Occupy San Francisco

State of the occupations

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news@sfbg.com, rebeccab@sfbg.com

 

STUDENTS TARGET THE 1 PERCENT

Another Occupy offshoot sprung up at San Francisco State University Dec. 1 when about 150 students attended a march and rally that culminated at Malcolm X Plaza, now the site of the San Francisco’s newest Occupy camp.

Students symbolically blocked off ATMs, wrapped Chase Bank machines in cellophane and plastered nearby Wells Fargo and Bank of America ATMs with “meet the one percent” flyers profiling wealthy University of California Trustee Monica Lozano and California State University Regent Bill Hauck.

The highlight of the action came when SF State President Robert Corrigan arrived on the scene. The group was using the people’s mic to read a letter addressed to Corrigan, penned by the Occupy SF State General Assembly, demanding that he write two letters. One should be directed to the school’s chancellor and CSU Board of Trustees, “urging them to repeal the 9 percent tuition fee increase” that the board passed Nov. 16, and another should go to “the presidents of every other CSU campus asking them to also contact the chancellor and Board of Trustees regarding a repeal of the 9 percent tuition fee increase.”

Corrigan listened, then participated in a frank question-and-answer session with protesters, urging them to contact Sacramento legislators. Yet he refused to write those letters or declare support for Occupy SF State.

Afterwards, the students returned to Malcolm X Plaza and erected about 15 tents, which organizers said would contain “books, food, and homework help” along with providing shelter for sleeping protesters.

 

OCCUPY LA MISIÓN

In the Mission, where city officials have been encouraging OccupySF to relocate from its current home in the Financial District, a separate new Occupy effort could be underway.

Organizer Enrique Del Valle says he and other organizers have been distributing flyers and talking to people and organizations throughout the neighborhood. “We’re getting it together to have a General Assembly,” he told us.

The effort is unrelated to the OccupySF General Assembly’s Nov. 29 decision to decline the city’s offer to utilize an abandoned lot at 1950 Mission Street, he added. Before the city made that offer, Del Valle, a community volunteer with connections with many Mission groups, says he was already working on forming a neighborhood occupation.

If Occupy SF had set up shop in the space offered by the city, “We would have worked with them,” he explained, “but set up somewhere else.”

Meanwhile, Mayor Ed Lee and OccupySF are still waiting for one another’s next moves. On the evening of Dec. 1, when San Francisco Police officers surrounded the camp in steel barricades, protesters felt another raid was underway. But they resisted and took down some barricades, causing police to suddenly back down and remove the rest.

“They’ve just been mindfucking us,” OccupySF protester Markus Destin told us. “As soon as they spend all that money breaking us down, we’ll just come back in a week and re-encamp.”

Mayoral Press Secretary Christine Falvey said Lee wasn’t aware OccupySF rejected his offer: “We haven’t heard back one way or another from the group. The offer is still out there and the group has all of the information they need from us. We are awaiting a decision. Mayor Lee has made it very clear to the group that he supports their first amendment rights and their right to assemble, but that overnight camping at Justin Herman Plaza is not an option for the long term because of the health and safety problems it creates.”

 

OCCUPY AGAINST FORECLOSURE

Community members rallied outside a foreclosed Visitacion Valley home Dec. 1 before moving their protest to the offices of the company that purchased the property.

At 11 a.m., dozens gathered in front of the residence where 75-year-old Josephine Tolbert had lived for nearly 40 years. A day earlier, Tolbert had arrived home with three young grandchildren in tow to find her locks changed. Organizers say the evicted resident needs to access the house to retrieve food and medicine.

The crowd — which included neighbors, friends, and members of Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), OccupySF, and Occupy the Hood — demanded that Tolbert be let back in. According to Bayview resident and self-proclaimed “foreclosure fighter” Vivian Richardson, “They would not let her in to get food, diapers, or her diabetes medicine.”

Tolbert had run a daycare business from her home for 20 years. One of her regular clients, a mother with two young children, arrived during the rally. She was surprised to find that Tolbert was locked out of her home and unable to care for her children that day.

“I want to get in my home so I can resume my business,” Tolbert said. “That’s my occupation there, I don’t have any other way of caring for myself.”

The group then headed to the offices of True Compass Loan Services, LLC, the new owners of Tolbert’s home. About 20 supporters gathered at the Ocean Ave office, where ACCE organizer Grace Martinez singled out True Compass owner Ashok Gujral, who owns a $2.75 million home and multiple restaurants, according to a press release from a group calling itself the Foreclosure Fighters.

“The man is worth $10 million, and he has a bunch of limited liability companies,” said Martinez. “Everyone has been shocked at how this man could do this, he knows she is a senior.”

According to Martinez, Gujral personally refused to let Tolbert into her home Nov. 30. He and others from the company “don’t want her in there because they say she’ll refuse to leave,” Martinez added. Calls to Gujral’s office were referred to attorney Jak Marques, who did not return Guardian requests for comment.

A True Compass representative informed protesters “there’s no one here to talk to you,” then swiftly shut the door. But when a few protesters went around through a side entrance and let everyone else in, the group took their protest to the hallway inside.

They remained there for almost an hour, chanting, pounding rhythmically on the walls, and flooding the office on the other side of a locked door with phone calls, demanding Tolbert be allowed to return to her home to retrieve her medicine and belongings.

Five police officers arrived almost immediately as protesters entered company offices. One explained to the protesters that if they didn’t leave, they would face arrest for trespassing. A heated but measured back-and-forth ensued, in which protesters insisted that if Tolbert was his mother, the officer would feel differently. The officer, Lieutenant C. Johnson, responded, “If it was my mother — I don’t know. I have a house for my mother. But I feel for Josephine, and for the millions of other Americans in the same situation.”

Martinez quieted groans from protesters, replying, “You’re part of the 99 percent, and we’re not going to shoot the messenger.”

Organizers conferred and decided to leave the building voluntarily. Sergeant R. Young, who was also at the scene, told the Guardian, “It’s heartbreaking to do this. Their freedom of speech is a constitutional right that we take a sworn oath to protect.”

 

THE SEEDS OF A NEW AMERICA?

Does the Occupy movement signify a new beginning for America? Is history repeating itself? Is violence inevitable? These were some of the big questions pondered by a handful of prominent Bay Area writers, thinkers, artists, and activists Dec. 1 during a panel discussion organized by Salon.com.

Dan Siegel, who most recently made headlines for resigning as Oakland Mayor Jean Quan’s legal advisor because he disagreed with her decision to order a police raid of the Occupy Oakland encampment, was a panelist. “The perspective of Mayor Quan and other mayors, besides reflecting the 1 percent, reflects a misguided paradigm,” Siegel said. “The nation’s clearly in an economic crisis that this country has not seen since the 1930s. The mayors should be on the side of the 99 percent. They ought not be the lapdogs of Wall Street.”

Renowned author Rebecca Solnit also participated in the panel discussion. Asked if she thought Occupy symbolized a new beginning, she reflected on the past. “Huge mistakes were made on the left,” in past social movements, she said. “It was supposed to be the revolution, but the women were still expected to make the coffee.” She offered that Occupy represented an evolved manifestation that had benefitted from lessons learned over the years.

“It’s a culmination of decades of refining, searching, and building coalitions,” Solnit said. “It’s the beginning in the sense that summer’s the beginning. We’re reaping the fruit of … what’s been imagined.”

It’s also provided a spark for campus-based organizing. “The Occupy movement has given a tremendous amount of wind to the sails of the student movement and had a consciousness-raising aspect,” said Matt Haney, executive director of the University of California Student Association. “Now they are prepared in a new way to join all of those other folks who are also suffering.”

A key question put to panelists was whether Occupy ought to consider running candidates for office. In response, panelist Melanie Cervantes, an artist and activist, got to the heart of the issue. “What is political power? Is it just representation?” she asked.

Cervantes pointed out that autonomous social movements in Latin America have given rise to leftist political leaders, and she spoke of the past successes of mass-based organizations. “There were things that preceded us generationally, and they worked,” she pointed out. “There’s a lot of different ways people are experienced in trying to change things.”

Panelist Peter Coyote, an actor, activist, and founder of a radical underground group called The Diggers, offered an analogy in response to the idea of Occupy running candidates for office. “If you take a healthy goldfish and throw it into polluted water, it’s gonna get sick,” he said.

Solnit framed her answer as an analogy, too. “We live in a really crummy house with roaches and a leaky roof … Occupy is saying, let’s try to build a better house,” she said. “Our demand is for a better world, isn’t that obvious? We’re building a whole new political vocabulary, a whole new sense of possibility.”

As to the question of whether violence is inevitable as the movement continues to unfold, some panelists discussed nonviolence as a protest tactic, while others focused on the violent behavior of law enforcement officers against protesters. “You don’t hear students talk about using violence,” Haney said. “It’s more like how do we deal with violence that’s being used against us?”

Siegel stressed that the protests ought to be disruptive, yet nonviolent. “The question for our society is, who has the power?” he said. “At the end of the day, we live in a nation state, and people control things. And if they continue to control things, we’re screwed.”

