Story Archives

by Liana Fabiani

OAKLAND---How do you change the make-up of an
entire community?---maybe by changing the school
system used by the community. Oakland Mayor Jerry
Brown has come up with a sure fire way to move
forward with his gentrification plans for Oakland..... or
so he hoped.

Last week Mayor Jerry Brown was defeated for the
second time this year by the Oakland School Board. The
vote just before midnight Wednesday brought an end to a
five hour hearing on the mayor’s plan to launch a
Military Academy (magnet school) on the former
Oakland Army Base by September. Arguments for and
against the proposal were heard but, one vote in
particular set forth by one of Brown’s own, drew a roar
of applause from the very diverse crowd of people
present. Brown was bewildered by his appointee Wilma
Whites no vote who throughout the meeting seemed to
lean towards casting a yes vote, but at the end denounced
the plan as RACIST. White believed that the military
academy proposal offered no real choice for students
trapped in Oakland’s public schools. She described the
plan as being the provider of a racist two-tier system in
education. ìI do not think the proponents of this academy
are racists; I respect them all,I found the military
academy charter petition, however, racist in it’s effect.

Brown responded with "I don’t understand" (white male
rhetoric), as well as lashed out against the other board
members who voted against his plan by saying that they
were flat-earth society members who jealously guard a
failing school system and resist any kind of change

Along with White, board President Dan Siegel and
members Jean Quan, Bruce Kariya, and Ken Rice all
voted against Brown. Siegel argued that a military school
would be a bad fit for progressive Oakland and that it
would be unethical because the charter school would
receive 2-3 times more funds than any of the 90 other
public schools in Oakland.

"We’re not trying to nail Jerry", Board member Rice said
last Thursday. He’s a bright guy. But he just doesn’t get
it when it comes to what’s needed for real school reform
in Oakland.

Oakland’s School Superintendent Dennis Chaconas
agrees. Formally Alameda's Superintendent, Chaconas
also opposed Browns proposal. Believing that he had
come back to a district that was in worse shape then
when he had left it in 1993, he states that student
achievement had not been the #1 priority of the Oakland
School District like it should have been. He brought forth
the notion that there is no significant data proving charter
schools effectiveness and that he is therefore committed
to improving the overall educational system and not for
separating the community by only helping a small
number of students through charter programs.

So what are some of the answers? Chaconas proposed,
"We do need to pay teachers more, which requires more
funding, fundamentally, you create a system with high
standards and you hold teachers and principals
accountable for performance. You tell those who are not
doing their job how to improve and you reward those
who are doing a good job."

Chaconas also believes that the real issues of education
have been buried by politics, which have destroyed
morale causing people and representatives to be on the
defensive. They’re saying you can’t change the system, "
I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t believe I could
change it and if you believe it can’t change, then you
should get out and do something else.Teaching is an art,
a passion. You have to have standards. You have to care
about the kids. Our teaching system doesn’t teach any of
those"

He went on to say that there has been a disconnect
between the district office and the school sites, a lack of
support and understanding. This seemed to ring all so
true on the night of the meeting as the crowd of more
than 150 people (many of them Oakland students) got out
of control because they were not getting a fair chance to
be heard, forcing Siegel to temporarily shut down the
meeting.

To push his proposal forward, it is publicly known that
Brown had exhausted all of his resources and pulled all
of his strings to get the idea funded through alliances
with local and National agencies from the likes of Gray
Davis and the National Guard. But it did not seem to
make any difference, as together-- the People of
Oakland, Wilma White, Siegel, Quan, Kariya, Rice,
Chaconas, and Alameda’s Superintendent of schools
Sheila Jordan stood up for what was best for all the kid’s
in Oakland. Through their courageous votes and/or
opinions they managed to slow Jerry and his troops
down.

"The bottom line is we're going forward" Brown said,
"and the point is Oakland School Board Members don’t
have the last say on this"

No Jerry, I really think the bottom line is that the people
of Oakland are simply not havin’ it.

by Anna Morrow

"Over the last four years gentrification in the Mission
has gotten completely out of hand! .....now it’s time we
take things into our own hands! "

The emotionally charged words came from Lisa
Hernandez who told the crowd of mission residents,
artists, tenant advocates and recently homeless San
Franciscans, that her mother, a long time San Francisco
resident, had been forced out of her home by the
voracious appetite of the dot com dollar.

The crowd around 1660 Mission St. bursted into
cheering and clapping ; a rolling of Congo beats lifted up
into the air. The emcee of the protest, Oscar Grande of
PODER asked the crowd to raise their voices when they
felt compelled by one of the many speakers telling their
stories of eviction and/or gentrification. The target of the
angry voices were on the fifth floor of the large gray
concrete building at 1660 Mission st. A Mr. Gerald
Green Director of the San Francisco Planning
Department was concurrently presented with a letter from
five members of the Mission District Anti-Displacement
Coalition (MAC). The demands of the letter were:

1.Mr. Green and all staff members, including
senior staff members, attend a community
meeting scheduled for Wednesday June 28th, to
answer the demands of the community.

2.that zoning in the Mission be changed
immediately to protect our community from
further displacement

3.that there be no more development, including
pipeline projects, until permanent controls are in
place in the North East industrial zone and
protections are in place for the Mission Street
corridor and 24th Street corridor.

For the past four years, the Mission District as well
as other low income and working class multi-cultural,
immigrant, communities of color have borne the
brunt of gentrification caused by the booming
economy and un-checked development of live -work
lofts of high-tech multi -media offices. All parts of
our community, from small community serving
businesses to low income renters and non-profit
community based organizations, have been displaced.
The Planning department and commission have done
little to protect the most vulnerable residents,
businesses, and community based organizations. The
Department and Commission have blindly followed
the demands of powerful lobbyists and developers
and have overlooked the concerns of the low income
communities like the Mission.

As protesters raise their voices in sympathy and
solidarity to the stories being told by various speakers
it is clear that the plight of the Mission district is yet
another verse in

the song whose chorus is " Economic Boom For
Whom?????"

This is happening in the midst of a booming economy
that is increasing the gap between rich and poor, with
little if any response from city officials.

Last month the Planning Commission approved the
Bryant Square project despite the objections of
community residents. This 150,000 + square foot
project slated for 19th and Bryant streets would be
located right next to a residential area in the Mission.
Over 100 community members mobilized to oppose
the development believing that it would further
displace residents , erode community culture, and
increase traffic-- jeopardizing the safety of children,
seniors and families. Strong arguments made by the
community prompted a majority of Planning
Commissioners to agree that the project would cause
displacement and other problems in the
neighborhood. However the commission then
proceeded to approve the project by a 4 to 1 vote.

