Comrades,

Mayor London Breed recently announced a declaration of a state of emergency with proposals and claimed that they will “make Tenderloin a safer, healthier neighborhood”. Given her history of overpolicing and criminalizing the unhoused and poor, DSA SF strongly condemns her proposals and calls on the Board of Supervisors to reject ratification of the mayor’s declaration of a state of emergency in the Tenderloin at this Thursday’s special hearing. You can read the full statement here.

We’ll need to let the supervisors know where we stand. You’ll be able to call in to Thursday’s special hearing to leave public comment, and it’s possible we’ll be going against a number of people supporting the mayor’s actions. Call-in information is below, and an email template to send to supervisors and talking points for public comment will be shared on the DSA SF Slack this week. Please look out for those and more direct action alerts in the coming weeks and months.

*Update: Here’s the email template from No New SF Jail Coalition.

Thursday, December 23 at 2:00 p.m.

Watch on www.sfgovtv.org

PUBLIC COMMENT CALL-IN

Dial 1 (415) 655-0001 – when prompted, use Meeting ID: 2497 279 5481 # #

Also, DSA SF Comms Committee is going to take time off from the weekly newsletter until January 11, 2022. We hope you all take care of yourselves throughout the holidays!

Solidarity, DSA SF Comms Committee

In Case You Missed It…

Interested in East Bay Socialist Housing Organizers Project (SHOP) Training?

East Bay DSA is holding a training program called Socialist Housing Organizers Project (SHOP) along with Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC), an autonomous tenants union. The SHOP program trains DSA members to become tenant organizers and get plugged in to organizing in their own buildings or supporting others in doing so. The Tenant Solidarity committee hopes to get a group of DSA SF members to go through the trainings to develop tenant organizing skills. The committee also hopes to explore the possibility of expanding SHOP into a cross-chapter collaboration that can connect people with TANC’s SF chapter. If you are interested in participating in a future training, please sign up via this form. Email tenantsolidarity@dsasf.org with any questions.

Volunteer for Single-Payer Healthcare Campaign

National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association have been ramping up the CalCare campaign as the bill for California state-level single-payer will return in January. They are focusing on priority districts, including AD 17 and AD 19 in San Francisco. For those areas, they are looking for District Leaders to lead locally. They’ll provide extensive training and support to these leaders. If you are interested, you can sign up here. If you want to participate in the campaign but not be a District Leader, please reach out to DSA SF member Ellen Y (by emailing healthcare@dsasf.org), who is a District Leader for AD 19 – she can get you started on text-banking voters!

DSA SF strongly condemns Mayor London Breed’s latest winter police state occupation of the Tenderloin and supports the recent condemnations by Defund SFPD Now, Coalition on Homelessness, and many others. We call on the Board of Supervisors to reject ratification of the mayor’s declaration of a State of Emergency in the Tenderloin at this Thursday’s special hearing. The Tenderloin has been beset by the intersection of multiple crises: poverty, COVID, homelessness, opioids (particularly fentanyl), all of which have resulted in a tremendous amount of suffering, staggering loss of life, and a street situation that is inhumane and untenable for all residents of the Tenderloin, both housed and unhoused. This situation has been exacerbated by the policies of the Breed administration.

Mayor Breed’s newfound outrage regarding drug overdoses in the Tenderloin is nothing more than an opportunistic publicity stunt and a rebranding of failed “tough on crime” policies of yesteryear, which will have devastating consequences for the very people for whom she feigns concern. Mayor Breed’s plan includes diverting funds from other programs and increasing the SFPD’s budget to expand street sweeps to displace unhoused people, increase surveillance and arrests, and target street vendors that don’t have licenses.  

Mayor Breed claims that her proposals will “make the Tenderloin a safer, healthier neighborhood,” but this will not improve the health and safety of Tenderloin residents. This is about protecting the interests of the wealthy landlords and developers who reap profits from the ongoing income inequality and racial disparities in San Francisco. More recently, she has revealed her true motives by prioritizing protecting property at Union Square over those who have been harmed by the police and other entities.

The Breed administration refused to house people in shelter-in-place (SIP) hotels at the beginning of the pandemic. After pressure from the Board of Supervisors and the community, Mayor Breed begrudgingly implemented the federally funded SIP hotel program on a much smaller scale than was mandated by the Board of Supervisors and necessary for public health.  

Mayor Breed also fought furiously to close down the SIP hotels, which are the bare minimum to keep people safe during the pandemic instead of living on the streets. Her own city departments are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in allocated (but unspent) homelessness response funds which has stalled the very programs the mayor claims will be part of her plan, including behavioral health services, Compassionate Alternative Response Team (CART), and more. 

