A Tiny Plot: "The Fence" EP 3

Mama D sees that the future of the experiment is up to her and what she decides: Lead the group to the plot of land offered by the city, hope and pray for a magical new plot, or disband the group and dissolve the experiment. Following weeks of indecision, Mama D makes a choice. And while everyone from the group was hard at work to turn their dream into reality, they didn’t seem to notice a major problem with the set-up. A fault line of sorts. This episode contains strong language & graphic imagery. Please take care while listening. Big thanks to the entire cast from A Tiny Plot for sharing your worlds with us. A Tiny Plot https://www.kqed.org/pressroom/12582/a-tiny-plot is a new 5-part series from KQED https://www.kqed.org/’s Snap Studios, hosted and produced by Shaina Shealy. Edited by Anna Sussman, original music by Renzo Gorrio, engineering by Pat Mesiti-Miller. Director of Production: Marisa Dodge. Executive Producers: Glynn Washington and Mark Ristich. Artwork: Teo Ducot. Special thanks: Jen Chien, Catherine Winter, the City of Oakland, Sweetie at the Travel Inn, Ryan Finnegan, Will Craft, JP Dobrin, Thomas Brouns, Sukey Lewis, Alistair Boone, The Street Spirit, KQED legal, and Ott House Audio. Episode 3 of 5. Episodes drop on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Listen on any podcast platform, right here on Snap Judgment! Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices https://dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

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• 2:19Speaker 01

  From KQED's Snap Studios, this is A Tiny Plot.

• 2:25Speaker 01

  This episode contains strong language and graphic imagery. Sensitive listeners, please take care.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Welcome to A Tiny Plot, a story told in five parts. This is Chapter Three.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  When we left off, the group from Union Point had finally gotten a piece of land for their revolutionary experiment. But that land is right across from where Mama Dee's son was murdered. Papa Eddie and President Matt and the group said, if Mama Dee won't go there, they won't either.

• 3:11Speaker 02

  And that just made me see the love that they have for me as family, not friendship, but family.

• 3:20Speaker 01

  So now, Mama Dee sees that the future of the experiment is up to her and what she decides. Lead the group to the plot of land offered by the city? Hope and pray for a magical new plot? Or disband the group? Dissolve the experiment? It's all up in the air.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  From KQED's Snap Studios, I'm Shaina Shealy. This is A Tiny Plot, Chapter Three, The Fence.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  This episode contains strong language and graphic imagery. Sensitive listeners, please be advised.

• 4:07Speaker 01

  Hello? I've been spending a lot of time at the Travelin' Motel, at meetings, in people's rooms. And suddenly, it's mid-October. At this point, the whole crew has been living here for eight months. Their rooms paid for by the city this whole time. One day, I show up at Mama Dee's door, and she's working on an art project, carving names into a flat piece of wood.

• 4:35Speaker 02

  Just like this with the sandpaper?

• 4:39Speaker 02

  But I engraved it, painted it.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  It's a plaque covered in sort of curly handwriting. Names burned into wood.

• 4:49Speaker 02

  It says, "Shining Paradise, shit shit. Kendrick, Max, Uncle Gary, Savage." Max is my nephew. He was murdered two years prior to Kendrick's. Helen is one of the ladies they found. Noncoherent in her tent. So I guess she died of a heat stroke. Miguel is from Union Point. He was murdered across the street.

• 5:16Speaker 01

  While Mama Dee sits in limbo with her decision, she shows me all these names of people she's loved.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  Tracy, I guess she was in Camp Mount Hopper. I don't know. They found her body at Lake Chabot. Chwan was at the Union Point Park with us as well. He was involved.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  And she's always thinking about her son, Kendrick, and what he would have wanted for her.

• 5:45Speaker 02

  He don't want to see me miserable and crying.

• 5:48Speaker 01

  You had a real big decision to make.

