SF Commune Raided {MARCH TONIGHT} May 15th: Arrests and Eviction by SWAT and SFPD

The SF Commune, a community center and social space for organizers in the Ocean View district of the city, was raided early this morning, Wednesday, May 15th, 2013. Over twenty people were evicted from their home and social center and four arrested as SWAT team and SFPD moved into the before abandoned building to push people to the curb and maintain homelessness in the city.

Tonight, the SF Commune and all in solidarity with direct action to alleviate the housing crisis and homelessness will march throughout the Ocean View neighborhood to call for an end to evictions and foreclosures in San Francisco by banks and police.
Gather at Minnie and Lovie Ward Recreation Center at Capitol Avenue and Lobos Street, San Francisco at 5pm to get ready to march at 6pm through the Ocean View and call for an end to evictions and foreclosures by banks, developers, and the police.

When the SF Commune moved into 200 Broad Street over a year ago on Easter Sunday the building was filled with needles, broken glass, and buckets of human feces. The group worked for weeks cleaning up the building, moving out all the hazardous materials and disposing of them properly, and turning the building into a livable home and organizing space. With freshly painted walls, cleaned floors, a rebuilt kitchen, working electricity and running water, the group started to put their attention to the neighborhood beyond themselves. Participating in and organizing free food programs, art projects, community gatherings, and social justice activism, the SF Commune found themselves with their need met and now able to address the needs of others.

Soon, more houses were opened to give shelter to those without. Some of the largest international banking corporations had foreclosed on families throughout San Francisco, pushing them to the curb the same way the police did this morning. Left vacant for years, organizers from the SFC went about turning these empty buildings into comfortable homes for people in need. Focusing first on housing others whose motive was to themselves help house, feed, and heal more people, and then working to alleviate the homelessness crisis of all, the SF Commune, as a people, began to meet the bottom of Maslow's hierarchy of needs for all people.

In April of 2013, the first three garden beds were built and planted at the SF Commune. Using wood from the Kezar Gardens native plant nursery and recycling center evicted earlier in January of 2013, the group built two fresh raised beds over the concrete backyard and cleaned up the garden bed in front of 200 Broad Street that had been left derelict and overgrown for years.
Soon, the beds were filled with strawberries, basil, edible root tubers, kale, chard, vegetables, salad greens, raspberries, and other edible and medicinal plants gathered from farms in San Francisco. It's the very same farms and gardens that inoculated these garden beds with edible plants in a neighborhood with people in need that are soon to be evicted to develop more condominiums. This neighborhood has been known as a food desert for a very long time, a place where organic and nutrient-rich food is very expensive at best and very hard to come by as the norm. Knocking on each door on the surrounding blocks, presenting themselves to the Ocean View-Merced Heights-Ingleside-Neighbors In Action coalition, and joining ACCE and Supervisor John Avalos on a blight tour of the blocks surrounding 200 Broad Street, the SF Commune invited all the neighbors to come plant vegetables, greens, and other edible plants in the backyard garden beds, to which they received overwhelming positive support.

There is a problem in this country, this city, and this neighborhood when people are forced out of their homes at the end of a shotgun and riot police storm neighborhood gardens to lock up abandoned spaces. We want to put an end to this type of repression before it affects any more people. Let's build a strong community that seeks to house, nourish, and heal all people.
We invite everyone to the table to figure out a solution that works for everyone, a win-win-win situation. We back that invitation up with a willingness to take direct action to offer solutions when our invitations are refused by banks, developers, and the state.


ABC 7's Story and Video Footage of the Raid and Arrests: http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=news%2Flocal%2Fsan_francisco&id=9103422