SFLC says yes to the gentrification of Hunters Point-Council Takes $500,000 From Lennar

San Francisco Labor Council says yes to the gentrification of Hunters Point-Labor Council reports taking $500,000 from Lennar
http://www.sfbayview.com/2010/san-francisco-labor-council-says-yes-to-the-gentrification-of-hunters-point/
San Francisco Labor Council says yes to the gentrification of Hunters
Point
May 21, 2010

Labor Council reports taking $500,000 from Lennar
by Roland Sheppard


Taken from the Hunters Point Shipyard fence looking south toward the
49ers stadium at Candlestick, the green field of the Shipyards
notorious Parcel E looks clean and healthy in the spring sunshine. Yet
that green grass tops a cap covering one of the most toxic landfills
in the country, full of toxins and radioactive waste, reeking of
explosive poison methane gas that burst into multi-colored flames back
in 2000 and continued burning underground for months. The Labor
Council agrees with Lennar about developing that area as a park or a
stadium. The community demands full cleanup prior to any development.
Photo: Francisco Da Costa
I recently received in the mail an expensive 11-by-17-inch glossy
political brochure from the San Francisco Labor Council asking people
to say Yes to Thousands of New Jobs at Hunters Point Shipyard an
EPA Superfund toxic dump site. This is the key part of the ongoing
plan and activities by the politically connected Lennar Corp., the
Democratic Party and the City and County of San Francisco to gentrify
Bayview Hunters Point, the last largely Black community in San
Francisco. In effect, the Labor Council is asking the people of San
Francisco to vote yes to gentrifying BVHP!

In exchange for betraying this poor, working class community, the
Labor Council acknowledges receiving a payment of $500,000 last year
from Lennar. According to the Labor Council Executive Board minutes
for May 4, 2009: The benefits agreement negotiated with Lennar for
the development in Hunters Point is moving forward. [Executive
Director Tim] Paulson reported we have received the first $500,000
from Lennar and chosen to put the funds in the San Francisco
Foundation since the SFLC does not yet have a 501(c)(3) fund. These
funds will go towards workforce development and job training.

As a consequence, of selling out these workers, the San Francisco
Labor Council has become politically bankrupt because of its self-
serving policy of securing benefits to the workers it represents at
the expense of the entire working class. Recently, the labor
bureaucracy has also been selling out the workers they represent in
order to keep the dues base for their salaries.


San Francisco Labor Council Executive Director Tim Paulson Photo:
Luke Thomas
Ever since 1975, when city workers in San Francisco were first under
attack, the San Francisco labor movement has sided with City Hall
against Black and other communities of color. And yet many of the
radicals who sit of the Labor Council or are delegates and claim to
be against gentrification, to their shame, claim that the San
Francisco Labor Council is the left wing of the labor movement and
remain silent about this. As Martin Luther King said, In the end, we
will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our
friends.

Roland Sheppard, who can be reached atroland.sheppard [at] yahoo.com, is a
retired business representative of the San Francisco Painters Union
Local 4 and a former delegate to the San Francisco Labor Council.
Learn how this type of policy has led to the downfall of the trade
union movement, athttp://web.me.com/rolandgarret/Site/The_Fall_of_the_Trade_Union_Movement.html
.