• 5:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I had to come up with, fighting myself. Deanna, you could do this. You can't. I'm not going to do this. I don't want to see myself. I don't want to relive this every day. I think maybe two weeks I went by and I was sitting there. And I don't know, something, premonition, something came to me. And it was just like, Mom, you have to go there. You can't fight it. Just go. I felt like it was coming from Kendrick or something like, I don't want to see you out there, you know? Mom, you don't need to go in no tent again.

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Just more of just scared for you. And I'm like, OK, I have to do this. But it's hard. So I've been telling everybody else, look, we may not want this, but we're all in the same boat. We was homeless. But now we have a place. That's all I want. That's all I want to do now. I want this project to succeed. And I know if my son was here, he is here. I know my son wanted it to succeed too.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  So after weeks of indecision, to everyone's relief, Mama Dee unlocked her motel room door.

• 7:27Speaker 01

  She walked out into the brisk air to the second floor balcony. She looked down at tents and RVs along the sidewalk. And she made a choice to lead the group towards a home at East 12th.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  With Mama Dee's OK, this whole hypothetical idea of a co-governed site, it all becomes very real, like very suddenly. People ride city bikes and scooters and walk to the empty slice of fenced-in land at East 12th.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  Well, I dug some trenching. I have helped.

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Within days, the East 12th site becomes a construction zone. And together, the group starts building their communal home.

• 8:19Speaker 02

  It's going good. I'm doing the, like, the corners. It looks like I'm working.

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Adam manages this huge list of to-dos for the group, the Home Depot shopping trips and all the construction logistics.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  You guys have the privilege and the responsibility to build your own space out how you want it. So now's the time to show up.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  On Adam's list, assemble and mark off space for shower stalls.

• 8:46Speaker 04

  Right now, I'm using wall paint as a marking paint.

• 8:51Speaker 01

  Get the space ready for plumbing and electric.

• 8:58Speaker 01

  Insulate and paint the walls of the extra sheds from the city, where Union Point will run their own security. Which, by the way, is a big deal. Running their own security means they'll say who comes and who goes. And they'll even get paid for it. This is co-governance in practice.

• 9:16Speaker 05

  That is real innovation, right there.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  MacGyver moves.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  While the group is making a lot of their own decisions about their little slice of land, they actually have no say in one of the most important aspects of a new home: their actual houses. They don't get to consider things like layout, or ventilation, or safety. Because around this time, the city of Oakland started buying shelters from a startup that mass-produces tiny homes. The company is called Palit.

• 9:47Speaker 06

  We are facing a national housing emergency. People experiencing homelessness need a shelter that is better than a sidewalk and faster than the permanent solutions. That's why we created Palit: a rapid shelter solution to address homelessness at the speed and scale that you need.

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Palit makes these prefabricated tiny homes. And cities all over the US, from Denver to Tampa, are purchasing them to provide shelter to homeless people. Palit shelters can go up fast. Without having to meet the same kind of safety requirements you'd need to build permanent housing here in Oakland.

• 10:22Speaker 03

  If we were going to get permits, we would be waiting six months to a year. There's no way you could do permits and get anything done in less than six months in Oakland. One of the many reasons why housing doesn't get built.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  One reason that temporary houses like Palit shelters can go up so quickly is because almost a decade ago, the city of Oakland declared a "shelter crisis." There simply were way more people living here than shelters. So, city council members authorized an emergency ordinance, which allows the city to build "emergency homes," like these Palit shelters, without a lot of the confines of state and local building regulations. I spoke to an architect, Narin Kadri Begovic, at a California firm focused on design for social cause called Kadre. He works on both permanent and temporary builds, including pallet shelters. And he told me that the regulations on permanent housing make it really hard to get things built here.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  He said it usually takes him five or six years to get a regular building project underway. But he's seen homes like pallet shelters go up in three months, and he considers them an important part of the solution to the housing crisis.

• 11:32Speaker 03

  But these are all movable. Oh, the modular or the movable?

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Anyway, after just a few weeks of Adam and the residents prepping the East 12th parcel, I show up to the site one morning, and I'm stunned.

