The new documentary The Encampments, produced by Watermelon Pictures and BreakThrough News, is an insider’s look at the student protest movement to demand divestment from the U.S. and Israeli weapons industry and an end to the genocide in Gaza. The film focuses on last year’s student encampment at Columbia University and features student leaders including Mahmoud Khalil, who was chosen by the university as a liaison between the administration and students. Khalil, a U.S. permanent resident, has since been arrested and detained by immigration enforcement as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to deport immigrants who exercise their right to free speech and protest. “Columbia has gone to every extent to try to censor this movement,” says Munir Atalla, a producer for the film and a former film professor at Columbia.

We speak with Atalla; Sueda Polat, a Columbia graduate student and fellow campus negotiator with Khalil; and Grant Miner, a former Columbia graduate student and president of the student workers’ union who was expelled from the school over his participation in the protests. “Functionally, I was expelled for speaking out against genocide,” he says. All three of our guests emphasize their continued commitment to pro-Palestine activism even in the face of increasing institutional repression. The Encampments is opening nationwide in April.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We’re joined by the four-time Grammy-winning musician Macklemore, a vocal proponent of Palestinian rights and critic of U.S. foreign policy. He serves as executive producer for the new documentary The Encampments, which follows last year’s student occupations of college campuses to protest U.S. backing of Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza. He tells Democracy Now! why he got involved with the film and the roots of his own activism, including the making of his song “Hind’s Hall,” named after the Columbia student occupation of the campus building Hamilton Hall, which itself was named in honor of the 5-year-old Palestinian child Hind Rajab. Rajab made headlines last year when audio of her pleading for help from emergency services in Gaza was released shortly before she was discovered killed by Israeli forces. “We are in urgent, dire times that require us as human beings coming together and fighting against fascism, fighting against genocide, and the only way to do that is by opening up the heart and realizing that collective liberation is the only solution,” Macklemore says.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

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When Stephenie came upon workers in Portland, Oregon, who had bagged up all of her belongings in a homeless encampment sweep, she desperately pleaded to get one item back: her purse. It contained her cash and food stamp card — what she needed to survive.

The crew refused to look for it, she said. The items workers had put in clear bags were headed to a city warehouse. Those in black bags were headed to a landfill.

They handed her a card with a phone number to call if she wanted to pick up her things.

Pregnant and hungry, Stephenie was supposed to rest and avoid heavy lifting. She now had to start all over. In the days that followed last September, Stephenie slept on a sidewalk for the first time. She said she attempted suicide.

“I had nowhere to go — no place, no tent, no nothing. I couldn’t even feed myself,” she said. “The lowest point I’ve ever been in my life was after the sweep.”

If you or someone you know needs help, here are a few resources:

• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988

• Text the Crisis Text Line from anywhere in the U.S. to reach a crisis counselor: 741741

As homelessness has reached crisis levels, more cities are clearing tents and encampments in operations commonly called sweeps. Since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June allowed cities to punish people for sleeping outside, even if there’s no shelter available, some have made their encampment policies more punitive and increased the frequency of sweeps.

Some cities have programs to store what they take, sometimes created in response to lawsuits. In theory, these storage programs are supposed to protect people’s property rights and make it easy to get their possessions back.

In reality, they rarely accomplish either objective, according to a ProPublica investigation of the policies in regions with the largest homeless populations.

ProPublica obtained records from 14 cities showing what was stored following encampment clearings. In Los Angeles and San Diego, thousands of encampments are removed each year, but the belongings taken from them are rarely stored, the records showed. San Diego, for example, removed more than 3,000 sites during 2023 but only documented storing belongings 19 times. In Seattle, the city removed nearly 1,000 encampments during a six-month period last year and stored belongings from just 55 of them.

Even when possessions are stored, the records showed, people are rarely able to reclaim them. In Portland, which stores the most among the cities ProPublica reviewed, property was reclaimed 4% of the time during a recent 12-month period. In San Francisco, property was reclaimed roughly 12% of the time over 18 months; much of what the city stored was collected after contact with police. Records provided to ProPublica by Anaheim, California, showed nothing had been retrieved from January 2023 through May of this year.

Some cities did not address ProPublica’s questions about the low rates at which people are able to retrieve their belongings. But they broadly defended their encampment practices, saying that they balance the rights of people experiencing homelessness with public health needs.

