Blackberries and Safety

A few weeks ago, Southern Oregonians were shocked by a rape on the bike path that runs along Bear Creek through most of the valley. In the aftermath of the event, community activists launched an effort aiming to make the bike path safer by cutting down all the blackberries (and other shrubbery). Local law enforcement got involved by rousting all the homeless (for a while, anyway).

Kris Wraight penned this response to the situation (which actually seems to be termed Operation Green Sweep, in contrast to her letter), was published in today's Trib, and her words speak to my views closely enough, I am going to let her have the rest of this space - a few links are added to her letter by me to add context to references she makes.

Operation Greenway is nothing but a pseudo-solution against an already marginalized people. What happened to that 15-year-old girl is a tragedy, and a thorough response would be taking action to organize against rape, not homeless people.

Rape doesn’t exist because bushes and blackberry brambles offer hiding places or because there aren’t enough cops patrolling dark pathways. Rape is a struggle for power by people who have been denied access to their own humanity. Rape is committed by members of every class, by poor people and by rich white men in suits.

It’s sickening that the Greenway "cleanup" has no interest in eradicating homelessness and seeks only to incriminate a people continuously oppressed by this classist, racist system. For those of you who think shelters are accessible and plentiful, the reality of our under-funded social services was underscored by the victim’s denial of shelter the night of the assault.

So go ahead and advocate for the removal of the blackberry bushes, Joy, but that won’t stop rape, and the homeless people won’t disappear .These problems are here to stay until we as a community are ready to sit down and confront this culture that accepts these injustices as "just part of life."