The Albany Bulb is an overgrown landfill on the Western edge of the East Bay, in the San Francisco Bay Area. “The Bulb” juts into the SF Bay, surrounded on 3 sides by water. It is a green growing wildland of naturalized plants, animals and people. And it’s an organically created citizens’ gallery of outsider art featuring giant sculptural forms and colorfully painted concrete and rocks.
Friends of mine have lived there, in handmade huts built from recycled materials. They were Food Not Bombs activists, musicians, and people who sought an alternative to the inhumanity of capitalist society.
Now the East Bay Regional Park district (EBRPD) is moving in to sanitize the area. Residents are being harassed and evicted, art is being removed and trees cut down.
Many activists and artists have lived storied lives that embue us with appreciation for the fringe-places, the edge-dwellers, the communities that thrive among the ruins and the refuse, society’s throw-away treasures. We love to find these “diamonds in the rough”, and we work and polish until the beauty shines.
In practical terms, who can afford to be an activist or an artist when our culture demands compliance with a system that does not support or value those callings? Or, where is a person to go when she can’t abide by living inside four walls or when he craves the constant presence of nature or requires the freedom of job-free living, sometimes due to a genuine inability to conform?
When we see a place and a community that has been born out of human resourcefulness and creativity, we are witnessing the life of the commons. The commons may sometimes appear messy or chaotic, but humans seek a sense of tribe, and as we create that tribe we find support and interconnectedness. At The Bulb, as in other squatted communities, residents know each other and feel safety in that community. Evictions in other “homeless” camps have put pressure on The Bulb as new residents flood into the community, but this is a function of crackdowns and the criminalization of homelessness.
EBRPD wants to make the Bulb into a product, consumable by the wealthy class, no longer a welcoming place for the underprivileged. Consumerism will never satisfy our human need for tribe, commons, and space to feel our interdependence, express ourselves and make our art.
Keep the Albany Bulb a place of freedom for all to share and enjoy. Evicting residents, tearing down art, cutting the trees, controlling and manicuring the space is not a service. Serve humanity by keeping wild spaces free and wild, even when that wildness comes in an unexpected form– on a landfill surrounded by one of the worlds richest urban areas.
From Share The Bulb website:
Share The Bulb is an organization of Bulb residents and community allies working to stop the eviction of residents from the Albany Bulb and to secure real alternative housing in Albany for those who seek it.
The Albany Bulb is a unique treasure in the Bay Area. It is a beloved center for public art and community engagement, and has been home to hundreds of otherwise homeless individuals over several decades. Situated on the western edge of the city of Albany, extending into the San Francisco Bay, the Bulb is an industrial landfill, created between 1963 and 1983. When the City closed the dumping site in 1983, it became a refuge for people made homeless during the closures of public housing and real estate speculation that characterized the early ’80s. Now, due to the hard work and artistic contributions of Bulb residents and allied community members, the former landfill has been transformed into one of the safest places for low and no-income people to call Home in the Bay Area.
The City of Albany, encouraged by the Sierra Club and Citizens for Eastshore Parks, has shown no respect for the otherwise homeless individuals who live there or their right to housing, instead approaching the Albany Bulb as if the human beings who live there are a problem, and as if the solution is to criminalize their existence. Our goal is to stop the effort to evict residents at the Bulb, many of whom have lived for years in homes they built with their own hands, and to push Albany to provide no-income and low-income housing.
So far, we have kept the eviction from happening since October of 2013 by putting political pressure on those trying to evict Bulb residents, by using legal strategies to keep the City accountable, by camping in solidarity on the Bulb, by creating art and empowering community, and by putting our bodies between backhoes and homes.
We Need Your Help!
Write & call the City of Albany, Citizens for Eastshore Parks (510-524-5000), & The Sierra Club (Michelle Myers: 510-848-0800 ext. 323), which are pushing for the eviction. Let them know you support Bulb residents!
Join us!
We meet every Saturday at 4pm in the keyhole at the front of the Bulb. We also meet every Tuesday at 5pm at a rotating location. If you would like to get involved, email sharethebulb@gmail.com
Check this page for events to support The Bulb.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nxz5sIsTKRg
Statement About Recent Arrests At the Bulb
On Friday, April 11th, Albany Police raided a camp on the Albany Bulb, arresting two Bulb residents at one of their longtime homes. One of those arrested is currently dealing with serious medical issues and missed an extremely important surgery while locked down.
Not content to merely criminalize the homeless, the city used their arrests as a pretext to exclude the two targeted Bulb residents (who happen to be two of the most tenured) from the monetary settlement that was offered to some of those living on the Albany Bulb as part of their recent lawsuit against the City of Albany.
A conviction on the charges alleged would also result in a lifelong ban on receiving housing or financial assistance from the City of Albany.
These arrests have occurred in the context of increasing harassment and repression against all the current and former residents of the Bulb. For the last several weeks, Albany police, as well as East Bay Regional Parks rangers, have posted at the entrance to the Bulb every night, issuing tickets to any Bulb residents who try to enter or leave after 10:00pm for curfew violation.
Once a resident has received 3 curfew citations, upon receiving the 4th citation, the infraction of curfew violation becomes a misdemeanor and a stay-away order can be issued to the individual, effectively barring them entrance (even during daylight hours) to the place that many have called home for years.
All of this serves to further fragment and attack the community on the Bulb in the hopes of wearing down residents to force them from their home.
The Bulb residents who did choose to accept the monetary offer from the City ($3,000 per person), are deemed ineligible for assistance from Albany’s Housing Subsidy Program; must have their homes cleared out by this coming Friday April 25th; and are each required to sign an agreement that forbids them from returning to the Albany Bulb and bars them from visiting any and all of Albany’s open space areas for a period of 12 months (even during the daytime), in order to receive their part of the settlement. Thereby rendering them helpless to support their former neighbors in their darkest moments.
