‘We shall not be moved!’

“The plan they have for us is war. It’s the same thing they are doing in Darfur and in Palestine. They want our land, push us out, and that’s their plan. I don’t care how many other lies that they come up with, check their past and see what they are doing right now,” Willie Ratcliff, Bayview Hunters Point resident and publisher of the Bay View newspaper, called out to the crowd gathered in the cold rain Saturday morning outside the Whitney Young Child Development Center on Hunters Point Hill just prior to a town hall meeting called by Mayor Gavin Newsom.
As at least 1,000 people poured in, residents speaking at the press conference and rally sponsored by POOR magazine and the Bay View disregarded the mayor’s agenda, set their own agenda for the meeting and called for an end to government sanctioned evictions promoted by the mayor under the banner – under the guise – of “redevelopment.” In San Francisco, that dreaded word conjures up memories of acres of devastation after Redevelopment Agency bulldozers razed over 200 Black-owned businesses and the homes of more than 5,000 Black families in the Fillmore, a world renowned tourist attraction known as “Harlem of the West.”
“The Black Caucus of California reported San Francisco is the most economically racist city in the state of California,” Willie told the crowd as he concluded his powerful speech with findings from a new study by the California Legislative Black Caucus on “The State of Black California.”
Challenging the mayor’s habit of allowing only speakers and questions that are friendly to him, Tiny from POOR Magazine declared that the format of his town hall meeting “does not represent the Bayview community. We are here to make sure that community voices get heard.”
She denounced the mayor’s most recent attack on Bayview Hunters Point, a proposal to bulldoze the Alice Griffith public housing development, also known as Double Rock, to entice the 49ers to stay in San Francisco. Suspecting the plan, which no one bothered to notify residents about, would actually replace their homes with a parking lot for football fans’ tailgating parties or more of Lennar’s upscale highrise housing to help finance the 49er’s new stadium, residents were skeptical of assurances they would not be displaced from Alice Griffith, which was built in 1962 to house the families of Hunters Point Naval Shipyard workers, then transferred to HUD and the Housing Authority in 1974.
Tiny recalled past broken promises. “Between Lennar Corp., the John Stewart Co., HUD’s HOPE IV, the City’s Housing Authority, Redevelopment and the Mayor,” she said, “there won’t be any Black or poor folks left in San Francisco. These companies and their City counterparts have systematically destroyed many of the public housing projects with the promise of one unit housing replacement for one unit demolished. The problem with that lie is it never happens.”
Explaining the sign at the rally that read, “Remember Valencia Gardens,” Tiny was adamant that people not forget the history and herstories of destruction and forced dispersal from the Fillmore – causing the Fill-no-more diaspora, including many now living in Bayview Hunters Point – the Mission and, most recently, Valencia Gardens public housing, where almost no one who lived there before the redevelopment was given housing in the new buildings.
More than 700 residents of Alice Griffith face eviction, many of whom have lived there a long time. Like the other 35,000 people of Bayview Hunters Point, they are furious that the mayor would even consider sacrificing their homes for huge corporations that cater to the rich like the 49ers and Lennar, the company named “Master Developer” over the Shipyard and Candlestick Point, which lie on either side of Alice Griffith. Lennar homes currently for sale in the Bay Area start at above $650,000.
Instead of Florida-based Lennar, one of the nation’s largest home builders and one of those most often sued by home buyers for a long list of deficiencies and atrocities, the community is demanding that any new development or home rebuilding be done by neighborhood-based developers who have proven expertise in building affordable housing using workers from the community and who have the trust of the people.
A lawsuit filed recently to reinstate the referendum against the Bayview Hunters Point Redevelopment Plan has put the Redevelopment Agency’s takeover of the neighborhood on hold. The referendum petition, which was signed last summer by more than 33,000 San Franciscans, was certified by the director of Elections then tossed out on an unprecedented technicality by the city attorney at the request of the mayor and two members of the Board of Supervisors.
As Byron Gafford, staff writer with POOR Magazine, poet and life-long Alice Griffith resident, said: “If this deal goes through, me and my family will have nowhere to go. They have been trying to get rid of Black folks up here for a while.”
Referring to the lawsuit against the Redevelopment Plan, Bayview homeowner and legendary community activist Espanola Jackson reassured the crowd that displacement is not an imminent danger. “The plans are in court,” she said, and until the judge makes a decision, “there is no redevelopment for this area. I am a homeowner since 1968, and no way will I allow this community to be run over the way the Western Addition was.” Western Addition is the name given by the Redevelopment Agency to the Fillmore district in an effort to erase any memory of its ethnic cleansing.