• 11:46Speaker 05

  Oh my god, this is so cool. We don't have a front door.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  There are 16 brand-new pallet shelters lined up in a semicircle. These sheds are bright white, shiny. Each one is about 8 by 8 feet, about the size of an ADA bathroom stall. They each have a foldable bed and a lockable door, windows that can slide up and down, electrical outlets, and a smoke alarm and a fire extinguisher.

• 12:22Speaker 01

  Seeing these pallet shelters makes this long-fought-for idea feel so real.

• 12:34Speaker 01

  Beyond Union Point's fenced-off slice of land, there's another temporary housing site sharing the East 12th parcel: Lakeview Village.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  On the other side of a fence, Lakeview has even more shelters, rows and rows of these same sheds, about 50 of them. As the Union Point folks shovel and hammer and paint and talk about the succulent gardens they hope to plant, people actually start moving into the homes next door, across the fence. These people moving into Lakeview Village arrive without knowing who they'll live next to, what their amenities are, who's watching over them. They don't run their own security or have meetings to discuss showers and toilets. In other words, they don't have the same co-governance elements the Union Point site has. And while everyone from Union Point

• 13:29Speaker 01

  was focused on what color to paint the security shed, they didn't seem to notice that underneath these two side-by-side camps, there were some major problems. A fault line of sorts.

• 13:49Speaker 01

  Stay tuned. You're listening to A Tiny Plot.

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• 16:05Speaker 01

  Welcome back to A Tiny Plot. I'm your host, Shaina Shealy. When we left off, the residents were building their very own site.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  Okay, we have to tell Shaina the story. So, we were gonna get donated lumber from Econo Lumber. They were gonna come deliver it between 12 and 1.

• 16:24Speaker 01

  Just the other day, when Adam and Mama Dee showed up to work on the East 12th site, there was a gray van parked in front of the entrance.

• 16:33Speaker 03

  Nino, Parker, and Miss Asada were there, and it seemed like it was connected to them.

• 16:39Speaker 01

  Nino Parker identifies himself as a Black homeless advocate. I'd seen him around the lake. He often wears a leather fedora and sleeps in a van near the East 12th site. He's been spending a lot of time outside the Union Point site, sometimes with signs, other times with a bullhorn.

• 16:56Speaker 03

  So, we went and asked, "What's up with this car? We need access to deliver this materials." And then, of course, screaming ensued.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  The lady was hollering at Adam for no reason, though.

• 17:07Speaker 05

  What was she saying?

• 17:08Speaker 02

  Um, that we're racist.

• 17:12Speaker 03

  She was screaming, "White privilege." She was calling me a segregationist. I've asked them nicely, "What do you want?" And they say, "Take down the fence."

• 17:23Speaker 01

  The chain link fence on the East 12th site that separates Union Point from Lakeview Village.

• 17:28Speaker 03

  Like, or...

• 17:30Speaker 02

  We're not gonna take down the fence because we're two different...

• 17:32Speaker 03

  It's two different programs.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Nino Parker sees that the majority of folks in the Union Point group are white.

• 17:38Speaker 03

  What do you think, Mama Dee, on that situation?

• 17:41Speaker 02

  Which one?

• 17:42Speaker 03

  On the controversy that's building.

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Oh, you know what? Oh, well, let them say what they want because they don't know the truth. We all know that there is African-American people in our group. My old man and my children.

• 18:01Speaker 01

  In Mama Dee's eyes, this controversy is personal. Instead of speaking to the criticism of how this experiment has gone down, she says over and over again...

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Well, I don't see color, period. I don't know no color. All I know is everybody being human.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  But that's how I feel.

• 18:19Speaker 03

  There's also this narrative that's building about, you know, we're this hoity-toity, whites-only country club of homeless encampments or homeless interventions. And right next door, this other community, they don't have their own... They don't get as many perks to run their own space, and it's gonna be mostly black folks.

• 18:44Speaker 03

  I actually don't feel so nervous about that because I happen to be black. I've thought a lot about race, and I feel very comfortable talking about race.

• 18:55Speaker 01

  And he has no qualms about defending this project against what he calls "the controversy."

