Join Astra House and the Economic Hardship Reporting Project (EHRC) at The People’s Forum for a community-building conversation to celebrate the release of Front Street: Resistance and Rebirth in the Tent Cities of Techlandia. Author Brian Barth will be joined by members of Wood Street Commons, a collective of unhoused activists featured in the book, for a conversation moderated by Alissa Quart, Executive Director of the EHRC and author of Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream.
About the book:
In this wide-reaching portrait of the constellation of people living in tents, shacks, and cars in the shadow of tech campuses and skyscrapers, award-winning journalist Brian Barth introduces us to the misfits, activists, and iconoclasts of Silicon Valley’s homeless encampments.
This immersive work follows residents of three distinct camps—Crash Zone in San Jose, Wood Street in Oakland, and Wolfe Camp in Cupertino. Regularly harassed by police and local government, and frequently at risk of often violent and always destabilizing sweeps, these camps may seem chaotic to some but more often than not, to their residents they are sites of refuge and rebirth. In research on 19th- and 20th-century homelessness and philosophical contemplations of communal anarchy, and through honest conversations with residents, Barth shows how the solution to homelessness isn’t as straightforward as one might think.
Front Street considers the root causes and possible solutions to chronic homelessness, contemplating political, economic, social and spiritual approaches alike. With empathy and poise, Barth follows this cast of characters, describing their personal stories, quotidian experiences, private philosophies and political activism. At this event, attendees will get to hear directly from some of the now formerly unhoused people Barth profiles in his book about their experiences of homelessness and the work they are doing to help solve it.
Brian Barth is an award-winning independent journalist with bylines in the New Yorker, National Geographic, Washington Post, The New Republic and Mother Jones, among other publications. He lives between the Bay Area and California’s remote Lost Coast region, where he is developing a spiritual refuge—open to seekers, broken souls, and all of humankind—amid a foggy, fern-filled forest. Front Street is his first book.
Alissa Quart is the author of five acclaimed books of nonfiction including Bootstrapped: Liberating Ourselves from the American Dream (Ecco, 2023). She is the Executive Director of the non-profit the Economic Hardship Reporting Project. She has written for many publications including The Washington Post, The New York Times, and TIME. Her honors include an Emmy, an SPJ award and a Nieman fellowship. She lives with her family in Brooklyn.
ABOUT WOOD STREET COMMONS – in their words:
Wood Street Commons began as a response to systemic displacement and the deepening housing crisis in Oakland. Formed by unhoused residents and allies, we’ve built a strong, interdependent community on the principles of mutual aid, dignity, and collective care. Despite facing fires, evictions, and ongoing city-led displacement, we continue to create pathways toward long-term stability and liberation.
We provide mutual aid to unhoused communities, and do advocacy to help our unhoused relatives have a better quality of life. We envision a future where unhoused people are decision-makers in the solutions that affect them — with access to safe shelter, wellness, and power.
