$6.75 Is Not Enough is a campaign to increase the minimum wage to $8.50 per hour for all people in San Francisco. In 1968, the federal minimum wage was $1.60 per hour. That year, the minimum wage had the greatest purchasing power. If that wage had kept up with inflation for the past 35 years, the federal minimum wage would be $8.50 an hour today — all across the country — not just in places like San Francisco with a high cost of living. The federal minimum wage is only $5.15 per hour (for workers who are classified as tipped employees it is only $2.13 per hour). Because our representatives in Washington have refused to take action on this most basic issue of economic justice, millions of workers across the country are falling further and further behind every year. (more…)

98 we hate!

99 is fine!

Spread the word!

Vote June third!

I recited this cheesy poem for artist and videographer, T.J. Walkup, hoping its doggerel claws would sink into his brain. I wanted to warn him in an unforgettable way about the savagely deceptive ballot measure Prop. 98. No rock star Obama or Clinton appears on the June 3 ballot. There is strong concern that low voter turnout could result in Prop 98 permanently wiping out rent control across California.

“The California Property Owners and Farmland Protection Act” seeks to prohibit governmental use of eminent domain to seize and transfer private homes to a private developer. However, the prop does not stop there.

Trolling the web, T.J. discovered a pro-Prop. 98 site linked to a “low-end” YouTube video. Comedian Drew Carey was paid to tell a “sad story” about a developer scheme using eminent domain to displace “poor Hispanic and Black kids” from a fitness center. The motive for this child abuse? These builders wanted to construct “mixed income housing.” To T.J. it suggested, “they were doing something for the greater good of the community, but taking the community out while they were doing it.”

“I’m not a lawyer,” T.J. told me. “[On the surface,] this looks harmless.

“The most evil thing about [Prop. 98] is that it’s written to deceive people who have reasonable intelligence or better. It presents itself such that a person like myself struggles for the logic [in] what’s going on.”

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State Law (AB 2745, Dave Jones) was created to deal with the practice known as patient dumping of homeless people onto the streets or into places like homeless shelters that can not provide the medical care they require. This happens all the time here in SF and elsewhere. AB 2745 explicitly mandates that a regional meeting comprised of “key stakeholders” including “nonprofit social service providers and regional advocates for the homeless” be held to “establish and support effective communications between hospitals and stakeholders regarding this transition.” It doesn’t require that homeless people attend!

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I was one among many of an unknown group here in the States: The Homeless Voter. While I struggled with life on the street, I still read the paper, still followed the issues, still voted.

Repeatedly. So when poor folks say they can’t take the time to vote, to me it’s a bunch of baloney. The reason they don’t vote is that most folks believe politicians wish to improve their own bank accounts above all others, so why bother voting?

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The Hotel Council of San Francisco is sponsoring a billboard ad campaign which can be seen on MUNI buses and taxis around the city. The ads depict panhandlers as being “aggressive,” drug-addicted maniacs. In response, on August 6th, 7th, and 8th, community activists and concerned citizens held three days of protest in response to the SF Hotel Council’s hate campaign. The campaign has several billboard ads with a similar theme. One ad reads: “Today I adopted a cat, gave some change, and shut down my corner grocer” with a sub-message: “giving to panhandlers doesn’t help, it hurts.”

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From the streets to jail and back again, there is a vicious cycle of incarcerations occurring to people who are poor and living on our streets.

Apparently, it is a crime to be poor, because poor people are going to jail.

And it’s because of California Penal Code section 647(j). 647(j) PC is a vaguely written law which prohibits lodging on public property. But we have a problem here, the problem is the city is spending scarce city resources on the enforcement of 647(j) PC citations — incarcerating homeless people for a life sustaining act. Law enforcement officers are writing so many of these citations to homeless people it is impossible for them to keep up with them without one turning into a bench warrant resulting in incarceration.

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