S.F. City and County Prohibits Immigrants from Organizing in their Own Community

PERMITS DENIED FOR 9/16 AMNESTY FOR ALL RALLY!
GROUP TO PICKET POLICE STATION INSTEAD!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

People United For a General and Unconditional Amnesty
Barrio Unido Por una Amnistia General e Incondicional
474 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
Contact Persons:
Cristina Gutierrez: 415-431-9925
Bonnie Weinstein: 415-824-8730

PERMITS DENIED FOR RALLY FOR GENERAL
AND UNCONDITIONAL AMNESTY FOR ALL!
SATURDAY, 9/16-1:00 P.M.
MISSION AND 24TH STREET, S.F.
415-431-9925

PERMITS WERE DENIED SEPTEMBER 14, JUST TWO DAYS
BEFORE OUR EVENT THAT HAS BEEN PLANNED
SINCE MAY 10TH, THE DATE WE FIRST APPLIED
FOR PERMITS FOR THIS EVENT!

At a meeting that same evening parents, teachers and friends
of People United for General and Unconditional
Amnesty for All voted to go to 24th and Mission Streets
on Saturday, at 1:00 p.m., at the time the rally
was to begin, with signs and a bullhorn, and hand out flyers
and announce to people who may show up expecting the rally,
that the permits for this rally were unconstitutionally denied.
We will then march on the sidewalk to the Mission Police
Station on 17th and Valencia Streets and picket the
Police Station that recommended the denial of our
permits based upon lies they told to the Interdepartmental
Staff Committee on Traffic and Transportation (ISCOTT)
who issue such permits.

THEY SAID:

--that major arteries of The Mission would have to be disrupted
for three hours. THAT IS NOT TRUE!: only the bus going up 24th Street
would have to be re-routed only around one block for the two
hours of the rally.

--that our group lied about our estimation of the number of
people that would turn out for a demonstration we called
April 10, 2006. THAT IS NOT TRUE! We can't see the future,
and, the outpouring of protest during April and May of this year
was spontaneous. No one could have or did predict it!

--that to prove of our dishonestly, the representative from the
Mission Police Department said that we set up a sixty-foot,
flatbed truck with giant speakers across Mission Street on April 10th.
THAT IS NOT TRUE: We had half of a 100-watt, battery operated,
portable speaker held up by two men who helped to balance
it on a broomstick, and we stood on a rickety, old wooden chair.
We came totally unprepared for the number of people who turned out.

The following is a detailed report:

September 16th, 2006 Amnesty for All Rally Permit Denied

A Report by Bonnie Weinstein

September 14, 2006 Interdepartmental Staff Committee
on Traffic and Transportation (ISCOTT) Hearing denied a Permit for
Rally Saturday, September 16, 2006, on 24th Street between Mission
and Bartlett Streets between 1:00 p.m. and 3:00 p.m. sponsored by
People United for General and Unconditional Amnesty for All!

I have just come from the ISCOTT hearing where, with the help and
assistance of the ACLU--who agreed with the S. F. Police department
that, although we had the right to free speech, the Police and this
committee had the right to determine where and when we can
exercise it--we were denied a permit to hold a rally in the Mission
on September 16th, in celebration and solidarity with Mexican and
Latin American Independence Day and for general and unconditional
amnesty for all immigrants.

Further, the permits were denied based on blatant and outright lies
told by the Mission Police Department representative to the ISCOTT
committee. First, that we lied to them about our estimation of the
number of people who would turn out for a demonstration we
sponsored on April 10th, 2006 in order to avoid the permit process
and, second, that we are lying now about our estimate of the number
that may turn out on September 16th. Of course, since this hearing
was part of this permit process they could not accuse us of trying
to avoid it this time.

To understand what is going on a little background information is
necessary.

Parents and teachers from the Compañeros Del Barrio Children's
Center in the heart of the Mission District organized themselves into
a group to fight for general amnesty for all immigrants. Our first action
was to be a procession, called by the 40 families who came together
to form this group-around 90 people all-together from the children's
center and other friends, such as myself who have committed themselves
to help immigrants in their struggle-to plan a procession April 10th
at 5:00 p.m. from 16th and Mission Street to 24th and Mission Street.
It was organized to be a procession of the 40 families with children
(90 or so people) up Mission Street for a small rally at 24th Street.
Having no resources or funding, we set our first goals very small.
A successful procession of families up Mission Street would be
a good beginning.

In-between the time our group called for the April 10th demonstration
several weeks earlier, and the day of the march, there occurred a giant
upsurge in the Immigrant Rights movement. Literally millions of people
spontaneously demonstrated in the streets across the country during
those weeks in April and May-a half-a-million in Chicago and over
a million in Los Angeles just to name two.

