In February, Fremont, California’s city council voted to make anyone “causing, permitting, aiding, abetting or concealing” encampments on public property guilty of misdemeanors—with penalties that include $1,000 fines and six months in jail. Unhoused people are already criminalized and scapegoated. The terms “aid and abet” were left curiously vague. Wouldn’t that mean churches and nonprofits soliciting donations, or anyone handing out sleeping bags and sandwiches?
After successful community pressure, the council removed the clause. But camping in parks, streets, and sidewalks is still illegal. The intention of the original aiding and abetting language remains—to divide communities by criminalizing not just marginalized groups, but those acting in solidarity, too. And that, though alarming, wasn’t new.
For the criminal legal system to function, there’s always an “us” against a “them.” For Fremont, the “them” was unhoused Californians. Centuries ago, the “them” was the enslaved. Legislation both embraced slavery and threatened the non-enslaved who desired to help. For example, there were $500 fines for harboring or concealing “fugitives.”
Of course allies, including free Black people risking enslavement themselves, did it anyway. The act was risky, but the logic was simple: the law was wrong. Freedom was unquestionably right.
As history reminds us, people aren’t inherently marginalized. The law marginalizes people. And when the law is illegitimate, unjust, and anti-Black, we all have the natural right to challenge it.