Women and Children First: Why You Should Care about 4 Moms Being Evicted in Oakland

Even the California sun couldn’t brighten up the walk to the Pretty Lady Restaurant. The one neighborhood diner left that hasn’t changed into a upper crust coffee shop, or disappeared altogether and become more housing for the burgeoning tech community that is flocking to Oakland. It’s a short walk to the Pretty Lady Restaurant, but the scenery that surrounds this journey is bleak. The needles litter the ground underneath my feet, the waste of abundance is everywhere. Another car burned out, Lower Bottoms Bagdad is now where I live. I exist in the outskirts of capitalisms greatest success; Apple, Facebook, Google, Twitter, all a stones throw away. In the shadows of this plenteous wealth sits this impoverished enclave. Capitalisms debris.

A one legged man in wheelchair approaches and asks for spare change to eat. He attempts to assure me that he won’t use the money I give him on liquor of drugs. I tell him I have no money. My reply is true, as is the despair in his eyes at my response. It frustrates me, how in our giving nature we can be so paternalistic; giving moral demands on our charity. The one legged man then asks for the simplest of favors, he asks me to help him traverse his chair over the potholes and train tracks so he can get to the Target located about a half mile or so down the road. I oblige him and maneuver him over these obstacles, that are so easy to walk over, but are a challenge with a wheelchair. On our 4 block journey I see more men that look like…