In Portland, officials said they manage an extensive database of stored belongings and “share in the collective frustration in the difficulties in managing a system that works well for everyone.” When asked about the sweep in which Stephenie’s items were taken, they acknowledged that camp removals are harmful to unhoused people, but that they must also maintain city property and natural areas.

ProPublica heard from at least 95 people who had experienced encampment clearings in cities with programs to store belongings. Thirty said they tried to recover their belongings but hit obstacles, such as being unable to reach anyone at the facility or the site not having everything that was taken. Only one person got back all of his items.

The rest said they didn’t try, often because they didn’t know how to go about it, lacked phones or transportation, or thought, and in some cases saw, that their belongings had already been thrown away.

The storage programs offer only an “illusion of compassion,” said Barbara DiPietro, senior director of policy for the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, a nonprofit research and advocacy group. People experiencing homelessness often endure encampment clearings multiple times, which “wears a human being down,” DiPietro said. “I’ve never heard anyone say they got their stuff back.”

Dozens of outreach workers and advocates in cities with storage programs echoed DiPietro’s statements. Advocates and people with lived experience said this deprives homeless people of belongings they need to survive on the street and forces them to reconstruct their lives and obtain new identification documents when they are taken.

“The loss of property was the harshest punishment many people felt they could face on the street,” said Chris Herring, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of California Los Angeles who researches homelessness.

Stephenie, who is homeless in Portland, describes the difficulties she encountered trying to retrieve her belongings after a sweep.

When Stephenie called to retrieve her belongings last October, no one answered the storage facility phone number. The line was staffed for limited hours. She left a message but couldn’t always keep her phone charged in case someone called back. When she finally reached a person, they provided the address and an appointment time. She had to take multiple buses and walk to get there.

As she sorted through the large clear bags at the warehouse, she realized her tent, most of her tarps and her cooking stove weren’t there. Nor was her purse or prenatal vitamins. Her engagement ring and the notes from her late fiance were also gone.

She left the bags behind.

“To go through all that trouble to get my stuff back and then to have nothing that I needed there, and to have that decided by somebody else who doesn’t even know me, it was traumatizing all in itself,” she said. “It was heartbreaking. It felt like losing everything all over again.”

Nearly half of the cities ProPublica examined created storage programs in response to lawsuits alleging they had violated people’s property rights by destroying belongings during encampment removals. Yet some of those cities, including Phoenix, continue to throw away possessions, according to advocates and people who sleep outside.

In December 2022, after a local advocacy group and unhoused people sued the city of Phoenix for violating the rights of homeless people, a chief U.S. district judge issued an injunction against seizing their property without advanced notice and ordered the city to store belongings for at least 30 days.

The city began storing belongings in May 2023. Since then, it has responded to 4,900 reports from the public involving encampments, according to city records through May. The city of Phoenix said workers, trained to assess which items are property and which are trash, found storable property at 405 of the locations it visited, and not all of those cases required storage because people may have removed their belongings prior to their arrival. The city stored belongings 69 times.

In June, the Department of Justice issued a report following a nearly three-year investigation, finding that the city and its police department destroyed belongings without providing adequate notice or an opportunity to collect them. Before property is destroyed, the city must provide notice, catalog the property and store it so people can retrieve their belongings, federal investigators wrote.

Benjamin Rundall, who represents the plaintiffs in the ongoing lawsuit, said he’s never encountered anyone whose belongings were stored by the city. “It’s just giving this appearance that they’re doing something when they’re not doing anything,” he said.

Over the summer, Mike Leeth was helping a friend move their things from a Phoenix alley, leaving his own camp unattended. He rushed back to find his own belongings — clothing, canned food and canopies for shade — were gone. “All of a sudden, I’m down to one set of clothes, and I can’t even wash them because I’m currently wearing them,” he said.

Leeth said the city has thrown away his belongings at least five times. He said he’s never been told that his property would be stored.

The city said in a statement that workers give notice and store unattended property, and that it’s “confident” its processes address encampments in a “dignified and compassionate manner.”

In other cities, lawsuits have continued long after storage programs were put into place.

Los Angeles, with the nation’s largest population of people sleeping outside, has in the last 30 years faced nearly a dozen lawsuits over the destruction of property in homeless camps, according to court records.

