Sacramento Right to Rest protest moves from City Hall to state Capitol

A short woman with a big smile stands in front of the state Capitol near L Street, braving the Tuesday morning chill. Next to her is a pushcart with rules and slogans emblazoned on its side: “Right to rest,” “Occupation,” and “Repeal Ordinance 12.52.030,” the latter being Sacramento’s now-famous “anti-camping ordinance.”

The woman, who goes by the name Mama Cat, says she came up from Los Angeles recently to support the Sacramento Right to Rest movement. She’s actually from New Orleans, but had to leave after Hurricane Katrina. She says she knows all too well what it’s like to live and sleep on the streets.

In Los Angeles, however, there’s a new law that allows homeless people to camp and sleep outdoors between the hours of 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. But not here in Sacramento; police regularly roust her during the night, but she’s yet to be cited under the anti-camping law.

“I’m lucky. I’ve gotten two warnings since I’ve been here,” she said. At night, she occupies the sidewalk along L Street in front of the Capitol. “But you can’t sleep. You sit in a chair, and you don’t get caught sleeping.”

So goes the city’s Right to Rest effort. After 90 days of occupying a strip of grass in front of City Hall, homeless protesters are now located a few blocks away at the state Capitol.

“We moved to the Capitol on Friday to support S.B. 876,” James “Faygo” Clark, one of the protest’s main organizers, wrote in a text to SN&R this past Monday. The Senate bill is also known as the Homeless Bill of Rights, legislation that would disallow cities to ban homeless people from resting or sleeping in public spaces.

Mama Cat says she is frustrated that anti-camping laws continue to persecute otherwise nonoffending homeless people. “Many people out here have never had any kind of criminal record. Now they’re getting ticketed. They’re creating criminals,” she argued.

Los Angeles isn’t alone in modifying or repealing parts of its anti-camping ordinance. Last month, the city of Portland passed a new law that allows sleeping bags and tarps on sidewalks between the hours of 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. The city also now allows tents on some public property, too.

Here in Sacramento, a subcommittee of three council members is exploring solutions for how to deal with this growing homeless population. They visited a “tent city” in Seattle last month, held a public meeting on February 29 and plan to make recommendations to the full council in April.

None of the three council members on the subcommittee, however, responded to an SN&R email asking to discuss the possibility of a repeal or modification of the anti-camping ordinance, or whether they were looking at policy in Los Angeles or Portland.

Meanwhile, Clark said that, even though the Right to Rest movement has left City Hall, he doesn’t want council members to think they’ve quit. “I am kind of concerned that they’ll think that we just left because we were defeated,” he explained via telephone on Tuesday. “I’m worried that they might assume that. But it’s not true.”

He called the move to the Capitol “more of an escalation than a de-escalation,” because now they have to deal with California Highway Patrol officers in addition to city police. They also have to acquire a permit, which is free, for each day’s protest.

Clark also vowed to return the protest to City Hall next month.

S.B. 876, which was introduced last year and was authored by Southern California Democrat Carol Liu, awaits a possible committee vote sometime this spring. If it makes it out of committee, it would still need to pass both houses and receive the governor’s signature.