Reader Dogfella just wrote in with this news:
COMMUNITY MEETING IN RESPONSE TO 7 KILLINGS LAST WEEK TONITE 5PM
Mission Community Council, SFPD meeting of residents, nonprofits and religious groups on Tuesday at 5 p.m. at the Mission Recreation Center.
Mission Recreation Center 2450 Harrison St @ 20th & 21st
USE 745 Treat St @ 20th & 21st ENTRANCE
SFPD confirms that district Captain Stephen Tacchini will be in attendance. See you there?
Did anyone go to the one last night? What happened?
The Glen Park one? SFist covered it: http://sfist.com/2008/09/09/glen_park_to_kamala_harris_rsvp.php
Oops – saw an email announcing one that I thought was last night but it’s this one.
I can’t make it. Why do they make these things for right after work, anyway?
If anyone goes and has the opportunity to relay a message, please note that this Mission resident would like the kind of police presence that North Beach (1 homicide in 2 years) gets every Friday and Saturday night. They have cops on every corner.
I just came from the meeting. I was there for 90 minutes and left early once they started group breakouts. Overall somewhat disorganized and not really sure what the goal of the meeting was other than a soapbox.
Considering that 7 people were killed in the last week, turnout of about 110 people (incl. city officials, non-profits) seems pretty dismal.
To put that in perspective:
*SFGate reports that Glen Park’s community meeting in response to a stabbing / store robbery had 300 attendees.
*Last year when SF was going to increase street cleaning in the Mission to 2x’s a week per side, over 100 people stormed city hall and Tom Ammiano’s office to protest that the city was adding street cleaning to increase ticket revenues (never mind the crazy amounts of garbage on the streets).
Attendees tonite included Supervisor Tom Ammiano, Police Chief Wong, Public Defender Adachi, Principal of John OConnell HS Janet Schulze, some other city officials and non-profits (HOMEY Homies Organizing the Mission to Empower Youth, Mission Community Council).
What was surprising to hear consensus that the police / law enforcement is not the answer from everyone involved. What was not surprising to hear was general political babble and finger pointing. There was overall agreement that there needs to be greater funding of community programs, after school programs and employment for youth and felons. With California 16 billion in the hole for this year’s budget, I don’t know the source of such funding. Some proposed redirecting the additional funding for police to these programs.
2 of the speakers from HOMEY said that the schools, teachers and students are set up to fail to which Principal of John OConnell HS Janet Schulze later spoke about. In contrast to the other speakers spoke about the students at her school as an amazing group of students with great potential. She was obviously immensely proud of them. She was inspiring to hear.
After everyone on the panel had spoken, there were breakouts with topics like “general community at large & initiatives” (who knows what that means) and “police” and 1 other. None of the topics really struck me as productive so I left at that point.
In attending the meeting I had hoped to find a way to help change the Mission. I guess I was looking for one of the speakers to lay it out for me, “3 steps you can take to resolve the crime issues in your neighborhood.” What I realize is that the Mission has to want to change. I’m not sure that 115 people is enough. Many of the people who live in the Mission are worried about survival – food on the table, paying the rent, etc. Changing the neighborhood just isn’t on their radar. And then many of the people in the Mission fear any change (no street cleaning, no new housing, no new non-Mexican businesses, etc).
the mission has been taken over by hipsters. That’s why nobody went to that meeting, hipsters dream about “change,” they preach about it, but they always expect others to deliver those changes.
i went to the meeting too, and also left just as the group activities started (i can’t stand that kind of shit). i agree it was disorganized, and i also agree that i was looking for some kind of message, some kind of unifying, rallying call. dogfella, thanks for a good run-down.
but you know what i saw… the meeting was primarily for a part of the Mission community that pretty much doesn’t read this blog.
the meeting was primarily for the Brown people that live in the hood, have lived here since the 50′s – the Latino community from whom the artists / punks / hipsters / yuppies stole the neighborhood – because it’s them that are having their kids killing one another.
for the most part (i’m sure there are exceptions)…no one from any of these newer groups can really understand what it must be like to have your kids in the life, blamming away at one another with guns. kids!
that said, one thing i DID tonight see was an amazing outpouring of genuine, well meaning, well stated, passionate and pure PROGRESSIVE opinion. (N.B. the caps)
whether i agree with them or not (which doesn’t really matter), the 2 dudes from those youth orgs were the real deal. it made me want to help, to do the right thing. it made me want to be a better person. it made me feel terrible for saying that the PROGRESSIVE orgs in the Mission were arcane and irrelevant. i was wrong to make such a sweeping generalization (i am not sure I’d feel that way about homeless rights orgs or tenants rights orgs, but who knows…)
that said, it also made me even more disdainful of the “progressive” politicos (N.B.the quotes). even more convinced that they’re liars and thieves.
these “progressives” have been running the city via the Board of Supervisors for years. yet all of these true PROGRESSIVE activist folks are complaining re lack of not only funds…but lack of support, lack of understanding, lack of connection to the machine…lack of, well, everything.
i am sure the homeless advocates, tenants rights people, education activists, economic development activists…they’d all say the same thing. they try to do the right thing, and they get no support.
so…how can we not indict that disconnect? “progressives” are running the city…but PROGRESSIVE orgs have no support?
why is that?
maybe it’s because the “progressives” are more interested in their own political careers than in true PROGRESSIVE issues?
THAT’S why i say the Board of Supervisors believes Brown families don’t deserve safe streets.
because they call themselves PROGRESSIVE, when they’re actually “progressive”. because they pay these orgs just enough lip service to ingratiate themselves – hell, who the hell else are the orgs going to talk to? – yet they do NOTHING but focus on their own careers…
all these issues…gang violence, homelessness, economic development, etc….have all gotten worse, not better, despite the “progressive” leadership elected again & again by folks who WANT to believe.
say it with me again: snake oil career “progressive” politicos steal tax dollars to advance their own careers by lying to poor people and guilt ridden liberals about a future they will NEVER actually work to create.
i think this logic holds. or am i crazy?
[...] is the Key A few Mission Mission readers, as well as Mission Mission itself, attended the meeting. Reader dogfella weighed in [...]
I get it, hipsters (like me, as far as you’re willing to consider) took over the Mission. Why don’t we divert our attention to that fact instead of addressing the issues that are causing my 17 year-old neighbors to die in the street? I was working (in The Mission, in an establishment that caters to the rich while employing primarily poor residence of The Mission) that night. Somehow, I don’t feel guilty. Then again, I haven’t shot anyone. I do my job, the police should do theirs.