Continuing her deceptive presidential campaign as a candidate representing the interests of the people of the U.S., Hillary Clinton came to the Bay Area last week to solicit contributions from tech company CEOs and other rich elites who could afford her time.
While in San Francisco, Clinton met with Mayor Ed Lee to ask him about “all the challenges of being a vibrant city,” and what solutions the city had for dealing with housing and homelessness.
Talking to the average San Franciscan you see on the city’s streets, it becomes apparent that some might have the luxury of living in a “vibrant” city, but that luxury comes at the expense of the poor and working people who remain in a constant struggle to stay in their homes.
Liberation News spoke with a homeless resident named Miriam while she waited in vain outside of a Salvation Army center in the Mission District for some food and water. She revealed that: “The rapid changes in the community are so obvious to the people that grew up here and see the Mission on a daily basis. The people are disappearing, the people you see every day. It’s harder to live in the city where they’re pushing out Latinos … they have no sympathy whatsoever for people that are low-income or homeless.”
Confirming these gentrification claims are the findings of recent census data that show the white population of the Mission has exceeded that of Latinos, whose culture defines the district. Many of the Latinos who have lived in the district for decades came to the Mission fleeing the poverty and violence imposed on their countries by policies of U.S. imperialism, only to now face eviction and racist police terror in a city dominated by the rich.
Occupation of City Hall
This takeover of the city by new money in the wake of the tech-boom has not come without mass resistance from workers and the oppressed. On Friday, May 8, hundreds of people, in solidarity with community groups and coalitions from the Mission and other neighborhoods facing rapid gentrification, occupied City Hall for several hours to declare a “state of emergency” in the city’s eviction epidemic.
As protesters made their way into the building, Erin McElroy, an organizer with Eviction-Free San Francisco, Our Mission No Evictions, and the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project, told Liberation News: The problem lies in “a political economy that involves speculators, development, politicians, and of course the tech-money that’s fueling the cycle. People are being kicked out of their homes, there’s no affordable housing for them in the city … and the Mission is one of the ground zero’s of this crisis.”
Oscar Grande (pictured above) of the Plaza 16 Coalition rallied the crowd from the steps inside to kick-off the occupation, proclaiming, “This is our house. It’s been bought and paid for by our blood, our sweat, our tears, our labor … we have to take over!”
Banners with slogans of “Affordable Housing Now” and “Stop the Evictions” were hung over the balconies and immediately removed by the police, amidst boos from protesters. Archbishop Richardson, representing the Black Lives Matter movement, addressed the role of the police in the gentrification process, saying: “We, from the Fillmore, from the Bayview, we told you years ago that there was a scheme to get rid of Black, Brown, poor, and oppressed people of this city. … This is being exaggerated by the police department. Policing grew out of slave chasing in this country, to go catch runaway slaves and protect the property of the masters. … We’re here to go back into our communities to organize, and then mobilize against the enemy of the people. I don’t care if you’re a Catholic, a Jew, a Muslim, or a Hindu, our religion is revolution.”
After the community speak-out, Mayor Lee became the target of the demonstration. Organizers mobilized the crowd in a march past the public offices of city officials while chanting, “No monsters in the Mission, stop the evictions!” in reference to looming luxury-priced development, including a massive project planned for the community plaza at 16th and Mission streets, where monthly rents for apartments would range from $3,500 to $5,000. Protesters then proceeded to knock on the door of the mayor’s office and deliver their list of demands, hoping he might actually come out to address the people of the city that he’s supposed to represent, but to no avail.
Demands of the protest that organizers hope will be met in the aftermath of the City Hall occupation include: at least a year-long moratorium of evictions and a two-year halt on “market-rate development,” investigations into “the cluster of fires” in the Mission that have forced a number of poor and working residents and small-business owners out of the city, while also guaranteeing the right of return to these residents, and allocating city resources and funds for affordable housing and providing a home to “every homeless resident of the Mission.”
These demands of providing adequate and affordable housing for all city residents are easily achievable in our society that holds vast amounts of wealth and highly advanced technology, yet what stands in the way of the needs of the people is the real monster: capitalist exploitation. In a profit-driven economy, landlords hold power over renters to hike prices and benefit off redevelopment after fires ravage the homes of low-income residents, while giant banks are constantly seizing people’s homes when they can’t afford to pay up. Profiting off housing is criminal. Only when the people take control of the state from the capitalist ruling class to build a socialist economy in which landlordism is illegal, can the issues of housing and homelessness be truly resolved.
