[6 articles]
Sit/lie proposal raises ire
http://www.ebar.com/news/article.php?sec=news&article=4618
03/11/2010
by Seth Hemmelgarn
[email protected]
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom last week introduced an ordinance
that would restrict people from sitting or lying on the city's public
sidewalks between 7 a.m. and 11 p.m.
Progressives are criticizing the proposal, co-sponsored and
introduced by Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier, and say it's
unnecessary. Others, including residents and merchants in the Haight
who first suggested the idea, say it's needed to keep squatters from
blocking doorways and intimidating people.
The proposed ordinance was introduced Tuesday, March 2.
Much of the concern around the issue has focused on the
Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, where people appearing to be homeless
can usually be found on the sidewalks.
The proposal ties people sitting or lying on sidewalks to "a cycle of
decline as residents and tourists go elsewhere to meet, shop, and
dine, and residents become intimidated from using the public
sidewalks in their own neighborhoods."
But Joey Cain, board president of the Haight Ashbury Neighborhood
Council, said at a March 1 press conference on the steps of City Hall
that the ordinance is being used "to manufacture a climate of fear."
"Our neighborhoods are being used cynically ... to manufacture a
climate of fear. There are some problems, but the laws already exist
to deal with lawbreakers," said Cain, who's also a longtime gay
activist and former SF LGBT Pride Committee board president.
The Reverend Lea Brown, senior pastor of Metropolitan Community
Church-San Francisco, said in a call to the Bay Area Reporter that
she opposes the proposed law.
"It's supposedly about, 'We don't want people to sit or lie on the
sidewalk,' but to me what it's really about is 'We don't want certain
people to sit or lie on the sidewalk,'" said Brown.
"I think it's a law targeting a certain group of people, and any time
a law targets a certain group, it's never a good thing. As queer
people, we have experience with laws that have been passed that are
then used to target us," she said.
Tommi Avicolli Mecca, a queer activist who works for the Housing
Rights Committee, predicted the proposed law would be used to harass
homeless LGBT youth and others, and said the priority should be
providing services and housing.
"Sit/lie laws have a long history of homophobia," Avicolli Mecca said
at the press conference.
Rafael Mandelman, a local attorney running for supervisor in District
8, is opposed to the sit/lie law. He said he doesn't think it will
work anymore than an aggressive panhandling measure passed by voters
has stopped such behavior from happening.
"The voters have a right to be angry but they deserve real solutions,
such as more housing for the homeless," said Mandelman.
According to a position paper from the Coalition on Homelessness, in
the 1970s, San Francisco police began using sit/lie rules of the time
"as a regular tool for the targeting of LGBT people" in the
neighborhood now known as the Castro.
Opponents have started a Facebook group called San Francisco Stands
Against Sit/Lie.
Not everyone dislikes the proposal, though. During a District 8
candidate forum last month, Deputy City Attorney Scott Wiener said he
supported the sit/lie measure.
Arthur Evans, a gay man who said he's lived at the corner of Haight
and Ashbury streets for 35 years, said in a phone interview that he
supports the ordinance.
Evans indicated that he's often been called "faggot" by people
sitting on the sidewalk and said he has seen increased hostility.
He said the problem doesn't apply to everyone, but "these are not the
flower children. Although they have long hair, their behavior is very
violent and their values are very repressive."
Specifically, the proposal states current laws barring "the
intentional, willful or malicious obstruction of pedestrians" don't
adequately address the "safety hazards, disruption and deterrence" to
pedestrians caused by sidewalk sitters.
The proposed ordinance would only apply to sidewalks, not plazas, or
public parks or benches. Exceptions would include people in
wheelchairs and festivalgoers.
The proposal calls for police to first issue a warning to any
violator. After that, among other punishments, a first offense could
result in a fine of $50 to $100. Subsequent offenses could result in
penalties including fines of $300 to $500, or jail time.
