Spend Labor day supporting Labor

Demands from the People's Eviction Court action on Thursday

Our immediate demands are:
1. End the war against Black Philadelphians
Immediately and fully implement the demands of Black Philly Radical Collective (https://tinyurl.com/ycao5364)
2. Complete and Unconditional Rent and Mortgage Forgiveness
3. Moratorium on All Evictions and Foreclosures until the End of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic crisis
Including any encampments, squats, and seized PHA housing.
Permanently end homeless sweeps and service days.
4. Disband PHA and Implement Genuine Housing Reform
Fulfilling the demands of Philadelphia Housing Action (https://philadelphiahousingaction.info/our-demands/) is the first step of this process.
5. Free Mass Testing and Treatment
6. Extend and Expand Social Benefits
Extend PUA and the $600-per-week enhancement.
Remove benefit restrictions for undocumented workers.
7. Immediately and Indefinitely Postpone All Reopening Measures
Structure the reopening process according to the democratic will of workers in each industry.

Thursday at 8am

Starting this week in Pennsylvania, the eviction moratorium is over. Those who lose their cases in court will be able to be evicted starting September 8th. The state of Pennsylvania has yet to extend the moratorium, and has instead elected so far through inaction to double the United States homeless population from 500k people to 1 million. The state of Pennsylvania has elected through inaction to create the highest concentration of homelessness in our nation. The city of Philadelphia has chosen to evict homeless encampments on September 9th. This is what economic injustice looks like everybody.

Philadelphia residents received an extended moratorium until next year. But they didnt include the homeless encampments. Despite CDC guidelines being against evicting encampments, the folks on the ground have been ordered in court to be evicted, and will be evicted on September 9th by notice. We are not going to just sit around and be told to scurry off and die at the hands of eviction in the State of Pennsylvania. We will stand up and fight to stop all evictions. We will sit in the housing authorities. We will mass squat in government owned homes. We will not accept a death sentence from our city government. We will work together to ensure every person has a shelter, has a home, has food and clean water. We will build mutual aid. We will stand up and fight for those who have the least amount of protections in our nation. Because all of us are 1 bad day from being homeless ourselves.

To those who need to know where to park their vehicles they live in, some Walmarts and Cracker Barrels currently offer individuals the ability to park in their lots and sleep in their vehicles. The problem is, each walmart will need 4200 parking spaces to help every evicted Pennsylvanian household park in their lots. That becomes 3500 parking spaces if we include all of the cracker barrel locations too.

Voting won't save us, but there is a drive to get people to volunteer to be poll workers. Most poll workers are elderly and therefore far more susceptible to COVID. If you're interested in a day of work, check out the link:

https://expressforms.pa.gov/apps/pa/dos-votespa/county

Starting September 8th, with inaction by the state government, up to 500k households could be forcefully removed from their homes. Pennsylvania is about to fuck around and find out.

Why are shelters inefficient and not helpful? It's like getting processed by the criminal justice system. You often get drug tested, have belongings searched. You often have to be in the facility by a certain time. They are also usually not free. Our state does not have the shelter capacity for 500k households, especially during a pandemic. The City of Philadelphia is sentencing those without shelter to death by taking away their camps, and they want to brutalize them further through eviction on September 9th. 18000 homeless, and 40000 vacant properties that can be collected by eminent domain. A $45 million dollar federal grant for low income housing assistance bought a new office. This is unacceptable!

Meanwhile, the city government just got asked by the Philadelphia 76ers franchise with a perfectly functional arena to pay $2 billion for a new arena. $2 billion builds 20,000 homes. So if you want to know why we will physically defend the camp on the 9th? It's because Mayor Kenny has openly decided to side with economic fascism.

Fascism is an economic system in which the government controls the private entities (PHA) that own the factors of production. The four factors are entrepreneurship, capital goods, natural resources, and labor. A central planning authority (PHA) directs company leaders to work in the government's (Philadelphia) interest. Rather than directly work towards addressing the interests of its civilian class. By denying a human right of permanent housing in a safe and properly distanced environment during a national emergency when the resources exist, you have the power and authority to make that decision, and the people are demanding it, you are committing by textbook definition fascistic economic policy Mayor Jim Kenney. We will physically fight against that to protect and defend civilians in crisis.

The city of Philadelphia has consistently lied to its populous of how many homeless people there are. Mayor Kenney is guilty of hiding the homelessness from a census. Philadelphia surveys how many people are outside on the coldest night of the year, and that's how many people they will call homeless. Those are just a small survey of the smallest population of shelterless people during the year. More folks during the summer will be shelterless. The city of Philadelphia's office of homeless affairs has helped nearly 18,000 different people last year. So the mayor is guilty in lying to us about the extent and damage caused by our cities economic and criminal justice policies. The Mayor is responsible and red handed in why there are over 200 people who die annually from extreme poverty.

Seriously, if you cant use the properties owned by PHA, you can use these lots, and give the money the sixers are asking to fulfill construction costs and eminent domain for public housing. 2 billion builds a lot of houses. If you can afford to give that to the sixers, you can use that for you civilians.

https://www.phila.gov/programs/vacant-lot-program/#:~:text=There%20are%20approximately%2040%2C000%20vacant,vacant%20lots%20are%20privately%20owned.

I am a huge NBA and 76ers fan. But the Sixers will not get money for a new stadium when there are 18000 homeless people in our city. Until all 18000 homeless folks are housed, we will block any stadium construction if public money is used for it.

https://www.whyy.org/articles/sixers-4b-arena-bid-vows-black-and-brown-inclusion-goals-similar-projects-failed-to-meet/amp/

The other thing about this whole idea for public housing is that it keeps all of the assets in the hands of the city of Philadelphia, so the city will not lose its investment in permanent public housing. Now how do we make the city more money for this? Well the housing will help folks become employable. So that is tax income. We can build a couple toll bridges to Jersey. How about Broad street to Red Bank? Washington-Spruce? Allegheny-36th? Linden-Riverside? We definitely need more bridges. How about an increase to the non resident wage tax? This will save lives which should be a priority more than anything else.