The city officials of Albuquerque have long tried to rid the International District neighborhood of its nickname the “War Zone.” From the retro aesthetics of the Historic Route 66, to the plans for a sports stadium at the Fairgrounds, city officials operate under a guise of community improvement, while the poorest in the neighborhood continue to suffer. Despite these “revitalization” efforts, residents living there continue to call it the War Zone because the nickname reflects reality: in the southeast of Albuquerque there is a military style occupation. Here the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) relentlessly criminalizes and harasses the homeless and anyone who lives there. Cops block off side streets and hold people for hours to run warrants. APD tackles and arrests people for running away when they pull up. City garbage trucks come by every morning to destroy people’s belongings that get left behind during sweeps. People are arrested for simply existing in the wrong area. The cops brutalize people on a whim. This whole other world of police brutality and harassment is one that city officials would like to keep out of sight and out of mind of the general public. They claim to be helping out the homeless in the War Zone and cleaning up the neighborhood. But beyond these politician’s lip service and measly “services” are their own policies that plainly enshrine cruel punishment of the homeless and function as the engine for their war on the homeless.
The city has employed various sneaky and overt methods that allow for them to routinely round up homeless people and put them in jail. The primary method for doing so is by issuing citations, most often with the language of “obstruction of property” or trespassing. People living on the street are given citations for setting up camp on sidewalks, walking on private unused lots, or having their stuff in an area that the cops don’t like. When the court dates listed for these citations are missed, they turn into bench warrants which lead to arrest. It is not uncommon to see APD block off an entire street where there are homeless people to run everyone’s name because they know most people will have warrants for arrest. We have heard many reports of specific pigs stalking individuals who they know will have warrants, or issuing a citation only to return later to arrest someone they know will have missed their citation court date. The city uses their APD foot soldiers to play this game of chasing and stalking homeless people to charge them with citations, often leading to arrest, intentionally making the lives of homeless people disorganized and undignified.
Imagine this: you’ve got a warrant out for your arrest for missing a citation court hearing. You had no way of getting downtown for court on some random Tuesday. Sometimes the court date is virtual, over zoom, but you have no way of knowing whether it was or not. Even if it was, you don’t have a phone anyway. Then, as you are setting up your tent on an unused sidewalk, a couple pigs come up to you and run your name, they tell you that you have two options: go to jail, or go to the shelter. Due to inhumane conditions like bed bugs, perverts, and inedible food, the shelter is not an option. What would you do? Another situation: The pigs write you a citation for obstructing the sidewalk where you slept last night. Then they tell you that you have 2 minutes to pack up all of your belongings and move them to the other side of the street or you will be arrested and your stuff will be thrown out. You are hungry, maybe going through withdrawals, haven’t had a decent night sleep in years, and the sun is beating down on you. The pigs are counting down and laughing at you While you scramble to gather everything you own. At the end of the 120 seconds anything you are not able to pick up is thrown into a garbage truck including your clothes, your art, your medication, your phone, your I.D., important documents, etc.
This system is by design. ProPublica recently produced an investigatory article into the realities of homeless harassment titled Albuquerque’s Mayor Said Arrests Were “Not the Solution” to Homelessness.Yet Jail Bookings Have Skyrocketed. The article correctly identifies Mayor Tim Keller as a wolf in sheep’s clothing, someone who claims to be friendly towards the homeless, but is actually a snake. In fact, Tim Keller had the audacity to say “you cannot dumb [the problem of homelessness] down to arresting people.” That is, however, exactly how the city has decided to deal with homelessness. From citations that turn into warrants, to pigs stalking the streets and harassing people, there is a very calculated apparatus set up to control and displace homeless people. On some days in 2025, “the Bernalillo County Metropolitan Detention Center held more homeless people than the largest local shelter,” what does that tell you? City officials are corralling the homeless into corners of the International District and using jails to control a population that threatens their bottom line. Each year the homeless population grows in size. People are dying in the streets and suffering, barely scraping by subsistence in any way possible. Pan-handling, the drug economy, and living outside in the streets are all detrimental to the city’s economy and tourism industry. That is why homeless people are contained and controlled so harshly.