--------
San Francisco proposes ordinance you can't sit on
http://media.www.thespartandaily.com/media/storage/paper852/news/2010/03/11/Opinion/San-Francisco.Proposes.Ordinance.You.Cant.Sit.On-3888575.shtml
Michelle Gachet
Issue date: 3/11/10
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom went for a walk with his baby
daughter on a Saturday.
On this morning walk, he saw someone on the sidewalk along Haight
Street smoking crack.
Suddenly, it became clear for the mayor that anyone sitting or lying
on the sidewalk could be dangerous.
This event prompted him to support the "sit/lie" citywide ordinance
proposed by George Gascon, San Francisco's chief of police.
Forget about sitting down to tie your shoe.
The ordinance would give police officers the authority to arrest
individuals who are sitting or lying on the sidewalk. It would be up
to the police officers' judgment to determine who to inspect or ask
to move off the sidewalk.
How about calling it the "ethnic race profiling/no more homelessness"
ordinance?
Calling this ordinance "Sit/lie" doesn't make it justice.
There are hundreds of people who live on the streets of San
Francisco, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.
This seems to be the solution to make San Francisco attractive for
tourists while displacing all the homeless people.
Sitting or lying on the sidewalk is not a crime.
Residents of the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood have been complaining
over panhandling, according to a Feb. 27 article in the SF Chronicle.
Some of the Haight residents argue that individuals intimidate them
with pit bulls, and residents of San Francisco apparently support
this ordinance as a way to stop panhandling, intimidation and fear
when walking on the street.
If someone demands that you give up your belongings with menacing,
growling pit bulls, would they be sitting down?
I agree, there shouldn't be people using dogs as tools of
intimidation on the street, but what does that have to do with
sitting down or lying on the sidewalk?
Nothing at all.
The police argue that with the ordinance they could respond to crimes
before they happen. If nothing happens, then what's the crime?
The police should find another way to enforce the already existing
laws to stop panhandlers.
A similar law passed in the city of Santa Cruz, and the city's mayor,
Mike Rotkin, said he thinks it's a positive law, during a KQED radio
show with Michael Krasny.
When asked what would happen if the most vulnerable members of the
community would be affected, Rotkin responded "there's always a
potential for that."
Rotkin said the law that would make sitting down or lying on the
sidewalk unacceptable behavior is "legal, constitutional and not
really a violation of anybody's rights."
A similar law didn't pass in Portland, Ore. because it was found to
be unconstitutional.
A Multnomah County judge ruled that "Portland's sidewalk law is
unconstitutional because it gives police the power to ticket people
for simply sitting on the edge of the sidewalk," according to a June
23 article in the Oregonian.
Prohibiting people from sitting and lying on the street does not
solve anything. It's just a big excuse.
--------
Haight at center of sit-lie debate
http://www.sfexaminer.com/local/Haight-at-center-of-sit-lie-debate-89335512.html
By: Brent Begin
March 28, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO The highest concentration of emergency medical
responses for alcohol abuse is centered in the Haight Ashbury
neighborhood where there is increasing degradation in the public's
feelings of safety at night, according to a controller's memo
released this week.
The memo, sent to police Chief George Gascón, adds fuel to the fire
over the debate of an ordinance that would make it illegal to sit or
lie on city sidewalks. The Haight has been ground zero for the
argument where residents have spoken out about aggressive behavior.
Mayor Gavin Newsom and Supervisor Michela Alioto-Pier have already
introduced a so-called "sit-lie" ordinance to the Board of
Supervisors. While the proposed ordinance appears to be bound for
failure at the board, a measure will most likely end up on the November ballot.
Among residents surveyed, between 2007 and 2009 there was a 12
percent decrease in feelings of safety at night in the Park Police
District, where the Haight is located, while the rest of The City
only decreased slightly, according to the report. The biannual
Controller's Office report uses data from randomly selected San
Francisco residents.
The controller also found that between July 2008 and December 2008,
78 patients out of 3,093 citywide were picked up in the Haight
Ashbury neighborhood. Nine out of 10 of that relatively small group
were sent to sobering centers for treatment.
Homeless advocates, who oppose the legislation, are taking the
controller's report with a grain of salt.
