Wood Street: Preview Screening & Fundraiser

Join KALW for a special work-in-progress screening and fundraiser for Wood Street — a gripping documentary that follows members of Oakland’s largest homeless encampment as they fight the city and state against eviction from their long-term community.

This intimate film centers on John and LaMonté—two unhoused men turned community leaders—who organize their neighbors in the face of displacement, addiction, and a failing social system. Their story is a powerful testament to resilience, solidarity, and the right to remain.

Directed by award-winning journalist Caron Creighton, Wood Street is currently in production and has received support from SFFILM, the Sundance Institute, Bay Area Video Coalition and the Berkeley Film Foundation.

Caron Creighton is an award winning journalist and filmmaker residing in the Bay Area. Her feature documentary Wood Street has received support from the 2023/24 SF Film FilmHouse Residency, the 2024 Big Sky Pitch, and the 2024 BAVC MediaMaker Fellowship. In 2025, Wood Street participated in Black Public Media’s PitchBlack Forum in New York, and won the Realscreen Pitch competition in Miami. She also earned this year’s UFO x Peace is Loud Impact-Post residency, and is part of the Sundance Cultural Impact Residency inaugural cohort. Caron has worked for The Associated Press, AJ+, KCBS Radio and The San Francisco Chronicle and has lectured at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. She has reported on the struggles faced by Eritrean migrants in Israel, and West African migration through Latin America. Much of her work is focused on displacement within the African diaspora, as informed by her identity.

John Janosko and LaMonté Ford are both leaders in the Wood Street community. They helped to build the Wood Street Commons – a space that offered food, clothing and shelter to other unhoused people- and organized their unhoused neighbors at Wood Street in an attempt to save their long term, supportive community from eviction. Now, they run the Wood Street Commons non-profit organization as part of a larger team of unhoused and formerly unhoused activists who are working to build a layered system of deeply affordable housing in Oakland.

Please become a KALW member today and receive your first drink on us at all 220 Montgomery events.

220 Montgomery St., San Francisco, 2 blocks from BART/MUNI
Doors open at 6:00
️ Program begins at 7:00
Refreshments for donation (and KALW members get their first one on the house)
🆓 The event is free with an RSVP — and you are welcome to donate what you want. Ticket donations made for this event on Eventbrite support KALW.

Please note:

• The event space is just to the left of the main entrance to the Mills Building at 220 Montgomery Street
• We recommend taking BART/MUNI, exiting at Montgomery, and walking two blocks north
• Ride-shares can drop off and pick up directly in front of the venue
• If you drive, there are several garages within two blocks of the event location