STREET SHEET

Free MUNI for Youth On the Horizon

COH — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 01:23:37 +0000

A movement for transit justice has gotten rolling in San Francisco.

Travel can be an important part of every young person’s upbringing, especially in a city as culturally rich San Francisco. Unfortunately, it is getting increasingly difficult for young people to get around—to school, after school programs, jobs, volunteer activities, museums, and parks. Thousands of youth, parents, drivers, bike riders and community members have joined together to demand that young people be able to use Muni for free to get to and from school, work, parks and museums.

San Francisco is not seen as a family-friendly city. Each year, more and more families with children move away. The cost of Muni’s Youth FastPass has more than doubled in the last two years. The San Francisco Unified School District will be cutting yellow school bus service every year for the next three years, beginning this year. Young people who cannot afford the rising cost and who have no choice but to sneak onto the bus are at risk of getting a $100 fine by Muni’s Proof of Payment program. The economic crisis is only making things worse, especially for African American, Latino, Asian, Pacific Islander, and other low-income youth in this city. We are building a broad base of support for this proposal. The Youth Commission has already voted unanimously to support free FastPasses for youth. Now, we have to win support from the MTA, the School Board, the Board of Supervisors and Mayor Ed Lee.

Free FastPasses will benefit everyone in the city, in particular low-income families who scrape money together every month to pay rent and put food on the table. We cannot afford for our next generation to not go to school.

Recently, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed a resolution urging the different partners in the city to work on the proposal together. At the MTA Board meeting on October 18, the Board and SFMTA Director Ed Reiskin heard the community speak. At the end, they all agreed the imminent need of free youth Fast Passes, while some still raising budgetary concerns. They have concluded that the SFMTA shall direct staff persons to investigate the feasibility of the proposals, and Director Reiskin promised to report back, earliest by the end of the year.

Hippies Pitch Tents, Mayors Pitch Fits

COH — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 01:19:25 +0000

I hadn’t realized how much hope I’d lost. For the first couple week of Occupy Wall Street, I watched with relatively little interest from the sidelines. Most of my updates came from the constant badgering of sometime Street Sheet writer Carol Harvey, who was hip to the importance of the movement weeks before I was. I just had to go down, she would tell me. This is what we’ve all been waiting for. I think I found some polite way to say: Carol, I am one hell of a busy man. I don’t have time to go camping. Besides which, the whole point of our work at the Coalition on Homelessness is that sleeping on urban streets sucks, and no one should have to do it. Doing this on purpose in October is stu– counterintuitive.

Following this, I had a few salty conversations with my housemates about the occupiers. Mostly, we were confused. One housemate who had happened to be in New York to check out Zucotti Park: I was like, “So you’re going to try to get all of poor, working, and middle class America onto your side by hanging out in the park in a drum circle. Good luck with that.” But it looks like I was wrong. I was maybe a bit more curmudgeonly: Who were these people?

Where had they come from? Why were they only plugging into economic justice now, when it had become this suddenly hip thing? Where had they been when we were fighting against the sit/lie law? Or for a housing fund? Or against the criminalization of Black and Latino youth for being in public in their own communities? Subsequent conversations have led me to believe that that grumpiness—which might possibly include the tiniest element of jealousy—is something I held in common with many other community and union organizers.

When I did finally go down to OccupySF, it didn’t take me long to fall in love. A week later, I moved in. OccupySF is a complicated, messy place where a couple hundred people are putting their all into developing a new society where democracy is meaningful, and where there is greater economic equality. There’s so much that’s new, that’s beautiful, that’s creative.

But much is also familiar.

On October 17, over 80 police officers in riot gear came to the camp to remove all tents and tarps. In the process, they arrested five of our campmates for peacefully resisting the theft of their belongings. Members of the camp and supporters from around San Francisco gathered to sit in protest in front of the DPW truck and the paddy wagon. Officers beat some of us, dragged others of us out of the way, threw people from one part of the street to others. But after the two vehicles left, the SFPD officers milled about for an hour—apparently lacking any further instructions—and then left. Before they were gone, our first tarp was back up. Campers still had enough of their belongings that a new camp was up by sunrise.

Among those who were new to such actions—including many of the college students, the disaffected middle class, the uncategorizable potpourri of San Franciscans who had been inspired by the Occupy movement, and the few homeless people who had been successful at avoiding police attention up until that point—SFPD’s actions were confusing. Why bully us, but leave enough of us, with enough belongings, that we could keep on camping?

The presence of riot gear indicates that SFDP knew that there was something new, here, something big. But their tactics indicate that they were still thinking of OccupySF—halfway appropriately—as a homeless people’s encampment.