As we stood in front of the Whitney Young Center looking out over the Bay, Bakara Nutungi from the community organization Uhuru in Oakland reflected on the past: “America was founded on people stealing the land we’re standing on today, so it’s the same situation. They brought Black people from down South in the 1940s to build the ships (for World War II). That’s how Black people got to Hunters Point to begin with.
“And now that they don’t have no ships and no shipyards, they kicking Black people up out of Hunters Point, because it’s nice property, so white people can have a nice view of the Bay. It is time for the African community to stand up and fight just like we did in the ‘60s with the Black Power movement.”
“Redevelopment is a joke, a killer joke for people like me, a mother, disabled woman, being shuffled from place to place ‘cause we can’t afford the rents,” said Laure McElroy from POOR Magazine. “I don’t want to see people who can’t move, who are disabled, and the elderly displaced by these corporate takeovers. This is murder.” Laure’s words struck a chord that hung in the air.
Marie Harrison, a resident and leader in the successful fight to shut down the polluting PG&E power plant, rallied the crowd: “Together we can stand; together we can save San Francisco and stop the mass move on Alice Griffith and Bayview.” Unless we resist, she said, “San Francisco will be a city of the rich and the richer.” Since 1990, 35,000 Black people have been pushed out of San Francisco.
“Never mind that the rich are standing on our shoulders,” Marie continued. “San Francisco, built by poor folks. That shipyard, managed by poor folks. Alice Griffith, filled up with poor folks who need to have a place to live. Don’t get suckered into that dream they are passing around about becoming homeowners. If your income is $18,000 and under, there is no way in this city you will become a homeowner. People in San Francisco need to stand together and draw the line in the sand to protect San Francisco.”
Marie made clear the reality and pressure poor folks face in this city – this city, where so many people want to live; this city, where poor folks are being evicted to make room for people with bigger wallets.
Vivian Hain from POOR Magazine recounted her struggle living in poverty in the Bay Area: “I am a native San Franciscan. My family was evicted out of our community in the Mission because of gentrification; we couldn’t afford it any more. So we ended up put out to pasture, in some place with no jobs or economic security.
“What’s going on is social and economic genocide. So, Mayor Newsom, it ain’t about wine tasting across the Bay, it’s about housing our low-income families and ensuring their ability to do right by their children.”
Julian Davis from the San Francisco Organizing Project spoke, giving his perspective on the lack of dialog in Newsom’s town meetings: “Newsom’s meeting does not represent the people. It is not a model for substantive dialog. Newsom prefers pre-scripted public gatherings to genuine community dialog and civic engagement.”
Just as the rally was ending, the rain resumed. The people began to chant, “We shall not be moved,” as they turned to walk into the center. The police checked everyone for signs and made people leave their signs at the gate. The only sign they tolerated inside the gate was a poster reading, “San Francisco Police Department now hiring.”
Inside the hall, Newsom started his speech by saying, “This meeting being held at the Child Development Center is symbolic because the center is not what it should be.” The police prohibition of signs and the mayor’s intent to prohibit any questions voiced by the people is also symbolic – of the systematic silencing of certain groups of people and of certain viewpoints.
Self-expression is intrinsic to the healthy development of a child and of a community. The silencing of our opinions is symbolic of the lack of democracy in community meetings and city government. The mayor and the police can take our signs away but our voices, never. As Tiny said, “We must demand to be heard. We must ask our questions about displacement and corporate development. We shall not be moved.”
And with that conviction, she and many others stood up in Newsom’s meeting and asked such questions as “Why are you stealing our homes, our land?” Newsom did not respond. Some people present at the meeting booed the questions that interrupted some of the department heads and other officials the mayor had brought. The great majority, however, were not afraid to speak truth to power.
Other voices in opposition to the redevelopment threatening Bayview Hunters Point were members of ACORN, who stood in solidarity with fliers that read; “WE SHALL NOT BE MOVED!” Several members of People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) also attempted to be heard about the wrongs of the City’s gentrification effort. Some in the audience stood with their mouths taped shut representing the silencing of community members while their homes are taken away.
Standing outside in the cold, in front of the building where Newsom held his “town hall meeting,” we heard many powerful voices and testaments to the lies being told around redevelopment. We heard voices recounting the history of Bayview Hunters Point. As we left, I looked out over the Bay thinking, “So this is what developers want – this land, this view of the Bay. This ground where Black folks worked on the ships. The same place where in 1966 there was an uprising resisting police brutality.”
As Tiny said, “Eviction is the ultimate capitalist crime, insidious, and when it happens, and the way it happens, we disappear, the poor folks and folks of color.”
One of POOR Magazine’s responses to the ongoing displacement and evictions is to hold teach-ins in the community around de-gentrification and resistance to the lies of redevelopment. For more information, contact (415) 863-6306.
Read more about issues of poverty and race written by the people who face them daily at http://www.poormagazine.org.