Perhaps you have walked by Golden Gate Park noticing groups of young people running or lounging on the soft green lawn. Watch the gathering more closely: Soon you will see a colorfully dressed community of individuals talking, laughing, and playing with dogs. Stand and listen and you may hear music. Many play instruments. Some are very good.

Wait patiently, and a cop on a bike or a black and white vehicle will inevitably wind up the path through the crowd. Uniforms will emerge, and a darker atmosphere will blot out the afternoon like a creeping fog.

Persuaded by media that these people are violent, dangerous malingerers, perhaps you avoid the Park entrance.

Nothing could be further from the truth. They will tell you that they are committed firmly to peace, love, and family. Their family is each other, and it extends from coast to coast. Dark-eyed Matt spoke of visiting his “family” in many states.

During Matt’s first day on the street, he heard words, “that changed my life forever.” He walked by his first “road dog” who asked him for money. Noticing Matt’s backpack, he said, “‘Oh, I’m sorry. You’re family. Whoever lugs a 50-pound pack all day and does what I do is family to me.’”

“[I] realized most people who live in houses don’t look out for each other. Here, all my road dogs and friends look out for me as I look out for them. Yeah, we get drunk and into fights, and stupid stuff, but we are all together. We help each other because we know where each other is at. If I have food, I’m going to give half of it away. If I have a beer, everyone’s going to drink. You give away what you have because you know what it’s like not to get. The main thing on the street is sharing. Sharing is caring a hundred percent.”

A new string of police beatings and false arrests began in mid-October 2008 with 57-year-old Robert Bearden (“Keys”). It was followed October 24 by a savage police attack on homeless youth Ashtray and was replicated November 12 with an officer’s body-slamming Bryan in front of American Apparel on Haight. There have been others including the unlawful detention of “Julie” and her partner.

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Market Street looks different from between the lanes: The buildings that impose jagged geometry from above, dominating the vista, are marginalized into stanchion and chassis of a sky that the 9-to-5 would have us forget. You can’t walk casually from lane to lane, sliding past cars, in “normal” times in San Francisco. This is not a “normal” view of Market Street. But November 7 was not normal in any sense. In response to California’s decision to define queer love differently under the state Constitution, tens of thousands of queers—without permission, without license, without approval—took over San Francisco’s central business street. At Octavia, I looked back toward the Faerie Building and saw that we had filled all lanes of Market Street as far as could be seen. Ahead, toward Twin Peaks, the view was no less—and I mean this in the Biblical sense—awesome. I don’t know how each of us would have articulated our hearts that night, but I’ll venture a rough translation: When one portion of a society arrogates to itself and delimits the native rights of all human beings, business cannot continue as normal.

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Ricky Green of Bolinas, California, and Anthony Waters of Cleveland, Ohio, don’t know each other, but they have this much in common: both are homeless and both were brutalized by hate-mongers in June.

But their outcomes differed. Green survived. Waters did not. Advocates for the homeless say such violent acts by youth are on the rise, and should be considered hate crimes because the victims were homeless.

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I had to report for jury duty last month. On day one, approximately 80 prospective jurors marched in orderly fashion into the courtroom. Three attorneys, the bailiff, and the court stenographer were in the courtroom. Our names were called and then the attorneys introduced themselves and the defendants. The judge came into the courtroom and told us that the trial would last until the end of the following week. He then asked if we were available to serve on the jury. Those who said they were available were dismissed for the day.

I was sure that this case was going to be a horrific one. A two-week trial must mean bank robbery or murder.

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Well, folks, it’s time to move. On Tuesday, November 18, the Board of Supervisors approved the Eastern Neighborhood Plan covering the Mission, Lower Potrero Hill, South of Market, and the Central Waterfront. Within three years, “industrial” job sites will be removed to make way for housing.

Four question arise: 1) Housing for whom? 2) The people that live in apartments in or above those “industrial” job buildings—where will they go? 3) Those “industrial” job sites—what jobs will they entail? At a September hearing at City Hall it was commented that “industrial” jobs included restaurants, retail, and office space. Industrial used to mean assembly line work. 4) So the question that follows is: If many of those jobs are eliminated, where will San Francisco residents find a job to pay the rent?

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In California 120,000 prisoners are released each year. That’s 60% of the prison population. But many are soon back in prison, some because they didn’t get the education, training, or job skills to succeed in society while incarcerated. Nor do supervision and parole programs provide adequate rehabilitation for addiction or training for life on the outside.

Proposition 5, or the Nonviolent Offender Rehabilitation Act, would have required the State of California to expand and increase funding and oversight for individualized treatment and rehabilitation programs for nonviolent drug offenders and parolees and reduce criminal consequence of nonviolent drug offenses.

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The editor of POOR Magazine is crediting a “corporate media infiltration” with the defeat of a measure that would have funded the Community Justice Center.

Proposition L lost in the November 4 election with 58 percent of votes against it.

As editor and co-founder of the Poor News Network, Tiny (a.k.a. Lisa Grey-Garcia) spearheaded the “L is for Legalized Lies and Liars” campaign, a multimedia effort that included the launch of the PNN-TV project three months ago.

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In a city hell-bent on gentrification and unwaveringly cutting services that benefit those with the greatest need, a Buddhist priest, Jana Drakka, devotes her life to single-handedly leading harm reduction groups and providing memorial services for homeless people, whose options for where to turn for help continue to diminish at an alarming rate. Drakka’s black priest’s uniform and charming Scottish accent might be the only things that distinguish her from the folks she works with—her glasses are missing one of the arms, her tenuous housing situation and practically nonexistent income place her on the verge of finding herself homeless, yet again. However, her eyes and incessant giggling radiate an energy that can only be described as joyful. I visit the “Street Zendo,” one of the tiny havens where Drakka holds her countless groups. Located deep in the heart of the Tenderloin, inside the Faithful Fools Ministry, homeless and low-income folks quietly meditate on black cushions in the tiny place of respite, where tolerance and compassion prevail over the chaos that often pervades the streets outside. In the back room of the building, Jana Drakka, holds a practice discussion with a man named Billy Jean.

Just under a year ago, Billy Jean lived in Kentucky, and decided to relocate to San Francisco after reading an article about a Zen Buddhist priest serving the neediest people of San Francisco. That priest, Jana Drakka, extends her services to people with drug addictions, people living with HIV, and homeless people; she even runs a support group for Tenderloin Housing Clinic case managers. Moreover, her dedication to these folks continues even after their lives end: she has performed, and continues to conduct, hundreds of funeral services for those who might otherwise leave the Earth unacknowledged, without a formal farewell. In moving to San Francisco, Billy Jean hoped to encounter the spirit of compassion he read about in the article about Drakka. Billy did not seek out Drakka out upon arriving; instead, he found himself struggling to survive in the city’s often merciless streets, where he ultimately found temporary housing in an SRO. Drakka, however, randomly found him, when she came to his SRO, offering the residents one of the many harm reduction/meditation groups that initially drew Billy to the city. Billy describes his initial encounter with Drakka as “an act of fate, because her story is one of the reasons I came to San Francisco.”

Her story, and Drakka herself, do not unfold from a traditional mold. (more…)