What’s Gavin Not Having?
On Monday, May 15th I was standing at the bottom of the escalators to the BART station at Powell Street selling my Street Sheets. I glanced up towards the escalators, and noticed that Mayor Gavin Newsom was talking to my friend Rob. Newsom says a few words to Rob and Rob goes up the escalator.
I think to myself, “The Mayor is giving out money.” So I make my way towards him and proceed to sell my papers.
Mayor Newsom approaches me and says, “I am going to have to ask you to leave. We don’t want you guys selling Street Sheets down here anymore.” I asked him why. He says, “We have received a few complaints.”
“Complaints from where? Bring the complainers down!”
Newsom responds “No. You will have to leave”.
I tell him, “Then if we have to leave, I need a cash donation to pay for a place to sleep.”
The Mayor says, “No. I don’t give cash donations in that way. I do them in other ways.”
I told the Mayor, “Are talking about no cash no care, which takes money out for shelters a lot of us are staying in, and leaves us with $29 every two weeks? How am I supposed to live on the that?”
Mayor says, “Well you are going to have to leave, and if you don’t I will call the police.”
I refused to leave.
My question: Why is the Mayor taking a sudden dislike to us? Is it a political thing? If so, he will never get our vote again. At one point, the Mayor came down and was personally cleaning up trash and said that he liked what we were doing down there. Why is he suddenly changing his mind? My belief is that it is political.
And it didn’t stop there. Just this morning, a mentally ill woman was screaming and an officer came down and was trying to talk to me about it. The police officer told me “We are trying to get you guys out from down here and make it illegal for you guys to sell Street Sheets.
Editors note: The San Francisco City Attorney has found that because we accept no commercial advertising or charge our vendors any portion of the cover price, Street Sheet has “no intrinsic value other than to communicate,” and asking a dollar donation in exchange for Street Sheet is protected speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution. SFPD Chief Heather Fong recently affirmed this in SFPD Department Bulletin #05-205, dated 11/03/05.
Sherlock