It was standing room only, and not even much of that left, when I arrived at the memorial for community organizer and Mission District icon Eric Quezada Sept 25. “It is,” my friend Chri Cook noted, “as if the entire San Francisco left is here.”
Well, maybe not quite — but close. The auditorium at Horace Mann Middle School couldn’t hold the huge, diverse crowd that packed the downstairs and the balcony and flowed out the doors and into the halls. The speakers talked of Eric’s life — as an activist, a soccer player and a father — but also, in a dramatic way, about the part of the Mission, the part that doesn’t live off tapas and $12 martinis on Valencia Street, a community that fought displacement in the dot-com era, that fights evictions and condo conversions and high-end housing developments every day, that supports artists and musicians and immigrants and working-class people … Eric Quezada’s Mission. Long may it live.
The family needs help with medical expenses — and also to help with the education of Eric’s daughter, Ixchel. Contributions can be made to the Ixchel Quezada education fund or mailed to 470 Columbus Ave., Suite 211, San Francisco, 94133. Checks should be made payable to Eric Quezada Memorial Fund. A fundraiser is being held at Jane Morrison’s home at 44 Woodland Ave. on Oct. 16 between 3 and 5 p.m.