 

WEST COAST PORT BLOCKADE

Occupy Oakland organizers have been engaged in planning yet another shutdown of the Port of Oakland on Dec. 12, which will coincide with attempts to shut down West Coast ports in San Diego, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle, Longview, Tacoma, and Anchorage. “On December 12, the Occupy movements in different cities will … effectively shutdown the hubs of commerce, in the same fashion that Occupy Oakland shut down the Port of Oakland on November 2nd, the day of our general strike,” according to a Call to Action on WestCoastPortShutdown.org. “The message to you from Occupy Oakland in the face of police raids and continued disruptions of workers lives by the 1 percent is the following: The Occupy movement will strike back and rise again! We will blockade all of the West Coast Ports on December 12th in solidarity with longshoremen, port workers and truckers in their struggle against the 1 percent!” Steven T. Jones contributed to this report.

Homes for the 99 percent

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news@sfbg.com

Pressed by foreclosures, evictions, and an economic crisis with the gnawing tenacity of an early winter flu, San Franciscans protested in neighborhoods throughout the city on Saturday, Dec. 3. Marches from four of the city’s most impacted neighborhoods merged in the Financial District to pressure landlords, banks, and what the Occupy movement has dubbed the 1 percent to ease the spreading hardship surrounding housing in San Francisco.

“The 99 percent tenants and homeowners can no longer let the 1 percent banks and real estate speculators destroy our city and our lives so we’re marching in the neighborhoods and on the streets today,” asserted the statement read by the Occupy SF Housing coalition to the crowd gathered in the Financial District. The message echoed through the glass and granite corridors in front of Wells Fargo, passed along in a thousand voices by the now ubiquitous “mic check” style of Occupy crowd communication.

Housing advocates warned that a steady stream of foreclosures, climbing rents, and lagging job opportunities are driving even native San Franciscans out of the city for the relatively affordable housing in the East Bay or forcing them out of the region altogether, transforming the face of San Francisco into an older, whiter, wealthier demographic.

Throughout the economic crisis, San Francisco as a whole has posted lower foreclosure rates than surrounding counties. At first glance, San Francisco, with one in 880 homes facing foreclosure, looks like a safe harbor in the state’s troubled residential real estate market compared with the statewide foreclosure rate of one home in 243, according RealtyTrac. That represents 55,312 residential units across the state. Nationally, one in 563 homes was in some stage of foreclosure as of October 2011, the most recently released numbers.

However, a near absence of foreclosures in affluent, stable, San Francisco neighborhoods like Pacific Heights and Noe Valley hide troubling foreclose rates in the city’s blue collar ZIP codes that far exceed national and statewide levels. In the 94124 zip code that includes the Bayview and Hunters Point, one in 180 homes received foreclosure filings, higher then Oakland’s overall average rate of one in 245 homes — levels that reflect the experience of some of the nation’s most hard hit areas.

Of the 1,513 homes currently listed on the San Francisco housing market, 1,255 were in the pre-foreclosure, auction, or bank-owned stages of the foreclosure process, representing roughly 82 percent of the available housing stock.

At the downtown headquarters of Wells Fargo, Occupy protesters were placing some of the blame for the deepening hardship at the feet of the big banks. According to the Occupy SF Housing coalition, Wells Fargo is the mortgage lender for 226 homes in San Francisco that are in some stage of foreclosure. That represents about 18 percent of the total homes in San Francisco under foreclosure.

In neighborhoods like Hunters Point, these evictions have turned into an economic cascade of household wealth in decline, even for those who have managed to hold onto their homes.

With foreclosures flooding the market, the median sales price for homes in Hunters Point from Aug. 11 to Oct. 11 was $167,500. This represents a decline of 13.2 percent, or $25,500 per home on average, compared to the prior quarter. Sales prices have depreciated 62.6 percent over the last five years in Hunters Point, wiping out equity families have built over years, and leaving those who hang on stuck in underwater mortgages, where their debt far exceeds the value of their home.

“Predatory equity loans make a quick profit (for the lender) at the expense of home owners in the Bayview,” said Grace Martinez of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment (ACCE). “There are 11 homeowners on a two-block stretch of Quesada in default or have already lost their homes.”

While the Obama administration has tried to ease the foreclosure crisis through the federally subsidized Home Affordable Modification Program (HAMP), only a small percentage of people who apply through their mortgage holder for relief under the program receive a loan adjustment. At Wells Fargo, only one in five borrowers applying for HAMP relief have received a loan modification.

Protesters sitting in the streets in front of Wells Fargo demanded that the company establish a moratorium on all foreclosures until it reforms its loan modification practices, halts the eviction of homeowners who have faced foreclosure, and instead offers them a rental option to keep them in their homes — a solution they say will ease the suffering of those caught in the middle of the banking crisis.

The banking and real estate driven economic crash has lead to the largest drop in home ownership nationally since the Great Depression. At the same time that home ownership has become increasingly out of reach for many San Franciscans, increases in rental rates and high competition for rental units are driving out many blue collar San Franciscans from the transit-friendly Mission District, in favor of a generally younger, wealthier, more educated, tech-savvy population.

As rallies took place across the city Saturday in the lead up to the afternoon’s Wells Fargo protest, a group of concerned residents and community groups gathered at 24th and Mission to highlight San Francisco’s other housing crisis — the rental market. The other marches started in the Castro, the Bayview, and the Tenderloin.

Much of the turnover of long-occupied rent controlled housing units in San Francisco comes as a result of the Ellis Act, a state law that allows evictions when an owner’s family wants to move in or when the unit is taken off the rental market. Brenda Nedina’s family is facing an Ellis Act eviction at 874 Shotwell Street.

“I’ve lived in that unit my whole life. My family has lived in the unit for 28 years,” said the tearful, 25-year-old San Franciscan native. “We would love to stay here, but with rents so high, it is not likely that we would find a place in San Francisco.”

Nedina, who works a service industry job at Pier 39, says the economic crisis has made it more difficult for her survive in San Francisco. She has had to cut down her college course load to get by in the tough economy. The troubles will get more complicated if her family is priced out of the city, as critical health services that they rely on are available through their San Francisco residency.

“A lot of people suffer through this as a private problem, but we are making it a public problem, and if the problem belongs to all of us then so does the solution,” said Maria Poblet of Just Cause, hugging a tearful Nedina as she addressed a crowd gathered at 24th and Mission streets.

Latino families like Brenda’s continue to be forced out of the Mission District by rising rent, and less economic opportunity for them in the recession. According to the 2010 U.S. Census, the past decade has seen a 22 percent decrease in the Mission’s Latino population.

“Landlords often abuse the Ellis Act as a way to remove tenants from rent controlled units,” Just Cause organizer Maria Zamudio told the Guardian. “I’m occupying Kaleidoscope free speech zone art space on 24th and Folsom. My slumlord landlord is not down with that mission,” said artist and gallery proprietor Sara Powell, also facing a Ellis Act eviction after pressuring her landlord to address substandard building maintenance issues. Powell’s landlord withdrew a standard eviction process that housing advocates said was unlikely to succeed before launching the Ellis Act eviction.

“With the help off the 99 percent and with right on our side we are going to fight this and we are going to win,” said Powell, whose gallery next door to Philz Coffee is a cornerstone of the neighborhood’s multi-ethnic arts scene. The San Francisco Rent Board has received more than 4,000 petitions to remove rental units from the real estate market since 1999 through the Ellis Act. While Ellis Act evictions have seen some decline during the economic crisis, more Ellis Act evictions are now concentrated in the Mission District, where 40 percent of all Ellis Act petitions are now filed. At the same time, evictions based on breach of lease throughout the city are on track to double pre-recession numbers this year as more and more San Franciscans are have trouble earning enough to keep up with the city’s exorbitant rental rates. According to Just Cause, the average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the Mission District is now $2,497. “The only way to keep our Chinese, Latino, Arabic, English speaking neighborhood is to fight like hell for our homes,” said Poblet. “Even before Wall Street was occupied, we have been defending this neighborhood. This is the neighborhood of the 99 percent.”

On the Cheap Listings

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THURSDAY 8

Drag Queens on Ice Union Square Ice Rink, 333 Post, SF. www.unionsquareicerink.com. 8-9:30 p.m., $10. Mutha Chucka, Anna Conda, Lil’ Hot Mess and other dazzlingly-named lovelies gleefully speed and twirl through the Union Square ice skater crowd.

Archie Green: the Making of a Working-Class Hero talk Green Arcade, 1680 Market, SF. 7 p.m., free. Historian Sean Burns captured foundational labor activist Archie Green’s story over years of interviews and conversations. Now he shares how Green became a tireless and radical advocate for the preservation of American folklore.

 

FRIDAY 9

Winter Wunderkammer holiday art sale The Lab, 2948 16th St., SF. www.thelab.org. 6-11 p.m. Also Sat/10, 11 a.m.-4 p.m., free. For the 15th year, the Lab hosts a jewel of a holiday sale where it’s possible to spend anything from one buckaroo to 50. Up for grabs: small-format work by local artists.