• 19:02Speaker 01

  He sees it as just another complication.

• 19:04Speaker 03

  It's hard enough to do what we're doing. We're dealing with the layers of people dealing with the trauma of transitioning from survival mode on the streets. We're dealing with just the general drama of people trying to live together. We're dealing with trying to set up this new thing. And then we got a layer on top of this, this like weird political football that these two people that just don't have anything else to do and want attention have to throw in our face. And it's like throwing a grenade, you know, in a pile of wood. They are literally looking for a screaming match.

• 19:37Speaker 02

  Well, we're not going to give it to them no more. We just have to ignore them, that's all.

• 19:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, I think that's the right strategy because he's over.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  Every time Nino Parker got in the way, Adam would advise the group to simply ignore him.

• 19:50Speaker 03

  We could talk about Nino all day and I advise we don't. Let's keep going around the circle. We got Tim, old man Tim, looking cool.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  Adam's strategy, as always, is to keep people moving forward, keep building. But Nino Parker was not backing down. He kept showing up outside Union Point site, day after day, protesting the fence separating the mostly white people from Union Point, from the mostly people of color at Lakeview Village. Two projects, side by side, on the same public-owned land, with the same public funding. One side making their own rules and the other side with rules imposed by the city. After all this time following Union Point, I wanted to talk with Nino directly.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  But day after day, he sort of refused to speak with me. Hi, Nino. We met. One day, for some reason, he finally rolled down the driver's seat window of his van, parked right outside the East 12th site. Is now a good time for an interview? I angle my microphone inside.

• 20:59Speaker 07

  There's not really a lot to discuss about this issue. This issue is the issue of segregation. Bottom line, it's basically illegal in America to have 99% white on one side and a mixed crowd on the other side.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  I did mention James Leroy, Tim Weddow and Dupree, the people of color at Union Point. Union Point was actually closer to 70% white. And Lakeview Village was mostly black and Asian. Only 11% white.

• 21:31Speaker 07

  Don't, don't, please don't. That, to me, that just says like you're trying to give it the okay. Give it the okay. I don't care if they got three. I started this encampment. They're telling us we can't be on the sidewalk. They're telling us they're going to get a restraining order for us protesting.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  Tell me again what your, the goal is for this staff. With this specific site.

• 21:53Speaker 07

  Um, I, I think, um, I, I think I'll, I'll leave that on reserve. But my goal in general, out here in Oakland, is to help homeless people. Especially the fact that there's 75 to 80% black homeless people that actually need the heat. That's, that's my goal. It's about protecting black people.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  According to a City of Oakland survey, around 70% of homeless people here in Oakland are black. While black people make up only 23% of the population overall. That imbalance has continued to grow.

• 22:32Speaker 01

  Nino doesn't want Union Point folks to be kicked back to the streets. He just knows that what he's seeing looks like a continuation of the structural racism he's seen his whole life. One group of people, whiter than the other, getting more rights in a government encampment. Do you see any potential in this project helping other homeless people, specifically black homeless people?

• 22:58Speaker 07

  How do white people help homeless, how do white people taking dollars that would go to black homeless people help black people, black homeless people?

• 23:06Speaker 01

  So I think Matt is really excited about training other encampments to resist eviction and get these contracts.

• 23:12Speaker 07

  I've been doing that for years. Why is Matt, why is a guy from San Jose that's been here two years, all of a sudden the, the, the new czar of a homeless? No, because he's white. No, sorry. Nope, this is a pilot saying, we accept systemic racism. We accept in the homeless world now what's been happening in the house world. Now we accept it here in the homeless world. It's not going to happen.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  This is a Tiny Plot. Stay tuned. You won't want to miss what happens next.

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• 25:06Speaker 01

  Welcome back to a Tiny Plot. I'm your host, Shaina Shealy. When we left off, the group was working hard to get their site ready for move-in.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Things are progressing at the East 12th site. It's December, 10 months since the negotiations on the barricade of trash at Union Point Park. And every day, almost everyone in the Union Point group has been out here, raking and trenching.