Like most of the people here today I represent one
generation of a multi generation San Francisco
family. I am sickened , saddened and outraged by the
careless handling of the our City’s destiny. The
essence of what makes San Francisco San Francisco,
the diversity which draws people from across the
globe, is being eroded and traded in favor of the
dollar. I am proud that we are here, taking a stand to
fight for what is rightly ours: the future of our lives
and communities, in our home - San Francisco.

by Kaponda

Like a barge on water, the quaint abode plodded
along the narrow, city road. In tandem with the
seasoned vehicle that slogged ahead, it signaled the
last vestige of free will. Its eyes pored in every
direction in search of a piece of parcel on which to
rest. Even an old-fashioned drive-in would provide
sufficient relief to cool its engines.

But the signs posted on most of the streets -- "No
Parking Between 2:00 PM to 6:00 AM" -- represented
the disdain which most residents of China Basin have
towards homes on wheels. Neither will Officer
Swiatco, the code enforcement officer who represents
the San Francisco Police Department at the Bayview
station, show any compassion for this mobile home
in distress. A tacit contract has been put out on
vehicles used for sleeping or camping in California.

Officer Swiatco of the San Francisco Police
Department has been turned loose by the Bayview
Station in San Francisco on vehicles that are used as
homes. He aggressively pursues any vehicle which
exceeds the 72-hour parking law, or that fails to
display the proper registration. Swiatco, however, is
a puppet, dangling from a strategically vast
conspiracy of economics.

Invoking the time-honored proverb, "The love of
money is the root of all evil", these words could have
been written just for planners and developers in
Silicon Valley and other "growing" areas of
California. Not too long ago, inexpensive trailer
courts and mobile home parks were sprawled along
cities from Sunnyvale to Los Gatos. But the real
estate boom in California has curbed the growth of
these mobile home communities. Developers are
literally snatching the ground from underneath
vehicularly housed residents' wheels.

An article in the San Jose Mercury, dated Thursday,
June 1, 2000, by Laura Kurtzman, states the
deplorable extent to which developers will push for
the love of money. According to Kurtzman's article, a
91-year-old woman, Antonia Telles, a former migrant
worker who lives on $830 a month from her late
husband's Social Security, was given an eviction
notice after having resided for 50 years at the
Campbell Trailer Court in Campbell, California. To
further accentuate the evil visited upon her in the form
of the notice to vacate, according to Kurtman's
article, Ms. Telles' space is beside the cemetery plot
of her deceased husband.

In Los Gatos, Doug McNelly, owner of Los Gatos Mobile
Home Park, admits that it would be very difficult for a
person to find other housing in the California runaway real
estate market. McNelly has put a moratorium on renting
spaces and has negotiated the buyout of every mobile home
resident on his property. He has cleared the way, along
with the hopes and aspirations of many poor people whose
only resort is to find housing in mobile home parks, to sell
his land to a developer, Barry Swenson. Again, both
McNelly and Swenson will probably earn huge amounts of
money in view of the real estate boom in California. But
their financial gains will displace poor and low-income
people throughout Silicon Valley, because most cities are
not creating space for vehicularly housed residents. Santa
Cruz, however, is an exception.

As of May 23, 2000, the first reading of legislation to
decriminalize sleeping in vehicles or outdoors at night was
approved by the Santa Cruz City Council. For years, Santa
Cruz had had a draconian sleeping ban. According to the
June edition of the Street Spirit, in an article written by
Robert Norse of Homeless United for Friendship and
Freedom (HUFF), so severe was the Sleeping Ban,
"...that the City1s own Interfaith Satellite Shelter Program
(ISSP), which has had homeless people sleeping on the
floors of churches for 13 years, is itself illegal in the City
(since churches are not considered domiciles under the
law)."

The recently approved proposed legislation is the product
of a combination of aggressive protests by Campaign to
End the Sleeping Ban (CESB) and bold actions by HUFF.
According to Norse's article, the new law, if sanctioned at
the second reading, scheduled for June13, 2000, "would
throw out entirely the Blanket Ban, which now bars
covering up with blankets at night...". It would also
"...establish legal areas to which the police could direct
homeless sleepers, giving everyone (in theory) a legal
place to sleep within City limits. For those without
vehicles, that would be on thin strips of pavement unless
private property owners granted them access to industrial
lots. Private property owners would be freed for the first
time in 22 years to allow sleeping anywhere on their
property, provided the activity does not create a public
nuisance or violate zoning laws."

The cause of the vehicularly housed was taken on by
activists such as Robert Norse, Becky Johnson of HUFF
and David Silva of CESB. These individuals
single-heartedly committed themselves to the struggle
against the injustice thrust upon one-third of the homeless
population in the City of Santa Cruz. They braved the
mean-spirited attitudes of the people and leadership of
Santa Cruz to gain this historic victory.

by Rodessa Garcia

"But it is an emer.....gen.............." the last part of
my sentence was cut off by my own saliva which was
draining into my throat at a rate of three gallons per
second.

"No Miss Garcia, I don't think so"..... the admitting
clerk mistook my choking pause for uncertainty, and
proceeded to start shaking her head from side to side
while she filled the silence with her persistent rant, "
We can only see you if it is a life threatning
emergency, and of course that is only if there is no
other county facilities available."

"I'm.....tell...ing.....you....I can't..... breathe.....It
is an emer....." She was still shaking her head. I
managed to spit out one last sentence. "Can you ask
your sup...ervis..or..?!"

At this point she made a small snort of
frustration/confusion and walked away.

It had been several months since I had had an asthma
attack quite this bad and when I had the last one I
vowed to never go to an emergency room due to an
example of what I call "Hellth-care" which included
sitting in a County funded emergency room for no
less than 16 hours before I recieved any treatment.
Unfortunately illness is an untameable beast which
strikes unexpectantly when you are least
prepared....and for poor people that is always.

But this day started simply. The sun was cool and
flat....Mountain and ocean breezes from opposite
ends of the sky collided in the San Francisco
atmosphere refreshing my pores. And then......all of
sudden....... a slice of fresh pollen coupled with
several hundred wayward dust mites entered my nose
and mouth.