"The data is pretty clearly unreliable," said Bob Offer-Westort with
the Coalition on Homelessness. "We have no doubt about the
controller's ability to crunch numbers, but we do have a problem with
the sources of the data and its reliability."
--
Troubled district
Police service calls around Haight Street in 2008:
Suspicious person: 3,978
Suspicious homeless person: 1,347
Location checks: 3,346
Muni calls: 1,236
Traffic stops: 1,227
Parking violations: 795
Noise complaints: 579
Citizen interviews: 401
Fight or dispute: 384
Driveway violations: 258
Source: SFPD via Controller's Office
--
[email protected]
--------
Sit-lie laws put spotlight on safety
http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2010-03-22-sidewalk-ban-san-francisco_N.htm
3/23/2010
By William M. Welch
SAN FRANCISCO Since the "Summer of Love" more than 40 years ago,
this liberal city and its legendary Haight-Ashbury neighborhood have
been magnets for the young, the alienated, the down-and-out and the
stoned and for tourists eager to watch them.
But residents, merchants, police and Mayor Gavin Newsom say what was
once a flower-power scene on bohemian streets now displays an ugly,
even violent side. They are calling for an ordinance to make it
easier for police to clear sidewalks of what they say are aggressive
panhandlers and the open use of drugs.
"The community is just fed up with the lack of civility and how it
had changed in the last 10 years," says police Capt. Teri Barrett,
who heads the district that includes Haight Street and nearby Golden
Gate Park. "They are very compassionate people, and they have had enough."
The ordinance, proposed by Newsom and Police Chief George Gascon,
would prohibit sitting or lying on public sidewalks between 7 a.m.
and 11 p.m. Benches and parks would be excluded.
First-time violators would face a fine of up to $100 and community
service, and repeat violators could face a fine of up to $500 and 30
days in jail.
The law would apply throughout the city. But it is aimed at the
neighborhood defined by the intersection of Haight and Ashbury
streets, ground zero for 1967's Summer of Love, as well as downtown
areas where tourists attract panhandlers.
Newsom's proposal was triggered in part by his own shock at the
street scenes since moving his family to the neighborhood. He said
while strolling his young daughter down Haight Street, he saw and
spoke with a man smoking crack. "This is a behavior issue," Newsom says.
The proposal has drawn condemnation from some advocates for the
homeless, who call it an attempt to push the poor out of sight.
"If they enforce the law the way it's written, people will think they
live in a police state," says Alan Schlosser, legal director of the
American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California.
Yet San Francisco is following a path of several other West Coast
cities. Berkeley, Santa Cruz and Palo Alto all university cities in
the San Francisco Bay Area have enacted similar ordinances, as have
Portland and Seattle.
Santa Cruz Mayor Mike Rotkin supports the ordinance. He says Santa
Cruz has used a more limited law to clear certain blocks. "We haven't
solved our problem with people blocking the sidewalk and creating
unfriendly space," Rotkin said. "On the other hand, it's been a huge
improvement."
Police say they want the ordinance because existing laws aren't enough.
Barrett said laws against aggressive panhandling and blocking the
sidewalks require a citizen or merchant to sign a complaint and agree
to appear in court before police can act, unless an officer sees the
infraction take place.
San Francisco's elected public defender, Jeff Adachi, has urged the
Board of Supervisors to reject the ordinance and said he expects to
challenge its constitutionality if a person is charged under it. He
argues that innocent tourists waiting for a taxi could find
themselves in trouble.
"The problem with the proposed law is it gives the police too much
discretion to decide who should and shouldn't be prosecuted," Adachi said.
Maria Foscarinis, executive director of the National Law Center on
Homelessness and Poverty in Washington, D.C., says such ordinances
are part of a trend toward criminalizing poverty. In a report last
year, her group said 30% of 235 cities it surveyed had enacted
ordinances restricting sitting or lying down in public places. "They
seem to be on the upswing now as homelessness rises dramatically due
to the foreclosure crisis," she said.
But the issue isn't homelessness and he isn't criminalizing poverty,
Newsom insists.