• 25:36Speaker 05

  I swap those screws out and then, yeah, I guess.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Adam lets me in through the gate.

• 25:43Speaker 03

  I believe in, strongly in the whole balance, work like balance, but this is a crucial sprint moment. So yeah, feeling the pressure.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  Through the chain link fence that separates these two villages, I see Lakeview Village's porta potties. Their neatly lined rows of tiny white houses. A security guard standing at the gate entrance like a bouncer at a club. On the Union Point side, the toilet and shower stalls are lined up. The security shed is painted and ready. And the tiny homes, they're almost ready for move in. Adam waves over Mustache Mike and a guy named Tim to a tiny home on the edge of the plot. One that will eventually be Tim's.

• 26:31Speaker 03

  So we got power connected? Okay.

• 26:35Speaker 04

  So all the units got power?

• 26:37Speaker 03

  Yeah. You can move in today, man. Wow. Yeah. You could. Let's see. I mean, I don't know.

• 26:44Speaker 01

  There's a single mattress, a fire extinguisher.

• 26:46Speaker 03

  I'm surprised. Let's see if it works.

• 26:51Speaker 04

  There should be a switch on there. Right there, look. Right down there.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  Where?

• 26:58Speaker 04

  Follow the cord.

• 26:58Speaker 03

  Oh, there we go. Hey! Look at that. I would open these.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  Their lights come on. Around the site, things are happening. The poles for their dome are here. The inside of their security hut is drywalled and painted.

• 27:20Speaker 04

  This is good enough for me.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  Do you have a vision of how you want to set it up?

• 27:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:25Speaker 04

  I feel like I'll be all right by myself.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  The residents are all smiles, flipping lights on and off.

• 27:31Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. I'm gonna set it up. I'm taking this bed. Our bed's gonna be up on top.

• 27:36Speaker 03

  What? You're gonna loft it?

• 27:37Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  All right. How are you gonna do that?

• 27:39Speaker 04

  That's what they said they would do.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  What's an idea?

• 27:42Speaker 04

  Move this up on top.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  If you put the bed up there, you could even put like a table.

• 27:48Speaker 03

  Look, this is Nino. He's doing a little political action.

• 27:53Speaker 07

  No whites on one side, blacks on the other side. We're not gonna have it. Take down the goddamn fence. We're not gonna have no separation going on in this side of Oakland. We don't do that here. Take down that goddamn fence. We're here protesting every day while you guys got to use all kinds of nonprofit standards to fund yourselves and self-govern yourselves while the black people have to be watched. Are you proud of that? Screw that. That's racism.

• 28:27Speaker 01

  Adam doesn't even seem phased when he sees Nino drive by.

• 28:31Speaker 03

  I mean, he's just looking for a thing to say. I mean, it's made up. That's Nino Parker. Oh, him? Yeah. Oh, asshole. What's up, asshole?

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Nino's van is rolling up and down the street. A handful of residents walk towards the van, and I follow.

• 28:49Speaker 05

  It's called snap judgment. We met on the corner.

• 28:51Speaker 01

  Nino gets out of the van and onto the pavement, on the roadside of the chain-link fence. He's standing with a woman in her 70s, Miss Asada. Nino and Miss Asada, Matt and Mustache Mike and Tim, they're separated by a chain-link fence. They face each other. Nino points to the fence that divides Lakeview Village from Union Point on the rise.

• 29:18Speaker 07

  There's no way to say that you have white people on one side, especially when that race is allowed to advance themselves. They have a self-governed encampment, and we were told that for security, they can hire each other for security, so they can pay each other to watch each other. Whereas over here, everyone's watched over by the housing consortium of the East Bay, and it's security people.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  It's a whole different program. It's a whole different...

• 29:44Speaker 07

  That's the problem. Why should people on this side get more than people on that side?

• 29:48Speaker 04

  That one there is run...

• 29:49Speaker 07

  I know who's run by. Why do you guys get to have the kitchen? Why do you get to have all these...

• 29:53Speaker 04

  Well...

• 29:53Speaker 07

  Make your own rules when they don't?

