Where have all the benches gone...

pstrongChannel Four News “expose” rationalizes the planned removal of all the benches used by poor and homeless folks in United Nations Plaza. /strong/p pDIV align="left" TABLE cellpadding="5"TR VALIGN="TOP"TDIMG SRC= "../sites/default/files/arch_img/326/photo_1_supplement.jpg" //td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TD/td/trTR VALIGN="TOP"TDTR VALIGN="TOP"TD pby Tom Gomez and Lisa Gray-Garcia/p pSunday morning I went out the door of my shelter at 6:30 am. I intended to go to sit on a bench in U.N Plaza and read my Sunday Times while waiting for the Quaker services I regularly attend to begin at 11:00 am. Sitting on those benches and reading my morning paper is a daily ritual for me. If I have an extra dollar I also like to enjoy coffee with my paper. My job (yes, I have a job, and so do most homeless people I know) doesn’t start until 3:00 pm and nothing opens until 9:00 am. I would stay in and sleep late like most of you probably do, but I live in a shelter. So I occupy a bench at my local park, reading my paper and watching the sunrise while sipping my coffee. /p pThe city is offended by that. Channel 4 is outraged by it. On Saturday the City removed the benches. A bench removal that had been planned for several months. Channel 4, I’m told, portrayed the park as an open sewer where homeless people sell and use drugs flagrantly. I don’t have a television. I missed the report. I miss the benches too. /p pDoes the city expect me to believe that with literally thousands of officers they are powerless to prevent a few dozen criminals from selling and using drugs in broad daylight? The crime the city has targeted here has nothing to do with drugs being sold or used. The city wants to purge its downtown of poor people and especially men of color. Throughout the whole weekend after the removal of the benches I observed police stopping black men exclusively, for no apparent reasons, demanding they produce identification and conducting random searches. /p pI am tired of being victimized for no better reason than my inability to pay $2,300.00 a month rent on my income from a $9.00hr catering job! Being a man of color is not a crime, and should not constitute “probable cause” nor invite forced warrant checks and random searches./p p No one supports urban blight. But in this case the city is responsible for failing to enforce existing laws for years, thus creating public outrage, and then mounting an outright attack on the poor in response. If the city is tired of seeing desperately poor people littering the streets of this city, I have a fine suggestion: BUILD AFFORDABLE HOUSING! And instead of punishing all of us, forcing us off public benches and into the streets at dawn, how about the innovative solution of curbing crime by arresting criminals? What a concept. Someone should suggest it to Chief Lau and Mayor Brown. /p pbExposing What?/bbr / br /By Lisa Gray-Garcia/p pThe Camera’ s gaze panned across the landscape at San Francisco’s United Nations Plaza lingering at discarded bottles, crumpled paper bags, empty beer cans...and then....a face... a man...An African-American man....smoking something...a cigarette, perhaps.. we’re not sure..then another African-American man.. then an African-American woman...then an African-American child...then another....then another and..another..and another and...until one would believe that the entire population of homeless folks in UN Plaza was African-American and then a voice, the voice of truth, the voice of.....authority?../p p“At the United Nations Plaza our hidden cameras uncovered the rampant drug use of Homeless People in UN Plaza...” This so-called “undercover” report by KRON-channel 4 (which incidently is owned by the Hearst Corporation) was followed by a shocked” interview with Mayor Brown - who after viewing the tape I just described, commented that he “would have his office look into it and see what could be done”/p pSeveral hours later the Benches at UN Plaza were removed, or rather "seized" by unmarked city vehicles- this act rendered almost every person in UN Plaza at-risk of being cited for loitering as their ability to sit was no longer legally sanctioned by the presence of benches in UN Plaza. /p p The Coalition on Homelessness filed a Freedom of Information Act Request, at which point it was uncovered that the bench removal was planned by the Mayor and City government several months ago, proving that the Mainstream media was used as an integral part of a public relations campaign to rationalize San Francisco's most recent act of racial and economic cleansing. /p p As well, and most disturbing to us at POOR, was the depiction of "so-called" homeless people, none of whom were actually spoken to, consulted or interviewed, about their homelessness or their alleged substance abuse, but as well, the intentional and bUNTRUE/b impression created by the direction of the Channel Four News cameras, that everyone in UN Plaza, was homeless, African-American, and on Drugs. /p pWe at POOR know this is not true because we are the poor folks who used to sit in UN Plaza, we are also the elders, the youth, Native Americans, African-Americans, Asians, Whites, Latinos and so on and so on.. and we have a voice, a voice of authority, an insider voice..and obviously we NEED to Be Heard!! /p p/p/td/tr/td/tr/table/div/p