It began as just a difficulty breathing and proceeded
into a monstrous cough/ wheeze, at that point, logic
and all other normal thoughts disappeared in place of
adrenalin fueled terror and extreme states of anxiety. I
walked into the emergency room of a hospital owned
by Catholic Healthcare West, a private non-profit
corporation, and began an odd sort of battle to prove
the emergent nature of my illness.

The supervisor returned with the admitting clerk who
was still shaking her head, in a permanent state of
no...... "Miss Garcia...we will admit you this time
but....." The supervisor's voice was loud and
smashed through the glass window between us "
because you have no insurance we will have to bill
you...." I thought this was a strange comment from
the admitting nurse's supervisor but somehow it
meant I could be considered "an emergency"

After this 45 minute financial diagnosis I was able to
recieve care. I saw the doctor for four minutes,
hooked up to breathing machine for ten minutes, and
recieved a prescription for an inhaler. Two weeks
later I recieved a bill. It was for several hundred
dollars.

I called the hospital billing office after recieving the bill, "
After a full minute of annoyance laced pleasantries between
me and the billing clerk, I began my tirade, " I told the
admitting clerk I was unemployed and homeless, I told her
I had no money to pay for services...I told her I wanted to
recieve services under the Hill- Burton act......why am I
recieving this bill? "

Many non-profit hospitals have an obligation to provide
charity care because of their use of low interest rate
financing from the federal government through the
Hill-Burton program.Approved by congress in 1946, the
program extends to hospitals and other health facilities
money for construction and modernization. In return,
recipients of Hill-Burton funds are required to provide a
reasonable volume of services to persons unable to pay and
also make their services available to all persons residing in
the facilities area.

"Well Ms. Garcia, we know someday you will be able to
work and until that day we will continue to bill you"

"You are not hearing me...! ...I said I am very low income
and I asked to be treated under the Hill-Burton Program."

"I told you what we will do......click

After that phone call....I began recieving bill after bill, until
the blue and green colored envelopes turned into hues of
pink and red. Billing turned into collection....and
eventually collection locked in my cycle of poverty
culminating with a landlord refusing to rent to me because I
they thought I was a "bad credit risk"

Despite the growing numbers of medically uninsured San
Franciscans, the city's three largest private hospitals (St
Mary's Medical Center and St Francis Memorial Hospital
of Catholic Healthcare West and California Pacific Medical
Center of Sutter Health reduced their rate of charity care
spending by 15.7 percent during the past four years. In
1998, the three hospitals spent less than half of one percent
of their revenues on charity care- approximately one-sixth
the national average for tax exempt hospitals. Together
these hospitals control more than half of the city's licensed
hospital beds.

All hospitals --for profit and non-profit alike-- have an
obligation to serve the sick and uninsured. Tax-exempt
hospitals are further bound by a basic social contract with
the general public due to their tax-exempt status. In
exchange for receiving millions of dollars in tax breaks,
tax-exempt hospitals are expected to provide charitable
services to poor and uninsured patients. Tax-exempt
hospitals' tax breaks include exemptions from property and
income taxes, access to tax-free bonds issued through
government agencies, and access to tax-deductible
donations from the public.

PT 2 HEALTHCARE..!!!

On June 26, 2001 At the Board of Supervisors Health Committee Hearing, Sup. Sophie Maxwell who has been working with SEIU local 250 on this issue, introduced an ordinance that requires private hospitals to notify patients of their right to apply for charity care. The ordinance also requires hospitals to file an annual report with DPH describing how many people applied for charity care, received charity care and were rejected, as well as cost info, etc. The ordinance establishes financial penalties to be levied against hospitals for failing to comply.

This ordinance will help hold hospitals accountable and is a first step towards establishing greater public accountability.

The ordenance was passed by the full board on Monday, July 2, 2001

"Charity Care Policy Reporting and Notice Ordinance"(print this and keep it with you, poor folks!!)

I. Purpose: According to the ordinance, its principal purpose is to provide City agencies with adequate information to plan for the provision of health care to city residents and "to maximize the access to charity care within the community and to enhance the health of the public by informing individuals of the availability of charity care.

II. Provisions: This ordinance would add language to the San Francisco Health Code requiring San Francisco's private hospitals to:

Notify patients about their right to apply for charity care;
Submit annual reports to the San Francisco Department of Public Health describing each hospital's provision of charity care.

Patient Notification Requirements:
Hospitals would be required to verbally notify patients during the admissions process about the availability of charity care and any process necessary to apply for charity care.
Hospitals would be required to post multilingual notices about their charity care policies in several prominent locations within the hospital, such as the emergency department, billing office, and waiting rooms.

Public Reporting Requirements:
Hospitals would be required to file annual reports with the San Francisco Department of Public Health containing the following information:
The dollar amount of charity care provided during the year, as measured in terms of costs to the hospital;

The total number of applications for charity care received by the hospital, as well as the numbers of acceptances and denials, including visit code of each patient's residents;
The number of people applying for charity care who were referred to other facilities, including the name of the facilities to which they were referred;
The description of the type of services delivered to charity care patients (i.e., emergency, inpatient, outpatient or ancillary medical services);
All of the hospital's charity care policies, including but not limited to explanations regarding the availability of charity care and the time periods and procedures for application, determination, and appeal; any application forms used; and the hospital locations and hours at which the information may be obtained by the general public;
Other information that the Department of Public Health requires.

III. Enforcement: The ordinance would establish a penalty of up to $500 per day for hospitals that violate the ordinance.

IV. Applicability: The ordinance would cover all private acute-care hospitals in San Francisco. Kaiser Foundation Hospital San Francisco would be covered by the notification provisions of this ordinance, but would be exempt from the reporting provisions because Kaiser hospitals, which operate on a pre-paid basis, do not have billing systems capable of collecting the data required by the reporting portion of this ordinance. This mirrors a similar exemption for Kaiser hospitals under state law.

The ordinance was passed
by the full board on Monday,
July 2, 2001.

by Kaponda

I felt like I had been atop Mount Everest, as I listened
to the small child in front of the United Nations Plaza.
Even the raised concrete structure on which the
beautiful, three-year old girl stood did not make her
appear any taller. The sound of her voice resonated
out of a loudspeaker as the breeze caused the unfurled
banners to cradle her body. True to the proverb, "Out
of the mouth of babes and suckling," it was she who
had provided me the insight into the significance of
the event held on Friday, May 12th, when she
uttered, "Happy Mothers Day to all of the Mothers in
Prison."

