Celebration/Funeral Protest of San Francisco Budget Cuts
Thursday, December 11, 2008 under a bright blue high-noon sky whisped with clouds, rows of cardboard tombstones marched in protest across Civic Center Plaza’s green grass shouting, “Rest In Peace, Buster’s Place! R.I.P Diversion Programs! R.I.P. Mental Health Services! R.I.P. Laguna Honda Adult Day Care Center!” The New Orleans style Brass Liberation Orchestra’s tuba oom-pahed gaily. Later, speaker Jennifer Friedenbach called this a celebratory funeral for the scrooge-ish budget cuts to 80+ vital service programs. “We are getting together and fighting back!”
The Mayor’s secret eye unpeeked out his drapes at the colorful crowd milling below. A Latina SRO Families United speaker shouted, “He is without a social conscience, with a bestial soul!”
From behind his green leer, the Christmas Grinch in a red Santa Hat told me, “They put [elders] in the Mission Street Keane Hotel after they left Laguna Honda. They’re kicking them out to fix it up, but there is no money to repair it.”
These cuts compromise people’s lives, creating similar life-threatening situations as newly evicted families seek shelter. Jennifer Friedenbach, director of the Coalition on Homelessness, told the Board, “The Budget is a moral document.
“61% of San Francisco families [homeless right now] are homeless for the first time.” People are losing their jobs and health insurance. A wait for a shelter bed is longer than the stay.
First at the microphone was James Keys, Senior Action Network Health Director and Secretary of the San Francisco Mental Health Board. “The cuts to mental health are absolutely disturbing. It is a crime. The murder to services has been caused by this administration and this mayor.”
Keys directed our gaze across Van Ness to the Opera House, doubting it would face real cuts.
“Opera-goers: When you step through that door, remember when you’re looking at a homeless person and you sit down in that seat, don’t be mad at them: Be happy that you’ve got a place to go and listen to good music. That person on the street has nothing but a cold, hard piece of concrete to keep them at least some kind of warm…”
During the deappropriation hearings the next day, Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin stated he doubted the super-rich would fund San Francisco General Hospital like they fund the Opera.
There was clarity that the pain of the cuts was intended to be borne by the poor. “Cut from the Fat, not from the Bone!” demonstrators chanted.
Caduceus Outreach Services Director and mental health advocate Mary Kate Connor’s voice reverberated: “We need to show them our lives have value… The priority has to be the most vulnerable people in San Francisco—people who are poor, disabled, and end up homeless simply because they are poor and disabled.”
SEIU organizer, Robert Haaland, urged the crowd to attend Supervisor Peskin’s $8.5 million alternative cuts presentation the next day.
“Opera-lovers are going to show up. Subsidizing the Opera when healthcare cuts are coming down the pipeline like this…!”
Bobbie Bogan, Seniors Organizing Seniors: “It’s worse difficult times ahead. The time don’t belong to these greedy-ass politicians [or] the government any more.
“It’s our time! We gotta treat this like our time! We gotta take over that building in the next two years. One of us can be a Mayor of San Francisco. We got a senior summit planned for January. Next is a People’s Leadership Summit. If we get ready, there will be 4,000 or 5,000 people out here.”
Tiny Gray-Garcia, POOR Magazine, read:
“Ode to an unheard voice
Of an elder who has no more SSI,
A child with no mama under which to cry,
A migrant worker being incarcerated while working
Trying to keep her family alive,
A person with no health care,
Therapy or help, only waiting to die.
These are the sounds of violence,
Unheard screams and brutal acts of silence.
The weapon is a lie called Budget Cuts,
And the victims are our lives.”
“Whose money is it?” she cried. “Our money!” Came the answer.
“I heard something about the opera,” she cried. “I know how to sing: ‘La Donna e mobile.’ That means, ‘The woman is fickle.’ That means people with wealth and privilege are fickle, and we need to tell them, ‘Just give our resources back to us.’”
Jennifer Friedenbach and the band led the chanting marchers, circling City Hall. Backdropped by a sparkling tree at the top of the marble stairs inside, we sang “Amazing Disgrace” (lyrics by James Chionsini).