OCCUPY! screening Artists’ Television Access, 992 Valencia, SF. www.atasite.org. 6:30 p.m., donation requested. ATA hosts a multimedia collage of the Occupy movement. Poetry, videos, history, aerial maps, and performance art relating to the massive protest are on the docket; all donations directly benefit Occupy San Francisco.

Luke Warm Water and Jim Barnard poetry reading Nefeli Caffe, 1854 Euclid, Berk. (510) 841-6374. 7 p.m., free. Stirring poets Luke Warm Water (a virtuoso of spoken word hailing from Rapid City, South Dakota) and Jim Barnard (cofounder of Berkeley’s Poetry Express readings) join forces for a colorful finger-snapper.

 

SATURDAY 10

End of Semester show Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts, 2868 Mission, SF. www.missionculturalcenter.org. 2-5 p.m., $5. Mission Cultural Center showcases the multitudinous and fine community talents it has worked to cultivate this semester, from Afro-Peruvian dancers to Samba Jam Brazilian percussion artists.

Writers with Drinks Make Out Room, 3225 22nd St., SF. www.makeoutroom.com. 7:30-9:30 p.m., $5-10 sliding scale. Gail Carriger, Sean Baby, Mike Jung, and Diana Salier have between them a prestigious prize for young adult lit, a balls-out comic strip, MTV appearances, and a new poetry chapbook on heartache and Wikipedia. The Center for Sex and Culture reaps the proceeds from this all-star reading.

Vagabond Indie Craft Fair Urban Bazaar, 1371 9th Ave., SF. www.vagabondsf.wordpress.com. 12:30-6 p.m., free. Independent artisans and the SF Etsy street team unite amongst Urban Bazaar’s backyard succulents for a small-scale, high-quality local craft fair.

1901 Maritime Christmas Hyde Street Pier, SF. www.nps.gov/safr. 6-9 p.m., free with reservation to (415) 447-5000. If the idea of riding the waves circa 1900 brings to mind scurvy and mishaps with icebergs, you’ve got it wrong. The National Park Service trots out costumed actors and historic ships for a warm, watery Christmas performance by lamplight.

East Bay Alternative Press Book Fair Berkeley City College, 2050 Center, Berk. www.berkeleycitycollege.edu. 10 a.m.-4 p.m., free. Local independent writers, publishers, zinesters and craftspeople flood downtown Berkeley to showcase boundlessly-inventive bookworks.

 

SUNDAY 11

Christine Schmidt book signing Museum Store, SFMOMA, 151 Third St., SF. www.sfmoma.org. 2 p.m., free. Christine Schmidt, the artist behind Yellow Owl Workshop and those ubiquitous, beautifully-printed California poppy postcard sets, demonstrates a project and signs her recent how-to printmaking book meant for, she says, those with “low budgets and high ambition.”

 

MONDAY 12

Occupy Phoenix Books readings Phoenix Books, 3957 24th St., SF. www.dogearedbooks.com. 6:30 p.m., free. Young ‘uns from 826 Valencia join Denise Sullivan, author of Keep on Pushing: Black Power Music from Blues to Hip Hop for a night of Occupy-oriented readings. Accompanying the shindig is local Americana act McCabe and Mrs. Miller.

The impact of Occupy

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With the city getting ready to crack down on OccupySF, and Occupy encampments around the country under attack, it’s easy to get discouraged. And I know that a lot of the Occupiers aren’t thinking about specific legislation or how the movement translates into action in Washington.

But it does — it does:

In the world where Occupy had never happened, Republicans would’ve held these tax cuts hostage without suffering any ill repercussions. Why would they? The chattering class and Beltway media would be droning on endlessly about deficits and other things that didn’t matter.

In this world, Occupy has thrust income inequality to the forefront of the political debate — so much so that typically immovable Republicans are afraid to feed that narrative.

In other words, a ragtag bunch of hippies with supposedly no demands have done what Democrats have never been able to do — get Republicans to cry “uncle”

And this is just the beginning.

OccupySF awaits police raid after rejecting city ultimatum

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A police raid that could wipe out OccupySF, one of the country’s largest remaining Occupy camps, now seems imminent after the protest group rejected the city’s ultimatum to either voluntarily move to school district property at 1950 Mission Street or face forced eviction.

OccupySF received a written document laying out the terms of this potential agreement yesterday. After a long day of discussion, including a General Assembly meeting last night, OccupySF is refusing to sign the agreement, largely because of concerns about autonomy, as well as visibility and livability at the new site.

This marks the end of almost a week of talks with the city during which no raids were threatened on the camp. Now that OccupySF has rejected the ultimatum, police are expected to enter the camp and attempt to clear it out tonight or tomorrow night. That could destroy the longest continuous large Occupy encampment in the country. Protesters have been sleeping in public spaces in the Financial District under the name OccupySF since Sept. 17, enduring two previous police raids that only increased support for the group.

After last night’s General Assembly, a working group is meeting to form a defense plan in case of a raid, and it’s still unclear how the standoff will unfold.

The rejection of the offer comes after days of debate at the camp, including a session that took place after the city made clear the exact terms of their proposed contract yesterday afternoon. Around 3:30 p.m., OccupySF liaisons to the city handed out photocopies of a document entitled “Facility License Agreement: 1950 Mission Street.”

If signed, the agreement would have allowed the group to use the former school site until May 31, 2012. There were 17 expectations listed, including no animals or pets, no minors, “no sound/noise greater than 45dBA between 10:00pm and 7:00am,” “no panhandling or loitering,” and “no stoves, flammable liquids, wood storage or gases, open flames allowed on the site.”

What the city called an “agreement” and an “offer,” protesters saw as an ultimatum and, for some, a “veiled threat.” Katt Hobin, one of OccupySF’s key organizers, told the group, “We are operating under violent coercion. They are threatening violence if we don’t evacuate this space.”

Under the agreement, the city would have been the tenants, renting the space from the school board for $2500 per month. The space is a lot surrounded by a 15-foot chain link fence and has several portable buildings. Protesters would have had access to toilets, electricity, and indoor space at the site.

At the current camp at Justin Herman Plaza, which they renamed Bradley Manning Plaza, protesters debated how accepting the agreement would affect their branch of the Occupy movement in terms of autonomy, ability to expand and grow, inclusivity, and long-term viability.

Around 4 pm, hundreds paced camp, talking to each other about how to move forward. Some were interested in the possibility of a deal with the city but felt they could not accept the terms, especially prohibitions on minors and animals.

There seemed to be an understanding that the police would attempt to clear out the current camp in the coming days. Yet many seemed assured that the OccupySF network would stick together even after such a raid. One organizer invoked George Washington, saying, “He knew his army didn’t have to win battles, they just had to stick together. They would lose and they would retreat to a new place, but everyone would know that revolutionary army is still out there.”

Others saw the group’s place in revolutionary history differently. One protester reflected, “I think this is history being made right now. We can take the space and do so much with it. There are inside spaces for the sick and the elderly.”

Dozens of protesters had made up their minds to take the space. They waited with their belongings on the Steuart St and Don Chee Way corner of the plaza. “Jerry the Medic” Selness, who had been acting as OccupySF liaison to the city and speaking with Director of Public Works Mohammed Nuru, had relayed the message that DPW trucks would be coming to pick up those who wanted to move to the new site that afternoon.

One protester said that he and about 30 others had signed a symbolic petition stating that they wanted to accept the space. “We don’t need to sign it as OccupySF,” he said. “We’re Occupy Mission.”

Some had been waiting since the early morning. Around 5 pm, Selness got a call that no trucks would be coming that day because the city was awaiting the General Assembly’s response to its offer. About 100 people convened for the daily General Assembly at 6 pm. Around 9 pm, it was clear that OccupySF would not be signing the agreement as it stood.

The assembly did not object to any individuals or autonomous groups who might want to sign the document. They planned to write a response letter detailing their reasons for the rejection, the text of which will be discussed in a General Assembly tonight (Wed/30) at 6 pm.

Many came and went during the General Assembly, including dozens of people who were coming through OccupySF for the first time. Many organizers and supporters who had been there since the beginning but who not attended for days or weeks came back to discuss this issue, which many believed was important “for Occupy movements across the country.” Representatives from Occupy San Rafael, Occupy Santa Rosa, Occupy Berkeley, Occupy Oakland, Occupy USF, and Occupy Gainesville, FL spoke up, expressing solidarity, requesting support, and giving advice.

One homeless woman who had been living in the camp but had never spoken in GA expressed the opinion that to move would be to get out of the public eye and to concede to the city’s attempts to contain the movement, a much-expressed sentiment at the meeting. She cried, “You can’t move and live limited with their rules and regulations. You’re an eyesore, that’s why they want you to move. It’s political.”

Another woman agreed, declaring, “They can’t tell us how to protest or where to protest.”

Others cautioned against accepting the offer for different reasons. One man who spoke up at GA said that he was a teacher at Civic Center Secondary, formerly Phoenix Continuation School, the previous tenants of the offered space. He warned that the school had moved because of instability and health issues surrounding the flow of Mission Creek underground. Another worker familiar with the area recounted a tale of power-washing the sidewalk on the proposed site only to be confronted with “thousands of rats who poured up from the streets”; an OccupySF member who had surveyed the site earlier that day confirmed that the buildings had several holes in the walls, seeming to indicate a rat infestation.

