Gavin Newsom's Scared of the People..!!

by Carol Harvey

Chants resound over a KPFA reporter's cell phone: "Gavin Newsom's scared of the people!" Screams protest Newsom's press converence, where he proposes useless vouchers and stipend reductions, which would slash General Assistance from $345 to $50 a month.

The chants continue: "People have legitimate uses for the money." "Living wage jobs and housing." "Racist, opportunist attack, criminalizing the poor."

The coalition on Homelessness, POWER, and Picture The Homeless, a New York-based organization, were at San Francisco City Hall in mid-February to protest Supervisor Newsom's proposals to drastically reduce General Assistance, fingerprint homeless welfare recipients, and further criminalize homeless people for panhandling nearly anywhere.

The protesters' voices rang out: "Newsom is hiding.  We are following him into the elevator." Frightened response: "The legislation has just been drafted.  You are criticizing based on emotion."

Reporters seemed stunned as Newsom was spirited away in the grip of five police officers, surrounded by 75 poor people. Viewing TV news, a friend chuckled. "He was so white.  His eyes looked like a doe's caught in the headlights.

Is his political career over?"

What career.? [Newsom's] Poli-sci degree, wineries, restaurants, investments and Gordon Getty gromming don't count for much."

A housed wealthy man writes a condescending proposal omitting homeless people from the plan, prejudging them as mental cases or addicts.  Selling wine, he knows alcohol.  Poor Magazine reported that his OBOAT legislation was about drug treatment in private doctors' offices for "rich junkies" who would be "spared the indignity of the methadone clinic."

POWER's Larry Lattimore said, "We stopped the Monday supervisors' meeting, confronting Gavin playing the cringing victim, an uncomfortable forced smile.  He knows we protested [that] we were not included. The temple may look nice; but, if the cornerstone is flawed, the building will crumble.  Don't say, 'Talk to me,' while applying the finish."

Newsom investigated New York City's shelters and The Doe Fund's "Ready, Wililng, and Able" program.  Did he fly the jet streams of Doe's multinational corporate board, wining and dining in the Big Apple, viewing the tidiest shelters?

Doe's 11-member board connects Rudy Giuliani to chemicals, crude oil, natural gas, AOL-Time-Warner, real estate, construction, banking, pharmaceuticals, health care, a California corporation making electronic image processing devices, miniature cameras, and integrated circuits.  A stable population warehoused in jails or shelters have, in the past, made excellent candidates for "research."

A director for The Doe Fund answered an e-mail.  "We have been contacted by a group...who tour(ed) our facilities twice...interested in incorporating our...procedures into a San Francisco program."

But, in my interview with Anthony Williams, founder and director of Picture the Homeless in New York City, he painted a picture of a system Newsom will never see.  Williams, an innovative former shelter resident, organized street folk in New York to express their voice.  Also present at the interview was Richard Ferry, feature film electrician, unemployed after Giuliani pulled film permits following the 9/11 attack.

Williams explained the origins of Giuliani's repressive treatment of homeless people in New York.  "During the Denkin administration," he explained, "the Manhattan Institute, a right-wing think tank, developed the 'Broken Windows' theory: 'If you clean the dirt, the homeless will be out of sight, out of mind."

Manhattan Institute think-tankers, Williams said, "are friends with Giuliani," and Raymond Kelly, the feared police commissioner.  After a thief, described by the mainstream media in an unthinking rush to judgment as a homeless man, attacked a New York woman named Nicole Barrett, Giuliani decided to "get those crazies off the street." He never called off his attack after it was shown conclusively that the theif was not homeless.

Giuliani started arrests "for sleeping, loitering, urinating, obstructing benches, life-sustaining issues that people don't have money or means to do if they're homeless," Williams said.  The real agenda was for security patrols to remove them from business districts and tourist areas like Disney-owned Times Square.

"Since 1999," said Williams, "hostility was directed at the homeless because of Quality of Life policies."  He described Giuliani's NYPD as, "Terror and fear with the devil in the blue dress."  In 1999, cops were rushing homeless shelters at 3:00 a.m., "arresting friends, throwing them against walls."

"Big as New York is, no one was speaking against Giuliani on Quality of Life issues," Williams said.  Newspapers announced $60 million in funding for homelessness.  Williams read that sheltering an individual cost $2,000 a month, but then he regarded the unclean shelter facility, the bed, locker, and common bathroom, and reflected that "for $2,000, we could have an apartment."

Louis Hagens, a socially savvy sound engineer, told him, "I know people at WBAI.  We can be on the radio tomorrow."  On the day of the interview, from 3:00 to 5:30 a.m., they hiked 60 blocks, 30th street to 120 Wall Street.

