homeless
people, and I=EDm going to jail if I have to.  I was protesting by erecting =
a
tent, the historic destruction of our local rent laws, and the growing lack
of affordable housing which is a problem all over Southern California.
It's a really a growing human rights issue for workers and the poor:
according to state studies, at least one in seven working people now can't
find affordable housing.  Because of luxury developers, poor people in
Santa Monica are losing their homes right now and the fixes are all only
temporary," says Busch, who gets some support from a poverty rights group
--The Los Angeles Coalition to End Hunger and Homelessness.

    Busch has been threatened by Santa Monica City Attorney Norman Waggoner
with six months in jail for refusing to plea bargain with the upscale city,
which up until recent years has enjoyed a world-wide liberal reputation.
That reputation is again facing a crisis over a convergence of issues,
especially housing and homelessness.  States Busch, "While many caring
people still want to live here in Santa Monica --unknown to many newcomers
and tourists --this town, for over four years now, has been almost totally
taken over by a cabal of development interests and the policies of local
trojan-horse politicians, who, exploiting to the hilt recent changes in
rent laws, want solely now to suck up Southern California's tourist bucks
and pretend like they're too good to deal with the real poverty in the rest
of L.A. --it's elitist and disgusting."

   Says Busch, "The damage is everywhere, but especially here in Santa
Monica.  The
policies of the developer interests now seizing control in this town have,
for example,
slashed the "Ellis" law housing rules just this summer --and for the past
year they have refused to spend more than a weasely, pathetic, 1% of the
city budget on homelessness  (LA TIMES 1/31/98 "Down and Out in Santa
Monica").   Says Busch, "We're a very wealthy city --4% of the city budget
would shelter every homeless person in Santa Monica, but current subsidies
for low-income housing have been cut by developer pandering to a point so
ridiculously low that they couldn't finance building homeless shop-ping
carts here.  Everybody in Santa Monica needs to wake up before it's too
late and we are all hit on January 1 by planned rent increases  --where do
they expect people to live?  It's obscene.  If going to jail for six months
brings out the truth, then it's a good thing."

    According to Busch, a two-person tent had been erected at 7:00 a.m. on
the morning of Friday June 12, and demonstrators had also placed a sign on
it that clearly read "This is NOT 'Camping' BUT is SURVIVAL!" At 5:00 p.m.,
Busch, along with three others, was arrested and charged with violating a
controversial city ordinance which declares it illegal to erect a tent in a
"prohibited public place...for the purpose of living accommodations." The
others at the demonstration have accepted plea bargain agreements and have
returned to their homes in San Diego, but Busch, a resident, is fighting to
prove his innocence; "It's Orwellian.  The city police came out and
arrested us all with no warning --in part claiming that because we had food
and water with us at an all-day demonstration, we were supposedly breaking
the law."  Adds Busch, "Nobody even sat in the tent --maybe in the future
though, tourists, if any still want to come here, should be warned to be
careful of what 'purpposes'
they think about, if they bring food or sleeping bags into this town.
Compared to the recent rash of tragic murders here, this whole campaign
against the poor just seems even more absurd.  Soon only rich people will
live here." Busch went on to say.

    The group questions too, the pattern of the arrest incident.  Officials
have already offered Food Not Bombs / Homes Not Jails $400 in compensation
for a prior demonstration at the Civic Center that was broken up.  This
latest arrest, interestingly, also took place just two days before the
widely-publicized Enis Cosby murder trial was set to begin in Santa Monica
with the demonstrators potentially in sight of world-wide news media.

    Since last November, when he helped the City's Social Services
Commissioner Jennafer Waggoner lead a protest takeover of an abandoned
building to house almost 100  of Santa Monica's 1,500 homeless people,
Busch --himself homeless, --has organized the groups' free picnic for
homeless people each Tuesday in Palisades Park and worked to involve other
parts of the community in street organizing.  "There"s more than enough
food on the planet right now to feed everybody according to the U.N, and
yet people on this planet are living in abject poverty and starving --and
billions of others get lousy education resources and medical care in the
midst of literally gagging wealth.  We can all live in peace on this planet
sustainably, but corporate media and others in this economy are obsessed
with feeding us too much of 'Monica,' consumerism, and hyping crime --and
or excusing the rampant speculation and manipulation of the stock markets
and America's increasingly low-income people.  It's
pathetic, and unless we fight back, Santa Monica is just a part of it too,"
said Busch.
                                                               --END

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