At the beginning of October, the public trash cans at Riley Plaza were removed. 

Riley Plaza is the beating heart of our community, with it being the site of Salem Survival Program's free food and clothes distro, Witch City Action's weekly meetings, funerals and church services for the unhoused community, and every other type of community work a city park is built for. 

By removing the trash cans, the city has taken its first step towards shutting our critical community space down. Trash cans are routinely removed in places where unhoused people congregate, as a means of creating a litter problem that can be blamed on the space's occupants.

This tactic was used as early as this summer to shut down the South River encampment, justifying its sweep with health concerns. Those health concerns were a direct result of the city deliberately removing all trash cans in the area, and openly refusing to remove the trash that would have otherwise been dealt with safely.

Though it may seem like a small issue, a lack of trash pickup can create unsafe conditions incredibly quickly. If your trash had nowhere to go, your house would become nearly unlivable within a just few weeks. We are seeing this happen in real-time to our critical public spaces.

We refuse to allow our city to punish the homeless community for a problem they intend to create, and we refuse to see our environment fill with litter to give them a reason to get rid of us.

Our only demand is to return the three city-owned trash cans to Riley Plaza, or allow our own community-owned trash cans to remain there.