A 2019 lawsuit brought by seven people experiencing homelessness and two advocacy groups alleged the city has “codified” seizing and destroying belongings, rather than investing in bathrooms, hand-washing stations and trash cans for unhoused people. In April, a federal judge overseeing the case found that the city had altered documentation of what crews removed during cleanups.

The city declined to comment on the ongoing lawsuit.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the city of Los Angeles provided data showing that it only stored belongings 4% of the time during a three-month period in 2023. A spokesperson said the city recognizes the “importance of ensuring people have their personal belongings” and “works to not unnecessarily remove anyone’s belongings during cleanings.”

In April, when crews came to move Ismael Arias from where he was living on a sidewalk in a Los Angeles suburb, they took his plumbing tools, a Mexican coin collection given to him by his father and a baseball card collection he was planning to give to his son.

A friend drove him to reclaim his things. At the storage facility, he was given items to look through. “I said, ‘This is not my stuff,’ and they said, ‘Well, this is all we got,’” he said. “I was like, ‘What do you mean this is all you got?’”

ProPublica spoke to three others who attempted to retrieve belongings from Los Angeles storage facilities and found some or all of their things were missing.

Evidence in an ongoing lawsuit in San Francisco revealed that workers were not instructed how to distinguish between personal property that is unattended, abandoned property and property that’s mixed in with biohazards, Chief Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu wrote. Workers’ decisions “appear to give rise to the most disputes,” Ryu wrote in August. The city agreed to better train workers who handle the belongings of homeless people at removals.

The ruling came weeks after Mayor London Breed promised “a very aggressive” crackdown on encampments. Breed lost her race for reelection.

In August, two ProPublica reporters observed San Francisco public works employees clear an encampment of tents, plastic bins of clothing, a cot and bikes. Nothing was set aside to be stored. One employee did slip into his uniform’s oversized pocket a tin of baseball cards taken from the encampment; he then placed it in the cab of a work truck rather than the back, where other belongings were stacked. The city said it is investigating the incident.

In Portland two years ago, workers took Errol Elliott’s tools, clothing, electronics and makeshift tent near the church where he stayed. He was given information about storage but didn’t have a way to carry his things.

“How are you gonna pick it up when you have no car and you’ve got nine bags of stuff or two big trunks of tools?” he said. “How are you supposed to get that back? They act like it’s so easy to go and get it, but it’s not that easy.”

Portland officials said in this kind of situation, property was likely taken to storage.

But people in Portland and other cities told ProPublica that even if local officials promise to store belongings, they’re often difficult to retrieve. The programs don’t take into consideration the challenges of experiencing homelessness, which include lack of access to transportation and not having a phone, they said. This is further complicated by requiring an appointment to retrieve belongings or not widely distributing the address where items are stored.

Some cities, such as Seattle, Portland, Anaheim and San Jose, California, don’t publicize the addresses of their storage facilities because of concerns about security. Phoenix says it delivers belongings to people, but records show people there are rarely reunited with their property.

When people do figure out where to go, the journey can be long and require multiple trips.

In Denver, for instance, the storage facility is only open for limited hours. Some people have trekked to the warehouse only to be told their belongings were stored off-site and have to be retrieved, said Andy McNulty, an attorney who sued the city on behalf of people who live outside. When they return they’re told that their belongings weren’t stored, he said.

“It’s pretty common knowledge to folks on the street now that if the city takes your stuff, even if they say they’re going to store it, it’s gone,” McNulty said.

The city of Denver said that people receive a claim slip when their items are stored after an encampment removal. Flyers with contact information are also widely shared so people can arrange a pickup, the city said.

In Los Angeles, a sign giving notice of a June encampment clearing in the San Fernando Valley directed people to call or retrieve their items from The Bins downtown, which is about two hours away on public transit. Multiple people said the distance prevented them from getting their things back or that they were unable to reach anyone for more information on how to retrieve them.

The city stores belongings at 10 locations across Los Angeles, making it even more challenging for people to find their things.

People who experienced encampment removals and researchers who study homelessness said the programs could be more effective by giving clearer notice, providing trash cans and garbage pickup and making sure people have detailed instructions on how to retrieve belongings.

Sonja Verdugo-Baumgartner, an advocate in Los Angeles who said she has experienced sweeps herself, said storage programs could be more productive if cities put effort into them. “But I don’t see the city or anybody being willing to take the time to do that,” she said. “And they can’t just do it for a few people, they need to do it across the board, for anytime they do a sweep.”

