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A few of us work from Bay View office at 4917 Third Street, but most of the Bay View crew are roving the Bay...

The lines are drawn – Captialism’s Profits over People, or, Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win, all Power to the People

It is clear that even though a person may have served their time in prison, release from prison to a halfway house does not provide freedom. One might be “allowed” to work, but may not be allowed the tools, or Constitutional Rights, necessary for the work allowed. The penal system prevails in unrelenting oppressor control and punishment against captive people, our Black and Brown community members.

These crushing personal accounts of lives living, lived and lost on Treasure Island, are a clear indictment against the white supremacist, racist, capitalist, profits-over-people developers, the U.S. Navy and government entities, which intentionally continue to withhold information and refute any danger and harm to residents suffering and dying from extreme toxic conditions of their harmful living space.

Treasure Island residents live surrounded by deadly radiation and chemicals in the soil and groundwater around their homes. The illnesses they cause can continue and even kill after the families leave the island. Two weeks ago, this beautiful 10-year-old was diagnosed with a brain tumor. Now his mother sits beside his hospital bed praying he survives.

Treasure Island residents have been subjected to virulent poisons by what Dr. King called “economic conditions that … give luxuries to the few and leave millions of God’s children smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society.”

When we least expect it, trouble comes. “I came in contact with a door handle, now I got COVID-19. It’s bad enough my immune system is compromised. I have emphysema and I might not make it out of this.”

The Treasure Island neighborhood’s history spans back 81 years. In 1939, San Francisco built this 404-acre artificial landform for the Golden Gate International Exhibition. In 1941, the Navy took it for a military base, and in 1999-2000, when it was decommissioned, San Franciscans – mostly people of color at risk of homelessness – moved in.

Twenty years before COVID-19, poor and people of color, some with disabilities, and low- and middle-income market rate renters were subjected to the island’s high winds carrying toxins creating a respiratory disease cluster.

“I’m angry about that because I would never have moved to Treasure Island if they had told me there was radiation (there). I didn’t know what was happening to me until I got these tumors (one) on my shoulder and one on my side.”

On Tuesday, Jan. 21, 2020, a press conference was held in front of San Francisco Superior Court, at 400 McAllister, at which San Francisco Attorney Stanley Goff and lead plaintiffs and former Treasure Island residents Andre Patterson and Felita Sample publicly announced a “class action lawsuit and complaint for damages,” arising from public and private exposure to toxins on Treasure Island.

The Navy’s announcement of an estimated 163+ radioactive waste excavations, 41 neighborhood chemical removals, and a large clump of elevated radioactivity from under an occupied home raises doubts that Treasure Island can ever be completely cleaned.

Judge James Donato: “It just doesn’t make any sense to me, that a guy rolls out of bed and says, ‘Hey, today is the day I’m going to swap out the test samples.’”

What is the Navy hiding from residents and business owners about toxins on Treasure Island?

At a June 18, 2019, Treasure Island meeting, a worried mother reported that her townhouse facade had sprouted a metal sign bearing a frightening message: “This area contains chemicals known to the State of California to cause cancer, birth defects, or other reproductive harm.”

Menchini’s skillful videography combines with Candy Corn’s up-close-and-personal footage to give her that respectful space in which to feel. In a series of moments of pure empathy, Audrey and the viewer – including myself – deeply connect. The result is emotional and compelling.

Remember the many years Marie Harrison owned the back page of the Bay View? She defined what “speaking truth to power” means. With headlines like “We’ve always survived your whip and your noose” and observations like “Voter education isn’t just somebody educating the voters; it’s the voters educating the people they elect,” as we carry on without her, we must infuse every fight with her courage.

You’ve been an especially effective, strong, patient and articulate voice confronting forces that do not respect human rights or human life. You’ve told these opportunists firmly and politely that every human being on earth has the right to live and raise their children and see their grandchildren thrive in pollution-free places and to breathe clean air without toxins.

Treasure Island residents’ subsidized and market rate rents have been used by the Treasure Island Development Authority (TIDA) and developers Lennar and Wilson-Meany to maintain and ultimately convert the toxic former Navy base into an exclusive community of wealthy condo owners. In a recent townhall meeting, middle and low-income residents expressed their suspicion that they are being “encouraged” by various means – the most recent of which is a toll tax – to depart from the island to make way for the rich.

Twenty years ago, the city of San Francisco moved thousands of its homeless and low-income residents into former military housing on Treasure Island, a small artificial land mass whose 55 years as a Navy base left it covered in toxic radiation. Today, construction on the island has it on track to becoming a bustling, upscale extension of the city. The problem is, some of those residents from 20 years ago are still there. So are thousands of others who have moved in since. So is the radiation.