• 29:55Speaker 04

  When, uh, okay...

• 29:56Speaker 07

  They don't get to have any of that.

• 29:57Speaker 04

  Well, it's like this, okay, any encampment out there doesn't have to leave. What we did was like this, when the city came to move us all out, we barricaded ourselves in there. We did not let them in there.

• 30:10Speaker 09

  We know that. We understand that part.

• 30:12Speaker 04

  So, if you're as a community, because we don't like to call it encampments, we call them communities, any community has to push, has to push against the city to get what, you know, to get what they want because, again, so any community that's out there has the same rights as we did, okay? We were supposed to get our own area, but the city councilwoman that's running that other side here, she had a... This is all of hers? Yeah, this is all of hers. Oh! Okay, so that's why, but we were trying to, we were trying to get our own spots. So what she did was she gave us this much, this much space.

• 30:50Speaker 07

  Unfairness, inequality.

• 30:52Speaker 04

  The city is using this as a trial, and if we make it work, then they'll be able to do other ones all over the city.

• 31:01Speaker 09

  Can I tell you the problem?

• 31:03Speaker 04

  Hmm?

• 31:03Speaker 09

  As I see it, you guys made a contractual arrangement to stay as a community co-governance, and you were supposed to go to Calcutt and 11th as your site. Calcutt and 11th Street.

• 31:19Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 31:19Speaker 09

  And Mr. Gallo, council member in 5th District, said no.

• 31:23Speaker 04

  Yeah, exactly. He said no.

• 31:25Speaker 09

  What happened was, this is intended for the Lake Merritt community.

• 31:29Speaker 04

  Right.

• 31:29Speaker 09

  So what you have done is taken space away from them for you.

• 31:33Speaker 04

  Well, we didn't, they did.

• 31:35Speaker 09

  They did.

• 31:35Speaker 04

  The city decided that.

• 31:39Speaker 01

  City staff told the group East 12th was where they would move. When I spoke with then-council president Nikki Fortunato-Boss, she said she knew it might be tricky to have these different models side by side, but that ultimately Lakeview Village never asked for a co-governance model. Tim sort of throws his hands in the air, turns around, and walks back toward paint buckets.

• 32:05Speaker 07

  I just hate that fence. And they know what's wrong, that's why they're walking away. You can't have a fence separating two communities. I've been here every morning, blowing my horn, waking up all these people. Every one of these people, 300 people probably, think about it, that are subject to my noise. The general public will help us solve this situation. Because they're gonna complain and complain, because you know what? We only did our horn, we're gonna get whistles? It's gonna be so damn loud here 24/7, you will not be able to be here.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Matt goes back to drywalling. Tim is just pacing across the dusty rocks where the bathrooms are supposed to go up.

• 32:41Speaker 01

  Let's process, what just happened?

• 32:45Speaker 04

  The argument with him is that they're homeless people here in this community should have been here instead of us. Yeah, I can understand his point. But it's, don't bring it to us! We had no say-so where we're going.

• 33:00Speaker 01

  Saying you agree with some of the things they were saying?

• 33:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, I agree with the point. Why would they bring outsiders here in this area? Knowing there's people organized to come over here and protest against it. This whole area, this park, was filled with homeless people. We didn't ask to be put in this location. It was all done already when, you know, they came to us.

• 33:21Speaker 01

  So how does that make you feel?

• 33:22Speaker 04

  It made us feel like we're... I like pawns in a way, but also... Benefiting us personally in a way, because we'd be still where we were there. So they agreed to do it, let the city handle it then, okay? The co-government title that they're using, need to step up and grab one of us, and put us in their meetings.

• 33:39Speaker 01

  If you feel like pawns, why are y'all out here working so hard?

• 33:43Speaker 04

  Because... Best thing we got going right now. Yes, all we got going. I mean, what else are we gonna do? Be out there...

• 33:48Speaker 01

  So you're saying this is all you got? This is your one opportunity?