Stephenie, whose belongings were taken in Portland, said the experience was crushing.

“It keeps you in what we call a ‘homeless rut,’ where we can’t focus on anything else except being homeless,” she said. “We can’t focus on getting out of it and moving forward.”

She now lives in an RV, which makes it easier to haul her belongings when city workers show up. But she has to move the vehicle every few weeks to avoid being towed, and finding a spot to park is challenging. She’s noticed more cement blocks cropping up in parking spaces along the roadsides.

ProPublica received records of personal property collected and returned to people after homeless encampment removals in 14 cities.

We verified that sweeps had occurred in the area and around the time that our sources described using additional interviews, city data, sweep schedules or media reports. We verified each person’s identity through public records. But we used only first names when people said the publication of their full names would pose safety risks or affect their ability to get jobs.

Have You Experienced Homelessness? Do You Work With People Who Have? Connect With Our Reporters.

Maya Miller contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Nicole Santa Cruz, Asia Fields and Ruth Talbot.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

As homelessness has surged to record levels in the U.S., cities are increasingly removing or “sweeping” tents or entire encampments of people living outdoors.

Cities say they carry out these clearings humanely with the goal of getting people off the street. But they often result in people's belongings being thrown away. ProPublica found — through reviewing records from 16 cities, reporting in 11 cities and speaking with people across the country — that these actions create a cycle of hardship.

Elijah Harris, 38, was living in a tent near Hollywood in January when Los Angeles sanitation workers showed up late one morning. Harris said he left to warn others nearby that the city was clearing the area. He came back to find his tent and its contents gone. He lost everything he needed for his job with DoorDash: his electric bike, ID and iPhone.

Losing his phone meant he had to regain access to his DoorDash account. Without his passport and Social Security card, which he said were also taken, that process proved difficult.

“They ask you to take a picture of the front and back of your ID and then take a selfie to verify it’s you, but I couldn’t do that,” Harris said. “It was a disaster.”

He said he couldn’t do his delivery job for months and then had to ride a nonelectric bike, which limited the area he could deliver to and the amount he earned.

Los Angeles officials did not comment on Harris’ case but said in a statement that the city “works to not unnecessarily remove anyone’s belongings” and that unattended items are stored or thrown away.

Harris, who lives in Los Angeles, said the loss of items he needed to work was a “disaster.”

Harris is one of thousands of people living on the streets in the United States who have been subject to sweeps, the term often used to describe how cities dismantle homeless encampments or clear areas where people are living outside.

Cities, including Los Angeles, have policies to alert people before a sweep. In an ideal scenario, city officials said, people would be packed before crews arrive. But advance notice is not always required. Many people told ProPublica they didn’t know workers were coming or had stepped away for work, appointments or to find water when workers came. Some were in the process of moving their items but couldn’t do so quickly enough. Workers sorted through what’s left, sometimes storing items and throwing others into garbage bags or trucks.

Encampment removals have become more common as local governments try to reduce the number of people living on sidewalks and in other public spaces. They are likely to escalate further after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June allowed municipalities to arrest or cite people for sleeping on public property even if there’s no available shelter.

Municipalities are often under pressure from business owners and residents to remove encampments, which officials said can obstruct sidewalks and pose public health, safety or environmental hazards.

Many cities told ProPublica that letting people live outside is not compassionate. “We cannot allow unsheltered residents to live in conditions that are below what we would accept for ourselves,” a Minneapolis spokesperson said in a statement to ProPublica.

Some cities, including San Francisco, characterized encampment removals as a first step toward shelter and housing.

“We are going to make them so uncomfortable on the streets of San Francisco that they have to take our offer” of shelter or housing, San Francisco Mayor London Breed said in July after announcing more aggressive sweeps would take place.

Advocates and people living on the streets say encampment clearings perpetuate homelessness.

“Every time someone gets swept, it just sets us back like 10 steps,” said Duke Reiss, a peer support specialist at Blanchet House in Portland, which provides meals and services to those experiencing homelessness. “It makes it almost impossible to get people help because everything requires documentation.”

While many cities instruct workers to store identification, service providers told ProPublica about people they were working with who struggled to access Medicaid, disability benefits, food stamps, sobriety programs and housing after their documents were confiscated in encampment removals.