"Mothers in Prison -- Children in Crisis" was
sponsored by Families with a Future, an organization
founded by the mother of the three-year old wonder,
Ida McCray. Now in its sixth year, Mothers in
Prison, Children in Crisis is the first and only
national organizing campaign that seeks to establish
alternatives to incarceration as the sentencing norm
for women with dependent children. Based in the
state of New York, it has a broad-based community
of supporters around the country whose mission is to
use compelling statistics to demand legislators to
overhaul current sentencing regulations.

According to statistics gathered by Campaign 2000
JusticeWorks Community, there are now 146,600
women incarcerated in United States prisons and
jails. An astounding statistic by the U.S. Department
of Justice: Bureau of Justice Statistic, states that of
the 146,000 women incarcerated, 75% are mothers.
Furthermore, two-thirds of these women have
children under the age of 18.

A formerly incarcerated woman, Ida McCray had
spent 12 grueling years in the California Prison
System, California Youth Authority and Federal
prisons. I asked her what she would most like to
express to the people concerning the rally at Civic
Center Plaza. "We need more places that will help
families. Monies have been appropriated to fragment
families. We need money to build families,"
according to McCray. Standing firmly on her
commitment to end the separation of biological
families, McCray continued to express her feelings,
as the wind gingered up her healthy dreadlocks, "This
is a form of genocide which is being given no
attention. A glaring example is our children." Unlike
many incarcerated mothers, Ida McCray did not lose
her children during her time in prison.

Children are the first casualties when their mothers
are incarcerated. According to a statistic by the U.S.
Department of Justice: Office of Justice Programs,
"Women currently in prison or jail are mothers to
more than 250,000 children, the majority of whom
are under 18 years of age." "While children usually
remain with their mother during the incarceration of
their father," according to a study by The Obsborne
Association, "Children of incarcerated mothers are
much more likely to experience a change in primary
caretaker."

The strategic efforts of the supporters of the Mothers in
Prison, Children in Crisis movement have opened the
doors of people in high places. Acting under authority of
the State of Iowa, Governor Thomas J. Vilsack proclaimed
May 7, 1999 as Mothers in Prison -- Children In Crisis
Day." Also, acting under authority, Governor Mike
Huckabee of Arkansas, during a rally in May of 1999,
proclaimed May 9th through May 11th of 1999, "Mothers
in Prison, Children in Crisis Weekend."

One of the speakers at the rally was San Francisco District
Attorney, Terrence Hallinan, who gave the onlookers hope
when he stated that he would like to, "Declare an end to the
war on drugs. A war on drugs is not the solution, as it
causes more problems and much more misery." Hallinan
further stated that "Women are being incarcerated for
victimless crimes...."

An official for the Department of Health, Jimmy Loyce,
gave a passionate speech before the crowd at the Civic
Center Plaza. "Every day a mother does in prison, her
child does in prison [also]," Loyce stated. He added that
"The only crime is a disease called alcoholism and drug
addiction," implying that a connection exists between
women who are incarcerated and their addiction to drugs
and alcohol.

A recent study by the U.S. Department of Justice: Office of
Justice Programs has determined that, "Women in prison
are more likely than men to have ever used drugs, to have
used drugs daily the month before their offense, to have
been under the influence of drugs while committing the
offense and to have committed the offense to get drugs."
"Less than 10% of those who need substance abuse
treatment in prison actually receive it. Seventy-five percent
of the general population who seek substance abuse
treatment, never receive it," according to The Nation1s
Number One Health Problem.

Claire Campbell of Jelani House, Inc., a refuge for
pregnant women, underscored the misappropriations of
funds to criminalize offenders of victimless crimes by
stating, "Women are in jail for nonviolent crimes, like
holding drugs for others." She called for women to stay
tuned in to each other.

The Executive Director for Standing Against Global
Exploitation (SAGE) provided recommendations to
changing the system. She stated that "Since changing
institutions is very difficult, we must change the minds of
individuals inside the system, and expose them to
alternatives to incarceration."

According to the Mothers in Prisons, Children in Crisis1
Fact Sheet, "Alternatives to incarceration have been
legislatively endorsed for more than 20 years. The
understanding which guided the early movement towards
alternatives was that penal institutions are destructive to the
humanity of prisoners, guards, administrators and the
community. Thus, alternatives were designed to keep
people out of jail and prison.

The recommended alternatives to incarceration of women
would probably decrease rapidly increasing separation of
biological families. There would be more children in the
warm embrace of their loving parents. It is a concept that
would give Mothers Day a whole new meaning.

by Terry Messman

Suppose a surreal scene (for, in Oakland, politics is the
art of the surreal). Suppose an elitist city planner goes
out of control after watching the film, Invasion of the
Body Snatchers, where the real inhabitants of a town are
replaced, one by one, with aliens and no one is supposed
to even mention the sinister plan. In a frenzy, said city
planner decides to create a master plan for the secret
removal of the unwanted poor from Oakland and their
one-on-one replacement by white, affluent dot-commers.

Quick shift of scene to the Oakland mayor’s office,
where the blueprints for the removal of the poor have
already been drawn up by the landlords and city planning
officials working in tandem to slowly replace the
longtime residents of downtown Oakland, one by one,
with outsiders…

A city report leaked to Street Spirit by Lynda Carson, an
anti-eviction activist who works with Just Cause
Oakland, shows that Mayor Jerry Brown ordered his
housing development staff to conduct a survey of all 24
Single Room Occupancy (SRO) hotels in the Central
District and analyze how much it would cost to remove
and replace them, presumably with market-rate housing
and upscale commercial developments.

Outrage among advocates

Housing advocates in Oakland are expressing outrage
that Brown would even request a secret report to analyze
what it would cost to eliminate low-income hotels in the
downtown area. The analysis, conducted for Brown by
city staff in the Housing Development Section, surfaced
recently in activist circles, although it had circulated
among a small inner circle at City Hall considerably
before then.

Even though the price tag for eliminating all 24 SRO
hotels in Oakland’s Central District may be prohibitively
expensive and therefore unworkable, tenant advocates
called it a betrayal by Jerry Brown of his poorest
constituents and a blueprint for increased homelessness.

"I found it to be chilling," Carson said. "When I first got
wind of that survey, I tried to visualize all these people
being forced to move out of their homes and relocate. It
really sunk in on me that if all the SROs are gone, there
will really be no place in Oakland for those of us who
have hit rock bottom."