On the way, listening to his Walkman, Hagens said, Bernard White mentions he has special guests coming.  They seem like interesting guys."

"It was us," Williams recalls.

On WBAI's "Wake Up Call,"Anthony Wiliams described pre-dawn raids at homeless shelters, brutal security, people warehoused for 5, 10, 20 years.

Bernard White said, "I used to see homeless people in certain areas of the city." Williams replied, "People ask, 'Anthony, where are all the homeless people?'   Walking around right in the freaking midst of you.  Unlike the population on the street with shopping carts, backpacks, dirty --- you have 25,000 people in the system with a change of clothes, a locker, a shower.  Also, we had to find places to go covert.  In certain areas of the city, it wasn't nice, cops kicking your boxes with sticks, and like, 'Get the hell out of here!'"

Homeless people become invisible to the public when they are driven from view by police sweeps.  That repression can make the larger issue disappear from view as well; the public is lulled into believing the problem isn't as bad because fewer people are visible on the streets.  There was a real urgency in Giuliani's New York to make the homeless visible again.

Lou Hagens said, "We need a name." The phrase "Picture the Homeless," popped into William's head.  Giuliani "disppeared" the homeless.  Williams would make them visible again.

What Williams describes is a warning that Newsom appears to be exploring ways to import Giuliani's police crackdowns and centralized shelter intake system to San Francisco.  Newsom seems to want to get elected on saving money, importing Giuliani's plan.  San Francisco's panhandling ban targets the most visible homeless people first in the identical way that Giuliani targeted visible "squeegee guys" cleaning New Yorkers' windshields.  This is to be followed by shelter vouchers, reduced GA benefits, and, as in New York, a central intake center with people herded through one site, data collection, fingerprinting, and removal from the city.

Williams and Ferry warn of the outcome, "Yeah.  They send them to Ward's Island.  A women's prison, the Clark-Thomas Building, was converted into an all-male shelter of about 1,200."  For noncompliance, you're threatened with Camp LaGuardia upstate holding another 1,200."

Williams and Ferry proclaimed New York's system disastrous for San Francisco, citing the following reasons.

1.  IT  IS  COSTLY.

New York City's homeless system needed a $60-million infusion in 1999.

2.  THE  BROKEN  WINDOWS  THEORY  IS  MISGUIDED.  Sweeping people away is a public relations gimmick.

It is a facade concealing an unsolved problem.  Richard said, "Ironically, after the World Trade Center [destruction], Giuliani haired Whistleblower Erin Brockovich and her new reality program for ABC TV, saying she could take a burned-down building and make this park beautiful in eight days."

The irony is that, to make a "miracle" happen at this site, Giuliani knowingly had the Parks Department destroy a homeless encampment where Ferry lived with friends.  Then they showed the event on television, but Ferry couldn't watch it because he has no home and no TV.  Brockovich never knew she was part of Giuliani's sinister hidden agenda to get rid of homeless people behind the facade of a beautification program.

"My friend and me were squatting a bandshell in East River Park," Ferry said.  "Parks Department told police and threw our shit into dumpsters.  To ensure we wouldn't come back, Giuiliani razed the place.  Erin has no idea homeless people lived there.  They cleaned us out two days before.  On commercials, she and Giuliani shake hands with big smiles."

"This was going to be a great project.  Not having a TV, I didn't watch."

3. CONTROL  IS  ENFORCED  WITH  TERROR  TACTICS.

Using over-aggressive anti-homeless ordinances," Giuliani created the sleight-of-hand homeless disappearing act, Williams said. "Who cares if you violate their rights, because then they are in fear?"  Homeless people rolled over from police attacks and fear of Giuliani.  "The homeless are scared of [mayor] Bloomberg," and Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly.  Homeless people are swept wherever they gather.  Monthly police sweeps are conducted for small Quality of Life crimes.

When Richard Ferry left prison, well-paid corrections officers laughed, saying "You'll be back.  With a new mayor in New York City, you're job security."

4. SHELTERS  ARE  FULL.

Supervisor Newsom cites reduced intake time: 21 days for singles, 10 for families.  Williams says flatly, "It's a lie."  He also said that with 30,000 people homeless in New York, shelters are at capacity, and people are turned away.  "If every homeless person requested a bed, there's not enough.  Beds aren't freed up.  People are housed 20 years."

5.HOMELESS  POPULATION  IS  GROWING.

In 2001, rich landlords evicted 25,000.

6.NO  (AFFORDABLE)  HOUSING  IS  AVAILABLE  IN  NEW  YORK  CITY.

Williams said that from "Harlem to Lower Manhattan, it's over."  Ferry said, "You have to make $30,000 to qualify for low-income housing."