We had no way to estimate how many people would turn out April 10
to our little procession--even though we sent out announcements
and distributed flyers in the days before the action. On April 10th
the Children's center proceeded to 16th and Mission Street-children
and parents with candles and handmade signs and banners-to the
BART Plaza, with nothing more than bullhorns-obviously unprepared
for thousands of people. I was waiting at 24th and Mission Street with
our little portable speaker that I brought myself in expectation for
the procession to arrive up the sidewalk to our rallying point on 24th
and Mission. We didn't have a permit for this speaker so we were
prepared not to use it if the police told us not to.

To my wonder, I saw thousands stretched clear across Mission Street
from sidewalk to sidewalk. I was amazed when they finally came into
view, which took quite some time! The bullhorn we had would have
been useless and even our little speaker was ineffectual in reaching
the numbers of people who showed up. Obviously we had not planned
on this number of people turning out!

At the hearing today, the officer representing the Mission Police
Department stated that we "deceived them" about the numbers that
were expected April 10th. Further, as proof of his claim, he told the
committee hearing that we had a "60-foot flatbed truck with giant
speakers" that we had to have arranged for ahead of time and
therefore, we, indeed, did expect a large turnout April 10th and
we lied to him about it.

But, as a matter of fact, we had no flatbed truck April 10th. We only
had that half of a 100-watt, battery operated, portable speaker that
I brought--barely louder than a bullhorn--and an old wooden chair
to stand on. We had a priest and six parents scheduled to speak but
politicians miraculously appeared and asked to address the crowd
that turned out in the thousands.

The A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition, active members of the community, seeing
that we were, in fact, totally unprepared for such a gathering dashed
off to their office a few blocks away and came back with around nine
or ten volunteer monitors and extra monitor-vests to help aid the
orderliness of the rally. We welcomed their help, as did the police
at the time.

We appointed monitors that cooperated with the police in all they
asked of us at the time. The police did not ask us not to use the
speaker. Two men held the speaker up for the length of the rally
by balancing it on a broomstick. It ran out of juice toward the end
of the rally and we ended the rally with the use of our bullhorn.

All of this evidence points to the truth of the matter-we were totally
unprepared for the turnout-very pleasantly surprised and inspired
as were with the turnout and the politicians that clambered to
speak-but certainly, we were totally unprepared because it was
unexpected. And that's the truth!

Inconsistent rights

We called another rally on May 1, 2006 at 5:00 p.m. and secured
a sound permit from the Entertainment Commission. We were
directed to cooperate with the Northern Police Station about the
street-closure and the specifics for the rally. We planned to and
did rent a flatbed truck that day and a 2000-watt speaker system
all of which was outlined in our sound permit application. The
Northern Police Station felt that it was our free-speech right to
have the street closure and did not require us to apply for the
ISCOTT permit through Department of Parking and Traffic (DPT).

The officers from Northern Police Station were waiting for our
truck May 1st when we arrived at McAllister and Golden Gate at
5:00 p.m. and quickly and efficiently closed the street off to traffic.
In fact, both the police of the Northern Police Station and our
volunteer monitors (again, the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition and
volunteers from those present at the rally recruited on the
spot) worked as a team in complete cooperation with each
other. The rally went off smoothly, within the time limits of
our permit and without incident.

After applying for a sound permit through the Entertainment
Commission for September 16th, we were directed to the Mission
Police Station to coordinate with them. When I called the station
for the first time we were immediately met with hostility. We were
told that since we had deceived them about the April 10th rally
that we had to go through the DPT permit procedure and, further,
that they would recommend to the ISCOTT hearing that our permit
for a street closure in the Mission be denied. When I asked Captain
Goldberg whether the commission ever went against the police
department recommendation he said, "No."

In preparation for September 16th, after a few weeks of negotiations
in which every configuration or street we requested was turned
down by Captain Goldberg, he sent us a letter. He put his
accusations in writing and threatened us with criminal charges
if we underestimated the number we expected to turn out
September 16th and insisted that we go through DPT.

We were in a predicament. We are not clairvoyant and have no
idea how many people may or may not turn out on Sept. 16th.
In my search for some location that the police department would
approve of, I called Sandy Lee of the Recreation and Parks Department
about a recommendation for a suitable park location in The Mission
for a crowd the police estimated, for April 10th, to be 7,000 people-
an estimate we were warned not to go under. Even Dolores Park has
a cap of 5,000 although many demonstrations in that park had many
more than that in attendance, technically, we were told we could not
apply for that park if our estimate was above 5,000 people.