It’s rational, if you are forced to live outside, to try to live in groups. There are serious elements of both safety and convenience. Unfortunately, San Francisco, like many cities, has determined that witnessing the magnitude of poverty in our country is bad for society, and that encampments should thus be busted up. It is not rational, if you live outside and are woefully outnumbered and entirely unarmed, to try to hold a patch of dirt against armed police. Thus, when cops bust up homeless encampments, they don’t have to arrest or beat everyone: All they need to do is destroy or confiscate a couple people’s belongings and assault or arrest a couple others. Everyone else would be crazy to hang around to be the next in line for this treatment.

Homelessness in the US really grew out of the economic policies of the later Carter and the Reagan eras. By the end of the 1980s, homelessness had become a serious political issue in most urban areas of the country. In San Francisco, a camp grew in Civic Center Plaza, across from City Hall, of dozens and then hundreds of homeless people who chose to live with each other for safety. Camp Agnos, as it was called, was a media nightmare for its mayoral namesake. After two years of working on developing a woefully inadequate shelter program that could house only a fifth of the number of people reported to stay in the camp, Mayor Art Agnos had SFPD invade the camp, using force and arrest to scatter its inhabitants. There was no attempt to reclaim the camp, and that one-night raid in the summer of 1990 was enough to put an end to Camp Agnos.

It was this tactic which SFPD tried to use against OccupySF on October 17. But it didn’t work.

This is how OccupySF is very different from any other homeless encampment. We’re not just trying to survive. We’re recognizing that holding onto ground right in the face of the most oppressive 1% of society is the means that we have right now to fight back, and to take back the country that they have stolen.

The more heavy-handed tactic of the Oakland Police Department a week later—and which Mayor Lee still threatens to implement in San Francisco—have been no more successful. Occupy Oakland is already back in Oscar Grant Plaza—along, it should be added, with the dozens of homeless people who are part of that camp. Our local governments, entrenched as they are in their ways, are finally beginning to realize that their traditional tools of driving poor people and people of color out of public discourse are simply not working this time around.

But that doesn’t mean that OccupySF isn’t a homeless encampment. Progressive observers of the Occupy Wall Street movement such as Barbara Ehrenreich have recognized that the occupants are facing many of the same challenges that homeless people have known for decades: they are on the wrong side of the law, and are constantly harassed by police and other city agencies. They have a hell of a time finding legal places to attend to Nature’s call. Hygiene and santitation are a constant challenge.

This is a story in which the mainstream media seems to be a little ahead of progressive media: The occupiers aren’t just people who are experiencing some fraction of what it’s like to be homeless—many of the occupiers are homeless. And the story, as told in the media, makes sense, and has some truth: The camps are safer than isolation on the street. There’s not enough free food, but there’s free food. And there’s a culture of acceptance which turns no one away. Certainly, many homeless San Franciscans have joined OccupySF for precisely these reasons.

But this story falls short, because it fails to recognize that homeless people might actually be politicized. Homeless people have been part of OccupySF since the beginning. I hope that this is obvious, but a hint just in case: Homeless people are part of the x%, where x is a number that has two digits. The financial sector created the real estate market in which poor people can no longer afford market-rate housing. The financial sector pushed for the tax cuts which made it easier for the Federal government to stop constructing and to start closing down public housing. The financial sector has been far and away the biggest backer of laws such as sit/lie (nearly 90% of the funding for the sit/lie law came from venture capitalists and the Silicon Valley businesses they fund), that make it a crime to be homeless in public places. They took our homes, they priced us out of any other homes, and then they made it a crime for the poorest of us to exist at all: The 1% has been no friend to homeless people.

While some housed occupiers fall into classist thinking that sees homeless people as being somehow different from the camp (usually ignoring people’s actual housing status in order to create this false distinction in their minds), others fully get it. We have work to do as a camp, and dissolving this distinction is one of them.

Activist Howard Grayson Dies

COH — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 01:05:20 +0000

By Susan Englander

Howard Grayson, 66, died suddenly from heart failure on Thursday, September 29, 2011. His death leaves the San Francisco progressive movement bereaved. Howard was a gentle and compassionate soul with a very good sense of humor and an easy smile.

Yet, Howard could be quite outspoken at events and meetings, some of which he would plan and organize himself such as candidate debates. Through it all, Howard never steered away from his solidly progressive instincts.

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1945, Howard spent his youth embracing the alternative communal life. It included living as an “out” gay man before most were ready to accept such openness.

During the civil rights era of the 1960’s, he joined the Black Panther Party and participated in anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, including the hugely significant “Confront the War Makers” protest at the Pentagon in 1967.

In the 1970s, Howard moved to New York City during the heady days of gay-sexual liberation. He worked on the staff of the Anvil, one of New York’s most illustrious gay bars.

Still a young adult, Howard moved to San Francisco several decades ago where he threw himself into the city’s vibrant political life.

Prior to his death, he was a member of the Harvey Milk LGBT Democratic Club, a retiree from SEIU-UHW (Home Care Division), an activist in Senior Action Network and California Alliance for Retired Americans, and a delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council, once serving as a Trustee for that body. Howard was also a vocal advocate against poverty and homelessness in San Francisco, lending his tactical support to many direct action housing takeovers by Homes Not Jails and Creative Housing Liberation. He brought joy, love, and tremendous gusto to all of his endeavors.