One of the attendees, a young child, expressed the opinion that “we should stay strong and stay here,” amplified by the Peoples Mic. She also helped keep the meeting’s energy high and going in the right direction, showing aggressive “downward twinkle fingers” that signal disagreement at the proposed prohibition of minors on the site, and yelling “there are children present!” when adults used curse words in their impassioned statements.

Many agreed with Diamond Dave Whitaker, local celebrity in the poetry and radical communities and OccupySF organizer, when he stated: “OccupySF is citywide. We’re an autonomous entity as part of a worldwide network. We’re going to see a number of autonomous occupations arising.”

Whitaker mentioned a planned Occupy USF action to take place Dec. 1, as well as the small contingent that is currently “occupying” outside of Wells Fargo at 1 California Street, across from the former occupation site at 101 Market Street. That site is still blocked off by police barricades.

Occupy LA issued a similar rejection letter November 23, which might form the basis of OccupySF’s letter (Link: http://losangelesga.net/2011/11/assembly-authored-city-response/ ). That camp was raided and disbanded last night.

OccupySF plans to put out a formal response to the proposal and explanation of their decisions tonight.

Public health and Occupy

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By Sasha J. Cuttler

OPINION On November 17, Mayor Ed Lee’s administration declared OccupySF a "public health nuisance." The mayor and other city officials are using this declaration as a justification to evict the OccupySF camps.

But rather than being a nuisance, the Occupy camps are reclaiming public space and voices while making health disparities more visible. Dozens of health organizations are making statements of solidarity, including the American Public Health Association, with more than 30,000 members, which recently passed a resolution with overwhelming support of the Occupy movement.

San Francisco officials say that overcrowding and inadequate sanitation are causing a threat to public health and safety. But as noted by public health nurse Martha Hawthorne, "When is the last time city department heads have left their offices and taken a walk through the Tenderloin, just minutes away from the San Francisco Occupy site? Smells of human waste? Evidence of street drug use? Garbage on the street? It’s there and has been for years, the inevitable consequence of the lack of affordable housing and years of cutbacks to mental health and substance abuse funding in San Francisco."

As far as overcrowding of tents, Hawthorne goes on to note: "Overcrowding? Go anywhere in the city with a public health nurse. You’ll see multiple families living in one flat, sharing a kitchen, having their own tiny room if they are lucky and can afford it. People sleep in shifts and live elbow-to-elbow in garages, basements, closets, old office spaces — and they are the ones we nurses can see, because at least they have an address. "

The one percent is attempting to maintain control by blaming the victim. Rather than blame the marginalized for their misery, the Occupy movement opens an opportunity for dialogue and mass mobilization while providing tangible assistance to those in need of help right now. Homeless and mentally ill individuals have been receiving food and shelter at Occupy encampments everywhere.

The Occupy movement is making visible the public health consequences of insatiable corporate greed. Income inequality is closely paralleled, unsurprisingly, by poorer health outcomes. The rich are not only getting richer, they are living longer, healthier lives than the majority of us in the 99 percent.

Despite months of Occupy experience world-wide, the only evidence of ill health and injury directly related to the camps can be found in the hundreds of nonviolent activists exposed to clouds of tear gas, fountains of pepper spray, myriads of beatings, and volleys of rubber bullets. These incidents of state-sponsored violence can cause lasting health impacts on the individuals who are exercising their right to free speech and assembly.

We can do better than this. We need to use this gathering as a reminder that health care is a human right and do everything in our power to help, not hinder, the populations we serve.

Like thousands of other public health workers, I believe that the Occupy movement is creating an incredible opportunity that needs to be protected and expanded. Public health does need to be protected — and one of the best ways is through engagement with the Occupy movement, not through its eviction. 2

Sasha J. Cuttler, R.N., Ph.D, is a nurse and SEIU Local 1021 activist

In his words: SF Occupier Derek

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We spoke with Derek at Occupy SF on Monday, November 21. He spoke about his Cherokee roots and how he feels like he’s been an activist since he was “in the womb.” Listen to our interview with Derek after the jump.

 

OccupySF_Derek by SFBayGuardianSounds

Meet more Faces of Occupy here.

In his words: SF Occupier Adam

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Art director Mirissa Neff and photographer David Bornfriend had the chance to talk with Adam at Occupy SF on Monday, November 21. The recent Cornell grad discusses why he felt it was important to participate in Occupy as well as the solidarity he feels with the UC Davis and Berkeley students. Listen to his interview here

(Click here to learn more about the collodion portrait work that appears on the cover of this week’s paper.)

The faces and voices of Occupy

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Who are the 99 percent — and what are they saying? It’s not what you read in the daily papers

To read some of the accounts in the daily papers in San Francisco, and hear some of the national critics, you’d think the people in the local Occupy movement were mostly filthy, drunk, violent social outcasts just looking for a place to party. Or that they’re mad-eyed anarchists who can’t wait to break windows and throw bottles at the police. Or that they’re a confused and leaderless band that can’t figure out what it wants.

When you actually go and spend time at Occupy SF and Occupy Cal and Occupy Oakland, as our reporters have done, you get a very different picture.

The Occupy movement is diverse, complex and powerful. It’s full of people with different backgrounds and perspectives. And they all agree that economic injustice and inequality are at the root of the major problems facing the United States today.

Here are some of those people, the faces and the voices of Occupy — and a celebration of the lives they’re living and the work they’re doing.

 

The student

Jessica Martin reflects on the First Amendment

Guardian photo by Rebecca Bowe

Jessica Martin stood and held her sign high on the steps of Sproul Hall, at the University of California at Berkeley, while a jubilant crowd of students jammed to classic dance party tunes and set up tents. They were invigorated by a general assembly that had attracted thousands following a Nov. 15 student strike and Day of Action called as part of the Occupy movement. (Their tents were cleared in a police raid two days later, yet students responded with flair, suspending tents high in the air with balloons.)

Martin’s sign proclaimed, “Remember the First Amendment,” and she’d written the text of the Constitutional right to free speech on the other side.

“My mother stood on the steps [of the Lincoln Memorial] in D.C. with Martin Luther King as part of the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech,” said the graduating senior, who’s majoring in Japanese and Linguistics. “And now I stand on the steps of Sproul Hall,” — the birthplace of Berkeley’s Free Speech Movement — “in front of the Martin Luther King Student Union, to defend my First Amendment rights.”

She expressed solidarity with students who were brutalized by police Nov. 9 following their first attempt to establish an occupation.

“Part of what [police] are here to serve and protect is the First Amendment,” Martin said. But on that day, “They met the First Amendment with violence.” (Rebecca Bowe)

 

The artist

Ernest Doty responds to police brutality

Guardian photo by Rebecca Bowe

In Oakland, a young veteran named Scott Olsen suffered a fractured skull and brain injuries after being hit with a police projectile at an Oct. 25 Occupy Oakland protest. Ernest Doty was one of several who ran to Olsen’s aid and carried him to safety.

“Immediately after I saw Scott go down … I knew I had to get him, and get him out of there,” Doty recounted. “I whistled at another guy, and we both ran in. The cops were shooting at us with rubber bullets.” As they ran up, he said, a flash grenade blew up next to Olsen’s face, just inches from his head injury.

Doty, 32, recently moved to the Bay Area from Albuquerque, New Mexico. An artist who also does spoken word performances, he’s camped overnight at Occupy Oakland and has incorporated words and images from the Occupy movement into his artwork and poetry.

He’s also been personally impacted by tragedies arising from police interactions: Both his stepbrother and his cousin — a veteran who suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder — were shot and killed by police in New Mexico.

Occupy Oakland “has managed to create a community out of chaos,” Doty said. “I think that this movement is going to continue to grow. It’s the 1960s all over again, but it’s broader. It’s going to be a long road. I think encampments, marches, and protests are going to continue into the next year.”(Bowe)

Ernest Doty’s next art show is Dec. 2 from 7 to 11 p.m. at Sticks + Stones Gallery, 815 Broadway, in Oakland.

 

The peacekeeper

Nate Paluga deals with camp conflict

Guardian photo by Mirissa Neff

Does this man look like he’s an occupier? Depends on your perception of the movement. He’s not homeless — he’s a bike mechanic who lives in Nob Hill and whose girlfriend only tentatively accepts that he’s camping in Justin Herman Plaza. He is young, blunt, and possesses the intense gaze of an activist, belied by a snug red-white-and-blue biker’s cap with “USA” emblazoned on the underbelly of its brim.

Paluga, a self-proclaimed philosopher, has grabbed upon the concepts of “fairness and equality” as the core values of Occupy. “This movement means something different to different people, but I haven’t found anyone that disagrees with those being some core values,” he said as he showed off the bike he uses to move as much as 100 pounds of food and equipment for the camp.

His core values are his guidelines in his other role at Occupy SF: peacekeeper. Paluga said he and others often intervene in the disagreements that can arise in a group-run housing situation populated by diverse socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds.

