Enough Is Enough Rally For Self-Determination Monday 11 a.m. at City Hall

dust, Enough Is Enough Rally For Self-Determination Monday 11 a.m. at City Hall, Archives 1976-2008 Local News & Views
Toxic dust and Lennar’s “repeopling” plan. -Photo: Liz Hafalia

Community stands up to redevelopment and SFPD

The movement demanding self-determination for Bayview Hunters Point and defying the Redevelopment Agency’s control and SFPD’s occupation of the community – the movement that organized the Sept. 27 march and rally marking the 40th anniversary of the Hunters Point Uprising – is already inspiring acts of solidarity and courage.

As hard as it is for Hunters Point residents – especially young Black men – to find work even in their own neighborhood, one of those young men, working at the Hunters Point Shipyard, was brave enough to put his job on the line. He complained to his supervisor that dangerous asbestos fibers released from the crushed serpentine rock in the toxic soil they were working on were blowing into a school yard and poisoning the children. He said the soil should at the least be sprayed with water to keep down the deadly dust.

Instead of being rewarded for ensuring compliance with the law and protection of the children, Chris, this young community defender, was fired.

A youth leader at Oakdale, the housing development adjacent to the Shipyard, took Chris to report what had happened to one of the daily meetings where movement organizers are planning the next major show of community defiance, the Enough Is Enough Mass Rally for Self-Determination to be held Monday, Oct. 16, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., on the steps of City Hall. Thousands are expected to come from Bayview Hunters Point and
throughout the Bay Area to join forces on that day, including Black Panthers from throughout the country and abroad who are in town for the 40th anniversary Black Panther Party Reunion this weekend in Oakland.

In response to Chris’s report, a delegation of movement organizers confronted the Lennar subcontractor Lennar is developing the Shipyard, which is still highly toxic and radioactive, under contract with the Redevelopment Agency and, while Chris found a better job, the supervisor who fired him was himself fired. The contractor promised to control the dust and issue protective gear to the workers. Chris and other young leaders are now core members of the organizing committees.

Movement organizers, young and old, are determined to stop the Redevelopment “repeopling” plan already in effect, and now these young leaders from Oakdale have exposed an even more shocking plot. They’ve got hold of a list naming over 500 neighborhood residents – at least 85 percent of them youth – as “urban terrorists,” the list intended no doubt as a
shortcut to prison or an early grave for each person named.

All that it takes to be branded an urban terrorist evidently is to be a “troublemaker”: complaining when sewage backs up into your sink or asserting your rights or defending your community in any way. Branding Bayview Hunters Point as a hotbed for urban terrorism brings police firepower and the tyranny of federal Homeland Security to enforce City Hall’s ethnic cleansing plan for Bayview Hunters Point, a community that is
91 percent people of color.

To learn how you can join the resistance and defend Bayview Hunters Point, come and bring everyone you know to the Enough I Enough Mass Rally for Self-Determination on Monday, Oct. 16, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., on the steps of City Hall. Now is the time to infuse the people once again with the power of the Black Panther Party.

For transportation to the rally, call (415) 240-0313. For more information, cal POWER at (415) 864-8372, ext. 302 or 303.