The Berkeley Outreach Coalition was brought together by members of Copwatch at the time of their Care Not Cops campaign, in conjunction with UC Berkeley students working with Suitcase Clinic and orgs doing harm reduction outreach such as Berkeley NEED and Berkeley Free Clinic in 2020. Formed to counter the loss of services experienced by the unhoused community with the start of the Covid-19 shelter-in-place, Berkeley Outreach Coalition is made up of a group of 8 trusted organizations who provide mutual aid to Berkeley’s unhoused. By sharing information and resources, we’re able to collaborate to more successfully meet the needs of our unhoused neighbors throughout the city. Simultaneously, we know that there is a great deal of interest throughout our community in helping provide such services through volunteer work, so we operate as a liaison between interested participants and orgs with which they can help in the manner that they’re willing and able.
Berkeley Copwatch started keeping their eyes on the cops in 1990 as the founding chapter, with Copwatches springing up all over the country following their lead, organizing to surveil police activity in response to mistreatment of unhoused folks at People’s Park. Archiving documentation of police misconduct and abuse, they've helped provide footage as evidence in court, and fight for civilian oversight of police activity. Their “Care Not Cops” campaign, from the early days of the pandemic, helped give impetus to the coalescing of the Berkeley Outreach Coalition. And they were key to getting it started, playing a central role in producing the BOC Orangebook and bringing our organizations together.
Since 1989, the Suitcase Clinic has been a group made up of UC Berkeley students who, after having gone through a class on the issues surrounding homelessness and the history of homeless activism/advocacy in Berkeley for a semester, participate in one of three clinics: the General Clinic, which caters to the unhoused community in Berkeley broadly, and the more specialized Women’s and LGBTQIA+ Youth Clinics. Each of these clinics is centered on a meal, yet they also provide legal consultation, medical supplies/services, clothing, footwashing, massages, community building, and more!
Founded by the Black Panther Party in 1969 as the Free Clinic for their Oakland chapter, the Berkeley Free Clinic operates on the central tenet that healthcare is a human right, not a privilege, and are guided by the four virtues of respect, demystification, inclusion, and collectivity. They provide outreach through their Street Medicine Team Wednesday evenings and every other Saturday afternoon, connect people with health insurance and food benefits, provide free medical services such as STI screening and basic wound care, peer counseling, as well as additional local resource navigation and referrals.
Free nasal naloxone and sharps drop off boxes available outside 24/7. Hygiene, camping, wound care, harm reduction, condoms, lube, take home pregnancy tests, and plan B available during open hours. Space is shared with Lifelong Trust Clinic. BFC operates during the following hours: Monday - Friday 6 PM to 9 PM, Saturdays 11 AM to 2 PM, and Sundays 4 PM to 7 PM.
Berkeley NEED is an organization which provides harm reduction pop-ups at various locations in Berkeley on Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Whether you’re looking for overdose protection (such as fentanyl test strips and HEPPAC FTIR drug checking at their Thurs site) and/or reversal (Narcan/Naloxone), supplies (including but not limited to needles, glass pipes, foil, straws, and the works administration), or a number of other items to improve your day-to-day quality of life, go and check out one of their pop-ups sometime! Check out their schedule for times and locations here: Berkeley NEED : Site + Schedules
Developing from the legal efforts of the Seabreeze encampment to protect themselves from being evicted by CalTrans and the CHP in 2019, Where Do We Go? provides both advocacy and material support for the unhoused community throughout Berkeley. Material support comes in the form of supply distribution (things such as tents, tarps, sleeping bags, and the like) as well as food distribution on Sundays.
Founded in 1990 by one attorney and one advocate in Berkeley, HAC now has 90 staff members serving both Berkeley and Oakland. They provide free, high-quality public benefits advocacy to assist unhoused folks in getting the resources that they need and to combat their criminalization.
Founded by Barbara Brust and Ingrid Powell in 2014, Consider the Homeless!, formerly known as Homeless Lives Matter, delivers hot soup, bread, snacks, and survival supplies to various encampments throughout Berkeley every Thursday and Sunday evening, rain or shine. Their goal is to insure that all the unhoused folks in Berkeley are seen and cared for, given the apparent inability of City programs to do so.
East Bay Community Law Center provides legal support for low-income and disenfranchised members of the Berkeley community. In addition to providing services in consumer justice, education defense, justice for youth, health and welfare, housing, immigration, and social work, they help to protect those who have fallen out of the infrastructural grid by becoming unhoused.
Part of our aim as a coalition is to make sure that the needs of unhoused folks throughout our city can be met where they’re at. As such, this portal provides you an opportunity to send in your request for help, and we’ll work to connect you to whichever org can most readily provide you the help that you need, whether that be in the form of needed resources to help you get by while forced to live in public space or advocacy to help prevent your criminalization for the same.
Ever since the resurgence of BLM at the death of George Floyd and the Covid-19 Shelter-in-Place, and now with ICE and neoliberal revanchism threatening the streets, there’s been an increased desire to help out the marginalized in our community through direct action, mutual aid being one of its primary forms. Yet, with many organizations out there feigning interest in helping the community while being driven primarily by interest in profit, it’s hard for folks who want to volunteer to get connected with organizations that are trusted by the community and with whom they can be put directly in touch with where there’s need. As such, we’re happy to help connect you with the organization with which your interests and capacities as a volunteer are aligned. Please let us know what type of help you have capacity to provide, and we’ll reach out to you for an initial intake interview so we can match you with the organization that’s the right fit.
While we do our best to coordinate our resources to reach the need that’s out there, we can always use more funds to secure said resources. Additionally, we are happy to receive resources directly as well, whether you have tents, sleeping bags, shelf-stable and ready-to-eat food, gas cards, or anything else you think might be useful.
Do you have something to donate? Let us know who you are and what you have.
For all other inquiries, please feel free to drop us a line.