They Say, GO AWAY, We Say, NO WAY

by Ed Willard/PNN and POWER

On Tuesday, October 22 POWER staged it's 6th and final pre-election protest against Gavin Newsom and his ballot initiative, Proposition N. Prop N, if it passes, will rob GA workers of most of their money and increase
homelessness in San Francisco. Meanwhile Newsom, who has been touring the city for the last few months making lying,
empty promises about "care" for homeless GA recipients, (all of whom, according to Newsom, are drug addicts), will
have made a name for himself at the expense of the poor.

For this action POWER chose the GA welfare office as it's target, (and as a result of this, head of DHS, Trent Rhorer
has forbidden POWER from doing outreach at the city shelters. Hah!) At 10:30 AM 50 POWER members gathered outside
the POWER offices at 32 7th St. for the short march over to GA on Mission St. Anyone still sleeping in the
neighborhood was roused up by the sound of our gutsy sound system as we marched and chanted: They say go away!
We say........NO WAY!!

When we got there we performed the POWER guerilla theatre piece which exposes the connection between Newsom, his
funders, the lying local media and slimeball, bought-and-paid-for by downtown interests, cheap bureaucrat Trent
Rhorer, director of the Department of Human Services. Then we marched down Mission to 6th Street, up 6th, crossing
Market and through the Tenderloin neighboorhood, past the food line at St Anthonys. We picked up more supporters
along the way. Even so our group was still small but, by design, we spread out and marched 5 abreast through the
middle of the streets until we reached city hall. There we picked a contingent to go up to Newsom's office. This
was headed up by POWER spokesperson Travis Bard. Newsom had got wind of us coming so, of course, his office was
closed and locked. On a large piece of butcher paper, we had documented the moneys the city had stolen from GA
workfare workers over the past year, (the descrepency between workfare folks wages and city workers pay, totaling
thirty million dollars). We were demanding reparations and tried to post the document on the wall outside of
Newsom's office at which point three members of security took it and crumbled it up. Unruffled, Travis voiced POWERs
demands of reparations to the security team.

As stated at the beginning of this story, the protest today was the last of POWER's pre-election actions but there is
a general concensus among POWER members that, even if our efforts against Prop N are successful and it goes down in
defeat, our fighting group certainly won't be disbanding. POWER is committed to continuing the fight to get real
affordable housing and living wage jobs for all. One thing, I think, should be clear to Newsom and his cronies and
that is that San Francisco's poor and working class will not be swept out of town or forced en masse into the rotten
shelter system. We're united and we're committed to taking our city back!

********************************************

In Honor of Theresa Guerra- a companera who will be missed

A week ago, on Friday in the morning our sister Theresa Guerra passed away. All of the circumstances surrounding her death have yet to be revealed. So this story is meant to be only a preliminary report.

Theresa first became involved with People Organized to Win Employment Rights (POWER) only about three months ago. In such a short span of time it’s hard to believe that someone could have become such an important part of the organization as Theresa did. My own impressions of her are from the times I worked together with her on the No on Proposition N campaign and I’d like to try to record a few of those here.

Since earlier this year POWER has been engaged in a battle with Supervisor Gavin Newsom to stop his Counterfeit Care initiative, Proposition N. Sometime in the summer Theresa came on board and lent her help in the fight. The first time I recall seeing her was when POWER organized an action against Harrington’s Bar and Grill. The owner, Kathleen Harrington, is also president of the Golden Gate Restaurant Association (GGRA). GGRA has been a major funder of Newsom’s Prop. N campaign. We wanted to expose Newsom’s connection with downtown business.

For this action POWER and POWER’s allies made a strong showing with 100 people, a few of whom were designated to present Kathleen Harrington with a list of demands. Theresa volunteered to take the lead and be the spokesperson for the group, stepping forward as someone who was currently homeless, staying at the Next Door shelter, 1001 Polk Street. Physically, Theresa was a large woman, solid looking and she carried herself well, I remember her at the point of this group, speaking in a loud, sure tone as she voiced the demand that Harrington stop funding a proposition that, contrary to what it pretended, was no solution to homelessness and would indeed cause more homelessness.

The message we gave to Harrington that day was that, if things didn’t change "we’d be back". True to our word, months later we did come back, this time "armed " with a guerilla theater piece, written and acted out by POWER members. Now, Theresa was taking a lead role, her part being a GA workfare street sweeper who was sweeping out corrupt politician, Gavin Newsom and his cronies, funder Harrington, lying SF Examiner columnist, Frank Gallagher and head of the San Francisco welfare programs, Trent Rhorer. On that day our main audience was a group of unappreciative patrons of Harrington’s sidewalk café (some of whose lunches could well have amounted to GA folks entire check if Prop. N passes). Later we marched down Market Street, stopped and performed again in front of the Gap, another financial contributor to Prop N.

Totaled up, POWER has performed its skit four times, the last being in front of the GA welfare office this past Tuesday. Sadly, Theresa was no longer with us and though POWER member Donna did a fine job filling in, it just didn’t seem the same without Theresa, whose courageous fighting spirit will be sorely missed. She will be missed in the movement overall and missed more specifically for the last part of our No on N campaign.

There’s one very striking irony in this story that’s worth mentioning and that has to do with the location of Theresa’s death. She was found unconscious in her bed at Next Door shelter (formerly MSC North) early last Friday morning. The coroner’s office has not released a full report as to what the cause of death was. There are many versions and stories as to the details surrounding Theresa’s death. But what we do know for sure is that this all happened in the daytime and hours passed before emergency medical technicians were called. This all happened in a "care facility" with staff on hand, and at a time of day when surely there was lots of activity. By the time the ambulance got to Next Door, it was too late to save Theresa. It’s said that the emergency technicians complained they could’ve saved her had they been called just half an hour sooner.

The bitter irony is that Next Door shelter is the very place that Gavin Newsom chose to kick off his Care not Cash campaign back in February of this year. The reason he chose Next Door is that this shelter is the shining star of the city shelter system, it is the most modern and cleanest of shelters, but we have to wonder about the "care." This is significant too because the more we examine social programs legislation from Newsom and those like him, the more we see that there is a broader agenda at hand. The objective of this agenda is to economically and racially "cleanse" San Francisco. It’s a war against the poor, and those who stay are forced into shelters or "care facilities" that look more like prisons than housing. The gravity of these attacks is seen in the casualties of its effects.

People have been willing to stand up and fight against this agenda to kick us out of San Francisco. Back in February, Newsom was met by an angry contingent of community activists who were determined not to take his crap sitting down. On that day our group of 40 some odd angry folks put Gavin on the run, (literally he was escorted out of the place and back to city hall by the police). And our sister, Theresa Guerra’s tireless and courageous efforts over the coming months contributed to keeping him on the run. She will be sorely missed, yet we know that her fighting spirit will accompany us as we continue on with the struggle for justice, fighting to build a world where precious lives like Theresa’s are not lost in vain.

POOR will do an in-depth investigation of Theresa’s death within the next two weeks- please stay tuned.