SF Bay View: Stop the poison, heal the people

Tuesday, about 150 Bayview Hunters Point residents packed the San Francisco Board of Supervisors’ palatial chambers, comprising at least 90 percent of the audience, and read ‘em the riot act. At public comment time, less than an hour into the meeting, they took over, testifying more powerfully than anytime in memory.

This revolution WAS televised. Watch the whole historic show online at SFGTV, http://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=10, and click on the June 5 meeting. For those who don’t have easy access to the internet and to entice the rest of you to watch, let me give you a taste of the testimony.

Fearless warrior Espanola Jackson, a resident of Bayview Hunters Point since 1948 and of the City since 1943, led off. Speaking directly to Board President Aaron Peskin, because “you control everything,” she said firmly: “I’m asking that you call a public forum with the EPA, the Navy, the Department of Toxic Substance Control, the San Francisco Health Department, because, Mr. President, my community has suffered long enough.”

Minister Christopher Muhammad of the Nation of Islam began quietly: “I represent a community that has been historically abused, misrepresented, underrepresented and sometimes non-represented. My concern is that this community has been the victim of one of the most blatant cases of environmental racism on record.

“Environmental racism is defined as racial discrimination and race-based differential enforcement of environmental rules and regulations, the intentional or unintentional targeting of minority communities for the siting of polluting industries.

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