On any given night, San Francisco's homeless shelters have more than
100 empty beds, he says. The city has kept its shelters open 24 hours
and even accommodates dogs. He says one study has found 44% of people
living on the streets of San Francisco have been in the city less than 90 days.
Kent Uyehara, who runs skateboard and snowboard shops on Haight
Street, says he and other merchants proposed the idea to police last
fall. He says merchants are fearful of calling police because they
may face broken windows, graffiti or other vandalism in retribution.
"Last summer it kind of reached a boiling point," Uyehara said.
Rob McConihe, who manages rental apartments and stores along Haight
Street, said he had seen panhandlers intimidate and shake down
passersby. "It's horrible for business," he said. "The city has
become more violent."
Interviews with street people on Haight recently revealed that
panhandlers can make $100 a day.
The proposed law could affect Lynn Gentry, 23, who has found artistic
work in the neighborhood since 2007. Gentry sits on a chair on the
sidewalk with a typewriter, offering poetry for a donation. He
worries the law could put him out of business. "It depends on how
they enforce it," he says. "Sitting down I mean, that's a non-violent act."
Newsom says he expects the Board of Supervisors will reject his
ordinance. If so, he says he will use his power as mayor to put the
issue on the November ballot for voters to decide.
"I think if you live and work on Haight Street, it makes a lot of
sense," said January Pongtratic, who manages a store on Haight.
"They're pretty relentless, the loiterers."
--------
A great sit-lie debate
http://www.sfbg.com/politics/2010/03/26/great-sit-lie-debate
03.26.10
Tim Redmond
KPFA's morning show had a great debate this morning around the
sit-lie law, featuring Gabriel Haaland, a longtime Haight resident,
and Ted Lowenberg, president of the Haight Ashbury Improvement
Association. You can listen to it here.
In the discussion -- nicely moderated by Brian Edwards-Tiekert -- you
could see the essential problem with the law emerging.
Haaland pointed out that blocking or obstructing the sidewalk is
already illegal; so is aggressive panhandling, assault and all of the
other behaviors Lowenberg complained about. Lowenberg's response:
Yes, that's true, but it's hard to arrest someone on those charges;
you have to fill out paperwork. What we need is to give the police
more discretion to use their judgment to make arrests when they think
that's what's needed.
"The police need the immediate ability to respond without paperwork," he said.
And that's precisely what bothers a lot of us about this law.
The San Francisco police have a long history of abusing their
"judgment" in cases involving marginalized populations. A lot of us
don't believe that arrests will be limited to violent bad actors --
and we have many, many years of evidence to back us up.
Haaland pointed out that the last time a sit-lie law was enforced, in
the 1970s when the cops wanted to crack down on the hippies on Haight
Street, it wound up being used against gay men in the Castro. This
time, it could be any of a wide range of people who wind up sitting
on the sidewalks, for a lot of reasons.
Lowenberg kept talking about "street thugs" and complaining that the
district attorney hasn't prosecuted them when they've attacked people
-- in one case, gouging someone's eyes and biting him. But attacking
someone on the street is already illegal; does anyone really think
that the D.A., and the law-enforcement model, will be any more
effective with the new law in place?
It won't -- but that's not the point. I think what Lowenberg and his
allies want is to give the police more power, to let them "clean up
the streets" as they see fit. It's not about courts and prosecution;
it's about curbside justice. And that's never worked well in San Francisco.
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Taking a Stand to Keep Sitting Legal
http://www.truthout.org/taking-a-stand-keep-sitting-legal58105
Monday 29 March 2010
by: Randall Amster J.D., Ph.D.
San Francisco is poised to become the latest in a string of cities to
adopt a law making it a crime to sit on the sidewalk. While it is the
case that some of these other cities are known as being among the
more liberal in the nation (e.g., Portland, Seattle, Boulder,
Austin), no city with such a deep progressive history has sought to
impose anything like a citywide ban on sitting such as is being
proposed for San Francisco. The fact that these draconian ordinances
have generally withstood legal challenges due to the intricacies and
inanities of the justice system is no small comfort to the homeless
people who are the primary targets, nor to the activists and
community members concerned about the social and ethical implications
of such punitive laws. In San Francisco, many of these folks -
activists and the homeless alike - are mobilizing against the
proposed law in the name of justice and common decency.