Courts have ruled that the destruction of property during sweeps violates the Fourth and 14th amendments, which prohibit unreasonable seizures and guarantee due process and equal protection under the law.

Some U.S. cities have established programs to store belongings — sometimes in response to those lawsuits. But they still have broad discretion over what ends up in the trash. ProPublica found that even when objects taken from encampments are stored, people are rarely reunited with their belongings.

To understand what governments confiscate and how it impacts people living on the street, we received storage records from 14 cities with large homeless populations and reported on the ground in 11 cities. We spoke to 135 people who had experienced sweeps, and we gave many notecards to write about the consequences in their own words.

Over and over, they told ProPublica that having possessions taken traumatizes them, exacerbates health issues and undermines efforts to find housing and get or keep a job. More than 200 additional people who went through sweeps, outreach workers and others who have worked with unhoused people wrote to us echoing these sentiments.

The storage records included images and written descriptions of the items cities had collected. Some records described the brand or color of belongings. Others had little detail, referring to most belongings as a “personal item” or providing no description at all.

Here are just some of the items that were taken.

ProPublica saw more than 400 references to tents and over 400 references to sleeping bags or blankets in the logs. Other survival items included a camping stove, a heater, soap, shampoo, toothpaste and deodorant.

In the three years Steven lived outside around Little Rock, Arkansas, he said he got frostbite leading to the amputation of his feet.

City workers cleared his camp in February after a snowstorm. Steven, 39, who uses a wheelchair, remembers asking for more time to pack. He said he was told no and was only able to gather a pillow, a backpack with some clothing and a Bible. Workers bulldozed everything else, including the tent and bedding that kept him warm.

City workers came to his new camp and took everything else. He got frostbite again.

Steven got frostbite after two encampment removals where his belongings were taken.

Almost everyone who shared their stories with ProPublica said they lost items needed to survive, such as tents, sleeping bags and blankets.

Rebecca Huggins, 33, broke her foot this year and needed surgery. While she was recovering, she slept in a dry riverbed in a Phoenix park. City workers confiscated her tent, umbrella, ice chest, sunscreen and pain medication as temperatures rose to 100 degrees, Huggins said.

“It was really hard for me,” she said. “They took everything, my sunscreen, everything, like all my necessities to be almost comfortable.”

Violette Loftis, a 42-year-old in Portland, said she’s lost tents to sweeps and theft.

“I’ve had many tents, and I never had one for more than like a week, if that,” Loftis said. “I’ve started over so many times it’s like nothing now, but like the first few times I was just like lost.”

To avoid sweeps, Loftis now sleeps in doorways without a tent.

Sometimes the belongings that were taken included supplies purchased using government funding. Portland officials say they regularly dispose of tents; the county has handed out thousands of tents in recent years. In San Francisco, an organizer told us the Department of Public Health hands out hygiene kits that are confiscated in encampment removals. Outreach workers said it can be challenging to get people government-subsidized service again when their phones are taken.

“We’re actually getting money from the city or the county to purchase these things for individuals, and then they’re just turning around and throwing them all away the next day,” John Rios, a case manager for people experiencing homelessness in Seattle, told ProPublica.

A Seattle spokesperson said tents and other gear are stored unless they are wet or hazardous.

ProPublica saw over 150 references to tools and toolboxes in the logs. Other work items included a new work jacket, a chest of hand and power tools, phones and battery chargers.

People experiencing homelessness told us that the confiscation of belongings — such as tools, phones and modes of transportation — limited their ability to work.

In Los Angeles, Mario Van Rossen said he lost tools he used to do gardening, landscaping and handyman jobs this year. He had moved his belongings to a nearby street that he thought was outside the sweep zone, but city workers still took the tools while he watched.

He said he lost more items in another sweep after speaking to ProPublica in June.

In early June, as temperatures creeped above 100 in Las Vegas, Dorothy said she ran to grab water. When she returned, her wagon — stuffed with her work clothes, blankets, four tents and eyeglasses — was gone.

Dorothy, a security guard, said it would take months to replace what she needed for work.

“They threw away me and my son’s badges,” she said. “So therefore, we can’t go to work.”

Ronald Brown, 61, was working as a street musician in Portland when he said his tent and the guitars inside were taken.

City contractors left cards with their number, but when he called, they said they didn’t have the instruments. Brown said he has no idea if they lost or stole them or if someone else took them in the chaos of the sweep.