Staff members of several Oakland housing agencies
confirmed that the report was prepared because Jerry
Brown and the redevelopment officials in charge of
pushing his plan to bring 10,000 new residents into the
downtown believe it will be very hard to "market"
Oakland when so many poor people are on the streets.
Advocates close to the mayor’s office say that Brown
had told his staff that SROs are the culprit and should be
closed down because there are too many low-rent hotels
and, therefore, too many poor people.

"Jerry Brown is under the influence of wealthy
developers who may fear that it’s very difficult to bring a
lot of rich new residents into a downtown area dominated
by poor people," said Carson. "I think the mayor’s office
is full aware that it’s discouraging to his plans to bring in
10,000 rich people to see so much poverty in their face
night after night."

Blueprints for gentrification are nearly always designs
for dislocation, eviction and homelessness. The moral
blindness of this mayoral administration is that it would
remove real, flesh-and-blood citizens of Oakland who
have lived downtown all their lives for fantasized hordes
of upscale people who have never yet lived in Oakland.
"It’s a pipe dream of Jerry Brown," said Carson. "His
slogan is ‘Oaklanders First.’ But Oaklanders first are
being run out of town."

The stages of gentrification

The first stage of this blueprint for gentrification and
homelessness requires a mayor willing to turn a blind eye
as Oakland’s avaricious landlords jack up the rents to
unconscionable levels and unleash a barrage of no-cause
evictions on poor renters and people of color.

The second stage of this plan involves canceling the
City’s lease with the Henry Robinson Multi-Service
Center, the largest transitional housing program for
homeless families in the East Bay, and negligently
allowing many other homeless services to be driven out
of downtown Oakland by escalating rents. But the
Multi-Service Center is only one of an estimated 24 SRO
hotels that provide the only housing still affordable to the
poorest residents of downtown Oakland.

Therefore, the third stage of this design for displacement
is clear: Target the other SRO hotels for possible
removal. Evidently, that is just what Jerry Brown began
contemplating last summer.

The report prepared for Brown by the City’s Housing
Development staff estimated that it would cost more than
$102 million "if the SROs were to be acquired by private
developers" and more than $162 million "if the
Redevelopment agency were to acquire these hotels given
the additional, state-required relocation costs of
$25,000/unit."

The study begins on an ominous note: "In order to assist
our discussion of this topic with Mayor Brown, the
Housing Development Section has analyzed the estimated
value of all the Single Room Occupancy Hotels (SROs)
in the Central District. In addition, we have reviewed the
report prepared by the Police Department regarding crime
reports and arrests near the SROs and have reviewed the
Code Enforcement Division’s records with respect to
building conditions."

Those are chilling words to anyone who knows the
history of how city officials in Oakland’s code
enforcement division have worked hand-in-glove with
the police and fire departments to close down unwanted
SROs, such as the El Centro and the Royal, in the past.
Police crime reports, coupled with complaints received
by the code enforcement division, can be used to close
down these buildings. Once an SRO has been
red-tagged, its market value plummets, and it becomes
more feasible for a private developer to buy it out and
remove or renovate it.

A brake on Brown’s ambitions?

Reportedly, this study was completed under the direction
of Oakland Housing Director Roy Schweyer, a longtime
supporter of affordable housing, and that may have
resulted in some cautionary observations that placed at
least a momentary brake on Mayor Brown’s ambitions.

The report warns, for instance, of dire consequences if
SRO units are eliminated entirely: "The elimination of
these units, which provide shelter, and in some cases,
social service resources would create an increase in
homelessness. The impact then could be a larger
presence of displaced people on the streets of
downtown."

Yet despite this warning, the report recommends
developing a comprehensive strategy that would include
"continued and stepped-up code enforcement activities,"
and even more chillingly, "marketing the areas and the
privately owned SROs to private developers."

That marketing strategy may be Brown’s best hope to
begin removing SRO hotels in a piecemeal fashion,
rather than in one fell swoop. When the city staff put the
numbers together (reportedly, sometime last August), it
became apparent that finding $100-$160 million to
remove all 24 SROs at once was nearly impossible.
Affordable housing advocates say that Brown’s real
game now is to implement this plan incrementally by
encouraging private developers to buy out SROs one by
one and replace them with new commercial offices or
market-rate housing.

Also, sources close to Mayor Brown say he was set back
on his heels by the community outcry against his plan to
bring in 10,000 new market-rate housing units while
rejecting any low-income housing in a time of rising
rents and eviction rates. Because of this widespread
criticism of the potential loss of affordable housing,
homeless advocates say that Brown has backed off
somewhat and now is supposedly more open-minded
about including a modicum of affordable housing in his
master plan to perform cosmetic surgery on downtown
Oakland.

But boona cheema, a longtime homeless advocate and
social services provider, warns that even when the mayor
talks about supporting bonds for affordable housing, he
is talking about housing for people at 80 percent of the
median income – housing that will never help homeless
people remain in Oakland.

A Trojan Horse

All too often, that is simply gentrification by another
name – using the promise of affordable housing as a
Trojan Horse to smuggle in higher-rent units for
middle-income renters in a city with a crying need for
housing for very low-income people.

Cheema, the executive director of Building Opportunities
for Self-Sufficiency (BOSS), has seen and studied the
secret city report on SRO hotels. She commented, "I
think Jerry Brown is really misguided. We have poor
people and disabled people and mentally ill people who
he wants to address from a law-and-order point of view,
and not a public-health point of view."

BOSS provides a comprehensive array of services,
shelter, long-term housing, counseling, job training and
referrals to homeless people in Alameda County.
Because of rising rents, cheema said, the poor people her
agency serves are facing a far greater struggle to remain
housed and avoid eviction than ever before – so Brown’s
proposed tampering with some of the last truly affordable
housing in Oakland comes at the worst possible time.

"We need more services for poor people," cheema said.
"We need to create a downtown in Oakland that is truly
mixed. Poor people have lived there for years. The SROs
are their only home. So in a way, Jerry Brown is
ass-backwards in his approach. By removing the SROs,
he will create more poor people on the street, like in San
Francisco."

Brown’s highly touted plan to upgrade Oakland’s
downtown has always consisted of an overt agenda and a
covert agenda. The publicly announced agenda is to
work with large real estate developers and contractors to
build market-rate housing for 10,000 new residents –
middle-income and affluent people who would create a
"more desirable" populace when the mayor tries to entice
big business to move into downtown Oakland.

But the hidden part of this so-called "10K" plan is to
drive away all the social problems and poor people that
might make downtown Oakland an unappealing place to
live for your average, upwardly mobile dot-commer.

