The Eastern San Francisco Strategy

By Lucrecia Bermudez

While District Elections make all the sense in the world to allow enhanced democratic participation of candidates and residents and force elected officials to focus on neighborhood needs, it is also important for elected officials not to lose sight of citywide issues, particularly class issues that cut across District boundaries.

I'm running for Supervisor for District 9 (Mission District, Bernal Heights, Portola and St. Mary), but the issues affecting working families and people of color in these neighborhoods are connected to similar working class issues in Districts 6, 10 and 11. That is why I'm running on an Eastern San Francisco strategy:

Here are just a few of the common issues we have:

• Environmental Racism - When asked, many people would answer that the most flagrant instances of environmental racism occur in District 10, more specifically in and around Bayview Hunters Point.

It is also true that the communities most affected by that environmental racism are African Americans, Latinos and Asians living in or around BVHP. But all the communities in Districts 6, 9 and 11 are the recipients of the environmental degradation imposed upon BVHP. The effects are felt throughout the entire City, but particularly in those surrounding Districts.

• Working Class Issues - The need for a massive infusion of new jobs, training, and economic development of our neighborhoods, the many empty storefronts and lack of adequate services are common to Districts 6, 9, 10 and 11. The need for solutions on all these matters is of an emergency nature in all these Districts. New businesses should hire local residents; minimum wage legislation should be enforced and new jobs at union wages should be created.

• Gentrification - Whether the issue is high rents, defense of tenant rights, or affordable and low income housing, all these Districts need improvement in these areas. The attempts to displace communities of color and working families from these Districts is a common feature, as are the attempts to Walmartisize businesses to the detriment of mom and pop operations.

• Political Representation for Immigrants - Over 35% of District 9 residents are non-citizens. They pay taxes, run businesses, serve the communities with their work and send children to our schools but do not have political representation and cannot vote. Large numbers of disenfranchized immigrants also live in Districts 6, 10 and 11. They will be massively supporting the non-citizens right to vote for School Board in November.

Here are the notes that I used in a recent presentation I made on the Eastern San Francisco strategy at a Progressive Left Movement conference:

1. Eastern San Francisco Strategy (Districts 9,10,11 and parts of District 6)

a. To see and work toward an East San Francisco strategy: Instead of seeing the problems and proposing solutions neighborhood by neighborhood, we should develop a strategy covering the interests of the BVHP/Mission/Excelsior/SOMA Districts as a whole. b. This Eastern strategy should include the formation of a political block of these neighborhoods, activists and elected officials and offer a plan to confront the problems creatively and together.

c. That strategy must include:

• Defense of rent control and its extension to new and future buildings.
• Support for the anti-demolition initiative, as it will affect rental stock in all three Districts.
• Creation of a Municipal bank to help anchor existing small businesses by extending cheap credit to help them own their present commercial spaces and avoid displacement.
• Opposition to displacement of our infrastructure; i.e. General Hospital outside our District.
• Intensive work to promote commercial rent control and reform of Prop 13 at the state level.
• Work towards the right to vote for non-citizens in local elections as that will bring about a powerful voice of an additional community that is affected by re-development in BVHP. That voice is vital for community ownership of the neighborhoods in the BVHP, Mission and Excelsior Districts.
• Creation of democratic neighborhood councils with the power to decide issues of economic development, re-development, zoning and services.
• Working for adoption of the concept of Tax Devolution.
• Regulation of new businesses: They must hire locals; work with the communities on issues ranging from parking to environmental impact to neighborhood character preservation; they should invest in social programs benefiting existing local communities, etc
• Re-development to be put under the control of the BOS
• Proportional investment in education and family and children services according to the number of children in our Districts.
• Working class rule in working class Districts