Having been cast away from employment, the city treats homeless people as an expendable population. As more and more people are forced to live out on the street, Tim Keller’s political power is threatened. This is because, shockingly, people don’t like to hear the Mayor say he is fixing the problem of homelessness when the problem is actually getting worse day by day. It discredits city officials by showing their clear mismanagement of funds going towards homelessness. In addition it is also not profitable for small business owners and tourists don’t like it.
That is why the city government has ramped up the brutality to try to keep the homeless population under control by the State. In fact under Tim Keller obstruction of property charges–those used to throw the homeless in jail–increased “nearly six times the number of cases in the previous eight years combined,” growing to 1,256 people charged with obstruction in 2025 alone. Seeing as people are often cited multiple times with the same charge, this number is likely much higher. In short, the city has fine-tuned a matrix of harassment that sows chaos and makes sure no one can ever live in peace (or with dignity). This is enforced mainly by the pigs who are the biggest gang out there; they are bullies and killers, they are most people’s #1 enemy. This is the city’s solution to homelessness.
What is the solution for the masses of homeless people? The truth is, capitalism, the economic system we live under does not have the answers. The city services provided to homeless people are never adequate and have nowhere near the reach that they should. And while food and clothing provided by religious people, non-profits, and people of conscience provide a certain immediate relief, the bullies of the homeless and their matrix of harassment go unchallenged. Unfortunately, for all of the charitable clothing that is given out, most of it will end up in the trash compactor so long as the homeless are still viewed as less than human and the sweeps continue. Which they will, so long as nobody is organized and ready to put up a fight. And the other unsavory truth is that even if you can get off the streets, the struggle to survive continues. The challenge to find an apartment and job and keep up with your bills is tough enough to land you right back out on the streets. This is because the society we live in does not value human life and dignity as much as economic gains. When there are thousands of unemployed people on the streets, businesses can pay their employees less because they know someone just outside desperately needs a job. With the homeless, the ruling class also has a convenient scapegoat for the many ills that have always existed in our society like drug use and crime. That’s why conditions can only truly be improved through the struggle for a better world that eliminates this cold economic logic of the ruling class.
Homeless people in the hundreds, and then in the thousands, could actually throw a wrench into the city policy that harasses the homeless by organizing amongst themselves to fight back. This could look like confronting and disrupting city officials that dictate this policy and have the power to change it (like Keller). Or it could look like exposure of specific pigs, firemen, or businesses who make the lives of the homeless particularly hard. Exposure in general to the media and public can force the hand of the city to change its policy if they know eyes are on them.
The point is that only when the masses of poor and homeless people in this society organize against their bullies will this harassment end. This involves a clear understanding of who the enemy is. And while the particular Mayor of Albuquerque, Tim Keller, is a laughably obvious wolf (in sheep’s clothing), there may be other, more cunning, “homeless friendly” politicians in the future that we cannot be fooled by. And there may be these politicians among us now. Unfortunately, the people who get into local politics because they have a heart for the masses are unable to transform the evil state machine that they enter. There is no fixing a state that is fundamentally antagonistic towards homeless people. And so, they will either leave, or be transformed by, that state into a fox, which is much cuter than a wolf but just as deadly. With this in mind, it is necessary to forge a homeless liberation struggle which takes its aim at the system as a whole, which does not beg and plead at city council meetings or resign itself to just passing out sandwiches and waters. Instead making demands and wrenching them from the government through defiant action, re-establishing the authority of the people on the block, and kicking cops that harass the homeless out of the neighborhood for good. Recognizing that the people of the War Zone, the poor, and those being crushed by this fucked up system are the makers of history and can take bold action to win dignified lives.
If you agree that people shouldn’t be harassed by the cops for looking poor, and you want to start building an organization that is capable of ending this shit, Dare to Struggle is hosting a conference this summer June 12-14th in Albuquerque that you will want to be at. With the help of Homeless Liberation Initiative, an organization of homeless and formerly homeless activists dedicated to fighting for dignity in the streets, we will begin organizing a nationwide struggle to challenge the oppression of homeless people. Join up with us!
Source:
ProPublica. Albuquerque’s Mayor Said Arrests Were “Not the Solution” to Homelessness. Yet Jail Bookings Have Skyrocketed. https://www.propublica.org/article/albuquerque-homelessness-citations-surge-tim-keller
Dare to Struggle 