The people advising Brown on his 10K plan to redevelop
and upgrade downtown Oakland, said cheema, have
made a fundamental error in judgment. "They’re up to no
good, because their thinking is flawed," she said.
"Instead of putting in resources to help people, they go at
the problem in a way that will create more problems.
Who is thinking for this man? He’s not thinking with
long-term vision. He’s just thinking, ‘We’re really
wired. Let’s bring in the techies.’"

An urban removal project

Brown has definitely chosen a new approach to the
age-old problem of poverty – not an urban renewal
project, but a flat-out attempt at urban removal.

Housing developers and homeless advocates labored
intensively for years to create an umbrella of support
services for poor people in downtown Oakland.
Programs for poor people blossomed, including the
Henry Robinson Multi-Service Center, the First Step
recovery program, St. Mary’s Center for Homeless
Seniors, Sentinel Fair Housing, the Oakland
Independence Support Center, BOSS, Traveler’s Aid,
Dignity Housing West, and Oakland Community
Housing, Inc.

Now, ironically, some of the very service centers set up
to help the poor and homeless are themselves threatened
by rapidly rising rents and face the same bitter fate of
displacement and eviction undergone by those they set
out to help.

Clearly, the SRO hotels are first on the endangered list.
SROs are rarely popular in the halls of power. The fatally
prejudicial notion in the elite circles of real estate
developers, mayors, and city planners is that SROs
contribute to urban blight and provide cover for the
undesirable poor, the mentally disabled, substance
abusers and street people. Thus, they are viewed as an
impediment to Oakland’s long-thwarted progress
towards becoming an affluent city of gleaming
skyscrapers and thriving commerce.

In truth, much of this "housing of last resort" is far from
ideal. SRO hotels run the entire spectrum – the good, the
bad and the ugly. Nonprofit agencies have created
architecturally attractive SROs that are models of decent,
humane housing, while slum landlords have let SRO
hotels deteriorate into rat-infested firetraps.

Hovel or haven

But, hovel or haven, one thing is certain about SROs:
they’re an absolutely essential lifeline for the poorest
citizens. They are indispensable in providing one of the
last places of refuge where very low-income people can
live without being forced to sleep on a chunk of
discarded cardboard in an alley.

The growing tragedy of homelessness in modern
America is inescapably bound up with the loss of SROs
to demolition, gentrification, fires, and conversion to
tourist hotels. In city after city across America, the
equation couldn’t be more precise or chilling – the loss or
destruction of every SRO hotel has always resulted in
ever-greater homelessness.

When I worked with the Oakland Union of the Homeless
from 1986-1994, we organized rent strikes and worked
with attorneys to have successful lawsuits filed against
some of the more slum-ridden SRO hotels. But make no
mistake: SRO housing was essential then to the
preservation of the lives of the poor in downtown
Oakland. It still is.

To have a mayor come into Oakland from the outside –
without understanding its problems or its history,
without caring about the effect his grandiose plans will
have on its poorest residents – is an outrageous misuse
of political power. Every major study of urban
homelessness has concluded that the loss or destruction
of SRO hotels is an absolutely central cause of increasing
homelessness.

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has released carefully
documented reports every year tracing the rise in
homelessness in the major U.S. cities for the past 15
years. A major component of this increase in
homelessness documented by their reports is the loss of
SRO hotels caused by gentrification.

So why is Oakland’s mayor so clueless about this
phenomenon? He isn’t. He knows full well that bringing
in his sleek crowd of yuppies and dot-commers will
cause displacement of the poor. He asked for this study
of SRO hotels precisely to see how fast and how far he
could go to expedite that displacement.

Watch this administration carefully as it goes about
polishing its image by encouraging big real estate
developers to buy off entire city blocks. Watch every
time a developer takes over a parcel of land in downtown
Oakland that has a homeless program or a low-income
hotel where poor people live. Where that happens, start
an SRO death-watch. Maybe drop off a memorial wreath
or decorate the block with black armbands to lament the
lost housing of the urban poor. Better yet, sit-in at the
mayoral offices of the Evictor-in-Chief responsible for
these designs for displacement.

Preferential option for the rich

A deliberate choice is at work when Jerry Brown uses
the full power of his office to attract the rich while he
presides over the displacement of Oakland’s homeless
programs and SRO hotels, and turns a blind eye to the
growing evictions of poor people and people of color.

What should we name this fateful choice that the Brown
administration seems hell-bent on making?

Jerry Brown, the former Jesuit seminarian, knows that
all over the world, Catholic bishops and nuns and priests
have made "the preferential option for the poor" a central
commitment of their lives and faith. In Latin America
alone, hundreds of priests, bishops and nuns have given
their very lives to stand in solidarity with the aspirations
of the poorest of the poor. And not just the clergy, but
thousands of lay people in countless churches have
dedicated their lives to this preferential option for the
poor.

What then constitutes the core of Jerry Brown’s urban
removal policy? A preferential option for the rich. And
given that most of the people evicted in Oakland have
been and will be people of color, it is inescapably a
preferential option for the affluent white.

"For someone who puts himself across as having lived
with Mother Teresa and being a Jesuit seminarian –
excuse me, I know something about that spiritual path,
and this man is not on it," said boona cheema. "If you
look at the Jesuits, you see a whole order of people who
go into the poorest communities and offer their service.
But as far as I’m concerned, he doesn’t help the poor,
and he didn’t learn anything in his time with Mother
Teresa. It just didn’t register."

Under the Brown administration, said cheema, "the
advocacy on behalf of the very, very poor – the homeless
and disabled folks – is just not there. People are not
politically motivated from their souls to reach out and
help homeless people. That’s a great loss to our
community."

A fateful question awaits Mayor Brown in the future:
When did I see you hungry and not feed you, homeless
and not house you, evicted and heartsick and not come to
your help? But, of course, that question was already
answered long before the mayor’s blueprint for
gentrification was ever drawn up: "I tell you solemnly, in
so far as you neglected to do this to one of the least of
these, you neglected to do it to me."

by Aaron Shuman

....Stories about provocateurs in the crowd is true, though there's been
some exaggeration about the materials thrown over the fence separating
delegates from the protest zone. black-clad anarchists were pressing against
the fence and giving cops the finger, and the lapd was using "supersoakers"
to douse the crowd with pepper spray to force them back, though don't
know who's chicken, who's egg. police directed protesters out of the protest
zone and up figueroa; then a cavalry of officers on horseback came riding
down figueroa, driving protesters back into the zone. they attempted to
herd protesters against the fence separating them from the delegates and
drive them out one exit. a toronto globe-mail reporter caught up in it
told me it was a "run the gauntlet" type situation, with police lined
along a narrow fenced-in corridor, delivering verbal and physical abuse
(kicks, batons). the protesters emerged onto olympic; some were given
contrasting directions from police lines, told to go east, then to go
west, then to go east again.

by Kaponda

The melodic sound waves from the Xylophone and
Gardigan instruments did not, alone, inspire the expressions of exultation.
Nor could the warmth of the brilliant sun claim all the credit for the
joyous faces. The groundbreaking ceremony and commemoration of the 23rd
anniversity of the eviction of Asian tenants from the International Hotel
fashioned the smiles on the faces of the many people at the juncture of
Kearney and Jackson streets.