He said that with aggressive individuals it’s important to reinforce why they’re all there. “They’re coming from places where there wasn’t a lot of equality and justice and they’re bringing that with them. You gotta step in and tell them it’s gonna be okay.” (Caitlin Donohue)

 

The nester

Two Horses’ permanent protest

Guardian photo by Mirissa Neff

Two Horses might have the most welcoming tent at Occupy SF. Brightly stocked flowerboxes and a welcome mat are outside; inside, the one-time property manager and current homeless man has arranged an air mattress, carpet, and princess accommodations for his 12-year-old blind white cat Luna. There’s even a four-foot tall kitty tower.

The agile feline moves toward the sound of his hand tapping on the floor. “I like the idea of a 24-hour protest,” said Two Horses. He came to the camp a few weeks ago and was impressed by the quality and availability of food available in the encampment’s kitchen, where he said donations come from all over (“it comes from the 99 percent”) at all hours of the day and night.

“I knew I had to do something, so I started volunteering.” He now works the late shift, a core kitchen staffer.

When Michael Moore came by the plaza, Two Horses was impressed. “It wasn’t so much what he said but how he came shuffling up with no entourage, no security, no assistant with a clipboard.” He would, however, like to see more communication between Occupy camps, maybe a livestream video screen to see other cities.

He seems quite at home in his surroundings. “My goal is to look as permanent as I can,” he said, the corners of his mouth turning up crookedly, happily. (Donohue)

 

The healers

Med tent volunteers from the nurses’ union do it for the patients

Guardian photo by Mirissa Neff

Melissa Thompson has a kid who’s looking at college options; she hopes her family can figure out a way to afford education in a state where public university tuition continues to rise.

But that’s not the only reason she’s at Occupy SF. On a cloudy Friday morning, Thompson sat outside the encampment’s med tent, where she tended to cuts, changed the dressing on wounds, and provided socks, blankets, and tools for basic hygiene. It’s her trade — she’s a nurse, one of the many California Nurses Association members sick of cuts to the country’s public and private health options who were eager to lend their services to the movement.

She’s also one of the determined crew that enlivens Occupy Walnut Creek. What’s it like out there? “It’s been good,” she assured us, brightly. “We’re on the corner, by the Bank of America? We’ve had great reactions at Walnut Creek.”

Thompson said she got involved because “I love being a nurse, number one.” Corporate greed, she said, has led to cuts in her patients’ insurance, leaving them to make tough decisions between feeding their family and filling the prescription for their post-dialysis medications.

She said he hopes the politicians are listening to Occupy. “I don’t understand what the problem is. They need to open up their eyes and see how they’ve damaged us.” (Donohue)


The fabulous

Li Morales and Molly Goldberg talk about Queer Occupy

Queers have long been resisting the ravages of the one percent on the 99 percent. Resistance has looked like coming together on our own, on our own terms, with our own names, genders, and chosen families. Like the (decolonize) occupations in San Francisco, Oakland, around the country and world, our resistance is made out of a stubborn imagination, and can be messy. We are a menagerie of magnificent beasts, with all of our struggles and limitations firmly at the center of the fabulous and fucked-up world we make for ourselves.

In HAVOQ/ SF Pride at Work, we imagine queerness not as a What, an identity whose boundaries we seek to police, a platform from which to put forth our One Demand. Rather, we imagine it as a How: a way of being with one another. We call it Fabulosity. And Fabulosity means drawing on queer histories of re-imagining family as a way of expanding circles of care and responsibility. Fabulosity is to affirm the self-determination of every queer to do queer just exactly how they do. It affirms that under the banner of the 99 percent, we are all uniquely impacted by the ravages of the 1 percent and we come with a diversity of strategies and tactics to resist and survive.

In the gray areas lives our emerging autonomy and interdependence — an autonomy not contingent on capitalism’s insistence on utility. We are not useful. We are not legible. And in that lack of utility and that illegibility, we are not controllable. Because we do not have one demand, but rather a cornucopia of desire. We’re making our fabulous fucked-up world for ourselves, with each other. We always have. (Morales and Goldberg)

Li Morales and Molly Goldberg are members of SF Pride at Work/HAVOQ, a San Francisco-based collective of queers organizing for social and economic justice.

 

The mechanic

reZz keeps Occupy’s tires filled

Photo by David Martinez

On a Sunday afternoon at Occupy SF, Bike Kitchen volunteer reZz exported the education-oriented bike shop’s mission — and its tools — to Justin Herman Plaza. There he stood, fixing alignment on the wheels of passers-by and occupiers — for free. “Occupy Bike Shop,” as he and other volunteers have come to call the service, has been tinkering out in the plaza two to three times a week.

“It’s been lovely,” he said later in a phone interview with the Guardian. “I’ve purposefully been in a place where it’s open to people in the encampment and people who are passing by. People who stop want to see the occupation in it’s most positive light.” reZz wouldn’t consider camping out at Occupy, but that’s not to say that he doesn’t truck with the movement’s message that public space can — and should — be repurposed.

An avid biker himself, he thinks public bike repair is a great re-envisioning tactic. And fixing poor people’s bikes sends its own message. “This year’s junk is an invented need,” he said. “We’re falling into debt because we think we need a new car every year. Part of the idea of fixing people’s bikes and showing them how to do it brings us away from the artificial scarcity whereby the robber barons and capitalists insist we have to struggle against each other instead of working with each other.” (Donohue)


The medic

Miran Istina has cancer — and helps others

Guardian photo by Yael Chanoff

It had grown dark, and the OccupySF camp was restless as many signs pointed to a raid that night at 101 Market Street. But 18-year-old Miran Istina sat calmly on the sidewalk, medical supplies spread over her lap. “As a medic for OccupySF,” said Istina, “It’s my job to have a well-supplied, well-organized medical kit.”

The tall, wide-eyed teenager, who spends some of the time in a wheelchair, is not just a medic at camp. She has done police liaison and media work as well. And she has a remarkable story.

When she was 14, Istina was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia. Her family had purchased her health insurance only three months before, and the cancer was in stage two, indicating that she had been sick for at least one year. So the company denied her treatment, which would include a bone-marrow transplant, radiation therapy and chemotherapy, on the basis of a pre-existing condition.

Her family bought a van, left Sisters, Oregon, and started searching for somebody who would treat her. They traveled around the country three years, desperate for the life-saving treatment but unable to pay for it.

Just after her 17th birthday, Istina left her parents in New York and began hitchhiking back to Oregon. “That was my way of saying, I’m done looking for treatment. I’m going to do what makes my heart happy.”

After a little over a year of traveling and exploring her interests, Istina made her way to San Francisco. She was sleeping in Buena Vista Park when she “heard some protesters walking by, going ‘occupy San Francisco! Occupy San Francisco. I figured they were a bunch of radicals and that a street kid like me really wouldn’t be welcome.'”

A few nights later, she did go check it out, looking for a safe place to sleep. “They explained to me what it’s about, and why we’re here, and my story directly sat inside of that.”

She has been living and organizing with OccupySF ever since. She got involved with the medic team after spending a night in the hospital for kidney failure, then being treated for nine days, free, in the camp’s medical tent. “They realized I had a lot of skill as a medic, and gave me a kit.”

In the midst of recent media attacks on the OccupySF community, Istina is defensive: “Every community has its assholes. Every community has that pit that no one goes into because it’s just yucky. For some people in San Francisco it’s the Haight, for the the Haightians- you know, the Haight people- it’s the financial district. For other people it’ll be somewhere else. But I love the community here. “I’ve been hurt by a lot of people in my life,” said Istina. “But I think I can make that right by holding to this pure-hearted motto of universal and unconditional love, for everyone. No exceptions.” (Yael Chanoff)

Police raid part of OccupySF

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Police dismantled the OccupySF protest and campsite in front of the Federal Reserve building early Sunday morning.


Around 1 a.m., police massed on Market Street between Main and Spear. They drove up to the Federal Reserve protest site, which consisted of a kitchen, small library and information table, and about a dozen tents. The 30 or so tents that had been pitched there for weeks were gone, voluntarily taken down by protesters around 12:40 p.m. Saturday, when police threatened to arrest and confiscate the belongings of anyone who continued to camp on at the 101 Market Street location.


Apparently considering that afternoon’s actions and previous notices concerning vacating 101 Market Street fair warning, police did not warn campers this morning before beginning to arrest. Six people who were sleeping in tents report having been awoken and put under arrest within a matter of minutes. Several had no time to put on socks or shoes before being dragged out of their tents.


All six were cited and released in a matter of hours, and arrived back at camp by 2:50am.


One man who had a small radio had heard a warning that police were present from camp security patrol about one minute before the police arrived. He says he had time to “spring out of bed” and exit his tent before police arrived and “Told me, ‘You need to leave now or get arrested.’ By the time I started to shake my head no they had already started putting the ziptie on me.”


Department of Public Works employees put tents and materials in DPW trucks police barricaded and blocked all of Market Street, including sidewalks, between Steuart and Main Streets.


