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Indybay Feature
Housing Activists Take Over SF City Hall
On Friday, May 8, 2015, approximately 300 people took over San Francisco City Hall to deliver their messages about the untenable evictions that are now occurring in the City. The protest included an ethnic ritual, chants, testimonials by victims of the evictions, and a walk around San Francisco City Hall’s political chambers to deliver their messages personally to the Supervisors and Mayor. The protest was loud and was peaceful. The sheriff deputies did confiscate the protesters banners.
The Mission District neighborhood is ground zero for the gentrification that is occurring in San Francisco. It is now common knowledge that the tech industry was responsible for landlords jacking up rents for the poor and the middle class in an already unaffordable City. The tech industry is also being blamed for the increase in evictions because developers see this City as a gold mine when it comes to housing because tech workers have more money to spend. It is also common knowledge that San Francisco has working class poor and middle class people, some with families, who are homeless. Homeless in a City that criminalizes the poor via Sit and Lie Tickets, camping tickets, or tickets for sleeping in cars. The coalition on homelessness released a report created from a survey that stated “Many poor people in the Mission feel vulnerable to police harassment and displacement. Some members of our community, including youth, elderly and disabled people, homeless and marginally housed people, people of color and transgender residents, have been subjected to more intense policing as the neighborhood gentrifies.”
The anti-eviction mapping project indicates there has been a 54.7% increase in evictions this year. There have been over 2,000 units evicted in 2015 alone. Common types of evictions are breach of lease, nuisance, owner move-in, Ellis Act and illegal use. Many victims of the evictions claim the local government is not doing enough to stop the evictions, so the community has organized and is now taking their message to the Mayor’s front door.
Groups who participated in the protest are ACCE • Calle 24 Latino Cultural District • Eviction Free SF • Our Mission No Eviction • Plaza 16 Coalition • Poor Magazine
Messages and demands issued by the protesters.
STOP THE EVICTIONS
NO MONSTER IN THE MISSION
TRULY AFFORDABLE HOUSING NOW
NO MORE LUXURY-PRICED DEVELOPMENT
MAYOR LEE; DECLARE A STATE OF EMERGENCY (OVER THE LOSS OF HOUSING)
Their demands are; Declare a State of emergency to address affordable housing crisis, take action to protect the community, fund and build affordable housing, and institute community oversight.
Links
http://www.antievictionmappingproject.net/EvictionSurge.pdf
http://www.cohsf.org/
https://evictionfreesf.org/
http://plaza16.org/
http://calle24sf.org/en/
Twitter handle and tags @PlazaSixteen #MissionTakesCityHall #NoEvictionsSF #HousingIsAHumanRight
The anti-eviction mapping project indicates there has been a 54.7% increase in evictions this year. There have been over 2,000 units evicted in 2015 alone. Common types of evictions are breach of lease, nuisance, owner move-in, Ellis Act and illegal use. Many victims of the evictions claim the local government is not doing enough to stop the evictions, so the community has organized and is now taking their message to the Mayor’s front door.
Groups who participated in the protest are ACCE • Calle 24 Latino Cultural District • Eviction Free SF • Our Mission No Eviction • Plaza 16 Coalition • Poor Magazine
Messages and demands issued by the protesters.
STOP THE EVICTIONS
NO MONSTER IN THE MISSION
TRULY AFFORDABLE HOUSING NOW
NO MORE LUXURY-PRICED DEVELOPMENT
MAYOR LEE; DECLARE A STATE OF EMERGENCY (OVER THE LOSS OF HOUSING)
Their demands are; Declare a State of emergency to address affordable housing crisis, take action to protect the community, fund and build affordable housing, and institute community oversight.
Links
http://www.antievictionmappingproject.net/EvictionSurge.pdf
http://www.cohsf.org/
https://evictionfreesf.org/
http://plaza16.org/
http://calle24sf.org/en/
Twitter handle and tags @PlazaSixteen #MissionTakesCityHall #NoEvictionsSF #HousingIsAHumanRight
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This event demonstrates the most outstanding feature of housing activists in San Francisco, and that is that they are unpaid City Hall functionaries. This event, ignored by all who didn't participate in it, is proof positive of this. Among other things, the best way to get politicians to ignore you is to go out of your way to tell them how very much they mean to you. The activist set in SF have spent many years refraining from engaging in the only kind of strategy and tactics that could save San Francisco from being turned into a combination gated community and office park -- and that's to make specific parts of the city that are currently under siege very unpleasant places for bourgeois interlopers to shop, dine, quaff, and dwell.
Only actions that do visible damage to the economic interests of the cyber-gentry and the cyber-Babbitts can make a difference. No San Francisco housing activist has ever attempted anything like this. An endless series of hissy-fits pitched at surrogates for parental authority at mommy and daddy's place might get this or that "organizer" a job with benefits in Nancy Pelosi's office, but it won't keep the city from being ruined, keep those currently under threat from getting their housing ripped off -- and it won't bring back any of us who have already been driven out of San Francisco.
Only actions that do visible damage to the economic interests of the cyber-gentry and the cyber-Babbitts can make a difference. No San Francisco housing activist has ever attempted anything like this. An endless series of hissy-fits pitched at surrogates for parental authority at mommy and daddy's place might get this or that "organizer" a job with benefits in Nancy Pelosi's office, but it won't keep the city from being ruined, keep those currently under threat from getting their housing ripped off -- and it won't bring back any of us who have already been driven out of San Francisco.
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