In a rainy week, Occupy Santa Ana performs its own Tarp Bailout
[Note: reprinted verbatim, with permission, from Occupy Santa Ana’s Madeline Spencer. Photo from Wednesday night, if I’m not mistaken, by Crystal Ngo. – Greg]
April 12, 2012 Day 3 of the “Necessity Village” Campaign:
Occupy Santa Ana has set up its second tarp on the green space in the Civic Center with six more spaces available to the homeless. Reports from the Catholic worker, shared by the nighttime relief group who bring coffee, bagged lunches and ponchos for the rain, that today twenty two new women checked into their shelter.
Their have been reports of rain every night and Occupiers this evening share their distress about the weather, concerned that they will not be able to protect the homeless who have come to sleep from the rain, yet; so far, since our inception on the April 10th it has only rained on us the first night. Tonight April 12, Occupiers were pleasantly surprised at 9:00pm to see a group of ten supporters from the transitional shelter called WISEplace—a transitional woman’s shelter who help roughly one hundred women in the County, who stopped by to hand out Costco pizza and sweet rolls to the homeless and occupiers. It is great to be acknowledged by the community, especially from those who are apart of the continuum of care meant to help the homeless population.
Kindly, our own Alex de la Vega has opened his home to Occupiers to use the restroom at night. So, thus far, we stand strong. Still no hassle from the police who we saw drive through the Civic Center around 8pm and who Davina spoke with today. In their passing we got merely a passing glance in the direction of the set up while the cop drove past.
The May Day Coalition held a three hour meeting this evening, our own Tim (The Medic) did a medical safety training for the May Day Group to prepare them for the upcoming general strike action. It was an excellent and successful demonstration, although Tim modestly admitted that he couldn’t get his rhythem, since there was a translator, breaking up the speech and translating everything he said to the group. He said he felt like he was giving a speech at the United Nations. Occupiers decided that we ought to record Tim’s speech and have our group translate it into Spanish, Arabic, Vietnamese, and Sign Language since we have the capacity– according to our Asset Map– and put it out on youtube.
According to Ray and Claudia and others in attendance in the meeting things are really gearing up for the General Strike May 1st, lots of volunteers will be needed to pass our flyers, Check with El Centro for the time schedule to create signs, art projects for the Marches. There will be fund raising events going on as well, everyone is needed.
Occupy Santa Ana will be manning booths at OCC next Monday and Tuesday and Santa Ana College on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week to pass out May day flyers. Get involved! There will also be crews of people passing out flyers door to door, flyer bombing parking lots, Outreach, Outreach, Outreach!
Don’t forget, this weekend, Saturday the 14th, there is the 8th annual Social Justice Summit at Cal State Fullerton free to the public from 9am to 5pm. Occupy Santa Ana will have a panel representing our local issues at the Summit.
As you all know Santa Ana’s current action made onto the Occupy Wall Street tweet list which is excellent “The whole world is watching!” as we like to say.
Great idea given this evening by Sara was that any of us who see an article about homelessness in the county ought to post in the response section our press release so that others know what is going on in Santa Ana and we can gather more support throughout the Orange County Community.
It has also been put out by many that we need to begin coalition building with the churches who are feeding regularly in the Civic Center. Anyone who is out there during feedings can get names and organization contacts info so we can send them our four points, etc.
See you all at Friday’s General Assembly
Solidarity—Social Justice—Love
Occupy Santa Ana
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