Shortly after 1:00, OccupySF put out calls for support. Many heeded the call and arrived around 1:40 to the site. By this time, only the sidewalk was barricaded, and protesters continued to chant and argue with the about 120 police in partial riot gear who lined the sidewalk. A few tried aggressively to shake or take down metal police barricades and were stopped by other protesters and met with chants of “non-violent protest!”


For the next few hours, protesters slowly left 101 Market and congregated back at Justin Herman Plaza, discussing strategy and trying to understand what had happened. The raid was over in a matter of minutes and very few protesters had witnessed it.


The 101 Market Street site had been used by the protest movement since September 29, when it was established as the main camp site. The encampment had since expanded, and as of yesterday 101 Market Street was serving as the group’s “protest central,” distinct from the main camp at Justin Herman Plaza.


As of 8:00 this morning, about 15 police officers were still stationed, warming themselves by heating lamps that have been placed behind the barricades in front of the Federal Reserve. Barricades surround empty space on the sidewalk on Market Street from Main to Steuart Street.


 

Labor ready to fight Occupy eviction

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Tim Paulson, director of the San Francisco Labor Council, just told me that he’s got as many as 500 union members on alert to stand with the OccupySF encampment if the city attempts to evict the protesters. The Labor Council has put together a communications system to let members who have volunteered to help know when a showdown with the police is coming, and the volunteers are ready to spend as much as 24 hours at Justin Herman Plaza, and if necessary, in jail.

“We mobilized for last night, but nothing happened,” he said. “We’re in a state of constant vigilance.”

Paulson noted that the San Francisco encampment “is the symbol of the Occupy Movement.”

The solidarity of San Francisco labor will make it considerably more difficult for Mayor Ed Lee to send in the police and break up the camp. The idea that he would be ordering the arrests not only of several hundred Occupy protesters but a large contingent of local labor leaders and union members has to be giving him second (and third, and fourth) thoughts.

And whatever the outcome, the connenctions between labor and Occupy are critical to building and sustaining a national movement to demand economic justice. It’s great to see the SF Labor Council in the heart of the fight.

OccupySF is worth the investment

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Thirteen labor and community leaders wrote to Mayor Ed Lee Nov. 17 asking him not to evict the OccupySF protesters. The message of the hand-delivered letter: It’s worth the time and effort the city will have to make to allow the encampment to remain. It was signed by Conny Ford, OPEIU Local 3, Bob Offer-Westord, Coalition on Homelessness, Pilar Sciavo, California Nurses Association, Elizabeth Alexander, SEIU 1021, Rev. Carol Been, Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice, Steve Williams, POWER, Gabriel Haaland, SEIU 1021, Tim Paulson, San Francisco Labor Council, Kate Huge, La Raza Centro Legal, Gordon Mar, Jobs with Justice, Forrest Schmidt, ANSWER, Shaw-San Liu, Chinese Progressive Association, and Mike Casey, UNITED-HERE Local 2.

Here’s the full letter:

Dear Mr. Mayor:

Occasionally a movement takes hold of the imagination of a people, resulting in major social and economic shifts in public policy. Thirty to forty years ago, such a movement driven by a coalition of the religious right and corporate America and spearheaded by the National Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers, changed the course of our nation for the worse.

With the election of Ronald Reagan and scores of corporate-backed politicians since then, our nation has seen a reversal of the progressive gains made in the decades immediately preceding 1980, from the New Deal to the War on Poverty.

In yesterday’s meeting, you and several city department heads questioned whether it is “worth the investment” to meet and work with the SF Occupy movement to address certain health and safety issues. We think it is.

The national Occupy Wall Street movement has brought dramatic focus to the disproportionate concentration of wealth and power held by the top 1% of America.  They have drawn broad attention to the devastation wrought by Wall Street upon communities throughout the country:  home foreclosures, record unemployment, attacks on immigrants, union busting, school closures, social service cutbacks, etc.

Over the years, in our own city, a number of legendary movements and causes have led to meaningful and lasting progressive change. The 1934 General Strike and the I-Hotel are but two examples. These and other struggles such as the Civil Rights movement are iconic not based on whether they resulted in victory or defeat, but because these struggles inspired and trained a new generation of organizers and activists committed to economic and social change.

Whether the Occupy movement is helping usher in yet another shift remains to be seen. But of this we are certain: the City of San Francisco working with Occupy SF to support their vision and work is “worth the investment.”

Provocative police actions in Oakland resulted in unnecessary injuries and threatened the very safety of the community they’ve sworn to protect.

We appeal that you not shut down the occupation of Justin Herman Plaza and continue to meet, daily if necessary, in order to work through the issues connected with Occupy SF.

Occupy Wall Street, two months later

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Today marks the two-month anniversary of the beginning of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which started when protesters began setting up tents in New York City Sept. 17. And following a police raid of Zucotti Park, renamed Liberty Square by activists, occupiers in the Big Apple are marching through the streets of Manhattan en masse right now, following an afternoon of demonstrations intended to shut down Wall Street that resulted in 175 arrests and numerous instances of police brutality. You can watch the livestream here. It’s an exciting, chaotic, and historic scene.

Meanwhile, here in the Bay Area, expectations are high that a police raid of the Occupy San Francisco encampment is imminent. Two events have been planned for tonight, according to a text update: a 7 p.m. mass nonviolent action training for responding to a raid, and 10 p.m. rally and dance party at Justin Herman Plaza.

 

There are homeless people and mental problems at Occupy encampments? No duh, that’s the point.

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The SF Examiner reporter that embedded at the Occupy SF camp just brought back a titillating story of pants-off rowdies, pot smoking, and screaming. This is how it starts (I swear):

The third major fight at the Occupy SF encampment was supposed to be the last of it Monday night after about 100 protesters banished “Jimmy the Instigator.”

Most protesters believed he was responsible for about half the brawls that broke out there in recent days. Once he was gone, tensions eased, and a heartwarming singalong forecast a peaceful night.

Then Nick took off his pants, the drugs and alcohol took their toll and the violence returned.

Examiner staff writer Mike Aldax spent 24 hours at the encampment undercover. He didn’t tell anyone he was a reporter or his real name, which I can tell you is A) arguably unethical as a journalist in a situation that doesn’t explicitly call for it and B) a great way to ensure that you don’t have any honest conversations with any of the people you’re reporting on. 

It’s fine if you’re just there to find ways to belittle protesters though! Like this gem: 

The east side now resembles a scene from “Pirates of the Caribbean.” Drunk people are fighting and yelling incessantly as someone sings a folk song in a low, bluesy voice.

I mean, that verbal imagery is hilarious but then, making fun of addicts is kind of like shooting fish in the bucket. Ahem, homeless fish that have run into all the injustices and inequities in life that the Occupy movement has sprung up in reaction to. 

Aldax differentiates the troublemakers from “responsible protesters” and tells tales of people with mental illness, not to mention someone who asks him for money, hugs him, and asks him for more, and of course, an incident in which he is told to turn his camera off. Of course, he’s undercover so the person that asks him to do so calls him by his psuedonym, which is Mickey (which I consider a fake name with flair, btw, begrudging props). 

I was also at the encampment the other day interviewing occupiers to get a deeper understanding of the society that’s sprung up in Justin Herman Plaza. Only I told the occupiers my real name. Even though I am a member of the media, I am of the belief that even if you are homeless you still merit the basic standards of human interaction. 

A photographer and I were at the Occupy SF info table when Nate Paluga (by the way Examiner, the occupiers have last names), came up and pointed to a cardboard sign that read “equality and justice” amid the brochures and fliers. “I did that,” he told me. “I’m kind of the camp philosopher. This movement means something different to different people, but I haven’t found anyone that disagrees with those being some core values.”

It turned out he was a bike mechanic who left his apartment in Nob Hill to come live at the camp. He also was one of the camp peacekeepers, and knew a fair amount about the “addicts, opportunists, and people suffering from mental illness” profiled in the Examiner post. 

Here’s the thing, Paluga told me – there’s a reason why people are like that. 

“They’re coming from places where there wasn’t a lot of equality and justice and they’re bringing that with them. You gotta step in and tell them ‘you’re gonna be okay.’”

That’s the role he fills on camp, but he says that kind of intervention also serves to reinforce the camp’s core values.

At Occupy SF, there’s a 70-year-old woman who is nuts. She screams a lot, occupiers told me. But she’s also a barometer for them: when people freak out on her, the craziest one there, others know that that person needs to be spoken with, and reminded of why OccupySF is there in the first place. Because we’re all crazy in our own way. There’s homeless people with mental problems at Occupy because there are homeless people with mental problems everywhere — it’s just that at the Occupy encampments they’re not precluded from being heard because of it. 

Paluga wasn’t denying that disruptions or evictions happen at Occupy – but also he was acknowledging that the movement has the responsibility to deal with trodden-upon people in a different way than the castigation techniques of our legal and social system. “You’ll see it,” Paluga told me. “People will step in.”

This line kills me in the Examiner article. In it, Aldax considers the failure of Occupy if the “good” and “bad” protesters are forced to co-exist:

As long as these two communities live side by side, it’s hard to see how the movement’s message will ever transcend the storyline being scripted by the troublemakers. 