• 33:51Speaker 04

  One opportunity the city, yeah, has given us. And if we make this little community here work, then they're gonna expand it. That's why my ass, and other people's asses, to make this work. And that's what we're here to do. Because I wanna see this work. I wanna see this actually work for the city.

• 34:15Speaker 01

  I wanted to see if Lakeview Village residents had any thoughts about Union Point having a different set of rules. I went to try to speak with them a bunch of times. They said, "No, I can't come in."

• 34:26Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Really? Their manager always said I wasn't allowed on their site. I'm not allowed in here?

• 34:33Speaker 09

  No.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  So I check with Nita B., a housing activist who works with what she calls "curbside communities" all over the city. She's been following the Union Point experiment, going to their motel meetings from the start.

• 34:51Speaker 10

  Knowing what I know about the Union Point community, being one of their advocates, I have to say this. The Union Point community is a very diverse group of people: Black folks, white folks, folks from Central America. There were many children there, like, under the age of eight. It was a family space. What's being said is total misinformation. They did the barricade standoff thing, and then they started negotiating. First point of negotiation was housing all the Black mothers and their children. They organized to make sure those babies got housing immediately.

• 35:26Speaker 01

  Before Mama Dee and President Matt and Papa Eddie moved to motel rooms, Nita B. and a former city employee told me the city placed families with young children in actual housing, not just spots in the cabin program. Mama Dee's daughters and her kids, they got spots in a building near Lake Merritt.

• 35:47Speaker 01

  A few days later, I go back to the East 12 site, when I hoped the tension had died down a bit. When I get there, it's eerily quiet. The fence is locked, and I see Nino Parker on the sidewalk, outside his van, wearing a neck brace.

• 36:09Speaker 05

  How are you doing?

• 36:11Speaker 07

  You can't see how I'm doing? Can you see how I'm doing? Does it look great?

• 36:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, you don't look great.

• 36:18Speaker 07

  Thanks to your wonderful Adam Garrett Clark assaulting me. I spent my birthday getting crutches. The crutches in the back here. That's why I'm sitting down and not walking around.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Nino Parker is loading new, bright white posters into his van. He's holding on to them with his left hand while balancing on crutches with the other.

• 36:39Speaker 05

  Are you OK?

• 36:40Speaker 07

  Are most people OK after they've been assaulted? What a silly question.

• 36:44Speaker 05

  Do you need some help?

• 36:45Speaker 07

  No, I need to do it myself.

• 36:47Speaker 01

  With one hand, Nino gets the posters into his van on his own. He climbs into the front seat and shuts the door.

• 36:58Speaker 01

  And I walk home, trying to think of what possibly could have happened that put Nino on crutches.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  You just listened to the third chapter of A Tiny Plot. There's more, five chapters total. Listen to all episodes here on the Snap Judgment feed. We'll be dropping them on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

• 37:36Speaker 01

  Next up on A Tiny Plot.

• 37:38Speaker 11

  When you're counting on something to be a certain way for a whole year and you work towards that, and then all of a sudden, everything's rocked like that. Some people can't function like that. It's really hard for them.

• 37:52Speaker 01

  A Tiny Plot is a production of KQED Snap Studios. Hosted and produced by Shaina Shealy. Edited by Anna Sussman. Original music by Renzo Gorrio. Made possible by the entire Snap team and everyone who lived at Union Point Park. Thank you for sharing your stories. Extra special thanks to Jen Chen, Katherine Winter, the City of Oakland, Sweetie at the Travel Inn, Ryan Finnegan, Will Kraft, JP Jobrin, Thomas Browns, Sukey Lewis, Alistair Boone and the Street Spirit, and KQED Legal. Engineering by Pat Mesiti Miller. Director of Production, Marisa Dodge. Our executive producers are Glynn Washington and Mark Ristich.

• 38:37Speaker 01

  On Team Snap, the union-represented producers, artists, editors, and engineers are members of the National Association of Broadcast Employees and Technicians, Communications Workers of America, AFL-CIO Local 51. And this is not the news. No way is this the news. Because this is Snap Judgment. Get your ears ready and keep your hearts open because this is PRX.