First, a bit of disclosure and a statement of bias: I have spent over
a decade investigating and analyzing anti-homeless legislation such
as these "no sitting on the sidewalk" ordinances (also known as
"sit-lie" laws because they prohibit sitting and lying down). In
1999, I led a challenge against the law in Tempe, Arizona, while I
was a graduate student at Arizona State University. There, we went
through all of the channels of dissent to take on a law that many in
the community perceived as unnecessary, cruel, unusual and really
just plain asinine. Community activists and homeless street people
packed city council chambers, launched media campaigns and (once the
law was passed) staged sit-ins in open defiance of and protest
against the no-sitting law in particular and the criminalization of
homelessness in general. Interestingly, the Tempe law actually took
effect on Martin Luther King Day, a fact that we were able to use to
highlight the argument that sitting is an important form of
legitimate social protest.
While these laws are aimed at homeless people, they diminish
everyone's rights in the process. The regulation of public spaces and
the restriction of forms of communication are serious First Amendment
matters that should not be lightly swept aside in the rush to "clean
up" our cities. These points in particular framed a lawsuit that I
filed in federal district court against Tempe's sit-lie law; although
I was not homeless, I was an activist engaged in "expressive sitting"
on the downtown sidewalks and so was able to get legal "standing" to
represent myself in challenging the law's application to protests.
This was really just a principled way of getting into court to take
on the entire law, which had previously been upheld by the Ninth
Circuit Court of Appeals in a case arising out of Seattle. Still, I
managed to convince a federal judge that my case raised novel issues
and, indeed, he wound up issuing an injunction against the Tempe law
and thus wiping it off the books on First Amendment grounds.
This decision was later overturned on appeal by the Ninth Circuit,
following a special hearing held at the ASU College of Law. The
court's decision wasn't unexpected, but neither was it determinative
of the larger issue. In the process of litigating the case and
organizing in the streets, many crucial facts that ultimately tipped
the balance were brought to light, including: the removal of benches
in the downtown area, the privatization of some of the sidewalks, the
lack of adequate alternatives such as shelters in the city, the
elimination of public restroom facilities and the inordinate
influence that the business community had on the city council. I
wound up writing my doctoral dissertation on these and other related
issues, resulting in two books on the subject, the most recent of
which is "Lost in Space: The Criminalization, Globalization and Urban
Ecology of Homelessness" (LFB Scholarly, 2008). I mention all of this
in no way to promote my own work, but merely to admit to a profound
inclination against these laws derived from years of personal
immersion and professional research alike.
Thus, we arrive in San Francisco, circa 2010. As is often the case,
the ordinance has been proposed by a political figure - in this case
Mayor Gavin Newsom - citing tried, true and trite "safety and
civility" concerns. Supporting the mayor are the local police
interjecting typically hyperbolic rhetoric such as references in the
media to "bands of thugs blocking sidewalks and bullying merchants,
pedestrians and neighborhood residents." The mayor himself claims to
have decided to put forward the new law "after walking along Haight
Street with his infant daughter and seeing someone smoking crack and
blocking the entrance of a business." Not only are such allusions
right out of the demonization playbook, but they are also completely
disingenuous since the behaviors referenced - blocking sidewalks,
harassing people, smoking crack and restricting access to businesses
- are already illegal under existing laws. Proponents almost always
will claim that it is "conduct, not status" being punished with these
sit-lie laws, but the conduct that is often cited is already
prohibited, begging the question of why relatively innocuous acts
like sitting are being placed into the criminalization loop. And,
please, don't buy the arguments that the police need more tools, and
that existing laws are too cumbersome because they require
complaining witnesses or the like - our criminal justice system
easily seems to procure more than enough convictions every day, even
operating within the limits of such tedious constraints.
