Despite the $56 million shortfall, the Mayor is still calling for a budget that prioritizes policing as a strategy to criminalize, unhouse, and gentrify our community while lining the pockets of housing and tech developers to create a San Jose that belongs to the wealthy. It is a budget that deems those of us who have built San Jose for generations as expendable.

A Cornerstone of National & International Sporting Events What makes the impossible task of moving hundreds of unhoused people out of sight suddenly an undertaking worth taking? An imagined bounty – for the idea of prosperity for some – the City of San Jose will spend money without a second thought – even in the face of unprecedented budget deficits. That’s what the city of San Jose is once again doing with Superbowl 60 and the FIFA World Cup coming to the Bay Area in 2026. 

This episode of the De-Bug the System Podcast, "The Discrimination Playbook: Hiding and Arresting Poverty in San Jose for the Super Bowl & World Cup" dives into what the Super Bowl and World Cup coming to the Bay Area means for the most vulnerable in San Jose in 2026. We reflect on San Jose's iteration of the common-used playbook that uses public resources and police to hide and arrest poverty locally for the up-scale appearance for our wealthy guests coming to town. We are i

About a month and a half separated Donald Trump from issuing an executive order that mimicked the “responsibility to shelter” policy of San Jose’s Mayor, Matt Mahan.  The parallels between the policies have been written about locally and can be seen with an objective eye. What is missing from the dialogue is the core value that Matt Mahan and Donald Trump share: scapegoating the most vulnerable. As San Jose and the country at large grow tired of real issues like cost of li

The third feature of "Y ou Are The Art.” This project is a photo journalistic series that features community members in their own words...

Editor's note: Below is a letter submitted to the San Jose City Council before the recent 2025-2026 budget vote that included the...

May 22nd, 2025 -- San Jose Police conducted a sweep on houseless encampments along the Guadalupe River in San Jose, CA. They told residents of the encampments that the sweep would take place in June and then suddenly descended on the encampment. The sweeps are part of an ongoing campaign by Mayor Matt Mahan whose self-proclaimed “innovative” policies on houselessness include the recently proposed Responsibility to Shelter policy, which creates a new police unit to arrest hous