They Finally Killed Jimmy

Update/In Memoriam:

Last week's article opened with my attempt last winter to locate an elderly Black veteran who was living on the street in San Rafael.

Two years ago, in the summer of 2021, he had been remanded into the deadly, police-run SSA/internment camp underneath the freeway in San Rafael.

A year later, in late July 2022, I got a call from one of the other SSA internees who asked me to help locate the veteran because “no one knows where he is!” Per the caller, the SSA's overseer, Officer Lynn Murphy, was reportedly "freaking out" because she herself did not know where he was. (I finally located him, after calls to multiple hospitals, in a specialized ICU in Marin, the inevitable result of being held for so long in that cruel camp.) As soon as he got out of the ICU, they threw him back in the SSA.

Late yesterday afternoon I received word that the man, Jimmy Sanders, had passed away. After calls to San Rafael Police, Marin County Sheriff, and hospital staff, I can confirm that Jimmy was declared dead at 3:34 pm on July 29, 2023.

Given what he had endured for years, I shouldn't have been surprised, but I still felt shocked and angry. I had made a habit over the past year of constantly reminding the County's Board of Supervisors, Marin Health and Human Services, the County's Human Rights Commission, and the City of San Rafael, that Jimmy remained on the street and was desperately in need of housing. I did this in letters, in phone calls and in public comment during council and board meetings.

But still they left Jimmy on the street, during a winter that featured some of the most severe storms and flooding in local history, when the County's "inclement weather shelter" barely opened, and when it did, only for a few overnight stays during months of storms. And in what is arguably the wealthiest county in the state, and which is inarguably California’s most racially segregated county.

Per hospital staff, Jimmy had almost unbelievably low hemoglobin levels when he was brought in to the ER yesterday. The low hemoglobin levels would be consistent with illnesses that Jimmy may have accrued after being stationed at Camp LeJeune. (The last time I saw Jimmy in person, he told me that he was having difficulties with benefits and compensation because of missing paperwork.)

Jimmy would be far from the first veteran who ran into serious problems getting necessary benefits because of bureaucratic errors. Shortly before Kerry Pierson passed in 2021, he informed me that the military actually denied he had ever served during the Vietnam era. Both Jimmy and Kerry were Black, but I also know many white veterans who were denied benefits, or whose benefits were stalled for extremely long periods. This shouldn't be happening to any veterans. And when the veteran is homeless, as in Jimmy's case, it becomes more difficult, because necessary paperwork is often lost due to police sweeps and lack of security.

There is much to say about Jimmy, his life, and his lost papers (that line from Melville about "dead letters" haunts), but I will save that for another time. A quick note on the SSA where Jimmy was held, and recent coverage of it, is necessary given that Jimmy is not the only SSA survivor to be brought to Marin General this past month. (Earlier this week, I was informed that another older SSA internee suffered a stroke earlier this month and was treated at the same hospital where Jimmy passed today.)

The fact is that Jimmy would most likely still be alive today had he not been forced into that wretched and abusive SSA. He was incredibly resilient despite everything, but there is only so much anyone can survive. And there was no reason to keep any medically vulnerable or even healthy people in that polluted location.

Unfortunately, local media mostly excused the abuses in that SSA, which contributed not only to Jimmy's hospitalization and death, but to the death of at least one other internee. Notably, The Pacific Sun's local news reporter, Nikki Silverstein, bizarrely whitewashed the camp when it opened as "kinder, gentler".

But to add sadistic insult to injury, just four days before Jimmy passed, Silverstein doubled down on her whitewash of the SSA far more seriously in a lengthy article:

1. Silverstein falsely claimed that "the city provided security" at the SSA. In reality, there was only one guard stationed at the camp (which cost $32,000 per month from Barbier security, per a series of CPRA’s I ran in 2021/22), but that did not result in anything resembling what most of us consider "security": internees were routinely harassed by some of the worst guards, and one internee was assaulted on two separate occasions by an interloper because security was so blasé. In fact the experiences of that internee will require an entirely separate article, as he was put through a harrowing nearly year-long experience in the County jail simply for trying to defend himself. Moreover, "security" routinely harassed reporters, advocates, and attorneys who tried to investigate conditions at the camp, a fact of which Silverstein was well aware.

2. Silverstein continues to deny in her recent reporting that the SSA was majority Black and Latino. In fact, it was the only non-lilywhite, city-sanctioned camp in Marin, and it is no coincidence that it had the worst and most deadly conditions of any of the city-sanctioned camps.

3. Silverstein went on to further praise Officer Lynn Murphy, who ran that cruel and deadly SSA camp, calling Murphy "impressive" and "indispensable" because Murphy knows the name of each and every homeless person she encountered, and "they all had a smile for her." But aside from what should be obvious questions about why all the unhoused people on the tour led by Murphy were all smiling, Silverstein continues to ignore serious complaints about Murphy from unhoused people, including complaints that Murphy is racially biased against Black and Latino people. As importantly, Silverstein continues to omit the severe racial bias in accessing the limited housing units.

4. Silverstein simply transcribed the City's claim that they housed 35 out of 47 SSA internees, but declines to note that she did not fact-check that number with anyone other than the City, or its dependent nonprofits, even though she has repeatedly been informed that the numbers were manipulated.

5. But even if you were to accept Silverstein's report that 35 of the 47 SSA internees were housed, you would then have to ask why Jimmy was not among those housed. Certainly, as a medically vulnerable elder who had to be hospitalized as a result of the conditions at the SSA, he should have been a priority for housing. And yet, younger, healthier (and whiter) residents were given housing even before last winter's storms, while Jimmy was forced to remain in the storms all winter long. That, too, is something that does not accord with Silverstein's whitewash of the SSA or Lynn Murphy's parceling out of available housing units.

*****

Staff reported that they performed CPR for over an hour on Jimmy. I can't for the life of me imagine his weakened body sustaining chest compressions for that period of time, but I am grateful that hospital staff tried – that they didn't just look at him like he wasn't worth saving. Jimmy was very worth saving. He had a lot more to do in life.

There will be a memorial for Jimmy. And all the people who failed to speak up for him over and over again when he was in the SSA, including "reporters" like Silverstein; leaders of the California Homeless Union; charlatan police officers like Lynn Murphy; and a whole bevy of nonprofit actors; will likely attend. There is, after all, money they wish to accrue and commission seats they covet.

None of that will make a damn bit of difference to Jimmy Sanders. He escaped those fools, at last.