Earlier in August, my coworkers and I at the Sustainable Economies Law Center (the Law Center) had the opportunity to witness and celebrate the spiritual and legal unselling of Homefulness 1 through the signing of a first-of-its-kind liberation easement between POOR Magazine (the legal owner of Homefulness 1) and the Sogorea Te’ Land Trust.

IMAGE ID: Kiki, a young child, walks on a cement path at Homefulness1. The path is painted in black lettering with community commitments to permanently unsell Homefulness 1. A diverse mix of people talk and commune in the background.

The ceremony included multi-nationed prayer and oral recounting of HERstories and truthtelling by each organization on the necessity and shared excitement for the liberation easement. After the signing, each witness present was invited to sign their names on the land to collectively hold POOR Magazine accountable for the promises made that day. I signed my name, followed by the short prayer “This Land Our Body” passed on to me by a Tewa elder.

The Law Center is so honored to have participated in the co-creation of this HERstoric document. During summer 2024, residents of Homefulness 1 approached us with the desire to codify their commitment to unsell this land and, as ancestors[1] and future ancestors, hold their descendants to that same commitment and practice of protecting the land from sale. Tiny Gray-Garcia, co-founder of POOR Magazine, had a dream with ancestors for a Land Liberation Act, which was worked on with my coworker Janelle over many moons. Then, this year, after praying with First Nations comrades at Sogorea Te and consulting with Janelle, the idea of a liberation  easement surfaced. 

IMAGE ID: Corinna Gould of Sogorea Te' Land Trust speaks into a microphone while standing amongst representatives from Homefulness 1 and Sogorea Te' Land Trust. 

The Law Center acted as an accomplice to ensure that the easement met all legal formalities. An easement is a legal tool that gives the holder of the easement the permanent right to access and use the land. The liberation easement gives Sogorea Te’, as the easement holder, these permanent rights to access, co-steward, and conduct ceremony on this land. More importantly, this easement gives Sogorea Te’ the right to directly take title to this land if future generations violate the spirit of Homefulness and try to sell the land on the speculative market. This is because if this land ever gets monetized, if residents start paying rent, the sacred relationships on this land devolve into transaction, and the spirit of Homefulness is sapped. So, the liberation easement is a pivotal example of land liberation and rematriation in action.

As I am coming to understand it, rematriation involves the restoration of right relationships to land – first with peoples with ancestral connections and then with guests who have developed connections since. Permission from Indigenous peoples is ethically necessary for guests to maintain a relationship with the land. Rematriation does not always involve transferring title to Indigenous peoples, for that requirement foregrounds the law of colonial-capitalist systems, rather than centering the liberation of and relationality with land. This liberation easement permanently liberates the land from being sold, and preserves the sacredness of relationships on the land.

IMAGE ID: Veryl Pow kneels down while holding a bowl of black paint and a paint brush. He's signing his name to memorialize his witnessing of the HERstoric event and promise to protect Homefulness 1 from desecration.

Homefulness is so much more than just a poor and unhoused-led solution to houselessness. It is a sanctuary of healing for formerly houseless, now Homeful residents, because it centers the co-creation of what Tiny calls comeUNITY. Launched by houseless, Indigenous mother and daughter Tiny while they were on the streets living in shelters and doorways, each resident commits to comeUNITY through active caretaking and stewardship duties and participation in collective decision-making structures such as the Elephant Council, as memorialized in a People’s Agreement/Mamafesto. New residents are held in love and supported during their transition from the violent manifestations of capitalism that disproportionately fall on houseless peoples – such as hoarding, trauma, addiction, and alienation.

Homefulness is a sacred way of life unintelligible to Western notions of community. At Homefulness 1, ceremonies involving danza and musica are regularly held to connect residents to land and ancestors. The space is designed to center comeUNITY gatherings, honor ancestors, and grow food. Young people are taught by residents and elders of this comeUNITY through Decolonize Academy. Instead of the spirit-crushing education provided by formal schooling systems, students at the Academy receive an embodied and spiritual education, are taught to harness their creativity and self-expression, and are developing political acumen to navigate between the world of capitalism and beyond.

Homefulness is thus a model for living out a politics of collective liberation. Homefulness residents do not hoard the special way of life they’ve created like so many other precarious communes that live in self-isolation. Instead, with an ethos of abundance, the comeUNITY redistributes their harvest and resources with other unhoused and poor communities through their sliding scale cafes, and through regular outreach and mutual aid support during violent sweeps of housing encampments and communities. Their monthly community newsrooms are open forums for the public to practice solidarity and care across social lines of division artificially created and maintained by the state.

I have personally been changed through my deepening of connection to Homefulness [2]to desire a similar degree of integration between liberatory politics, the sacred, and the people I live and work with. These words only begin to describe the power and sacredness of Homefulness. But I hope it shows that the liberation easement goes far beyond preserving the land from sale and into the types of relationships on the land. The text of the easement is remarkable in that it spans 41 pages – including stories from First Nations relatives and Homefulness residents – to capture the spirit of Homefulness so that this sacred legacy will extend for seven generations to come and beyond. 

PHOTO ID: Four Law Center staff and Kiki, sit and pose for a selfie during the Liberation Easement Ceremony.

We are so proud to be part of this effort to liberate and rematriate the land. The recording of this easement is set to formally take place with the Alameda County Recorder-Clerk’s Office in October.

Footnotes:

[1][^Jump back]Rest in Power, Mama Dee Garcia and Uncle Brokin Cloud - two pivotal spirits who were integral to the creation of Homefulness and whose voices are included in the Liberation Easement.

[2][^Jump back] My own transformation was supported by the decolonial education of PeopleSkool at POOR Magazine - a “poverty skola” run seminar that is rooted in a theory of change created by POOR Magazine known as Poverty Scholarship. For a good starting point for Poverty Scholarship, please see Lisa “Tiny” Gray-Garcia, Dee Gray-Garcia and POOR Magazine, Poverty Scholarship: Poor People’s Theory, Art, Work and Tears Across Mama Earth (2017).