Bayview Hunters Point: The city keeps asking the question but won’t hear the answer

They – the Mayor’s Office of Children and Their Families, Mayor’s Office of Economic Development, Department of Public Health, SFPD and even the Human Rights Commission – along with developers and big money folks knew then what we learned later: San Francisco is only 49 miles square and has been overly developed in all but – yes, you’re right – Bay View Hunters Point, the last horizon. This is the only place left to do any economic development at all.

If you stop and think about the last four weeks of meetings pulled together by this mayor’s team of folks, you’ll ask with Mrs. Sheila Carter, “How many times and how many ways do we say the same thing over and over and over again?”

To my knowledge, nothing has changed.

I must admit, along with many others, how ironic it is that here we are, once again, meeting with the city and all its officials to say what we want. Now, looking back, wouldn’t it be more kind if this mayor would simply take a strong hard look at the past, correct the mistakes and make it obvious to us that nothing has changed in spite of the fact that we all sat in meeting after meeting.

We formed the PAC, stayed strong with the Restoration Advisory Board, worked diligently with the Community Advisory Committee, stuck it out with ROSES and put mothers in touch with Child Protective Services to assist in retrieving their children who were snatched – some with just cause and many more without – challenged the California Independent Systems Operator to take away PG&E’s contract, intervened on behalf of the community with the Public Utilities Commission and went after the EPA and Air District on non-enforcement violations.

We still want an economically sane and environmentally safe community in which to live, work, play and pray. We want our young folks off the corners and back in school. We want to stop the competition between young fathers and sons for the same jobs with neither receiving. We need to reinstate fathers as the co-heads of their households – women should not be forced to take all rolls: head of household, breadwinner, caregiver and what ever comes in between.

Close the gap between fathers and mothers, so that together or apart, both can take on equal responsibility for the upbringing of their children. This means you, Mr. Welfare – you should not be making these decisions about families. To my knowledge, this only happens in poor communities.

We want an end to police brutality – no more incidents like the one on Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday in 2002 or shooting one of those same youngsters in the back just last month. If the police who patrol Bayview Hunters Point are not willing to become part of our community, then they should not be in our community.

And we want our schools to understand that sending a child home, instead of insisting that that child stay and do the work for the day, accomplishes nothing. Two easy fixes: Reinstate truant officers and after-school detention. This opens the door to two additional jobs and keeps kids off the street during critical hours.

Now if nothing has changed, that’s obvious to the many strangers who come into our community and proceed to tell us what we need. Three recent economic tragedies come to my mind:

1) Martin Luther King Jr. Park and Pool that should have been built by community folks in desperate need of those jobs. Think back to the many meetings when our young folks surrounded the meeting hall in their white hard hats, damn near begging for the jobs, running around the park every morning, doing push-ups, then retreating to a classroom to learn work better learned on the job. Still they did not get these jobs.

2) Pac Bell Park, jobs that should have gone to struggling community folks. I am told even journeymen who reported to the Neighborhood House with tools in hand still did not get the jobs.

3) Third Street light rail. This community was promised that it would not be built unless Bayview Hunters Point community folks built it. Now I know, with this job, they will say that they hired from the community. But here’s the real deal. Community folks shut down the job, forcing a semblance of compliance. What good does it do to hire folks, then lay them off after a month or two of work? To add insult to injury, they weren’t even paid union wages.

I tell you all this again only to make you think back and remember how many times the city has asked the right questions but refused to hear the answer. This question is for Mayor Gavin Newsom: “Will you hear the answers and act upon them?”

Some of these are quick and easy fixes; some of these are low down and dirty fixes. Most of them simply take the political will. We already know you have the ability, because we know the buck stops at the top.

For the community, I guess the best way to say this is if you want to know the answer, then you gotta ask the question. Don’t stop ‘til you get to the top. So Gavin, no more basketball, no more toys and movies for the babies. We want a clean and safe environment. We want polluters dealt with from the top down, not from the bottom up.

We want true economic development that would allow even the least of us to secure and maintain safe and affordable housing with gainful employment that would assist in keeping our children in school and off the corners.

We want our children educated with the good old fashioned ABCs and 123s, reading, writing and arithmetic. We want teachers who want to be in our community schools and not afraid to say no when they mean no. We want principals who will stop looking for excuses to send our children home, understanding as we do that a mind is a terrible thing to waste.

We want banks that will commit to community reinvestment; we don’t feel we should have to go to the sharks to get a loan for our small businesses. Like most other parts of town, we don’t want big box stores invading our communities and replacing our small community businesses. We need community policing with officers who have a real stake in keeping us successful.

We understand that we are a community of many problems, drugs being among the biggest. We want services, not jails, with no reprisals against those people who successfully complete one or more of our community drug programs. We want social services to protect our children, not remove them from their families and communities who love them.

Mr. Mayor, we want what every community wants: The great American Dream, to live life, pursue economic security and to love our neighbors as God commanded. It goes without saying, if you want to be successful in the Black community, this is the time to answer the question.

Many of us stand ready, willing and able to assist you in this from the inside, not the out, so please don’t send us any strangers. You know some of the quick and easy solutions already. These should take place immediately. And let’s work on the long term solutions together.

Email Marie at marie [at] greenaction.org.

http://www.sfbayview.com/101905/askingquestions101905.shtml