Portland officials said they didn’t see instruments in the photos crews took of a sweep in the area.

ProPublica saw over 80 references to wheelchairs or walkers in the logs. Other medical supplies included an oxygen tank, a dose of the overdose-reversal drug Narcan, a first-aid kit, a bottle of migraine relief medicine and a blood sugar monitor.

Outreach workers and people who’ve experienced removals told us of the loss of CPAP machines; antibiotics; Narcan to reverse drug overdoses; medications for blood pressure, diabetes and seizures; wound care items; mood stabilizers; nebulizers; inhalers; insulin; and prenatal items.

When medications or medical devices are taken, health conditions can worsen and visits to emergency medical services can increase. Replacing medication and devices can also be expensive.

Barbara DiPietro, senior director of policy at the National Health Care for the Homeless Council, a nonprofit research and advocacy group, said when medications are taken from people it’s “significantly destabilizing.”

“What would happen if you just suddenly went off all of your medications?” she said. “How would that throw your entire body off, but then also your ability to work, your ability to take care of your daily functions?”

In the fall of 2023, Greg Adams was sleeping near the Sacramento River when a crew arrived. He said he lost his hiking backpack because he couldn’t carry it up an embankment. Inside the backpack, Adams kept Keppra, a seizure medication. It took months to replace, and in that time he said he experienced a seizure, causing him to fall and injure his head.

Sacramento officials said that multiple agencies have jurisdiction over the area.

Helen’s Hepatitis C medication has been taken multiple times in Portland. For it to be effective, Helen had to finish all of the medication, which can cost tens of thousands of dollars.

“I was flipping out,” she said. “That stuff’s not cheap.”

Helen had to work with a clinic to get a replacement approved. To keep it safe, she stored it at a local nonprofit.

Portland officials say they tell workers to always store prescribed medication.

Adam Mora said he had eyeglasses taken in a sweep in Riverside, California, this year.

His partner said her supply of contacts was also taken.

Riverside officials did not comment on specific cases but said they do their work with the “utmost professionalism and respect.”

ProPublica saw over 1,300 references to clothing or shoes in the logs. That included work pants, socks, underwear and Keds sneakers.

Candince Swarm’s boyfriend, Armando, died in July 2021. Swarm, who is 38 and lives in Austin, Texas, kept the shirt he was wearing that day in a Ziploc bag. She described taking it out once: “It still smelled like him, you know, and I just missed him so much in that moment and I just hugged the shirt and I cried.”

In November 2023, city workers told her she had 72 hours to move her belongings. She said workers returned about 48 hours later and crushed her van and everything inside, including Armando’s shirt.

Jeffery Stafford, in Riverside, said he watched a city crew dispose of his tent, shoes and clothes. “They came in with the Bobcat and just picked up whatever they could, threw it in the truck and took it,” the 32-year-old said. Afterward, he said, he “started wandering the streets,” trying to replace his survival gear.

Kayla said she lost all of her clothes when workers removed her encampment in San Francisco in 2020. Kayla’s mother had taken her shopping recently.

“I came back and everything was gone,” she said.

ProPublica saw over 125 references to belongings described as “personal” in the logs. Sentimental items included an American flag, a pink diary, a silver heart ring and a copy of the New Testament.

Since Teresa Stratton, 61, became homeless with her daughter over a year ago, she’d kept her husband’s ashes in an urn made of Himalayan sea salt. Ray, the “love of her life,” died in 2020.

Teresa Stratton said her husband’s ashes were taken in a sweep in Portland.

In April, when city contractors came through Delta Park in North Portland, she said Ray’s ashes were taken.

Portland officials said they didn’t see an urn in photos taken by workers. They said depending on how the ashes were stored, they could have been thrown away.

Advocates and people experiencing homelessness repeatedly mentioned having ashes taken during sweeps.

Many cities only store items that cleanup crews deem valuable and in good condition, meaning things like letters and photos can be discarded. In interview after interview, people said the loss of these belongings stuck with them the most.

ProPublica saw over 125 references to belongings described as “personal.”

Over six years, Mary and Jeff Yahner said crews in the Phoenix area took their belongings at least a dozen times. They’ve lost and replaced documentation and clothing. But Mary, 59, gets emotional when she thinks about the loss of blue baby shoes that her son and daughter wore.