While committed to many causes, he was very proud of his career as a professional home care provider and in that work gave comfort, care, and compassion to many elderly and disabled persons over the years. To his last client, his close friend and fellow labor and gay activist Howard Wallace, he offered devoted attention that included his patience, good humor and culinary skills.

Howard is survived by his brother, John Grayson, and many sorrowful friends and comrades who will keep him long in their hearts and memories.

We’ll miss you, Howard!

DA Candidates Face Off

COH — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 01:01:11 +0000

In September, we wrote, e-mailed, and called all five candidates for the District Attorney’s Office in order to ask them seven simple questions about their positions and plans for office, should they be elected. After two rounds of reminder calls and e-mails, we have been able to hear from two of the candidates: Bill Fazio and David Onek. Their answers to our questions are below:

BILL FAZIO

Do you plan to prosecute citations of the sit/lie law?

No.

Do you plan to maintain a presence in Traffic Court to prosecute “quality of life” infractions?

Perhaps, depends on each case.

Do you endorse the “Broken Windows” theory of policing and prosecution?

Under certain circumstances.

Are there circumstances under which you would seek the death penalty?

No, never.

Will you release the results of District Attorney’s Office criminal liability investigations in officer-involved shootings?

Unless prohibited by law.

Do you support the opening of a Safe Injection Site or sites in San Francisco?

Do not know enough facts.

What do you believe should be the role of the District Attorney’s Office in addressing homelessness?

Homeless is not a crime. Homelessness is NOT a crime.

DAVID ONEK

Do you plan to prosecute citations of the sit/lie law?

No. I voted against Sit/Lie. I think it was a political solution to a public safety problem and was extremely divisive, with no proven safety benefit. We would have been better off using all the time, money, and resources that went into the ballot fight bringing people together to find collaborative solutions to the issues Sit/Lie intended to address. As DA, I will not prosecute people criminally under the Sit/Lie law. If more serious crimes are being committed by people violating Sit/Lie, they should be charged as such; minor infractions should be handled in alternative ways and not clog up our already overburdened court system. Simply put, we should focus our resources on serious and violent crimes.

Do you plan to maintain a presence in Traffic Court to prosecute “quality of life” infractions?

No, not for “quality of life” infractions. I will assess the effectiveness of all the alternative courts that handle quality of life infractions, taking into account community input. I will focus our resources on serious and violent crimes.

Do you endorse the “Broken Windows” theory of policing and prosecution?

No. The “Broken Windows” theory of policing and prosecuting shifts focus away from the serious and violent offenses we should be prioritizing with our time and resources to keep us safer.

Are there circumstances under which you would seek the death penalty?

No. I will not seek the death penalty under any circumstance. I have consistently and unequivocally opposed the death penalty throughout my campaign, and throughout my career. The death penalty does not make us safer, it is not cost effective, and it is not fair and equitable.

Will you release the results of District Attorney’s Office criminal liability investigations in officer-involved shootings?

Yes. I will issue a very detailed report in every officer-involved shooting case and make the report publicly available on our website. The report will detail the facts, the law and the investigation results. Building trust with the community is the key to enhancing public safety, and transparency in officer-involved shootings is crucial to building that trust.

Do you support the opening of a Safe Injection Site or sites in San Francisco?

Yes. Data show that safe injection sites reduce harm and make our communities safer.

What do you believe should be the role of the District Attorney’s Office in addressing homelessness?

The District Attorney’s office must work collaboratively with other city agencies and, crucially, with community-based organizations to address homelessness. Homelessness is not a crime and the District Attorney cannot solve the homelessness problem with a law enforcement-based approach. As DA, I will work to make San Francisco safer and fairer by partnering with city agencies such as the Department of Public Health and the Human Services Agency and with community agencies throughout the city on homelessness issues.

WHERE’S THE INCUMBENT?

It was tremendously disappointing that the appointed incumbent, George Gascón, did not see fit to respond to the questionnaire. Mr. Gascón has been dismissive of poor people’s concerns since he first arrived in San Francisco two years ago as our appointed Chief of Police. Gascón, a long-time Republican and supporter of the death penalty, was instrumental in the passage of San Francisco’s anti-homeless sit/lie law. As District Attorney, in a time when budget cuts have led to a decrease in the number of attorneys prosecuting felonies, Mr. Gascón has continued that office’s practice of prosecuting homeless people for infraction violations in Traffic Court, while failing to prosecute other infraction violators. In running for office, he left the Republican Party to register as a Democrat—probably a smart move in predominantly Democratic San Francisco. Since announcing his candidacy, Mr. Gascón has also renounced his former support for the death penalty. It would have been nice to find out if he’s had a similar about-face on anti-homeless legislation.