BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KGET) — A Bakersfield City Council member gave a passionate speech on Wednesday after several members of the community spoke out against his comments on homelessness made during a previous City Council meeting.
On Jan. 21, Ward 6 Councilmember Zack Bashirtash expressed frustration over the city’s Clean City Initiative and Community Vitality Program, saying they wasted millions of dollars in programs that didn’t do much to help keep people off the streets or create safe communities.
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“I’m enraged that we prioritize homeless degenerates over our children in our community. We’ve wasted millions of dollars on treating a problem that’s not doing anything,” Bashirtash said at that meeting.
Nine people, some of whom represented different local organizations, attended the City Council meeting Wednesday evening to criticize Bashirtash’s use of the word “degenerates” and ideas on holding homeless people in jails for a period of time.
Jacqueline Aguilar, the president of the Kern County Young Democrats Leaders, was among several speakers who said the homeless population includes veterans, seniors, families, people with disabilities, people with economic hardships or health crises, those fleeing domestic violence and more.
They said shelter services and other similar investments are more effective solutions over jails and spoke against criminalizing homelessness.
Carter Beardsley, secretary of the Kern County Young Democrat Leaders, said he was disappointed in Bashirtash for degrading his constituents and neighbors instead of providing a solution.
“And I think we need to be conscious about the words that we’re using because if we want to come to a legitimate solution to these problems — these real problems that we can all agree there is a problem — if we want to come to those solutions we have to come together,” said Beardsley. “And degrading people by calling them degenerates, that’s not getting us anywhere.”
Gennessa Fisher, the chair of the Youth Action Board under the Bakersfield-Kern Regional Homeless Collaborative, said she was homeless in the past. She said people in power calling homeless people “horrible names” creates shame around homelessness and discourages people from asking for help.
“We care about these people, we have a heart for these people and they are people at the end of the day. This is somebody’s mother, this is somebody’s daughter, this is somebody’s son, somebody loved this person so much, and now they’re going through something hard. And for you to call them horrible names and be so disrespectful …,” Fisher said tearfully.
Fisher also criticized Bashirtash for not coming out to the PIT Count or working with Flood Bakersfield Ministries.
“So before you sit there and flaunt your privilege to have a house, to have food, to have clothes on your back, to be clean, go out there and talk to those people because at the end of the day, they’re people,” Fisher said. “Somebody loved them, I love them.”
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Robert Hooks, a member of the Democratic Women of Kern, said how we talk about people in crisis matters just as much as the community’s urgency for safe neighborhoods and cleaner streets.
“Public officials have a responsibility to govern with restraint, accuracy and respect for human dignity,” said Hooks. “When rhetoric starts to resemble national political crackdowns instead of local practical problem-solving, all you do is make a complex situation worse.”
“You’re just astronomically wrong. And I’ve heard you complain before about your job … There’s a saying in leadership: ‘Lead, follow or get out of the way,’” said Hooks.
Flood Bakersfield Ministries Executive Director Jim Wheeler also spoke at the meeting, saying it was disappointing to see people online mock the work the organization has been doing. Flood Ministries is an organization that aims to reduce homelessness through various services like street outreach, shelter placement and housing navigation.
Wheeler asked councilmembers to come out and see the work Flood Ministries does to help homeless people find housing and shelter.
Bashirtash said he knew the speakers were coming to the meeting because he was told a “certain councilmember” was inviting people to come and “bash” him.
He said his goal isn’t to lock away homeless people and throw away the key, but to slow individuals down long enough to get them the resources they need to become functioning members of society.
He appeared to be choking up as he said there are incidents like the newborn who died by a dumpster on Monday while the city invests in things it believes are helpful to the community.
Bashirtash said he spent a large part of his life working for a nonprofit in the past where he worked with people living on Skid Row. He also talked about how his father-in-law was hit by a car and died in Northern California because he was homeless.
“So I don’t sit lofty in a mansion like someone who has no idea what they’re talking about,” said Bashirtash. “I’ve sacrificed thousands of my hours on helping intervene in people’s lives who didn’t want intervention.”
He also defended his use of the word “degenerate,” saying the definition of the term is someone whose behavior is socially irresponsible.
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“It blows me away at the amount of death threats and hatred I’ve gotten from a 30-second video when no one will take the time to actually look and track what we’ve done,” Bashirtash said.
He asked people to stop taking things out of context and learn to not be emotionally charged.
“I’m sorry that I offended some people with my words,” said Bashirtash. “I don’t take back what I said at all.
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