Harold Odom, 64, has been housed for about seven years. But he still thinks about the family photos, including of his late mother and sister, that he said were taken from him in a sweep in Seattle.

“It’s a sense of loss that doesn’t go away,” he said. “Knowing that my belongings are likely gone for good — trashed or lost forever — fills me with a sadness that’s hard to bear.”

Brandon Lyons, 28, had his belongings taken by Riverside’s code enforcement unit last year. Lyons said he and his friends moved their belongings out of the area, but the city still took them when they were briefly left unattended.

Crystal was most devastated to lose a rhinestone crown during a Portland sweep.

“It was just the feeling when I wore it,” she said. “Like I was somebody.”

There were sweeps in the area around this time, but city officials said they didn’t find a record of her items.

ProPublica spoke to many people who lost nearly everything they owned repeatedly. They told us how this extreme loss disoriented and demoralized them.

After two sweeps in the span of a few months, Jerry Vermillion, 60, said he stopped trying to rebuild and spent most of the past two years in Portland “wandering around sleeping in a doorway here, a doorway there, not settled.”

“You better get used to starting over. If you get attached to anything, you’ll get devastated,” he told ProPublica.

Vermillion is in temporary housing now, as he secured one of 20 spots offered by a local nonprofit. But he said the sweeps did not motivate him to find housing.

Even when someone gets off the streets, the loss of what was taken stays with them. Deonna Everett, 68, said the city of Santa Cruz, California, threw away many of her belongings, including furniture she’d saved from when she was housed in early 2024. When she moved into new housing in June, she had only clothes and a few other items.

“I don’t know if anything will ever seem quite right after what happened,” Everett said. “But I have to keep in mind that there’s got to be a light at the end of this tunnel. And so I’m just going to keep a close eye on that light. I hope it’ll shine.”

One person, who asked not to be named because of safety concerns, offered a description for people on the streets: “I call us the missing-stuff folks,” she said. “We’re missing our families, we’re missing our homes, we’re missing our stuff.”

ProPublica received records of personal property collected during homeless encampment removals in 14 cities. Out of thousands of items in those responses, ProPublica chose a small selection to display here, prioritizing notable entries and items representative of those commonly seen.

Some records clearly indicated whether an item had been disposed of by the city. Other records did not explicitly list a status for items. When possible, via reaching out to cities or cross-checking against property retrieval logs, ProPublica confirmed that the items displayed were disposed of. When we could not confirm whether an item was disposed of, ProPublica only used items that were not listed as claimed.

We verified that sweeps occurred in the geographic area and around the time that our sources described using additional interviews, city data, sweeps schedules or media reports. We also gave cities the opportunity to respond to what would be included in this story, and we noted throughout when they provided relevant context or disagreed with specific details. We verified each person’s identity through public records. In one case, due to a common name and difficulty reconnecting with the source, we confirmed the name matched what was given to service providers. We used only first names when people said the publication of their full names would pose safety risks.

ProPublica is working on multiple projects related to homelessness, and we are committed to hearing from the communities who have experiences and stories to share.

• In New York, we’re partnering with New York Focus to investigate hotels and motels used to house people who are homeless. Reach the reporters through this form.
• In Maine, we’re partnering with the Bangor Daily News to report on evictions, especially those from public housing authorities. Reach the reporters through this form.
• In Oregon, we’re partnering with Street Roots to investigate Portland’s city spending related to homelessness. If you have insights, contact the reporter at k.rambo@streetroots.org.

If you have other experiences to share regarding homelessness, contact us through this form.

Hailey Closson and Anna Maria Barry-Jester contributed reporting.

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by .

Police have now arrested more than 2,500 students at pro-Palestine protests across the U.S., yet students continue to call for an end to the war on Gaza and universities’ investment in companies that support Israel’s occupation of Palestine. We speak to three student organizers from around the country: Salma Hamamy of the University of Michigan, president of the school’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, about the commencement ceremony protest she helped organize, and Cady de la Cruz of the University of Virginia and Rae Ferrara of the State University of New York at New Paltz about police crackdowns on their schools’ encampments. De la Cruz was arrested in the UVA raid and banned from campus without an opportunity to collect any of her belongings. She says repression has strengthened the resolve of many protesters, who are willing to risk their academic futures to push for divestment. “All of us there felt like we have more time on our hands … than the people of Gaza,” she explains, “We would hold it down for anything.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

• Student encampments shutdown amid violent confrontations and building occupations.
• May Day rallies held around the world including in the Bay Area.
• Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene calls for vote on House Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership.
• May Day rallies held around the world including in the Bay Area.
• Secretary of State Antony Blinken meets with Israeli leaders, calls for ceasefire in Gaza war.
• Harvey Weinstein back in New York courtroom for first time since appeals court rescinded his 2020 rape conviction.
• Florida abortion ban goes into effect. 