The mayor and the press have cited “red tape” as a justification for needing a declaration of emergency. However, it is simply false to contend that red tape has prevented the mayor’s own departments from implementing any of the stalled programs she now claims to want to implement. Rather, the state of emergency is a political maneuver to give the mayor free rein to reallocate public money and to subvert the oversight of the Board – and therefore the people. This is a move to send more money to cops and to questionable nonprofit entities like Urban Alchemy.

Forcibly cleaning the streets and putting people into jail does not create safer streets or healthier people — it simply punishes people for circumstances that are the direct result of capitalist alienation and oppression. It’s an unjustifiable policy that is not only dehumanizing but also harmful to people on the streets and folks who use drugs that are not sanctioned by the capitalist class. These tired “War on Drugs” tactics also harm efforts to destigmatize drug use and, in turn, save lives. Thus, the recent public health emergency manifest in drug addiction cannot be solved by the police. The focus on using cops to enforce sit-lie, sleeping, and camping laws as the mayor has announced she intends to, is not only illegal but cruel and inhumane. The policies of this city keep people out of housing by enforcing laws that protect private property. The simple truth is the people Mayor Breed is targeting with anti-sleeping laws have no place to go. Of course, she doesn’t care where people go so long as they are out of sight.

If Mayor Breed actually cared about the health and safety of the Tenderloin, she could have spent the already allocated funds to invest in behavioral health and harm reduction services that can become lifelines for many. She could have invested in the Tenderloin rather than increase the SFPD budget. Instead, she’d much rather continue to criminalize and demonize the poor, the unhoused, and immigrants simply trying to survive in this city. We believe that the people in the Tenderloin deserve to be housed, have better economic opportunities, community-based programs including responding to mental health crises without the police, and other solutions that will move us towards harm reduction and addressing the root causes. We will invest our time, money, and energy into our own programs like Hotels Not Hospitals, brake light replacement clinics, and mutual aid actions to distribute PPE and supplies to unhoused people.

While the mayor has unsurprisingly blocked many proposals that would’ve provided safer environments and resources for those that are affected, we will continue to fight until the marginalized in this city are no longer hurt by these policies.

We urge Mayor Breed to use the power and funds already at her disposal to meet people’s needs rather than grandstanding and overpolicing at the expense of the most vulnerable folks in the Tenderloin. We further call on the Board of Supervisors to stand up to Mayor Breed and protect the people of the Tenderloin by rejecting this politically-motivated declaration of a state of emergency. This is not a time for silence or rubber stamping. Mayor Breed has laid out her detailed plan to criminalize the Tenderloin community. It’s time for you to step in.

Comrades,

To bring about a just world, the fight for socialism is just as vital here in San Francisco as it is anywhere else in the world. This past week, DSA SF took action against international and local injustices – last Friday, DSA folks organized and marched with various human rights organizations in honor of International Human Rights Day and to protest a U.S.-led Summit for Democracy that included Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte and Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, leaders of fascist regimes funded by the U.S. war machine.

After we shouted down continued U.S. hypocrisy on the world stage, we got together to make sure that our fellow comrades here in San Francisco remain housed. Dean Preston and DSA’s Electoral Board organized an Eviction-Free Zone gathering to inform tenants of their legal rights to fight back against landlords. Dean and various DSA leaders spoke about the importance of eviction protections in a historic housing crisis.

As we head into 2022, we’ll look to do more of the same together – strengthening our sense of community here in the Bay while building towards a world that puts people first. Build it with us!

Solidarity, DSA SF Comms Committee

Event Calendar

🌹 Sunday, 12/19 (12:00 p.m.): Haiti’s Crisis and the Popular Resistance panel discussion (Zoom)

For more events, click here.

Announcements

Join us for a panel discussion about crisis and resistance in Haiti!

In Case You Missed It…

Interested in East Bay Socialist Housing Organizers Project (SHOP) Training?

East Bay DSA is holding a training program called Socialist Housing Organizers Project (SHOP) along with Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC), an autonomous tenants union. The SHOP program trains DSA members to become tenant organizers and get plugged in to organizing in their own buildings or supporting others in doing so. The Tenant Solidarity committee hopes to get a group of DSA SF members to go through the trainings to develop tenant organizing skills. The committee also hopes to explore the possibility of expanding SHOP into a cross-chapter collaboration that can connect people with TANC’s SF chapter. If you are interested in participating in a future training, please sign up via this form. Email tenantsolidarity@dsasf.org with any questions.

Volunteer for Single-Payer Healthcare Campaign

National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association have been ramping up the CalCare campaign as the bill for California state-level single-payer will return in January. They are focusing on priority districts, including AD 17 and AD 19 in San Francisco. For those areas, they are looking for District Leaders to lead locally. They’ll provide extensive training and support to these leaders. If you are interested, you can sign up here. If you want to participate in the campaign but not be a District Leader, please reach out to DSA SF member Ellen Y (by emailing healthcare@dsasf.org), who is a District Leader for AD 19 – she can get you started on text-banking voters!

