Activism

Mayor Breed Declares State of Emergency in Tenderloin as Part of Crackdown Efforts

“The emergency declaration is really about removing obstacles so that we can go in and conduct the work we need to do [to] help the residents of the Tenderloin. Our goal is to get those services coordinated as quickly as we can in order to alleviate the overall suffering that people are experiencing in the neighborhood,” said Department of Emergency Management Executive Director Mary Ellen Carroll.

Published

3 years ago

December 26, 2021

Oakland Post

San Francisco Mayor London Breed

San Francisco (BCN)

San Francisco Mayor London Breed doubled down on efforts to crack down on public drug use and other disturbances in the city’s Tenderloin, announcing an official State of Emergency in the neighborhood Friday.

According to Breed’s office, the emergency declaration would work similarly to the city’s COVID-19 Declaration of Emergency and allow the city to respond to health and safety concerns on the streets quickly and without bureaucratic barriers.

Specifically, the declaration allows the city to waive rules around contract procurement and zoning codes in order to quickly open a “linkage site” to voluntarily connect people who are living on the streets and struggling with substance use and mental health issues to services.

The declaration comes just two days after Breed, along with emergency and law enforcement officials, announced several new initiatives to address the neighborhood’s health and safety concerns, including public drug use and illegal street vendors selling stolen items.

“When we look at the conditions on our streets it is really unfortunate; it is sad; it’s heartbreaking,” Breed said during a briefing Friday at City Hall. “We have to move quickly. Too many people are dying in this city. Too many people are sprawled out all over our streets. And now we have a plan to address it.”

According to Breed, an emergency response is needed in the area, as the opioid drug crisis has worsened in recent years, with the highly addictive synthetic opioid fentanyl contributing to a sharp rise in overdose deaths.

“This is necessary in order to see a difference, in order to reverse some of the deaths from overdoses, and the assaults and attacks happening in this community,” she said. “When people walk down the streets of San Francisco, they should feel safe. They shouldn’t have to look over their shoulders; they shouldn’t have to be punched in the face randomly; they shouldn’t have to see someone sticking a needle in various parts of their body; they shouldn’t have to see someone laying out in the street…”

The Board of Supervisors must approve the emergency declaration within the next week, and if approved, the declaration would last for 90 days, according to Breed’s office.

Supervisor Matt Haney, whose district includes the Tenderloin, is in support of the declaration.

“The overdose epidemic is taking the lives of nearly two people a day in our city. Most of those people are in the Tenderloin and South of Market and mostly from fentanyl,” he said. “As the supervisor of the Tenderloin, but also as a resident of the Tenderloin, we need an emergency crisis-level response to confront this deadly epidemic at the scale of the problem that we’re facing.”

Department of Emergency Management Executive Director Mary Ellen Carroll said the linkage site will not only help people coordinate health services from community organizations and the San Francisco Department of Public Health, but the site will also help people get food, hygiene products, and connect them with housing programs.

On Wednesday, Breed announced the Tenderloin Emergency Intervention plan, which involves several approaches to address the crime and public drug use and improve the neighborhood. Part of that is increasing the police presence in the area.

In addition, Breed on Wednesday proposed amending the city’s Surveillance Technology Ordinance — passed in by supervisors in 2019 — to allow police to access more surveillance cameras throughout the city. She also proposed increased funding for law enforcement training, hiring, and increased overtime.

“At the end of the day, the people in this community are not safe and it’s not right. Part of the response to this is definitely police officers,” Breed said Friday.

“We have to arrest drug dealers. We have to arrest people who are assaulting people,” Police Chief William Scott said. “Our officers have said time and time again, ‘Let’s have a system where we can get the social workers involved,’ and that’s exactly what this does at the front end so that we can go and do all the things that the public wants us to do: arrest people who are hurting people; stop the open-air drug use; and stop some of the craziness that’s going on in our streets.”

On Friday, the group Defund SFPD Now criticized Breed’s newly announced initiatives.

“The mayor’s plan includes moves to appropriate additional money to the San Francisco Police Department, expand coordinated sweeps of unhoused people, expand surveillance, and target unlicensed street vendors. While we believe in doing whatever we can to secure basic resources and dignity, Mayor Breed’s latest proposal deflects from the failures of the city’s neoliberal policies by imprisoning vulnerable people in the Tenderloin,” Defund SFPD Now said in a statement.

“We are disappointed that Mayor Breed would use the declaration of a state of emergency to increase the reach of criminalization rather than using it to meet people’s needs with respect and compassion,” the group said.

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Activism

‘Respect Our Vote’ Mass Meeting Rejects Oakland, Alameda County Recalls

The mass meeting, attended mostly by members of local Asian American communities, was held in a large banquet room in a Chinese restaurant in Alameda. The Respect Our Vote (ROV) coalition, consisting of concerned community members and groups, is organizing meetings in Oakland and around Alameda County leading up to the November election.