The post The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays – May 1, 2024 Student encampments shutdown amid violent confrontations and building occupations. appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.

New York police in full riot gear stormed Columbia University and the City College of New York Tuesday night, arresting over 300 students to break up Gaza solidarity encampments on the two campuses. The police raid began at the request of Columbia President Minouche Shafik, who has also asked the police to remain a presence on campus until at least May 17 to ensure solidarity encampments are not reestablished before the end of the term. Police also raided CUNY after the administration made a similar call for the police to enter campus. Democracy Now! was on the streets outside Columbia on Tuesday night and spoke with people who were out in support of the student protests as police were making arrests. We also speak with two Columbia University students who witnessed the police crackdown. “When the police arrived, they were extremely efficient in removing all eyewitnesses, including legal observers,” says journalism student Gillian Goodman, who has been covering the protests for weeks and who says she and others slept on campus in order to be able to continue coverage and avoid being locked out. We also hear from Cameron Jones, a Columbia College student with Jewish Voice for Peace, who responds to claims of antisemitism, saying, “There is a large anti-Zionist Jewish voice on campus, and it’s also important to recognize the difference between anti-Zionism and antisemitism.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Palestinian solidarity protests and encampments are appearing on college campuses from Massachusetts to California to protest Israel’s attacks on Gaza and to call for divestment from Israeli apartheid. This week, police have raided encampments and arrested students at Yale and New York University. Palestinian American scholar and New York University professor Helga Tawil-Souri describes forming a faculty buffer to protect students, negotiating with police, and the ensuing crackdown that led to over 100 arrests Monday night. Uptown in New York City, the encampment at Columbia University is entering its seventh day despite mass arrests of protesters last week. “In my opinion, the NYPD were called in under false pretenses by the president of the university,” says Joseph Slaughter, professor at Columbia University. “The university is being run as a sort of ad-hocracy at this point, the senior administration making up policies and procedures and prohibitions on the fly, changing them in the middle of the night.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

As cities nationwide crack down on unhoused populations and soaring rents force people out of their homes, the Los Angeles City Council faced major protests this week when it voted to ban encampments for unhoused people near schools and daycares. The vote expanded an anti-homeless ordinance to include nearly a quarter of the city. “What they’ve done is to just put a finer point on their intention to criminalize folks out of the city of Los Angeles,” says Pete White, executive director of the Los Angeles Community Action Network, who spoke in opposition to the measure at the meeting. “Houselessness is a byproduct of a failed housing system.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Sanitation workers clear an encampment of unhoused people in Los Angeles, Calif., on March 17, 2022.

Photo: Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Mayor Eric Adams holds a press conference regarding homelessness in New York City on March 29, 2022.

John Nacion/STAR MAX/via AP

Activists, supporters, and members of the unhoused community attend a protest calling for greater access to housing and better conditions at homeless shelters, outside City Hall in New York City on March 18, 2022.

Photo: Ed Jones/AFP via Getty Images

There is more than ample evidence that “broken windows” policing, of which encampment sweeps are a part, entrench rather than counter poverty.

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Natasha Lennard.

• Former President Barak Obama campaigns for Democrat Joe Biden in swing state of Pennsylvania.
• President Donald Trump pushes Attorney General Bill Barr to investigate rival Joe Biden.
• San Francisco reopens more businesses; sports arenas also get clear to reopen.
• Oakland City Council passes ban on homeless encampments, despite public outcry.
• Remains found at excavation site of Tulsa Massacre attack on Black Wall Street.

The post Former President Barak Obama campaigns for Democrat Joe Biden in swing state of Pennsylvania; Oakland City Council passes ban on homeless encampments, despite public outcry appeared first on KPFA.

This content originally appeared on KPFA - The Pacifica Evening News, Weekdays and was authored by KPFA.