Comrades, 

Last week, DSA-endorsed District 5 Supervisor Dean Preston’s housing appropriation PASSED with a veto-proof majority in the Board of Supervisors! This a huge victory for socialism and DSA SF, because it consolidates our victory at the polls last year with Prop I. While Mayor Breed tried to redirect the money via bureaucratic obfuscation, we stayed on message and gained unlikely allies due to the overwhelming majority of voters who supported Prop I. This is an object lesson in our struggle: it’s not enough to win at the polls, we need to keep constant pressure on the state to win. And last week, we won

Tomorrow night at 6:45 p.m., we will be having our first hybrid in-person meeting since the beginning of the pandemic. The in-person meeting will be held at 518 Valencia Street, but you will also be able to join the meeting using Zoom. We will be observing COVID safety protocols – masks will be required indoors and in-person attendees must be vaccinated. There will be opportunities before and after the meeting to socialize with comrades. Note that due to the nature of this hybrid meeting, there will not be food served, nor will there be childcare. There will also not be Wi-Fi available. Register here!

Solidarity, DSA SF Comms Committee

Announcements

March for International Human Rights Day with the International Solidarity Organizing Committee!

Join the International Solidarity Organizing Committee this Friday, December 10, at 5:00 p.m. to march for International Human Rights Day. Joe Biden will be hosting his virtual Summit for Democracy December 9-10 to “promote respect for human rights.” This action will start at the SF Federal Building (90 7th St), and we will march alongside Malaya Movement SF, San Francisco Committee for Human Rights in the Philippines (SFCHRP), Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), Haiti Action Committee, Black Alliance 4 Peace, and more towards Powell and Market St.   This is in response to Biden’s virtual summit, and grassroots organizations will highlight the actual human rights situation and hold Biden and the US government accountable for their contributions to human rights violations and support of fascism and dictatorship around the globe. We will put forward these demands to Biden and the US government to stop funding and arming dictatorships, stop militarizing our communities, uphold human rights at home and abroad, and respect people’s rights to self-determination. We hope to see you there! Click here for more info.

Join #30RightNow TODAY for a victory rally to celebrate affordable rent for our most vulnerable comrades!

For two and a half years, #30RightNow has been fighting to secure a 30% of income rent cap for folks living in permanent supportive housing sites, and it has been a fight every step of the way – securing approval from the Board of Supervisors, ensuring Mayor Breed funded the cap this year, and finally ensuring that both the Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing (HSH) and the Department of Public Health (DPH) do their parts to implement the cap in the sites they operate. We were set to take that fight straight to the doorstep of the holdouts at DPH today to demand that they implement the cap NOW – and now we’ll be celebrating, instead. DPH has agreed to implement the 30% standard across all their supportive housing sites, and that means today’s protest is now a victory rally. It’ll be in front of DPH offices at the corner of Polk Street and Grove Street today at 12:45 p.m. There will be special guests, celebration, and talk of what comes next – because there’s so much left to fight for.

Reading Groups

Ecosocialist Book Club: Jason Henderson’s Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco

Join the Ecosocialist Book Club  tonight at 6:00 p.m. for our final session reading of Street Fight: The Politics of Mobility in San Francisco. We’ll be joined by a very special guest – author Jason Henderson! Open to all, DSA members and DSA curious alike. Register here!

In Case You Missed It…

Interested in East Bay Socialist Housing Organizers Project (SHOP) Training?

East Bay DSA is holding a training program called Socialist Housing Organizers Project (SHOP) along with Tenant and Neighborhood Councils (TANC), an autonomous tenants union. The SHOP program trains DSA members to become tenant organizers and get plugged in to organizing in their own buildings or supporting others in doing so. The Tenant Solidarity committee hopes to get a group of DSA SF members to go through the trainings to develop tenant organizing skills. The committee also hopes to explore the possibility of expanding SHOP into a cross-chapter collaboration that can connect people with TANC’s SF chapter. If you are interested in participating in a future training, please sign up via this form. Email tenantsolidarity@dsasf.org with any questions.

Volunteer for Single-Payer Healthcare Campaign

National Nurses United and the California Nurses Association have been ramping up the CalCare campaign as the bill for California state-level single-payer will return in January. They are focusing on priority districts, including AD 17 and AD 19 in San Francisco. For those areas, they are looking for District Leaders to lead locally. They’ll provide extensive training and support to these leaders. If you are interested, you can sign up here. If you want to participate in the campaign but not be a District Leader, please reach out to DSA SF member Ellen Y (by emailing healthcare@dsasf.org), who is a District Leader for AD 19 – she can get you started on text-banking voters!