At the Mayor’s Office, security guards confiscated the Grim Reaper’s sword. Newsom, whose face was the Reaper’s mask, failed to appear outside his chambers. By contrast, Supervisors Campos, Mirkarimi, and Dufty welcomed the group.
Hope
Several ad hoc groups including the Coalition to Save Public Health and the Community Budget Reform Council (CBRC), are developing reform suggestions.
The CBRC includes representatives from Coleman Advocates, Senior Action Network, The Living Wage Coalition, the Council of Community Housing Organizations, Planning for Elders in the Central City, and the Coalition on Homelessness. Some members, like Jennifer Friedenbach, have worked a long time on the People’s Budget, an earlier effort to increase popular participation in the budgeting process and to demand government accountability.
The CBRC is considering possible changes to City Charter by taxpayer vote. CBRC member James Chionsini stated that some budget changes must be done electorally. Supervisors can accomplish some changes legislatively without a vote.
This group is discussing the need to for the Mayor to show his hand, submitting his budget earlier. This would enhance transparency, allowing supervisors and advocates to work on the budget and plan more effectively. There were complaints about how little real information Newsom provided about his recent mid-year cuts until the last minute. Taxpayers would also get more information in time to better understand budget numbers.
Transparency would inhibit the Mayor’s potential to conceal reality behind budget opacity. One CBRC member noted the inherent hypocrisy in the Mayor’s massive slashes to public health while Project Homeless Connect simultaneously refers people to cut mental health clinics. The same is true for Newsom’s Community Justice Courts: “Quality of life” tickets for panhandling send homeless people to court, where they are assigned to defunded programs.
Chionsini recalled that ten days after Newsom signed the 2008-2009 budget, while supervisors vacationed, the Mayor cut the budget he had just signed. The CBRC may move for supervisorial legislative approval of the mid-year cuts.
This underscores an implicit arrogance toward the people—the grassroots taxpayers and their advocates. “You go through all this advocacy,” stated Chionsini, “Then Gavin just cuts it anyway. All the work that people did was just discounted. It’s disingenuous. We won’t stand for it anymore.”
Final protest speaker, Howard Wallace, Senior Action Network, asserted firmly, “The rich of American and San Francisco society… are at war with the rest of the population. The only way we are going to defeat them is by remaining united and being prepared to lie down in their corridors or their offices if necessary.”
Steps Forward
The Coalition to Save Public Health is advocating a two-part solution to the City’s budget woes: First, they would like to see the current cuts to vital healthcare and human services replaced by more sensible cuts in areas that caused less community devastation. Second, they would like to see the Board announce a special election for summer of 2009 to allow the populace to vote on new revenue measures before the next fiscal year (beginning in July) requires more cuts.
After we confront these crises, through the CRBC and other advocates we can continue to streamline the governmental budget process to save money more equitably than on the backs of the most vulnerable and poor.
The CBRC cites a need for co-equality between branches of government with a more equitable balance of executive (Mayor), legislative (Board), and judicial power (court system). Currently, Section 3.100 of the City Charter gives the Mayor “wide and varied powers” in administering City Government. Some see these powers as excessive and would seek to rewrite this clause to promote a better balance.
Said Chionsini, “One other approach we are starting to push is using the Budget Analyst, Harvey Rose, more. He does all these analyses, but they don’t listen to it.”
I pointed out the obvious: “It’s boring.”
“Yes,” laughed James, “But that’s the devil in the details.” We agreed that the Budget Analyst could be used to clarify those devilish details.
Said Chionsini, “We’ve got a good board to work with. We need to work with them very closely and hold them accountable. We have to make sure that, when they figure out the budget, we’re right there with them” both the advocates and the community at large.
The second ad hoc group, The Coalition to Save Public Health, is asking citizens to isolate ideas to streamline City Departments’ budgets. E-mail suggestions to director@cohsf.org. List the item, the department, the justification and the potential amount of money saved.
Carol