But what about the storyline being scripted by the mass media?

Occupy your imagination: Tomorrow, hear the words of a Mission son

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It’s getting into the grind time for the Occupy movement. The first, brilliant tactic of camping out in our nation’s towns and cities is meeting with a nationally-coordinated crack-down, just like we all knew it would. It’s time for phase two.

Benjamin Bac Sierra knows a lot about reimagining. The author survived an adolescence among the Mission gangs to publish the first novel by a native son to come out of the neighborhood in decades

“Once upon a time,” he writes on his blog announcing a lecture tomorrow (Thu/17) at City College,  “the truth was that I was supposed to be a dishwashing convict criminal and to disagree with that truth was to fight the universe.”

With the raid on Zuccoti Park, the raids on Oscar Grant Plaza, the violence on the UC Berkeley campus (?!?), it’s clear that the warriors of Occupy are in need of some uplift – and they’re certainly in need of a plan. 

“To invent your destiny, you must appreciate your base knowledge and synthesize it with other knowledge or predictions, and create something new, unimagined by others,” Bac Sierra writes. Sure, it’s New Agey and maybe his presentation isn’t geared exactly towards camping activists – but this is a man from a section of society that gets a raw deal, who has subverted the “rules” and come out on the other side with a family, a teaching gig at City College, a luminous book, and self-worth.

It might be worth a trip to City College to hear him at this point, just sayin’. 

 

“Inventing Your Destiny” presentation by Benjamin Bac Sierra

Thu/16 1 p.m., free

Diego Rivera Theatre

City College of San Francisco

50 Phelan, SF

todobododown.wordpress.com 

 

Editor’s notes

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tredmond@sfbg.com

Occupy Oakland has been very good at exposing one local problem — police brutality. The first raids, and the tear gas and rubber bullets that flew afterward — showed the world how poorly trained the Oakland cops are and how unprepared they were for a largely peaceful demonstration.

But overall, the Occupy movement has been about national issues — or rather, The National Issue, which is income inequality. Nothing else going on in the United States compares. On an economic level, I could argue that nothing else matters — until we resolve the wealth and income gap, the recession will never end, the deficit will never improve, the unemployment rate won’t stabilize, the nation will grow weaker and weaker and more and more unstable … basically, we’re doomed.

But while there have been marches on local banks and corporations, not a lot of Occupy attention has gone to local inequality — to what the folks at San Francisco City Hall, and Oakland City Hall are doing to make the one percent in our own backyards pay its fair share for the services that most impact many of our lives. Mayor Jean Quan got booed for calling in the riot cops, but Mayor Ed Lee isn’t getting booed for corporate tax breaks.

The OccupySF people came out in force to a Board of Supervisors hearing to demand that their camp be left alone. But they aren’t out in force to demand, say, a local fee on bank foreclosures.

That’s not a criticism of a movement that continues to inspire me every day; it’s just a statement about tactics and strategy. And it’s one we all ought to be thinking about.

In a brilliant opinion piece this week, Raj Jayadev, director of Silicon Valley Debug, notes:

“In San Jose, the city that used to promote itself as the capitol of Silicon Valley, city budget cuts have either eliminated or dramatically slashed hours for youth sanctuaries like libraries and community centers. … For us, the one percent are just up the street -– the 101 to be precise. Those tech giants exist in the same Silicon Valley that cannot even keep its library doors open. Why have they not given? Why have we not demanded?”

Good question.

Occupy SF: The eviction drumbeat begins

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We all knew that Mayor Lee wouldn’t risk sending the cops in to evict OccupySF until after the election. But now the newspaper drumbeat has begun — the place is filthy, there’s shoplifting nearby and (gasp) the Ferry Building has to spend more money on toilet paper.

There’s an easy solution to the toilet paper problem: Install and maintain some more portable toilets near the camp. Not difficult, not expensive. And when you have that many people around (the camp keeps growing) and some of them have been living on the streets for a long time, having to hustle to stay alive, it’s not surprising that some cookies have been stolen. For the most part, the camp is pretty self-sufficient and there’s plenty of food, but if theft is a problem, a couple more beat cops at the Ferry Building would probably put a lid on it.

It’s too bad the Bay is so cold at this time of year; a quick dip with some Dr. Bronner’s would solve the need for the alleged sponge baths (and I just can’t imagine anything worse than the thought of a few people washing themselves off in a …. bathroom). It really wouldn’t be hard to install a solar shower on the scene, if the Department of Public works cooperated.

We all know there are going to be challenges dealing with a growing outdoor encampment in the middle of a big city. But this is something special, something important, a popular movement that’s responding to an emergency situation in the United States. This is a sophisticated city; we can deal.

But just as the merchants complaining in Oakland is putting pressure on Mayor Jean Quan, this sort of stuff will put pressure on Lee to send in the cops. Ugh.

 

AIDS vigil returns at Occupy SF

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A coalition has come together to bring a striking new component to OccupySF: a rebirth of the ARC/AIDS Vigil. The vigil created an encampment similar to OccupySF’s at UN Plaza in the 1980s and remained there for ten years, protesting the federal government’s refusal to put resources into research and support for people with HIV/AIDS. Some who were involved in the vigil are currently part of the OccupySF encampment as individuals. Now, many hope to make that relationship more direct and active.


Brian Basinger, a longtime activist in several capacities including work with the AIDS Housing Alliance, is one of those involved in this effort. Says Basinger, “We are resurrecting the ARC/AIDS Vigil at 11/11/11 at 11:11 am. We are going to provide housing counseling, bring needle exchange, providing HIV testing, distributing organic vegetarian brown bag lunches, holding a speak-out, and presenting our demands to mayor Ed Lee to cure homelessness for people with HIV/AIDS, LGBT youth and transgender San Franciscans.”

All of this will take place tomorrow from 11am-2pm at Justin Herman Plaza, the site of Occupy SF’s encampment. Or, says Basinger, “Ethel Merman Plaza, as we like to call it.”

Those interested in the speak-out should be sure to get there by 11:11, as that will likely be first on the agenda. The food distribution is planned for the end of the kick-off event.

The group will provide services to the OccupySF encampment and anyone who comes through it. “We’re looking to create a safe space for homeless LGBT youth to gather…queer homelessness is invisible. We experience homelessness differently than the non-gay world.”

Like the ARC/AIDS Vigil of the 1980s and the Occupy Movement today, this event has the potential to be ongoing. Said Basinger plainly, “We won’t leave until we get our demands are met.”

Basinger warns: “It’s going to rain. But we want to highlight that people with fullblown AIDS and cancer are out in the goddamn rain everyday because the mayor has failed. ‘Ed Lee gets it done’- he’s not ‘getting it done’ for people with AIDS.” Basinger added that San Francisco “has the highest rate of homelessness for people with AIDS in the country.”

The group is putting out a call for “Rain gear to keep us warm- tarps and umbrellas.” Added Basinger, “Umbrella, ella, ella. Also, we put out a call for Rhianna. Rhianna, if you’re listening, come tomorrow.”

And with the impossible to predict explosion of the Occupy Movement- hey, anything could happen.

 

The growing 99 percent

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steve@sfbg.com

In recent weeks, the Bay Area has been roiled by anger and frustration with how the rich have grown richer while the rest of us endure underemployment, foreclosures, and deep cuts to public education and services, peaking with the Nov. 2 Oakland General Strike that drew more than 10,000 people into the streets to demand economic justice.

The Occupy Wall Street movement — and its many local manifestations, including OccupySF and Occupy Oakland — has been the main vehicle for those populist passions for the last two months, with the support of the labor movement. But now, student and faculty groups from California’s three public university systems are about to get involved in the fight in a big way.

Student and labor groups allied with the ReFund California coalition are planning a week of action for Nov. 9-16, culminating that final day in demonstrations outside the California State University Board of Trustees meeting in Fullerton and University of California Board of Trustees meeting at the UCSF campus in San Francisco’s Mission Bay.

Those protests aim to connect the problem of deep cuts and tuition hikes in the public university systems with the larger issue of wealthy individuals and corporations that haven’t been paying their fair share. The coalition wants the boards to pledge support for a five-point action plan that includes taxes on the wealthy, removing commercial property from Prop. 13 caps on property taxes, restoration of cuts to higher education, a sales tax on Wall Street financial transactions, and pressuring banks to reduce mortgage debt on underwater homes.

Charlie Eaton, a ReFund California organizer from United Auto Workers Local 2865, which represents teaching assistants at UC, notes that many UC and CSU board members also sit on the boards of major banks and corporations that have contributed to the current financial crisis and which have been in the crosshairs of the Occupy Wall Street movement.

“It’s really a club of California’s corporate elites,” Eaton said. “It’s about saying to these folks: if you aren’t willing to actively support paying your fair share, or at least get out of the way, we can’t let it be business as usual at the Wall Street institutions that you help run.”

 

NO BUSINESS AS USUAL

He said there’s a direct connection between the actions of these corporate boards and lack of resources in California for public education and services, so it’s only right that these powerful board members — from Regent Richard Blum, the investment banker husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, to Trustee Bill Hauck, former head of the California Business Roundtable — support the needs of the 99 percent.

