Their Land Grabs, and Ours

These are the notes I prepared for a talk at Counterpulse on 2/14/07. The talk was part of a series on urban life and resistance co-sponsored by City Lights Foundation and Shaping San Francisco. Thanks to Chris Carlsson for inviting me to speak and Erick Lyle for rounding out the evening with an inspiring talk about housing takeovers in the Mid-Market redevelopment area.

Patterns of displacement as resistance remain pretty constant throughout the centuries. They are revised, re-ramped and remixed; given a different face. The political economy in which each story occurs in is often very different from the last. But the blueprint of domination, the strategies of the elites, the response of everyday people tends to remain quite constant.

Take for instance, settlers on this continent clearing the prairie of Native Americans. For the most part they were those of limited resources who bought the lie that the land was theirs to take, and that no-one of any consequence was there before, just savages a notch or two above animals. Then the settlers too were largely displaced, often urbanized as robber barons cleared their claims to make way for railroads.

Jump to today where the presence of young artists and bohemians is manipulated in order to soften up a neighborhood, make it appealing for the truly rich to walk in and finish the process of destroying a working-class neighborhood. The process is of course, economic but is far more complex than political economy of a ‘hood.

In order for their land-grabs to be successful, the Real Estate Industry breaks bonds of solidarity neighbors might develop with one another by amplifying anxieties of community safety, immigration, and sexuality to warp the discussion about how a city can develop. This masks a discussion that is about class hatred and white supremacy in the codes of revitalization.

Then debates around housing to boil down to “supply and demand” without ever asking “what kind of supply, and what kind of demand?” The discussion hardly ever arrives at what it takes to make an open, egalitarian city that honors its workers, preserves communities of color, and develops a strong artistic life that cannot be manipulated to help destroy all desirable areas of life.

Governing Under the Influence of…

San Francisco is a city that enjoys booze and sex. We enjoy both in every conceivable variety and mixture. This joie de vivre is responsible for attracting folks from all over the globe to live here, brave the high rents, and ignore the fact that the City only really enjoys 1.5 changes of season. Mayor Gavin Newsom’s troubles raise a lot of questions, but with the very critical exception of the possibility of sexual harassment in city employment, none of it is anybody else’s business.

I write this as someone whose “Matt for Mayor” sticker only recently fell off his bike.

I’m not writing to defend the Mayor, rather the basic principles of privacy which dictate that we treat sex, and sexual indiscretions, as solely the business of the of those having it or directly harmed by it. That excludes just about everyone, except for three people.  Once the decency police are unleashed, they rarely relent. Then no one’s bedroom is safe. As for the booze, you can’t throw a rock in this town without hitting someone who is high on something. As the great prophet Marilyn Manson said “We’re all stars in the dope show.” That means that if you aren’t a star, you are probably a supporting character. We on the left are the first to call for Harm Reduction, and compassionate approaches to the illness of addiction. That said we can only sincerely wish the Mayor a speedy and meaningful recovery.

However, there is one form of governing under the influence that always needs scrutiny-the influence of corporations, big money, crooked lobbyists and the real estate industry.

So ultimately Gavin Newsom will be judged not by the influence of alcohol and women in his life.

Rather, when the true history of the Newsom years are written, the following questions will need to be answered:

Did the Mayor preside over a redevelopment of the Bayview District which revitalized the neighborhood for the exisiting community or one that decimated one of the last African-American communities in San Francisco? Did he truly deal with the homeless epidemic or did his programs pit various populations of poor people against each other for the same small scraps of housing? Did this administration manage to stem the tide of street violence without turning San Francisco into a surveilance state? Did San Francisco stand by while the Inland Boatmen’s Union was busted by the Hornblower Corporation? Will San Francisco be developed in a way that preserves the brilliant diversity of our city, or turn Baghdad-by-the-Bay into Disneyland of the North? Will our city find a way to build more truly affordable family housing, or will the city become a sick version of Logan’s Run, where no one over thirty is welcome?

At each of these points, tough decisions will have to be made.

While some of them might require a stiff whisky, none should be made under the influence of the kind of money that would steal your mother’s pacemaker if it means a higher return on a Tenancy in Common.

The answers to these questions are, everyone’s business.

Interview with Carolyn Ho: Mother of Lt. Ehren Watada

On February 28th, the Chinatown Tenants Association hosted a talk by Carolyn Ho, the mother of Lt. Ehren Watada, who is facing court-martial for his refusal to be deployed to Iraq. I was honored to be invited to this event by Reverend Norman Fong of Chinese Community Development Center, who is one of my personal heroes. I caught up with Ms. Ho following the powerful speech to talk about building a truly grassroots anti-war movement.

JT: You have chosen to speak out not only in support of your son; but against the war in Iraq. What do you see is the state of the anti-war movement in the United States?

CH: I think that the anti-war movement is obviously now part of the mainstream national agenda. It is not just the agenda of the Left anymore. Early on, it was the Left, and some intellectuals sounding out a warning about what this war is about. Now the overwhelming majority of Americans oppose the war; that is what the elections showed us. Of course, some Congress people are now trying to tell us the opposite; that the elections really weren’t a statement on the war!