The few Bulb residents who have moved off of the Bulb have been told by Albany Police Officers, on numerous occasions, that they had better not go back to the Bulb. Some have even been told not to come back to Albany!
Open Letter to Visitors From a Bulb Resident
This letter has sat painted on a slab of concrete on the Bulb for years…its words ring true today and inspire our struggle to keep this place what it is
At some point (maybe tomorrow, maybe this week, maybe not for years), the Albany Bulb will come up as a subject of discussion before some political body, and that body will raise a question. That question might be, “Is this really the best use for the land?” or “Can this situation with the homeless continue to be tolerated?” Or it might be a question in which a drastic change is already presumed like, “What is the best way to develop the Albany Landfill?”
Whatever the question is, it will likely be raised by people who have very little to do with what goes on at the Bulb day to day. Their understanding of this place will be framed largely by filed reports, brief tours, and statistics. Because of this, the political body will be at risk of making mistakes. Mistakes that could do a lot of harm although they may be made with the best of intentions.
As a Bulb visitor your understanding of this place will be framed differently. You will have walked here, heard the waves, and witnessed the unique beauty. You will have looked across the water at the skyline of San Francisco, seen how small the towers look, and felt how far away the noise and bustle seems. You will have, in common with those of us who live here, an appreciation of this place as an escape, as an alternative.
And this is very important.
You will have passed by our camps, seen our tarps set against the rain, and glimpsed jugs of water placed near our tents. You will have seen we deal directly with the same daily challenges others deal with at a distance through the intermediaries of property owned, bills paid, rent spent. You will have seen evidence of our needs and how we meet them.
This is also very important.
These things are important because they will allow you to speak out in the event that the politicians make the mistake of characterizing us—the Albany Bulb residents—as weak, passive, and inhuman. They might say we have no choice but to be out here, that this is where we landed after falling through regrettable but sadly inevitable cracks. Or they might say we have been too lazy, too slow, too stupid, or too weak-willed and that, in some sense, we have painted ourselves into a corner by making bad decision after bad decision. They might make decisions on our behalf to ‘save’ us. Or they might make decisions as if we were merely annoyances or obstacles.
You will be able to say that this place has many fine qualities, and that it is possible many of us want to live here because of these qualities, and not because nowhere else will have us. You will be able to say that we are not negligent or lax; rather, we deal with our needs directly in ways many would find difficult. By saying these things, you may be able to help the politicians understand that we are human beings. You can help them understand that we, like everyone, reside in a complex interplay between social and personal dimensions, not relegated to one or the other in order to suit whatever narrative is expedient and easy on the conscience for those making the distinction. You can help them understand that we are not agentless statistics, we are not summed up neatly by a term like ‘homeless’, we are not without intelligence, and we are not without voices.
We are not without voices.
Even if the politicians become convinced of our humanity, they may yet make another mistake: the mistake of thinking they can put themselves in our shoes. They may think they already know how to treat us humanely, because they’ll assume that we want the same things they want. Their decisions will not account for the particulars of our experiences—both of this place and of our lives here— which are very different from theirs, and even from yours. So hopefully in addition to giving your own account of us, you will join us in demanding our right to give an account of ourselves, and in demanding that our perspectives play a critical role in shaping decisions about the future of this place we call home.
It may seem this is asking a lot of you, and it is. But you are not being asked to do our work for us. Of course we will try to be heard. But you must know that political processes tend to operate in such a way that important voices like ours are often not heard, or listened to, or understood, even though they may be loud, and strong, and articulate. The walls of the political structure can be very thick when approached from certain angles. You, on the other hand, may come from a direction from which it is easier to get through.
In asking for your support the hope is to appeal not only to your awareness of our humanity, and not only to your appreciation of our unique and essential perspective, but also to your own self interest. You will have felt the special qualities of this place. It would be beautiful even if we were not here. It would be symbolically powerful even if we were not here. But we add something.
This landfill is made from the shattered remnants of buildings and structures that not so long ago were whole and standing, framed in concrete and steel, expected and intended to last. Now, through the concrete, the grasses make their way. Eucalyptus, acacias, and palm trees drive their roots down through the cracks. Waves constantly erode the shoreline and wash out the edge of the road. And here and there, in sections leveled and cleared of rebar, our tents are hidden away. We live around, and with, and in the rubble.
Live. Not merely survive. Can you see how hopeful this is?
The Bulb is not utopia. It is not free from strife, and chaos, and cruelty, but neither is anywhere else. It is flawed, but it isn’t broken and it shouldn’t be treated that way. We too are flawed. But we are not broken. So when the politicians start asking their questions and making their decisions, you can help ensure that we are not treated that way.
Enjoy The Bulb. It is yours as much as it is ours or anybody’s.
Watch Where Do You Go When It Rains?, Andy Kreamer’s wonderful documentary about life on the Bulb.
Also see: A Homeless Boxer’s Mansion, a Slate photo blog By Jordan G. Teicher
Such a great article. I love how you integrated photos of the art within the commentary. People need to see the connection between the homeless, and the millions of new homeless being evicted from their homes and apartments every day, and out seeking places to live which happy landlords have priced way above people’s ability to pay! Our two movements, the one to help the homeless, and the one to help those being evicted, must unite! A place to live should be a HUMAN RIGHT, and for those wanting to camp, land should be available. Let’s unite, people!! Demand our rights! We can win, but only if there are masses of us fighting back!! Hopefully this article will help lead the people in that direction! WHAT KIND OF PIE? OCCUPY!!! gg