The main reason for the preference toward criminalization of
low-level behaviors is fairly straightforward. Under our legal
system, "status crimes" are generally taboo, so the easiest way to
attack a particular group is to isolate a behavior common (or even
exclusive, if possible) to it and criminalize that conduct. Think of
other public-place laws regarding skateboarding (targeting youth),
"cruising" (youth of color) and even congregating (youth "gangs");
these are often sold as neutral prohibitions on conduct that apply
equally to everyone even though it is widely understood that only
certain demographics regularly engage in the behavior - recalling
Anatole France's famous remark that "the law in its majesty draws no
distinction, but forbids rich and poor alike from begging in the
streets or sleeping in the public parks." By criminalizing sitting on
the sidewalks, the law is singling out a group of people who
generally lack better alternatives in terms of places to sit, such as
sidewalk cafes or their own living room couches. Moreover, for many
street people, sitting is understood as a passive posture that can
convey need in a nonthreatening manner while doing so visibly and
without shame.
In this regard, sitting is an expressive behavior. It has been
utilized for purposes of political transformation on innumerable
occasions, in places ranging from buses and lunch counters to
university offices and, yes, sidewalks. With available spaces for
public demonstration rapidly shrinking in the era of privatization,
regulation and consumption, it is vitally important that we resist
further colonization of the remaining public spaces of our cities.
Sidewalks are part of that small class of "traditional public forums"
where First Amendment rights of expression, assembly and petitioning
for redress apply and, thus, sidewalks (like streets and parks, as
the Supreme Court observed in the 1939 Hague case) "have immemorially
been held in trust for the use of the public and, time out of mind,
have been used for purposes of assembly, communicating thoughts
between citizens and discussing public questions." The fact that
these precious and eroding public forums are being lost in the name
of commercialism and sanitization is all the more troubling.
Indeed, cities sometimes have found that when they attempt to "clean
up and clear out" their public spaces to create more
business-friendly environments, things can go awry and the very
qualities that make for an interesting "destination point" can be
lost in the process. This is particularly true of an area such as
Haight-Ashbury, one of the primary tourist locales in San Francisco
and also ground zero for the proposed no-sitting law. People likely
to be found sitting on sidewalks there include poets, musicians and
artists in addition to homeless people and youths. A recent USA Today
article highlights many of these concerns and further notes that the
law "would also make lounging near the entrance of Golden Gate park"
illegal as well. Yet, while certain alleged behaviors and competing
community values in the Haight are central to the public dialogue,
the primary version of the ordinance being proposed (two versions
were initially proffered) would enact the no-sitting ban on a
citywide scale from 7:00 AM to 11:00 PM, rendering it one of the
nation's most restrictive sit-lie laws. Tellingly, the text of the
proposed law notes that "the prohibition applies Citywide in order to
prevent displacement of violators from one district or neighborhood
to another," but it makes no mention of where people will in fact be
displaced to if a citywide ban is imposed. Simply running them off to
neighboring cities is shortsighted and counterproductive in the
larger struggle to address the complex social issue of homelessness.
We are living in a time where drawn-out recession has caused a spike
in homelessness, not just among the unemployable or substance-addled,
but also among working class people, families, veterans and children.
Many of the young people frequenting the public sidewalks are in fact
refugees of a sort, oftentimes fleeing from abusive situations even
as they express their defiance and autonomy in ways that can
sometimes be seen as incompatible with social norms of civility.
Rather than the punitive arm of the law being brought to bear - with
violators potentially receiving fines of up to $500 and terms of
imprisonment of up to 30 days just for sitting down! - We ought to be
expending our collective energies and political capital on
constructive and compassionate solutions that protect everyone's
rights and interests rather than privileging those of one class
against another. Time and again, cities opt for these patterns of
criminalization and demonization, which do nothing whatsoever to
address the underlying problem and, in fact, make it worse by
stigmatizing certain groups and undermining community cohesion.