7. THEY  CAN'T  FORCE  EVERYONE  OFF  THE  STREET  OR  INTO  SHELTERS.

Thousands run from the cops, and won't enter shelters.  Richard says, "I'd go to jail first," rather than going to a shelter.  The working homeless avoid social workers' pointless evaluations, deciding.  "I'll just stay on the street."  The homeless count is inaccurate.  The Homeless Commissioner's circular argument provides a pretext to keep the count artificially low: "You won the legal 'Right To Shelter.'  If you don't enter, you're not homeless because you are not counted."

8.OUTREACH  IS  DEFICIENT.

"WHAT outreach teams?  There's a guy walking around Washington Square Park for years."  Williams called for assistance and got an answering machine.  Outreach teams sweep for a $2,000 "bounty."  Most people swept up bounce out of the system in 72 hours.  Holding people is illegal, and the shelters are full.

9.MASSES  ARE  MERELY  WAREHOUSED.

Enormous numbers are warehoused for years.  Anthony said, "The system fails.  From management to individual counseling, it is horrible; just cattle."  "Before Clark-Thomas Building on Ward's Island got MICA, Mentally Ill Chemical Abusers, the dangerously mentally ill were together on one floor without services."

10. THE  SYSTEM  CALLS  TEMPORARY  HOUSING  "PERMANENT."

Ready, Willing, and Able calls two years "permanent housing."  This cruel promise of "security" disrupts family bonding and stability for schoolchildren.

11. HOMELESS  LABOR  IS  EXPLOITED.

"Project Breakthrough" paid Anthony $12.50 a week sweeping cigarette butts, cleaning bathrooms, then "promoted" him to 8 hours at $2.00 an hour.  "Climb that ladder to get to $6.00 an hour. Feeling worthless, you do things for nothing; from having nothing to being exploited."

The Ready, Willing, and Able director wrote that the starting salary of $5.50 goes to $6.50 at 6 months, tax-free, with opportunity for overtime.  Everyone saves at least $1,000 through the mandatory savings program, with matching funds.

Williams said the reality is different.  His experience is that two guys share a room and work for the program, sweeping and bagging garbage.  The homeless laborers, though, work alongside regular workers making quadruple for the same work.  People untrained for living-wage employment later recycle back into poverty.

13.THE  INDUCTION  PROCESS  AND  CONDITIONS  ARE  ABUSIVE.

The program targets the visibly homeless, squeegee people (windsheild-washers) and panhandlers.  The city's extended intake results in people forced to sleep in chairs in shelters.  One mother sued when her children slept on the floor for weeks.

People are funneled through centralized intake, and Williams charges that this database is misused for tracking "suspects."  Centralized intake results in farming homeless people out of Manhattan to outer boroughs, and in warehousing enormous numbers in temporary housing.

The mandatory rules of New York's shelters undermine people's sense of worth. Williams and Ferry describe the infantalization of adults.   Remarks Ferry, "It is ridiculous to give 10 p.m. curfews in 'The City That Never Sleeps.'"  "Grown men won't knuckle under," says Williams. "It's humiliating to sign for a shelter bed."

Other humiliating factors include mandatory drug tests, police raids, abusive shelter guards and staff.  Ferry, who completed parole for selling drugs, said, "If you are institutionalized, you can be brainwashed.  Prison or shelter, it's emotional coercion."

14. PROGRAMS  CONTROL  THE  PEOPLE.

Williams doesn't trust Ready, Willing, and Able, calling it a monopoly bent on "controlling" the homeless, adding that it makes big money off homelessness but doesn't give the people themselves any say-so.  He said that Ready, Willing, and Able "uses homeless people, takes their voice away, beats them down, [then] tells Giuliani, 'We get them off the street.'  It's a lie.  They get two years of housing, call it 'permanent,' then get cycled right back into the system again."

15. THE  SYSTEM  IS  CLASSIST  AND RACIST.

"The majority are black and Latino," said Williams.  Ferry added, "How'd they get there?  No jobs, services, or education."

"White or black, you're economically profiled."

16. THE  SYSTEM  IS  CORRUPT.

It's a growth industry.  Intake headhunters make sweeps worth $2,000 each.  With 30,000 homeless, there's no incentive to move people out of beds.  "Money pumps this homeless machine around and around."  Williams charged that conservatorships rob the mentally incompetent.

William called New York's shelter system "corrupt" and denied that Giuliani's approach has been successful in getting people off the street.  Instead, he describes it as a revolving door for the poor with no exit.  "Guys go into one door, treatment through the next door, the next door maybe jail.  Jail, back to the system."

"Will San Francisco create this vicious cycle?" Williams asks.