“We’ll be there to call on them to sign the pledge,” Eaton said of the Nov. 16 meetings. “And if they aren’t prepared to make that pledge, we’re headed to the Financial District to make sure there is no business as usual for these corporations.”

That day of action will echo the last ReFund California protest in San Francisco, the Sept. 29 “Make Banks Pay” march through the Financial District that was one of the first high-profile demonstrations involving OccupySF. The march was several hundred strong, targeting major financial institutions including a Chase Bank branch on Market Street that was occupied by protesters, resulting in six arrests.

When we asked Eaton whether the Occupy movement would lend its energy and numbers to these ReFund California protests, he said, “We’re embedded in the Occupy movement, so it’s not quite right to say it’s something the Occupy movement might help with…I think the Occupy Wall Street movement shows we can make them pay.”

Meanwhile, the next day (Nov. 17), Occupy Wall Street plans to march the 11-mile length of Manhattan in a day of action that will be supported by solidarity marches by Occupy encampments across the country. That is also the day that a two-campus strike is being threatened by the California Faculty Association.

“I think that day is going to be a busy day all around the nation,” Kim Geron, a political science professor at CSU East Bay and vice president of the CFA, told us.

On Nov. 7, the CFA Board of Directors authorized one-day strikes for Nov. 17 at the CSU East Bay and CSU Dominguez Hills campuses to protest CSU Chancellor Charles B. Reed’s decision to withhold negotiated faculty pay raises. It would be the first faculty strike in the system since 1983, although a strike was authorized in 2007 but called off after a negotiated settlement.

After the vote, according to a statement put out to members, CFA President Lillian Taiz told her board, “We hope this carefully targeted strike, which symbolizes both our anger and our commitment to fairness, will lead to changes in his priorities and his positions. If it does not, the CFA leadership—and the CSU faculty we represent—are prepared to escalate the fight.”

 

DUCKING THE TAX ISSUE

CSU spokesperson Mike Uhlenkamp said the campuses will remain open despite the strikes. “We expect it to be business as usual,” he said. As for the pledge that ReFund California is seeking, “We don’t get into advocating between taxing and not taxing,” he said, saying that’s a state decision and “we’re not going to push them to make that determination.”

Guardian calls to the UC President’s Office were not returned by press time. A spokesperson for Gov. Jerry Brown, who is the subject of a student letter-writing campaign urging him to tax the rich and stop cutting public services, continued to blame Republicans.

“We too are deeply concerned about cuts to the state’s universities and colleges, which is why the Governor pushed for a solution to our budget deficit that included extending revenues. Unfortunately, Republicans in the Legislature refused to even allow the people of California to vote on the measure, which could have helped prevent future cuts,” Brown spokesperson Evan Westrup responded via email.

When we asked whether Brown was simply giving up, how he planned to deal with the problem, and why Brown has not followed up his campaign pledge to tax the rich with any proposals to do so, he wrote simply, “There are a number of ways to pursue additional revenue moving forward and these options are being considered.”

Geron said there is a clear connection between problems in the CSU system and the hoarding of resources by the richest one percent of Americans, the main critique of Occupy Wall Street, a movement driven largely by current and recent college students.

“We are part of it. One of our slogans is we are the 99 percent and we teach the 99 percent,” Geron told us.

While the CFU is focused on decisions by the Chancellor’s Office — indeed, the strike is legally allowed only because the chancellor broke the contract by withholding negotiated pay increases — Geron said those decisions were made in a climate of deep funding cuts prompted by the state budget crisis.

“Obviously, the economic crisis is a lot of the reason why all this happened. It’s part of a larger crisis that is going on about how to fund the public good, including higher education,” Geron said. “Students are paying a lot more and getting a lot less. That’s the heart of what’s going on.”

The UC Student Association is taking part in the ReFund California week of action, but has not yet voted to participate in direct action against corporations on Nov. 16, Executive Director Matt Haney told us. But he said that many UC students will still take part in that action, just as they’ve been taking part in the Occupy movement.

“It’s the same frustrations. We have to get out there and start pushing this ourselves,” he told us. “We need to show the state that things can’t just keep moving along as they have. We have to put a stop to business as usual. The economic collapse is what destroyed the UC system.”

Haney sees the student, labor, and Occupy movements starting to come together in a very natural way. “It has really put the wind in the sails of student activists to see the energy of the Occupy movement,” Haney said. “There is a coming together of students and labor, and it’s overlapping with the Occupy movement in a powerful way.” *

Find details about the ReFund California Week of Action at www.makebankspaycalifornia.com.

Why Occupy? Here’s why

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The Chron buried the story below an item about Chevron cutting its grants to PBS, but if you want to see the case for the Occupy movement, it’s laid out perfectly in a powerful new report by the California Budget Project. Read it here (PDF) The data is solid; the policy impacts are clear.

For starters, California’s 33,900 millionaire taxpayers (people reporting more than $1 million in income in 2010) — that’s two-tenths of the top one percent — earned $104 billion — 11 times the amount needed to lift every single California out of poverty. That’s right — a ten-percent surtax on incomes of more than $1 million could end poverty in California.

California, the report states, has the 7th worst income gap in the nation, between Alabama and Texas.

The San Francisco/Marin/Oakland metropolitan area has the 7th worst income disparity of any major urban area in America.

And it’s not the Invisible Hand of Adam Smith that caused the problem: “Public policy,” the report states, “narrow income gaps less today than they did a generation ago.”

San Francisco’s electing a new mayor today. When you go to the polls, think about economic justice. And when you hear complaints about Occupy SF, think about the fact that before the Occupy movement, the wealth and income gap was barely on the political agenda.

 

The Black Bloc is always with us

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I learned about how a handful of people could screw up a major demonstration back in 1984, when the Democratic National Convention was in San Francisco and a fairly large number of peace activists had arranged a protest called the “War Chest Tour.” The idea was to draw attention to the fact that Democrats as well as Republicans got big campaign donations from defense contractors whose business was making war. Back then, a bunch of the biggest war profiteers had offices in San Francisco, and the demonstration — which attracted hundreds of people — wound through the financial district with signs and banners. It was, generally, a great success — except in the national press.

The thing is, the protest (like occupy Oakland) was prety anarchic, which a small “a” — peaceful, but leaderless. There was no organization with an office and a phone that the press could call for comment, no easy way to identify the coalition that had put it together.

Oh, but there was one very organized group present: The Revolutionary Communist Party had maybe a dozen members marching (which may have been the entire local membership of that particular group, which has been on the margins of the American left for many years). The RCP members had T-Shirts, newspapers, people designated to speak to the media, handouts with an office phone number — all the stuff that made lazy reporters’ lives easier. So when the story broke, both locally and nationally, the first paragraph read:

“Revolutionary Communists protestested yesterday in San Francisco ….” And the whole point of the War Chest Tour, which my friends had worked on for months, was lost.

Those of us who have been around awhile knew, and know, that the RCP is always with us. There may only be a handful of them still around, but they show up for everything — and don’t seem to care if they undermine the message that event organizers are trying to put out.

The Black Bloc — the “big A” Anarchists who broke windows in Oakland —  are becoming part of the same tradition. It’s a relatively small group, but it’s always around. The marches against the War in Iraq were huge, with tens of thousands of people, and entirely peaceful — except for a few Black Bloc-ers who broke windows and set fires.

Now: I’m not here to blast the Anarchists, or even the RCP. The Maoist/Bob Avakian types have become almost a parody of themselves in recent years, but if that’s what you’re into, go for it. I’m not even going to get into the argument over whether property damage counts as violence; been there, done that, got the circle-A T-shirt. Destroying stuff and causing mayhem can be a powerful political statement, and there have certainly been times when it was appropriate, effective and considered more than acceptable.

But it’s not always the right strategy, and in Oakland in 2011, I think it wasn’t. I recognize that this is an emergency situation, that the class warfare has already begun, and that extreme tactics are necessary to fight back. And hell, I don’t think smashing a bank window is so awful; smash enough of them and you put a lot of unemployed glaziers back to work. But in downtown Oakland, that tactic can too quickly backfire and lead to stuff like this. (Here’s an idea — how about a Shop Local day at Occupy Oakland, where everyone agrees to patronize small local businesses downtown? It fits right into the plan to withdraw your money from the big banks and put it in local credit unions.)

The problem with the Black Bloc (which isn’t really a bloc at all, it’s just a loose group of people who (a) think their tactics are appropriate and (b) love this shit) is that it’s acting in direct conflict with the many, many people who worked really, really hard to organize what was supposed to be a peaceful event. Like the RCP, they’re too quick to piss in the well.

You want to get violent? You want to break stuff? Show up for the general assembly, make your case, and see if you can convince the rest of the group that this is a good idea, right now, one that sends the right message and promotes the cause. Maybe you can do that; maybe everyone agrees. But if the majority of the group says no — that respect for property (much as we may hate private property, particularly bank property, and all that) is a better way to go right now, today, in this situation — then back off, dudes, and get with the program.