Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) reportedly told a group of homeless people in Los Angeles to “go home.”
As the LA Times reported earlier this week, the powerful lawmaker lectured a crowd of homeless people in South Los Angeles attempting to get Section 8 vouchers. Employees of the Los Angeles Housing Services Authority, as well as supporters of Fathers and Mothers Who Care — a nonprofit advocacy group — were overwhelmed as people flooded their event.
According to the LA Times, Waters drew ire when she suggested that the individuals return to their residences:
Waters told the gathering of mostly homeless people Friday that “you cannot get Section 8 vouchers here.” And later, “I want everybody to go home.” The response was fast and angry, a voice from the crowd yelling, “We don’t got no home, that’s why we’re here. What home we gonna go to?”
Waters, who wore a powder blue pantsuit and had a black face mask pulled down below her chin, laughed and said, “Nothing is going to happen here today.” Her remarks were captured in video of the event obtained by The Times.
Waters even dropped an expletive in reaction to the crowd’s qualms:
Less than half a minute later, the congresswoman responded to a question from the founder of Kingdom Warriors Foundation, a local housing advocacy nonprofit. Jabbing her finger into the air, Waters said, “Excuse me, there’s nobody in Washington who works for their people any f— harder than I do. I don’t want to hear this. No, no, no.”
Waters then answered a plea that she work with the community to address the housing crisis: “That’s what I do every day. The money that you got thus far came from me in Washington, D.C.” She walked away moments later after telling the crowd, “I will continue to work. I will get the information out to you.”
When contacted by the LA Times, Waters refused to answer specific questions and instead claimed that the story was “a bunch of rumors.” She then asked that the story not be published.
“You’ll hurt yourself and the community trying to put this together without background,” she told the outlet. “I don’t want you to start trying to write it, you won’t understand it.”
In recent years, Waters has provoked criticism for making calls to increase political unrest. During last year’s trial of Derek Chauvin — the police officer who killed George Floyd in the summer of 2020 — Waters said that “protesters” were “looking for a guilty verdict,” and if they didn’t get what they wanted, then “we cannot go away.” When asked what “protesters” should do if they do not get the verdict that they want, Waters responded that activists have “got to stay on the street,” “get more active,” and “get more confrontational.”
In 2018, Waters encouraged her supporters to harass Trump administration officials as they went about their lives in the nation’s capital.
“Let’s make sure we show up wherever we have to show up. And if you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd,” she told those at a rally in Los Angeles. “And you push back on them. And you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”