"One of the things that we are very committed to
do is to make this happen, come hell or high waters. Many
individuals died because of the International Hotel." Supervisor Leland
Yee was very emotional as he expressed his thoughts during an interview
with me after he had addressed the predominantly Asian-Amercian audience.
"There memories cannot go in vain. The reason it is important to build
this project is so that their memory and legacy will live on from now
and into eternity." Although the Housing and Urban Development had awarded
$7.7 million and the Mayor's Office of Housing had committed another $5.5
for construction of an affordable housing project, there was still a tone
of skepticism in Supervisor Lee's voice as we talked. I asked if a groundbreaking
of the new building at the site where the International Hotel had been
located would occur during the Fall of 2000? "This is a done deal to the
extent that all of the plans and all of the agreements are there, but
we have still not somehow pulled it all together yet. But somehow and
some way we've got to make it happen. There are still some last glitches
in terms of right-of-way and so on that will be dealt with."

The Internatinoal Hotel was built during the 19th
century on the corner of Kearney and Jackson streets. Its occupants were
single Filipino and Chinese men who worked as longshoremen and seamen.
Due to its proximity to the wharf, the International Hotel provided a
convenient location for the Filipino and Chinese community. Since a single
room rented for $45.00 per month, it provided affordable housing as well.
Between 1960 and 1977, during the golden age of the Kearney street corridor,
the Filipino community stretched more than four blocks. This enclave was
dubbed, "Manilatown" and the International Hotel would play a key role
in the Asian Community.

Like a shark in a frenzy from the scent of fresh
blood, in 1968, commercial developers sensed huge profits along the Kearney
Street corridor. Since that time, construction of buildings such as the
Holiday Inn, Transamerica and Bank of America have taken place. In 1968,
notices to vacate were given to nearly 200 residents of the International
Hotel. It was learned that a permit to demolish the hotel was issued,
so that construction of a multi-leveled parking lot could began. The tenants
-- most of whom were elderly -- were only given until January 1st of the
new year of 1969 to pack up and move out. That eviction notice was the
catalyst of a cohesiveness that would propel a fierce, nine-year battle
in the Asisan community over racism and civil rights.

After nine-years and three mayoral administrations
of legal gridlock, on August 4, 1977, at three o'clock in the terror of
the morning, the elderly and all other tenants of the International Hotel
were forcibly evicted from their homes. It was a night when injustice
and racism bellowed every aspect of their tyrannous power. The forced
evictions would result in the dispersal of the historical and cultural
roots of a first-generation of Filipinos whose origin went back to the
beginning of the 20th century.

A resident of the International Hotel in 1977,
Emil De Guzman, who is now affiliated with the Manilatown Heritage Foundation,
a community-based organization formed to assist in the development of
a new Manilatown Center, shared with me his first-person experience of
that night. "On August 4, 1977, 200 police, sheriffs and firemen forced
their way through thousands of protesters into the International Hotel.
The San Francisco Fire Department trucks were used to hoist policemen
onto the rooftop of the International Hotel. People were dragged out of
the building."

The Reverend Cecil Williams of Glide Memorial called
the hole in the ground where the International Hotel had been, "The most
important civil rights' issue in San Francisco." Furthermore, he went
on to state as he spoke on the raised platform at the 23rd anniversary
of the forced eviction, "We have to make sure this will never happen again."

I remembered the words of Gandhi, "If the cause
is right, the means will come," when I heard Nancy Hom of the Kearney
Street Workshop, encourage the crowd by stating, "When the cause is right,
the human spirit will prevail....Its what's in the heart that matters."
Many people were in the audience who were personally involved in the struggle
from its beginning.

Bill Sorro, an organizer, activist and former tenant
was married at the International Hotel. He had lived there since May of
1970. Bill did not disguise his frustration while discussing his feelings
with me. "Quite frankly, more and more people need to say, 'screw you,
I ain't leaving' [to any future landlords with plans for gentrification].
I know a lot of people who were there and were hurt. During the
'70's, horses were a legal weapon used to control crowds, and so policemen
came into the crowds on horses wielding billy clubs."

Peter Rubin of Local 261 acted as a member of a
security team outside of the hotel that helped form the barricade around
the hotel to deter the police from storming the building on the night
of August 4, 1977. Many members of Local 261 were sympathetic to the people's
struggle to resist the vacate notices by the owners of the International
Hotel because the members of Local 261 understood the nature of the struggle.
According to Peter, "The sheriff himself came down here and smashed in
some of the doors to get to the tenants who were locked inside their rooms.
When we found out that the police were coming we set up our barricade
around the building. It was six-people deep around the building. The police
came from Washington Street. The San Francisco Fire Department occupied
the adjacent parking lot so that police units and sheriffs could successfully
occupy the roof. The police were pretty violent. Police were riding on
horses, swinging their clubs"

Marshall Werner, a part of the San Francisco community
at-large, shared her thoughts with me about the night of August 4, 1977.
"It was not just activists who were involved. Rather, it was a citywide
effort that saw people from all of the Bay Area providing support to tenants
of the International Hotel. This act [of eviction] by the hotel owners
was viewed as a precedence for developers in San Francisco to seize land
from tenants and the working class for commercial development. Looking
back, historically, it has become true. In addition, the emergence of
greed began to gain politically power among local politicians. We are
no longer able to form the alliances to stop the rapid displacements in
all of the districts in San Francisco. "

As the band, Scratch Pickles, filled the air, I
watched Pearl Ubungen and Wailana Sim Cock interpret the International
Hotel eviction through a dance performance on the barren sidewalk filling
the atmosphere with hope, resistance and revolution.

