Dear Beachhead,

Free Bags – 100 sleeping bags were distributed on Saturday, November 22nd free to anyone who needed them as a part of a broader outreach campaign by Venice Community Housing, Occupy Venice, Los Angeles Community Action Network, Vets for Peace, the Venice Justice Committee, the Venice Family Clinic, POWER, and other regional groups working to create lasting solutions for the unhoused and homeless. Held at the Free Safe Storage site by the paddleball courts, the giveaway was made possible through donations coordinated by VCH and featured info on the Homeless Bill of Rights and free local ticket clinics. Another 100 bags will be given out in mid December. For more on the Free Safe Storage program or to volunteer call 310-399-4100.

Above: Sleeping bag give-away, November 22

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OPEN LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF VENICE

This is a reprint from the May 1969 edition of the Beachhead

Dear people of Venice,
I am watching what the police are doing on your beach. I have seen this before. Do you remember, do any of you remember, when Jews were beaten to death on the streets of Warsaw and Berlin, and Poles and Germans stood by and did nothing? The Nazis wanted to eliminate the undesirable Jews so that “better people” could live in our place. The aryans. The Poles and the Russians were undesirables too, but first the Nazis made their victims enemies of each other before they eliminated them…
The American police on the beach are not yet Nazis but the story is the same. They want to eliminate undesirables so that “better people” can live in their place. First they will turn you against the young people, and when the young people are gone you will be next. If you could afford to live on Miami Beach you would be there and not in Venice. You will have to pack all your things and move away from your friends, to live in the smog, to where you will have to travel for miles on the bus to get back to your beach. Do you think these anti-semite cops care about you? Don’t sign their petition to get rid of the young people. Better you should sign a petition that the police behave like Americans and stop acting like the Nazi beasts of Europe. The lessons of Warsaw should not be so soon forgotten.

– Yitzak Gershman