Predictably, despite such concerns, the public seems to support the
ordinance, at least based on the initial stories and quotes featured
in the media and likewise local news outlets, which have editorially
endorsed the law as well. This is par for the course, especially in
the early stages of the debate where primarily police and politicians
have their views reflected in the popular consciousness. Yet,
critical voices have begun to emerge in the community, including one
local columnist who described the law as "an overly broad,
complicated and expensive option for fixing a very specific
problem.... It's like killing a housefly with a flamethrower."
Another blogger has accused the mayor of "political opportunism" and
notes that the Board of Supervisors ironically met to discuss the
sit-lie issue on the same day that the US Interagency Council on
Homelessness was meeting in the city to gather public input on a
strategic plan to end homelessness, concluding with this cogent
suggestion: "start with 'don't outlaw sitting.'" And a local
television report included comments from a citizen member of the
Police Commission Board calling it "a draconian law," and an ACLU
representative observing that the law would be "criminalizing
innocent conduct" and is a "backward step" in addressing the root issues.
In fact, community voices are only just beginning to be heard.
Activists held an all-day "Sidewalks Are for People!" citywide event
on March 27, with demonstrators occupying and celebrating their
public spaces in as many as 50 locations around the city. A
concomitant web site and Facebook page have been established around
the theme of "Stand Against Sit-Lie," drawing myriad postings and
testimonials against the ordinance. Concerned residents like Andy
Blue, a local organizer, told me that the proposed law "doesn't
represent what this city is about.... We want to show that San
Francisco is unified in its celebration of public space, civil
liberties and a tradition of compassion." Many organizations that
work with homeless populations will be offering their views about how
to address the matter in nonpunitive ways. One such group, the
Coalition on Homelessness (COH), focuses in particular on
empowerment-based strategies that strive to foster "the active
participation of homeless and low-income San Francisco residents and
front-line staff in the struggle for economic and social justice." In
this manner, as civil rights organizer Bob Offer-Westort of the COH
recently told me, local organizations have been "turning homeless
youth from the Haight-Ashbury out for hearings" and striving to
ensure that "homeless people were able to be part of the hearing
process." This is crucial to not merely opposing a bad law, but to
further articulating contrasting perspectives and inclusive
alternatives in its stead.
This task has been undertaken from a number of fronts including, as
Offer-Westort noted, "a group of students in a journalism program
[who] interviewed merchants on Haight Street to get varying
perspectives on the proposed law. Everyone they spoke to either
opposed the law because it was mean-spirited and constitutionally
[problematic], or because they thought that it was a dumb idea that
wouldn't really make homeless kids go away. They were unable to
locate a proponent." On the question of public polling showing
support for the ordinance, he observed that the poll question was
posed in a demonstrably loaded manner: "Would you support a law that
prohibited people who were sitting or lying down from obstructing the
sidewalk and harassing pedestrians?" (Note that the proposed law
criminalizes any act of sitting and, thus, targets neither
obstruction nor harassment.) Based on his experiences as a homeless
rights advocate, Offer-Westort concluded, "because the hatred of
homeless people is still so socially acceptable, [big business
interests] see sit-lie as a good wedge issue to turn the electorate
conservative," and likewise that due to the ongoing recession, "poor
people get scapegoated [and] it's way easier, psychologically, for
some merchants to think that they can do something about the
situation by attacking homeless youth" than to address the issues in
more direct and comprehensive ways.
The presence of individuals and organizations with sophisticated
critiques and longstanding connections to the issues bodes well for a
positive outcome for all residents - homeless and housed alike - in
this potentially divisive matter. As one of the true jewels of
America, San Francisco occupies a unique place in the cultural and
political workings of the past half-century. The forward-thinking,
transformative and eclectic perspectives embodied by the people that
call the city their home have served as something of a beacon of hope
for those of us scattered among the more reactionary environs of the
country. The fact that a city as creative and dynamic as San
Francisco would even consider replicating the failed strategies of
less innovative locales is troubling. Fortunately, the contest is
only just beginning and the tide is already starting to turn away
from knee-jerk criminalization regimes and toward the longer-lasting
promise of compassionate and constructive resolutions to pressing issues.
--------
Also, see:
http://www.standagainstsitlie.org/
.
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