Published

1 week ago

September 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Some of the leaders who spoke at the Respect Our Vote – No Recalls!” mass meeting were (left to right): Elaine Peng, Mariano Contreras, Pastor Servant B.K. Woodson, and Stewart Chen. Photo by Ken Epstein.

By Ken Epstein

A recently organized coalition, “Respect Our Vote – No Recalls!,” held a standing-room only mass meeting on Sept. 14, urging residents to vote ‘No’ on the two East Bay recalls funded by conservative billionaires and millionaires with the help of corporate media and instead to support the campaign to protect residents’ democratic right to choose their representatives.

The mass meeting, attended mostly by members of local Asian American communities, was held in a large banquet room in a Chinese restaurant in Alameda.

The Respect Our Vote (ROV) coalition, consisting of concerned community members and groups, is organizing meetings in Oakland and around Alameda County leading up to the November election.

Speaking at the meeting, prominent East Bay leader Stewart Chen said that local leaders, like Alameda County D.A. Pamela Price and Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao, worked hard to get elected, and our system says they get four years to carry out their policies and campaign promises. But rich people have “broken” that system.

Within two months after they took office, they were facing recalls paid for by billionaires, he said. “(Billionaires’) candidate did not get elected, so they want to change the system.”

“(Our elected leaders) were elected through the process, and the people spoke,” said Chen. “It’s the entire system that the billionaires are trying to (overturn).”

“If a candidate does something wrong or enacts a policy that we do not like, we let it play out, and in four years, we do not have to vote for them.

“The democratic system that we have had in place for a couple of hundred years, it needs our help,” said Chen.

Pastor Servant B.K. Woodson, a leader of the coalition, emphasized the diversity and solidarity needed to defend democracy. “We need each other’s wisdom to make our nation great, to make it safe. We are deliberately African American, English-speaking, Latino American, Spanish-speaking, and all the wonderful dialects in the Asian communities. We want to be together, grow together, and have a good world together.”

Mariano Contreras of the Latino Task Force said that people need to understand what is at stake now.

The recall leaders are connected to conservative forces that will undermine public education, and bilingual education, he said. “The people behind (the recalls) are being used by outside dark money,” he said. The spokespeople of these recalls are themselves conservatives “who are wearing a mask that says they are progressives.”

In 2017, Oakland passed an ordinance that gave teeth to its “Sanctuary City” policy, which was brought to the City Council and passed because it was supported by progressive members on the council.

“That would not be possible anymore if the progressive alliance – Sheng Thao, Nikki Fortunato Bas, and Carroll Fife – if they are pushed out,” he said.

Elaine Peng, president of Asian Americans for Progressive America, said, “I strongly oppose the recalls of Oakland Mayor Sheng Thao and Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price.”

Citing statistics, she said Alameda County’s murder rate was higher when Alameda County D.A. Nancy O’Malley was in office, before Pamela Price was elected to that position.

“The recall campaign has been misleading the public,” said Peng.

She said Oakland is making progress under Thao. “Crime rates are falling in Oakland,” and the City is building more affordable housing than ever before and is creating more jobs.

Attorney Victor Ochoa said, this recall is “not by accident in Oakland – it is a political strategy.”

“There is a strategy that has been launched nationwide. What we’re seeing is oligarchs, (such as Phillip Dreyfuss from Piedmont), right wingers, conservatives, who can write a check for $400,000 like some of us can write a check for $10.”

“They aligned themselves with so-called moderate forces, but they’re not moderates. They align themselves with the money, and that’s what we have seen in Oakland.”

Ochoa continued, “You got to put up signs, you’ve got to talk to your neighbors, volunteer whatever hours you can, have a house meeting. That’s the way progressives win.”

Pecolia Manigo of Oakland Rising Action spoke about what it will take to defeat the recalls. “This is the time when you are not only deputized to go out and do outreach, we need to make sure that people actually vote.

“We need everyone to vote not just for the president, but all the way down the ballot to where these questions will be. Remind people to fill out their ballot, and mail it back.”

Former Oakland Mayor Jean Quan, who had herself faced a recall attempt, said, “In this recall, they used a lot of money, had paid signature gatherers, and they moved very fast. I talked to many of the people gathering signatures. They didn’t know what was going on. Many of them didn’t live in Oakland. It was just money for them.”

“Sam Singer, the guy who is their spokesperson, is a paid PR guy. He has media ties, so they’ve swamped the media against Sheng,” Quan said.

‘Oakland is… a city that implemented some of the first rent control protections in the country. So, developers and big apartment owners would love to get rid of rent control,” said Quan.

“We also established ranked-choice voting, which allows people with less money to coalesce and win elections,” she said. “That’s too democratic for people with big money. They would rather have elections the way they were.”