They cut the heart from San Francisco: Open letter to the SF Board of Supervisors

Land is the commodity. What makes this seven mile square area so valuable is that there is so little of it.

Redevelopment wants poor and African American community members out of Bayview Hunters Point so they can turn it over to Big Developers.

The supremely wealthy behind the Redevelopment Agency and developers like Lennar who they would use to take prime Bayview land don’t just want to change San Francisco’s tax and economic base by driving out low income and peoples of color.

They have worked for years to change the City’s voters.

In 2002, Supervisor Daly stated, “Some of our opponents are smart enough to figure out if you change who lives here, you change who votes here, thus you can change the politics.”

Corporate interests would exile moderate to low income citizens and progressives who don’t cast conservative votes, replacing them with whiter, wealthier taxpayers who vote for money-generating initiatives. Cutting out ethnic diversity, they would excise San Francisco’s human heart. Into the soulless cavity, they would graft the planet’s largest artificial money-generating pump.

Redevelopment bares its blood-tinged fangs: eminent domain and “blight.” A state agency more powerful than any City, Redevelopment can declare a desert, even a gated community, blighted and take it.

Crushing pressure from Redevelopment’s “re-peopling” threat is the toxin in SFRA’s fangs, stunning Bayview groups into paralysis and apparent community division. Redevelopment is the real bogeyman, dividing and conquering:

1. PAC members, among them nonprofits, who benefit in money and power.

2. Supporters hoping against hope it will somehow work.

3. Anti-PAC activists, like POWER, trying to curtail damage by building oversight into the Plan. Supervisor Mirkarimi has directed SFRA Director Marcia Rosen to introduce an appeals process.

Bayview factionalism is illusion. There is no real conflict. Residents simply want to stay and live in peace and prosperity – not greed, just the comfort of food on the table.

Redevelopment seems behind PAC Chairman Angelo King’s complaints that April 26 public commentators were not at PAC meetings and can’t understand the Plan’s complexities.

A SFRA critic, Espanola Jackson, was on the first “PAC.” Roland Sheppard and Francisco Da Costa attended years of meetings. Dr. Ahimsa Sumchai knows the plan, chapter and verse.

Activists wonder, “Do San Francisco taxpayers know precious City Services are depleted to line Redevelopment pockets?

“Where are visible signs of the tax increment money already raised in existing Redevelopment areas?”

Media signals Redevelopment’s tool, eminent domain, is anathema. The May 1, 2006, PBS Lehrer News Hour covered protests in L.A,, San Jose and San Francisco.

Would San Francisco Supervisors want to be associated with a Supreme Court decision taking Susette Kelo’s New London home or the largest self-contained African American community just to develop a waterfront?

Carol Harvey, carolharveysf [at] yahoo.com

http://sfbayview.com/050306/cuttheheart050306.shtml