"By virtue
of its nature, change must occur. Whether a radical or positive force
effects that change depends on you......" Kaponda, August 8, 2000.

by 24 inmates of the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility

>We are 24 male prisoners currently held
at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility for our participation or attempted
participation in the August 1st non-violent direct actions against the
Republican convention in Philadelphia. The carefully choreographed conventions
of both major parties have nothing to do with democracy. They are corporate
sponsored pageants designed to legitimize a system of corporate class
rule that crushes the human spirit and that is destroying the planet.
The criminal justice system of cops, courts and prisons that targets poor
and working class people in general and people of color in particular
is a cornerstone of a system that serves the rich and maintains their
rule. Our actions in the streets of Philadelphia were intended to shine
a light on the incarceration of 2 million people in the U.S., on the systematic
use of police brutality to terrorise whole communities, on the racism
and cruelty of the death penalty, on the many political prisoners, including
Mumia Abu-Jamal, who are caged for their commitment to social justice.
Our actions were aimed at disrupting the Republican convention to the
best of our ability. While weíre sorry any inconvenience we may
have caused the people of Philadelphia, we are proud of what we did to
expose this rotten system.

>From the moment of our arrest we have
experienced and witnessed

the workings of a system designed to dehumanize
people. Many of us were brutalized in the course of arrests. Some of us
were beaten or peppersprayed after we were handcuffed. In jail as many
as nine people were packed into cells designed for two people. People
with dietary restrictions went without food for up to 48 hours. In some
cases our hands and feet were cuffed together and some of us had our cuffs
so tight that we lost feelings in our hands or bled as a result.

>We were denied the opportunity to meet with
our lawyers prior to arraignment and were arraigned in a court room closed
to the general public with the exception of select members of the capitalist
media. We were arraigned with a court appointed public defender serving
as counsel despite our explicitly and repeatedly stated desire to be represented
by our own counsel who were denied access to the proceedings. We were
charged with a variety of misdemeanors and in a few cases with felonies.
Our individual bails have been set at between $10,000 and $1,000,000.
Many if not all of the charges against us are either greatly exaggerated
or completely falsified.

>At Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility
County Jail-we have been placed in a special pod where we have little
contact with other prisoners. While we regard our conditions here as dehumanizing
we recognise that we are receiving special treatment such as extra food.
So far we have not been beaten or physically hurt by personnel here.

>Throughout this process we have sought to
resist and stand in solidarity with each other to the best of our abilities.
Almost all of us have refused to give our names. Many of us have had to
be physically dragged through the various stages of this process. We have
kept our spirits high through singing and chanting and pounding on our
cell walls. We developed systems for communicating with each other and
for reaching decisions by consensus. Many of us ripped the bracelets intended
to identify us off our wrists. We resisted fingerprinting and attempts
to photograph us. Some of us have refused food. In jail we stripped naked
to make our processing more difficult. In the course of all this we have
discovered strengths we never knew we had and have built a wall of solidarity
based on profound love and respect for each other. We have drawn particular
strength from the proud defiance of the sisters whose loud voices we have
heard and whose acts of resistance we have occasionally been able to witness.
While our access to information is restricted we are aware of the efforts
of those on the outside to assist us. We love you all. We are in here
for you and know that you are out there for us.

>We believe that our experiences so far strongly
vindicate us in our decision to take powerful action to expose the brutality
and injustice of the so-called criminal justice system. As we go through
this process we are learning personally of the mistreatment people experience
every day in this country. As a group of mainly white and mainly middle
class men we know full well that the treatment routinely received by poor
people, people of color, and other marginalized people is much worse than
what we have received.

>While we have had little contact with other
prisoners, that contact has been overwhelmingly positive, they know why
we are here and they let us know in many ways that they support our actions
and respect our commitment and solidarity. In turn we are learning from
them about the workings of the prison and their own traditions of resistance.
They have our respect, admiration and solidarity. So far the efforts of
some personnel to cultivate distrust and antagonism between us and the
other prisoners have failed.

>We are political prisoners:

>We are being held on outrageous charges,
in many cases with no foundation whatsoever in our actual actions; Our
bail figures are far out of proportion even for the crimes we are falsely
accused of; We are here because of our political commitment and because
we dared to defy the corporate powers that be as they were attempting
to give a veneer of popular support to the rule of the few.

>We call on those who support us to continue
to put pressure on the Philadelphia authorities to win our quick release.
We urge you all to continue to organize protests on our behalf and to
write and call the mayorís office, the prosecutors and the prison
authorities to demand:

>1.Our immediate and unconditional release
on our own recognizance

>2. That all charges be dropped and

>3. That prisoners with dietary restrictions
(vegans and vegetarians) be provided with adequate food that they can
eat.

>Call these officials and let them know that
you support our demands:

>District Attorney Lynne Abraham 215-686-8701
Mayor John Street 215-686-2181

>City Solicitor Ken Trujillo 215-683-5003

>30 of us have gone on hunger strike to win
these demands. We want everyone to know that we are in good spirits and
remain strong in our solidarity. We come from a variety of backgrounds
and perspectives, but we are united in our commitment to genuine democracy
and an end to corporate rule in general and to the criminal injustice
system in particular.

>FREE MUMIA ABU JAMAL AND ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS
STOP POLICE TERROR

>TEAR DOWN THE PRISON INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX
END THE DEATH PENALTY

>Write to us:

>John Doe ìJDî Professor

>John Doe ODB

>John Doe Wolfman

>John Doe 6010 ìDingerî

>John Doe ìThatís not good
for businessî John Doe Slick

>Camilo Viveiros Jr.

>John Doe 6013

>Christopher Hartley

>John Doe Mac

>John Doe Mango

>John Doe ìB.A.î

>John Doe Sparky

>John Doe Flea

>John Doe ìHank H. Partsî

>John Doe ìWispî

>John Doe Tennessee/Jimnikov

>John Doe Buckshot

>John Doe GOD

>John Doe Switchblade

>John Doe Ms. Pac Man

>John Doe Zeke

>JD Lovebug

>J.D. Kowbone

by Kaponda

Radiating bitter condemnation, the eyes of Leroy Moore, Jr. conducted
the crowd through years of disappointment experienced by disabled people
of color. His suggestive indictment of the exclusionary policies of the
Americans with Disabilities Act cast a pall of gloom over its 10th Anniversary
ceremonies around the country. The people at City Hall listened that Wednesday,
July 26, 2000, as the president and founder of Disability Advocates of
Minorities Organization (DAMO) told the other side of the ADA story.