I know the news is in the pocket of the ruling class and everything but I can’t fucking believe ppl in philly created an entire fucking les-mis style blockade around a city block to stop cops from evicting houseless folks and that wasn’t major breaking news.
Like CHAZ was in the news for fucking weeks meanwhile philly had a colossal group of homeless people set up a tent city, a bunch of black bloc folks erected a barricade by breaking into construction sites and stealing supplies, then used that barricade as a bargaining chip to negotiate the city into giving 100 homes to public housing, and nobody fucking knows about that except for a few of my friends irl. What the fuck.
Is there anything about this online at all? Twitter threads? Pictures? Any media from the activists?
Yeah! So I actually didn’t expect this post to leave my little online circle but I saw you and somebody else mention it so. Sorry if this is messy, I’m no source of authority here.
https://philadelphiahousingaction.info/ is a great place to start. They actually have an entire page on press behind it. I’d also recommend looking through their twitter @PhlHousing. Philadelphia housing action is as close to an organizational body behind the two encampments as exist.
There were 2 encampments, camp JTD and camp Teddy, which was parked
right out side the philadelphia housing authority. Basically what the
Philadelphia Housing Authority was doing was taking row homes that were
designated as “public housing”, refusing to let anyone rent, letting the
property value go down, and then selling to private investors, some of
which are owned by the mayor. As a protest, a large group of homeless folks set up encampments on public property, declared them sit ins as to make them protected under first amendment rights, and then proceeded to set up camps at some point in late june.
On their instagram, @campjtd, they posted this on september 27th
this thread from unicorn riot on twitter does a pretty good job of covering it, with some images here and there
The camps themselves were actually very well run, they had access to porta-potties, clean running water (I have no idea how they set it up but I spent a couple nights there on lookout, they had sinks for washing they had set up outside and for drinking water). Tents were donated so new residents could set up sleeping areas if they didn’t have one themselves. A steady stream of food, toiletries and other essentials were donated by dozens of local activist groups and individuals, they had grills and stoves for cooking hot meals, medical tents with on site street medics from volunteers and various groups. It was really incredible how well everything ran.
Below are some more pictures of the camp from their instagram
and twitter
I don’t know much about camp Teddy, as I only ever went to JTD, but a very large number of people lived there, and eventually police started routinely circling the camp and demanding it was disbanded, and threatening to mobilize, only to be met with enough pushback to prevent them. Some images of the event were posted on their instagram
and actually this video is of the police delivering the order to disband
Eventually from enough pushback 50 homes were given away to people living at the camps, but the struggle isn’t quite over as many of the homes were in a dilapidated condition and many individuals wound up not receiving a home. As of today (6/10/21) I believe both camps have been disbanded, and no further organized action has been pursued, but it was still a mind blowing radicalization in resistance.
I can’t stress enough please go through https://philadelphiahousingaction.info/, I am not an expert, I am just a random kid who happened to be there at the right time, and all information I picked up was through word of mouth.