And, we did not want to have a demonstration at Dolores Park anyway.
That park really is on the outskirts of the Mission. We wanted to have
a venue in the community most affected by immigration issues. Our
reasoning was that many undocumented workers do not feel secure
coming to a rally on the outskirts of their community-many believe
that it could expose them to persecution or deportation if they were
seen to consciously go to such a demonstration. Having a rally in
the community itself, where they already are, there is much less
of perceived risk of being singled out as an "agitator" or an "illegal
alien."

We decided to go through the DPT process after all, in the hopes
that we could come to some kind of compromise at the hearing itself.
We drastically scaled down our request for space. We secured toilet
facilities and tried to comply with all the requirements of the
ISCOTT 17-page application, in addition to paying all the permit
application fees totaling over $700.00. We also scaled back on our
speaker system deciding not to rent a truck or powerful speakers
such as we had May 1st and use the same small system we used
April 10th. (Part of the reason for this is that, as an immigrant
group, we have no more money.)

At the hearing this morning I stated that our estimation of the
number of people that would actually come out on Sept. 16th
was far fewer than the numbers that did turn out either April 10th
or May 1st. I stated to the committee that the numbers at that time
were spurred on by that huge outpouring "of the moment" and that
we are not in that same situation now. In fact, we went through
the process for May 1st because we did, indeed, expect larger
crowds that evening-especially since another immigrant rights
rally held during the day on May 1 just a block away would be
letting out at about the same time as our rally began and our
rally had been announced to those people in attendance at the
earlier event.

We repeated this identical process for the Sept. 16th rally
because we wanted to abide by all the requirements necessary
to have a legal and peaceful rally. This morning I stated that we
did not expect anywhere near those numbers-perhaps one or
two hundred people at the most--and we don't even know if
we will need a street closure for this rally.

Then the officer representing the Mission Police Station, again,
stated we were being deceitful, and that thousands could turn
out! Then, within the same breath, he stated that we could have
held the rally at Justin Herman Plaza or at Horace Mann Middle
School. I stated that Justin Herman Plaza, certainly, can't be
considered "The Mission" and that, by the Police Department's
own admonition, we couldn't have estimated our crowd small
enough to even get use of Horace Mann Middle School or Delores
Park or any park or plaza in the area, and, that in any case, the
school would have cost several hundred dollars more than the
$700.00 we have already paid and, would have taken even
longer to apply for.

Our permit was denied without a single dissenting voice or
vote from the ISCOTT committee.

I regret also to say that we had no legal support at the hearing
what so ever and that was extremely disappointing since the
police did blatantly lie to the committee and now there is only
me as a witness to it.


TEXT OF FLYER TO BE DISTRIBUTED ON SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2006

POLICE DENY PERMITS TO THE IMMIGRANTS OF THE PEOPLE
UNITED PREVENTING US FROM ORGANIZING IN OUR OWN
NEIGHBORHOOD IN ORDER TO DEMAND UNCONDITIONAL
AND GENERAL AMNESTY

The People United has been engaged in the application process
since May 10th in order to celebrate our national holidays and
find a real solution to our problems as immigrants and specifically
or undocumented immigrants. The police have completely blocked
all of the attempts we have made in having an assembly in our
own neighborhood. There has been no possible negotiation, and
furthermore the police had lied at the public hearing in order
to deny us our permits.

WHY?

Because The People United is the only organization in San Francisco
led by immigrants! Not by the sons of immigrants. Not by any
democratic nor republican parties. Not by any so called left
organizations or parties who claim they want to save us but
won't listen to our demands. Not by organizations that receive
governmental monies or who receive salaries in order to
supposedly help us immigrants get papers. Not by democratic
or republican parties who see us as their future votes.

NO

We are a group of immigrants who demand a general and
unconditional amnesty for all, we are not talking about using
our people to go vote and elect people who never fulfill
their promises.

We denounce our governments of Mexico, Guatemala,
Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru, etc., for not providing jobs in
our countries and forcing us to leave them.

We denounce the government of the United States for being
an accomplice with the government of our countries. They
work together to bring us here as a cheap source of labor
and many times we are forced to become scabs.

We denounce the government of the United States for planning
disenfranchisement and dehumanization keeping us as an
army of unemployed with no rights to health, education,
or dignity.

We denounce all the political parties and organizations that
look at us as objects in order to achieve their political and
economic needs and they deny us the right to organize
ourselves and represent our own struggle.

We denounce the police for the constant abuse of our people
of which the negation of this permit of this assembly is just
one more.

Immigrant brothers and sisters, unite in the struggle for
our rights and the general and unconditional amnesty
for all!!!!

MEETING

Date: Thursday, September 21st

Place: 474 Valencia St.

Time: 7pm