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Bayview Marches Against Redevelopment – But Prop 90 Would Be its Worst Nightmare
One week after City Attorney Dennis Herrera disenfranchised over 33,000 San Franciscans by invalidating the Bayview referendum, over 100 Bayview residents and activists gathered at the corner of Third Street and Williams to protest, march and rally to save their neighborhood. “We’re marching because people spoke – and people have to be heard,” said Francisco DeCosta, Executive Director of Environmental Justice Advocacy, a local non-profit in the Bayview District. For decades, Bayview-Hunters Point has been neglected and left to fend for itself while crime, unemployment, pollution and police brutality run rampant. Today, the neighborhood residents want nothing more than to control their own destiny, but a massive new Redevelopment area plans to put critical land-use decisions in the hands of an unelected body. After a grassroots movement gathered the necessary signatures to challenge the Redevelopment plan and place it on the ballot, City Hall shut them out.
Exactly forty years after police shot an unarmed youth in Bayview that spawned the Hunters Point Riots, having the Referendum invalidated was a bitter pill to swallow. “It’s wrong,” complained resident Patti Franklin. "Redevelopment’s gonna come in and put in condos that we can’t afford. We can’t afford things the way they are now. But when they put the [light] rail in, they just want to get rid of us.”
As gentrification continues to be the largest concern affecting San Francisco, even a casual observer could see that Bayview is next in the minds of real estate speculators. Companies like Lennar Corporation and the San Francisco 49ers would want nothing more than to deal with an unelected Redevelopment Agency than to have to face the community. And when the Third Street Light Rail opens for business next April, a Streetcar Named Displacement will inevitably start rolling into the last affordable neighborhood in San Francisco.
Despite criticisms that the Referendum was getting help from supporters outside the neighborhood, community members clearly dominated the rally and were roughly two-thirds of its attendees. Along with Willie Ratcliffe of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, leaders who participated in the protest included District 10 candidates Marie Harrison, Espanola Jackson, and Charlie Walker, as well as grass-roots organizations like ACORN and POWER.
Read More
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=3729#more
As gentrification continues to be the largest concern affecting San Francisco, even a casual observer could see that Bayview is next in the minds of real estate speculators. Companies like Lennar Corporation and the San Francisco 49ers would want nothing more than to deal with an unelected Redevelopment Agency than to have to face the community. And when the Third Street Light Rail opens for business next April, a Streetcar Named Displacement will inevitably start rolling into the last affordable neighborhood in San Francisco.
Despite criticisms that the Referendum was getting help from supporters outside the neighborhood, community members clearly dominated the rally and were roughly two-thirds of its attendees. Along with Willie Ratcliffe of the San Francisco Bay View newspaper, leaders who participated in the protest included District 10 candidates Marie Harrison, Espanola Jackson, and Charlie Walker, as well as grass-roots organizations like ACORN and POWER.
Read More
http://www.beyondchron.org/news/index.php?itemid=3729#more
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