Two unhoused men turned community leaders— John and LaMonté —organize their neighbors in the face of displacement, addiction, and a failing social system.
Wood Street is showing in 1 cinema in Amsterdam - next screening Tuesday 17 November at 18:00 at Pathé City.
Next screenings: Tuesday 17 November.
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An incredibly powerful look at an unhoused community in Oakland during a time of eviction and displacement. Infuriating to watch this community shuffled around and used for optics by people in positions of power. It’s all done with such a deep empathy and closeness.
"Everything in US history is about the land-who oversaw and cultivated it, fished its waters, maintained its wildlife; who invaded and stole it; how it became a commodity ( "real estate" ) broken into pieces to be bought and sold on the market." -- Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz"In order for nonviolence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none, has none." -- Kwame TureCan you reason with a bulldozer?Damn near every unhoused person in the East Bay has some relationship to Wood Street. Stories of love and kindness, generosity, of violence and addiction -- Wood Street is a prism that refracts through those who carry it with them the whole spectrum of lived experience. Wood Street was an entire world, and the City of Oakland destroyed it without remorse. It was a ghetto, too -- the city made no effort to provide basic amenities; plumbing, electricity, waste disposal. But wherever human beings go, we create communities, we create worlds.What the City of Oakland could not abide was the challenge Wood Street posed to its own sovereignty, the self determination of it residents -- their refusal to be pushed back into "tiny home" concentration camps and assertion of their right, echoed in the Panthers' ten point program, to "decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings," was a living, growing, and dangerous threat to the real estate machine of the Bay Area, whose appetite for profit and development continues to devour entire communities to make way for waves of gentrifiers with the means to afford these criminal rents.Caron Creighton very deliberately contrasts each lurch toward eviction day with the progress of the luxury development directly across from it. That the development marches in step toward its completion is no accident, it is settler colonialism functioning as intended -- the native must first be "erased" to make way for the settler, who cannot abide a constant reminder of the crimes they benefit from.I have little doubt the City of Oakland will, at some point, commission a mural to "commemorate" Wood Street, just as Berkeley did to honor the city's destruction of People's Park. Maybe in a show of "respect" they will even include it in their land acknowledgements.If there is some light to be found in these grim times, in the midst of so much evil, let Paul Robeson's tribute to Joe Hill give us the courage to do what we must away from the screen:"The Copper Bosses killed you Joe;They shot you Joe" says I"Takes more than guns to kill a man"Says Joe "I didn't die"Says Joe "I didn't die"And standing there as big as lifeAnd smiling with his eyesSays Joe "What they could never killWent on to organizeWent on to organize"
So hard to do a doc or any kind of film about unhoused folks that isn't objectifying or contemptuous in some way. This film succeeds in large part by indicting every single cop, government official and liberal nonprofit that seek to undermine the dignity and autonomy the residents refuse to cede. It's also beautifully filmed and scored.
Two unhoused men turned community leaders organize their neighbors in the face of displacement, addiction, and a failing social system.
Wood Street was directed by Caron Creighton in 2026, capturing the resilience of an unhoused community in West Oakland through immersive verité. Full schedule on Mood.
