Rally at SF City Hall, Bayview-Hunters Point Calls for Mass Mobilization Over Shipyard

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 5, 2026

CALL TO ACTION

Bayview-Hunters Point Community Calls for Mass Mobilization at San Francisco Hall Over Radioactive Contamination, Environmental Racism, and the Future Hunters Point

Issued by the Marie Harrison Community Foundation and Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice

San Francisco stands at a moral crossroads.

For decades, the people of Bayview-Hunters Point have lived in the shadow of one of the most contaminated former military sites in the United States: the Hunters Point Naval Shipyard Superfund Site. Generations of residents have been forced to live, work, raise children, and struggle for survival amid radioactive and toxic contamination associated with the Shipyard, industrial facilities, diesel corridors, hazardous waste sites, and cumulative environmental exposure.

These dangers are not confined to the past.

Recent discoveries of additional radiological materials at Hunters Point, combined with longstanding concerns about cleanup fraud, delayed disclosures, unresolved contamination, and aggressive redevelopment pressure, have intensified community demands for truth, accountability, and justice. For Bayview-Hunters Point residents, this crisis is not about one isolated incident. It is about the cumulative burden of decades of exposure to environmental hazards, documented disparities in asthma and respiratory illness, adverse birth outcomes, economic hardship, and the repeated devaluing of Black, Brown, low-income, and working-class lives in District 10.

The Marie Harrison Community Foundation and Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice are calling on concerned residents, public health advocates, scientists, labor leaders, students, faith communities, environmental organizations, civil rights groups, and community allies across San Francisco and beyond to stand with Bayview-Hunters Point in a united public demonstration for environmental justice.

RALLY DETAILS
Wednesday, June 24, 2026
12:00 noon
Steps of San Francisco City Hall

This rally will bring together community residents and allies from across the Bay Area and California to demand that public health, environmental justice, and human dignity come before development interests and convenience.

OUR DEMANDS

1. Health Reparations for Impacted Residents

Residents who have lived, worked, gone to school, and raised families in the shadow of contamination deserve recognition, resources, and meaningful remedies for the health, emotional, and economic harms inflicted over generations. Justice requires more than acknowledgment. It requires repair.

2. Independent, Community-Supervised Retesting of the Entire Shipyard and Impacted Areas

The Hunters Point Naval Shipyard and adjacent impacted areas must undergo comprehensive retesting under full community supervision. This process must include independent technical review, split-sample testing, transparent public reporting, and unrestricted oversight by trusted community representatives.

3. Public Funding for Independent Community Experts With Full Site Access

The City, State, and federal government must provide funding so community organizations can hire independent technical experts of their own choosing. Those experts must be granted full and unrestricted access to the Superfund site, the right to review records, the ability to obtain split samples, and the authority to collect independent samples. The community must not be forced to rely solely on agencies or contractors whose credibility has already been called into question.

4. Cleanup to the Highest Protective Standards for Residential Safety

The community demands cleanup standards that truly protect present and future generations, including removal of contamination wherever technically feasible. Simply capping contaminated areas, especially near the shoreline, is unacceptable given serious concerns about sea-level rise, groundwater intrusion, erosion, and climate-related risks.

5. No Transfer or Development of Contaminated Land

The City and County of San Francisco must reject the transfer, approval, or development of any parcel from the Shipyard unless it can be independently verified as safe and free from contamination that could threaten public health. Hazardous materials that cannot be safely treated onsite must be removed and disposed of at properly permitted facilities.

6. Long-Term Health Monitoring and Community Investment

The people of Bayview-Hunters Point deserve comprehensive long-term health monitoring, expanded healthcare access, environmental health research, pollution prevention investments, workforce development, and permanent community-led oversight mechanisms to ensure that future generations are never again placed in harm's way.

This is not a call against development.
This is a call for truth.
This is a call for science.
This is a call for transparency.
And above all, this is a call for environmental justice.

The people of Bayview-Hunters Point have spent generations fighting to be treated as if their lives matter as much as the lives of residents in every other neighborhood in San Francisco. What is happening at Hunters Point is not simply a neighborhood issue. It is a test of whether San Francisco is willing to confront environmental racism when doing so is politically difficult.

Environmental justice is not just a Bayview issue. It is a San Francisco issue. It is a California issue. It is a human issue.

The time for silence has passed. The time for accountability has arrived.

We urge environmental organizations, climate justice advocates, healthcare professionals, labor unions, tenant groups, faith leaders, neighborhood organizations, students, civil rights organizations, and concerned residents throughout the Bay Area and beyond to mobilize, attend, endorse, and help spread the word.

Join us on Wednesday, June 24, 2026, at 12 noon on the steps of San Francisco City Hall.

For more information, coalition participation, or organizational sign-on, please contact the Marie Harrison Community Foundation and Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice.

Marie Harrison Community Foundation, a.harrison [at] sfmhcf.org, (415) 504-5107
Greenaction for Health and Environmental Justice, greenaction [at] greenaction.org, (415) 447-3904