In Austin, Texas’s state capital, VOCAL members rallied at Cicero’s headquarters on February 13th to denounce the group’s efforts to draft and pass legislation criminalizing homelessness. They were joined by VOCAL members and the unhoused from Tennessee, Kentucky, New York, and Grants Pass, Oregon.
“When you have the richest people in our country pushing for policies that privatize our education system or privatize our housing so people can’t even afford to live, there’s a problem,” said Paulette Soltani, executive director of VOCAL-TX, at a “Fight Back Against Billionaires” public forum forum they also hosted during the days of action with the Austin Justice Coalition.
Cicero-drafted bills criminalizing homelessness have already become law in 8 states, and were encouraged by the Supreme Court’s Grants Pass decision. The think tank was founded in 2016 by billionaire venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, who made his fortune developing surveillance technologies for law enforcement, and actively invests in private prisons. So while Cicero seeks to to arrest anyone who is forced to live on the streets, Lonsdale profits off of their incarceration.
“We’ve lived through the policies that Joe Lonsdale and the Cicero Institute push,” said Maurika Smith, a VOCAL-TX leader. “We’ve been ticketed just for trying to survive. We’ve been harassed by police for having nowhere else to go. We’ve had our belongings destroyed by police.”
VOCAL-TX members were also front and center in Washington, DC, where they took part in People’s Action Institute’s “Take Back Our Money” tour on February 24 and 25, which included a press conference on Capitol Hill and a protest at the offices of Blackstone, Inc., the nation’s largest private landlord.
“ Blackstone is a private equity company that has over 300,000 rental properties across the country. said J.J. Ramirez from VOCAL-TX. “They gobble up these homes, raise our rents, price gouge us, and then evict us when we can’t afford to live in their places. We’re here today because we want to make the rich pay their fair share.”
